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Nov. 18, 2021 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #266

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	Music Good afternoon and welcome to episode 266 of the podcast of the Lotus Eaters I'm your host today, Harry, alongside my co-host, my guest, John.
	Hello, Lotus Eaters.
	And today we're going to be talking to you about some very interesting subjects, such as the left being still obsessed with Milo Yiannopoulos for some reason, how there is a submarine fighter jet.
	Yes, we'll get into that.
	It's about the crash of the F-35 yesterday, which I thought we'd expand on.
	That should be very interesting.
	And we're also going to look at the gradual infiltration of paedophiles into academia, which, for anybody who's paying attention, should knock them as a surprise.
	But before we get into any of that, we've got some announcements to make.
	So first of all, we've got a new article up from Josh.
	Robbing Men of Masculinity is Good for Business, which is about the gradual societal feminization of men due to the fact that men don't make good consumers.
	And if you encourage more feminine traits within men, they're more likely to spend more money, hence being good for business.
	Anyone who's a fan of Thomas Sowell and his sayings and writings should be a big fan of it.
	It feels like it's come straight from Sowell himself.
	And if you've got a Silver Tier membership or above, you can check out the audio track from John, which will be excellent, as always.
	If we move on, we've also got a new video from Thomas called Critical Based Theory No.
	1.
	It's episode 1 of a new series that he will be undertaking for the foreseeable future.
	Where he's looking at the first episode...
	The first episode is looking at the hyper-reality of wokeness, and as you can see the thumbnail states a new amoral morality.
	He's going over some pretty high-level concepts in that, so for all of you more academically minded, Um, viewers out there, that'll be a very interesting one for you to check out.
	And for any layman, there's still plenty of value in there as well.
	And finally, we've got a new premium video, uh, that came out last week, which was one that I was involved in, well, it was just me, uh, talking about what happened to the January 6th rioters.
	If you're interested in that, sadly, the answer to sum it up in a sentence is nothing good.
	But if you're interested in a little bit more expounding on that, then go check out that video.
	So that should all be very interesting for you.
	So now let's get into the stories, eh?
	So, the left is currently obsessed with Milo Yiannopoulos for some reason, which we'll expand on as we continue.
	So you can see here there is an Indy 100 I think there's something very interesting that we can learn from this recent saga of news on Milo.
	So let's get into it so that we can find out what that is we can learn.
	So this is, as you would imagine, from a reputable organization like Indy 100, a very It's an unbiased...
	A reputable source.
	...refresher.
	Exactly.
	It's an unbiased refresher on who Milo is.
	So it starts off here, cast your mind back to 2016, and you might recall the name Milo Yiannopoulos, although we could forgive you for completely blocking it out altogether.
	So that's some excellent journalism...
	I think we call that poisoning the well in the train.
	Absolutely, yes.
	The British commentator and journalist became synonymous with the alt-right movement in the United States, which helped to elect Donald Trump to the White House.
	No, I think that was Donald Trump managed to get himself elected, and also Hillary Clinton.
	His unapologetic...
	Far-right views should have seen him maligned by the political and cultural landscape, but his fame and stock kept rising, even after he was banned from Twitter for instigating an onslaught of abuse against actor Leslie Jones.
	For anybody unfamiliar with this, I'm pretty sure that Leslie Jones was the black woman who was acting in the 2016 all-female Ghostbusters reboot, which anybody with a functioning funny bone should know was acting.
	Absolutely terrible.
	I've not watched it.
	I've seen clips from it.
	I saw the trailer.
	That's all I needed to see.
	But he did not instigate an onslaught of abuse about her.
	From what I'm aware, he called her out on Twitter for having been playing the victim in the face of controversy, at which point she turned around and then...
	Yes, the left in Twitter does seem to have a very elastic definition of the word abuse, doesn't it?
	Absolutely they do.
	But that was enough to get him banned from Twitter.
	They continue, however, Yiannopoulos' influence plummeted when video clips of him advocating paedophilia emerged online in 2017.
	Yiannopoulos, who was openly gay, claimed that the clips had been badly edited and that he had been a victim of child abuse.
	Now, to clear some things up here, I am not too familiar on this situation.
	From what I am aware, Iannopoulos on a few podcasts had made some references to the fact that he had been in a relationship as a child or a young teenager, like 12, 13, 14 years old, with a Catholic priest, because he was Catholic at the time, he is Catholic again now, and made some references to it being consensual on his part.
	Now, From what I can tell and what he said afterwards, this either appears to have been some kind of incredibly edgy joke as a way of dealing with what was obviously going to be a very horrible and traumatic sort of experience for him, or just a means of coping for it and trying to justify it in his own head.
	I don't believe that those comments were ever supposed to be taken as some kind of justification for what happened to him or what happened to other victims of the Catholic priests and bishops.
	Yes, I don't think you need much charity to explain those comments as something other than paedophile advocacy.
	Exactly.
	And also, let's be perfectly honest, I'm not going to side with the mainstream view of things when they are very, very happy to selectively clip videos and comments made by people to paint a very particular picture of them, whilst at the same time, for years, covering up.
	Other serial abusers in elite establishment positions.
	I could name names, but we all know who are.
	Names like Jimmy Savile, perhaps.
	Yes, exactly.
	Jimmy Savile and others.
	You all know who we're talking about.
	So let's continue here.
	This backlash to this controversy resulted in the 37-year-old being forced out of his position at the conservative news outlet Breitbart, losing the opportunity to talk at CPAC and the publisher Simon & Schuster cancelling his planned autobiography.
	Yiannopoulos was also banned from Facebook in 2019.
