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Nov. 12, 2020 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters
01:04:51
The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #3
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Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
Welcome to the podcast of Lotus Eaters for Thursday, the 12th of November 2020.
How's it going, Callum?
It's going well.
Good?
More shenanigans from the election.
Right.
We've got some housekeeping to attend to, don't we?
What is it?
I've forgotten.
Well, the first thing is me swiveling in my chair.
I've really got to stop it.
I don't know what it is, it must be nerves or something, but it really makes me more comfortable to do it.
But I'm going to try not to.
The second thing, we need to talk about your shirts.
My shirts, yeah.
Or your shirt, should we say.
So last time I went shopping was before the first lockdown, and you know when you walk into Primark and the shirts are $150 and you just grab five of them and then they're all the same colour.
You were wondering about the fact that people probably think I'm wearing the same shirt, which no, not.
But I'll buy some more stuff off the merch store before it's closed.
Good idea.
And then we'll wear those instead, okay?
Good idea, because, I mean, it's not like you can go shopping at the moment, is it?
No, literally.
Primark is closed.
We're in a lockdown again.
Sorry.
I don't even want to get into it.
But yes, and the website is still currently down, I'm afraid.
When we put it up the other day, it wasn't quite robust enough in the backend, and that had to be spread across multiple databases apparently because of high demand, which I shouldn't complain about obviously, but it was something that had to be fixed.
So we've taken it down now.
Because it's still not perfect.
Anyone who tried to subscribe for the premium and got double charged, we'll refund those, obviously.
Just send us an email and we'll get that refunded ASAP. And we'll let you know when it's back up and ready so we're all ready to go.
Our apologies, by the way.
Right, so...
Let's talk about how the New York Times has a habit of creating alternative facts.
Now, do you remember Kellyanne Conway kind of stumbling into this, probably in like 2017, where she was being pinned in an interview and she said, well, there are alternative facts?
And everyone roundly mocked her.
Yeah.
And I was really annoyed about that because that's totally true.
It's a totally true thing that there is such a thing as alternative facts.
What these are are facts that just lay outside of the media narrative.
Things that the media just don't want to talk about.
In fact, there are entire sort of compilations of hate facts all over the Internet from various different ethnic and gender groups that are just things that appear to be true that are just difficult to, you know, shove into the sort of politically correct narrative as they just get ignored.
And so you could reasonably describe these as being alternative facts.
And we have an example of The New York Times not only creating fake news, but actively sidelining facts to essentially be in the category of alternative facts.
If we can get slide one up, then we can see how what we were talking about yesterday was in the Project Veritas versus the New York Times video.
Was that the New York Times have posted there's no evidence of nationwide fraud, say, election officials.
Well, they're asking the Democrats, did the Democrats do anything wrong in most of these cases?
But as you can see, I've lifted this image from today's news trending page on Twitter.
So now, what is an article, I would say, entirely without merit or The merit it does have is misleading, is now being promoted as the main sort of narrative point that people should take away.
Do you know if Twitter does that?
I assume they do.
Twitter has done that themselves, yes.
They pick a verified source.
Yes.
I mean, it's never Infowars that ends up on the news section of Twith trending, right?
But anyway, the way they frame this, if we can go to slide two, you can see how they've tweeted this out.
This is all included in the Twitter featured section.
Election officials in dozens of states from both parties told the New York Times that there was no evidence of voting fraud, amounting to a forceful rebuke of President Trump's false narrative.
This is just not really a true statement.
Trump's narrative is neither true nor false, as we haven't arrived at the end of the investigations yet, so we are yet to discover.
It's indeterminate whether that's correct or not.
There's no particular rebuke in asking the people who you're accusing of committing a crime whether they've committed that crime or not, because naturally they deny it.
And the election officials in the one for...
Was it Kansas?
That said, well, we don't have any evidence of widespread vote fraud in Kansas.
They'd asked two Republicans and one Republican was a guy in Kansas saying there was none in Kansas.
I was like, right, but we're not asking about Kansas, are we?
Yes, that's not the allegation.
The allegation is in other states.
And in the article, if we can go to the third one now, please, in the article you can see how they're framing this.
So, you can see they've sandwiched one of the Democrats between, these are three of the eight they asked, but they've sandwiched, like, between the two Republicans that they featured in the previous article, one Democrat, as if to say, well, look, there is no particular obvious left-wing bias, but what they're not showing you here is the fact that there are five other Democrat agents that they've asked and have not included.
So, it gives the impression that they are less biased than they are.
And it's a way of kind of forming the narrative.
And again, this is the end of their description in the article of what's happening there.
And then you get the response.
Can we go on to number four, please?
Yeah, previously, please.
So yeah, this was reported by Fox News.
How a New York Times columnist started posting how angrily Byron...
Was it Byron?
No, it was a different guy, sorry.
But he was angrily posting how there is right-wing misinformation teeming all over Facebook.
Can we go to the fifth one?
So he says, Facebook's absolutely teeming with right-wing misinformation now.
All of these are among the ten most engaged URLs on the platform over the past 24 hours.
Because for anyone who doesn't know, Facebook is essentially a far-right platform at this point, because the general public are basically far-right, and the general public all use Facebook.
The boomers are on it.
Yeah, the boomers are on it.
And God bless, by the way.
Keep going.
And what was the most popular news outlet?
This is the same guy, and he loves to rail about the Daily Wire.
I can already see there the Daily Wire link.
The Daily Wire are absolutely dominating Facebook news, which is great because they're not left Ben specifically as well.
Like, he gets very angry at Ben, saying, oh, look at this terrible news.
Ben Shapiro's number one for another week!
Yeah.
Yeah?
Like, Ben's a perfectly moderate conservative.
Yeah, but as you can see from all of these headlines, Republican Michigan goes from loser to winner after technical glitch fixed.
Officials urge confidence in the system from the Daily Wire.
That's a true story.
That was a true story.
That was just a county in Michigan.
It was something like 13,000 votes as well.
The next one, William Barr authorizes the Department of Justice to look into voting irregularities.
It's reported by Breitbart, but it's a completely true story.
Michigan legislature holds rare emergency session to investigate election irregularities from Dan Bongino.
Again, completely true.
And Purdue Loeffler call on Georgia Secretary of State to resign over election.
Again, a true statement.
Whether you are interested in it or not, all of these are not misinformation.
And so he got called out by a lot of conservative journalists and people at the New York Post, things like this, where they were like, how can you say that A misinformation...
you know, these can be factually accurate and part of a misinformation campaign.
If they're factually accurate, that means they're not misinformation.
It just means you have a particular narrative that you are trying to establish, and if there are alternative facts to this narrative, Then you've got to describe them as being in some way bad or negative.
So ignore them.
Don't worry about these facts.
I'm coming to the conclusion that the term misinformation for Democrat circles is just the alternative facts.
Yeah.
Like it's the same term just being applied to anything they don't like.
Yeah, things that are true that we disapprove of.
Yeah, absolutely.
And so, yeah.
Did this guy work for the New York Times?
He's a columnist for the New York Times.
Kevin Roos.
That's great.
Yes.
But then he doubled down on this.
Sorry, can we go back to the previous one?
Yeah, so this is the doubling down of it, as you can see.
Part of a misinformation campaign aimed undermining confidence in an election.
