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Oct. 27, 2021 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #250

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	Good afternoon and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters episode 250.
	I'm Harry, your host, joined by Carl.
	Hello!
	And today we're going to be going over a few things, such as the cyber-fascism of the merger of state and social media power.
	How the Democrats are coming for your children and how and why everything is just so ridiculous.
	But first we've got a few announcements to make.
	The recent premium podcast, the premium contemplations that Carl did with Josh discussing the scientific backing of dadism.
	Yeah, I really enjoyed doing this one.
	I think the only contemplations I've done, but it was a really good episode and I just wanted to promote it again.
	Yep.
	And then next up, we've got a Hugo article, Is Bitcoin a Threat to the Environment?
	Which, if you have a Silver Tier or above membership, you can check out using the audio track from Jonathan, which is very good.
	We've got a book club.
	Come out recently on George Orwell's Shooting an Elephant, which I've not managed to give a watch yet.
	My primary familiarity with George Orwell is with his novels that he's done, like Animal Farm in 1984.
	So I'll be interested to listen to that.
	Shooting an Elephant seems like an interesting little piece of literature.
	Well, it's about his time in Burma as a colonial officer and how things were.
	But you're doing a book club on something soon, aren't you?
	Yes, it appears that Josh and I might be doing a book club on cynical theories by Helen Pluttrose and James Lindsay and their analysis and what you could call a translation of the same sort of thing that he does with New Discourse.
	It's a translation of what...
	Critical theorists are actually saying in a lot of the rhetoric and jargon that they use in their essays.
	Because if anybody out there has ever tried to read one of them, they are indecipherable.
	Deliberately so.
	Yes, going through hieroglyphics, basically.
	And also just a reminder that you can follow us on Facebook, so give us a like over there if you want to get updates from us on Facebook.
	And just a reminder as well that on Friday for all our Gold Tier members, we have a Zoom call at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, so be sure to join us there if you're a Gold Tier member.
	And without any further ado...
	Yeah, let's get into it.
	So, cyberfascism would be something like the merger of the state and social media power.
	And before we start this segment, I just want to suggest that perhaps you would want to follow us on alternative media, such as on Getter, where you can follow lotusitas underscore com, or you can follow my own Getter account, which is just at Carl Benjamin.
	Because it looks like things are going very strangely in the realm of social media.
	And it seems that we're arriving with enough information to say that we have arrived at some sort of form of cyber-fascism.
	I find it hard to define it as anything else.
	There are many different threads that lead me to this conclusion, so let's just begin with the first one.
	Which is this thread by one Patrick McGee about the complaint that was filed with the Texas Attorney General, filed in December of last year, that has been released.
	And people have been going through it.
	Now, I haven't had time to go through it myself, so I'm going to be taking these people at their word.
	But I think that what they have put is likely to be in it.
	So we're just going to go through some of the things that have been revealed about the collusion between Google and Facebook.
	They say, online advertising is enormous.
	Google's Exchange processes 11 billion online ad spaces a day.
	So this is a massive, massive market, and it's a virtual monopoly.
	Google controls almost all of it.
	More daily transactions are made on Google's ad network than on the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ combined.
	They also own the largest buy-side and sell-side brokers.
	Quote, it is pitcher, batter, and umpire all at the same time, says the complaint.
	One senior Google employee says, the analogy would be if Goldman or Citibank owned the New York Stock Exchange, and more to the point, if the New York Stock Exchange was the only stock exchange.
	So this is just giving us an impression of the monopolistic power of Google.
	They just control everything, by the sounds of it.
	Those terms that they're using are not uncertain whatsoever.
	They're in control.
	But without a doubt.
	And Google started a dynamic allocation ostensibly to maximize revenue for publishers.
	In reality, it was to snatch publishers' best inventory at the expense of the publisher's best interests.
	To respond, competitors came up with header bidding.
	Publishers could route ad inventory to multiple exchanges to solicit the highest bid.
	By 2016, this was adopted by 70% of major US online publishers.
	And so publicly, Google said, well, this isn't a threat to us at all.
	But privately, they said this is an existential threat.
	So Google's response to this was to secretly make its own exchange win, even when another exchange submitted a higher bid.
	And this program's name was JEDI. Day by day, I'm ashamed of being a Star Wars fan when you hear about stuff like this.
	It's not your fault they're the ones doing this.
	Google's own words are, Jedi program generates suboptimal yields for publishers and serious risks of negative media coverage if exposed externally.
	So if the public were to find out that Google is a monopolistic entity over a giant market and is rigging that market in its own favor, well, that's going to be serious risk of negative media coverage, as one might expect.
	I don't think many people are going to be too happy with that situation.
	No, I mean, it's illegal for a start, but it's also deeply unethical, and Google don't seem to care.
	And then in comes Facebook.
	So in March 2017, Facebook threw its weight behind the header bidding, which was a big threat.
	Quote, Facebook communications reveal that Facebook executives fully understood why Google wanted to cut a deal with them.
	They want this deal to kill header bidding.
	Google doesn't want to compete with Facebook.
	It says it would rather build a moat by collaborating instead.
	Facebook anticipated this in an 18-month bidding strategy, says New Unredacted Details.
	Facebook and Google allegedly agreed on quotas for how often Facebook would win publishers' auctions, literally manipulating the auction with minimum spends and quotas for how often Facebook would bid and win.
	Google employees discussed a Jedi mind trick on the industry to cut off exchanges in header bidding.
	Now, Google monopolizes the publisher ad server market for display inventory through its own product called Google Ad Manager.
	And Google Ad Manager controls 90% of this product market in the United States.
	So Google and Facebook are currently operating a monopoly with a particular deal that means they're both insider trading, essentially.
	And this is unsurprisingly quite scary, frankly.
	I mean, it sounds like it's living up to the title of cartel.
	Well, yes.
	To me.
	It's absolutely a cartel with a ridiculous amount of money, a ridiculous amount of market dominance, and shows that there is something deeply wrong in Silicon Valley.
	So one Google employee conceded, an exchange shouldn't be an immensely profitable business.
	It should be a public good used to facilitate buyers and sellers.
	Because the people who lose out on this are the regular people who are like, well, I'll just use Google Adverse to try and promote my product.
	Well, Google are like, well, we're going to take something like 32% of your profits out of this, when a regular ad exchange is something like 15%.
	And Google can't even be attacked on this because they are the market.
	So there's nothing you can do about it.
	They set the rules.
	Exactly.
	Google has insulated its exchange from any of the competitive market dynamics that would otherwise incentivize them to lower the prices.
	In fact, here we go.
	GDN charges high double-digit commissions of at least 32% on advertising transactions, whereas according to public sources, this is double the standard rate elsewhere in the industry.
	The remaining 10% of the industry.
	And so, how mad is that?
	I mean, they're not really giving people many options, are they?
	No.
	Going on to another Twitter thread, talking about Google's internal rules, it says, Google has a secret deal with Facebook called Jedi Blue, which they knew was so illegal that they have a whole section describing how they'll cover for each other if anyone finds out.
	So they literally, they are literally a cartel.
	So they know exactly what they're doing is wrong, and they have contingency plans in place.
	Facebook and Google are conspiring to protect one another in the event that this becomes public knowledge.
	And we trust these people with the exchange of information.
	Oh, completely.
	Google has worked with Facebook and Microsoft to discourage them from increasing user privacy, lamenting occasions where they prioritize their reputation over the collective business interest.
	Again, data is money to them, and they control it all.
	Google appears to have a team called G-Trade, which is wholly dedicated to ad market manipulation.
	Google had a plan called Project Nera to turn the web into a walled garden they called not owned but operated, as in Google is the thing that runs the internet.
	Facebook and Microsoft are aware of this, which is why Facebook is in a direct cartel with them.
	Google is willing to do almost anything to prevent people from circumventing their ad exchanges.
	This is what AMP is about.
	Google habitually insider trades on their ad exchanges in every way you can think of and everywhere you can't.
	Too many ways to list here.
	The exchanges are also rigged so Google wins the ad bids when they aren't the highest bidder.
	A large amount of people inside Google are aware of all of this.
	If Google ever tells you that some change will increase your ad yield, run.
	In fact, everything they tell you is a lie.
	How very interesting.
	So moving on to Facebook's internal leaks, which the Wall Street Journal have been banging on about for the past couple of weeks.
	Facebook is riddled with intersectionality, woke nonsense.
	The company is basically run that way.
	And they have here information about an internal racial justice chat board.
	Just so you can get a feel.
	And remember, people at Google, when Donald Trump won in 2016, literally they had a big meeting and people at Google, the top executives, one of them cried on stage.
	Just to show you, I mean, these are Californians through and through.
	Weak people, by the sounds of it.
	Radically left-wing weak people.
	Yes.
	But anyway, so in June 2020, after the George Floyd protests, there was a get Breitbart out of the news tab, because, of course, they are well aware that Facebook is full of boomers, and because it's full of boomers, they tend to be more conservative than they are left-wing.
	And this means that conservative news outlets do remarkably well on Facebook, again, why you should follow us, while you still can.
	And they are furious about this.
	The employees said that Breitbart was emblematic of a concerted effort at Breitbart and similar hyper-partisan sources, none of which belong in the news tab, to paint black Americans and black-led movements in a negative way.
	It's not like any other social media has a tendency to promote certain hyper-partisan news outlets, is it?
	That would represent black Americans and black-led movements in a very positive way, as if balance is off the table here.
	And this is just something that a bunch of Facebook employees chimed in to agree on.
	In the same chat, a company research said that any steps aimed at removing Breitbart could face roadblocks internally because of a potential political blowback.
	At best, it would be a very difficult policy decision.
	So it's not that they don't want to.
	It's just that they're like, well, publicly this is going to look bad.
	In the same way that Google was like, if any of this gets out, publicly it's going to look bad.
	We're going to try and do it anyway.
	Ideologically, they're all for it.
	It's just the optics of it.
	Exactly.