	So, for all intents and purposes, this article just seems to be some kind of sick victory lap that the left is taking, like trying to trample all over Yiannopoulos.
	They got him completely deplatformed from basically anywhere that he was a public figure, or at least able to speak to a wider audience as a public figure.
	And for all intents and purposes, it seems that what they wanted to get him deplatformed, they won.
	So this all seems a little bit mean-spirited, as far as I can tell, but, you know, the left can't help themselves from going up to a well long, long after it's dried up.
	But recently, he has come back into the news.
	If we move along to expand on the story, we've got this website called Wonket, which I'd never heard of before today, with a name like that.
	They're quite unique in their reporting style.
	You can see here, Milo Yiannopoulos selling Virgin Mary's on far-right Catholic Home Shopping Network knockoff.
	Now, from what I'm aware in regards to this, Milo...
	It came out earlier on this year in March or something that he had either become Catholic again or reverted back to Catholicism and had now come out as straight.
	He was now an ex-gay or something like that and his husband had been relegated to a housemate.
	You know, all sounds quite amusing to be perfectly honest.
	Very interesting development, but...
	Fair play.
	It's his life.
	He can do what he wants.
	And this article talks about it.
	So Milo Yiannopoulos, once the brightest star in the alt-right sky, once again there's that buzzword, that spooky word, alt-right, has had trouble finding his place in the world after getting booted from basically every Trumpist platform on Earth after suggesting that being molested by a priest was not all that bad.
	Once again, trying to mischaracterize any comments and also trying to Characterise what, Twitter and Facebook as Trumpist platforms?
	Are you insane?
	Well, they were also missing out a very important detail in that phrasing, which was that he was referring to specific instances, I believe, and the person being molested by a priest was him.
	Was him.
	Yes, exactly.
	He's not trying to carry water for the adults in these situations.
	He seems to have been trying to justify and cope with his own position within that dynamic, you could describe it as, which obviously was abusive.
	I mean, any relationship between a child, because that's what a young teenager is, they are a child, And a grown adult is abusive in that sense.
	Yes.
	So they continue.
	Naturally, he's turned to the only institution on Earth with absolutely no business criticizing anyone else for defending child-molesting priests, the Catholic Church.
	Okay?
	So now he's found religion.
	I mean, fair play.
	He was yeeted from...
	Every platform that had him on it, and it seems as though his livelihood was destroyed to a certain extent, so honestly I don't really blame him for finding religion in what was obviously quite a difficult period in his life.
	To go along with his renewed faith, Yiannopoulos moved back into the closet, declared himself a heterosexual, and grew out a mullet just to prove how aggressively heterosexual he plans on being.
	So...
	Once again, just to clarify my own thoughts on this, I very much doubt that Milo Yiannopoulos has managed to eliminate any sort of gay feelings or temptations within his own life.
	This does seem just sort of like probably a prerequisite of him converting back to Catholicism and possibly just another example of him trying to cope.
	With certain elements of his own life.
	No judgement there, just what I'm seeing it as.
	But it does kind of interest me, because it refers to something that I've read recently in Douglas Murray's The Madness of Crowds, which I imagine you've read as well.
	In the chapter that is about gay, gays in the madness of crowds, he talks about how within the current societal paradigm that we have, coming out of the closet for a gay man is considered to be reaching the truth, Having hit the final station in your journey, you finally reached your destination.
	Whereas going the other way, going from being gay to going, well, actually, I'm straight now, or any other variation on that, is considered as a form of lying to yourself.
	And this is very much a demonstration of that.
	Even if it's something where I look at Milo, and you can see all the images of him.
	You can see the way he talks and holds himself.
	He does seem still to be very, very camp.
	Pretty gay, to be perfectly honest.
	But, you know, if he wants to declare himself to be heterosexual and live his life in that way, that's absolutely his right.
	It's his prerogative.
	It's his life.
	That's his right to do so.
	And they continue.
	It looks like Milo has moved on to sharing Virgin Mary brick-a-brick on Church Militant's knock-off version of QVC, where he is selling statues of the Virgin Mary for your home shrine.
	Church Militant, for the unfamiliar, is a very far-right Catholic news site run by Michael Voris, a Steve Bannon wannabe who does not care for the Catholics, Is he wrong?
	I was going to say, that sounds pretty basic, to be perfectly honest.
	I don't see the contradiction there, and I don't see what's wrong about that.
	But also, if you dislike everything that We're good to go.
	Oh, isn't it so evil?
	Seems like a very uncharitable way to go about things, and it seems like just another example of them trying to bully him off another platform, as far as I can tell.
	And if you move along, Pink News, of course, also have an article on it.
	Desperate ex-gay Milo Yiannopoulos flogs Virgin Mary statues on a Christian shopping channel.
	I mean, why is this headline news?
	Why is this something that you have to have an article on?
	It's Pink News, isn't it?
	I think the bar for headlines and pink news is set pretty low at this point.
	Yeah, that's true.
	But they basically just go over the same sort of information.
	They all sort of toe the same line that you can see here.
	Self-described ex-gay, blah, blah.
	In a video for a Catholic news site's church militant shopping channel, Yiannopoulos has been seen describing a Virgin Mary statue up for sale.
	In 2019, he claimed that he couldn't put food on the table after being deplatformed by the social networks.
	I spent years growing and developing and investing in my fan base, and they just took it away in a flash, he told his followers on Telegram.
	This 19k BS here is not going to cut it.
	I can't make a career out of a handful of people like that.
	I can't put food on the table that way.
