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Oct. 21, 2025 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
01:55:33
Charles Bausman

Charles Bausman is old money Pennsylvanian and speaks fluent Russian because his father was AP bureau chief in Sixties Moscow and because he later worked in Russia as a journalist and financier. He was also, by unhappy accident, a witness of the January 6th “Insurrection.” He chats to James about all this and more, including in a particularly terrifying section on why the Bolshevik revolution really happened and the important lessons we are currently not learning from it.Twitter handle is Cbausman The ArkAbout Russia by people who live here - geopolitics, Christianity, history, culture, society.↓ James and Dick’s CHRISTMAS Special 2025Featuring Dick. And James. And Unregistered Chicken. And possibly some other special guests. Not included in ticket price but available so you don’t starve/die of thirst: nice pizzas out of wood-fired ovens; street food.Tickets - £40 VIP Tickets - £120 including bell-ringing lesson, walk with James, front row seats, church tour Location is: My neck of the woods. Northants. Nearest stations, Banbury/Long Buckby. Junction 11 of M40. Friday, 28th November 2025. Starts at 5pm https://www.jamesdelingpole.co.uk/Shop/?section=events#events ↓ Monetary Metals is providing a true alternative to saving and earning in dollars by making it possible to save AND EARN in gold and silver.Monetary Metals has been paying interest on gold and silver for over 8 years.Right now, accredited investors can earn 12% annual interest on silver, paid in silver in their latest silver bond offering. For example, if you have 1,000 ounces of silver in the deal, you receive 120 ounces of silver interest paid to your account in the first year.Go to the link in the description or head to https://monetary-metals.com/delingpole/ to learn more about how to participate and start earning a return on honest money again with Monetary Metals.↓ ↓ How environmentalists are killing the planet, destroying the economy and stealing your children’s future.In Watermelons, an updated edition of his ground-breaking 2011 book, James tells the shocking true story of how a handful of political activists, green campaigners, voodoo scientists and psychopathic billionaires teamed up to invent a fake crisis called ‘global warming’.This updated edition includes two new chapters which, like a geo-engineered flood, pour cold water on some of the original’s sunny optimism and provide new insights into the diabolical nature of the climate alarmists’ sinister master plan.Purchase Watermelons by James Delingpole here: https://jamesdelingpole.co.uk/Shop/↓ ↓ ↓Buy James a Coffee at:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jamesdelingpoleThe official website of James Delingpole:https://jamesdelingpole.co.uk xxx

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Welcome to the Delling Pot with me, James Dellingpole, and perhaps you can tell from my attire that I'm about to tell you the exciting news of the date, the long-awaited announcement of the date of the Dick and James Christmas special.
now those of you who came last year will know that this is as the name implies it is a very special event uh it's it's conveniently located in the middle of england in a lovely venue and And there is not included, but it's but it's but it's very reasonable.
There's this there's really good pizza and really good um sort of like beef stew, I think we had last year.
It was very good anyway.
And we have entertainment.
We have a l the the obviously the the highlight of the evening is a um a live podcast with with me and my not my special guest, just my guest, Dick.
Dick and I on stage chatting our usual interesting digressive rubbish.
But the main thing uh and I I I expect that um unregistered chickens will be playing, and I expect we might be singing Jerusalem, and there might be some Christmas carols, but mainly, you know, it's about you.
Um what people always say is actually actually they don't say this, but I think they feel it.
They they don't say actually James and was crap.
Um the other stuff was good, they don't say that.
But this is me telling you, even though I'm good, even though you'll love to come and see me with Dick.
The best part for me is just like everyone really gets on.
It it's like if you haven't met them, then they are the best friends you'd ever met.
There's a really good atmosphere, really good atmosphere.
I think you would be seriously missing out if you didn't come.
I anticipate massive demand for tickets.
Though they they they sold out last year, and they probably will get so I'd get in there early.
I'm trying to encourage you this year to use cash.
Cash is king, we love cash, we want to support cash.
So if you can pay by cash, it it's better.
Also, I think uh then the money doesn't go into sort of um administration fees for whatever the other thing is.
Um, I hope to see you there.
There'll be VIP tickets.
Uh this time I'm gonna get it sorted.
It there will be bell ringing for the special VIP guests.
Um we might go to a different church, I don't know, depending on what the what the requests are, but um and maybe a walk with James as well, and it'll be lovely, and you're gonna love it.
So the date, the date, November the 28th.
November 28th, James and Dick's Christmas special details below this um advert.
See you there.
You're gonna love it.
I love Delly Pole!
Gold and subscribe to the podcast, baby!
I love Delling Pole!
And listen on the town, subscribe with me!
Hello!
Welcome to the Delling Pot.
With me, James Dellingpole.
I know I always say I'm excited about this week's special guest, but before we meet him, let's have a word from one of our sponsors.
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of physical gold or silver which you get in addition to any price of appreciation from gold and silver during the year join thousands of investors earning interest in physical gold and silver every month with monetary metals visit monetary hyphenmetals.com forward slash delling poll to earn more welcome to the dying pod Charles Balsman um Charles I'm missing you already we're we I spent a great time
with you.
James, it's great to see you.
In Moscow, yeah.
We had a great meeting.
I left.
Yeah, no, it was a fantastic time.
It was really fun.
Yeah, I mean, I sometimes think, why do I do this?
You know, I earn a relative pittance and you know, I'm a pariah apart from among my my followers
just occasionally this podcast comes really good and one of them was when I got this this letter out of the blue uh that I've been invited by the the Moscow patriarchate to on on a a trip to Russia I thought whoa anyway it turns out that it was largely thanks to you because you're you're a Delling pod listener.
I'm a shortly and I have been for like four years.
So hardcore and so I better I mean I know you quite well now I know you like my like my brother from another mother because we spent a week together just doing stuff and traveling in in buses and sitting through um what do you call them?
When you sit around a table and you've got a man with a beard at the end a uh an archbishop or a Russian minister or whatever um and uh these are well then we never did go to the banya.
Well yeah there's so much actually you missed and um you're just gonna have to come back and you should bring like a crowd with you next time.
So I I'd love to come back to Moscow well and I and see the rest of Russia actually because it's i uh I it's quite a big country I I've I've I've gleaned on my fact finding mission but part of the problem is that in the West they're making it really difficult for you to to visit Russia.
I mean I mean the Russians don't make it easier either you've got those incredibly complicated immigration forms to fill in and then you've got at the airport you think you're through like I got to the airport and I thought I saw this line in the in in the immigration queue to see the see the the man in the uniform with where you deal fingerprints and stuff and I thought there's only two people in front of me this is fantastic.
Russia is so much better than the West it's so much freer man and then of course I I go into the into the booth and the guy I give my fingerprints and stuff and um I think yeah I'm through I'm through and he says five minutes five minutes of what five minutes like where?
Where do I go?
And so I just sort of left and and hung out outside wondering what this five minutes meant and where I was meant to be anyway ten minutes later another young guy in uniform comes and escorts me with my passport to this area where there are lots of other people from all sorts of parts of the world you know Some of them look look like they're from Mongolia way, that kind of thing.
And some of them one one of them is is an Italian who speaks Russian and he's very cross.
And you just you just wait there for like an hour.
And you'd warn me that this was gonna this might happen.
So I kind of I knew it wasn't scary.
But nevertheless, I suddenly realized that it's very easy to paint a um a rosy picture of places like Russia.
Just because just because you know the West sucks totally and it's in decline and it's run by really evil people.
But it doesn't mean to say that in Russia all is um all is roses and sunshine and you know I I I should just say about that thing that um you know the same thing happened to me and I arrived like a day before you did and it um it had never happened to me in 30 in 30 years of coming to Russia.
So it's very unusual and it's it's because of these security problems they're having with in connection with the war.
You know and it's so easy for the Ukrainians to infiltrate into Russia.
And so they've come up with all these additional security measures but it's it's not typical actually it's usually not a problem going through Russian customs.
and so you probably you know there was a reason god wanted you to experience that but uh it's not typical don't don't scare your your audience you know it's it's the only uh inconvenient thing about coming to russia is uh having to fly through istanbul or Or some place around there.
Otherwise it's not that bad.
And you know there are travel agencies that can take care of the the visa and all that stuff.
The reason it was a little bit inconvenient for you is because the the patriarchate like rushed this thing at the last minute and so they you know they didn't have time to to to deal with the visas and everything.
But no, it's not that hard to get here.
That's actually a myth.
And plenty of folks come and, you know, it's a must-come place.
I mean, it really, you know, it's one of these great, great countries.
And I hope we can get into this whole Russian revolution thing today because that is just, I think that's going to blow your audience's minds when you hear the story.
Ah, yeah.
Do you know what?
I completely forgot we were going to talk about that.
I thought this was just going to be a kind of James's greatest hits of his Russian experiences.
No, we should do that again.
I mean, that's, yeah.
But no, can we talk about the revolution?
Because it's such a...
No, we can.
But first of all, I think...
It's such a rabbit hole.
It's such a red pill.
But anyway, yeah.
I agree with you.
I think we ought to put you in context first, though.
And you've got to tell me the story that I forbade you from telling me because I said, look, if you're going to tell me something interesting, you're gonna have to talk about it on the podcast because I don't like having to feign surprise.
That's something I've heard before and so obviously people can tell listening to you that you are American either that or you're a Russian speaking with a bloody good American accent.
How did you I mean so what's your what's your story?
What's your background?
Okay, so in a nutshell, after a privileged and completely wasted sort of elite education, I came to Moscow in the late 80s and worked in journalism for about three years.
