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Nov. 2, 2021 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #254

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	Good afternoon and welcome to episode 254 of the podcast of the Lotus Eaters.
	I'm I'm your host today, Harry, with my guest, Tom.
	Hello.
	Hello there.
	And today we're going to be going through a few interesting subjects with you, including, first of all, the Conservatives' current attack on online anonymity.
	Colin Kaepernick's ridiculous assertion that being part of the NFL draft is somehow the same as slavery.
	You know, because you can always draw it back to slavery somehow, I suppose.
	And finally, Virginia's deceitful Democrats playing some dirty tricks on their Republican opposition.
	But before we get into any of those subjects, we've got a few things we'd like to let you know about.
	First of all, we've got my actual article here.
	It's a premium article, so if you've got silver membership or above, you'll be able to check out Jonathan's reading of it and his smooth and eloquent voice.
	It's a bisexuality as oppression LARPing, which is basically about how many members of the younger generations are increasingly adopting the bisexual label.
	And I would argue, certainly, it's as a form of kind of a shroud that they can wrap around themselves so that they can sort of join in the LGBT community, as they would describe it as, and protect themselves from any kind of criticism that they might receive for otherwise being a straight and protect themselves from any kind of criticism that they might receive
	We've also got, if we move on, Carl's new article, which is a free article called Asklerotic Politics, which is about the kind of freeze frame snapshot of British politics, which has remained basically the same ever since Tony Blair's Britain, despite the fact that we've had a conservative, well, ostensibly a conservative despite the fact that we've had a conservative, well, ostensibly a conservative government for the past 10 years I've given that a read earlier.
	Very interesting read, so I'd recommend any of you to check that out.
	We've also got another shill for Hugo's new article, which is Tax Me Harder, Daddy, about how the government is just continually increasing our taxes.
	Once again, Silver and Gold membership will be able to listen to Jonathan's reading of that.
	And finally, we've also got mine and Karl's premium video on the recent open letter that Ole Scambrax released to multipolar.com on I cannot do this anymore, trying to implore the German broadcasters to report the news with some transparency and honesty.
	Spoiler alert, it hasn't ended up well.
	It seems that he's been fired now.
	So, you know, we'll see what happens with Olay in the future.
	But give that a listen.
	It's a pretty heavy black pill, but it's very much worth listening to.
	And now we've done that, let's get into the news.
	Did the Keemstar thing.
	And so...
	Let's talk about the current attacks we are all experiencing against online anonymity.
	So, just as some context for what many of you may already know about, this all seems to have started, or at least been kick-started to a certain extent, by the recent murder of Sir David Amos, which we've covered on the podcast previously.
	You probably already know about it, but just to go over some of the details in case some of you aren't aware or can't remember very well...
	So, yeah, he was a MP for the constituency of...
	which constituency was it?
	Leon C. Essex.
	Yeah, Leon C. Essex, who was doing a constituency surgery in his local area at a church when a man called...
	let me just get the details up here...
	Ali Harbi Ali showed up, who was a man of Somali descent, and stabbed him to death, sadly.
	The man was of Islamic faith, I believe...
	I believe so, yes.
	Yes, and since then, the Conservatives have, understandably, to a certain extent, and many MPs as well, been quite worried about their safety when they're going out in public, whether the rest of the public is safe in these sorts of scenarios they don't really seem to care that much about.
	But yeah, so if we move on to the next article, you can see here that the David Amos killing has been causing MPs to ask questions.
	So should the MPs still be able to meet in public?
	So here we've got Home Secretary Preeti Patel has been asking all police forces to review security arrangements for MPs with immediate effect after South End West MP... So David Amos was stabbed to death at a constituency surgery.
	So it's caused them all to say, how safe are we in these scenarios?
	Because by all intents and purposes, from the information that's been released about Ali so far, it seems to have been just an attack that he made because he could access David Amos very easily.
	And obviously it's been a tragedy that he was murdered in such a way, but it doesn't seem to have been for any purpose other than just general terrorism.
	Yeah, no, it seems to be a lone case.
	Yeah, and as a result of that, the MPs and the Conservatives in general have been asking all of the wrong questions.
	They have decided that the reason for this may have been online anonymity.
	Hmm.
	Well, let's look into that.
	So this Breitbart article here goes into it.
	Three days after the suspected Islamist-inspired killing of British MP Sir David Amos...
	Home Secretary Preeti Patel has suggested the incident could usher in restrictions on anonymity on social media to combat cruel comments and attacks on politicians from anonymous users.
	Now, was it cruel comments and attacks that stabbed Sir David to death?
	Absolutely no evidence of that.
	I see no causal connection between the two of these.
	It does seem to me, as far as I can tell, to be a connection that they are drawing very loosely because this seems to be something that they already had planned or already in the books because they are looking into implementing a new online harms bill which they can't have drawn up over the course of, what, a day or two?
	Over the course of three days, will they?
	No, it sounds very much like an extension of hate speech legislation to me.
	Yes, very much.
	Very opportunistic.
	And the other thing as well, regarding this, in regards to how strange it is to bring up anonymity in the first place, was that Ali was not an anonymous killer.
	He was able to sign up for the constituency surgery using his full name.
	He was not anonymous in any sense.
	He was actually already known to Prevent, who, as far as I'm aware, are the UK terrorist preventative agency, who are...
	Who look at keeping tabs on people who are potential terrorist threats.
	So this man was not anonymous.
	He was known to the agencies who should be made aware when situations like this could happen, and it didn't make a difference because he was still able to get to this constituency surgery.
	But yeah, continuing.
	Appearing on Sky News' Trevor Phillips on Sunday programme, Preeti Patel said that she will look into everything, including the end of anonymity online after the killing of Sir David.
	Once again, as I've said, this just seems pretty gross and opportunistic to take advantage of his death so that you can push a bill that you obviously already had planned.
	There is work taking place already.
	We have an online harms bill that will come to Parliament.
	There is working taking place on it right now, she said.
	I don't know if that's a misprint in the article.
	Yeah, so it's definitely an extension of the hate speech laws that we already have, pushed by the 2003 Communications Act, I believe it is.
	Yep.
	So that was the act that made it a criminal offence to cause, what was it, a gross offence online, I believe is the wording in there.
	So this is just going to be an extension of that.
	I've already done a lot of work on social media platforms, mainly around encryption and areas of that nature.
	So once again, sounds like they've already been working on it.
	The Home Secretary added that the country cannot carry on like this.
	Continuing, I spend too much time with communities who have been under attack, basically who have had all sorts of postings online, and it is a struggle to get those posts taken down.
	I mean, they're online posts.
	If they're from anonymous people, there's this amazing thing that these communities can do to avoid receiving the sort of gross harm and offence, which is just ignore them.
	them.
	Yeah, but what could communities who have been under attack allude to?
	Like literally anything, anyone can posit themselves as a community, anyone can claim to be under attack, this is just a very, very clever way of dancing around the problem of the fact that what they're trying to do has second to nothing.
	It sounds like she's kind of sick of people complaining to her and is just trying to find another way to outlaw those complaints, well outlaw the cause of those complaints before they get to her.
	Yeah.
	As far as I can tell, but yeah.
	Prefishing politics.
	She said, we want to make some big changes on that.
	So, the other question that this brings up is, how would the UK government extend such massive powers against US-based companies if they were able to make it so that people weren't allowed to be anonymous online on, say, Facebook or Twitter or anything like that, because they are over the seas, quite a few thousand miles away...
	They're not going to be happy about having to implement such specific rules for one particular area.
	Yeah, we've already got the case of Twitter, which is almost bigger than the entire Almost has a hold over the US government insofar as freedom of speech is concerned.
	It's almost acting in contempt or acting outside of its own constitution.
	So what jobs have we got?
	And it seems to me, looking into this, it looks like the British conservatives are sadly not the only ones looking into this.
	If you move along, there's another article here from Breitbart.
	Spanish conservatives propose ending anonymity online.
	So this is an idea a lot of Conservatives seem to have across Europe for some strange reason.
	Spain's Conservative People's Party have presented a bill to the Spanish Parliament that aims to end anonymity on social media and require companies to identify those who register on their platforms.
	People's Party Senator...
	Excuse me.
	Rafael Hernando introduced the bill in the Senate as a modification of Law 34-2002 on services of the Information Society and electronic commerce by adding a duty for companies to identify users.
	The proposal is aimed at combating cyber violence as well as other online crimes from identity theft to extortion, cyber terrorism and child abuse.
	The People's Party argues that the current situation is complicated for investigators to I mean, I understand that the aspect of online anonymity does seem to, as far as they're saying, complicate some real investigations that might be taking place, but I don't think that the benefits that...
	Online anonymity adds to people and gives to people should be stripped away on those bases.
	That's just a sad fact of life that these things are going to be difficult to solve, but you shouldn't punish the rest of society on the basis of a few bad actors.
	No, and especially given that there are several things which are very, very frightening to say as a person on public display.
	And for as long as you have, I don't know, particular interest groups, you know, giving death threats towards people, there's always going to be, well at least at this point, a moral case for anonymity pertaining on social media.
	And there's also the question of when they refer to certain investigations, when we see what happened to people like Count Dankula, I don't know about Spain's potential hate speech laws for online speech, but if it's anything like in the UK, what they mean by investigations is presumably some random guy called me a dick.