	So, judging by what he's saying there, it sounds like they did put him through quite a difficult period in his life, as I've alluded to earlier.
	It sounds like being deplatformed was a major pushback on his livelihood, his ability to feed himself, and other such things.
	And going back and just sort of trying to Pathetically dunk on him years after the fact, years after they've already taken away that part of his life.
	Seems a bit cruel and a bit weird to me, personally, but that just kind of expresses, that's just the left in a nutshell, really, isn't it?
	Reasonably speaking, given that he is somebody who was abused as a child, especially by an institution like the Catholic Church, Reasonably, the left, if they were to stick to their principles, should be on his side.
	But, because of the fact that they see him as a member of the outgroup, a member of the enemy, then they would never extend that kind of charity to him.
	He's now launching his own conversion therapies venture in Florida, which was recently the subject of protests by students at Penn State University.
	He told the New York Post in March, "This clinic has been the easiest thing to raise money for that I've ever done.
	There is an enormous demand for this among people who believe they've been led astray by, it sounds silly to call it this, but you know, the gay establishment." I mean, that's obviously what they're actually so salty about, that he just decided to open a conversion therapy clinic, but as far as I can tell, there's no coercion going into this.
	Well, I will say one thing about Milo Yiannopoulos.
	It's that he always, I think he wakes up in the morning and he manages to find the most controversial thing that he can do that day.
	Oh, absolutely.
	Which makes him very amusing to follow.
	Yeah, I'm not as familiar with him, but it seems like this is one of the reasons that they are so angry with him.
	But once again, it doesn't seem that there's any coercion going into this.
	This is not the same as the old-fashioned Christian conservative conversion therapies that they used to force on people when they were children.
	This seems to be a purely opt-in, voluntary thing.
	And if people want to do that, then...
	That is absolutely their right to do so.
	Well, in a free country, you would expect them to be able to subscribe to that if that's what they want.
	I believe the madness of crowds actually begins at such a venue.
	Yes, yes.
	There was a cinema viewing of a documentary about men who had been gay and decided to be straight again.
	And as with anything regarding that, once again, his view...
	Yes, but I also understand from that that the attendants of that event were concerned that in Britain even voluntary gay conversion therapy is banned.
	I believe that's the case.
	I think they are in the process of banning it, but I think that in the process of doing so they are also looking to ban what could be considered another form of conversion therapy, which are therapies for positive transitioning for minors, which I would absolutely consider to be a form of conversion therapy when some miners are too young to be able to really make those decisions, especially such far-ranging, lifelong decisions.
	So it's kind of backfired straight in their face in the UK. But, I mean, in the US, if...
	If consenting gay adults want to go and try and be converted to being a straight person, whether that be for their own personal reasons or whether it be they want to start their own family and have biological children or something like that, then if they want to give it a try, that's their business, I suppose.
	It's the same sort of argument that you could have used back in the 80s and 90s for why gay people should be allowed to just live their lives.
	It's their business.
	Similarly, there's another gay news site as well, Queerty, that has something to say on it.
	Sodomy Free Milo Yiannopoulos is offering Pray the Gay Away services on college campuses now.
	They go through a lot of the same information.
	Ex-gay activist Milo Yiannopoulos is taking his side to show Penn State next week for a Pray the Gay Away ceremony, which I'm sure is absolutely purely voluntary in attendance.
	The event scheduled for November 3rd is being hosted by the student hate group Uncensored America, which was created last year to empower young Americans to fight for free speech in order to make American culture free and fun again.
	Sounds dreadfully hateful, doesn't it?
	According to the events page, the ex-gay global political sensation will talk about everything from free speech to conversion therapy to hairstyle.
	Tickets range from $15 to $55.
	Once again, talking about hairstyles, not the straightest thing a man can do.
	I think Milo would have to pay me to listen to him on Hairstyles.
	Exactly, but if people want to spend their money on that, then go for it, I suppose.
	You can skip over as well to the next thing.
	We've got this person here filming Milo at some event that was being held.
	Where he's talking to a very large crowd and they're saying, it appears that Yiannopoulos cut his hair off mid-event and dyed it black.
	This crowd is all about it, whatever happened.
	I think it appears to me that this might be portraying it in a negative light, as far as I can tell.
	But as far as I can tell, looking from the footage, Milo is speaking on a very large stage to a decent amount of people who all seem to be very into what he's talking about.
	So for all intents and purposes, he seems to have landed on his feet with everything that's happened.
	He seems to be doing quite well for himself, and, you know, it would only be within those Christian Catholic circles that he would be well known if it weren't for lots of weirdo leftists online going, Look at Milo Yiannopoulos.
	What is he doing?
	Why are you so obsessed with him?
	Good God.
	We move along as well.
	He's put up a status recently of someone trying to call him out in some way, where he's like, for F's sake, this is literally my dream job.
	So, once again, just him affirming again that he's actually quite happy with his position in life at the moment.
	And whether or not, you know, whatever my personal feelings are on him going from being gay to being straight or whatever, if he's happy with it, then fair play to him.
	And then we can just move along to see what he's been up to recently.
	I believe that this is what the big event that he was part of is.
	So you can see here the National Catholic Reporter talks about his Catholicism.
	So this article just goes into a little bit of what he was involved with there.
	But this year's annual fall, the U.S. bishops gathering in Baltimore convened on November 15th to 18th, so they're still going on today.
	It's set to host at least two unusually visible demonstrations that showcase the increasingly broad spectrum of American Catholic thought.
	So they explain the first protest, which is, as you would expect, Democrats and other such people on the left.
	And they
	go on, the US Bishops Conference.