	Many Republicans say that Facebook discriminates against conservatives, which would be shocking if it didn't.
	I mean, look at the internal bias of the people running it.
	I'd be surprised if any of the Silicon Valley giants were found to not be discriminating against conservatives' viewpoints.
	If they want to talk about unconscious bias, well, I mean, they've got very conscious biases.
	The documents reviewed by the Journal didn't render a verdict on whether biases influenced several decisions.
	They do show that employees and their bosses have hotly debated whether or not and how to restrain right-wing publishers, with the most senior employees often providing a check on agitation from the rank and file.
	The documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, which don't capture all of the employee messaging, didn't mention equivalent debates over left-wing publications.
	Surprise, surprise, surprise.
	Shock.
	Yeah, they continue with right-wing sites are consistently among the best publishing performers on the site.
	According to research data, this is one of the reasons why Facebook was criticised by people on the left who say their algorithms reward far-right content.
	I mean, they reward popular content, and if right-wing content is popular on Facebook, because Facebook is...
	Populate by boomers.
	What are you surprised about?
	In 2016, Facebook took steps to damp the spread of what it deemed as misinformation.
	This included a tool called Sparing Sharing, which targeted hyperposters, or accounts that post very frequently.
	It reduced the reach of their posts since data had shown these users disproportionately shared false and incendiary information.
	Another tool called Informed Engagement reduced the reach of posts that people were likely to share if they hadn't read them.
	So basically, Facebook is actively engineering what people can see on their platform.
	In 2019, Facebook data scientists studied the impact of two tools on dozens of publishers based on their ideologies.
	The study, dubbed a political ideology analysis, suggested the company had been suppressing the traffic of major far-right publishers.
	Again, far-right being conservative.
	Even though it wasn't its intent according to the documents.
	Very conservative sites, it found, would benefit most if the tools were removed.
	With Breitbart's traffic increasing an estimated 20%, the Washington Times 18%, Western Journal's 16%.
	I love the idea of the Western Journal's right wing.
	An epoch times by 11%, according to the documents.
	And so we move into the latest whistleblower attack on Facebook.
	Again, you can see how this is coming from the left-wing establishment against a massive organisation like Facebook, because Facebook is platforming right-wingers even while they are throttling them.
	From establishment media, this whistleblower has had absolutely no pushback.
	Everything that she has said has been welcomed with open arms and no critical thoughts or any pushback at all.
	Because she's working exactly within the institutional logic of the left-wing establishment, and she's trying to get right-wing...
	Competition.
	Deplatform.
	That's what she's going for.
	She's just parishing their own phrases back at them.
	Exactly.
	Anyway, so Frances Hagen...
	Hagen?
	Hagen?
	I don't know how it's pronounced.
	Hagen.
	Hagen.
	Sounds more likely.
	Is preparing to give evidence to politicians, members of parliament at Westminster.
	And she is accusing Zuckerberg of not being willing to protect public safety.
	And this basically...
	It's more of her complaining that Facebook isn't censoring right-wingers.
	This has fueled renewed concerns about Facebook's role in the January 6th Capitol riots, in which a mob seeking to overturn the election results stormed Congress, which is actually a more reasonable description than it could have been.
	But Facebook is now finally getting the comeuppance that Parler got, even though the January 6th Capitol riots were not organized on Parler.
	But this has finally come for Facebook, where it was actually Yep.
	Yep.
	mic over if you, oh, you enable free discussion between people?
	Oh, you must have had something to do with the riots then.
	You see it everywhere.
	Anyway, so moving on, the Conservatives, to whom she's going to be giving her beware of Facebook speeches, are all for censorship.
	They demand it, in fact.
	The social media giants have been warned they'll face new curbs if they don't adopt a no-tolerance approach to online abuse, because people are insulting members of parliament online, and therefore social media should do something about it.
	They, of course, want to abolish the idea of online anonymity, but they want to go further.
	Furious Tory MPs have ordered them to enforce compulsory ID for opening accounts and lifetime bans for repeated hate speech.
	So it's not enough that in this country that's crime, in America that's not a crime, and therefore the Conservative MPs want to force a foreign company to ban you for something that's not illegal in the country Facebook is located in.
	Wow.
	Yeah.
	And hate speech is such a nebulous term in the first place.
	It's a left-wing term.
	Yeah, it's nice and easy and flexible.
	Yeah, it means whatever you want it to mean, and it's invented by the left, and the conservatives have adopted this and championed it as their own.
	Why not?
	Anyway, so they've spoken out amid growing pressure for a crackdown on online hate following the murder of Sir David Armas.
	Which had nothing to do with online hate.
	Who's pushing that pressure?
	The Conservatives are.
	They want this.
	Because that's the world we're moving into.
	MPs highlighted the abhorrent racist abuse of England footballers after Euro 2020 and threats targeted at women.
	Conservative MPs.
	Ostensibly.
	Who seem very much like Labour MPs, don't they?
	And even if it wasn't anything to do with that, all of the abhorrent racist abuse that they received, didn't that all come from mainly Italy and France?
	It came from foreign countries, that's correct.
	Yes.
	But they're calling for a three-strikes-and-you're-out policy and a widening of what's considered racist, why not, to include slurs like monkey emojis.
	So they want monkey emojis essentially banned from the internet because people in Italy posted them against England footballers.
	This just feels so scattershot, like they're just throwing anything and everything they can.
	They absolutely are.
	But again, the connection between Google, Facebook, and the British government goes deeper.
	According to The Times, MPs are concerned about civil service leaks on Facebook.
	We'll get to the next one, John.
	The government's plan to regulate social media is being leaked by civil servants to former colleagues who work at Facebook.
	Because it turns out there's something of a revolving door between the civil service and Facebook employment.
	Oh.
	I didn't know this.
	Neither did I. No.
	There is concern in government over a lack of oversight of officials who have quit Whitehall to join big tech firms.
	Now, one wonders how much the big tech firms are doing to poach these people, as in, come and work for us instead.
	You know, you know people on the inside, we'll give you a nice fat paycheck and a nice easy job, and you can just be part of the sort of mechanism that we use to interface with the government.
	I can't prove that, of course.
	I'm just speculating.
	But anyway, a senior Facebook representative had said in a meeting and raised an issue about online harms that only a few officials knew about, according to a senior government source.
	So basically, we know they're talking to one another because how did the people at Facebook get this information?
	This is supposed to have been inside the government and suddenly Facebook representatives saying, yeah, but what about that thing you haven't told anyone yet?
	Hmm.
	How do you know?
	Well, I mean, we do employ a bunch of your civil servants, you know, and they obviously have spoken.
	For example, Farzana Dudhuala, who worked at the Office for Artificial Intelligence within DCMS and then the Government Center for Data Ethics and Innovation, joined Facebook in January to work on AI policy and governance.
	We have examples of these people doing it.
	Julian Knight, Tory chairman of the DCMS Select Committee, said any perceived coziness between the likes of Facebook and civil servants has the potential to undermine the new online harms bill and regulatory regime.
	Well, I mean, good, but, like, the concern for me is that the boundaries between our government, between Facebook, and between, like, you know, the civil service are all becoming very blurred.
	Yeah.
	These people are going from one to another.
	I mean, at the moment, Nick Clegg is the chief operating officer for Facebook.
	Really?
	Yes.
	Oh yeah, didn't you know that?
	No, I wasn't aware of that, actually.
	Oh yeah, he's the guy who's regulating Facebook in the UK. Okay.
	Nick Clegg, ex-leader of the Liberal Democrats, deputy prime minister from like 2010 till 2014 or 15 or whatever it was.
	All I'll say is that's a very convenient position to be in.
	Yeah, isn't that amazing?
	Facebook's like, oh yeah, we'd just love to have you on board.
	Yeah.
	Just love it.
	I mean, this is very concerning.
	And it gives, especially if they do have ex, well, ex or current politicians in them, I imagine they imagine it gives them a sense of prestige to a certain extent.
	And not just that, it connects them to the political establishment directly.
	You know, these people have all got personal connections of their own to various other people around.
	The civil servants throughout the civil service in Facebook.
	So you can see, like, a sort of meshing together of these two entities.
	But anyway, they carry on.
	Frankly, it isn't too important to have anything done other than by the book.
	I trust ministers will take this seriously.
	Damien Collins, the Tory MP who chairs the Online Safety Bill Committee, said, The UK will lead the world in creating a comprehensive regime for online safety.
	There is nothing that Facebook can do to stop the government and parliament from creating a regulatory regime to make the social media safer, which is why you should follow us on alternative social media, because these people are mad and they are going to try and take over the entire internet.
	That sounds positively dystopian right there.
	We have a comprehensive regime to keep you safe.
	We have a totalitarian plan for the internet.
	That's what they're saying.
	Sue Hawley, the executive director of Spotlight on Corruption, said these are very serious allegations which suggest that big tech are getting privileged access to civil servants and information off the back of the revolving door and they need a full investigation.
	The revolving door regulator, ACOBA, needs far greater powers and expanded remit and more resources if it's going to prevent this kind of thing from happening.
	Well, who's going to be employed in that?
	How do we know that it won't be civil servants and ex-Facebook employees employed in Acoba?
	None of this can be marked off as being a safe, independent body that will regulate the other two.
	Absolutely not.
	This is unbelievable.
	Anyway, so moving on, it turns out that billionaire investors such as George Soros and Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, are going to launch something called Good Information Inc., which will be a new group to police the internet and tackle the disinformation crisis.
	Oh good.
	Yeah, this was announced earlier today and I haven't got any further information on it, unfortunately, but what do you think this is going to mean?
	This is going to mean that international billionaires are going to be working with our new tyrannical totalitarian governments that have deep connections to Facebook and Google And we'll be controlling all of the information available on social media.
	Again, follow us on alternative social media platforms, folks.
	And if you think, for a second, that the media is somehow not going to be complicit in this, you're an idiot.
	Why did you think that, right?
	Right, but just before the podcast went live, I... Saw this by Breitbart.