	On Facebook, therefore I need him to be arrested, him or her.
	Which, I don't trust governments to have that sort of power, personally, that's just me.
	How this could be abused as a means of political...
	Suppression.
	Suppression is extremely frightening.
	This is a step in a worrying direction.
	Yeah, and then we've also got in France, Prime Minister Jean Castex stated last year that he was not a fan of anonymity online.
	Well, I don't care if you're a fan of it or not.
	He claimed it distorted online political debate.
	Fair.
	I mean, you can claim it, but that doesn't make it true.
	You can call someone all kinds of names, accuse them of all kinds of vices by hiding behind pseudonyms.
	I mean, governments call people all kinds of names all day anyway, so the fact that you're not Anonymous doesn't stop people from doing that.
	To be fair, that is true.
	It does cause people to say very, very silly things, but how many people actually seriously listen to those people when they're just being blindly stupid or hateful?
	Well, apparently some communities do, according to Preeti Patel, but they need to toughen up, I would say.
	So, in these conditions, social networks are the Vicky regime.
	Nobody knows who it is.
	Previously as well, President Emmanuel Macron had proposed that people convicted of hate speech crimes should be banned from using social media entirely.
	Once again, with the very fluid nature of what a hate crime can be, with the very nebulous nature of what a hate crime could be, that's just an open license for governments to be able to ban whatever they want.
	If you're saying something that we don't like, get off.
	That is the most Robespierre thing Emmanuel Macron has said to this day.
	If we move along, you may remember this out there, which is Katie Price's ridiculous petition to make verified ID a requirement for opening a social media account.
	She puts here in the description, make it a legal requirement when opening a new social media account to provide a verified form of ID. Where the account belongs to a person under the age of 18, verify the account with the ID of a parent slash guardian to prevent anonymised harmful activity, providing traceability if an offense occurs, and this is primarily because, as she states down here, my son Harvey is disabled.
	He's also the kind and gentle son of a person regularly in the public eye.
	The Online Harms Bill doesn't go far enough in making online abuse a specific criminal offence and doing what Harvey's law intended.
	So because of the fact that I'm publicly visible and my son gets made fun of means that you should get arrested for making fun of my son is what that comes across as.
	Pretty much.
	And once again, you can see there on the screen that almost 700,000 signatures.
	It's just what happens when people get caught up in the emotion of it all.
	People are very easily triggered by what they could see as perceived harm.
	So they perceive someone like Harvey as being bullied as being some kind of great harm.
	And they'll just click and sign their signature on this petition, which I don't know if it's actually been debated yet, although to be fair...
	I haven't heard about it, but it's...
	Given everything that's going on, I wouldn't be surprised if they were just like, yes!
	This is just what we were looking for.
	We can all agree that bullying is bad, and bullying Harvey on the grounds of his disability is, of course, terrible, but what is this actually...
	What is this going to do for him?
	Is it going to stop him from being bullied, or are they actually going to find a more inventive way of doing it?
	Is it going to fix his disability?
	No.
	Sadly, those things are going to be things that people will pull him up on, whether justified or not.
	But yeah, and this is now extending even further in the extension of the online safety bill.
	So here we've got politics for all the so-called Twitter pylons will be made a criminal offence in the new online safety bill.
	This is taken from an article from The Times, so if we move along to that article, I'll go over it in a little bit more detail.
	So the proposed law change will shift the focus onto the harmful effect.
	Of a message, rather than if it contains indecent or grossly offensive content, which is the present basis for assessing its criminality.
	So great, we're going from one incredibly nebulous metric of what is harm to another.
	So the harmful effect I could, you know, you could have two 12-year-olds on social media, which you shouldn't keep your kids off of social media, but you could have two 12-year-olds on social media.
	So one sends over, you're a smelly poopy head.
	And the other one starts crying.
	I mean, do you count that as a harmful effect?
	Like, psychologically speaking, you could make that claim.
	You could make that claim.
	So once again, these kinds of nebulous grey area terms are never a good thing.
	I mean, Dank always goes on about how the government loves a good grey area because it lets them, you know, play around in it.
	A new offence of threatening communications will target messages and social media posts that contain threats of serious harm.
	It would be an offence where somebody intends a victim to fear the threat will be carried out.
	A knowingly false communication offence will be created that will criminalise those who send or post a message they know to be false with the intention to cause emotional, psychological or physical harm to the likely audience.
	Government sources gave the example of anti-vaxxers spreading false information that they know to be untrue.
	So this is where the political angle of it becomes incredibly, incredibly obvious because...
	Not to go into too many details, the governmental position and the expert position over stuff like anti-vaxxers has shifted many times over the course of the past two years almost, so it just seems another way for the government to suppress the speech of those that they disagree with.
	It's such a specific example that makes me sort of narrow my eyes a little bit.
	Hmm.
	And then you've got, it follows on down here, the new offences will include so-called pylons where numbers of individuals join others in sending harassing messages to a victim on social media.
	So this is just another case of, well, if you're on Twitter and you say something dumb...
	And everybody responds to you and piles on.
	How many of them are liable for whatever psychological harm or damage is done to you?
	This seems like...
	This honestly seems like MPs are like, I don't like people calling out my bad takes on Twitter.
	So let's just make it illegal to call out my bad takes on Twitter.
	Because that is something that does happen, especially with UK MPs, very often.
	You know what Xi Jinping did when people keep calling him Winnie the Pooh?
	Oh yeah.
	He banned Winnie the Pooh.
	Oh yeah, this is very much Xi kind of behaviour.
	And also, if you were able to retroactively apply this sort of stuff, say if it went in America, how many people who piled onto every single tweet that Donald Trump posted, for instance, would be liable for the so-called damage that they caused him because they piled on?
	It seems absolutely ridiculous, all this.
	So pylon's actually going to be a currency for understanding the extent of a hateful comment?
	Well, I would say that being able to articulately explain why the pylon caused you great psychological harm is going to be a very valuable skill if this all gets passed.
	So yeah, and then you skip along, we've got a Bloomberg article saying Britain leads the way for reigning in Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, which realistically means Britain is leading the way for tyranny.
	So this article is very, very complimentary of everything that's going on here in the UK. Facebook Incorporated managed to distance itself from the most damning document leak in its history by renaming itself as Meta Platforms Inc.
	So we covered that in Friday's podcast if you want to take a look at that and the so-called metaverse that they're implementing.
	But that doesn't mean that it won't face greater regulatory scrutiny around the world.
	Where will it get the most heat?
	My bet is the UK. After blundering on Brexit, obligatory Brexit insult just thrown in there, The UK is moving much more effectively on a law aimed at tackling the same social media harms that were outlined by whistleblower Francis Horgan.
	The online safety bill tackles a wider range of issues than the European Union's similar proposals, and will likely come into force earlier, potentially next year.
	Yes, once again, the other thing that this, of course, damages is actual whistleblowers' ability to come out and tell the truth.
	We've seen it with a number of actual whistleblowers who come out and they suddenly become the target of media attention in a very negative light, whereas someone like Francis Horgan has just come out and said everything that the elites and everything that the mainstream media wanted to hear about Facebook, about it being a festering hive of alt-right activity just because about it being a festering hive of alt-right activity just because boomers are on Yeah.
	Because boomers are on there and they tend to be more right-wing than Gen Zs and millennials, which, big surprise, am I right?
	No surprise at all.
	Yeah, but apparently they are influencing people and pushing people in the direction of right-wing boomers.
	media sources, which, you know, great job.
	The law cleverly threads the needle between human welfare and free speech by treating social media companies as public environments, not publishers, and with the right final touches, it could be a template for other governments to follow.
	Oh, God.
	Yay!
	We're leading the way!
	This is exactly what Great Britain needs to aim for, for the future.
	I mean, what on earth is this rubbish?
	"In essence, social media companies will be required to carry out regular risk assessments on the nature of harmful content on their platforms and to take action on those harms, as well as on any prevalent illegal content.
	Communications regulator Ofcom will assess the companies on those outcomes.
	If they don't comply, the companies face multi-billion dollar fines and potentially criminal charges for executives." I don't know if you've ever worked in an organisation who were regulated by Ofcom, have you?
	I haven't.
	Well, I have when I was working for a community station back in the day.
	And Ofcom are ridiculous sticklers for what they consider to be appropriate speech and not.
	We had to stick to a ridiculous list of words that you could not use or could only use in certain contexts and all this sort of stuff.
	So it's just going to be...
	I think the regulatory...
	The amount of red tape that a regulator like Ofcom will put onto these social media platforms is going to make them unusable.
	Not that that's necessarily a bad thing that people aren't using social media, but still, I don't think that people's liberties should be stepped on.
	No, and actually, I do have experience with Ofcom not having worked for them, but as having complained to them about something that I thought should not be distributed to children.
	There was an old lady stripper on Britain's Got Talent, which was aired at, what was it, half past five in the afternoon.
	Oh, really?
	Yeah, and I basically said, like, what the hell are you doing?
	How could you authorise this?
	And their response was that it was done in good spirit.
	Okay.
	So I don't think they're the best judge of what ultimately should be purged out.
	I think Quentin Tarantino has used the argument that the bloodbaths at many of the ends of his films is mainly done in good spirit because it's fun.
	I still wouldn't necessarily show them to 5.30 on an afternoon.
	No.