	Church Militant, which is based in Detroit and has been rebuked by leaders of the local arch...
	some kind of Catholic term, which I don't know how to say out loud, organized similar protests outside the Marriott during past U.S. bishops' meetings.
	But this year's effort has drawn additional attention for its speaker lineup, particularly the inclusion of Milo Yiannopoulos, a far-right agitator, and Steve Bannon, one-time advisor to former President Donald Trump.
	A spokesperson for the church militant told regional news service that the rally known as Enough is Enough is gathering is meant to provide a venue and voice for hundreds of thousands of victims of the bishop's physical abuse.
	So it doesn't sound like a particularly far-right cause.
	No, it doesn't, does it?
	Or attached to any particular section of the political aisle itself.
	It seems like people being able to go out and speak their grievances for an abuse scandal that was big news back in the day and something that you would especially expect the typically secular anti-theist left to be able to Come out in full support of, but no, it's Milo Yiannopoulos, so we don't like it.
	According to the Associated Press, Yiannopoulos testified that he wanted to speak at the event because he is a survivor of sexual abuse by a priest and wants to encourage others to confront the enablers and abusers.
	So this is why I think there's no truth in Neonopolis supporting paedophilia or anything like that.
	He may have made some comments back in the day to cope with it or to make light of it, but it seems that in recent years or recent months, he has come around and just accepted that what he experienced was abuse, and now he's openly talking about it and openly trying to bring attention to people that they can talk about it as well, and as he said, confront their enablers and abusers, which...
	Sounds like a sort of thing that could be Me Too adjacent, almost, that sort of rhetoric and language using there.
	But once again, because Milo is the enemy, the left cannot support it.
	But at the same time, they just can't stop talking about him for whatever reason.
	So, listen, members of the left, if you want Milo Yiannopoulos to go away, just ignore him.
	Yeah, I think that's pretty good advice.
	There you go.
	So I want to move on to a cautionary engineering tale for you today.
	Scientists and engineers have a bad habit.
	It's called over-promising.
	The military-industrial complex is no exception, and each arms manufacturer is tempted to exaggerate the capabilities of its proposal in order to win the competition for an eye-wateringly large government contract.
	And it's often the most exaggerated concept that wins the bit.
	Then, once the project under delivers and the costs overrun, the state has no choice but to keep shoveling your money into the canard.
	So, if you're in government, you would do well to remember the ancient maxim, beware of geeks bearing gifts.
	So, if we go to yesterday's news, we have this here.
	A British F-35 stealth jet has crashed shortly after takeoff from the UK's flagship aircraft carrier, forcing the pilot to eject into the Mediterranean.
	The F-35 jets are the most prized part of the UK's new carrier strike group.
	The British and American jets have flown to intercept Russian aircraft from HMS Queen Elizabeth in recent months.
	The aircraft carrier is returning to the UK after more than seven months at sea on a maiden voyage to the Far East and back.
	The jets on board have conducted around 2,000 takeoffs and landings during that time.
	So, just to keep things in proportion here, the F-35 is an operational jet fighter, and I wouldn't want one coming to bomb my house.
	But it does have serious problems, and that's what we're going to get into.
	So if we go to the next slide, this is the Metro's take on this.
	Ever eager to inject some drama into this fairly routine military failure, they're worried that the Russians might get to the sea floor.
	If we can scroll down to the map on this article, John.
	So if you can look on there, can you see Russia on that map?
	Yeah, I can't either.
	So for those of you who are just listening, the incident happened just north of the Egyptian coast.
	So if the Russians are ready to snatch a fighter plane from the bottom of the sea, then we have more to worry about than their airplane technology.
	This incident has prompted questions about the safety of the jet as the UK has another 138 on order for £9.1 billion.
	These things are not cheap.
	They're very expensive.
	So it turns out that if you haven't heard of the F-35 before, it has a long and controversial development history.
	We go on to the next.
	With a development history dating back as far as 1995, the F-35's designation is Multi-Role Joint Strike Fighter.
	It's not a dogfighter, a plane that would shoot other planes out of the sky.
	It's supposed to do everything.
	The F-35 finally won that defence contract in 2001, which kick-started full-scale development.
	Many different roles have been crammed into its remit, and this is where the engineering over-promising just gets ridiculous.
	It has short take-off and vertical landing variants.
	It has carrier-based variants.
	It has conventional take-off variants.
	It's a warplane, and it's a stealth plane.
	It has ground attack capability, and it has air-to-air capability.
	And after today's news, they may now be adding submarine capability.
	It has groundbreaking electronics, and it's the first fighter to have no heads-up display, relying on its next-generation helmet-mounted display.
	In a sense, this brief is a technology nerd's dream, but it doesn't make for a good fighter.
	Well, from what you were just describing there, it does sound like they are promising it will do everything, but the more you promise that something will do, the more you are opening up for everything to go wrong.
	Exactly.
	I don't know if the engineers who came up with the concept in 1995 are still working on this, or if they've managed to wash their hands and drift into peaceable retirement, but they've certainly put a stinker in the laps of today's technologists.
	This was pitched as a replacement for the F-16, the F-22 Raptor, the F-18 Hornet, and the A-10 Warthog.
	All in all, they wanted to replace six different aircraft variants with just this one plane.
	And the cherry on top is that they said, as they always do, that it would be a cost-saving project.
	9.1 billion pounds.
	Cost saving.
	Well, that's just what the British have paid.
	The American cost is in the hundreds of billions.
	I'm almost certain.
	Yeah, I do have it.
	So then we move on to the next thing, which is a recent report that the F-35 is a failure.