Elections aren't holy or sacred.
They're run by flawed humans.
And it's entirely possible that they can be tampered with.
They're tampered with in many, many, many countries around the world, and there's no particular reason to think they can't be tampered with in the United States, especially as we have lots of video evidence that would indicate that maybe there is shenanigans at hand.
And we don't want any of that kind of malarkey, and so you have to be particularly diligent about these things and make sure that there's a lot of keen oversight in what's going on.
Trump should just tweet that out.
We've got to stop with all this election malarkey.
He did say the word shenanigans.
He did say the word shenanigans.
He did.
It was fantastic.
I approve of these sort of old-worldly words.
But yeah, can we go to the next one, please?
So he says, take Breitbart, for example.
All week they've been getting huge engagement with stories about election-related glitches and Republicans protesting the results.
In some cases they're just repeating what a politician said.
But that's not saying that they're false, because they're not false.
That's what a reporter does.
That's right.
That's exactly right.
Which is something the New York Times, I guess, doesn't do, and is astounded by.
Well, yeah, they're quite surprised that, hang on, there's people out there reporting the news.
How dare they imply that the election glitches from, what was it, Dominion Software or something?
That is something we're going to have to spend a bit more time looking into, because it looks like there is actually a series of genuine concerns there.
Yeah, there's nothing inclusive yet, so I don't know.
That first one jumps out to me.
This is hard evidence the media needs to do your jobs.
Yes, that's Rudy Giuliani.
Yeah, it's just Rudy Giuliani giving a statement and Breitbart saying he said this.
What's wrong with that?
But also, moreover, Rudy Giuliani has sworn affidavits from witnesses.
Which is evidence and needs to be investigated.
This is not unique.
Kayleigh McEnany said she had 234 of them, as we covered yesterday.
And there's lots of videos of people doing things that are outright suspicious.
They're not outright illegal, like vote counting being done outside of the official hall and things like this.
Refusing entry to Republican poll watchers, things like that.
Lots of examples of things that are worthy of investigation at the very least.
Now, I'm not saying that all of these are concrete proof that something has happened, and it could, well, turn out to be that there just happens to be a bunch of innocent explanations for all of these things, but it's not wrong for the right-wing press to spend their time investigating it and reporting on it if politicians and lawyers and whatnot are covering it.
It's completely normal, but it goes against the presumed position that Kevin Roos has taken, which is the elections are sacred and inviolable, and God's ever-watching eye is making sure that none of the Democrats' operatives stuff any ballots or anything like that, because they would never do something like that.
No, of course not.
I mean, there's two things I think I'm to say about this, which is, I'm sure you can find lists from pages like, I don't know, The Hill, or Now This, or even probably The New York Times doing exactly the same thing.
AOC said this today, isn't that interesting?
Nothing wrong with that.
You're allowed to do that.
AOC says all sorts of crazy nonsense.
Yeah, but it's just reporting.
It's up to the audience to interpret what's going on.
We shouldn't be surprised by this, I don't think, because the New York Times on the day of the election, on the night, put out that tweet saying it's for other media to report whether or not...
Well, we'll get to that in a later story, actually.
Because this all does tie in to something we'll talk about in a bit.
It's like that CNN guy, remember when the emails came out and he says, it's up for us to interpret this.
It's not for you to look at the reporting and make your own decision.
What he said was...
What he said is...
Oh yeah, that was another bit of the housekeeping.
We do have better microphones coming.
All the equipment hasn't arrived yet.
But yeah, Cuomo said it's illegal to read the Wikipedia leaks.
It's okay for the media, but it's illegal for you.
And it's like, okay, well what makes you so special and different?
I've got the right politics.
That's it.
I've got the institution.
And more than that, I have something at stake that obviously I stand to risk losing were you to continue doing things that were outside of my control.
And again, saying that you should get all of your information from me, that's terrible.
I would never say such a thing.
You should watch all news sources.
Watch a big variety of things that never go from one place.
But sorry, go on.
I was going to say, this...
Coming from the New York Times is especially concerning because like old media, CNN, all of them have been attacking YouTube and the internet.
You need to censor more, you need to promote us more because we're more reliable.
How dare people look at the information for themselves?
And especially from the New York Times, given the example of PewDiePie, the fact that they just completely made up nonsense against it.
And it's sort of embarrassing.
And that was a Wall Street Journal.
Was it the Wall Street Journal?
I thought the New York Times jumped on the bandwagon.
Oh, they all jumped on the bandwagon.
But the original expose was discovered by the Wall Street Journal.
Watching videos that have been watched millions of times.
Yeah.
There's a podcast series the New York Times has done where PewDiePie's actually gone on now and be like, yeah, you guys smeared the hell out of me.
And it's very interesting to watch.
I haven't seen that.
I'll send you it.
Yeah, yeah.
But, what was I going to say?
The...
The point is, essentially, they don't believe in people being able to see information for themselves.
They want to interpret it and give it to you.
I think that the problem they have is that people might be able to see information for themselves.
Exactly.
And that means that they're pointless now.
Yeah.
It's not just that they're pointless either.
It's that they, as we'll see in the next segment, or in one in a bit, there is an obvious and overt attempt to control what the public think, to set a particular agenda in the public mind, And have that become reality.
But I won't talk about it yet.
But can we go to the last slide, please?
So that's the thing.
All of this sort of ties in together.
It's a very, like, interlaced series of stories.
But yeah, as he says here, so many of these stories aren't false, per se.
Okay then, why are you wasting my time with this?
Yeah, I mean, you know, many have been reported elsewhere, but if you just look in the framing and how they're serving them up, bam, revealed, just in.
And the facts they aren't including, it's obvious they know what they're doing.
It's like, okay, well, you're complaining about the style of presentation.
It's clickbait, which obviously it is.
But it's not false, per se.
You call it misinformation.
Yes.
You're saying that they're actively not true.
But then he gets to, it's obvious they know what they're doing.
He says, okay, now we're into the mind reading and projection side of things.
Now we're into what's in your mind, Kevin Roos, and what you're going to see in others.
So he says, the people who run these pages know they can't claim outright that the election was stolen because Facebook's fact checkers might ding them.
So, okay, stop there.
I think that everything that Breitbart posts is basically going to have a Facebook fact checker thing on it.
I'm going to check it now.
You can probably say, yeah, but most of them are going to be.
So they do the just asking questions thing and use discussion threads and cherry picked headlines to accomplish the same thing.
It's like...
Kevin, you've got to understand, buddy, that half your country is looking...
Actually, this isn't true.
Not half the country is looking.
But a large portion of the Trump base is looking at what's going on and saying, well, hang on, this all looks a bit shady.
And the fact that you guys have leapt to conclusions that would favour the left-wing view of the world kind of implies that you're just doing the same thing that they're doing.
It's not everything, but the number two thing they posted today is, yeah, go on, fact check.
It's all going to be covered in fact checks.
So, yeah, it's wonderful watching the New York Times actually double down on the fact that there are facts that they can consider misinformation.
Well, they're alternative facts.
They're just the right wing believes these to be true because of X, Y, Z. Because they appear to be true.
Yes, in this case.
But if you're a leftist, you know, they believe it because of this.
Yeah, you're not allowed to believe it.