And my family had a background with Russia, a love affair with Russia, because my dad had been the Associated Press Bureau Chief here from 68 to 72 and the flower of the Brezhnev years um and yeah and so I'd always had an interest in Russia.
Charles can I just interrupt you there.
All I I say 95% of the listeners are going to hear the words AP Bureau chief in Moscow and say CIA.
I mean come on.
Well listen we we talked about this before I mean you know maybe Mike listen Knowing my dad, he'd be the worst CIA agent, but you know, maybe you did have to have some kind of like relationship with the agency to get a job like that.
But um uh it's not the kind of thing you tell your kids, you know.
I'm kind of like a Tucker Carlson.
I'm like a Tucker Carlson person.
Like our fathers had similar careers.
Um that's not that that's not gonna reassure a lot of them.
It's gonna be thinking you're digging deeper here.
Like a lot of people think Tucker Carlson's a spook as well.
I know that.
I know that.
But uh I don't think he is, actually.
Well, no, maybe he is, but you know, that doesn't mean that all spooks are bad, basically, right?
But you know, I'm not a spook.
I I I'd be a great spook, you know.
I'd probably sort of miss my calling.
But um You would be yeah, you would be a great spook.
Yeah, anyway, so so um so what your dad was APR chief, so that's why you speak the Rusky very well.
I mean you you you you almost speak it like a native, don't you?
Yeah, but it was it wasn't really because of that, because um we um we were very segregated from Russians, so the the the we weren't encouraged to uh yeah to you know mingle with Russians or have Russian friends.
I didn't go to Russian school, and I never spoke Russian as a kid.
Um I'm just I'm good at languages.
I can just pick up languages pretty easily, and I've got a whole system for learning them and everything that I've developed myself.
So um it's kind of like a gift.
Yeah, well, can you I I know you mentioned that.
Can you can you please rush out your your system?
Because uh like I do want to learn.
Um I'll tell you what, it's not something I can explain in in in like five minutes or something.
I mean, if I if I had to just summarize it in a nutshell, I would say just forget about everything else and memorize words.
Just crash cram words into your head.
Um and everything else comes by itself.
So I was never a grammar guy, I hated grammar, I never did it.
Um uh what you really need to be able to understand and then start to speak a language is just a very large vocabulary.
So you actually could understand every word that's thrown at you.
And so that's the basis of the of the method.
But hey, listen, I would uh love to come back and talk about it some more because I'm talking to some programmers about uh rolling this out and making it available to the public.
And uh, you know, we're we're a couple months out, but uh uh I would yeah, I I I would love to tell you guys about it in more detail because it's fascinating.
I I'm only interested in for selfish reasons.
I don't care about anyone else.
I just I just want to be able to learn quickly.
Oh, James.
Listen, no question.
We'll we'll teach you Russian.
We're we're we're we're really good at it.
Are you by the way, you're you're looking quite quite is that is it is it is it humid there or are you are you just looking at the whole these Russian apartments are completely overheated.
You know, it's the it's the it's the it's a side effect of having uh basically free energy.
Um and so they've turned on the heat in the apartment, and it's uh it's it's warm.
That would drive me nuts.
Because I can't open the windows because of the sodding mosquitoes.
No, mosquitoes are gone.
I honestly think that the last mosquito in Moscow managed to find you, chance.
I I I it found my blood because when I splattered it on the wall, it definitely had blood in it.
Yeah, how I feel about that.
He was on a mission, he was on a mission.
He wanted to, it was a demon, actually, and he was trying to get you.
Well, that was one of the questions I asked one of the monks, wasn't it?
Um I said I asked the abbot of a monastery, because we we were having dinner, supper, in this room.
It was it was fish, it was smoked fish because it's one of the numerous days in the Orthodox calendar where you can't eat meat.
And I saw these mosquitoes on the wall, and I I had to ask the abbot.
Um he lives a fairly rigorous life in in cells which presumably got lots of mosquitoes in him.
I said, can you confirm my suspicion that mosquitoes are agents, a demonic agents, that they work in league with with demons.
Uh and he said, no.
He didn't think that was the case.
Um disappointing.
And I and I I suppose just goes to show that m even monks can be fallible, because I don't I don't think he's right.
I think my thing mosquitoes are, they're like mini vampires.
Which are obviously agents of the devil.
That's true.
That's true.
Yeah.
Um so um okay, we we your dad would so yeah, and you you also were in you were in Russia as well.
You worked to the journalists, but you were also there as a financier some kind, weren't you?
Yeah, so I basically realized after a while that uh journalism wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
And I spent the next 20 years working in finance and investments.
Um and uh did that through the 90s, you know, through that whole horrible period, uh, which didn't seem horrible to us because we were living high on the hog, you know, as these privileged Westerners.
Um and uh and then through the 2000s, and then um in 2000 and 14 um people don't remember this very much, but um it really looked like a major war would break out between Russia and Europe, like and and when the whole Crimea crisis happened and you know that the Ukrainian event started in 2014.
So um my business completely dried up because nobody was gonna invest in Russia at the time.
And uh so and I obviously was able to read and understand the Russian media perfectly well, explaining what was going on, and I it was clear to me that the Western media was just lying through their teeth about what was what was happening and what had caused it.
And so me and a couple other expats said, listen, we gotta do something because this is this looks bad.
This could be turned into a massive tragedy.
And we actually considered putting up a um buying an ad in the New York Times.
You know how people do when they want to get like a message out, a full-page ad about something.
Um and then we said, you know, no, no, what we'll do is we'll start a website and we'll just write some articles and try and put people straight, what's really going on.
And um and that's what we did.
We called it Russia Insider.
And uh we started that in September, and in you know, by Christmas, we had gotten like 40 million views on the thing.
I mean, it was insane.
Um and it was really fun, and uh it was just basically pro-Russian stuff, but from a much from a conservative Christian, much more kind of like hard-hitting angle, like R than RT, for example, or sort of Russian usual Russian stuff.
And it ended up getting really, really big.
It was so much fun that I said, well, this is way more fun than than negotiating um loans and and investments.
And um I did that for the next six years.
And the thing got absolutely enormous.
Uh when we finally stopped doing it in like 2020, uh it was we tallied everything up and we'd gotten uh 1.3 billion views on our all our platforms.
So we were like innovators in the information space, you know, in the in the sort of the whole new media world, and we were a sizable player.
We were the second biggest source of news about Russia in the world after RT.
And um we're actually doing a lot better than RT by many metrics.
And um and I got to be pretty well known because of that.
Did you make any money out of it?
No, so I that's why I eventually shut it down because um, you know, it's funny I uh I came from a finance background, right?
So I absolutely knew how to how to present businesses, sell them, market them.
I I knew the people with the money both in Russia and in the West.
Um and for the first two years I must have spent 30% of my time raising money.
Uh, because I realized I had a hot potato on my hands, right?
And this could get really big.
And um uh it turned out to be just politically impossible uh on both sides.
People were just scared to invest.
And uh I find uh you know, we did crowdfundings, we did three crowdfundings, we raised about 150,000 that way, and there was serious excitement around it, and people were really thrilled with what we were doing.
Um, it was like a brush of fresh air in in the media space about Russia.
Um and uh And then I finally said, look, this is just stupid.
I'm not gonna waste my time raising the money anymore.
And it's way more fun just putting out like so we that's what we did.
And I just I just ramped the thing up, then it got really big, but I basically had to fund it myself, and I basically it was exhausting.
It was like twelve hours a day, seven days a week for like six years.
And I finally said, look, uh, I think we've done our part here.
For the good guys.
Yeah, I I I don't know anything about financing or monetizing as as as you know, because we talked about this.
Yeah.
But I can it's fairly obvious that when you're running a project like that, if you take money from the Russian state, you're instantly compromised as a kind of evil Russian bought and paid for propagandists.
And if you it it no no American or no one in the West is is gonna back you because no one of any significance because we are de facto already or bore with Russia, aren't we in the West?
I mean it's i it's it's it's it's happening and and no one's acknowledging it.
And and so it's so it's no good for any kind of big big interests on this this side, on the Western side.
So all you've got left is is is kind of the subscriptions model, which is never easy.
So I can see why you could I mean is that right, is that a fairest estimate of why you couldn't make money out of it?
Well, I wouldn't I wouldn't agree with that really, because uh I I would have no problem taking money from from Russian sources, be they you know, government or more private individuals.
Um as long as there's no strings attached, right?
If they if you if you were if you retain control and somebody like invests in your venture uh but they're not telling you what to do, uh then who cares where the money's gonna be.
No, I will I I I I I don't agree with that, but but but at the same time, you're always going to be open, even if there are no strings that strings attached, you're always going to be open to the charge by your enemies that there are strings attached.
Yeah, but go ahead, I don't care.
They're also being paid by you know the nefarious sources, the USAID and all, you know, all this media is like propped up by their own governments and by the very worst elements of Western society and and and you know the worst nastiest people in in the Western government.
So they're the listen, what it's not so much important where your money's coming from as long as there's no strings attached.
And there are lots of examples of like successful, you know, very desirable media properties that grew up like that, that way, like Zero Hedge and the UNS Review and you know many other websites, life site news.
You know, they all bootstrap their way up one way or another.
Yeah, but you are quite like me.
Um you you do have an innocent faith that if your motives are pure and if your watch word is the truth, well then it doesn't matter what kinds of brick backs that's the enemy slings at you.
Yeah, no, I think you know they're so full of crap, honestly, that they're the ones who are vulnerable to attack.
And this is my like what it was my attitude through um throughout the whole venture was you know, people just hold back way too much, they're way too polite.