	And just to show what they say, the media is cooperating in how to release these kind of whistleblower publications.
	Again, the person on the inside, with full support from the media, because she is part of the media's attack on Facebook's right-wing information ecosphere, right?
	They say, A series of recent reports reveals.
	The group shut down abruptly on Tuesday afternoon after a series of unanswered inquiries from Breitbart News were sent to known members throughout the establishment media, including at least two New York Times reporters, a senior editor at The Atlantic, an NBC News reporter, and several others.
	Because, of course, journalists move from publication to publication to publication, creating a nice network and class of journalists who are again all in complete contact with each other, Except for those people at Breitbart, for example, whom they want removed from Facebook's news tab altogether.
	This is all coming into focus, is it not?
	The online chat was done through Slack, an application that facilitates group chats and is used by many different newsrooms and other companies nationwide, helping establishment media outlets coordinate the release of their stories on documents provided to them by the so-called Facebook whistleblower Francis Haugen.
	Probably pronouncing that wrong again.
	Slack is generally used for internal, easy communication of remote companies, but special features do allow them to set up the groups with external members.
	It's unclear who created the group, but its full membership list is of yet now unknown.
	But two different press reports, one from an outlet called The Information and another from a reported column from New York Times, Ben Smith, publicly revealed the existence of the group and the nature of its purpose, as well as some of its members.
	Most known members did not respond to Brightmark News requests for interviews, which were sent earlier on Tuesday, but after the first round of inquiries went out seeking information about the Slack group and whether its members in the interest of transparency would support a public release of its full contents, a third report, this one from tech blog Gizmodo, revealed that the group would be shutting down permanently.
	Smith himself has not replied or anything like that and is downplaying these revelations.
	So, you can see the media is coordinating, Silicon Valley is coordinating, and they're all somehow connected and meshed in with our own governments.
	This is what a cyber-fascist regime is going to look like in the future.
	Follow us on Alternative Media.
	Alright, well that was demoralising.
	Yeah, I know.
	Nothing good news there.
	Christ.
	Well, we'll see how this next story goes, because the Democrats are, of course, still coming for your children.
	Those paying attention to the gubernatorial race in Virginia may be aware that currently it is Glenn Youngkin versus Terry McAuliffe.
	For the Virginia governor race currently going on.
	From what I'm aware, the polls have been getting closer and closer together, and it appears that McAuliffe, who is the Democratic nominee, who was previously the Democratic governor for Virginia from 2013 through 2017, I believe, is only winning in the polls by less than a single percentage point.
	So, it looks promising for the Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin, So let's see what's been going on with that race.
	So we can see this CNN Politics article here, that Biden has been endorsing McAuliffe by comparing Youngkin to Trump, because, of course, why not?
	Does he think that's not an endorsement?
	It's the go-to, but they do still think it has the same power it might have done a year ago, potentially.
	So, let's take a look here.
	So, for McAuliffe, a steady stream of high-profile Democratic surrogates has turned to the race into a referendum about the past eight years of Democratic leadership in the Commonwealth, as well as the first year of President Joe Biden's term.
	Because that is the interesting thing about this is that it seems to be taking the temperature somewhat on the first, what is it at this point, 10 months or so of Joe Biden's presidency.
	People are treating this as the go-to to see how people are really thinking about the current democratic establishment.
	I mean, the last thing that Terry McAuliffe probably wants is an endorsement from Joe Biden.
	Joe Biden's approval ratings are lower than Trump's were.
	And Trump had a massive media campaign against him.
	So, I mean, like, you know, it's obvious that Joe Biden is ruining the United States.
	Let's go, Brandon.
	Biden will make his second trip across the Potomac River to rally support for McAuliffe on Tuesday evening in Arlington following a July visit there to boost McAuliffe after the former governor clinched the Democratic nomination.
	McAuliffe is closing the campaign much like he opened it by looking to tie Youngkin to former President Donald Trump.
	I mean...
	I don't know anything about this young king guy, but he sounds great if he's been endorsed six times by Trump.
	Based.
	I'd vote for him just on that alone.
	And once again, even if you were to take it as a criticism, it's not exactly substantive.
	It's just going, this man bad because Trump man bad.
	Yeah.
	So, it continues, It
	seems as though things might shift for Virginia.
	And if the current state of things in America is anything to go by, I wouldn't be surprised.
	I can't imagine why anyone would vote Democrat.
	Yeah, why would you at this point?
	But we'll go into a bit more on why specifically, if you're in Virginia, you shouldn't vote Democrat.
	Because there are lots of good reasons, in fact.
	Yes, there are many good reasons, including some that we can't go over on YouTube.
	Check out some of our premium podcasts for more on that.
	Yeah, we did a podcast about the Loudoun County cover-up that we couldn't do on YouTube.
	Yes, but carry on.
	Education seems to be the most important point determining voters' decisions.
	This comes after we've had about a year at this point of parents going up against school boards when it comes to stuff like critical race theory.
	So in this article here from CBS News, in what could be a referendum on President Biden's agenda and popularity, blah, blah, blah, Mr.
	Biden won the state by 10 points in the presidential election last year, but Democrat Terry McAuliffe only holds a slim lead over his Republican challenger, Glenn Youngkin.
	Independent voters will be key to deciding the race.
	Independent voter Kendra Lee is a prime example of why this race is so close.
	I cried when Hillary Clinton lost, Lee said.
	Great starter.
	If someone told me I'd ever be not considering voting for a Democrat, I would have thought you were crazy.
	You were out of your mind.
	And yet the mother of two voted for Republican Glenn Youngkin.
	After a year of virtual learning and now mask mandates in schools, she said that she trusts him more with her kids' education.
	I don't think he would have as much governmental restrictions, Lee said on Youngkin's appeal.
	I think that he would leave it more in terms of local control.
	So that just goes to show exactly what's going on over there.
	People are tired of government overreach, too much government control, and they see it going on in the schools as well.
	It's to the point where that woman, who sounds dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, you'd be crazy if I wasn't voting Democrat, has decided, maybe enough is enough.
	Yeah, but do I want this kind of state centralisation controlling every aspect of my life?
	Possibly.
	And my children's lives.
	And one of the main points of contention, if we switch over again, in the race seems to be over what is the so-called Beloved Bill.
	Now this article here goes into what that is.
	The so-called Beloved Bill in Virginia, which is known as HB 2191, in Virginia has been put down by Governor Terry McAuliffe, this was back in 2017 when he was still the governor, who has vetoed the latest attempt to attack reading materials in schools.
	I don't know what that is.
	Good, because why would you be teaching them sexually explicit content?
	What massive importance does sexually explicit content have in the curricula?
	What are you teaching these children?
	Yeah, is this going to be another example that the left are pedos?
	I mean...
	I haven't looked at the rest of your segment, so I'm going to say yes!
	You won't be surprised, shall we say.
	But I mean, there is the thing where, whether it's like, I mean, I learnt about stuff like Of Mice and Men in high school, like many people do in secondary school.
	We did, what was the one, To Kill a Mockingbird?
	Yeah, those deal with what you could describe as heavy and mature themes, which I don't think that some kids are beyond, but parents should definitely have a say.
	And things that are important, they will face in the world, these are issues that are important.
	Yes, but some of the stuff that are currently stocking school libraries in Virginia, possibly not.
	So, let's look at what kind of books these parents are worried about.
	Go on, then.
	A week before Virginia voters picked their next governor, Republican nominee Glenn Youngkin released an ad featuring a woman, Laura Murphy, criticising Democrat Terry McAuliffe for previously vetoing a bill that would have allowed parents statewide to opt their children out of reading any book with explicit material.
	The bill dubbed the Beloved Bill, blah, blah, blah, stemmed from Murphy's crusade to ban Tony Morrison's Pulitzer Prize winning novel Beloved from Fairfax County Classrooms.
	Youngkin's ad, which centres on how inappropriate Morrison's book is, doesn't mention Beloved or Tony Morrison.
	When my son showed me his reading material, my heart sunk, Murphy says.
	It was some of the most explicit reading material you can imagine.
	Her son Blake Murphy was assigned Beloved, a novel about the haunting horrors of slavery.
	As a senior in his college level advanced placement English class.
	Family centric common sense media says Beloved should be read by kids 15 and older.
	It features a gritty infanticide, racial language, horrific sexual assaults, and even references to sex with animals.
	Common Sense explains, but teens are mature enough to handle the challenges that this book represents.
	I don't agree.
	Yeah, I mean, there's one thing to learn in a controlled manner through something like Of Mice and Men, the sort of things that were going on in the Great Depression, the racial tensions that were still very, very prevalent throughout the American South.
	Or a racial injustice in To Kill a Mockingbird.
	Exactly.
	Something like that.
	But I don't know how much I needed to have some bestiality thrown into either of those novels.
	Infanticide, sexual assault, and bestiality, possibly not for the 15-year-olds?
	I'm sure there are 15-year-olds who can handle it, but whether publicly funded education needs to be putting this into their hands...
	Oh, absolutely not.
	I would be an absolute no on that.
	But, that's not the worst of it.
	What other books are they putting in the school's libraries?
	We have had to censor this, John, if you skip over...
	Yep.
	Yep.
	Right, so that appears to be someone wearing a gender-fluid person, wearing a tank top, getting their penis sucked.
	Yes, by another potentially gender-fluid person, and Terry McAuliffe himself made a statement.
	Doesn't look very happy about it either.
	He looked quite concerned, actually, shocked almost.
	Yeah, like this is some sort of sexual assault.
	Yes, it's quite...
	I would certainly describe it as inappropriate for children.
	And the fact that it's being stocked in school libraries where children aged as young as 11 could easily get their hands on it.
	You do not need to be reading this.
	Exactly.
	But Terry McAuliffe's statement, as you can see in this, there is the book itself and then the spin.
	McAuliffe said, Stop exposing children to sex, you pedos.
	Yes, that's what they truly are.