	No.
	Oh, goodness.
	And then, yeah, it just finishes here.
	In other words, social media companies will have to provide much of the kind of information that Horgan leaked.
	Internal research.
	That could, for instance, be data showing that women in certain parts of the UK are more liable to read COVID misinformation.
	Okay.
	I don't know what that has to do with anything.
	People are free to seek out the sort of information that they're looking for.
	Or that certain teens are hyper-exposed to self-harming content.
	Ofcom would then tell social media firm to tweak its algorithms to change those statistics or be punished.
	So only show them what we want you to show them or else is what this is coming across as.
	And once again, the reiteration of COVID misinformation and other such things is pointing in the direction to me of just sweeping governmental control, as with lots of regulations end up being.
	And all of this, and everything off of this online safety bill, is being pushed by the UK government off of the back of Sir David Amos' murder, and it's absolutely disgraceful, and the Conservatives should be ashamed of themselves for tarnishing the man's memory with such disgraceful behaviour.
	Quite.
	Quite they should.
	Well said.
	Let's move on, because that genuinely annoyed me.
	No, let's move on.
	Unfortunately, it's something that is maybe not quite as depressing, but still depressing.
	I think this one's actually quite uplifting in how funny it is and how out of touch it is.
	It's uplifting compared to the Conservatives' attack on online anonymity.
	But in short, Colin Kaepernick, the former NFL quarterback and now political activist, is a star in a new Netflix movie about himself.
	I think this actually came out last Friday, so a lot of the clips that people have seen...
	Very, very recent.
	It's called Colin in Black and White.
	So I won't say anything more for now.
	I thought we would just play the trailer to give you a taste of what's in store.
	Since the day I was born, my passion, my love, was being a quarterback.
	Yeah!
	But what you start out as is not necessarily what you become.
	While I was in high school, I felt a lot of different emotions.
	Sometimes scary.
	Sometimes fun.
	Oh, shit.
	Oh, shit.
	Colin already got his game face on.
	It turned out my competition wasn't only on the field.
	Look, you got a ton of natural talent, okay?
	Johnson?
	He's the prototype I'm looking for.
	Growing up with white parents, I assumed their privilege was mine.
	You two good?
	Okay.
	Fine, thanks.
	Yeah, I'm good too.
	Thanks.
	Why is Nick Offerman in this?
	He was so good in Parks and Recreation.
	This actually is probably the brightest part of the trailer.
	It proceeds from here to take on a much more cryptic tone where you see Kaepernick being rejected by football teams for not having the right profile referring to his race.
	I will say, it comes across to me like fanfiction of his own life.
	He's written a fanfic of his own life, but I've never seen people make such fanfiction where they turn themselves into the victim.
	Normally it's supposed to be empowering about yourself, but no, he's the victim of our white society.
	Yes, but he is nonetheless the pioneer of the taking the knee gesture.
	Yes.
	Which represented his step into political activism on the 1st of September 2016.
	Yeah, I've covered a bit of this myself in the previous segment we've done on this, and he was the guy who, like you say, pioneered it and then it proliferated and has extended all the way, as these things always do, over to our end of Europe, where we've got things like the English football team taking the knee earlier this year as part of the Euro Cup, which was just embarrassing.
	Yeah, and it's embarrassing because they don't understand how it's politically motivated.
	I mean, given the taking of the knee gesture at the play, you know, when the US anthem is being played, is a symbolic message that transmits the idea that racial inequality and police brutality is an expression of something systemic that still pertains in the United States.
	How is that not political?
	It's incredibly political.
	And I've had to have it explained to me why it is that taking the knee is seen as a positive thing, because to a British set of eyes, it looks like submission to me.
	Generally speaking, in feudal societies, taking the knee was a sign of fealty.
	So I never understood it personally.
	It doesn't work as what it actually wants to achieve ultimately, but...
	He's actually doubling down on this narrative.
	Of course he is.
	And he's now making a somewhat bizarre claim that the legacy of the slave trade continues in the power dynamic of the NFL's draft system.
	So if we get this up here from the New York Post.
	Have we got the clip for this?
	No, this is just the...
	It's a shame.
	It's such a good clip.
	No, unfortunately not.
	We'll probably be done for copyrights.
	Oh, okay.
	Colin Caponet compares the NFL's draft process to a slave auction in his new Netflix special with black athletes in shackles and their white owners whipping them.
	The former NFL player uses the analogy in his drama series, Colin in Black and White, to depict the league's draft process and training camp.
	What they don't want you to understand, this is him being quoted now, is what's being established is a power dynamic.
	Before they put you on the field, teams poke, prod and examine you, searching for any defect that might affect your performance.
	No boundary respect, no dignity left intact.
	The Netflix special then cuts to a line of black actors playing NFL prospects For goodness sake!
	This is the exact same as being tried out to be a multi-million dollar salaried football star in America.
	Yes.
	Absolutely.
	I remember the most notable features of American slavery was the high wages and your ability to go home.
	Yeah.
	When you participate in the sports industry, you are basically subsuming yourself into an instrumental process of being judged on your physical ability to deliver a result.
	What else is physical sports, other than how well can you perform?
	It's absolutely ridiculous.
	The fact that he managed to not just say these sorts of things with a straight face, but go through the entire production of this, because he narrates the whole thing in a very self-serving way.
	Yeah, and it...
	It's ridiculous.
	And to be honest, given that, needless to say, slavery is a dark period in anyone's history where it occurs, this is actually in bad taste given the seriousness of the subject.
	For a start, it's disingenuous because not all NFL players are black.
	Not all NFL coaches are white.
	I mean, not all slaves were black, so, you know, maybe he's got a point.
	But to say this power dynamic from the slave trade carries over in the draft, which is basically their version of the transfer window, it's just ridiculous.
	When I looked into this, the director may have had something to do with this as well.
	It's kind of a docudrama, you could say, because the director has done a number of things.
	She did that film a few years ago, A Wrinkle in Time, which I don't know if you It was the one that Brie Larson went off on about in public when she was saying, like, oh, I don't care what middle-aged white men have to say about A Wrinkle in Time, so a very intersectional framework to look at it from.
	But she's also done a number of documentaries, I think I saw, scrubbed through one called Thirteenth, which was just wall-to-wall critical race theory rubbish, you know, so...
	The director of this is, I would say, in my own eyes, quite notorious for doing the sort of race-baiting, sensationalising tactics.
	Yes, and identifying a market opportunity where there is one, where people are actually buying this pseudo-progressivist nonsense.
	And Kaepernick, needless to say, is cashing in on this as well.
	Oh, he's absolutely feeding into it.
	But shall we actually see just how oppressed NFL players are?
	Oh, I can't wait.
	So let's have a look at, if we can get the next article up, which is the NFL's 25 highest paid players in 2021.
	So Patrick Mohamed, I'm really sorry if I mispronounce your name, is the highest paid player at $45 million per year.
	He's mixed race.
	That's a lot of money.
	Yes.
	Josh Allen, who's white, is second at $43 million.
	Dak Prescott is third at $40 million.
	He's black.
	They're all so oppressed.
	Deshaun Watson, again black, is fourth at £39 million.
	And Russell Winden is fifth at £35 million a year.
	He is also black.
	So three out of the five richest players in the NFL are black.
	Are black.
	And the average salary for an NFL player in general amounts to about £20m per year in salary.
	So that's just the average?
	Yeah, that's not including match bonuses, end-of-season bonuses, sponsorship, etc.
	I should have hit the gym, man.
	Jesus.
	Yeah, and the funny thing is, Kaepernick is insisting this to be a race issue.
	So just to put this into context, take a look at the demographics of the players in the league, which is here.
	So 57.5% of all of the players in the NFL are black.
	24.9% of the players are white.
	9.4% are mixed race.
	If you think about the data that we have just seen of the five highest paid players in the NFL, that is almost perfectly representative.
	That seems almost like some kind of racial disparity that I'm seeing here.
	It goes against the narrative, because the demographic of the top five highest paid players in the league represents the overall demographic of the players.
	I don't see much aiming for parity when it's the blacks who are doing well.
	And to be perfectly honest, just to make it clear, I'm happy with people being paid ridiculous amounts of money for these sports because they are such...
	High earners in terms of sales on tickets, merchandise, advertising.
	So if the players themselves are the ones drawing in that through their performance and through their personalities, then, you know, they should get a cut of that.
	I see that as fair.
	Well, the market dictates the value, doesn't it?
	Yeah, that's what I mean.
	And the players for their clubs are delivering far more than that, and so they're not...
	Wait, those salaries, were they just the salaries?
	Because I know that lots of players also get sponsorships from companies that get...
	Yeah, it's just flat salary.
	That has nothing to do with sponsorship outside of their profession.
	So that's not entirely representative of everything that they're earning.
	But in short, this is the exact outcome you would expect from a completely fair meritocratic system that conducts itself in the interest of sport.
	Absolutely.
	Yes.
	But Kaepernick is, of course, desperate enough to be trying to redefine NFL playing as slavery, as we know from the article.
	And he's trying to present it as something that disproportionately affects black people.
	And I suppose if you're going to work with this dichotomy, given that the overwhelming majority of the players are black, you could say that he has a point if you want to run with that.
	That's not to say I agree with it, but it's the narrative that he's going with.