And you should just get out there and and just rip them uh, you know uh I won't say it.
But anyway.
Um that's what we did, and that's why people liked us.
It's one of the one of the things I I noticed when I went to Russia.
Um well, particularly during that meeting we had with a the most senior Russian politician that we had, we had a sort of round table with.
Um I'll always remember it for two reasons.
One of which is that there were these delicious cake things on the table.
Like, what were they?
Those those pie things or pies and Jams and yeah.
Yeah, and I didn't want to have one during the meeting because I was sort of focused on getting my question in and stuff.
And I wasn't that hungry.
I think we just had a sort of businessman's lunch or something.
Right, right.
And and so at the end I asked for a for a big cardboard contain a doggy doggy takeaway and and and this the the the the secretary woman filled this thing with goodies.
Yeah.
And they were meant for me, or some of them were, and that was the last I ever saw of the so but the second reason I remember it is because you and I made a good case to this to this senior politician, um saying, look, your PR is really rubbish.
You're just like you have a you have a a very viable case for what's happening in Ukraine.
It's not as it has been presented in in the Western media, which is pure the pure propaganda.
As far as the Western media is concerned, evil putler invaded innocent sovereign state Ukraine, led by hero Zelensky, who has never played the piano with his penis, or snorted a line of coke, or been to gay parades in in in in New York.
That's a complete lie.
This guy is a hero.
Ukraine is a is a model of democracy, and the evil Russians have sent their tanks in because they're hateful and because they're led by Putna.
That's so that's the Western Yeah, actually for no reason at all.
They just you know did it for no reason just for the shits and giggles.
That's the kind of thing he does.
And he won't stop at after Kiev, Paris, London.
That's what that's what evil putner wants to do.
So this is the yeah, people at home are thinking, well, I'd better put a Ukraine a blue and yellow flag up my flagpole and outside my house.
Even though I couldn't place Ukraine on a map, I know it's the most important, beautiful, democratic country in the world, and we should go to war with these bastards because they are so evil.
I mean the Russians.
Well that's what that's how person would think, wouldn't they, if they if they were told that story and they didn't have any other information.
Well they would think that.
Yeah, because you know, I mean, it means they're good decent people.
They hear that horror horror, you know that's true.
Uh I can't really send my three times to die in a ditch, be droned to death to for this country I've never heard of before, but and and I I I it's a flag I previously couldn't identify, but now I know it's blue and yellow, and I care so much.
I will kill my children for this country's freedom.
I suppose I do I do witness this, and it makes me quite frustrated, to say the least.
So I I share and I have shared in the past your desire to kind of make people aware there is at least a counter-narrative that it's not it's not quite as presented in the in the in the media.
So we were saying to this guy, we c we can mention his name, can't we?
Yeah.
He was called Tolstoy.
Yeah, yeah, Pyotr Pyotr Tolstoy, uh uh the relative of uh the great author.
The greatest novelist who's ever lived.
I mean I'm sorry, I had arguments about people this about Dostoevsky.
D Tolstoy is a better novelist.
Tolstoy had sorry, hello.
Hello Tolstoy uh Dostoevsky groupies.
Yeah, he was good, but he wasn't told.
Tolevsky had better things to say.
But Tolstoy was the better word painter.
Yeah.
Totally.
Well, another another thing we agree on, Charles.
So we were trying to explain to this guy.
And there was a point where he said he said I have tried it.
Obviously he wasn't speaking, he couldn't speak English.
He said, I I've tried to explain this many times.
I've exp I have explained this to senators in America.
I have explained this to MPs in in in Britain.
And I said to him, Hello, these people are puppets.
They have no autonomy.
Whatever you tell them, of course they're gonna go yet.
Of course they're not gonna believe what you're saying, because they're not interested, because their controllers demand that they're not interested.
If you want to get your message out, you've got to reach the people who are you've got to bypass the politicians and bypass the mainstream media and speak to the internet to speak on on blogs and and and podcasts and things.
I did this to a degree when I interviewed a Swiss intelligence guy called Jacques Bo, who briefed me on the causes of the colour revolution in 2014, people being burned alive in Odessa, the mistreatment of Russians in the Donbass by the incoming Ukrainian regime, which had been replaced by the legitimate one.
How do you taste it?
so on simple facts that you need to get out and do you remember the joke he told me I don't what was it he told us a Russian joke which which for me was emblematic I I I told this to Dick and Dick didn't understand it.
He said yes I will tell you a joke there are two Russian two Russian tank I remember now I remember riding into Kiev one tank commander says to another what a shame we lost the information war or something like that.
Or so we lost the information war.
In other words as far as he's concerned it's it doesn't matter because what will be what would be on the battlefield that's incredibly stupid because it comes at the price of of you know hundreds of thousands of lives of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers and you know vast wasted treasure.
So, no, that's silly.
But, you know, Russians like to do that.
That's a very common conversational technique is to answer with a joke.
Alleged joke.
Well, I can see the humor in that.
Like, who cares about the information war?
Look, we got tanks and rockets.
Like, you know.
It was really intransigent, wasn't it?
And what it made me realize was a point I've kind of made earlier in the chat, which is that it's very easy to project your fantasies on other countries.
So lots and lots of people who will be listening to this podcast, I don't blame them either, will be thinking, oh, we love Russia.
It's got family values.
It takes its Christianity seriously.
It's got, well, as I discovered, it's got really good food.
And it doesn't spray the hell out of everything.
And there's lots of things to love about Russia.
But it's easy to go from there to, they're so based.
They're so right about everything.
And what one has to remember is most people in Russia are normies too.
They're not awake.
Absolutely.
They're normies.
They buy their propaganda.
Yeah.
Although I would say that just across the board, Russians are more awake than Westerners.
And, you know, Russia is that most rabbity, holy place you can imagine.
They have a natural knack for conspiracy thinking.
And they have this great, you know, soulful quality that they can sort of sense things and intuit things.
It's like that.
Remember that woman at that art academy who not having like even like spent much time thinking about the Charlie.
Oh, oh, oh.
It was obviously like a, just a.
I've got, sorry, Charles.
I've got, I've got to tell that story.
Because from my perspective.
so it's our last day it's my last evening in Moscow and I've been denied the chance to go to a banya because as always in in in in Russia I imagine an event that was supposed to last an hour has extended into three hours.
And it's all very nice because we've been...
So it's...
What's the art academy called?
The Glazunov Academy.
Which kept sort of the traditions of painting alive, actual life drawing and sculpture and things like that alive.
Yeah, so classical drawing and painting as it was practised until World War I. So while the CIA was busy funding avant-garde and post-modernism to undermine evil communists, ironically in in in in Russia in defiance of the communists who hated everything people like Glasanov's father.
Yeah what was he called Ilya Ilya Ilya Glasanov was keeping the the traditions of the keeping the canon of of Western art alive and the traditions and and and and stuff.
Anyway, so went to look at this academy and I miss we we both missed the gorgeous the vision.
The girl we were standing outside Oh yeah there was a just an absolute stunner down there wasn't it in the building yeah I actually she went in she went into the building and I said what I missed I don't what was James she was just the most beautiful and I and I I kind of wanted to see one of these types of Russian beauty.
Just just I mean just just for aesthetic reasons um obviously we should um we should and you and I sneaked out for a fag because we because we were being given a tour by each department and we were given and after a while it got quite exhausting.
Yeah we nipped off for a fag.
We got back joined the others and they said you missed her.
What the girl girl was in the next place we were shown to and we saw her up close and she was the just amazing and you and you were having a cigarette.
Anyway so at the end we went to I'm drinking raw milk here.
going to remind me to go back to the raw milk theme so we were in the the dining room with these lovely bits of russian folk art collected from far-flung parts of the former soviet union and and oil paintings and it was just lovely and they brought out the blinis we didn't have vodka we had we had um champagne champagne ski well we had it was what's that italian stuff called prosecco prosecco yeah i mean
anyway um and we're drinking toasts and stuff and a young man about my son's age said and I was very sorry to hear about Charlie Kirk and I looked at you and I said Charles shall I tell shall I tell him that I don't I don't think he's I don't think he's dead it was all fake.
And you said, no, James, I don't think this is the time to bring it up because it's like, you know, it's too much.
And then completely unprompted, the wife.
Our hostess.
Yeah.
Our hostess, who was a former actress.
She had studied directing.
Directing.
Yeah.
She said, I don't believe this was completely like I hadn't put in my top knee.
hate this was this this was unprompted she said i don't believe any of it oh we said why she said well as a director you you come to see when people are acting and this guy was clearly acting and i said well have you been put up to this or what and you recognize the screenplay also you kind of like you know it's all like yeah no so that is so russian right that that is a typical Russian
ability to see through the bullshit and, uh, have an innate distrust of authority and what's being told of you from a pie.
And it served the Russian people so well so many times especially during COVID for example people were just like this Bolshev we're not gonna do this that's the thing isn't it because I I learned that the the the the Russians would were not exactly were not were no better than than all the kind of the Western governments pushing it.
Yeah the government was no it was the people who just like came through like people just weren't having it yeah they were fancy so let it not be assumed that no one is think no one is saying oh Putin was so based he invented the Sputnik vaccine which wasn't a vaccine just the trick to f to save everybody no he was pushing in the same old shit the difference was that the Russians yet not having this this stuff to do that.
Yeah yeah so they've got this very healthy you know kind of like immune system against bullshit um and and oppression and and in a way the United been inoculated against it by their like sort of, you know, just bitter, bitter, bitter experience um under communism.