	These are Trumpian dog whistles to parents who don't want pedophiles to be molesting and debauching their children.
	Yes, yes.
	And the idea that it's silencing the voices of black authors.
	If you're just taking it out of a public-funded school...
	You can still buy it yourself.
	Yeah, people can still go buy it.
	I mean, the question would be, if it wasn't being forced on children, would anybody read this stuff?
	Well, yeah, yeah.
	And that book itself I looked into is a book called Gender Queer by a woman, well, a non-binary person called Mia Kobabe, who is a non-binary queer author, and the book is her personal memoir.
	What educational value you could get from reading the personal memoir with illustrations of Mia Kabobe, I have no idea.
	And you can tell just from the name, it sounds a lot like stuff like Gender Trouble by Judith Butler, very much in the queer theory.
	Well, it's called genderqueer.
	I mean, we know where this is coming from.
	Exactly.
	And once again, this is, you'll have to watch the premium podcast, but this is the state where Loudoun County is.
	Is this the sort of stuff that you want your kids having a hold of?
	It's mad.
	Yeah, and plenty of people have pointed this out.
	You can see another example that James Lindsay has pointed out.
	How it started.
	How it's going.
	How is that supposed to be appropriate for children?
	Like, you'd have to be mad to say that's appropriate for children.
	I mean, that's pornographic!
	You'd have to be mad or ideologically predisposed to think that this sort of thing is okay.
	If you think, for instance, that children are moral or emotional equals to adults, for instance.
	And if you want to see more of Terry McAuliffe's position...
	On what schools should teach.
	You can skip over.
	I think we've got a clip loaded up from John.
	This is just a quick clip from a little...
	It looks like some questions that he was taking.
	If you want to play that for us, John.
	Veto books, Glenn.
	Not to be knowledgeable about it.
	Also take them off the shelves.
	And I'm not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions.
	So, yeah, I've stopped the bill that I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.
	You know, I get really tired.
	So the clip cuts off there.
	He sounds so annoying.
	Yeah, the parents just don't have a right to do that, I guess, in his view.
	I don't think that parents should be telling schools what they should teach.
	Well...
	I think they should.
	I mean, they pay their...
	Yeah, exactly.
	They pay for it.
	Yeah.
	And especially if you're like, yeah, well, I really want them to teach sucking dick to that 12-year-old.
	It's like, no, sorry.
	Yeah, I think most people would have something to say about that.
	I think the parents should be telling schools what they should teach in these circumstances.
	Yeah, and another good insight from James Lindsay.
	I wasn't able to read this article because it's the Washington Post, a lot behind a paywall, and you'll fight me to get me to pay for Washington Post articles.
	But yeah, they believe that they own your children.
	Parents claim they have the right to shape their kids' school curriculum.
	They don't.
	The Biden Education Secretary said something very similar to this as well.
	The parents are not the primary stakeholder in the children's education.
	This all comes, again, from the sort of French conception of the state, as in the state actually is the progenitor of everything and the owner of everything.
	Quite fascist.
	Including your children.
	Yeah.
	The English conception is the opposite.
	Anyway.
	Yeah, and this, of course, if we go over to the next article, all comes after we've had lots of clashes between the National School Board Association recently and parents, where a parent activist and former school board member who has trained hundreds of concerned parents across the country to run for school boards themselves tells Fox News that parents where a parent activist and former school board member who has trained hundreds of concerned parents across the country to run for school boards themselves tells Fox News that parents will not accept the
	So you don't want your kids reading porn in school.
	You're a terrorist.
	That's where we're at.
	Yeah, that is exactly where we're at.
	She predicted that the NSBA letter will only energise concerned parents, as it should.
	It's really disingenuous.
	It's a little too late for that.
	Laura Zock, Director of Education, told Fox News in an interview on Saturday.
	It's almost as if it's a forced apology, which...
	I agree.
	It absolutely is.
	If people hadn't heard about it, I imagine they'd still stick to this anyway.
	They still consider you all domestic terrorists.
	They've just come out and gave a flaccid apology.
	NSBA sent the letter on September 29th warning the school boards face physical threats due to opposition to COVID-19 policies and critical race theory.
	The letter claims that some unruly parent protests may be equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism.
	Yeah.
	They use that term three times in the letter.
	Three times.
	Good God.
	Yet on Friday after the Department of Justice had issued a memorandum apparently based on the letter, NSBA issued an apology for the letter.
	On behalf of NSBA, we regret and apologise for the letter, the NSA... They said, noting that there was no justification for some of the language included in the letter, parents of school boardings in Fairfax County, Virginia have worn t-shirts declaring parents are not domestic terrorists, which is...
	Obviously true.
	Absolutely right.
	People who just care about...
	Just further proof we live in clown world.
	One man's concerned parent is another domestic terrorist.
	Apparently so.
	Apparently so, yeah.
	So, Virginia, I don't really know personally that much about Glenn Youngkin, but look at what he's going up against.
	Do you want another four years of this?
	Yeah.
	Do you want a bunch of people promoting sexual content to your children?
	The answer's no.
	Don't vote Democrat.
	Get out on November 2nd and speak your mind.
	Yeah.
	Anyway, so, I mean, that leads us nicely into this next segment on why everything is ridiculous.
	Just everything about the public political discourse we have now is absurd, and I am very, very tired of it at this point.
	So let's just begin with it.
	I've got just a series of stories that are just absurd in their own right, but they, I think, capture a sort of slice of political life from around the world.
	And the sad thing is there's so many absurd stories to choose from.
	I mean, the one that I just went over.
	Absolutely.
	And, like, if you're an alien who arrived on the planet and you're expecting, like, sensible management of power within society, what are they going to be debating?
	Well, you're not going to get it.
	You'd look at this and think, right, okay.
	I mean, if you were a foreigner, you'd be like, the West has descended into absolute chaos.
	The political class have lost their minds and the people that they're ruling over have got very little they can do about it, apparently.
	Right?
	So let's begin with Joe Biden saying, oh, it's white supremacy that caused the January 6th riot in the Capitol.
	White supremacy.
	It wasn't anything to do with the summer of riots before maybe telling people that it's alright, the media won't care.
	Among other things, but it was primarily driven by a segment of Trump-supporting Republicans who did not believe that Joe Biden had legitimately won the election.
	I'm making no comment on that.
	That was simply their opinion.
	That's what drove them to go into the Capitol.
	There are other theories, but I'm not going to go into them because who knows.
	But Joe Biden says the violent, deadly insurrection on the Capitol nine months ago, deadly only to the protesters.
	Yes, to one.
	Yes, Ashley Babbit, who was shot...
	And still has no answers on why that was or who did it?
	No, no, no.
	We do know who did it.
	It was some sort of special forces agent who just shot her for the sake of it.
	Apparently she's been declared a dramatic threat to people even though she wasn't armed.
	She was being escorted by armed police.
	For some reason she was the threat though.
	But anyway, he says, Yeah, but your opinion's stupid, isn't it, Joe?
	He was giving the speech at the 10-year anniversary of the Martin Luther King Jr.
	Memorial in Washington.
	He says, the through line is that hate never goes away.
	We had a president who appealed to the prejudice, but the good news is we ripped that band-aid off.
	Don't agree.
	The party that's pushing critical race theory is fanning the flames of hate.
	We're making sure that hate never goes away.
	Yeah, exactly.
	They were the party of slavery, Jim Crow, the KKK, now critical race theory, and they don't want to take any responsibility to the fact that they are the racial party.
	The Democrats have always been...
	The racial party.
	And the Republicans aren't, basically.
	But anyway, moving on.
	They are following my predecessor, the last president, into a deep, deep black hole of a mess.
	Jim Crow in the 21st century is now a sinister combination of voter suppression and election subversion.
	Can't talk any more about that on YouTube, so moving on.
	Condoleezza Rice is a white supremacist.
	Do you know who Condoleezza Rice is?
	I am not a word.
	She was the United States Secretary of State from 2005 to 2009.
	She was the 20th National Security Advisor from 2001 to 2005.
	She is a member of the Republican Party and she is black.
	She was the first female African-American Secretary of State and the first woman to serve as National Security Advisor.
	So a successful black Republican woman is now an agent of white supremacy.
	I can only assume being that she's a Republican that she got there through genuine merit.
	Yes!
	I can't really assume the other Democrats.
	That's a great point.
	Well made.
	She recently appeared on The View.
	Are you aware of The View?
	It's amazing.
	Passingly.
	It's amazing.
	Is it one of those shows where middle-aged women complain about things?
	Yes.
	There's a YouTuber called Mr.
	Reagan who often does videos about The View and I really enjoy them.
	I'll have to check them out.
	Because it's hilarious.
	But anyway, her recent appearance on The View was offensive and disgusting for many reasons, this author who's being hosted by Yahoo News for some reason says.
	But she was who we thought she was.
	Quote, a soldier for white supremacy.
	No one agrees.
	No one outside of the radical left-wing bubble thinks that Condoleezza Rice is a soldier for white supremacy.
	She must be there arm-in-arm with Larry Elder, then.
	Well, yeah, who's also arm-in-arm with, like, Richard Spencer.
	In their eyes, maybe.
	Even though Richard Spencer endorsed Joe Biden!
	So it's like, okay, well, don't know what to say.
	Moving on.
	Her thoughts on critical race theory are completely white-centric, as in they revolve around the thoughts and needs of white people, as if white people aren't people deserving of consideration or something.
	Can I also say, when you are part of a regime and part of a...
	School of thought that characterises everything from logical thinking to science.
	Manners, politeness, being on time, reading, writing.
	These are all whiteness.
	Yeah, when you classify that as whiteness, yes.
	Well, anybody who is saying, hey, maybe we should think about something logically for a second is suddenly...
	It's insufferable as well, because white people didn't invent time or timekeeping.
	They didn't invent reading, writing, literacy, or anything like that.
	All of these things were just inherited by white people from the distant past, and yet now they're white peoples and black people aren't allowed to have them.