	The government sank tons of money into something that turned out to be a failure.
	Where have we heard that before?
	Well, let me get the list out.
	So if we scroll down to a quote from military commentators, to say the F-35 has failed to deliver on its goals would be an understatement.
	This is quite long, but it's also savage and very on point, so I'm going to read it in full.
	Its mission-capable rate is 69%.
	Below the 80% benchmark set by the military, 36% of the F-35 fleet is available for any required mission, well below the required 50% standard.
	Current and ongoing problems include faster-than-expected engine wear, transparency delamination of the cockpit, and unspecified problems with the F-35's power module.
	There have been so many problems with the F-35, it's difficult even to summarise them.
	Pilot blackouts, premature part failures, software development disasters, and more have all figured in various documents over the years.
	Firing the main gun can crack the plane.
	Firing the main gun can crack the plane.
	The Air Force has already moved to buy new F-15EX aircraft.
	The Air Force has already moved to buy new F-15EX aircraft.
	A different variant.
	A different variant.
	Multiple partner nations that once promised F-35 buys have shifted orders to other planes, and can't you blame them?
	The US Air Force continues to insist that it will purchase 1,763 aircraft, but the odds of it actually doing so are increasingly dubious.
	The F-15EX costs an estimated $20,000 per hour to fly.
	The F-35 runs at $44,000.
	Lockheed Martin has promised to bring that cost down to $25,000, but it's been promising that for years.
	Former Air Force pilots have not been kind in their recent evaluations of the aircraft's performance and capabilities.
	For all intents and purposes, that just sounds to me like an unmitigated disaster.
	Not just a failure, a disaster.
	You can't fire the gun without cracking the plane.
	You would think that's a pretty big problem, but it gets worse.
	If we move on to the next slide.
	It still has seven critical flaws.
	As the F-35 programme inches its way through operational testing, the number of critical technical deficiencies is slowly dwindling, dropping from 11 in January to 7 in July.
	Seal noted that all remaining critical deficiencies are classified as Category 1B issues, which represent a critical impact on mission readiness, which is good because the more serious Category 1A is problems that indicate a risk to the operator's life.
	So they've set themselves a pretty low bar for success here.
	So it doesn't immediately blow up on take-off.
	We've got room for improvement here, lads.
	And just to give you an idea of what some of the remaining deficiencies are, there is a technical problem involving the F-35's cockpit pressure regulation system, which led to several incidents of extreme sinus pain or barotrauma.
	In April 2020, the program office believed it would be able to resolve the problem in 2021 after flight testing the fix, but we don't yet know if they've been able to.
	On nights with little ambient light, the night vision camera embedded in the F-35 helmet could display horizontal green lines that could make it more difficult for pilots to land on ships.
	So, just a heads up, we're going to start seeing UFO reports of horizontal green aircraft being spotted by F-35 pilots in the near future.
	And finally, the F-35's Northrop Grumman-made ANAPG-81 active electronically scanned IRA radar meets requirements.
	Hooray!
	But the Navy wants to upgrade the system so that it can scan a wider area while in sea search mode to remain competitive.
	In 2020, the Programme Office stated that this issue would remain on the books until 2024, when a software update is made to the aircraft's avionics equipment.
	This is just a grand case of the sunken cost fallacy, if I've ever seen it.
	It's failed so much.
	Let's just keep going.
	Just keep going.
	We need to make it work.
	Four years for a software update is pretty bad, I think I would say.
	But that's just the critical deficiencies, because it turns out there are many more.
	We move to the next slide.
	In January, the F-35 had 871 floors, only two fewer than a year earlier.
	we're getting there lads lockheed martin corps f-35 remains marred by 871 software and hardware deficiencies that could undercut readiness missions or maintenance according to the pentagon's testing office lockheed has delivered or is under contract for 970 aircraft of a potential 3200 or more planes for the us and other nations the assessment outlining the seemingly intractable roster of flaws provides the incoming biden administration
	this is from a while ago with a primer on the 398 billion dollar f-35 program that retains strong backing in congress and from overseas purchases despite its problems so who is operating this plane And why?
	There is a map here.
	This is all of the operators.
	It's already been delivered to and in use by the US, the UK, Australia and Israel.
	Other adopters are Japan, Turkey, Belgium, Italy, Norway, Netherlands, United Arab Emirates, Poland, Italy and Denmark in rough order of the size of their deal.
	For all of these countries, the F-35 is a massive investment of public money.
	Planes, especially jet fighters, do not come cheap.
	In fact, if there's anything that's more expensive than a private jet, it would seem to be a public jet.
	So the success or failure of this project directly impacts the strategic military capability of the entire Western Alliance.
	So we move on to the next slide.
	It turns out the UK has slashed its F-35B order by 65%, so there is some good news.
	An order for 90 more F-35 Lightning combat jets is to be cancelled in favour of the Tempest fighter, built in Lancashire, while 24 older Typhoon fighters will be retired early.
	Whole fleets of aircraft will be taken out of service as drones become ever more common.
	Ah, okay.
	Moving on to the review of UK defence plans.
	In his Munich speech, Johnson said, We do not wish to live in a world of unchecked rivalry or decoupling, nor are we concerned solely with trade.
	The UK has shown that we will defend our values as well as our interests.
	Now, that's actually a statement from Boris that I can get behind.
	It's only when he fails to live up to literally anything he says that I start rolling my eyes.
	Following the disappointment of the F-35, the UK is developing its own fighter, which is good news, the Tempest, in collaboration with Sweden and Italy, and potentially with Japan.