And that's something that's just not appreciated enough to this day, just how horrific it was.
You know, it was I it it's important.
For the West to understand what Russia went through because they should realize this could happen to them.
That's the point.
That's the moment.
It sounds like it sounds like you're segueing into neatly into your analysis of what happened.
Actually, yes, I uh that was uh that was a segue in a way.
But should we go should we get into that?
I mean, I listen, if you want to talk about the trip and everything, we can do the revolution thing somewhat.
Yeah, we can always we can always weave it in in in my inimitable fashion.
Okay.
Let's do it.
Because it's it's it's super interesting, and and I can't do it justice in like the amount of time we have here, but I can at least give like a preview, and then you'll you you'll get an idea of what before you do.
I might have to let him...
Dog?
Thank you.
I was going to say if the dog is letting in.
Um.
Okay.
tell you, Charles, it is a bloody nightmare here.
You think you've got problems in Russia with your sweaty apartment, uh overheated apartment.
We've got it's a nice day here.
It was really bad over the weekend because it was clear you know how weather manipulation was blowing, it was like being in a wind tunnel.
It wasn't natural, it was just just created by Harp and next rat and stuff.
Now we've got a nice we've been allowed a nice day.
And the ladybirds are going mental.
Well, I had the back door open so the dog can go in and out of the garden.
But the ladybirds were swarming in.
I tried to get rid of them, and I wanted to close the door because the tumor they're coming, but I didn't want to squash them on the door jam.
So I was trying to this this is why I was late starting this podcast.
I tried to retrieve them from the door jam.
And they more and more kept crawling.
It was like that Hitchcock film, The Birds, except with Ladybirds.
Tell me about Tell me about the Russian Revolution.
Bullshit.
So this so the way I found out about this, it's it's uh important to realize that um uh the Russia's number two churchman uh in Russia, and I call him that not because that's his his titular status as number two.
He's just as a personality he's sort of the most influential churchman in Russia after the patriarch.
Um and he's uh he's a guy named uh Bishop Tichon.
Tichum.
And uh, you know, he's kind of famous in the West too, if you know about Russia.
The FT is did a big profile on him, a lot of the big media have written about him.
Um he made the West hate him.
Huh?
Does the West hate him?
Oh, yes.
Oh yeah, yeah.
They're always trying to demonize them.
Anyway, so he made this documentary film.
It came out in 2021.
Uh just completely turning everything that people in Russia and the West think about the revolution on its head.
Um and it's just it it's important to understand who this guy is.
So um he uh became a monk uh in the 80s.
Um and then he had this meteoric career as a church person in the 90s, and he he wrote uh the best best-selling book in Russian history after Tolstoy.
It's called Everyday Saints.
And it's just sort of a collection of stories of his impressions of orthodoxy in Russia, like in the eighties, and as when he was a young monk.
And it's a wonderful book.
Um and uh but anyway, he became this massive celebrity because of this book, and this book just really completely like became a phenomenon in Russia, and he uh and and millions of people converted to Christianity because of it.
Um and it was published, uh it was beautifully translated into English by um a friend of mine, uh uh Julian Loenfeld from New York City.
Um and uh and so it's available and it's quite popular in the West too, especially in Orthodox circles, like Orthodox.
I want to get this book.
No, that's this book.
That's great.
I've got a copy line here because he's gonna mention it.
Everyday Saints.
So anyway, so he became this like celebrity, he made a ton of money on the book.
Um they put him in charge of a monastery in in Moscow where we went that time, remember, to meet with uh Mother Cornelia and uh and Father Paul.
It was one of the first Sreatinsky Monastery.
And um he became close to Putin, and there were some rumors that he was that uh he was Putin's confessor.
And they've they have a very tight relationship, they're very good friends for all these years.
Um and he and then from there he just everything he he takes on these massive projects and he turns them into these incredible success stories.
Like that giant cathedral that was on the territory of that monastery, you know, the modern one.
I don't know if he went into it.
Um anyway, it's uh it was right through that big picture window at the table we were sitting at.
There was this giant modern sort of thing there.
You know, an enormous thing, and it was it's a monument to the to the um the new martyrs of Russia, which means the people who the Christians who who suffered under communism.
And uh, you know, and getting something like that built is impossible in Russia and it costs a bomb, and it's just whatever, but he had no problem.
He managed to raise the money from the people and got tons of money from the government and wealthy people, and they put up this enormous thing.
Um sort of everything he does is larger than life, and he's a real powerful like influence.
There's nothing like it in the West.
I can't think of any sort of spiritual leader in the West that has this kind of like, you know, it's just what not even our new Archbishop of Canterbury.
That's what's the name.
No.
Nothing like it.
So his latest.
His latest thing is the he keeps having to be sent off to like different um uh dioceses to sort of like keep him further away from power because he's too powerful already.
Um and so uh they sent him down to Crimea to be the bishop of Crimea, and um he uh uh has built this enormous reproduction of a Byzantine uh uh twelve uh uh twelve hundred uh uh AD,
you know, like the year 1200, Byzantine city on the shores of uh Crimea right next to Sevastopol, the military base.
Um uh it was entirely financed by the Russian army uh and built by the Russian army's construction unit, and it's absolutely extraordinary.
It's like kind of like an amusement park, but that's like a bad way of describing it.
It's more like a historical theme park or something, you know, replete with like massive cathedrals and and reconstructed Roman buildings and amphitheaters and and there's people running around there in historic.
It's like Williamsburg, if you've ever been to America, of the Russians.
Yeah, yeah.
And um, so he's like he does things on a grand scale.
So when he makes a film, it's a big deal, right?
And it was heavily promoted in Russian media shown on all the main TV stations, uh, you know, all over the internet and everything like that.
And um anyway, and he turned the he it was just kind of mind-boggling because he Turned the whole narrative on its head.
And he basically said, look, guys, Russians, you have to realize this.
Every single thing you've been taught about, told about the Russian Revolution, is not just a lie.
It's an inverse of the truth.
And it's extremely important for you to understand this now because you're on the verge of making the same mistake Russian society made on the eve of the revolution.
And he was warning against them being seduced by Western propaganda, basically.
And so let me, I'll just run through the basic, you know, fairy tale that we've all been taught and told in our schools and our movies, uh, by our history, uh our professors at university, and everything like that.
So the basic thing that we've been taught is that you know, Russia was very backwards, it was oppressive, um the ruling class were uh corrupt and incompetent, and um, especially the Tsar himself was a weak uh guy who got pushed around by his wife,
and uh the dastardly Rasputin, um, who's like kind of like one of the most demonized and defamed and lied about people in history.
Um, and uh Russia was behind in literacy, Russia was behind in in you know medical care, um their economy was uh not competitive, and on and on and on.
And um, and then and so, and then you had these, you know, these miserable proletarians in the cities and these miserable peasants, um serfs, you know, in the countryside being exploited by this miserable system, and it was all rotten and it was all bad.
And then when World War One happened, of course, this this incompetent and backward society couldn't handle a modern war, uh you know, was practically defeated by the Germans in the first years.
This put so much of a strain on Russian on the Russian uh system that it uh it just there were food shortages and soldiers at the fronts without bullets and uh riots in the streets and miserable poor people, and they rose up in like you know, anger and and overthrew this ridiculous system, and uh welcomed the communist in.
Okay.
So that's the basic the lie that we're told, right?
Now, here's the thing.
Every single thing about that is not just not true.
It's an inverse of the truth.
It's exactly the opposite.
And what really happened in the revolution is absolutely mind-blowing.
So, first of all, starters.
Um Russia was not backwards.
It was one of the, if not the most impressive and dynamic economies and societies and civilizations in the world.
And furthermore, they were on such a growth track that they were poised to become like the world hegemon, right?
There was like nothing that was it didn't seem like anything could really stop them.
They were they led in technology, they led in um in social uh reforms, they had um, you know, they had workmen's uh insurance and compensation before, like, you know, uh Western European countries, before America did.
Uh they had very progressive legislation in that in that regard.
They had public schooling, they were cutting edge in medicine, and they were also cutting edge in technology in all kinds of industries.
Um they had the most advanced air force in the world.
Um their scientists and their inventors were making, you know, sort of breakthrough after breakthrough, and it really looked like it was going to be uh the country that was going to dominate Europe and dominate basically the world.
It was the only co uh comparable country at the time was America in terms of its dynamic dynamism and growth potential.
Um it was led in this, you know, for 20 years before the The revolution or 25 years by Tsar Nicholas II, who by all accounts was an extremely successful ruler,
and he was you know a strong man and a good man and sort of like just kind of like the ideal um the ideal of what a ruler should be, you know, uh at once very competent, but also very fair, uh, very decent, very pious, an amazing family man, and just a hero any way you look at it.
So um and uh and there were all sorts of things about Russia that were uh, you know, for example, there's this myth that while it was very repressive and they had the secret police and they had censors, and they were shipping off decent, you know, democratically minded reform types to Siberia, and uh that's not true either.
Um in fact there was almost complete freedom of the press.
Um there was some censorship, but it was basically ineffective and and impossible to enforce.
Um there was a you know a lot of freedom of speech, and and there was a parliament, and there were opposition parties and opposition newspapers and all kinds of people, you know, being able to say whatever they want, and this relentless, relentless uh attacks and and demonization of the czar from like the yellow yellow press, uh making up stories about Ras Putin and so on and so forth.
Um and and most of all, Russia was a was an a Christian a Christian country and a Christian government that put Christianity first.
It was the most Christian country in the world, and the Russian people were the most Christian people in the world.
Um let's see.