	It's like, that's horrible.
	Anyway, her primary argument is critical race theory is that it should not be taught in the way that makes white kids feel bad.
	That's not wrong.
	It's not just white kids that feel bad.
	It's white kids as well.
	You tell them they're a victim.
	That is, incidentally, where she goes with this.
	But yeah, Condoleezza Rice basically went on The View and said, look, I don't think we should be making any children feel bad because of their race, and your critical race theory is trying to make white children feel bad because they're white, and I think that's wrong, because, you know, persecuting children for the sins of their ancestors, and it's not even all of their ancestors, you know, it's a small number of people who own slaves, so, and especially imagine that you're like, you know, Italian or something.
	You know, your parents came there in the early 1900s, and it's like, right, you're white, therefore you're a slave owner.
	And this Italian kid's just like, what are you talking about?
	You know, I literally have no connection to this, but now because you're white, because it's an abstract categorical that just applies to many different kinds of people, you're now culpable for slavery.
	Imagine if you're from Eastern Europe.
	You've been under the heel of the Turks for 300 years.
	You get to America, it's like, listen, slave owner, It's like, get Ben!
	And if they're literally from an ethnic group called Slavs, where do you think the word comes from?
	The etymology of slave is from Slav, because the Turks kept enslaving them.
	But anyway, they carry on.
	Why should we whitewash US history to protect the feelings of white children?
	Because we don't want to create a generation of catatonic, like...
	People who have absolutely no understanding of why they're not bad people inherently.
	Excuse me, I misspoke.
	We should whitewash US history even more than we already do.
	First of all, what about the feelings of black children?
	Okay, well, teaching black children, they're the perennial victims of white children, is not good either.
	Don't know why I have to say that.
	But anyway, also this, white children and white adults should absolutely feel bad about the past atrocities committed by white Americans.
	They should feel guilty.
	Why?
	They didn't do anything!
	If one of this person's ancestors was a rapist, should they feel guilty about that?
	Of course not!
	Is this just editorialising from this article?
	Yes.
	It's all editorialising.
	It's an opinion piece.
	But, like, it's just awful, the things that this person is asking for.
	You know, let's have not just collective guilt, but ancestral collective guilt.
	Why would you ask for that?
	And how far back do you go until you reach a reasonable cut-off point?
	You go as far back as is necessary to win this argument.
	That's what it is.
	And so, on The View, Rice suggests that learning about America's racial history could make black people feel disempowered by race, but it had the exact opposite effect on me.
	Are you sure?
	Is this what empowerment looks like, is it?
	Because it looks like you're deeply bitter against white people and hate them for something that they didn't do, and their ancestors may have done.
	Some of their ancestors.
	But anyway.
	They finish with, I cannot accept a country that contorts itself to avoid causing white pain.
	Sounds like you just hate white people, to be honest.
	I'm not here to comfort white people, and Lord knows I'm never going to center them.
	So you don't want to live in the same country.
	This guy's an MSNBC contributor.
	No surprise there.
	Ex-MSNBC, I think he is.
	If you don't want to live alongside white people, there are lots of countries that don't have any.
	Like loads of countries that don't have any, incidentally.
	The living conditions might not be up to your typical standards.
	No, which is presumably why you're not going to go there, but, you know, there are lots of non-white countries.
	Anyway, what this means is that Republicans want black people to disappear.
	Go to the next one, John.
	This is a few months old, but it's just one of those ridiculous headlines.
	Republicans want black people to disappear.
	If I just say it, it's true.
	Yeah, it's nonsense.
	I mean, the first black senators and congressmen in America...
	Was it Frederick...
	Frederick Douglass.
	Yeah, Frederick Douglass.
	Wasn't a Democrat.
	No.
	You know?
	Wasn't the Democrats that fought to free the slaves.
	You know, but no, it's the Republicans that want blacks to disappear.
	Like Condoleezza Rice, you know, what was it?
	First...
	First female African-American Secretary of State.
	But, you know, black people got to disappear.
	Republicans, you know, hate them for some reason.
	We're not going to waste any time on this one.
	Let's move on.
	Is Biden a white supremacist?
	I think he might be.
	Do you know why?
	Because he did the OK sign.
	That's why.
	Look at him.
	What a Nazi.
	He's rubbing it in our faces.
	He is.
	He's a member of the Democratic Party.
	He's doing white supremacist gestures.
	What more do you need?
	He's gatekeeping who's black and who isn't.
	He is.
	He absolutely is.
	So Biden was asked a question about what will count a fair share of the taxation burden for rich people and corporations.
	And part of his answer, he noted that some corporations paid zero and went zero in a weird way.
	But that also means okay, and that's been called a white supremacist symbol by numerous leading left-leaning analysts.
	And so there we go.
	Biden's a Nazi.
	Confirmed.
	Anyway, moving on to Australia.
	They're in a new Soviet regime.
	This is embarrassing to read, and it's just awful.
	I can't stand what's going on.
	So, Australia's second largest state emerged from what experts and local media called the world's longest lockdown.
	Well done, Victoria!
	They have finally given you your freedoms back, but with caveats.
	So apparently 70% of the people, the adults living in this state, got their double vaccination.
	So now the benign powers that be, the Soviet regime that's ruling over them, said, ah, you may now go to the pub.
	Oh, how benevolent of them.
	Yep.
	The 6.7 million residents can now leave their homes for any reason.
	Oh, thank you.
	Thank you so much.
	How freeing that is.
	Even if I just want to?
	Yeah, you can just go for any reason.
	You're not confined to home arrest.
	Although you will need proof to show full vaccination to enter public venues.
	If you haven't been double vaccinated, you're not going to a restaurant, you're not going to school, but if you do have these things, you can go to restaurants and go back to school.
	There's no longer a 9pm curfew.
	Freedom with limits doesn't sound like freedom.
	No, it doesn't sound very free, does it?
	No.
	But either way, stores selling non-essential goods won't be open until 80% of the state is double vaccinated.
	Don't know why.
	How arbitrary.
	Exactly.
	Why not 85%?
	And what about 90%?
	Why stop at anything less than every single person?
	That's what I want to know.
	But still, the end of the lockdown is a huge relief for Melbourne residents who have spent more than 260 days confined to their homes.
	Nearly a year.
	Jesus Christ.
	Just confined, you're not allowed out.
	I'd be interested to see the studies on mental health.
	Oh god, I dread to think.
	So they were forbidden to leave except to buy groceries or other essential items.
	Unbelievable.
	And other states in Australia, in Melbourne, they're fining children for not wearing face masks.
	We're going to go to the next one.
	If you can scroll down a bit, you can see the fines.
	If your child is 15 years or under, it's $40.
	And if your child is 15 to 18, it's $80.
	I'm sorry, they're just going up and taking these kids' lunch money.
	They're actually bullying children now.
	It's amazing that this is going on.
	Flying back over to the UK, there's a mask mandate for staff in Parliament.
	But not for the MPs.
	Because as Jacinda Ardern said, it's a two-tier system.
	That's how they like it.
	They want you to know you're inferior.
	So the mask mandate's being made for all parliamentary staffers, but not MPs, because of the concern of the recent rise in COVID cases.
	Including Keir Starmer.
	Yeah, I mean, you scroll down, in fact, they give us the number.
	40,000 COVID cases, but only 263 deaths.
	I mean, it doesn't sound...
	No, it's way less than 1%.
	It doesn't sound that deadly to me.
	No, because the cases are among kids who are just basically not vulnerable to COVID. But anyway, the reintroduction of the measures by the parliamentary authorities since restrictions were relaxed.
	Those who refuse to wear the face covering will be told to leave.
	Again, except for the MPs.
	The new guidance was issued on Tuesday and said that all face-to-face meetings with colleagues should be avoided unless there's a business need.
	Again, business need.
	You're a government, not a business.
	Don't know why he said business need.
	People should space out and avoid sitting directly opposite each other while working together.
	MPs cannot be forced to follow the same rules, but they can choose to continue.
	And so many Conservatives have been recently seen packed shoulder to shoulder in the Commons Chamber while Labour MPs have made a point of wearing the masks.
	Okay?
	But the Conservatives should be like, yeah, we're not wearing masks.
	We're going to live our lives as normal because the COVID pandemic is under control because of all the vaccinations we rolled out.
	That was the point of the vaccinations.
	Apparently they work, so what are you whining about?
	Right?
	Right.
	But Tory MPs have since been told by senior party figures, unnamed, to wear masks for Wednesday's budget as it will be watched by thousands of people.
	And ministers have realized they need to set a better example to encourage mask wearing.
	Except we don't have mask mandates.
	You don't need to encourage people to wear the bloody masks.
	People who are going to wear them, wear them.
	Exactly.
	Again, two thirds of the country, more than, in fact 70% of the country are double vaccinated at this point.
	Haven't you won?
	Take the win, for the love of God.
	But a staffer said that the rule change not applying to MPs is ridiculous, that they're being exempted from steps that will keep us all safe.
	Prove it.
	Prove that that kept anyone safe.
	Anyway, it doesn't matter because the UK is becoming an Orwellian state anyway.
	If you want to leave the United Kingdom, and we might not have passport, well, we do have vaccine passports and mask mandates in Scotland and Wales, but if you, in England, want to leave, you don't have those things.
	But if you want to leave, you're going to need three doses of the COVID vaccine.
	Why not four?
	Why not five?
	I mean, you know, don't these vaccine companies need that money?
	They probably need a few extra yachts or something.
	So, like, why not go ten?
	Just vaccine, just constant daily injection of vaccines.
	Why not?
	We'll just get a rolling subscription, shall we?
	Just pay 50 quid a month to Pfizer and just get your daily update on the vaccine.
	Why not, right?
	This is absurd.
	People who have had two doses are currently considered fully vaccinated, but this definition is likely to evolve over time, says Care Minister Gillian Keegan.
	I wonder how much money she gets from the vaccine companies.