	Moving on to the next slide.
	In the Tempest, £2 billion were initially invested by the UK, but it will need upwards of £20 billion to complete.
	These are long-term expensive projects.
	I'd just like to point out that if Japan could be put on board, I think that's a very sensible idea and could be a windfall for the development of this project.
	It turns out, however, that military hardware is very controversial in Japan, which has the world's fifth most powerful military, despite not having a military.
	I was not aware of such.
	Yes, so Japan has a defence force.
	Oh, okay.
	There was a constitutional provision following the Second World War which prevented them from having a proper military.
	So they have built themselves a military and called it a defense force, but it is mired in various political scandals and controversies.
	It's a good, fun read if you want to get into it.
	A competitor to the Tempest is out there, which is the Franco-German-Spanish project called SCAF, French for Future Combat Air System.
	But it's struggling.
	France's defence industry, by the way, is not looking too good at the moment following the engineering failures that led to Australia cancelling its submarine contract.
	Maybe they can get F-35s instead.
	We'll see.
	And just to summarise that Australian deal in the next slide, an Australian spokesman said, France should not have been surprised that Australia cancelled the submarine contract as major concerns about delays, cost, overruns and suitability had been aired officially and publicly for years.
	A Australian politician said, they would have to have their eyes shut not to realise the danger they were facing, said Rex Patrick, an independent senator from South Australia.
	France having its eyes shut is not a new thing.
	There was an incident I believe in 1940 that caught them rather by surprise.
	But just to briefly summarise this article, so arms manufacturers over-promise with your money, beware of geeks bearing gifts, it ends up with a buggy, expensive mess, and the Tempest is a plane to watch for both military and economic reasons going forward.
	All sounds very interesting, quite depressing.
	I mean, the government have never had too tight a hold on their own purse strings, shall we say.
	Well, our purse strings is probably more accurate, but yeah, all sounds very, very interesting.
	So, let's move on and examine how it is that pedophilia advocacy seems to be the next step in advocacy groups as a whole, and is already starting to get into the universities.
	So, here we can see on Facebook, Carl has shared out a little thing, sort of alluding to this.
	Pedo-advocacy is the next intersectional frontier, but not the final one.
	I don't know exactly...
	How you go further than pedo-intersectionality, but I'm sure they would find a way.
	So you can see here there is the image of a...
	I don't want to get in trouble with YouTube, so let's go gender-indefinite person here.
	It stood in front of their slideshow, which is titled, Understanding Resilient Strategies Among Minor Attracted Individuals.
	Now, for anybody unfamiliar with this phrase, minor attracted individuals or minor attracted person, as it's more frequently used as, is abbreviated to MAP, which is a...
	Sort of non-threatening, inclusive-sounding way of saying pedophile.
	It's very much the kind of subversive way that they're trying to get more inclusive, non-threatening language to be spread about more commonly and enter into discourse more commonly.
	It's rather nefarious, isn't it?
	It is very nefarious.
	And you could also say that resilience among child-attracted individuals means how to stay strong when you're a degenerate.
	That's how I would characterize it as.
	And also note that this person, we're going to go a little bit more into them as we carry on.
	They're called Alison Walker, PhD, is an assistant university lecturer.
	And note that these sorts of causes, these sorts of movements...
	Always begin in the universities, they always come from the lofty realms of the ivory tower of academia, and then disseminate further.
	But we'll get a little bit more into that as we carry on.
	And if anyone's a little bit more interested in this subject on a whole, I will be having a video out soon on the second channel discussing the left's consistent...
	Well, the left's affiliation with paedophilia, shall we say.
	That's probably the best way of putting it.
	But that'll be out soon.
	So if we move on, you can move along.
	Carl's got another post on Getter.
	Follow us both on Getter and Gab.
	Where he says, Very, very strange.
	If we move along again, you can see here, they, Susan, are listed on their website as part of the Prostasia Conversations.
	Alan Walker is an assistant professor at Old Dominion University in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice.
	Of course, they're in the sociology department.
	These sorts of people always are.
	It's been said many, many times that the social sciences are much more acquainted with social than science.
	In fact, I would say that they only have a skirting idea of what science is in the first place.
	And this is also worrying to me to a certain extent because I've got it noted here, the gay rights movement framed itself.
	You can hear in the language that they were using of pursuing dignity.
	The gay rights movements of the 60s, 70s and 80s and even to a certain extent the 90s Consistently framed itself as a pursuit for dignity from people who could not help who they were attracted to.
	That was one of the ways that they were able to gain such positive press and gain such widespread acceptance from the mainstream public because of the fact that it was sort of Based on the idea of, I'm born this way.
	And I think most people, especially when it comes to gay people, are happy to accept that nowadays and move on, just let people live their lives, which is absolutely fine.
	But, sadly, groups like Prostasia and other pro-pedophile advocacy groups have seen that this is a very effective way of framing any struggle and are trying to mimic this.
	Going forwards.
	And you can see here, just through the collaboration of these, well, this person and this group, they are working together to try to, as it said, de-stigmatize paedophilia.
	And once again, these ideas always start in the academic realm, in universities, and they filter down into the real world.
	Because whoever this person is teaching will take on board those ideas, and they will go out into the world and become part of the workforce.
	And disseminate it from there, and it will go on and on and on.
	But let's look a little bit more at prostagia, shall we?
	So if we move along, you can see here they label themselves as a child protection foundation.
	Oh, isn't that so wholesome.
	I know.
	I know.
	It's wonderful, isn't it?
	But really, they're a pedo-advocacy foundation.