Um and so then we get to World War I. So what happened at World War I?
Uh there were people in Europe who really wanted this war, and they really needed Russia to come in on the side of England and France.
And the Russians were sitting on the fence, and and and they had good reason not, you know, that the they were doing great, and they didn't need they didn't want to get into some kind of massive war with Germany and and Austria.
And so they they held back and they held back, and the the British kept sweetening the pot.
And they kept saying, okay, well, come on, join us in our alliance, we'll give you this, we'll give you that, we'll give you this.
And when they finally uh uh it all uh ended when the English said, okay, here's what we'll do.
Uh if we win this war, Russia will get Constantinople and control of the Dardanelles.
And this would have made Russia absolutely invincible as a world power.
Because I don't know if you know the whole McKinder, I don't know, I'm forgetting the name of the theory.
It's the the idea that if you control the world island, you control the world.
Um I'm forgetting the name.
It's it's this it's a sort of uh geopolitical theory from the 19th century.
And it was just almost too good to be true, because this is what Russia had wanted for centuries, and that and England had struggled mightily to prevent Russia from getting with the Crimean War and similar things.
Um and Russia and Britain were at that time the great global rivals for the main sort of empires of the world.
And um, and so the Russians uh, against the advice of Rasputin, who was clairvoyant and told the Tsar, if you go to war in this war, your entire family will be killed, and your country will be awash in a sea of blood.
And the Tsar ignored him.
Well, he took him, he took him very seriously because he genuinely liked Ras Putin and valued his advice, uh, but he just couldn't turn down this incredible offer.
So then what happened?
So then the war started, and the Russians did very well.
Um and they absorbed like, you know, literally half of the German military might and the Austrian might in those eastern offenses and and gave up almost no land.
So this idea that um that Russia was doing badly during the war is completely wrong.
There were a couple of major battles which were setbacks, but they were exceptions.
And by and large, they had basically exhausted the Germans.
And um and the thing about Russia was it had this because it had this enormous dynamic economy that didn't have, you know, that didn't have any sort of borders to the to the east and unlimited manpower and you know huge amount of agricultural production that they were in the best condition of all the belligerents in the war.
During World War I there was serious uh food shorter shortages uh throughout Europe everywhere including England but also especially in Germany and by the third year of the war the Germans were literally starving.
And I have a personal uh anecdote about that like my my grandfather was a teenager during World War I and he was a typical you know blonde, tall blonde blue-haired German guy um you know six foot one uh but he had small feet he had like size seven shoes and and I asked him Papa like what why do you have small feet and he said because we were starving during World War I we
We literally had nothing to eat.
We ate, you know, soup made out of potato rinds.
And, you know, it happened when my feet were growing.
So my feet never grew.
But anyway, so this is a real thing, right?
Well, guess what?
In Russia, there was nothing like that.
All the European countries had food rationing and problems with supplies and everything.
Russia never had any food shortages.
uh there was plentiful grain and vegetables and meat and milk and honey and everything you could imagine and on the eve of the revolution there was an article in one of the St. Petersburg newspapers complaining that the price of lemons uh had gotten a little bit higher than it used to be so that was the extent of the food problem in Russia at the time okay um and what's furthermore is that Russia had completely
militarized their economy, and it took them a longer time to do it than the West, but they eventually got it done by the third year of the war.
And they had raised an enormous army.
They had equipped it with the latest equipment.
Hold on a second.
Sorry, the kids got home.
And they were poised to march to Berlin in the spring of 17.
And the Germans knew it.
The Germans knew that their goose was cooked, and it was very much sort of a foreplay of what would eventually happen in World War II.
And the German general staff, you know, their communiques and their telegrams survived and like been studied by historians.
And they basically said, they just said, look, we're done.
Russia's won.
There's nothing we can do to stop this.
They've got way more guns.
They've got, you know, 10 times more soldiers.
They don't have any supply problems.
They've completely militarized their economy.
And they can't be stopped.
We cannot stop them.
And so in preparation for this offensive, the Russian military created special uniforms that the soldiers were going to use in the victory parade in Berlin.
And they were those, I don't know if you know from those Russian revolutionary hats that the soldiers wore.
They were kind of like these peaked hats, and they had the star on the forehead.
Well, what those peaked hats were, were actually they were like stylistically, like designed hats by Russian designers um to symbolize uh Russian you know peaked helmets of like the Middle Ages, like when you know uh Alexander Nevsky was fighting the Teutonic Knights and so on.
And instead of a red star, there was supposed to be they had made these um double held double-headed eagles, uh symbol of of the Tsar.
And um, and so everything was set, right?
And the English also realized, well, we're screwed now because uh we promised the Russians the dark now and and a large part of uh eastern Greece, and basically they're gonna be able to control uh you know the whole Middle East and the whole thing, it's where we're done.
So they organized a color revolution.
They um had been working on this for decades.
Uh they had gotten all these Russian conspirators among the sort of wealthy elites of Russia, and um and your favorite guy, Lord Milner, shows up in Moscow uh at the end of 1916, and he goes to the Tsar and he says, Look, uh it was almost like a mafia kind of like shakedown, right?
He basically shows up and he says, Okay, what we need you to do is um change your governing system, uh, give up your auto autocracy, uh, give power to a popular elected parliament,
put uh French and English generals in charge of all your armies, okay, and basically give up power and become a titular monarch.
If you don't do this, we're gonna take you out.
You're gone.
And uh he must have been he must have been expecting a well, you you're doing very well.
Um this war against the Germans.
Keep it up, and instead he gets Lord Milner delivering this ultimatum.
Exactly.
And and uh and Nicholas II was very polite, you know, he didn't like fly into a rage or something, he was a very decent, sort of good man, good, good, solid man, and he just politely told Lord Milner that his demands were unacceptable and that he should head back to London.
And um and that's when the British put into operation their their plan to depose the Tsar.
Um and uh and so what happened when the actual revolution happened, it was a conspiracy by the by the top generals and uh and a number of businessmen in St. Petersburg, and they faked a food shortage.
So they were they were the people who you know ran the trains and and kept the the provisions coming in and so on and so forth, and they they deliberately stopped that.
They went to the workers of the um of the largest uh and best paid uh factories in St. Petersburg and basically um did what happened in 2014 in in Kiev.
Um you know, they they made they paid these people money to go out on the streets.
They've been already sort of agitating and starting to push this idea of like we need to have like a Western system and so on.
And um uh and they handed out an enormous amount of free uh vodka and uh prostitutes.
And they basically ginned up like a fake riot, okay, and then faked the food shortages and spread rumors about food shortages, and and that's how that uprising in St. Petersburg happened.
And then at the same time, uh the general uh Nicholas's generals uh basically uh stopped his train uh out towards the front and told him that he had to abdicate.
Um and it's not clear that he actually did, because there's no official abdication letter or anything.
And um, and the only thing that was ever produced was this this type piece of paper with a pencil signature that doesn't really seem like an official document.
And the thing is that Nicholas was in detention, you know, for every day after that.
And so he was never able to come out and say, hey guys, I never abdicated.
And he also might have been threatened, where he they might have told him, listen, if you ever, if you make a peep about the fact that you are still the Tsar and you did not abdicate, you know, we'll just murder you, and we'll murder your children.
Whatever.
So yeah, so that's what happened.
It was it was a coup, it was a takeout, um, and it and it happened um with 90% of the country being very, you know, uh loving the czar and and being very positive about it.
And I should point out about this whole business about the you know, the badly treated serfs and peasants and um uh factory workers in the cities.
Well, no, that's not true.
The factory workers in Russia made better salaries than factory workers in England and had better standards of living.
And you didn't make it up to St. Petersburg, but there are blocks and blocks of these absolutely beautiful 19th century kind of like, you know, apart you know, big apartment houses, ornate and nice and big apartments, you know, two or three rooms and so on.
Um that those were apartments of factory workers, of highly paid factory workers in Russia.
Um it wasn't uncommon for factory workers to have servants.
Um anyway, so uh and this and and the peasants were the same way, they were extremely prosperous and they were happy with their lot.
Uh so then Tichan asked the question in the film.
Um, so okay, so if everything was so great, then what was rotten?
Like, why did this amazing civilization, one of the greatest civilizations ever, right?
I mean, their achievements, as you well know, like in literature uh were extraordinary, but it wasn't just literature, it was theology, uh, every kind of uh fine art, you know, ballet, painting, architecture.
On and on, just go across the board.
Russia was this incredible, like wonderful civilization.
Uh it was like, well, what was so rotten?
And what was rotten was that for three or four decades before that, uh the Russian elite, the elites, had become wokeified by 19th century in the 19th century understanding of that word.
So they uh their newspapers were full of uh lies about the Tsar, you know, how great Europe was compared to Russia, how Russia was backwards, how Russia wasn't as good as Europe, um, how um it had all this scurrilous uh uh uh rumor,
yeah, rumors and and and stories about Rasputin, who was, you know, in I I listened to your podcast with Conrad, and you touched on the Hell Grass-Putin thing, and and Conrad was, well, I'm not sure, you know, I don't know of the story on Rasputin.
Well, I know the story on Rasputin.
Ras Putin was a great guy, and he was a hero.
And there are people in, there's a large movement in Russia that thinks he should be become a saint.
Um and um and that is why they attacked him so, and that is why they made up these stories about him.
And we could do like a whole rabbit hole on Ras Putin and what actually happened around him.
Um but uh the the he terrified Russia's enemies because he really represented like the the greatness of like the like Russian spiritual like omniscience.
And he was giving fantastic advice to the Tsar.