	But again, like, so we've now arrived at a position where it's like, you are going to be medically dependent on a vaccine company.
	And the definition that we're using to define whether you're vaccinated or not, it's just going to change as we want it.
	We determine whether you're considered healthy or not on a day-to-day basis.
	Exactly.
	Literally newspeak.
	Literally the changing and destruction of words.
	This means, of course, that eventually people only deemed fully vaccinated will be vaccinated if they've had their booster vaccine.
	Asked if people would not be able to travel unless they'd received their third dose.
	The minister has told Sky News, I don't think so.
	The advice at the moment is the double jab vaccination, but of course that will evolve over time as the third dose comes in.
	Sorry, who's giving you this advice?
	Who's paying them?
	How do we get rid of them?
	How do we hold them accountable?
	How do we hold any of this accountable?
	It's two doses for now, but I'm sure the vaccine passport concept will evolve, and there will be if you've had your booster, etc., because it's probably not going to be good for next summer.
	So they're giving us a little preview there.
	Next summer...
	Yeah, next summer you're going to get the vaccine passports.
	Anyway, moving on, we may as well start rationing, because why not?
	Again, I really am thinking that we've arrived in the Half-Life 2 universe.
	Climate expert Joanna Lumley speaks up.
	Exactly, thank God.
	Climate scientist Joanna Lumley.
	I mean, they note here that she's an actress, but...
	That's obviously nonsense.
	She's either a climate scientist or deeply involved in food supply chains, right?
	Because she's suggested the introduction of legislation to ration, holidays, food and drink to help tackle the climate crisis.
	But there's no shortage.
	We aren't suffering a shortage of food and drink or holiday.
	It's a supply chain issue.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And even then, it's a supply chain issue.
	Oh, I go to the grocery store.
	Oh, no, I've only got two choices rather than three of different types of cheeses that I was going to make.
	That's a shame.
	My favorite type of cheese in there, I'll just have to have a different type of cheese.
	I mean, for someone like Joanna Lumley, that's probably more of an issue than it is for us.
	She does say that, actually.
	Oh, no.
	She says, these are tough times.
	I think there's got to be legislation.
	That's how the war was.
	Stuff was rationed, and at some stage, I think we might have to go back to some sort of system of rationing, where you're given a certain number of points, and it's up to you how to spend them, whether it's buying a bottle of whiskey or flying on an airplane.
	Her suggestion included taking one holiday a year at home instead of hopping on a plane to Magaluf for the weekend.
	Oh, yeah, I just do that all the time, Joanna.
	Yeah, I can just hop on a plane any weekend.
	I mean, hey, I don't have a vaccine passport, so I can't do that.
	B, I don't have the money to just every weekend go to Magaluf, because I'm not a famous actress.
	Every plastic bottle you don't buy, every piece of litter you pick up, every piece of meat you don't eat, every small thing counts.
	Sure, but are the billions of people in China and India following your advice?
	Because if they're not, I'm not going to bother.
	That does just sound like you'll own nothing and like it to me.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And you'll get rationed.
	Again, I don't think the government should be the one rationing my food.
	That was done in a time of extreme danger because we're at war with Nazi Germany, Joanna.
	As far as I've been told, we're not getting bombs dropped on us.
	No, no.
	It's all man-made.
	It's all self-inflicted wounds.
	But while all of this is going on, of course, tremendously evil things are happening on our streets and no one wants to talk about them.
	This happened a few days ago.
	You don't hear anything about it because who cares?
	Who cares if two black kids, one black kid kills another?
	Well, I say kid, but like young men kill another on a Coventry street.
	Who cares?
	Right.
	So this gang member executed a rival with a shotgun on the streets.
	Gang of peace.
	Yeah.
	Murderer Karen Monger, 19, is already serving a life sentence for killing Abdul Zassan as he walked home from a mosque.
	He bled to death after sustaining horrific internal injuries from two blasts out of a car window.
	So real problem here.
	Real problem we're not talking about.
	Fake problems we're talking about constantly.
	Imagine who could have been caught in crossfire there.
	Oh yeah!
	In the middle of the street, someone drives past.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	But that's assuming that this guy isn't important enough to object to being murdered on the street himself.
	I think he is important enough to object to.
	But you are right, obviously it could have been a mother and a child, which would have been even more tragic.
	But it's still a tragedy on its own.
	But again, no one wants to talk about it.
	Why?
	Because there's a black kid, or a black guy shooting another black guy.
	I'd rather talk about climate change, thanks very much.
	This is a bit sticky, isn't it?
	But this was done in broad daylight last year on a Coventry street.
	He fired the gun from the back of a stolen VW Golf that was driven by a 15-year-old.
	Monger was found guilty of conspiracy to murder and jail for life and served a minimum of 27 years by Birmingham Crown Court.
	Both were electronically tagged at the time due to their suspected involvement in other offences.
	Why not?
	And the tagging information showed they were in the street at the time of the murder, and it was a stolen vehicle that was, of course, found burnt out by the end of it.
	Unbelievable.
	I went to university in Coventry.
	I mean, there was actually a drive-by shooting outside of my house when I was there, so I guess nothing's changed in the last 20 years.
	But it's just, these are things that are going on, real problems that real people have to deal with.
	And instead we're talking about rationing for climate change.
	We're talking about whether MPs have to wear masks.
	No, they don't, but their servants do.
	And all of these other non-things that otherwise aren't killing...
	Well, I suppose some of them are killing people, but anyway.
	I just can't stand the state of the world, and there we go.
	Well, everything definitely is ridiculous then.
	Well, let's move on to the comments and the video comments first.
	Let's take a look at this one.
	Okay, considering the fact that I'm doing these video messages based off of memory that I've recorded all at once, it is possible that I am going to get some details wrong, because the flying thing is something I did literally years ago.
	So, that being said, yeah, what this guy said.
	Well, this guy said, I might get some things wrong, but even he does point out that, yeah, you'd still have problems with the vaccine.
	With a prosthetic, though, that works fine for legs, but would it still work well for your arms?
	I have no idea, but I'm just glad the pilot's won.
	Yeah.
	Good question with the arms.
	I imagine that there's not exactly any nerve endings or anything that you could use to, like, Luke Skywalker pull your...
	I have no idea.
	I'm pretty sure we actually skipped that comment when it came up a few days ago.
	So, yeah, I can't really speak on it.
	Carry on.
	Some time ago, I came to the realization that religion and ideology is one and the same, but in different coats of paint.
	And I couldn't exactly explain why, but a colleague of mine said something that just made me...
	I had a eureka moment.
	And it was belief.
	That belief is the core of everything.
	that artists exist or that you can make the perfect society if you make everything equal or that you should live your life and let people be.
	Should we see that the need to believe in something as the same thing to need to express yourself?
	Thanks.
	Goodbye.
	I actually thought something similar until I finished reading the critical race theory stuff Because they have a theory of ideology embedded within critical race theory.
	Is quite interesting and does allow us to distinguish it from religion.
	When Callum has mended, I don't know what, he's off ill at the moment.
	He'll be back soon, folks.
	Yeah, he will be back soon.
	But when Callum's amended, we'll go through and record the next part of the critical race theory podcast that we're doing for the website, in which we will talk about the theories that underpin critical race theory, because they have a certain set of ways of viewing the world.
	And one of them is this theory of ideology, which actually is quite interesting.
	So I'll get to that another time.
	That sounds interesting.
	Yeah, yeah, it will be.
	He doesn't need to shut the society down, but he does need to mandate vaccines.
	I'll tell you one thing, and this is very hard.
	Nobody wants to hear you talk.
	They're trying to eat out there, and you come along with your stupid stories.
	Just stay in the kitchen.
	A thousand refused to get vaccinated.
	They were fired.
	Oh, you blow your father with that mouth?
	The twisted and demented psychos who kill people for pleasure.
	The degenerate bastards that molest and torture little kids and they kill babies.
	The one you sleep with.
	I mean, he's not wrong.
	No one wants to hear her talk.
	Oh, hello, Thomas.
	No, you never run the conversation.
	I'm being increasingly encouraged to do so.
	I can do it quite easily, but not everyone can.
	If we just commit, emotionally commit...
	That's an excellent way of putting it, isn't it?
	Sounds like a fair point to me.
	Agree.
	Correct.
	That's a good point.
	That's a great point.
	That is an excellent point.
	Yeah, that's a great point as well.
	Yeah.
	What are we looking at here?
	And that's why we don't upload this part to YouTube.
	Good point.
	I'll tell you what, if you guys are going to start making crap points, I'd appreciate it, because then we can say, no, that was a terrible point, and I'll tell you why.
	Yeah, I think you've got a point there.
	Good point.
	Sorry if I'm beating a dead horse a bit with this, but in regards to the Alec Baldwin shooting...
	If somebody's injured or killed in a workplace, the employer or whoever's in charge is actually killed until proven innocent.
	It's very different to the rest of the English common law because health and safety is law.
	If somebody's died or been injured, you've broken that law because they wouldn't have been hurt otherwise.
	It's a really weird contrast compared to the rest of a lot of English law.
	I don't know whether that holds an America.
	I don't know what they're...
	Neither do I. I understand the concept that he's talking about, though, seeing as health and safety is law.
	If somebody has died, obviously something must have gone wrong with health and safety, so someone has to be held accountable for that.
	And as the executive producer and the person who fired the gun, maybe Alec Baldwin is the man we need to point the fingers at.
	Instead of adding to the choir on Baldwin, I wanted to highlight Carl's comment about feeling confident at the range because of the way people at the range conducted themselves.
	What Carl is referring to here is firearm or range etiquette, and etiquette is the perfect word for it.
	You are conducting yourself in a manner that is safe and responsible and demonstrating that to those around you.
	The Baldwin incident is so ironic because people like Baldwin will advocate for gun rights to be taken away because they believe gun owners to be irresponsible, but they believe this because they themselves do not understand this etiquette and are irresponsible.
	That's a great point.
	He's exactly right to call it etiquette.