	The thing that I can see in my head is that the director being who she is, is the sort of person who saw black people lining up to try out and thought, you know what that looks like to me?
	Slave market.
	And that was as far as the thought process went, I would imagine.
	You know what he has in mind here?
	Because, of course, this is a power dynamic between the coaches and the players, is the ethnicity of the coaches.
	So if we can actually get the next one up...
	Yes, so first we're going to start with how much coaches earn for a start, compared to the players.
	They earn...
	The wealthiest coach, Bill Belichick, earns £12 million a year.
	Dollars a year.
	Yeah, so they're not even paid anywhere near as much as the players are.
	In the analogy, these are the slave owners.
	Okay.
	I remember all of those wealthy plantation owners who were so much more destitute than their slaves.
	My God.
	Yes, exactly.
	If this is the narrative that you're going to be selling to future generations, or notably, so is the African-American children, about the awful conditions that they historically endured, are they not going to come to the wrong conclusion that actually slavery sounds kind of great?
	Just in case, it was not.
	Of course it wasn't.
	But the fact of the matter is, this narrative is being peddled, that this ongoing relationship between the slave trader and the slaves is somehow represented by this division of labour.
	You are right.
	I do feel bad for any kind of child watching that who may...
	Have, as a result, a completely distorted view on the world, but that's just basically what critical race theory and other such post-modern theories are trying to do anyway.
	Yeah, well, this is literally what Kaepernick is trying to do.
	Oh, yeah.
	I mean, it sounded stupid the second that it came out of my mouth, but what else is he trying to do here?
	He's seriously trying to claim that players that earn, what is it, on average...
	40 million, 20 million on average.
	40 million dollars are somehow slaves to those who actually earn far, far less, and who...
	Yes.
	Because they're white, they've somehow, to him, got some investments in perpetuating this power dynamic that Diane Abbott continues to believe is true.
	I mean, maybe he's been using Diane Abbott-esque maths to figure out these salary disparities.
	Yeah.
	Well, he's clearly using Diane Abbott logic, and needless to say, I don't think we have to spend too much time analysing exactly what that is.
	But if we could actually get up this article, which is about the coaching diversity problem, which basically addresses precisely why so many coaches happen to be white.
	Oh, yeah.
	Put simply, it's...
	The article itself says, ultimately, that it's got very, very...
	They don't think...
	FiveThirtyEight themselves say that they don't think it's because there is some intentionality in preventing...
	Black players who either don't make it or retire from reaching these high-level positions.
	I imagine, not that I'm any expert, that a lot of these coaches are players who have reached past the age where they can perform at their peak and decide to return back and retire into some kind of...
	Or they never make it into the professional game.
	What ultimately seems to be happening is that whereas if you're white and you're just not good enough...
	More of those rejects, white rejects, tend to pursue coaching careers, whereas those who are black do not choose to do other things.
	And you've got this disproportionate outcome where you've got more coaches who are white.
	And it's the result of a free and meritocratic system where what you get out of it is what you put It's quite simply a non-sequitur to say that just because there is a disproportionate outcome of one race over another in different sectors, that that is representative of a serious problem of racial prejudice.
	And to contrive a narrative in the way that he has in virtue of the outcome...
	And also coaching, I would imagine, especially if you're picking the players for a team, requires different skills than being on the field.
	So it would be a case of maybe you're not the best on the field, but you're really perceptive at choosing people who are great on the field and then coaching them to their best.
	So it's all a part of skills.
	I'm going to have to wrap up because, of course, there's a lot of content that I aim to get through here.
	But in short, I think we can both agree that the movie, at least, I mean, I hope that it's better than it sounds, but it's pretty much an insult.
	Oh, I've seen some clips from it that don't give me that impression at all.
	It sounds to me like a little bit of an insult to those who endured the genuine horrors of slavery.
	And it's just another case of, needless to say, as I would argue, not sure how you think about this, but corporate capitalism's annexation and fetishisation of a genuine social problem that once existed.
	I don't know what I would comment on the corporate capitalism.
	I would say that companies like Netflix, you can see what's happened over the past few weeks with the Dave Chappelle transgender issues.
	Yeah.
	- It's got nothing to do with raising awareness about social justice or racial injustice because it's so misguided.
	This is all about money.
	It's an attempt from Kaepernick and Netflix to profit off of the back of perpetuating a false narrative about race that Black Lives Matter ultimately want to reify the entire world with. - Yeah, well, I mean, I think Kaepernick is probably to a certain extent a true believer because he is a fan of like post-colonial theory and he's involved in all these filmmakers who make critical race theory influenced documentaries.
	And then Netflix itself is, as I say, infiltrated by overbearingly woke staff members.
	You'd still hope that for all of the interest in those, I would argue, bigoted ideas, he would have come up with a better analogy than the draft system as an expression of...
	White supremacy continuing to sustain itself.
	At the end of the day, he was being paid for playing football, not for his political opinions, although to be honest, his political activism has seemed to be very lucrative as it stands.
	How popular this docudrama will be in the end, I don't know.
	Netflix has more than enough money backing it to sort of absorb any costs that it may not get them.
	Yeah, and there are more deplorably awful shows than this as well on Netflix.
	Yeah, but that's a different segment entirely there.
	Quite, yeah.
	But yeah, that is Colin Kaepernick making a fool of himself whilst making an awful lot of money off of it as well, I imagine.
	Almost certainly.
	So...
	Let's take a look at what's going on at the Virginia gubernatorial race.
	So, those of you who have been watching over the past few days may have known that I covered this, a little bit of it, last week because as of today, I believe, November the 2nd on Tuesday, is when the votes are going to be cast for who is going to end up as the next governor of Virginia.
	And the race is currently down to the two primary candidates who are Glenn Youngkin running for the Republican Party and Terry McAuliffe running for the Democratic Party.
	Terry McAuliffe has actually been the Democratic governor of Virginia previously.
	I don't know what led to him not being the governor from 2017-2018 onwards, but he is running for it again and they have had Democratic governance in that time with a different governor whose name eludes me at the moment.
	And as far as everyone can tell, the election seems to be sort of taking the temperature of the nation on the popularity of Joe Biden's presidency as it stands at the moment.
	So here we can see on NBC News that Biden's approval rating is down again.
	So it's not boding well for people liking the Democrats at the moment.
	Yes!
	A majority of Americans now disapprove of President Joe Biden's performances, while half give him low marks for competence and uniting the country, according to results from the latest national NBC News poll.
	What's more, the survey finds that 7 in 10 adults Including almost half of Democrats believe the nation is heading in the wrong direction, as well as nearly 60% who view Biden's stewardship of the economy negatively just nine months into his presidency.
	And you can see there that his approval rating has been steadily dropping very consistently.
	And it's not even just that his approval rating has been dropping, it's that his disapproval rate has been growing.
	It's not that there are more people who are like, eh, I don't really care that much.
	It's more people who end up going, no, I really dislike him.
	We outright hate what you're doing.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I mean, when you've got record inflation, infrastructure bills that are skyrocketing into the cost of trillions of dollars, and barely anybody knows really what's in them because they're like 1,500 pages long, and then with that comes ever, ever expanding encroachment of the government into your personal life, it's not really that surprising to me that people aren't that happy with this performance.
	That he made one of the worst geopolitical decisions any leader of the free world has made.
	Oh, absolutely.
	And here's just a reminder of what we covered last week regarding this.
	I don't know if you've seen this image, Tom.
	I have the displeasure of...
	Well...
	For context of this, what this is is a book called Genderqueer that was being stocked in school libraries in Virginian public schools that could be accessed by children as young as 11.
	It was the memoir of the writer whose name I can't remember.
	She is, of course, a queer person who decided that a comic book about her own sexual activities Is what she wants to release and then the schools decided this is perfect for our education.
	I don't know what this is going to do in terms of providing educational value for the students, but hey-ho.
	And here's Terry McAuliffe commenting on it when Glenn Youngkin was rightfully calling them out for feeding this sort of thing to children.
	Glenn is spending the final days of his campaign focusing on banning award-winning books from our schools and silencing the voices of black authors.
	You probably can't see it in this, but he has used, of course, capital B black because they are their own voter block at this point.
	It's more than just an immutable characteristic.
	It's part of your indelible identity now.
	So he's trying to downplay exactly what the books are.
	There is another book called Beloved, which is a bit more contentious on whether or not parents should let their kids read it or not.
	But I think we can all agree that this is not appropriate for children.
	Yeah, I think we can all agree that this is just as damaging for black children as it is for anyone else's children, so the point doesn't.
	Back in 2017, McAuliffe himself vetoed a bill that would allow parents of students to be able to have a say in what kind of educational materials, including books, that their kids can get a hold on.
	So he does not want you to be able to say no to this sort of stuff.
	And there's also the question, it's not banning the book if you just don't stock it in schools.
	People can still go out and buy it in their day-to-day life if you want to.
	But of course, then there's the question, if this wasn't being fed to impressionable schoolchildren, would anybody actually read this?
	And there are other issues that we can find with Democrats educating your children in the state.
	So if we move along, John.
	So we can see here, if you scroll down a little bit, James Lindsay on Twitter had gotten into a little bit of an altercation with, a verbal altercation with someone.
	Scroll down a little bit further for me, so we can see, yeah, Jud Legum here had been asking James for some kind of evidence that they were teaching critical race theory in K-12 schools.