He was somewhat clairvoyant, uh, and he and he basically saw through what was going on and and was trying to improve and save Russian society.
Um and they realized that they had to get rid of him, and so that's why they they murdered him.
And he was murdered basically, again, by the British, um, Who got the some Russian aristocrats up to the job, but it was all directed out of the British Embassy.
And anyway, yeah, and then the British Embassy during the revolution was like revolution headquarters.
Like the British ambassador was basically sitting there, you know, on the phone all the time and like coordinating with these uh with his uh collaborators among the Russian elites who did this.
And um, and so here's why this is super important.
Um Tichan made this movie as a warning to Russians.
He's like, don't repeat the mistake your forefathers did a hundred years ago.
You're getting fed a bunch of lies from the West.
Um, and you know, we Russians are easily taken take taken in by this stuff and don't believe it, don't believe it, because you're being sold a bill of goods and you're being sold a lie by people who want to destroy your country.
And um, and so you know, I watched that, and I thought, wow, that's really interesting.
But what was important to me was I was like, wait a minute, this is exactly what's happening in our countries.
This is exactly the same thing.
It's you have basically good people in the middle class and the and the working class, and then you have these really evil, corrupt elites who are you know, just destroying their own countries.
And what's so terrifying about this whole thing is that, and I was alluding to this before.
Okay, so like a lot of Russians have like gone back and gone over this history and looked at everything and said, Well, wait a minute, how did this happen?
Because this was one of the most amazing civilizations ever, and one of the most lovely societies that was so full of goodness and so full of like success and you know, and prosperity, and and everybody was doing well and things were getting better,
and um it was beautiful, uh, and the churches were beautiful, and the religion was beautiful, and it was very Christian, and it was all great, and and and then literally within three or four years, the country turned into a complete hellscape,
with the most extreme evil and torment and terror being, you know, uh meted out on these Russian people, most of them you know were completely didn't deserve it.
I mean, just the regular Russian people, the the peasants and the workers and the and everybody else, the middle class and the intellectuals and everything.
And um, and I don't think Westerners have still understood how bad it was in those first, you know, things got better after the war, but for in the 20s and the 30s, it was just it was just the only the only thing I've seen in my like studying as a journalist and the historian and so on and so forth is what's happening today in Gaza.
If you look at that just incredible, just brutal lack of humanity going on there and the and the behavior of the Israelis and what they're doing to the Gazan people, that's basically what happened to the Russians.
And it happened over about 20 years, 25 years until World War II.
And um, and the suffering was just incalculable, and the country was wrecked.
And do you know that the the living standards of Russians did not return to the level of the uh the years before the revolution until 1968.
And you could argue that in fact they weren't as good even by 1968.
Um, this horrible loss of life and everything like that.
So I think the message, what what I realized about this film was like, oh my god, the f the West has to understand this.
The West has to has to see this film.
They they have to realize what's going on.
Because it's almost like God sent like a like a preview for the West.
He like gave the West like a but Look, study what happened in Russia, you know.
Uh if you don't change course, this could very well happen to you.
And it might not be like this soft kind of totalitarianism that we sort of see like emerging, right?
It might very quickly turn into like literally people being like, you know, having their slots their throats slit in basements on a mass scale and taking out behind and getting shot.
Um and um and yeah, so that's uh that's the message of that film, and it's super important.
Well, anyway, so I uh that guy you interviewed Conrad.
So I've been bugging Conrad for the longest time.
It's like, Conrad, you've got to get this film out somehow.
And by some sort of again, I think divine sort of circumstance, um uh we found a monk who speaks English in a monastery in provincial Russia, who's like, okay, I will translate this into English.
And it's a four and a half hour documentary.
And so he did that.
And then Conrad and his show did an appeal to his audience, and he says, Okay, we've got this rough translation from this Russian monk.
Um, but we need like an editor to clean it up and and get it out there.
And somebody came out of the woodwork, this wonderful Russian guy from a guy with Russian background uh from South Carolina, and uh and he he did it and put the subtitles on the film, and Conrad has released it on Substat to his paywall audience, but he's gonna put it out for free on YouTube in like uh a few weeks.
So I I just can't encourage people enough.
Watch this film, and it's fascinating.
It's well done.
It has all the facts, way more than I could possibly like give here, and and realize the message of it for the West, that um we really have to do something because it's not just like this kind of soft kind of BS that we're experiencing now.
This could get really ugly and very bloody very quickly.
And so sorry to be such a black pillar, but uh I don't know that it's gonna happen, but I mean, look what happened to the Russians.
It was just incredible.
You know what's interesting about those Russian elites?
They even had this slogan at the time, abolish the police.
You know how that was a thing in in America, like during BLM and all that stuff.
You know, the police dismantle them and like get rid of them, and actually I think some cities did, and the result was of course a disaster.
Um that's what the Russian elites did during the revolution.
Because the revolution happened in two phases, right?
So first it was the bourgeois revolution, which were these sort of like, you know, Russian millionaires who basically were trying to set up a parliamentary system uh where they could be have the power, uh be the prime ministers and the minister of this and the minister of that, uh and so on.
Uh and they did that for seven months, and they ran the country so completely into the ground uh that the Bolsheviks then rolled in uh eight months later.
Um and so it's a it's an amazing story, and people I think would enjoy it.
I think huge truth.
The the instant the instant reaction of we we know what what norm is like and normist would go, yeah, but this is a story told by one of Putin's by Putin's favorite priests.
Of course he's gonna blame the West.
How do we how can we trust this guy?
We let there was so many history books by eminent historians telling us the truth about what happened.
See, okay, there's an answer to that.
Okay, so basically, you know, Tichan isn't coming up with this stuff on his own.
He's a churchman, right?
So all he's doing is he's taking sort of 30 years of re revisionist historical work that has been done in Russia uh since the fall of communism.
And so there's enormous amount of this stuff um and uh books and publications and all kinds of things.
And uh and he was just kind of summarizing it, and saying, listen, we we need to know about this more, like among the people, Because among the Russian people, uh everybody went to school under communism and they were sort of drummed into their heads that fairy tale that I started with.
Um but uh uh it's this it's a four and a half hour film, and it's backed up with just a mountain of of statistics and facts that make his arguments like irrefutable.
And and oftentimes he's citing Western sources, you know.
That is that is mind-blowing, actually.
got to check this dog downstairs so it's not going to be upstairs so it's not going to be a big problem but it's not going to be a big
problem.
So, I'm going to go ahead and see how to do this.
I'm going to go ahead and see how to do this.
Okay.
Thank you.
Well, Charles, that story is incredibly depressing.
Thanks for helping me make the most depressing podcast I've ever done.
Maybe the most maybe the most um important.
I mean, that is a story that needs to get up.
Um I particularly commend you for stripping the story of its I mean, as soon as you for example, you mentioned the um the religious stroke, ethnic identity of the of the Bolshevik leads the Bolshevik revolution, or when you start talking about the things that I'm going to talk about, the sort of the battle between Christianity and Satanism.
Uh I mean, it's not that it's not true this stuff, but it does make it less accessible for people who are not who are not fully on board with what's going on in the world.
So so you you've presented it in a way which I mean power interests.
As you know, I wrote I read a piece about uh a book I'd read called Two World Wars and Hitler, who was responsible by um Jim McGregor and John O'Down.
I'm I'm gonna get them on the podcast sometime.
Um I am.
Um But Lord Milner, the chap who delivered that ultimatum to the Tsar figures quite prominently.
And he g he gave his name to the to the Milner group.
And he He wasn't really a sort of uh he wasn't really a big shot in himself.
He was he was more of a kind of the bad man for the big man, in the same way that Henry Kissinger was.
Yeah, it's kind of one of these like you know, great cardinal behind the scenes, but with enormous influence.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it was Milner who who enabled the first concentration camps in the world.
There's that whole collaboration with Cecil Rhodes and all that sort of thing, you know, just really a nasty, nasty guy.
Um, James, but the you know, there's a there's a uh there's a reason why like Russia had to be taken out, also uh like a spiritual reason, because it was the last great defender of Christianity.
You know, Christianity was still relatively strong in in Europe in the sense that many people were still very Christian, and it was even stronger in America, but it wasn't this centralized orthodox autocracy, you know.
The Tsars were the descendants or uh were the descendants of the throne of Kent uh Constantinople, who were the descendants of the Roman Empire, right?
So and it was in the Roman Empire that the cr the the Christianity appeared and then was generally uh accepted and spread around the world.
So there's a whole spiritual dimension here, and you know, Conrad got into that a little bit with that murder of the Tsar, but you know, there's this whole backstory that he didn't have a chance to get into.
Um so the reason that the if you believe the ritual murder thing and what eventually transpired, is anyway, there are no remains.
There are no relics, okay.
Every single bone was like you know burned down or dissolved in acid and sprinkled on eggs and eaten by uh those people and so on.
And there's a very good reason why they didn't want any remains because they didn't want to have any possibility of there being relics that you could venerate in a Christian civilization.
And so what happened was after the fall of communism, so people started talking about this and talking about whatever, and and so uh uh the the Russian government announced that the remains of the Romanovs had been found.
And they they said, in fact, uh they were shot, and then the bodies were tossed down these like into these pits or mineshafts or whatever like that.
Anyway, we were able to retrieve them, and here they are.
Here's the bones of Nicholas, here's Alexander, here's like this and yeah.
Um and they triumphantly uh took those bones to St. Petersburg, put them in Peter and Paul Fortress.
I don't know if you know what that is, that's one of the main sort of historical buildings in St. Petersburg where the Tsars are buried.
