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Dec. 11, 2016 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
27:19
This Week in Stupid (11⧸12⧸2016)
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Hello everyone, welcome to This Week in Stupid for the 11th of December 2016.
This week's episode is the penultimate one of this year before I do this year in Stupid, so if you've got any ideas for things you'd like to see or think I should remember from back way back when, do leave comments to let me know.
And I have to give a shout out to Tom, who I met at a train station in Swindon, in fact the train station in Swindon, who recognised me in the street.
A little bit embarrassing for me because I didn't really think I'd ever get recognised, but it was nice to see you.
So we start this week with a New York firefighter charged with setting fire to their own home and blaming it on Black Lives Matter.
So this firefighter was arrested after allegedly setting fire to his own home in an apparent attempt to smear anti-police brutality activists.
A family member said at the time that they believed their home was targeted because of the Blue Lives Matter flag flying out front.
Investigators found the message, Lie with Pigs, Fry Like Bacon, written on some siding outside the burned home.
This being a riff on the Black Lives Matter chant of frying pigs like bacon.
They are just anti-police brutality activists, don't you know?
Anyway, the point is, this happens on both sides of the aisle.
There have been plenty of instances of activists at Black Lives Matter demonstrations being charged with making threats to the demonstration they themselves are at, because they want to obviously drum up some kind of controversy about it.
I do think it's important not to just simply be tribal, and so we have to understand that this does happen on both sides of the aisle and should be roundly condemned wherever it is done.
If you don't have a real example of something, it is not okay for you to make up an example and just say, well, you know, we know this stuff happens anyway.
That's what the SJWs do.
They're wrong when they do it.
If people who are anti-Black Lives Matter do it, they're wrong when they do it.
We have to be consistent.
This is not an acceptable thing.
And honestly, it's just a big kick in the face.
It's an own goal.
You shouldn't do this.
This makes you look like you don't have a valid point.
And there are many valid points against Black Lives Matter.
But more importantly, someone has to be responsible for bringing some honesty back to the public dialogue.
And the mainstream media has time and time again demonstrated that they won't do it.
They will not be the ones to tell the truth.
It seems that they've learned nothing at all.
And so we as individuals have to be honest in what we do.
Because the actions make us the man.
If you, as an individual, just some guy with 50 followers on social media, you do your part to be intellectually honest, and I do my part and everyone else does their part, then we will have created something better than the alternative.
And that will get people to listen to us rather than them.
And it's in that spirit in which I really have to congratulate Glenn Greenwald in his coverage of the media's spurging out about the concept of fake news.
He's been really letting them have it in a brutal and absolutely accurate way.
Glenn has, there are many problems with a lot of Glenn's reporting, but his reporting against the mainstream media has been fantastic.
Listen to this.
One of the most egregious examples was the recent Washington Post article hyping a new anonymous group and its disgusting blacklist of supposedly pro-Russia news outlets.
An article, a shameful article mindlessly spread by countless journalists who love to decry fake news, despite the post article itself being centrally based on fake news.
The Post this week finally added a lame editor's note acknowledging these critiques.
The post editors absurdly claimed that they did not mean to vouch for the validity of the blacklist, even though the article's key claims were based on doing exactly that.
And he's absolutely right.
That's absolutely fantastic to see, this kind of intellectual honesty.
This article is a long one, so this is the last quote I'll read from it.
But seriously, he's really laying into them and he just goes through example after example.
Now we have an even more compelling example.
Back in October when Wikileaks released the emails from the John Podesta archive, Clinton campaign officials and their media spokespeople adopted a strategy of outright lying to the public, claiming with no basis whatsoever that the emails were doctored or fabricated and thus should be ignored.
That lie, and that is what it was, a claim made with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for its truth, was most aggressively amplified by MSNBC personalities such as Joyanne Reid, Malcolm Nance, The Atlantic's David From, and Newsweek's Kurt Eichenwald.
Give it to them, Glenn.
Name these people.
I love it.
Name these people by name.
These are the liars who will pick up something that is fake news and propagate it and then claim other people are propagating fake news.
And the examples of the mainstream media lying just keep coming.
For example, secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win the White House.