	And I'll tell you what, the three gun ranges I went to, every single one of them, I felt safer there than I did just wandering around the streets.
	Because everyone, you could tell it's a very controlled environment.
	Everyone there, no one's pratting around.
	Everyone is taking what they're doing very, very seriously.
	Well, apparently, unlike Alec Baldwin, they all recognise that what they're holding in their hands is a dangerous weapon.
	Yes, and has the capacity to kill someone very easily.
	Yeah, and so, like, you didn't have to worry about the people in the other stalls next to you, because they were behaving themselves, and they were acting properly.
	And I think he's exactly right.
	Like, Alec Baldwin doesn't know this.
	I mean, he's a man who's committed most of his recent years, as far as I'm aware, to advocating against this.
	So what incentive does he have?
	Being hysterical partisan.
	What incentive does he have to not be a hysterical partisan?
	Exactly.
	He's been richly rewarded for it.
	But no, I think that's exactly right.
	And this was not just in one area of the United States either.
	This was in three different sections of the country.
	Where was the first one?
	Boston, I think it was, something like that, and then Texas, and then California.
	So, like, you know, it's widespread across the United States.
	This is a very responsible gun culture, and I was genuinely impressed, and I had a wonderful time doing it.
	Yeah, I can't wait to go to a gun range if I ever get the chance to go to America.
	Oh, it's fab, fab.
	Let's go to the next one.
	Regarding the puppy torture...
	To answer the question of why you do this, it's to study the disease process and understand the biology of the disease and hopefully develop means of treatment that you couldn't otherwise do in a petri dish, though why they didn't just anesthetize the dogs to offer pain relief, I don't know, probably cost savings.
	It's terrible.
	I think it's worth the money.
	If you have to do this for some reason, can you at least make sure they don't feel pain?
	I mean, from what he was saying, I would need more information to be able to say that what Fauci was doing was justifiable, even on a purely scientific basis, personally.
	Anyway, next one.
	From my personal experience on low-budget movies, there are no rules.
	They brought in a new crew when the Union crew had quit, according to some reports, and that the young armorer was amongst them.
	Another report says that the gun that was eventually used by Alec was actually used for some target practice offset, and that's why it had live rounds in it.
	Apparently the armorer forgot to take out the live round.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Fair play.
	I would still imagine that you should still have rules on a low-budget set, and I wasn't aware how low-budget that new film would be.
	With a big name like Baldwin behind it, you'd expect at least a medium-sized budget, so I can't really speak to...
	No.
	I'm no expert on the way these things are done, anyway.
	Hey guys, so I just wanted to show you something quick that pertains to everyone's favorite Umbrella Corporation employee, and that would be the Hippocratic Oath.
	This is it in its original form translated from Greek, and the main points are, as many know, do no harm, protect patient privacy, and always act truthful and in a manner that is to the benefit of the patient.
	But one of the important portions is this last paragraph here, if you would like to read that aloud, because I think a certain someone has completely forgotten and forsaken this oath.
	Yeah, well, I don't think he has maintained his oath faithfully and without corruption.
	But that was an awesome background that he had on his computer.
	Oh, yeah.
	Brilliant Battletech background.
	It was cool.
	Okay, you guys at the Lotus Eaters do not know what you are talking about.
	The reason we cut the dogs' vocal cords was to keep them from getting their droplets on us.
	So frankly, you have no idea what you are talking about and we did not fund gain of research in Wuhan.
	Yeah, that's not the most accurate one I've done.
	Mostly because there's not a giant shrine to myself behind it.
	That was good!
	I think that was really accurate.
	All I needed was an up-close shot of his hand going, that, when he's talking.
	Yeah, I thought that was fantastic, actually.
	I totally got who you were.
	Oh, God.
	So, I'm looking to start a relationship, but I have no idea where I would go to find the kind of wholesome partner I'm looking for.
	And I was wondering if you guys had any advice as to where I might go in real life to...
	- A church. - To find such a person, given that, well, I mean, I'm already paying for the old subscription anyway.
	Might as well make use of it. - Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
	I love this meme, by the way, because that is exactly how things are with YouTube these days.
	We are literally just, there's a bunch of topics you're just not allowed to discuss, essentially.
	And if you are going to discuss them, it's in a very specific way.
	But yeah, how to meet someone?
	Good question.
	I mean, I'm young, but I can't really give much advice on that.
	I've been in a relationship for the past five years now, so...
	How did you meet your girlfriend?
	In a less than wholesome way.
	I'll just put it that way.
	So I can't really give advice, but yeah, maybe if you're religious, a church I would imagine is a good place.
	If you're not religious, a church.
	Yeah.
	Maybe if you've got some hobby or something that you do, like rock climbing or anything like that, maybe you'll be able to...
	Just don't be creepy if you're doing something like that.
	Well, that's the thing.
	Don't try to meet someone, because that comes across as weird and desperate.
	Just do the things you want to do, and you should end up meeting someone.
	You have, of course, got to make sure there are opportunities to meet people, so you have to leave the house, you have to go and do something, you have to be working on yourself, improve something, blah, blah, blah.
	To be fair, not from personal experience, from seeing other people, if you have a good and wholesome friendship group, generally in the process of doing things with friends, you should probably encounter some women that you are interested in and who might be interested in you back and will share some of your same interests.
	So basically go to church.
	Let's go to the next one.
	It's a bit of an old topic, but my big awakening for how much the green energy pushes have been sort of like scammy-like was whenever the cylinder happened underneath the Obama administration where half billion went into this company.
	Nothing really came out of it.
	And further was your peer, Thunderfoot, basically making all these videos about Solar Warways and how are all these millions and millions and millions just going into this company disappearing.
	Yeah.
	I do think there's been a bit of a scam in many ways.
	And to think Noam Chomsky used to be so respectable.
	Now he looks like a frickin' hermit who wandered in from a desert.
	It just looks...
	Oh, gee.
	How far the mighty have fallen.
	He does look a little bit like he's got out of the asylum.
	He does.
	I didn't...
	Kraut put out a really good video about him, actually.
	I didn't know that he was a Bosnian genocide denier.
	I didn't know that.
	I know that he was supportive of the Khmer Rouge.
	What?
	Yes, when the Khmer Rouge were a thing back in the late 70s, early 80s, I believe that he spoke basically on behalf of the in-light public.
	He was one of the most forward-facing Western intellectuals who supported them.
	And then, of course, as soon as all of the truth comes out, as with so many other Western intellectuals when it comes to socialist regimes, he just goes, Oh, that wasn't real socialism.
	I never supported that state capitalism or any other buzzword that you can just throw out for it.
	I did not know he spoke kindly of the Khmer Rouge.
	Let's go for the next one.
	So we are actually having an election in Denmark right now.
	Not for Prime Minister, it's a regional election.
	The great thing, though, is that no one is campaigning on mandates because they know...
	That would be political suicide at this point.
	They are all campaigning on climate change and immigration, less immigration, so could be much worse.
	Congratulations for having a voter base that sticks up for themselves, I suppose.
	Yeah, that's exactly it, isn't it?
	For having a sane country.
	Because the only reason the politicians do the things they do is because the people allow them to get away with it.
	It's like, well, you know, if you don't vote for that nonsense, thank God.
	And it's shocking to me that there are so many people over here who have just sort of fallen straight into the trap of being like, well, I want subjection now.
	It's just awful.
	Govend me harder.
	Yeah.
	Anyway, you go into the comments.
	Maria says, Today's podcast could be called The Day of the Black Pill.
	It's a sad fact that black pills are necessary.
	Unfortunately, these are things that are just happening, and you should become aware of them.
	Silas says, Even Zuckerberg used to be human, or so it's said.
	Yeah.
	Marcus says, whenever governments and private enterprise merge, it ceases to be a private enterprise.
	Good point.
	The best way to combat this is to refuse to use the services presented to you by these entities.
	That is true, but the problem is Google is essentially the infrastructure of the internet, and Facebook is essentially the infrastructure of society.
	You know, who's not on Facebook?
	It's hard to be active in the grander society without being involved, without being connected to at least one of those two services.
	I mean, don't get me wrong, unlike John, I've changed my default search engine to DuckDuckGo, and not Google, and you get a much wider variety of results.
	In the office, I've been using Bing and DuckDuckGo, and I find that they are pretty good.
	Yeah.
	And again, follow us on alternative media.
	This is why it needs to be done.
	Silas again says, Yeah, I watched a podcast by James Lindsay the other day, yesterday.
	About the second enlightenment.
	And it's very optimistic.
	And he's like, oh, this is a white pill.
	Because look, this sort of like the hive mind of the internet actually is capable of passing information in a very effective manner.
	And great ideas are coming out of it.
	It's like, yeah.
	And we just need to get past the institutionally gate-kept narrative and power structures of the internet.
	It's like, yeah.
	How are we going to do that, though?
	That is the difficulty of it.
	I mean, the internet has allowed for media outlets such as ourselves to be out there, whereas, you know, 30, 40 years ago, it would be very difficult to find anybody like us.
	But at the same time, there are still those barriers and gatekeepers out there that need to...
	I mean, we operate on YouTube means that we can't put out everything that we want to.
	Yeah.
	I mean, literally, we are prevented.
	Yeah.
	But yeah, I mean, it is true that that's what the internet facilitates until it gets shut down.
	Anyway, 2Number9 says, Dave Rubin had some actual good news about a merger between his media company and Rumble.
	Apparently they all have their own payment and server infrastructure already built.
	Hopefully we will see a shift away from big tech, one can only hope.
	Well, fingers crossed, and good luck to them and godspeed.
	That's the only way to fight against the big monopolies.
	Yeah.
	Callum says, as I understand it, 33% is a pretty standard income take from Corpo companies on any product promoting or cooperation with such entities.
	No, it's not.
	15% is the standard income.
	M1Ping says, I see why Google removed Don't Be Evil from their code of conduct a few years ago.
	Was that in there?
	Yeah, it was.