So that's a misinformation.
I mean, we had the same thing with the last election, which is why those fact checkers are coming in now.
Yeah.
Because I remember watching.
So everyone thinks Facebook's misinformation and, you know, we have to...
Russian trolls got on the internet came from...
Yeah.
Anyone else, but it came from Mark Zuckerberg, actually.
I remember him talking about it, and then Hillary started talking about it, and then it became part of the democratic response to the election.
But it's the reason he has all these fact-checkers, and it's amazing because very recently he gave the hearing to, I think it was Congress, not the Senate, in which he was saying, we don't want to be the arbiters of truth, no, we can't do this and that and all the rest of it.
It's too far gone, mate.
I don't know if he honestly believes it, but why are you fact-checking everything if you don't want to determine what isn't true?
I get the feeling that Zuckerberg, and he's done this before with regard to Holocaust denial and things like this, where he has put forward the principled free speech position where he doesn't want to be the arbiter of truth.
And there have been leaked audio from within where he has been on the defensive side, on the free speech extremist side of the argument.
Oh.
Not quite.
His defence is always based in our customer base expects us to tone it down a little bit.
And not just that, our customer base does not share our political opinions, which he...
Like, he's obviously becoming fully aware that, Christ, the public is really right-wing.
You know, really right-wing.
And we're not.
But he has made these principled defences.
I can only imagine the amount of pressure that he is under from different angles.
The very fact that he made a defence and has consistently...
Even if he's collapsed and failed at every point in the series of stages that have gone on, the very fact that he made the defense was probably a bit of a sacrifice in and of itself.
He probably got a lot of stress from merely saying, "Well, hang on, guys.
Have you considered that the public are raveling right-wing lunatics?
No, no, we can't consider that," etc., etc.
So I get the feeling this probably wouldn't have been something that he would put on himself, but he's just capitulated.
I find it strange because I believe he's still got 51% of the coverage.
Yeah, he's got the controlling stake in.
He's the CEO. They can't actually oust him.
No.
So he could just rant and rave all day and there's de facto nothing they can do.
But I'm sure in work, you know, you've got to work with these people for the rest of your lives.
Base Mark Zuckerberg.
Come on, buddy.
Come on.
We don't want to hear about your grilling, Mark, although, you know, everyone likes to grill.
What we want to hear about is your opinions.
You've got a great platform, man.
Just sit there and go, so I've really got concerns.
And then just start telling us how you feel.
I would love to see it.
So I've been reading all this fact check because it turns out they're right.
I mean, there's one of the fact checks.
I don't think we'll have time for it today.
But it was just talking about the 1,400 dead people.
And the short and long of it is you click the fact check and it just says, yeah, but one of them is still alive.
It's like, yeah, but it's a list of 1,400 dead people.
And I've already typed in on Twitter, you know, the five of them.
And they're older than the oldest person alive.
So the fact that one of them is alive is not a fact check.
It's not a rebuke of the statement.
I just am amazed that Biden got 100% of the zombie vote.
It's a huge demographic, too.
There are so many dead people.
I was using the politically correct, mortally challenged.
Oh yes, good point.
Don't censor us, please.
Hate speech against the dead voters.
Yes, yes.
No, no, I respect our dead voters.
But the fact that it's 100% Biden for the dead, it makes me want to recount.
That's all I'm saying.
It's suspicious.
It's North Korean levels of commitment to the Biden campaign that they have.
So, you know, we've got to run a fair election.
Anyway, so taking a brief break from US politics, because it's everywhere, although that will be the third story to cover.
What is it that you wanted to cover today?
Yeah, so let me get this up.
I'll get my notes so I get this right.
So I'll probably put the link in the chat as well just so people know, but it's behind a paywall on the Times.
So it's a story about the grooming gangs because there have been more developments with the independent report into the national issue and also there's been a new finding with Rotherham itself, which is embarrassing.
There we go.
So that's in the chat so people can read it.
So in rather biggest story or at least biggest incident of growing gangs that everyone knows about internationally at this point probably...
So the Independent Office of Police Complaints issued a report in regards to Sammy Woodhouse.
Now, I don't know all of Sammy Woodhouse's specific incident problems, but she's very famous.
She's done a lot of media interviews.
She's out there.
Everyone can find out about her.
But when she was 14, she was in a foster care home, and a guy would come to the foster care home and just take her and other girls, and he would be known as the older boyfriend, is how the social workers referred to him.
And where did he take them?
Oh, you should use your imagination.
I don't really want to.
Yeah, well, she's a victim.
Let's put it that way.
So the complaint from her was, well, why did no one say anything?
Why did no one do anything?
I was being taken away and being abused.
So I'll read a quote from it.
So South Yorkshire police was aware that Hussein was raping Miss Woodhouse when she was 14 and that she was pregnant by him.
It also knew that the rapist was in so-called relationships with other female minors of the foster care home.
So the foster care and the police knew that he was doing this.
No one said anything or reported anything.
Get worse?
Well, before we go on quickly, I can't remember whether it was the Rotherham or Rochdale cases, but the police write-ups would essentially, and they were directed by the labour authorities, to treat these girls as if they'd made a lifestyle choice, these are quote, lifestyle choice, and that the girls are to be essentially treated as if they are in consensual relationships with these much older men.
Ergo the social workers saying she was the elder boyfriend.
Yes.
And often treating them as if the girls are child prostitutes, which is a bit of a contradiction in terms, because you need to be an adult to be able to be a prostitute.
Yeah.
I mean, prostitution actually is legal in the UK, but obviously not child prostitutes.
Not for children, because that's rape.
Yeah.
So police documents from March 2000 revealed that, quote, Hussein has in the past had a number of relationships with young girls who are in foster care.
He targets young, vulnerable women.
So that's a police document saying that.
Women.
Women.
See, this is another reason why the definition of woman has to be something along the lines of adult human female, because then children can't be called women.
Yep.
Anyway.
This was a problem we actually saw in, I think it was Rochdale or something.
There was a guy who was arrested because his brother had been involved, and then they were asking him, do you think your brother did it?
And his response was along the lines of, well, if the women are wanting to get in and women want to do that, and then there was a Labour MP who was being told, well, what about...
Actually, no, it wasn't a Labour MP. It was Tommy Robinson telling a Labour activist that, you know, we need to stop them raping our girls.
And under her voice, you can hear on the hot mic going, women.
I was like, what?
No, it's not a woman.
That's a young girl.
That's...
But if you want to let this carry on and you want to not rock the boat, then it's easier to pretend that they're actually, you know, fully adult women who are making their own sensible life choices.
Yeah, that's the justification in these people's mind.
It seems that way, doesn't it?
Other reports from later that month revealed that South Yorkshire police had struck a deal with Hussein to hand over the child, who was missing from the home.
To officers, records show that the Pakistani heritage man was neither questioned nor arrested.
So not only did they know he was going to this foster care home, taking people back...
Yeah, obviously doing the fairest things.
When they had a missing child report, they would contact him and say, hey, can you find this child for us and bring it to us so we can deal with this?
And he would.
He would just mysteriously find a child that's been missing, bring it back, and then the officers are like, thank you for your service, and let him go on his way.
Yeah.