The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump win the presidency rather than just undermine the confidence in the US electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter.
And the mainstream media is reporting this as if this means it happened.
As if the CIA would never lie.
As if they're a trustworthy source when it comes to something like this.
There has been no evidence at all presented of this.
It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia's goal here was to favour one candidate over another to help Trump get elected, said a US official briefed on the intelligence presentation.
That's the consensus view.
Okay, I'm sure they all do have that as a consensus view.
But where is the proof?
Well, apparently we don't need no stinking proof, as the US government officially accuses Russia of hacking campaign to interfere with elections.
The US intelligent community is confident that the Russian government directed the most recent compromises of emails from US persons and institutions, including US political organizations.
These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the election process.
Okay, let's assume that you're not talking out of your asses.
I mean, they do have an interest in doing it.
You haven't provided any evidence, but they do have an interest in doing that.
Let's assume they did.
Let's assume what they did is true.
Russia acted like a journalist should act to the American public.
They let them know about the corruption within the DNC, the conspiracy against Bernie Sanders.
They let them know about Hillary's numerous conflicts of interest, about the money that was flowing to the Clinton Foundation from the Gulf Oil tyrannies.
If we should take Russia as being responsible for these leaks, then we owe them a debt of gratitude for telling us what Hillary Clinton and the DNC were really doing.
This is incredible to me.
Oh, Russia hacked the things.
Okay, what happened?
Well, they told everyone the truth.
I mean, they weren't even docked in the emails.
This was all just honest reporting, apparently.
You know, the thing that the journalists were supposed to do.
Get hold of this stuff.
Leak it to the public.
Show everyone what's really going on.
Draw back the veil.
And it takes a foreign government to tell us that our own politicians are lying like this.
And we are then meant to condemn that government on the basis that they showed us the truth.
And again, I am forced to applaud Glenn Greenwald for sticking it to them.
Anonymous leaks about the Washington Post about the CIA's Russia police are no substitute for evidence, and he's right.
Key claims are based exclusively on the unverified assertions of anonymous officials, who are in turn disseminating their own claims about what the CIA purportedly believes, all based on evidence that remains completely secret.
Well, I'm sorry, I am not going to believe anything the CIA says without supporting evidence.
And in many ways, you do have to admire the Trump camp's response.
It was actually quite hilarious.
These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
I'm honestly not joking when I say only a fool would trust the CIA on their word.
This is just one of the continuous stream of excuses that's coming from the Hillary and Remain voting camp in Brexit about why they lost.
And it's the same with all of those celebrity endorsements of these political positions.
These celebrities now look like total fucking idiots, utterly out of touch with their own audiences.
And when they're asked to explain their positions, they do so in the most hilarious of ways.
This is what Madonna thinks of the fact that 53% of white women voted for Trump.
I felt like someone died.
I felt like a combination of the heartbreak and betrayal you feel when someone you love more than anything leaves you, and also a death.
I feel that way every morning.
I wake up and say, oh wait, Donald Trump is still the president.
And it wasn't a bad dream that I had.
I feel like women betrayed us.
The percentage of women who voted for Trump was insanely high.
Can you even imagine thinking that people have an obligation to you based on their gender, to vote for your political cause because they were born in a certain way?
Just, I can't even imagine what it's like to be in a bubble, this small and tightly compressed, with everyone just bouncing around the same fucking idea all day, every day, to the point where when reality intrudes and pops that bubble, and you realise that literally you do not represent the majority, you're just sat there feeling like you someone's died.
Like this is just like a betrayal, like you've been stabbed in the back.
I can't imagine anything more entitled from a multi-millionaire.
But why did they do it?
Well, she said, women hate women.
That is what I think.
Women's nature is not to support other women.
It's really sad.
Men protect each other and women protect their men and children.
Yeah, men are just famous for protecting each other.
If you actually look at studies that have been done on this, men and women have a pro-woman bias.
And it's not surprising, it's just basic evolutionary psychology.
You needed to have a pro-woman bias, and men did need to be viewed as disposable.
That's something that came out of our inferior caveman past.
It was a necessity for the human species to survive.
The point is though, Madonna is just not in touch with reality.