	You can see that they put lots of striking imagery, the abuse factory, America's broken foster care system.
	I mean, if you've heard anything about the Kentler experiment from Germany, Carl and Callum had a podcast on that earlier on this year.
	The foster care system in some countries was actively putting children in the hands of pedophiles, but I'm not sure if America necessarily has that problem.
	Fingers crossed.
	Hopefully, yes.
	Well, I mean, if Prestasia have anything to say about it, perhaps.
	But they are framing all of these arguments from the perspective of, we just want to make sure that the children are okay.
	We just want to make sure that the children aren't being abused.
	But they're also framing it at the same time from the perspective of, but these pedophiles who've never abused anybody, never been caught abusing anybody, they just want their rights.
	They want their freedoms.
	They even say, if you scroll down a little bit here, John...
	Yeah, yeah, here we go.
	Protecting children by upholding the rights and freedoms of all, including those who would seek to abuse them, seemingly.
	They say here we are a child protection organisation that combines our zero tolerance of child sexual abuse with our commitment to human and civil rights and sex positivity.
	From my understanding, whenever I've seen that particular phrase, sex positivity, used within any sort of wider movement, it generally means being non-judgmental about people's sexual preferences.
	Yes, I also think that putting child sexual abuse and sex positivity in the same sentence like that is a massive red flag.
	Exactly, but you can see here how they have co-opted the language from LGBT movements to use that inclusive language so that they can communicate their desires, I suppose would be a neutral way of putting it.
	Degenerate urges would be a less neutral one.
	Yes, degenerate urges would probably be the better and more accurate way of describing it in a way that people can almost sympathize with, especially given that LGBT movements as a whole are trying to push people in a queer theorist sense to be more suspicious of repressive ideas within mainstream consciousness and the heteronormative systems that we live within as part of our society and stuff like that.
	How far does that go until you start to push into these areas where you need to respect the civil rights and sexual preferences of people who want to abuse your children?
	Hence the sudden alliance with fringe members of these LGBT movements, such as Alan Walker, who identifies as a non-binary person.
	And if you move along, they've got a handy-dandy FAQ on their website to answer all of your many questions.
	I'm sure you have plenty of them.
	I certainly do.
	So they say here, the name Prestasia comes from the Greek word for protection.
	Now, I thought it was a testicular disease, so that's me.
	Sounds like it.
	But it signifies that we are a child protection organisation.
	Yeah, it may try to signify that, but everything else regarding your organisation does not seem like it is in the interests of the benefits of children or protecting children.
	You are a nonce protection organisation.
	I'll just flat out say it.
	You are protecting and trying to fight for the rights of nonces, people who will abuse those who are in a very vulnerable situation.
	So, you are disgraceful and you should take yourselves off of the internet.
	That's all I can really say.
	But let's carry on, be a bit more neutral about this.
	So, Prostasia is the first national child protection organization to promote evidence-based laws and policies for the prevention of child sexual abuse.
	No, you just make it illegal and shame anybody who has those thoughts and urges, and just make it illegal so that if they do anything, that they will go to prison forever.
	That's my idea.
	I would suggest other ideas, but they may not be entirely...
	In line with YouTube's guidelines, while insisting that the human and civil rights of all are also upheld.
	So, once again, you can hear how they are trying to manipulate language to replicate and mimic that of inclusive movements.
	They go on further down...
	You can readily imagine how you might be at a dinner at university and you meet someone who gives you all of this spiel and it wouldn't cross your mind for a moment that they were doing paedophile advocacy.
	They have so cleverly cloaked what they are doing in this scientific language.
	Oh yes.
	I mean, Carl talks about the skin suit, the progressive skin suit.
	This is somebody taking the progressive skin suit willingly onto themselves to try and subvert the culture and try and Trojan horse their way into the mainstream consciousness.
	They go on: "Sex positivity means that every human being has the right to express and enjoy their own sexuality, provided they do so consensually.
	This contrasts with other organizations whose work is underpinned by society's moral standards, which can be mutable and subjective.
	There you go.
	That's the queer theorist Judith Butler, Gail Rubin sort of framing of this as society has normative standards which are held together by the cultural hegemony which is determined by the elites and those in power, when I think you'll find a lot of the elites and those in power would be a little bit more on these guys' when I think you'll find a lot of the elites and those in power would Well, judging by recent revelations, yes.
	If the evidence is to be taken into account.
	But generally speaking, they're saying society sees paedophilia as an awful, terrible, stigmatised thing.
	Whereas we need to open up the society so we can be more inclusive and open.
	And they are also, I've got it noted here again, again, they are using the postmodern standards and ideas of consent that underpinned the French thinkers like Foucault and Sartre and influenced their decision in 1977 to sign a document that was trying to get the French government to make consensual sex with people under the age they are using the postmodern standards and ideas of consent that underpinned the And just to make it clear, I do not think that if you are a minor there is any such thing as informed consent for sex with an adult.
	I think the very suggestion of that is, especially coming from a guy like Foucault, who is obsessed with power dynamics and other such things, a vast abuse of the power dynamic that inherently exists between an adult and a child.
	Because people under the age of 15, and I think in the UK the age of consent is 16, Which for young people wanting to have sex with one another is probably fair, but if you're an adult trying to have sex with anyone under the age of 16, you are abusing them inherently.
	Let's take a look at some of their members.
	So if we move along...
	They've got this guy here, who I don't want to stereotype, but kind of looks like what you'd expect a pedo to look like, let's be perfectly honest here.
	Is it the bow tie that gives it away?
	I think it's the bow tie, the glasses, and the smug look kind of says it all.