So it's not just the police corruption or incompetence of knowing something's going on and being like, oh, I'm not going to deal with that, or it's, you know, the nonsense of thinking it's child prostitution or, sorry, elder boyfriends.
Yeah.
It's that they actively were in contact with the man to make sure that the story didn't get out, or at least...
And facilitating his ability to continue doing it.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
That's unbelievable.
Like, complicity in this.
So, there is some good news in this, in that Sami has, she came forward in 2013, and Hussein was arrested, and he's been charged, I think it was 2016 he was charged, he was sentenced to 35 years in jail for 23 offences against 9 girls.
So there won't be the totality of his crimes, but at least he got 35 years in prison.
I mean, imagine what he must have been thinking as he was doing all of this.
It's like, they're just going to let me take these kids.
Yeah, I mean...
I'm guessing from the Pakistani heritage statement that he comes from a Pakistani culture.
And then he's probably thinking he identifies as Pakistani-British or maybe just Pakistani, I don't know.
But he would have been experiencing British culture, or at least the British legal system, as one that just lets you do this and even facilitates you doing it and doesn't ask questions.
And it, I mean, I don't think this would have happened had it been a white English person, for a start.
No, you'd say he's a wronger.
Well, obviously.
He's not.
Yeah, the cops would arrest him.
I've got absolutely no doubt in my mind.
It wouldn't be, you know, elder boyfriend classification.
And I'm absolutely certain that the, you know, that he would have been aware of something like that, too.
You know, I don't think that the people doing this are stupid.
I think they're deeply immoral.
I don't think that they don't know that they can see, they're just going to let us get away with this.
I don't know.
I mentioned last time the documentary This Is What Winning Looks Like in Afghanistan, where they're looking at the more rural areas and backwards parts of Afghanistan.
And one of the problems they had with training the local police to be police officers was that they would...
This is an old practice, apparently, where the local police officers, if they wanted to, they would just go out into the town, steal young boys.
I don't know why boys, but they would take them back to the police station and keep them as T-boys.
Yeah, it's well known.
Yeah, so this is the police.
This isn't just randos like this guy.
So it was culturally accepted, at least in that part of Afghanistan, that you could just go and steal boys as a police officer, keep him, and then abuse him.
And the vice documentary filmmaker went with the American to the local commander, a guy who knows regional.
And he's more higher up, so he has to be proper.
And they ask him, what do you think about this?
We've got video evidence that's going on, they've admitted it, we've got the witness statements, and can we please go in 9am tomorrow, raid all these police stations, and free the boys, because they're slaves.
And he's like, oh, I don't know, maybe we can do this, do that, and they're arguing and arguing.
I don't know, I'll have to think about it.
Should we free the slaves?
Yeah, literally.
They're just children.
This is like 2015.
Yeah, this is awful.
Modern day attitude.
And eventually his response comes to, well, if they don't do it to the boys, who are they going to do it to?
Their grandmothers.
How about they just don't?
Yeah, this is a regional police commander.
Yeah.
And then, you know, the Americans are shocked by this.
They carry on arguing.
And eventually I think he just gets bored.
And he's like, fine, fine, we'll do it, we'll do it.
You can see this American who's been there for 10 years training these guys.
And you see how downtrodden he is for everything.
He's like, finally, a win.
We can finally do something.
Next day, 9am, he gets a phone call.
Oh, we've cancelled it because of a meeting.
And you just see the guy, he's like, what am I doing with my life?
I've wasted 10 years here doing nothing.
But that's Afghanistan, right?
You might be thinking, but Pakistan's right next door.
And the more rural parts in the north, I imagine, have a similar culture, or at least a similar history.
Well, they certainly do.
Yeah, so the fact that this guy, or that you get these attitudes from these communities, is not a surprise.
But what is the surprise is the British police response.
Yes.
Because that's the part we can control and we should be expecting to do properly.
Yeah.
Which they didn't and are still not.
Yes.
Anyway.
Let's go on to the last bit here.
Oh, yeah.
So that's the Sammy Woodhouse case.
So we have more evidence of the police doing nothing.
Yeah.
Or at least actively helping them.
So the grooming gang report, which we've all been very happy about.
At least we're getting that, you know?
So, well, remind everyone what it is.
So...
I believe it started with a petition or something.
It did.
So it got 100,000 signatures.
John Wong's petition.
Yes.
Johnny started it.
His name's been scrubbed actually.
Has it?
Yeah, so on every parliamentary petition you go on, you get the name of the author.
Yeah.
Perfectly standard.
If you go to the one with 100,000, his name's not there.
Really?
It used to be there.
So I don't know what that's about.
John, you got on person, mate.
Racism!
Yeah, literally.
John's from Hong Kong, just in case you didn't know.
So that got done, and the government agreed, fine, we will do a full report, independent, into all the grooming gang issues.
It was Sajid Javid's report.
Sajid Javid, for anyone who doesn't know, has been very firm on the issue of the grooming gangs.
His rhetoric, and what appeared to be actions as well, seem to all match...
Essentially the sort of Tommy Robinson position on it.
This has to stop.
There can't be any stone left unturned.
Political correctness can't be a factor in determining what the characteristics of these gangs are and why they're doing it.
And everyone was thinking, great, we might actually get some real answers now.
But what's the report like?
What a radical position, right?
Yeah, yeah.
We might get to learn the truth.
The alternative facts of the situation, as it might be.
So, he got kicked out, because I think he got made Chancellor, and then it got changed for Priti Patel in charge.
No, no, it was Rishi Sinek.
Oh, sorry.
No, no, he was moved on to Chancellor, and then Rishi Sinek.
Oh, was he?
Right, right.
So, Priti Patel's in the position of being the one in charge of this, so any complaints ought to be labelled at her now, because Savit Javid laid the groundwork.
Yeah.
So they're doing the report, and there was another petition set up.
I don't know why they let this one through, because usually they take down duplicates.
And this, what, 10,000?
So it got a government response.
So it doesn't have a full debate in Parliament, but it gets a little bit of writing.
And the writing in there was interesting, because it's mostly waffle, but this part's good.
This investigation is focusing on six separate geographical areas.
St.
Helens, Tower Hamlets, Swansea, Durham, Bristol, and Warwickshire.
You'll notice...
Yeah, the thing that jumps out at me with that list is that these are places that are generally not associated with Islamic grooming gangs.
Not exactly the problem areas where I would say something like Telford, Rotherham, Rochdale...
Was Halifax one?
Halifax was quite a significant one.
Yeah, Halifax had one.
Hull or any Sheffield.
In fact, they're...
Oxford.
We keep going.
Oh, Helen Dale, shout out the Lotuses on Talk Radio this morning.
Thank you very much, Helen.
When the website's up, you guys will be able to check it out.
But Helen's got a great piece up there, by the way, which, like I said, when it's all ready, I'll be putting out on various social media outlets.
But anyway, sorry.
Yeah, so it's naming places which are not the famous ones, the big ones, or the ones that have the demographics which people are interested in.
Yes, and the ones that we've just listed are very heavily documented.
There's Sheffield, Rochdale, Rotherham, Telford.
Telford and Rotherham are the two best examples, because not only do we have the long documentation, we also have the numbers.
I mean, in Manchester, there was a Muslim police officer who was also arrested for raping a child.
Oh, I believe he was arrested for lying about it or something like that.