None of these people seem to be in touch with reality.
And when reality comes calling, they can't accept it.
I mean, listen to this.
I was devastated, surprised, in shock.
I haven't really had a good night's sleep since he's been elected.
We're fucked.
The progressive cause is fucked.
The progressive bubble, the fantasy land you lived in, is fucked.
That's right.
Everyone else is in the process of unfucking themselves.
They're doing it at the ballot box, and the signs have been there the whole time.
I don't particularly want to speak well of the Conservative Party, but when they do things that I agree with and should, in fact not necessarily just that I agree with, that have to be done, I have to speak well of them because of it.
It's not something that I have a choice over, especially given how the left has just degenerated into an ideological purity test.
But we'll talk about that in a bit.
This is just one of those things where it's like, look, this has to happen.
You might remember last week when I mentioned Dame Louise Casey's long-awaited report, and this is a follow-up on that.
The report warns that ethnic segregation is increasing, with some areas simply not able to cope with the pace of change.
Promoting English language among immigrants will be highlighted as the single most important thing we can do to improve cohesion, because it is.
If these people can't talk to native British people, they cannot integrate.
It must be mandatory for this to happen, if you want integration to happen.
This report will encourage ethnic groups to adopt the British way of life.
It will focus on the contrast between Britain's liberal attitude towards issues such as homosexuality and the equality of women to that of some immigrant groups which are more patriarchal, illiberal, and even misogynistic.
Yes, we're pointing fingers at you, Islam.
That's you.
I mean, this wasn't necessary because of Chinese immigrants, of which there are many hundreds of thousands, or French ones.
London being the second largest French city on the planet.
No, it's the Islamic world because the Islamic world is fucking backwards when it comes to these issues.
She will recommend that safeguards are put in place for ethnic minority children who are not in mainstream education, but who are being taught in religious establishments or at school.
Because these people, I think, are entirely likely to end up becoming radicalised.
And I think they think so as well.
I wonder how many of these kids come out being Quranic literalists.
Regarding immigration, the importance of British values will be emphasised.
Increased integration expectations are to be set out earlier in the immigration process, she will say.
Good.
Thank God.
As said earlier, promoting the English language should be a government priority, particularly for women.
Figures show that Muslim and Hindu men are twice as likely to speak English as women.
And there was a report a while ago that said 22% of Muslim women in Britain don't speak a word.
That's a huge number of women who simply can't get help outside of the Islamic communities that often are ruled by Sharia courts from their local mosque.
Which is why so many women are having their human rights violated in Britain.
And a new oath of allegiance will be drawn up to be taken by all holders of public office.
It doesn't give us any more information about that, which is a real shame because I would love to see this oath of allegiance and see how it makes them pledge to promote British values and the English language.
But again, they don't give us any more information, so what can we do?
The government should make it a requirement for all immigrants, if they want to receive any benefits, to prove they can speak English by having an approved qualification or at least be working towards one.
Fantastic.
Why was that not done before?
Why has it taken this long to get to the point?
It's 20 years almost since New Labour took over and allowed millions of immigrants to come to this country.
Why was this not done in the beginning?
I just...
As if you could look at these other cultures and know anything about them and not predict the problems that were going to occur.
But at least they're finally doing something, I guess.
As an interesting parallel to this, you have a religious leader in Australia backing a drive for cartoons for Muslim children.
And I am in support of this.
This is an acceptable thing for them to do, and it should be expected that they will do this.
Muslim audiences should have better alternatives to mainstream cartoons, and an Islamic leader in Australia has said.
Sheikh Shady Asuliman, the head of the Australian National Imams Council, suggested parents donate to TV cartoons that support Islamic values.
The producers behind one programme idea, the Barakar Hills, suggested it should be an alternative to the hugely successful Peppa Pig cartoon.
I realise there are going to be people on both sides of this issue, but I don't think we have justification to restrict their ability to use their own money to fund a cartoon series which a TV shation can choose to pick up or not, or they can put on the internet or whatever.
I don't think the Australian government is within their rights to stop them, as long as they're not producing something like this.
First, go with our Arabic language that is living in a day and day.
Yes.
Yes.
This is the language of your language.