And they were like, come Russian people now and venerate these remains.
Well, a huge part of like Russian like believers were like, no, we're not gonna we don't think those are the real bones.
We think we believe the ritual murder thing, and that there are no relics, and that this is a demonic trick to try and get us to venerate bones that have no um legitimacy, you know, to sort of weaken our spiritual power uh and weaken the spiritual power of the Tsar, who was subsequently made into a saint.
Look, I've got an icon of him here on my desk.
There he is.
That's the saint version.
And then this is the the human version.
The bust of Nicholas Istlik.
I think you can't see it with all this light.
Anyway.
Um so and it's so interesting.
I mean, this guy's a contemporary of ours in a way.
I mean, he's like, you know, he was like the generation of our grandfathers, sort of in between our grandfathers and our great-grandfathers.
He was a modern man.
He was kind of like us.
Um Anyway.
So there's this huge schismatic like debate going on in the Russian church.
And guess who's behind the people who want who are insisting, no, those are the real bones and go up and pray to them in St. Petersburg.
And if you say anything else, you're promoting certain famous ethnic blood libel tropes.
Yeah.
That's who's pushing that in Russia.
And then every time, yeah, and then every time the faithful rise up and say, no, it's the ritual murder story, and it's there are no remains and everything.
And it's it's gotten to be such a thing that the church has just stopped talking about it.
Because the people have basically said, we'll go into schism over this.
If you don't, if you try and you know, make a final decision as the Russian church, whether those relics are real or not, uh, and you and you come to the conclusion that they're real, we're out of here.
Okay, the Russian church is going to split in half because we're not going to go with so it's a it's a serious crisis.
And this is such a great example of like really important stuff that happens in Russia that never get never gets reported about.
That was part of the reason why I went, I want to do Russian cider, because there are these amazing things going on here that people don't realize.
I really felt that.
I really felt like the West doesn't want its people to come and see what's going on in Russia.
It doesn't want them to have access to it.
It's a bit like it there's been a kind of reversal of what happened in the communist era where Russians were discouraged from visiting the rest world.
I mean prevented from visiting the West, but they were told you don't want to get them anyway, because it's really rubbish.
It's not like you don't have all these benefits that we have in the marvelous Soviet Union.
And now we've got a reverse situation where the West, you don't want to get Russians uh it's a dictatorship.
The Russians, their economist tanking, the the the people have been scripted into a war.
Uh no one likes Putin, but at the same time they he kind of he he brainwashes them with stuff like family values and stuff, and they fools them into thinking that he's he's acting in their best interest.
So we get told all this stuff, and they don't want us finding out that actually the Russian economy is doing pretty well, and the food, the food is great.
And they do believe in founding Russia.
Russia's huge fun, and and it's an amazing, like vibrant, like lively, intensely human place, right?
But you know what makes Russia great?
Russia was great even like under communism, when it was so different, James, like all this sort of prosperity and like you know, lovely public transport systems and playgrounds and parks and all these nice Chinese cars buzzing around, you know, you have this this veneer of prosperity here.
And it's true, it's real prosperity.
This is what happens when you know you're your economy is set up in ways that it basically helps the people, you know, and this is the kind of prosperity that would be everywhere if there wasn't this like giant sort of what is what a Mat Taibi.
Mat Taibi was a a journalist in Moscow when I was journalists and we were friends.
So I remember this.
Remember, he called um the vampire squid.
Right?
There's this like vampire squid like wrapped around Western uh societies, like sucking everything out of them, this financial sort of thing.
Um and and everything's sort of turned into a uh a ripoff operation, everything from like education, you know, health care, um, your mobile phone system, your TV like payments, it's all like an effort to like suck money out of you and rip you off.
Well, if you if you cut that out and you just let people get on with their lives and do good things, and the government like puts back into society like uh a decent amount of stuff, people prosper and they do well, and that's what's happening here.
Um But here's the thing.
Like, even in the communist years when that wasn't the case, and Russians were leading very aesthetic lives.
And I remember this.
I saw this.
I I, you know, it was very much the case when I got here in the 80s.
And I remember it from childhood and what it was like, you know, that the just the feel of it.
The smell on the street, like the the atmosphere and in public places and everything.
It was a great country then because of this incredible Russian like intensity.
And you know, they're just so full of life.
They're just so human.
And you saw it, like, remember the characters we met, like you mentioned that like Bishop with the big beard and you know, his mannerisms and so on.
You know, they're just great personality.
Vlad.
Vlad, the um the the bear refer man.
Another one, yeah.
Yeah.
They're just fascinating, compelling, you know, rich people.
I mean, rich in in terms of their humanity and their human qualities.
And I think that's, you know, maybe maybe it wasn't that Tolstoy was a genius.
Maybe he was just constantly surrounded by these Russian characters.
And you just couldn't help but like just like transcribing.
Paint these pictures of these personalities.
I guess before we go, um your work is not yet done.
Because you never told me the story about how you got involved in the January the 6th.
Oh, I thought you'd forgotten about that.
I was gonna ask you if you wanted to, I should mention that.
Um yeah, so anyway, um so in uh and in uh late 2020 and into 21, I was working with Russian television.
Um because I'd recently come back from Russia, where we're living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where my family's been from since uh the early 1700s.
And uh yeah, and so I I told them, hey, and I and I was like a Trump, I was a MAGA guy, I was a like a Trump activist, I would go to like Trump rallies, and I went to a number of them after the elections because I was convinced that they were stolen, and I felt that was the correct civic thing to do, like stand up for your rights and like all that stuff.
And I um anyway, and so I went to that January 6th one and I told my Russian friends, I was like, hey, I'm going to this like this is supposed to be the really big one, like when even Trump himself said, Y'all gotta come, come on, we're gonna go, we're gonna like turn this thing around.
And so I went to that thing, and I um uh I went alone, I got very cold, it was unseasonably cold, I was underdressed, uh I I got very bored, and I decided, okay, I've had enough of these things, and I I went home,
and I was good heading home, and my car was parked off to the side of the Capitol building, and I was sitting in my car eating a sandwich, starting to and somebody sent me a tweet, and they're like, hey, there's like some fighting broken out, like there's like a riot going on in front of the Capitol building.
And so I was like, huh.
So I I I walked back towards the Capitol building and I saw that people were going up on the balcony.
I was, you know how the bal the the Capitol is kind of a long thing, with like a narrow edge, and then the wide, you know, wide front and wide back.
So I was on one of those narrow edges, and I saw people just walking up the hill there and going onto a balcony onto the top.
So I just walked up there with them, and by that time there were a crowd of people at the at the door, and uh and a broken window that were they were going in through the broken window and going through in through the door, and I was like, yeah, I'm definitely going.
This is fascinating.
So I I went in there, and um I I knew I had like what the biggest story of my career on my hands.
I mean, I was in there before like there was any, there were no uh you know, TV stations, cameras, anything like that.
And so I filmed as much as I could on my on my phone uh and then sprinted a few blocks up and uh to where there was a hotel with Wi-Fi and sent it to Moscow, and it was big news in Moscow, and they used all my material, and it was really good.
I'm I'm really I'm actually very good with a camera.
So the heck I got all this like really kind of dramatic footage And gave interviews and stuff.
And I thought I was like, this is my like lucky day.
I hit the jackpot, man.
I was like witnessing history.
I was there.
And I saw it all.
And I and anyway, and I um and then like a few days later, I I was giving interviews and like, you know, basking in the glory of this like great journalistic like coup.
And I realized people were getting arrested for being inside.
And I was like, definitely gonna arrest me.
Because they hate my guts.
I mean, they hate my they you wouldn't believe the amount of like look me up on the internet.
I just was like, this is this river of like, you know, uh attack pieces and hit pieces from the Western media about me.
And everybody, SBLC and APAC and eight uh they all like, I'm like, whatever.
So we hadn't been to Russia in two years.
My wife really wanted to go visit relatives.
And I was like, honey, we're getting on the plane tomorrow morning.
Right.
Uh and uh and we thought, I thought, well, you know, it'll blow over, we'll go for a month or so and visit Russia and come back and this is all stupid and it'll blow over.
Well, it didn't.
And it um, you know, it dragged on and on and on, and this kind of witch hunt against the J6ers went on and on and on.
The FBI got in touch with me in Russia.
The New York Times published a front page, get this.
The New York Times published on July 4th a front page article about me, like this major research thing.
You know how they do those long sort of in-depth sort of research things where they're trying to dig through like every little last aspect of your life.
Um in the print version of the New York Times, you know, that my fated parents read like the Bible like every single day of their life.
This is a big thing.
Um thankfully by that time both my parents had passed away.
They probably would have, you know, it would have been too much for them.
Um anyway, and so uh, and so I had to stay, we had to stay in Russia for four years until the great liberator Trump uh returned.
And what did the FBI did the FBI sort of indicate to you that you were gonna get if you got came back?
No, because I don't think they say that to people that they're plunging to like arrest, but I mean I'm not an idiot.
I could it's obvious to me.
They were running around like, you know, uh arresting grandmas and veterans and so old fogies who had been like you know in the wrong place at the wrong time, they would have definitely had a field day with me, right?
So that's true.
Well what what did the New York Times say about you?
That I was a loser, a CAD, an academic failure, which is true.
Um let's see, all kinds of, you know, just I was like bad news.
And then they interviewed my sister who was dying of cancer at the time, and she was not entirely in her own right mind, and she's and she's very liberal, or was very liberal.
Um although we were very good friends.
I mean, it's not a problem in our family to have different political opinions.
And um, yeah, it was bad, it was it was low clutch.
That must have been right.