	And if you scroll up, James pointed out this document that he found from the, let me just see here, the Virginia Department of Education, which talks about racist ideas, which cites Ibram X. Kendi, who I covered on the podcast yesterday, who claims not to be a critical race theorist, but is heavily influenced by critical race theory.
	And you can see there in the red circle, he has circled it up, that they have a definition of white supremacy, which explicitly states that it's drawing from critical race theory.
	So, of course, this is exactly what kids are being, this is the sort of things that people are being taught in these K-12 schools.
	And then there's also other influence of critical race theory in not just the way that these kids are being taught, but the choice of their teachers as well.
	And we've got a clip, if you move along, of him where he says you've got Christopher F. Rufo, who's great on Twitter, I recommend you follow him, calling out Tony McAuliffe closing his campaign with the message that there are too many white teachers in Virginia and he wants to reduce the number of white teachers in order to make everybody feel comfortable.
	John, if you want to play that clip just so we can all hear it for ourselves.
	And I promise you, we've got to diversify our teacher base here in Virginia.
	50% 50% of the students at Virginia schools K-12, 50% are students of color, and yet 80% of the teachers are white.
	We all know what we have to do in a school to make everybody feel comfortable in school.
	So let's diversify.
	So here's what I'm going to do.
	We'll be the first state in America.
	If you'll teach for five years here in Virginia in a high-demand area, let it be geographic or coursework, We will pay room, board, and tuition at any college, any university, any HBCU here in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
	Or maybe what's good for children is not to make everything an issue about race.
	Exactly.
	And maybe also what's good for children and what will make people more comfortable is not stocking it full of perverted memoirs.
	Just a bit.
	It really confuses me, but he says there, you know, we know what we need to make people feel comfortable, which is racial parity with the students for some reason.
	I would say what's best for people's education is hiring teachers on merit, their ability to teach and to handle a classroom professionally and get kids enthusiastic about learning.
	And honestly, it doesn't matter what race or ethnicity you are.
	And clamping down on teachers who are smuggling in material, that is explicitly corruptive.
	Well, the thing is, I don't think that was smuggled in.
	That was being openly displayed at university, well, not universities, at schools, for kids to just find and read themselves.
	Okay, I didn't know that.
	It's very, very strange.
	Worse than I thought, then.
	Terry McAuliffe has some other problems, which is that he seems to keep lying about COVID figures.
	Now, YouTube, we are trying to stick to the rules here, so we are trying to be as accurate as possible with the figures that we get, so we are just reporting on what we're finding here.
	Through the information and through fact-checkers, and including the Washington Post, who I'm sure you're fine with.
	So, you know, hand on heart, we're doing our best here.
	So Terry McAuliffe, as you can see here through this post on Gab, has falsely claimed again that today 1,142 children of our children...
	Sorry, this is written very strangely.
	Sorry, I wrote it down wrong.
	1,142 of our children have been hospitalised with COVID. For the week that ended in October 23, the real figure was 19 children who were in hospital with COVID. Very strange, and they point out what kind of politician lies about children being in the hospital.
	So he is inflating the numbers in some way according to this.
	I don't know exactly how.
	Some overshoot.
	It seems that this is so obvious that even the Washington Post is calling him out on it.
	Now, I found this article through US Presidential Election News, because the Washington Post article itself was behind a paywall, but I can go into some of the details here.
	So, it says here, the Washington Post, a liberal paper which has endorsed McAuliffe, finally took notice and scored his COVID lies a whopping four Pinocchios.
	I kind of like that they're scoring it in Pinocchios, but okay.
	We first became interested in this issue when McAuliffe, in the second and final debate on September 28th, said that there were 8,000 coronavirus cases yesterday in Virginia.
	He then repeated the statement the next day and a week later on October 7th.
	But when we checked the records, you had to go back to January to find a single day when a combination of confirmed and probable cases in Virginia got close to 8,000.
	On September 27, there were fewer than 2,000 confirmed cases.
	Repeating numbers that are easily checked is just dumb politics and perhaps lazy campaigning.
	However, it doesn't look good when you want to be the one in charge of the state's COVID policies, but you appear to be mistaken or lying about the current numbers.
	So this is so obvious that even the Washington Post, who you would expect to be shilling as hard as possible for McAuliffe, are calling him out for it.
	And they continue here.
	And what about McAuliffe's October 7th comment that 1,142 children were in ICU beds?
	That number seemed totally off-kilter.
	For the week that ended October 2nd, the number of children in hospitals, not necessarily intensive care, was just 35.
	The McAuliffe campaign said that he simply misspoke.
	Okay, we moved on.
	But then he said it again on October 21st.
	We've just got 1,142.
	So he has continued to use the same number for some reason.
	I don't know if he's got the wrong information and just hasn't bothered to fact-check it.
	But he says, we've got that amount of children in hospitals, in ICU beds, and that was still wrong.
	On that day, there were only 334 people of all ages, so that's total, in ICU beds in Virginia, according to the state health department data.
	So this is also obvious, once again, that the Washington Post are able to call him out on it, which is very good of them, to be perfectly honest, more than I would expect.
	And he is obviously seeming to inflate the numbers for the purpose of scare tactics and scaremongering, because I believe that Youngkin has stated as part of his campaign for the gubernatorial election that he would potentially be pulling back on some of the COVID because I believe that Youngkin has stated as part of his campaign for the gubernatorial election that he would potentially be pulling back on some of the COVID restrictions in the state, which just seems like a reasonable thing to do for me, because Republicans, which just
	So, yeah, and then you move on, and there's some even more damning things have been coming to light in regards to the way the Democrats have been playing with the election, which is in the final few days before the election,
	a bunch of people here, if you scroll down to that image, a bunch of people here, if you scroll down to that image, showed up in Charlottesville, outside of Youngkin's campaign trail, dressed with white shirts, these hats and sunglasses, khakis, with tiki which, for anybody familiar with what happened in Charlottesville back in 2017, is obviously trying to reference back to the fact that, you know, there was the big, there was the grand showing of people throwing up and throwing Nazi solutions.
	These are Putin levels of electioneering now.
	I know, this is pretty impressively transparent.
	Almost literally, because it's raining and you can see the shirts underneath.
	Yeah, the other thing is they've got a black guy with them.
	If they were white supremacists, how likely would it be that they've just got one black guy with them?
	Very strange choice optically, but I don't know necessarily if these were supposed to be actively trying to perform as legitimate white supremacists, or if it was just an optics thing so that they could be like, hey, remember that this happened?
	Oh, you don't want to vote for the Republicans because this will happen all over again, and here we are to remind you.
	Maybe the whole thing's ironic, but I can't see...
	It would be almost out of character with the Democrats' strategy, wouldn't it?
	Yeah, I mean, honestly, if this was supposed to be some kind of legitimate psyop, these guys are radioactive.
	They're glowing that bright.
	But I do think it seems to have just been one of those situations where they were just like, let's remind people of what happened a few years ago.
	But the problem is that the people who dressed up seem to have gotten caught and called out on their private social media.
	If you put...
	Pull this up now.
	I'm not doing this to dox anybody, and I'm not entirely sure, looking at the images, whether this is the same guy or not, but people seem to have pointed out that the financial director for the Young Virginia Democrats has put his account as private after having been exposed for posing as one of these fake white supremacists.
	And it doesn't look great that he's gone private on this.
	No, it looks somewhat suspicious.
	Yeah, and the Young Virginia Democrats are an activist group, so it does seem that it might be the guy, but don't harass these people, folks.
	It might be a case of mistaken identity, but it is a little bit suspicious.
	And then a few days later, if we skip along again, the Lincoln Project just came out and outright admitted that they organised this.
	Yeah, so the Anti-Republican Political Action Committee, the Lincoln Project, claimed responsibility on Friday for a stunt which involved drag activists dressing up as tiki torch carrying white nationalists in a bid to link the Virginia GOP gubernator candidate Glenn Youngkin to racist views.
	The group of five people stood outside Youngkin's campaign bus during an event in Charlottesville, the site of the deadly Unite the Right rally in August 2017.
	In one of the defining images of that event, rally organizer Jason Kessler led a tiki torch wielding a mob On a march through the grounds of the University of Virginia in an attempt to echo Nazi torchlight parades.
	Friday's group, which included an African-American man, which everybody's noticed at this point, were wearing white button-down shirts and khakis, the outfit worn by some of the white nationalists who attended the rally.
	We're all in for Glenn, members of the group said, according to an NBC29 reporter.
	Youngkin himself suggested that his Democratic opponent was behind the demonstration telling NBC29, I think they work for Terry McAuliffe, and I'm sure he sent them.
	They'll do anything to win, and he's doing anything to win, and so he's paying people to show up and act silly at our rallies.
	Very perceptive, absolutely true.
	Of course it was.
	I mean...
	Who's asked him to condemn it?
	Why is this?
	Obviously, he is a Republican.
	He does not support people showing up to his rallies and throwing Nazi symbols and Nazi salutes and supporting actual white supremacy.
	Not the critical race theory idea of white supremacy, that is.
	Actual white supremacy.
	Actual contempt for someone's skin colour.
	Yeah, obviously he does not support those things.
	Donald Trump did not support those things, but people are still trying to call him out for it.
	And this just appears to have been, in the end, an epic self-own, and it shows how deceitful and deceptive they are happy to be in their campaign tactics.