Do you have to speak Arabic language?
Yes, yes, yes.
Yes, my language is the language of the world, the language of the world, the language of the world, which will understand, which will be used.
You're right!
What is this?
The secret is not the world that he's in.
I am a small one.
And we are in a permanent release of your language in your morning's message and what we will do with you.
The fire of the...
But I'm sure they won't, because I'm sure that Australian TV has a whole host of regulations against inciting genocide.
Interestingly, originally this story was centered around the idea that the Islamic objection to Peppa Pig was, of course, that she was a pig, and this is something that has happened in Britain.
This was, of course, roundly denounced by the Muslim Council of Britain, who said the majority of mainstream Muslims would not find Peppa Pig offensive.
And anecdotally, we know of many Muslim children who watch the show for its entertainment value.
Those who do have issues with this can simply refrain from watching the show and purchasing Peppa Pig memorabilia, which is precisely what I want to hear.
And the fact that the BBC actually went back and corrected their article could be an indication that they are starting to realize that listening to the fringe radical elements of a given community and using them as the basis of your reporting may get the clicks, but is entirely misrepresentative of what people actually think.
And they should really pay attention to that when they start reporting on Richard Spencer and the rest of those chaps.
But I'm gonna do a video on that next week because it's been just ridiculous.
It's been absolutely ridiculous.
So they had this statement and I found it very interesting for a few reasons.
One for kids producer told the BBC that he enjoyed Peppa Pig, but there are apparently messages in there that turn kids into brats.
I'm a fan of Peppa Pig like many people, non-Muslim, Muslim, pig haters and pig lovers.
As if this is about the fact that people love pigs and not the fact that you don't have any right to object to us having a pig on British TV as a cartoon character, which the chap in Britain was doing.
But these people are not doing that.
But it's very interesting that he says, there are messages in there that turn kids into brats.
That's true, as far as I can tell.
If you go on forums like NetMums and stuff like that, you'll constantly see mothers complaining that their kid watches Peppa Pig and then acts like a brat.
It just, for some reason, inspires them to act in negative ways.
And this is, it just seems to be a consensus on the show, despite how popular it is with their children, who absolutely adore it.
Not really an issue or anything, but it's just an interesting thing about Pet Pig itself.
There is actually a good reason to not let your kid watch it, because apparently it does just turn them into a little brat.
I have actually watched Pepper Pig myself, and I didn't see the problem with it.
I didn't see why it would do that.
But this is just something that consistently parents say about the show, and that's what they're picking up on here, I think.
It's also very interesting that Angela Merkel has called for a Burker ban wherever legally possible in Germany.
That's amazing, Angler.
I mean, why do you have to call for a Burker ban?
Just out of interest.
I mean, I know you're running for a fourth term, and I don't know enough about German politics to know how badly you're going to lose.
But this just seems like an entirely cynical political manoeuvre.
She's realised that the winds of change have blown.
The general public has finally realised that allowing in hundreds of thousands of migrants from poor countries on the promise that you're going to give them money attracts the bad people from those countries.
It's just, I mean, can you even imagine?
The sort of person who might take advantage of that actually did come and take advantage of that.
But I'll tell you what, if I were a German, Angela Merkel's track record on the refugee crisis would be exactly the reason why I would never vote for Angler Merkel.
And I think I'm going to turn the end of each week into a regular fucking segment called the slow-motion train crash that is the Labour Party in Britain.
It's just incredible to watch it.
So this week, Labour MPs warn of disaster after another dismal by-election.
Senior Labour figures have warned that the party is heading for electoral disaster after it slumped into fourth place in a by-election yesterday.
Fuck!
That's the second one!
The party slipped from its position in the main opposition to the Conservatives in the seat of Sleaford and North Hykemb in Lincolnshire, falling behind UKIP and the Lib Dems in the ballot, just like in the other one.
Caroline Johnson, a pediatrician, will be the new Conservative MP after winning a comfortable majority of 17,570 votes, or 54%.
The poor result for Labour came after insiders reported that voters were confused by the party's position on Brexit.
Corbyn's party struggled to cut through in the seat with its nuanced stance that respects the EU referendum result but is seeking assurances from the government about the shape of Britain's withdrawal from the bloc.