No, but he, no, no, he...
Oh, he was.
The allegation was that he had taken part.
Jesus Christ.
Yeah, and he, there's, you know, video of him in, like, you know, hey, kids, we're all, you know, I'm a friendly police officer, and then later on...
Yeah, he's pretty sure that's...
Anyway, so that's what the report will be based on, which, of course, why?
Why on earth would you exclude all of the places where people have been talking about and wanted the investigation to also include?
I think it was Hugo who said, it's like having a report looking at poverty in the UK and then saying, oh, we're only going to survey Surrey.
Yeah.
We did Surrey, some parts of London.
Yeah, like an equivalent for the U.S. or Los Angeles.
Yeah, we did Beverly Hills.
We did, you know, Manhattan.
Manhattan's rich.
There's no problem at all.
Yeah, exactly.
There's no problem with poverty in the U.S. Manhattan's booming.
What are you talking about?
You know, like...
Alabama must be just as well off.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, Appalachia is just...
It's opulent.
But, yeah, you're exactly right.
The fact that it is deliberately leaving out these most glaring omissions seems that this is an attempt by the conservatives to sweep this under the rug, in my opinion.
What do you reckon?
I reckon you're probably right.
Breitbart did offer an explanation.
It's only a couple of lines, but that's blah blah blah blah blah is going to be included in this places but not these places.
And the reason was because these places that we mentioned, the big ones, were of a historic nature.
Right.
Which ones were the ones we mentioned?
Rochdale, Rotherham, Manchester, Oxford, Telford are of historic nature, therefore they're not to be included.
That's where the reasoning ends.
Which...
Okay, well, there's a couple of assumptions there.
One, that it's not still going on, which I think it probably is.
And two...
There were arrests this January in Manchester.
Well, there we go.
And two, the term historic is doing a lot of heavy lifting here because we're...
I mean, it's not like it's outside of living memory or something.
We're talking about 10 or 15 years.
So historic is, you know, being stretched quite a great deal here.
And three, even if it is historic, so what?
That's the point of the independent inquiry, is to look at this long-running thing that's been going on and determine what caused it and what factors are at play.
Oh, these are historic, so we don't need to worry about them.
Well, all of those people are still out there, the victims are still out there, all of the evidence is there, and it's still going on.
Why?
It's like, I'm going to do a study on, I don't know, the history of Britain, but anything before 1995 or something, that's too historic.
Yeah, the history of Britain doesn't start before 1995, you know.
Anyway.
So not very encouraging, then.
No, so this report might end up being completely useless, so just warning people ahead of time, which I didn't want to hear, no one wants to hear, but that's what it is, so sorry, that's the news.
And what was the date they were going to release it as well?
I don't think they've released one yet.
I thought they said something like early December.
I haven't seen one.
Right.
So it's probably still...
I must have dreamt that.
Oh, wait, no, I know what you're talking about.
They said they're hoping for December.
Right, right, right.
But who knows?
Yeah, there's also one more quote here.
So Maggie Oliver, I believe she's a Manchester whistleblower, so she has done a lot of media interviews and everything.
You can Google Maggie Oliver.
Yeah, I'm familiar with her.
And you'll find her.
So she was a police detective who blew the whistle on the Rochdale grooming gang, condemned the inquiry into sexual abuse for its decision, and revealed that two-thirds of her witness statements to the police had been deleted.
As in, for this inquiry, here's a bunch of witness statements, two-thirds of them just deleted because they're not in the areas we're looking.
Who needs to know about those?
Yeah.
I mean, if Maggie Oliver wants to send us the witness statements, we're happy to read through them and see what she says.
Yeah, why not?
Publish them, why not?
These are the witness statements.
Tips at lotuseaters.com.
The emails are actually working.
So you could send us an email if you want, Maggie, and we're happy to take a look and see what you've got to say, because I think this is important information that the public should know, frankly.
Yeah, absolutely true.
There's not really anything else to say there, but it's just more evidence of the failures and the fact that this report, which we're all hoping for, would be at least a I don't want to say the word closure because closure never really does anything.
Just a conclusion to the saga.
A validation that the problem is real.
Because for years the problem was denied.
Tommy Robinson was completely mocked as if this was ridiculous.
How could you suggest this?
And then suddenly it all started coming out that actually, oh god, this looks really bad.
And not just Tommy, let's be fair.
A lot of people talk about this.
Tommy was just a big media guy at the time who got a lot of headlines.
But he was doing good work.
He was getting the message out.
I remember when I was young thinking that this has got to be false.
There's no way this is true.
It's cruel.
It's inhumane.
On an industrial scale of child rape gangs operating across the country.
Networks of them trafficking children around to be raped and prostituted.
And the police are in some way complicit.
A factual statement by the standards of the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
Great!
Anyway, a bit of a black pill, not much of a lotus pill, but it's the news.
I'm afraid that is the case.
We feel bound to report these things as we find them.
There's very little good news these days.
Honestly, I don't have any good news really.
You know, we should start...
I wonder if we should do this.
Someone mentioned, should we start trying to find a good story to end everything with?
Maybe.
Because I know the BBC did this for a little while with the local stations.
They'd always have, oh, and a dog was rescued today or something like that.
That sounds good.
We'll take that.
But to be honest, when we're dealing with such dark subjects, I don't think a dog being rescued can mix up for it.
It's definitely something, though.
Yeah.
What about the president of Turkmenistan putting a statue up of his dog and making everyone salute it?
See, that's a happy story.
Yeah, that's funny.
You know, who's not going to salute a statue of a good boy?
Look up president of Turkmenistan on Twitter's probably best, and you'll get a video of his men saluting this dog and playing it a song.
It's just a statue of his favourite dog.
But why wouldn't you?
Who's going to say, I'm not saluting a statue of a good dog?
Everyone can salute that statue.
Good boy!
The reading list, we will have it on the webpage when the podcasts are embedded on the page on the website.
It's just the website down at the moment, so we will provide it, we promise.
And incidentally, for anyone who's wondering, I'm going to be doing a book club that you won't be able to watch on Thomas Paine's common sense.
So I think there's a lot in there that's worth talking about.
The sort of motivations and goals of the revolutionaries at the time.
And where Thomas Paine came from, as well, is an interesting thing.
But anyway, I won't go into it now.
But anyway, I guess for the final thing that we'll talk about today is...
The fact that Joe Biden has been widely recognized as the winner of the 2020 US election.
Two days ago, Reuters published a poll from Ipsos where they found that nearly 80% of Americans say that Biden won the White House and ignore Trump's refusal to concede.
Apparently, in the National Opinion Survey, which ran from Saturday afternoon to Tuesday, Last week, they found that 79% of US adults believed that Biden had won the White House, 13% said the election had not yet been decided, 3% said Trump had won, and 5% said they do not know.
That means that 82% of the US public are flat wrong about the results of their own elections.
Yep.
And who's to blame?
Well, we'll get into that in a minute.
Interestingly, the people who said the election has not yet been decided are the people who are correct, the 13%.
And the 5% who say they do not know are not wrong.
So they have not committed.
So 18% of people are not flat out misinformed about the US election.
Now, where are they getting this information from?
That is the question.
Well, the first thing...
Can we go to the next one, please?