	And do you want this kind of deception running your state?
	And then just as another reminder, so we've got the real-time polls, as far as I can tell, up here.
	If you scroll down to the graph, it might make it a bit clearer for people watching.
	So you can see there the red line, of course, is Youngkin for the Republicans, blue line McAuliffe.
	For the most part, during the campaigns, it seemed that McAuliffe had a pretty steady lead against him.
	Until you just get to this little bit at the end here, where all of a sudden, Youngkin overtakes him.
	So he's currently leading at 48.5 to 46.8 in the polls.
	Whether that'll translate to an election win, we don't know necessarily yet.
	But if you're out in Virginia, get out today and get voting, because you have the chance to change your state from democratic governance, which is hard for what, like...
	Probably 12 years at this point, I believe.
	Back to Republicans.
	And honestly...
	Why do you want the Democrats running your state when we've just shown you everything that they're up to at the moment?
	Whatever your political persuasion, why would you want a compulsive liar, an electioneerer?
	Yes, who will push race baiting and perversion on your children in the schools and will happily do so.
	So, yeah, get out and let your voices be heard.
	And I think with that we should move on to the video comments.
	Let's do it.
	Let's take a look.
	Hey, Lotus Eaters.
	I just wanted to say that I quite enjoyed the little Zoom chat that we had last week.
	There was one thing that I wanted to bring up that I couldn't because we were running out of time.
	Recently in the Victorian Parliament, they weren't allowing members to attend Parliament meetings unless they show their vaccination passports which several members outright refused to show.
	And couldn't you blame them?
	No.
	No, I can't blame them.
	I mean, complying is not what I would suggest people do if you want to actually push back against any of this effectively.
	So if people are pushing back against it in any way they can, great!
	I've had the vaccine to be sure, but on principle I won't be using a vaccine passport because the whole thing is as draconian as anything I've ever seen.
	Absolutely.
	I've not had it myself, but that's because of the fact I don't really feel it's necessary for someone of my age and fitness to be able to have to have it.
	And even if I did have it, I don't want to give my passport out.
	And once again, I don't condemn anybody who has had it.
	You make your own decisions.
	That's fair play.
	Just don't force those decisions on me.
	No real question tonight.
	I'm drinking...
	It's my birthday.
	Good for you.
	Happy birthday.
	Ah, happy birthday.
	Well, that was just kind of nice.
	Well, thank you, small L Libertarian.
	Godspeed.
	The 98 by Mawsey Prite.
	And these rebel groups aren't going to fix things.
	There are too many of them with too many different ideas and too many ambitious leaders who would backstab each other.
	They may be united against you but the minute they overthrow you they just start fighting each other and we're right back to where we started.
	The first half of the book is inspired by the West Africa Squadron and a man trying to build trust with the crew and the second is an escape from a monster planet.
	Recommended.
	Very interesting.
	Yeah, sounds fun.
	Sounds good.
	If that sounds interesting to any of you out there, maybe give it a read.
	My dad works as a general contractor for the city.
	He's been doing renovations and maintenance for the housing for disabled people for the city for almost 20 years now.
	And on the 15th, then he's going to be losing his job because he's not getting the vaccine.
	And, yeah.
	He's gonna land on his feet.
	He's a remarkably talented and capable man, but yeah, this is madness.
	Absolutely agree there.
	The fact that that is happening to him is really terrible.
	I'm glad to hear that you're expecting him to land on his feet, but it shouldn't happen to him in the first place.
	But men of great resources will always end up landing on their feet, so good luck to him, and screw those people doing that to him.
	I second each and every part of that, and I'm just glad that his dad's in a position to be on his feet.
	Regrettably, there are going to be many people who aren't, Yeah.
	And are actually going to be pushed to the poverty line because of this.
	It's disgusting to be quite frank.
	Almost certainly, but if people do do that, I respect them for sticking to their convictions.
	Yeah, as do I. I am rather disappointed in you.
	You even had Harry on, who was responsible for your segment on American Comics.
	That you didn't address the actual point of my last comment.
	So I guess I have to make it more obvious.
	This is what we call a parallel.
	The author is definitely sad about the state of current American comics and feels robbed of something.
	And at this point I'm convinced that he didn't put it in entirely by accident.
	Fair play, absolutely.
	I am in complete agreement that there are plenty of people involved in the Western comics industry who are not happy with how it's going, which is why you should absolutely go out and support independent comic creators, because Marvel and DC certainly aren't putting out anything that's doing it for most people.
	The entire Western comics industry...
	As far as Marvel and DC and other such companies are concerned, are being outsold by one manga.
	So go out and support the independent comics who are actually making stuff that you want to read.
	Yeah.
	Do you have any books I can buy?
	Do we have any books?
	Not yet.
	I have my dissertation that you can download.
	Please don't read it.
	It's shocking.
	I've also got my dissertation right here.
	Do you think people would like copies of this?
	Let me know.
	Well, the site to remind everybody is cscooper.com.au if you're interested in getting the book.
	So, check it out.
	Yeah, and read his dissertation.
	I don't know what it's about, but I'm sure it's better than mine.
	Oh, don't put yourself down so much, Tom.
	Don't apologize for anything you post.
	I mean, like, if I was that concerned about being, you know, poked fun at or mocked online, I wouldn't post anything online.
	So I need some advice.
	When I move out with my boyfriend, he really wants me to go back to school and get a bachelor's degree.
	I don't really want to.
	I just lost all faith in the college system nowadays, and I don't want to do any sort of critical race theory or any of that nonsense.
	Especially when I'm about to pay thousands upon thousands of dollars for it.
	So what do you think I should do or say?
	Hmm.
	This is my coca look.
	I don't blame you.
	At all.
	But the sad thing is I can't see how we can overcome this problem without adopting a bottom-up strategy.
	Yeah, I mean, I agree there with the fact that if we abandon the universities altogether, then we're just ceding that ground to the leftists.
	Oh, excuse me, sorry.
	Yeah, we're just ceding that ground to them, which is not a desirable result, as far as I'm concerned.
	But at the same time, they are...
	I mean, in the UK, we have government loans that you can get so that you can pay for your university costs.
	I don't know what it's like in America, but I am aware that university on average costs like in the tens of thousands of dollars over there.
	So it is a risk, but I say that would be more to do with choosing the right degree and choosing the right area, checking out the right universities to see if you can find one that doesn't seem to be infected properly.
	And you're still at university, aren't you?
	I am, yes.
	How would you say that your course is in terms of woke ideas, is it?
	Well, my master's course was extremely analytic, so we didn't so much engage with...
	I suppose the sociological things that wokists are interested in, we look at things more from a pure conceptual level, and my brand of critical theory is very different to what most people understand as critical theory, but the Uni of York in general is actually more robust than most unis at combating this, mainly because of its red-brick status.
	So yeah, just to pick up the Uni of York there, but I'm afraid that can't be said of other universities.
	Yeah, so pick and choose your university wisely and pick and choose your course wisely.
	Generally speaking, if it's a sociology degree, maybe just give it a miss.
	Yeah, but no, on a serious note, do check the libraries, because I would be very, very surprised if what you showed earlier is the only case.
	I'm sure they're filled with intersectional rubbish, but let's move on to the next comment.
	Tony D and Little Joan with another Legend of the Pines from Weird New Jersey Magazine, The Parkway Phantom of Exit 82.
	This is a ghost that haunts the Garden State Parkway around Tom's River area.
	This is a road that goes along the east coast of New Jersey down south.
	And it's very strange.
	This is an article from 59 of people going to see it.
	Apparently the ghost appears as a naked female ghost that floats over the road.
	Easily the most New Jersey ghost I've ever heard of.
	And that will explain why they're all men looking for it.
	Yeah, where is she?
	Where is she?
	Now, that's a really cool story.
	I mean, I'm interested in all the ghostly occurrences.
	And if you're interested, you should check out Tom's premium contemplations that he did with Josh over the weekend talking about parapsychology and trying to explain why some people see ghosts and other such paranormal events.
	But that was a really interesting story.
	Thanks.
	So why not go nuclear?
	Well, because going nuclear would actually solve the problem with carbon emissions.
	And then you can't leverage it against the working class and for your own benefit.
	You can't leverage for control.
	And these are the same people who've been running the code experiment for the last few years, which really was just an experiment of obedience.
	Let's give them zero benefit of the doubt.
	These are the same people who are trying to take away parental rights and yet manage to revolve the entire philosophical discussion in the West around the least significant social issue we can have, possibly have a discussion on.
	The trans issue.
	Well, it took me a moment to catch on to what you were saying properly there because of how quickly you were speaking.
	But yeah, I mean, if you're referring to COP26 and what's going to go on there, I have no doubt that all of the solutions proposed are just going to involve more government interference into people's everyday lives and not actually propose anything remotely practical.
	More discussions which we need to have.
	Oh yes, we need to have discussions about having discussions which we can later have chats about and then ponder and then maybe think about having a conversation about it in the future.
	Somewhere off in the distance.
	How did we end up here?
	The lies.
	The division.
	And for some, they embrace it.
	But this election isn't about them.
	It's about us.
	Together, we can build a better future that works for us.
	This is our moment.
	On November 2nd, a new day begins.
	Glenn Young can hail straight down Virginia.
	Yep.