We're in a strategic clamp, said one Labour insider yesterday.
When you knock on doors, voters ask you if you're for or against leave.
When you try and explain a nuanced position, it sounds like you're prevaricating.
Well, that's probably because in a way you are.
But seriously, think about why you do this.
I know why you do this.
You do this so you can turn around to your hardliners and say, look, we were consistent with our principles.
Well, I have some news for you.
Your hardliners are not going anywhere.
They are absolute died-in-the-wool partisans.
They will never vote Conservative or UKIP.
They will probably never vote Lib Dem.
They are with you until the bitter end.
You do not need to appease them.
And yes, you will have people who are like, well, you said back then to this person X, Y, and Z, and you can say yes.
I was giving them an argument they would understand.
I gave it in the best way I could without just ignoring the nuance because the nuance wasn't appropriate for that situation.
If you were just saying to them, yes, we're fully in favour of Brexit and we want to do everything we can to make it work, people will vote for you, and that's still not untrue.
That's just you not going into saying, well, and we want to make sure human rights protective, of course you fucking do.
That's not the question.
The question is, are you going to be supportive of Brexit?
And you should just be saying yes, yes, yes.
David Winnick, a Labour MP today, pointed the finger of blame at the party's leadership for the appalling showing in the Lincolnshire seat.
Even if one takes into account the by-election turnout was considerably lower than in the general election, it was an appalling result for Labour.
If we were to continue in this way, then the indications are that 2020 will be an electoral disaster, and the possibility of a Labour government very remote indeed.
This sort of bunker mentality that seems to exist at the moment at the highest levels of the Labour Party needs to recognise what's happening in the outside world.
So I guess we'd better take a look at what Jeremy Corbyn has been doing this week, because it seems like this is a bit important.
Jeremy Corbyn considering radical plan to ban petrol car sales.
You plan to ban the internal combustion engine, Jeremy!
For fuck's sake, what are you doing?
Corbyn's Labour Party is considering radical plans to ban the sale of new petrol cars in the UK.
The bold proposal would mean only zero or low-carbon vehicles being sold after a set cut-off date, dramatically reducing air pollution and potentially saving thousands of lives.
The move would form a part of a broader and revolutionary package of measures to transform Britain into a low-carbon nation.
Look, now is not the fucking time.
Just, we're going to ban petrol cars.
That's what we're going to do.
None after a certain date.
Yeah, I know that's going to cost a lot of jobs.
a lot of fucking jobs.
I mean, that is...
People are going to flip their fucking shit, Jeremy, when they hear this.
When they...
If that were to happen.
I mean, can you imagine what the car manufacturers are going to say?
They themselves are going to flip their shit.
Let alone all of their employees and all of the people who happen to want to buy a specific kind of car because of a specific kind of engine, of which I'm sure there are many enthusiasts who deliberately have that view.
If you're going to bring something like this in, it can't just be a right, boom, done.
It has to be part of a gradual scheme over time.
My God.
Just incredible.
You're an absolute moron.
But I'm sure we can count on mainstream left-wing activists to really get up and get in people's faces about what's going on and say, no, look, you have to start looking at realistic issues for people, things that they actually care about.
This can't all be just one big ideological purity test.
To which Peter Tatchell, a veteran gay rights protester, says, that's where you're wrong, kiddo.
That's exactly what this is going to be.
When he interrupts a speech by Jeremy Corbyn demanding action on Aleppo, as if Jeremy Corbyn can do shit about Aleppo.
As protesters held posters in front of television cameras demanding actions not words, Mr. Tatchell said, what's happening in Aleppo is a modern-day Guernica.
We haven't heard the leader of the Labour Party speak out enough to demand UK airdrops.
He's spoken out about it.
He just hasn't done it enough for Peter Tatchell and this annoying and cringeworthy group of protesters.
Peter, can we raise this to the questions, please?
We'd like to do.
Well, Peter, this is an event.
We're trying to make a speech here, and then we're going to do the questions.
Well, could we just...
Well, Peter, um, Peter, I think...
What's happening on that mode?
Peter...
Modern-day Guernica!
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