	It used to be their motto, don't be evil.
	And then a few years ago they removed it.
	It's like, why would you remove that?
	Yeah, why would you take that part out?
	Surely that's quite simple to stick to.
	Exactly.
	Well, we were adhering to the motto, don't be evil, but then we were like, but we want to do a bit of evil.
	Well, we could make more money if we're evil.
	Exactly.
	Student Fistry says, "So I'm going to run through this.
	Two massive companies are controlling the entire market.
	They actively weight the market to choke any form of competition.
	They control your data at every level and will choose profits over their reputation.
	Now they're actively working with the federal government as a de facto intelligence agency.
	Did I miss something here?" Yeah, it's not the federal government, it's our government.
	But the problem is, I imagine the same sort of thing is going to be true in America.
	I can't imagine that Jen Psaki and her, like, you know, the puppet administration of Biden aren't intimately working with Facebook and Google.
	It's just that I don't have any evidence for it, but I'm sure they are.
	I mean, I think they have said in some of the White House, when they've gone out and spoken to journalists, they have basically said, well, we've been talking to Facebook about trying to block so-and-so to get this and this and this passed.
	Remember when Tim Cook of Apple refused to give the FBI the encryption data so they couldn't break into their phones?
	Feels like a million years ago now.
	Anyway, Silas again says, politics has so infected businesses that I would find it wholesome and refreshing if they would be motivated entirely by greed.
	Take us back to the 80s.
	I never thought that Gordon Gekko would be a hero.
	But in 2021, here we are, you know.
	Baystapers said, this is actually not surprising.
	It reminds me of the time that Facebook launched the Login with Facebook feature that was designed to integrate Facebook into the web on such a level that if Facebook ever failed, it would break so many other parts of the web, essentially making Facebook immortal.
	There's an old thing in tech.
	Yeah, I know it's not new, but I just can't stand the fact that it's being done.
	Alice Crowley says, The meme prediction is true now.
	Politicians are now an underprivileged class and must be protected.
	Think of the poor politicians.
	Well, they are getting nasty messages on social media.
	I mean, they could just log off, but anyway.
	Now, criticism of the governments can be prosecuted and aggressors will have sentences longer than terrorists and rapists.
	Yep.
	Silas says, good information, Inc.
	Really?
	They've abandoned all subtlety?
	Yes, they have.
	I'm so looking forward to billionaires controlling what we're allowed to say online.
	Radical Centrist God says, Jesus, that first segment was the mother of all black pills.
	Yeah, I'm sorry.
	But it's something that you had to know.
	Kayla...
	Oh, I'll do it.
	I'll carry on.
	It's all right.
	Kayla says, does the UK generally have something like school boards?
	Yeah, yeah, we do.
	Um...
	We don't have critical race theory in them yet, I think.
	The Conservatives actually did ban that.
	Baron Von Warhawk says, just to give you guys some context about how bad our schools are, I was forced to buy a college textbook called Everything's an Argument with Readings, 8th edition by Andrea A. Lunsford, and one of the chapters is entitled How Free Should Campus Speech Be?, followed by a picture of kids in MAGA hats and a picture of Trump in KKK robes.
	I was forced to spend $30 on this propaganda book.
	Wow.
	Yeah.
	What a comparison to draw in the immediate image straight after that.
	Why you have to ask that question.
	I love the way the Democrats are constantly trying to pin the KKK and Republicans there.
	It cracks me up.
	I don't know why a single Republican lets them get away with it.
	And the majority of people are just historically illiterate when it comes to such matters.
	So it's sad that they do get away with it.
	And deliberately so.
	Callum says, I'd be more in support of a book with the cover of a bloke cutting his penis off with a rusty bread knife.
	I dread to go back to my old schools and see what's going on in there here in Scotland.
	Feth.
	Yeah, I mean, the Scottish National Party being in charge of Scotland being exceptionally woke, you're going to get all of this stuff in their schools.
	You know you are.
	You probably just need to take a few minutes to look around the libraries and you probably won't find stuff too dissimilar from what we were showing there.
	And as Fraser here says, Christ on a bike, they're putting books in the libraries and turning the freaking kids gay.
	Yeah, well, I mean, at least exposing them to pornography.
	Thanks.
	Responsible.
	Joseph says, I'm definitely sending my kids to a Catholic school now.
	Don't blame you.
	Lord Nerovar says, given the Democrats' reputation around kids, looking at you, Joe, I don't particularly want to be in the same country as them.
	Yes.
	George Windsor says, regarding the books, as with lefty political indoctrination, it appears that the pedophiles have figured out that they can groom the kids in school and get paid for it.
	Yes, indeed.
	Student of History says, I mean, that's where we are.
	Yeah.
	It's embarrassing.
	Literally two tears.
	Jimbo says, It really just feels like some of these people who are sexualizing children are trying to be as inflammatory as possible.
	And then when people complain about not wanting their children to be subjected to it, they equate it to the stigma gay people have historically faced regarding children.
	How many kids are going to be messed up because of perceived victimhood by adults?
	I mean, that's not wrong.
	Yeah.
	Well, I mean, the sad thing is you look back on a lot of the movements in the past and they were infiltrated quite a few times by...
	Infiltrated.
	Yeah.
	Loads of left-wing movements are about breaking down barriers.
	I've looked at the barrier against Peter Filler and been like, I can overcome that.
	Yeah, I still question the term pansexual.
	That comes across very strange to me.
	Do you know that term?
	Yeah, I'm aware.
	It means you're into everything, basically.
	It's personality.
	And then that begs the question, what if the kid's got a great personality?
	Yeah, and also the phrase, love is love.
	It's like, oh, you're free to love anyone that you love.
	Isn't that the sort of thing a paedophile would say?
	Yeah, that sounds a bit map-adjacent.
	Yeah, it was, not even map-adjacent.
	Why wouldn't a map say, yeah, but love is love, and so you've got to accept my identity?
	That probably has been on some of their propaganda they've put out there, yeah.
	You know, I don't doubt.
	So it's just, like, sorry, they're coming for your kids, and you must be aware of it, man.
	Yeah, protect your kids.
	Yeah, I mean, even if we get rid of it in humans, animals are still going to spread it, and they're just going to spread it straight back to us.
	And also, I just don't think this will work.
	I think that people will, you know, break the lockdown like Neil Ferguson and continue spreading it.
	And ultimately, I don't think the government's got the right...
	I'd have trouble sticking with another lockdown.
	Oh, God.
	I don't want to.
	No, I don't want to.
	I don't think the government's got the right to do it.
	Simon says, I need to check every article to make sure it's not the Babylon Bee.
	Unfortunately, it's not.
	I know.
	I feel bad for the Babylon Bee, actually, because while they're hilariously funny, they're not as funny as some of the articles I come across that are meant to be sincere.
	So, you know.
	Kayla says, Thank you, Carl.
	I'm a second-generation Ukrainian-American on my father's side and a third-generation Polish-Hungarian-American on my mother's side.
	You're responsible for slavery!
	Listen, white person.
	And I know that Ukrainians just happen to be some of the whitest people in existence.
	Have you ever met a Ukrainian?
	Unbelievably pasty.
	I've met a number of Eastern Europeans.
	All pasty.
	They are very pasty.
	Because there's hardly any sun.
	Ukrainians have been through some bad times.
	Yeah, we went through Ellis Island in 1950.
	We didn't know slaves and don't know people of colour anything.
	It's maddening.
	Well, it turns out you do.
	And just because you were oppressed by Turks, who happened to be people of colour, for hundreds of years, if you're an Eastern European, well, that doesn't matter.
	Get on your knees and apologise.
	Anyway, M1Ping says, instead of a third jab, can you just pay a tithe to Pfizer?
	I would be more open to that, actually.
	I would definitely be more open to, look, can they just tax me 10% of my income so I can just leave the country?
	Or so I can just go somewhere else?
	I would happily pay a tithe to Pfizer and continue on with this absolute charade.
	Land of the White People says, this 2021 budget is sponsored by Pfizer.
	No, that's your media in America, unfortunately.
	But...
	I haven't watched the budget.
	Rory's watching at the moment.
	He's going to be doing some coverage on it.
	Doubtless, it's going to be sponsored by Pfizer.
	Apparently, John McDonnell was crying during the budget, which is wonderful.
	Someone was making an argument that socialism actually creates terrible societies where nobody's got any money and everyone suffers, and John McDonnell's there with the crying Wojak face.
	Red.
	Yeah, yeah, which is exactly what I want to see.
	Bilbo Swagin says, they're just outright admitting they will forever move the goalposts.
	Yeah, they're just outright admitting it.
	Oh, this definition is going to change, so don't get settled in.
	You're going to need your booster shots.
	Just start paying your tithe to Pfizer.
	Henry says, there's an unofficial rule in cycling as a hobby where the optimum number of bikes to own is N plus one, where N is the number of bikes you currently own.
	Weird, that's the same rule that we have in painting Warhammer.
	Yeah.
	Disappointing to see the same rule applies to vaccine doses in the eyes of the government.
	Yeah, I know.
	I know.
	Yeah, I haven't even had a test.
	I'm not having a test.
	I'm not having a vaccine.
	I'm not doing anything.
	And it's not because I don't think they work or anything like that.
	It's just I just don't like the way this is all being done.
	And until they stop doing this, I'm just not going to do it.
	And finally, Mr.
	Flibble says, Well, you don't matter, apparently.
	You are not included in the...
	I mean, they're not carving out any exemptions from what I see.
	I just don't see them ever...
	Well, exemptions for anyone but themselves.
	Well, yes, exactly.
	Apart from themselves.
	But yeah, so I'm afraid they don't care.
	Yeah, sorry to hear about that, by the way.
	Yeah, and I've got friends who have had negative reactions to the vaccine as well, but we're not allowed to talk about that, and we're out of time anyway.
	I think we're out of time there, yeah.
	So thank you very much for tuning in to this episode of the podcast of The Lotus Eaters.

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