Well, it didn't bother me that much because it was like the the the latest in like 20 similar articles.
I mean, you would we we really did some serious damage to like the bad guys, the people that you know the the the rulers of this world sort of calling things out and uh yeah, they definitely had my number.
So they've been writing stuff about me for years.
And I I I I take it as a badge of honor.
Like, great, you know, make me more famous.
Make me sound more important than I am.
It's fine.
Well done.
I mean I I I spent uh I spent a week in your company, and I I I I I came away with the impression that you are kind of like the American the American James.
We have sort of similar-ish backgrounds, and we and we and we're obviously we work out about the same time because if you were if you were still pro-Trump at the time of of January the 6th, and that's indicative to me that you weren't awake that Well, no, I I I I was aware that Trump uh uh very possibly and very likely was full of shit, but he was still better than the alternative.
Yeah.
So my attitude is like, yeah, okay, like back the you know, support the lesser of two evils, and then once that guy's in power, then push uh to try and you know and honestly, I don't know why that's not happening now in the US.
Like, you know, the i I I give Trump six months.
He's probably gonna get you down and stab you in the back and pull the rug, because that's what he did last time.
Um and that's what he's done.
Let's not have any illusions.
But but then you start pushing, then you say, okay, now we're gonna like, you know, uh organize and um and do something.
Uh because what we just sit here and like accept this humiliation.
No.
Better like organize, do something.
Um I think we ought to um end.
Because I've I'm I need it, I need a cup of tea.
And actually my wife's made me some cake.
Well, I shouldn't be eating cake, but it is quite nice.
Apple cake.
Um we should talk about the milk.
Listen, there's so much we haven't talked about.
Uh but you want to talk about the milk just briefly?
Well, we yeah, we should we should maybe do uh do a another podcast sometime, but but yeah.
I I just one of the one of the astonishing places you took me to.
We you took me into a covered market, of which there are quite a few in Moscow.
Yeah, there's like, you know, dozens and dozens of them.
Oh, dozens of them, really.
Oh yeah, yeah.
There's something like you know, twenty or thirty or something throughout the state.
Because there's a covered market in Rome, which is fantastic, but it is the covered market in Rome.
It's not like you go into different you go into Cestachio and there's one and you go to wherever there's the there's one.
That is the covered market.
But it if all the covered markets in Moscow are as good as the one you took me to, yeah, then that is mind-blowing.
Yeah, no, they are, and it's a it's it's a it's a policy supported by the the municipal authorities, you know.
Uh, they they especially create these places and encourage uh you know uh farmers and people like that to to sell their wares there.
And it's not just Moscow.
It's uh it's in every Russian city, you know, medium-sized provincial cities, all have these markets.
And it's lovely because um, you know, there's still a substantial kind of like um sort of uh backyard garden economy.
They're mostly like little old ladies who keep cows and goats and chickens and um grow vegetables and and fruits, and and they they sell them there, and it's it's fantastic, and it's the best food in the world.
I I sort of done you uh because you told me this before I came out, and I was thinking, yeah, right, he's he's painting a pretty picture of Russian food here.
And then I I saw the the fruit stalls piled high with this glorious fruit.
And then I went to the dairy counter.
Well, I mean I'm sure there were lots of dairy counters, and you kindly bought me some raw milk, because you said that raw milk would be very good for dealing with your health problems.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I tried this raw milk.
I I mean I drink raw milk at home when I can get a hold of it.
Actually, my my friend Paul kind of gets it for me.
But this raw milk, your raw milk, was just like the raw milk of the gods.
Yeah, no, it's you know, I I I drink a lot of raw milk.
I'm I'm from Lancaster County in Pennsylvania, which is really the heart, the heart, the heart of that whole Amish thing.
And so we're completely surrounded by these Amish farms, and you can get tons of raw milk there from these wonderful Amish people.
And it's delicious there too.
So that's the only raw milk I'm familiar with, uh Russian raw milk and the Amish raw milk, and it's equally good as far as I know.
But maybe it's not as good in England, I don't know.
Also, the the the yogurt um in that Georgian restaurant you took me to.
Yeah.
Was just like the best yogurt.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, Russians are great Sybarites.
They they love the finer things in life, and they have a sort of a genius for cultivating them and making them fantastic and everything.
Tell me one more thing before we go.
I've been trying to describe to people the magnificence of the black dumplings with cod and shrimp that we had in that Tchaikovsky restaurant.
Yeah.
I mean why is it so why was it so good?
I don't know.
It's just, you know, that's not a super fancy restaurant.
This isn't something what you call high cuisine.
You can go to restaurants in Moscow and spend like four or five hundred bucks for a meal.
Um that certainly wasn't that.
You know, it was nice restaurant, but sort of upper middle.
Well the waits told me the people come from St. Petersburg, which is what a four-hour train journey away, just for that dish.
And I c I can understand it.
Yeah.
So they've just got a great recipe there and they make the best of it.
But um Yeah, it's it's delicious stuff.
Um oh, and about the raw milk, I would rec recommend you know what I realized about because it's so affordable here and um and it's so delicious that I just start drinking it in quantity.
And I think that's what people maybe don't do.
Like they think, oh, I'll have like raw milk in my tea, or I'll have like a little cup, you know, every other day or something.
And I think the trick in my experience, I just realized that the more I drank, the better I felt.
And it was almost like uh asterisk, you know, drinking the like magic potion.
So um I would recommend if anybody's like a fan of raw milk, experiment with drinking it in quantity.
Like a like a quart a day, you know.
Um and see if that how that works for you.
Because I found it to be extremely beneficial.
Okay.
Um I better up my raw milk.
Um, absolutely delight.
Yeah.
Chatting to you.
Uh you can you've got a you've got a substack.
Substat, by the way, I think is intelligence controlled.
Limited.
It could be.
It could be.
But you know what, I'm like a a veteran of these like information wars.
And the bottom line is they can't control it.
They can try, they can like fiddle with substack algorithms and other things like that.
But put yourself in their shoes.
There's this technological revolution going on.
Um and they're like, stop, like stamp out all those troublemakers.
And you you can't.
You you it's like whack-a-mole.
You you you you you slow them down in one place and they start coming in the other place.
So I don't care.
You know, I I never had a problem getting information out.
Um I mean look what's happening in the American like information scene.
It's incredible.
I guess it's not this so much the same in Europe, but it still is.
I mean, you know, I speak German and I follow the German media, and that's a pretty crazy place, I would say.
Alternative media.
Yeah.
So uh it's hard to keep the truth down.
It really is.
It takes a hundred times more effort to push a lie than it is than it does to tell the truth.
So I think we've got advantages on our end.
Yeah.
Okay.
Good.
Well thank you for thank you for that note of positivity uh in a podcast of otherwise almost unrelenting grimness.
Yes, I'm an optimist.
I'm an American optimist.
An idealist.
Well, thank you.
It's been a pleasure.
Um do you want to plug anything of any of your your products?
Um no, I mean I don't publish much on that Substack thing.
It's just a occasional thing.
Um but uh but there are some good articles on there.
And uh and I don't tweet much, but I do sometimes tweet, and I will be tweeting about this film when it comes out.
So fall keep an eye on my Twitter, which is uh C Bowsman.
Um and uh yeah.
Uh follow me on Twitter.
That's the best place to keep it.
Okay, cool.
Um thanks.
Everyone else.
Thank you, my lovely viewers and listeners for watching me.
Um I love you all.
But I especially love the ones who become paid subscribers for obvious reasons.
I I I'm I uh everyone has their favorites and and you are my favourites you're paying subscribers.
So if you want to come one of my favorite people, do consider um contributing to the upkeep of this podcast.
I really appreciate it.
Try and get through the the under the wire on Substat if you can.
they let you, they make it make it difficult, or buy me a coffee or go to my website, uh James Dallingpole.co.uk, which I think we've started to do a thing where you can sign up there, be a paid subscriber, I think.
I don't know.
Um have a look.
Right.
Um Charles will applaud me for my my marketing skills.
Yes, that's very well done.
Thank you.
Um good.
Alright.
Um Global warming is a massive con.
There was no evidence whatsoever that man-made climate change is a problem, that it's gonna kill us, that we need to amend our lifestyle in order to deal with it, it's a non-existent problem.
But how do you explain this stuff to your normie friends?
Well, I've just brought out the revised edition, my 2012 classic book, Watermelons, which captures the story of how some really nasty people decided to invent the global warming scare in order to fleece you, to take away your freedoms, to take away your land.
It's a shocking story.
I wrote it, as I say, in the well, 2011 actually, it the first edition came out.
And it's a snapshot of a particular era.
The era when the people behind the Chin Climate Change scan got caught red-handed, tinkering with the data, torturing till it screamed, in a scandal that I helped christen Climate Gate.
So I give you the background to to the skullduggery that went on in in these seats of learning where these supposed experts were informing us.
We've got to act now.
I rumbled their their scam.
I then asked the question, okay, if it is a scam, who's doing this and why?
It's a good story.
I've I've kept the the the original book pretty much as is, but I've written two new chapters, one at the beginning and one at the end, explaining how it's even worse than we thought.
I think it's a good I think it still stands out.
I think it's i it's a good read.
I'd obviously I'm biased, but I'd recommend it.
You can buy it from James Dallingpole.co.uk forward slash shop.
You'll probably find that mic, just go get to my website and look for it, James Dallingpole.co.uk.
And I hope it helps keep you informed and gives you the material you need to bring round all those people who are still persuaded that oh it's a disaster, we must amend our ways and appease the gods, appease Mother Gaia.
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