	Yep.
	I don't often do many endorsements, but I endorse Glenn Youngkin for Virginia Governor just because Terry McAuliffe seems like a clown.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, you saw that clip of him dancing with Biden.
	Good God.
	A few moments later...
	Wait, yes!
	Oh my god!
	I guess the battle for Carl's soul has been won then.
	Yes.
	I don't know.
	So...
	I guess God has forsaken Carl.
	All right, then.
	Let's move on to the viewers' comments that we've got here.
	So, Robert Miller says, regarding the death of an MP being used to enforce online tyranny, reminds me of Churchill's quote, which I seem to be using every day these days, never let a good crisis go to waste...
	Absolutely.
	I mean, the Conservatives doing what they're doing currently is disrespectful, shockingly disgusting to me, but sadly not a bit out of step with what they normally get up to.
	You know before, there was the huge ISIS attack in Paris, and very shortly after that there was the legislation for secret courts.
	Where am I? They always seem to find a way to sneak in something that they're already planning on after these kinds of events.
	Was that in the pipeline in the same way?
	Almost certainly.
	I feel like they've probably got a contingency of bills and other such things that they're just waiting for the right crisis to stamp it on, you know?
	That's just my opinion though, so I can't really back that up.
	Anyway, Tiber Fett says, those on the side of the powers that be never need to worry about being anonymous.
	This only serves the left.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, you could say the same about the femcel and the incel thing as well.
	Oh, yeah, we were discussing that earlier.
	The femcels get much better treatment than any incels.
	Femcels are poor, oppressed people being stepped on by society, whereas incels are evil domestic terrorists.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, double standard in plain sight there.
	That Island guy says, Twitter pylons banned T.R.A. Blueticks and their minions most affected.
	Exactly.
	In all seriousness, the wording of the online safety bill is so vague, perhaps deliberately so, as to be unenforceable.
	How can any court in the land prove beyond reasonable doubt the intent to cause psychological harm unless it's explicitly stated?
	However, it will frighten sufficient numbers of people into silence.
	And that's the thing.
	I do think it's mainly for frightening, but also the fact that it is so vague means that whether or not they can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt is not the intention.
	I mean, Count Dankula got fined and he made a meme.
	Yeah, and on the last podcast that I did, we mentioned about the gender equality as to how vague that is.
	It does seem to be that ambiguity is very much the...
	Yeah, it's very much the, I suppose, thing with which to pursue if you've got a political agenda that you have in mind, I guess.
	Yeah.
	Michael Megois, I don't know if I've said that right, or Megois, said, did elected officials just realise they're generally loathed by the general public?
	Almost certainly, because people on Twitter do not let them forget it.
	Yeah, but let's not forget that they probably loathe the general public as well.
	Oh, absolutely.
	Anthony Parrish says, Absolutely, once again, the fact that they've just slapped this straight on to the death of David Amos.
	She's wanted this around for a long time.
	She's been talking about online anonymity for a while as well.
	Yeah, Twitter's rotted the entire public sphere, I would say.
	Twitter's rotted people's brains, which is why I'm glad that it's not.
	Twitter is not real life, thankfully, yet.
	S.H. Silver says, They all hate you and want to rule you.
	Their opposition with each other is just on who gets the reins.
	The UK needs a serious liberal alternative to challenge their hegemony.
	You can no longer be satisfied with the Tories dunking on Labour on some cultural issues when they are both marching in lockstep on the important issues regarding civil liberties.
	Sadly, there is a lot of sense in that comment.
	There is.
	How do we bypass the...
	The two-party system that we in effect have, even though it's not officially a two-party system.
	I mean, I would potentially like to see some outsider conservative or liberal parties get their foot in the door the way that UKIP seemed to be doing a few years ago, but given how the media trashed UKIP... Would you turn to PR? Which one's PR? Proportional Representation.
	I'm not that familiar on different voting systems and electoral systems.
	What proportional representation would mean is that the executive would actually reflect the demographic of votes.
	So if, for example, 30% voted for UKIP, that executive would be comprised of 30% of UKIP. So instead of doing the MP basis, how many MPs that they have in UKIP, I don't know.
	I'd need to think about that.
	But, I mean, obviously UKIP did win a sizable portion of the vote.
	It was a third of the votes in 2015, I think.
	Yeah, they were getting more and more, and then since Nigel Farage left, they just kind of tanked, as far as I'm aware, sadly.
	But Free Will 21-12...
	They'll extend their powers with help from other authoritarians like Biden, the Australian PM, and the tech giants.
	It's a worldwide push to constrain our ability to question the elite as they begin the process with military-style mobilisation, as Prince Charles put it, absolutely, of implementing the Great Reset Green agenda.
	That does seem to be what it is pushing to, as far as I can tell.
	Spadrune to Rapiers.
	She keeps her son in the public eye.
	It's a moneymaker for her.
	Harvey isn't her son, merely a tool for her to wield whatever influence she can scramble together.
	That's in reference to Katie Price.
	I mean, I don't know much about her son, but if I was her son, I would not like to be used in such a way because it is very obvious that she's just using it to stay in the public eye.
	She's not the only one who's done that either, sadly.
	Yenol's J. Mullak.
	It's amusing that they can't see how this will bite them back at a later date, probably with greater damage than to those it was meant to harm.
	I hope so.
	I hope so, but I don't necessarily...
	I mean, none of these seem to bite back to, like...
	The SNP got away with Dankula, as far as I can tell, and lots of other...
	The government gets away with most things, sadly.
	Bites back better.
	Maybe we should keep that.
	Benjamin Charles, I hope any parliamentary debate about this proposed bill is publicly broadcast, if only for the waning hope that a sane MP would stand up and shout, Did you totalitarian T-words read 1984 and think it was a how-to manual?
	They all certainly seem to have.
	HR Slave, the anti-anonymity push from conservatives is the best possible advert for a VPN anyone could have come up with.
	Almost makes me wonder if some of these Tories secretly have shares in NordVPN.
	That was a point I was actually going to make that I completely forgot to, which is, if you're in the UK and they implement these kinds of rules, will you be able to bypass them very easily just by getting a VPN and putting yourself in America, for instance?
	I mean, it works for companies like Netflix and Amazon Prime where you can access other countries' content.
	I don't know how they would enforce this in any practical way, but then again, it's never about practicality, they'll just do it anyway.
	No, so it seems.
	Student of history, every single reaction leads to one point.
	More government power and control over your mind, body and spirit.
	Funny how GB once fought the Nazis, right?
	That's depressingly true.
	Yeah.
	Alexander L., so let me get this straight.
	If I say something grossly offensive, which by definition is anything that offends many people, I've broken the law.
	But if I find something offensive, along with many other people, and we all decide to let them know, I've broken the law.
	Pretty much, I mean, offence is taken, not given.
	As with anything else.
	So it is just one of those things that's so nebulous.
	How are you going to be able to define it?
	How are you going to measure it?
	How are you going to be able to determine it in a court of law?
	But it's probably more about fines.
	You can't, but we're all capitulating to those who are doing this and politicising this in bad faith.
	Yeah.
	Henry Ashman, I find this new legislation harmful and threatening to me.
	Can I report the government to the police under this new act?
	Of course you can't.
	They would never allow that.
	"The more new legislation I see pushed through as a result of an event like the murder of Sir David, which wasn't caused by items this law will prevent, but separate issues, exactly, the more I feel that it needs to be reviewed by game theory experts or behavioural psychologists.
	Laws that affect the incentive functions of people, which if they don't align to the stated intent of the law, will lead to unexpected behaviour.
	Historic example will be the window tax, which just encouraged people to brick up windows, circumventing the point of the law." Yeah, yeah, probably.
	Might just lead people to change their names.
	Who knows what might happen.
	Or just, once again, increase stonks of NordVPN, probably.
	Rowan Alcock, whatever happened to sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
	Instead of shifting the bullying into the realms of government overreach, maybe drink a bag of cement and harden the F up.
	Though the problem with that is that words and criticism are what will damage a politician's career, so that's primarily what they're looking out for, as always, themselves.
	Just a thought.
	I'm surprised it hasn't caught on by now, at the risk of offending any aspiring Karens who might be wandering past.
	Words only have the power that you afford them.
	Wringing your hands at the management to step in and fight your battles for you, where someone else's expression is concerned, is a more damning demonstration of your own weakness than any nasty, cruel, or horrid things anyone else might say of.
	Once again, as another commenter pointed out, we fought the Nazis once, and now people are breaking just words at people and saying some nasty things to them online.
	It's pathetic.
	It is pathetic, and we need to bypass it.
	Do you want to go over your comments?
	Yes.
	So, that's Colin Kaepernick.
	Henry Ashman says, To be fair,
	I have heard from a number of people who are fans of American football say he basically wasn't very good in the first place.
	And as such, I can absolutely agree that it is probably just a case where he wanted to keep his star profile up.
	And honestly, sadly, it seems to have worked, because I imagine he's made an absolute mint from all of his grievances.
	Yeah, and he will continue to do so with this film about himself.
	Yeah.
	His fan fiction.
	So Ty Buffett says, Are the NFL a bastion of white people, not a black man in sight?
	Give me a break.
	He was at the bottom of the QB rankings, and when they were going to drop him, he suddenly became political.
	Yeah, yeah, I mean, that complements the previous point.