The first thing we can look at is the real clear politics map.
Which I took literally an hour ago, this screenshot, and as you can see, Biden hasn't gone across that line.
He hasn't reached the magical 270 number, because if we can scroll down a little bit, please, John, you can see there are a bunch of states that are still yet to be called.
It was Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
Now, Trump is ahead in North Carolina.
Arizona, was it Arizona?
It was Wisconsin, and Georgia are having recounts.
Wisconsin is just still being called for Biden there, but they are having a recount.
There are legal proceedings that are going on in these four contested states.
That was about it actually, but the point is these results have not yet been collected and the answers haven't been given.
So where are they getting the impression that Biden has won from?
And where Biden is president-elect?
Can we go to the next one, please?
I do have some breaking news which interferes with this story.
Oh, do you?
Yes.
RealClearPolitics updated like two minutes ago.
Pennsylvania is now called for Biden.
Is it?
It doesn't prove your point wrong, though.
No, no.
Because it only just happened, like, whilst we're streaming.
Yeah, but also, that's not enough, is it?
No, it's not over there, because I think there's a lawsuit or a recount there.
How many electoral votes does he get from Pennsylvania?
Oh, does that give him enough electoral votes?
I believe so, actually.
279 in total.
Right, okay.
But yeah, as things are, they're still not over.
But that doesn't prove it wrong with the fact that up till this stream, 80% of the Americans are believing that Biden is the victor, when that just factually isn't the case.
Yeah.
I'm wondering, I'm not old enough to remember 2000 and the George Bush-Gore fiasco.
I know I've seen some newspaper headlines of the day saying Gore...
And quick correction, we said that Bush was a sitting president at the time.
He wasn't.
Thank you for pointing that out.
Oh, sorry, yeah, because he was winning the election.
Yeah.
I've seen some headlines from that time from newspapers saying, you know, President Gore or Gore wins, that they then had to retract.
But can you remember it?
Were people openly thinking that Gore had won?
It was only after 2001 I became much more aware of politics, to be honest.
Oh, right, yeah, so the update.
Okay, well, we'll have to look into what's happening in Pennsylvania after we finish doing this.
But the question is, why were people under such an inaccurate statement?
Why did they think that the election would be called?
Why did they think that Joe Biden was president-elect?
I think the answer is quite obvious.
If we go into slide three, please.
I'm going to have to update.
Yeah.
As you can see, I did a Google search geographically for America, so this is the news articles that Americans are getting, and I searched for the last week, just before today.
And as you can see, lots of news stations like local ones, WPVI-TV, or the New York Times are saying things like, with President-elect Joe Biden, the long national nightmare is over.
They just lied.
They just keep saying, President-Elect, President-Elect, President-Elect.
If we can go on to slide four, please.
Again, this is all just from the front page of this thing.
President-Elect, President-Elect.
Yeah, that's exactly it.
Well, I did on my computer, but yeah, that's exactly it.
And, you know, outside of traditional political reporting...
But after date response, search President-Elect Biden instead of just President Biden.
Oh, no, no, that's stay up to date on election...
That's my search.
Sorry, I thought Google were even trying to push it.
No, no, no, they probably are.
But that's the thing, if you just look through all these things, it's constant propagandizing by the media.
They have lied.
They have just continually lied.
And I presume this, if we can go on to the next slide, this stems from the New York Times's desire to have the media be effectively the captain of the ship of state.
As they tweeted out on the election night, the role of declaring the winner of a presidential election in the US falls to the news media.
The broadcast networks and cable news outlets have vowed to be prudent.
Here's how it'll work.
Well, it doesn't matter how you think it'll work, New York Times, because that's not how it works.
It gets called by the electors.
It's completely mask off, isn't it?
Mask off.
We believe we run the world.
Yes, that's exactly what it is.
There is a formal process laid out by the Constitution.
This is just total nonsense.
There was massive backlash, obviously, by...
I presume it's...
You can see I'm getting ratioed in there.
Yes, you can absolutely see massively ratioed.
Because that's just not how it works.
That's just such a bizarre assertion, because the media is not an institution, like a single formal institution.
The New York Times is a single formal institution.
The institution of the media is broad, diffuse, and informal.
We talk about the media, and we know we're talking about journalists who broadcast takes, shall we call them, to the world and are taken as seriously as anyone foolish enough to do.
They're always of the same kind of narrative as well.
But it's not a homogenous group, and they don't have some sort of shared agreement, or they shouldn't.
They just so happen to fall into certain bounds.
Yes, and yes.
And as we can see now, there are genuine alternative facts that the New York Times themselves agree that these things might be true, but are still misinformation.
And so it's not like we can trust any kind of consensus from the media on this anyway, even if it was the case that the media had some role in declaring who the winner was, which they don't.
They've got a role of announcing it to the public, but they're not the ones who decide it.
If we can get the next one up, please.
The New York Times retracted their statement after getting horrifically ratioed, saying, In correction, we've deleted an earlier tweet that referred imprecisely to the role of the news media in the US presidential election.
The news media projects winners and reports results it does not declare the winner of the election." Yes, imprecisely is the key word here.
We might call it a flat out lie.
Yeah, it's not actually a full retraction then, is it?
No.
They're saying, well, we were just imprecise about this.
No, you were flat wrong about this.
The media does not declare the winner of the election.
You were wrong, New York Times, is what you need to say.
We wished we were in control of the society that we think we're in control of, that we think we can manipulate because of the particular facts that we present to you, even when it's outright lies like headlines like President-elect Biden, which is an outright lie.
And we saw New York Times headlines coming up in the Google results where they just call it President-elect Biden because it's a...
Essentially.
And I don't mean to be uncharitable when I say this, but I would characterize that as a disinformation campaign.
Because it is.
It's actually a correct use of the word as well.
Exactly.
It's the correct use of the word.
It's not a fact.
It's being reported as if it's a fact, and we have proof that it has misled the public.
What Kevin Roos accused the right-wing media of doing while reporting on actual facts is what the New York Times has done while reporting on fiction.
The publication he works for.
Yeah, the publication he works for had done reporting on fiction.
Absolute, flat-out lies.
Total...
I just...
And there's no way to hold them to account.
There's no way to hold them to account.
At least not directly through any kind of legal means, it seems.
There's a comment from a Cornell Law School professor in the Fox News article that covers this.
William A. Jacobson.
And he thinks they got carried away before issuing the correction.
The Times seems to think it runs the country rather than reports on the country.
A declaration by major news outlets as to the winner of a particular state is informal only, not an actual decision.
That's correct.
And so This dovetails nicely with another particular offense that the far-right general public have committed against the progressive news media.
In Brian Stelzer's view, Trump voters are flocking to a TV channel that claims Biden is not president-elect.
So we can reframe this as Trump voters are flocking to a TV channel that tells them the truth.
Or just reflects reality.
Yes, that gives them factual information rather than the misinformation that CNN, the New York Times, and presumably the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.
I should have just got them, just to give it a full flush, you know?
See, we were in the car driving home from work yesterday.
I think it was yesterday or the day before.
And I think it was LBC was saying, oh, President-elect Biden, Trump's got no information, no evidence.
They were like, fuck it.
Went to talk radio.
Same thing.
I think the BBC was.
Same thing.
I just went, oh, stuff this.