	It was a Hail Mary to save his career that spiralled out of control.
	Seems to have made him a lot of money, so for him, I'm sure he's very happy with the decision.
	Oh, yeah.
	And Student of History says, If Kaepernick is correct, then truly a great harm has been done by the Union.
	We've separated the slaves from all of that money, power, privilege clout and women throwing themselves at them.
	Then, yes, we have caused great harm to them.
	On a real note, the comparison is disgusting considering actual slaves still currently exist, and considering, well, shall we say, extremely privileged people as slaves is a little bit...
	It's completely out of touch, and a great term for it would be balmy, I'd say.
	And yeah, once again, if you were to try and take that comparison in any way literally, it just does not hold up in the slightest.
	No, it absolutely does not.
	An HR slave says, considering black African-American players make up 57% of the NFL, I have a hard time believing Kaepernick's encountered racial discrimination when trying to make a team.
	Anyone who follows American football knows Kaepernick was a mediocre quarterback and that's probably why he was rejected from certain teams.
	Well, I guess we can't know for sure.
	Well, I'm sure that in this fan fiction of his own life, despite also being the victim, I'm sure he's also the second coming of the Messiah or something.
	Given the opportunistic spirit that he has displayed so far, it would not be surprising that he has somewhat, I mean, shall we say, exaggerated his past so as to glorify his rise.
	Yeah.
	I wouldn't put it past him.
	No, we have to suspend judgment to a point.
	Anyway, Hammurabi VI says, Colin's a third-rate player with a fourth-rate throw, desperate for whatever attention he can get.
	Yes, absolutely.
	There's a recurring theme throughout these comments from people who are obviously much more in the know about American football than we are.
	So thank you for...
	Educating us on Colin's abilities.
	100%.
	On how mediocre he was.
	And Avatar says Colin continues to confuse skill with privilege.
	Yep.
	Thank you.
	Absolutely.
	Most critical race theorists are trying to rebrand skill and merit as privilege anyway.
	Yeah.
	Millionaire victims welcome to the loony bin, says David Shipton.
	Benjamin Charles says Colin Kaepernick can console himself by crying into a large pillowcase full of money.
	He absolutely is the gif of Woody Harrelson from Zombieland, wiping his tears away with $100 bills, isn't he?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I haven't seen Zombieland, but I can picture that being quite vivid.
	You can cry all the way to the bank.
	The Island Guy says, I'm assuming the NFL has a players' union.
	Football over here has its own players' union, which looks, yes, the PFA, which looks after the welfare of its members.
	If someone could point me in the direction of the Alabama Slaves' Union of the 1700s and their calls for members to down tools or work to rule, I'd be most obliged.
	Yeah, I mean, we have the PFA, but unfortunately they don't seem to make the best decisions on behalf of the players, not least because the players aren't that politically aware themselves.
	But anyway, a union, I suppose, could help.
	Jimbo G says, the Colin Kaepernick documentary seems exactly what some people want, an entirely synthetic and fictionalised version of events that makes them feel like they're helping the cause simply by watching it.
	I wonder what effect this sort of thing has on young African-Americans.
	Well, this is wokeness in and of itself, really.
	It's posh.
	You're not doing anything for the African-American community.
	You're not enabling them to actually help themselves.
	You're basically just claiming allegiance to their cause by posturing yourself to be within, well, on the right side.
	That's all you are doing.
	And this almost certainly does have a very negative effect on just the self-esteem of young black kids in America because of the fact that they're being told that all of society, even if you reach what could be seen as an incredibly privileged place, In that society is against you and everyone secretly hates you.
	They just don't let it be seen out in public and there's all of this shadowy going on behind your back.
	Above all else, it's an insult for the progress that the United States has actually made since it actually abolished slavery.
	Well, these people aren't looking for that kind of progress.
	They're looking for whatever progress will progress their political interests.
	Yeah, let's move on to some more comments.
	So, Student of History, in regards to the Democrats, says, Virginia Democrats couldn't pull off a proper false flag.
	They sent a black guy to false flag and alt-right support for Republicans.
	Gigi Noree.
	Absolutely.
	I don't know what they were thinking with that, to be perfectly honest.
	I mean...
	If that's the kind of governance they've been receiving, if those are the kinds of things that they're doing, then...
	Well, the only positive you could interpret from that is that at least it shows that colour blindness still exists in the Democrats to a point, but that's literally...
	Maybe, maybe not.
	Free Will 2112, don't be surprised if the Democrats win.
	You must take into account the magic ballot boxes.
	I wasn't wanting to say that during the segment itself for YouTube, but we can always count on a good dose of fortification, sadly.
	Kevin Fox, that CRT crowd, are always pushing the white supremacist thing.
	Without white supremacy, there can be no black victimhood.
	So basically, the CR crowd are shilling for the white supremacists because without them, they'll be out of a job.
	Absolutely never trust anyone to solve a problem when their ability to make money is entirely dependent on that problem existing.
	That's why the critical race theory and people like Ibram X. Kendi have never seemed genuine to me whatsoever.
	I mean, we covered yesterday, Kendi gets...
	$16,500 per lecture that he does for 45 minutes over Zoom.
	That's insane.
	Do you reckon with something that lucrative he's actually looking for a solution, or probably just trying to fan the flames of the problem, what little problem there may be?
	The best thing that can happen for him is it just goes on forever and ever and ever, and he keeps finding new oppressions to have to contest.
	Oh, exactly.
	He would be more than happy if this whole thing just got worse, because then it would increase the need for his services.
	And now we're on to the honourable mentions.
	Anonymi, stop using the word capitalist.
	It's a Marxist term and immediately puts you into their framework.
	I do agree people do use that framework.
	Tom's got a bit of a Marxist background, would you say, potentially?
	When I was on the next Bolshevik, yes.
	But I don't think Marx is the only person to use the term capitalism.
	I think he might have been one of the first people to popularise it.
	I'm pretty sure that it circulated in political economy before.
	It wouldn't be surprising to me.
	I do agree that the term free enterprise, as Carl likes to say, and that Milton Friedman preferred to refer to, is a much better one because capitalism is such a loaded term at this point, especially when it comes to, sadly, people of our generation and Gen Zers.
	Just to clarify, I think that new speak in general, as in sticking to Marxist terminology, is bad.
	But I'm afraid something else exists on the right as well.
	When, for example, when people use communists as a pejorative.
	I don't think that's as unhelpful as, for example, describing civil society as capitalism.
	It can be very unuseful to label any political opponent or anything the government does as communism.
	Well, if, for example, you call Kimberley Crenshaw a communist, I think that's actually praising her.
	Not only would she get some sense to...
	She's worse.
	I know that she's worse.
	Because at the heart of what she's trying to do is, well, there's an implicit essentialism that takes you to a far worse political system than communism.
	So that's...
	Stop flattering the self-positive Marxists, is what I would say.
	That's an interesting perspective, because I would say the pursuit for communism has created some pretty diabolical systems that have hurt a lot of people, whereas as far as it stands at the moment, thankfully critical race theory and intersectionality has not created those kinds of...
	Systems that have implemented that level of damage just yet.
	To give it time, we can always see if they'll make it even worse, but so far I don't see that having been the case.
	But it's interesting, and if you want to learn more about Tom and Carl's discussions on those sorts of things, check out the premium videos on the origins of critical theory that you guys have been doing, very interesting stuff.
	Callum Dayton says the President of France says that anyone convicted of hate speech should be banned from social media.
	Does that mean we can ban all of France then?
	If only.
	Yes.
	Brian Galpin, Tom and Harry, another great early partnership, carving your own style.
	Awesome.
	Why, thank you very much.
	I really appreciate that.
	Kind words are always welcome.
	Chris Wolf, Pitt University is requiring the remaining 3% of campus to be vaccinated by the end of the year.
	If you want a religious exemption, you have to apply for approval through the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
	The party offices are out in full force in our companies.
	I'm tired of this.
	I'm tired of picking up work for people so they can call off work and cry about depression.
	I'm done with it.
	I was depressed until COVID got me on my feet.
	Now people want to clip me at the knees because I'm strong and don't need a vaccine to help me sleep at night.
	I agree.
	Honestly, I can absolutely sympathise with you.
	For me, it was the beginning of lockdown that did push me to re-examine a lot of the behaviours that I'd fallen into and re-examine the way that I was living my life.
	And as a result of that re-examination, I came out stronger.
	So it's not fair that people should be given these excuses to let their life slip beside them when people like you or I are working so hard.
	People have got to carry their weight.
	We can't just keep making excuses for them.
	We've almost got to give them a paternalistic kick in the right direction, I think.
	Yeah.
	As nasty as that might sound.
	Free Will says, was the Kaepernick film out in time for Halloween?
	Yes, it was.
	I'm sure it got some great viewing.
	And Based Ape, God bless his soul, says, kneeling being a symbol of fealty is exactly the point.
	He wants you to view him as subservient and downtrodden, therefore deserving of being given the most That sounds fair to me.
	I have heard other people say about how it is supposed to be some kind of act of defiance, but I suppose performative subservience could be seen as an act of defiance in a sense.
	But yeah, I think that's about all we've got time for.
	Thank you all very, very much for tuning in to this episode of the podcast of The Lotuses.
	Be sure to tune in again tomorrow at one o'clock GMT so that you can see more.

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