I pull up my phone, and I'm weird.
So I like to listen to a lot of propaganda songs from different countries.
Right.
Just because...
Okay?
So I literally started listening to government propaganda from, like, gone-by regimes rather than listening to the mainstream media at this point.
How is it different?
It's not.
It is not on that fact that you can literally just say a lie to try and change people's minds, and you know that's what you're doing.
Yep.
So this new channel, I've never heard of it before, actually.
It's called Newsmax, and during the election week it averaged 182,000 viewers.
It's a satellite news channel.
And clearly Brian Stelter is very upset about the fact that Fox News, also called Biden as president-elect, Which is why presumably people are like, well hang on a second, that's not the case.
Wait, Brian Stelter's upset about Fox News doing that?
No, he's upset about Newsmax not doing that, people flocking to Newsmax.
Fox News, I guess, being controlled opposition at this point.
But apparently there were 182,000 viewers during the election week, which then went up to 347,000 viewers.
And some of them have gone up to 800,000 viewers.
So it looks like a lot of Trump's base have actually been looking for actual facts and had to go somewhere that isn't the mainstream media to get them.
And this really means that the media is...
Let's go with the New York Times.
Yeah, okay, let's say the media calls the election.
That's pretty open.
That means that anyone who can reasonably claim to be media and the Surely the barrier to entry to that is just to have a broadcasting publication means that you get to call the media.
So, if we can go for the next one, John?
I think we should welcome and congratulate President-Elect Alex Jones, who has declared himself the President-Elect.
He fulfils all the requirements.
He's got amazing numbers as well, doesn't he?
He has numbers similar to CNN, that's correct, as far as I'm aware.
And he has a broadcasting organisation, which we can rightly term the media, whether you like it or not.
And let's be honest, considering how factually inaccurate or devoid of factual content some of the stuff we've covered today is, I don't think they should be casting stones in the glasshouse about who...
I mean, Alex Jones has been right about a fair amount recently, let's be honest.
And so, yeah, Alex Jones is the president-elect by the criteria laid out by the New York Times, and I don't see how they could challenge it.
Hail to the chief.
You are our commander.
Yes.
Godspeed, sir.
Man, it's those 30 days in office.
Could you imagine?
I think it would be hilarious.
But the thing is, though, the thing is, if Alex Jones becomes the president, isn't that going to ruin his career?
What do you mean?
Because his entire career is complaining the government's going to come and get you and put you in a FEMA camp.
If he's in charge of the government...
He'll just have to do it.
Yeah, exactly.
He's like, well, I didn't want to have to do it, but suddenly I'm here and the FEMA camps are there and...
I don't want to be a liar.
Oh, boy.
I mean, Seriously, I reckon he would just, he would be like, okay...
1776 will commence again, that's how it better be.
Yeah, he'd call up the CIA and be like, give me everything you've got, and then just leak all the stuff that's bad, and they'd be like, shut down the CIA, and then, you know, department, diaper, department, just getting rid of them.
I mean, that sounds great, to be honest.
I'd be very interested in seeing what comes out of that.
Might send this to Alex to see him, see what he'd say.
He should publish it.
He should publish his first 30 days in office before he'd do it.
Be good.
Alex 2024.
I got two things to say about those messages from the New York Times about the media.
What I find very interesting is these outlets, whenever you mention the mainstream media or even use the term MSM, they get very touchy.
What do you mean mainstream media?
There's no such thing.
You can't say this.
Did they say that?
Yeah, yeah.
I remember BBC, ITV, I think I've seen CNN do it as well.
Where it's like, what do you mean mainstream media?
Because you're not all one thing.
We all have disagreements and all this stuff.
Oh, come off it.
Because when you're talking about the media, or the mainstream media, you understand it.
They understand the term.
In which case, if you're able to understand it, why can't I? Yeah, the New York Times can reference the media, who calls it.
Well, who are the media?
Well, I think we're the media, so we can call Alex Jones as well.
So if Alex Jones has done it, we've done it.
I wonder if any other independent media outlets would like to call Alex Jones as well.
You can call yourself now if you want.
No, no, not me.
I can understand it the way a President liked.
Yeah, exactly.
I wasn't born in America, so...
But, you know, if that's the case, then why can't we get it trending?
Alex Jones is one.
Let's get it on every Google feed.
Alex Jones elected president.
He wasn't even on the ballot.
How did this happen?
Well, the media calls it, you see.
Yeah.
The media calls it.
You've just got to learn who's in charge.
But that's so...
It's such giving away the fact that they use the term the media because they do not mean Alex Jones.
They do not mean any other type of media except the mainstream.
Those who are in the acceptable bounds of discourse on satellite television.
It's a big club and you ain't in it.
Yeah, yeah.
But it's also one of these things I find.
You've been watching the coronavirus sometimes.
The coronavirus meetings that Boris held.
I'm sure Trump did the same where you get these journalists gaggle.
And you can see how disrespectful they are to the politicians.
And I'm not one for saying, oh, they should sit and just write down what he says.
No, they should challenge.
You don't want a Russian-style democracy.
You want them to say, okay, you said this and now you're wrong, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
All the rest of it.
But what you don't want is just openly hostile for basically no reason and asking questions that they know the answers to endlessly to try and embarrass politicians.
It's like, well, no one elected you.
You're not running for office.
Just present us the facts.
Tell us what is false.
That's fine.
But more importantly, what good are you doing there?
This is Jim Acosta.
Must be feeling personally attacked right now.
And this is presumably why Kayleigh McEnany is such a popular figure among Trump supporters.
Because she spends her time chewing the media out.
And honestly, you love to see it.
I love to see it.
I'm going to be so sad when she's gone.
Yeah, if he doesn't win this, I'm going to be genuinely gutted.
Because...
DNA force pills.
When are the Lotuses going to start shilling DNA force pills?
Soon, I hope.
Yeah, well, presumably.
We will actually be shilling something, but what we want to do is...
We know what.
Well, no, no.
We do have something in the works, actually.
But we both need to do it first to make sure that it is the thing that we'll be selling.
What am I being signed up for, yeah?
Well, you'll find out, won't you?
That doesn't...
Where's my contract?
You're finding the contract.
You'll have to do all these things.
But no, no, no.
It's going to be good stuff, I think.
But yeah, we want to support people that we know and trust, basically, and who are trying to build up something of their own, because we can't exactly rely on advertisers from wherever else.
The moral kind of shilling, where you have something, you know it's good, or you know somebody's making something Yeah, where we can validate the amount of work someone's done, and we can see that something genuine is being created.
Something that demonstrates virtue, in fact.
Dare I say such a word at some point?
No, it's an important word.
No, no, I'm just thinking you should write advertiser standards for the organization.
Must be virtuous.
No, it's like the Aristelian advertiser standards for the site.
You must reach these requirements.
Maybe I should do some of that, actually.
I'm not joking, go for it.
I'm not even joking.
We have advertising requirements and it requires you to achieve the state of eudaimonia.
Trying to think what wouldn't be included.
Yeah, but then we can give them like vicious backhanders.
It's like, oh, can we advertise on your site?
It's like, no, we have evaluated you and you count as a vicious publication.
So you have the official mark of vicious publication.
And we'll get others like, can we?
And we'll know you're incontinent.
You're an incontinent publication.
And then we'll get others to say, well, no, you're good, but you're only continent.
Is this just you getting back at anyone?
Like if they try and advertise Buzzfeed and you're just like, no, fake news, sorry.
Yeah, basically, no, vicious publication, incontinent publication, you know, continent publications, gradient, you know, but then a eudaimonic, you know, virtuous publication at the top.
We can do that, actually, an Aristotelian grading system for these publications.
I don't see why not.
Okay, so that's your afternoon sword.
Yeah, it is, actually.
Should we take some questions or something?
We can't do the audio questions at the moment.
We have no Super Chats, of course.
Can we get AA in for an interview live?
Is that possible?
Yes, of course.
We'd have to blur his face, I assume.
No, he's just going to have to be doxxed.
Doxxed himself.
Well, that's the thing, yeah.
I'd love to have him just talk for economics for an hour.
Well, this is what we have to do before we can get him in, really.
So we can shill hard, but we've got to shill something.
And what we're going to be shilling, again, the only shilling that we're going to do is shilling that we think will be good for you, and we're going to do the things that we recommend in order to say, look, we've been through it, so we can tell you firsthand.
I'm going to try bowl and branch sheets before I recommend them.
Yeah, I'll get you some sugar butter.
Not quite like that, obviously, but I'm just joking.
Yeah, but...
Academic agent, for anyone not knowing who AA is.
His channel's great.
Go to subscribe.
Yeah, he's very good.
Right, so any questions in the chat?
You said there are two channels.
What's the second one?
Well, the second one we haven't really got running.
The Lotus Eaters?
Yeah, it's called The Lotus Eaters, but we haven't got it running yet.
Because we found a kind of...
Copyright problem.
When you're a single YouTuber, as Carl was, making videos is very easy because of the mess that is copyright law.
And YouTube basically takes care of it.
It's the long and short.
Watch Tom Scott's video if you want to know the ins and outs.
But if you're a commercial enterprise like technically this is, then copyright gets very restrictive and it kills creator freedom.
I'm all up for changing copyright laws.
They're a mess.
They're an absolute mess.
There's a new question.
When is our next Brexit update?
Last I heard they offered us 90 billion for access to our waters and the based Mr.
Frost said no thanks.
Who's Mr.
Frost?
Is that the new negotiator?
I presume it is.
I haven't been following Brexit nearly as close as I need to, to be honest.
But we can do that.
The last thing I saw, I think it was the day after the election, Isla von Braun said that there's still significant differences and the British guy had been sent back to negotiate more.
So I'm assuming we're still arguing about a trade deal.
I assume.
I've had...
We've got a month and a half left.
Yeah, I've had questions.
Are we going to...
Eat some lotuses.
No, I was going to ask a different one.
Sorry.
We're not going to have Voltaire's ghost as a guest, probably, because I think he lives in Singapore, so it's going to be quite difficult.
But will I be doing live streams where I'm just talking directly to you, and will we be doing short videos where it's just an address style, like the polemics on my channel?
Yeah, yeah, we will do.
It's just really about settling into things at the moment.
And we want to get the podcast as a regular, you know, scheduled thing that, you know, we can be familiar with.
I don't have to necessarily be on every single one of to make sure that we're producing good content, basically.
We want to get this hammered out first.
Because, honestly, just me producing a video where I'm just talking to you about a bunch of stuff that bothers me, that's easy.
You know, I can do that any time, and it's not a problem.
Sorry to get to read that.
Yeah.
It's a breakthrough as Barnier's language drops, a subtle hint.
We'll look into it and make sure it's on tomorrow's podcast.
I'll force Callum to get you a Brexit update.
Great.
I don't even care about Brexit that much, despite the mug.
Now it's over, I'm fine with it.
It's been four years.
Yeah, I'm just...
Even you don't care about it, you shield so hard for it.
Oh yeah, absolutely, but we won, that's why.
Now I don't have to keep going on about it.
Sam Hyatt, guest.
Yeah, the Good Christians is definitely still on the list.
It's just, at the moment, we've got no time to do anything outside of what's going on.
What's in the cabinet?
Well, this one?
Nothing.
It's just empty, I'm afraid.
We're going to fill stuff up, essentially.
Yeah, yeah.
As things go on, we will be able to fill the shelves with stuff.
It's just, at the moment...
Well, what was the point in bringing loads of stuff to fill it up when, you know, you're going to get stuff over the years?
Yeah, yeah.
Over the years, things will fill up.
Like in Flag?
But what we're doing for the top tier patrons on the loadseats.com website when it's back up is a...
We've got a fortnightly Zoom call.
So what we'll do is we'll have myself or the team maybe.
I don't know how many of us we can have.
And any of our patrons and members who'd like to...
Join in on the Zoom call where we can just sit and have chats and, you know, essentially prepaid super chats sort of thing where you can just jump in the call and we'll take your questions for an hour or so on like a Friday night or Friday afternoon or something like that.
I think we're going to do Monday actually.
Oh, Monday, sorry, on a Monday afternoon.
What are the chances we face of a serious redesign of America's political system?
I think it's very, very low.
Oh, I don't know, maybe Electoral College.
I think that's very low.
No, because if they get rid of that...
Well, don't you need a two-thirds vote?
To do any of these constitutional matters.
I mean, they're already arguing about whether or not they're going to get 50-50.
And Republicans, don't let them change the Electoral College.
Don't let them change anything.
The only reason the Democrats want to change anything about your system is because they can't win by fair means.
And so they're trying foul means instead.
Don't let them do it.
Let them lose.
Let them continue to be losers.
When will the website be working?
Really soon, hopefully.
But I'll put out a video letting you all know.
That's interesting.
So I saw someone saying, when they're Tommy Beyond, Alex Jones, that would be great.
Yeah, yeah.
And then someone saying Russell Brands.
That's one of the things I quite like to do, is get more people that we haven't spoke to who are interested in the UK. I would love to.
Because, you know, I'd love Tommy and all the rest of them, we'll have them on.
Yeah, yeah, of course.
You know, we have done a lot.
Yeah.
So I'd love to speak to some more strange people.
So if you know people in the UK who are big, and we haven't spoken to an interesting, you know, Yeah, let us know.
Russell Brand's an interesting one.
Yeah, as people say, two-thirds in the Congress and three-quarters in the Senate.
What does Russell Brand believe?
I assume he seems very sort of...
Like John Lennon-esque?
You know, imagine all the people living hand in hand.
It's like, yeah, okay, but there are a bunch of them over there cutting off heads, Russell.
Yeah, or stealing kids from police stations.
Yeah, yeah, what now, Russell?
Yeah, because I saw he was very don't vote, and then I think it was Ed Miliband visited him for an hour, and he was like, guys, you've got to vote!
You've got to vote Labour, and this guy's great!
And it's like, well, that happened fast.
Weak.
But right, Johnny is telling us that we have elapsed our time.
So thank you everyone for joining us.
I'll have a video up about the website very soon.
I'll let you all know when it's up.
And the fault is on my end, I just want to say.
I thought we were good to go when we weren't, and so I let everyone know, and that kind of crashed things.
I do apologize.
If you've been charged twice, we'll make sure you're refunded.
And it will be all in sparkling working order when it's ready.
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