	Guy Hamilton-Smith, who is a graduate of the University of Kentucky College of Law and is the sex offence litigation and policy fellow at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law.
	So...
	Very sort of formal, very legitimate sounding, correct?
	What is it that he might have left out of that description of himself, might you think?
	well if we move along we'll find out that for some reason he decided it would be a great idea to leave a massive reddit post about it explaining his backstory saying that my name is guy padria padrake hamilton smith in 2006 when i was 22 i was arrested for possession of child pornography i know it's going to shut down a lot of people right there and i totally get that
	well i mean forgive me guy for not trusting the intentions of someone who got caught possessing child pornography and in the future turns out to have started to advocate for the rights of pedophiles Those two little facts seem to...
	Add up to say a lot, really.
	He goes on later in this long Reddit post, which just sounds like he's trying to play himself off as the victim, if you actually read it.
	Oh, society punished me, oh, the criminal justice system for people caught with child pornography, the sex offenders register, because of course he is on the sex offenders register as a result of his crime.
	Oh, it's cruel, it's stigmatising, it doesn't actually help anybody who suffers with minor attraction and other such nonsense.
	He says, I have used my story, my experiences and legal training to do what I can to advocate for more effective and humane sexual offence policies and laws to help those who struggle with addiction and to advocate for those who have no advocates.
	So once again, you can hear he's reframing the story.
	He's even taking the legal expertise that he has gained through university to try and advocate for this.
	So this guy is one of the main members of Prostasia, you're telling me.
	Yes, I believe it might have been him or one of the other members who, I think they unsurprisingly have a number of members who are on the sex offenders registry, who hosted the interview.
	Just to give viewers and listeners an idea of what this guy looks like, he has a sort of face that says, you've just said something problematic and we don't do that here.
	Yes.
	That sort of smug frown that he's got on.
	That's a good way of saying it, but is it any wonder that these people who say that, oh, I'm just advocating for the rights, I don't want people to actually abuse children, always end up being either abusers or offenders on the sex offenders registry?
	I mean, because we've heard it before from other thinkers on the left, people like Vorsch and those saying that, oh, you know, owning child pornography is not inherently immoral, when it is because you are providing a demand for it inherently by trying to get when it is because you are providing a demand for it
	I think that's true, but I also think that this can be a very nuanced area, as opposed to paedophilia, which is obviously very clear cut.
	I think there have been cases of possession of child pornography which are a little more borderline.
	So a blanket condemnation on that basis is not necessarily always appropriate.
	So for example, in the law, I believe in the UK, so child pornography is basically sectioned into multiple different categories depending on the act depicted, the ages of the participants and so on.
	Which is a sort of recognition in the legal system that there are gradations within this and it's a very messy area.
	Okay, well, I'm going to throw out a blanket.
	Condemnation, personally.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	For my own standards, because I think we do need to draw a very definitive line in the sand, because these people, they always start with, oh, we're just trying to humanise maps, you know, minor attracted people, and then it ends up with people like Vorsch saying, why can't I ethically own child pornography and other such things?
	And once again, as soon as...
	Oh, I don't think you...
	I don't...
	Oh, let me clarify.
	I don't think there is any ethical case for owning child pornography.
	What I'm saying is there can be legal cases where demonstrated possession of child pornography is not necessarily the damning indictment that it may seem.
	I recently read a book featuring a legal case on this, which is why I've been here.
	Oh, fair play.
	I mean, they have, along similar lines, they have brought movements forwards like causes and campaigns forwards to try to organise against child pornography laws.
	Within the Europe and United Nations, and they've got this article here, Criminalising Art and Fiction is a Bridge Too Far for the United Nations, where they say these guidelines, because they were going to, I think, reorganise some of the guidelines or redraft some of the guidelines in regards to what constitutes child pornography,
	They say these guidelines include a radical reinterpretation of the international legal definition of child pornography that would expand it to include not only photographs and movies, but also drawings and cartoons, audio representations, any digital media representation, live performances, written materials in print or online, and physical objects such as sculptures, toys or ornaments.
	In other words, criminalizing art and fiction.
	And to that extent, you have a point in terms of, like, when does, like, a piece of classical art, for instance, like, there's that statue in Europe of the child weeing, which is a fountain in the middle of a town square or something.
	I think you're probably aware of that.
	I forget where it is.
	Where does that cross the line into something being child pornography?
	However, when it comes to stuff like live performances that they're mentioning there, that's where I start to think that these guys' problems really start to come up.
	Because the problem with the rhetoric like this is that they're using here to, it seems to be carrying water for films like Cuties, which came out the other year.
	And I don't want any support for films like Cuties.
	That's surely the kind of thing that live performances refers to, and plus the problems with these kinds of live performances, if you want to explore the subjects that Cuties did, you didn't need to cast actual children in those roles.
	But they did.
	And I would say that that is where the distinction between art and performance and child exploitation and also giving pedophiles a means to easily access what is essentially softcore child pornography becomes very, very blurred.
	So I very much disagree with...
	Plus, once again, these people always end up being on the sex offenders registry.
	Pardon me if I don't trust your intentions.
	But all hope is not lost, as much as it can seem very strange that these people are infiltrating the universities and having their own foundation, if we move along, thankfully, People haven't completely lost their heads just yet.
	So the university that this person, Alan Woods, was part of have put them on, I believe, indefinite leave.
	So we go here from this New York Post article.
	A Virginia university has placed an assistant professor on administrative leave after the educator sparked heated backlash for saying it isn't necessarily immoral for adults to be sexually attracted to children.
	I take it they didn't have a basement to lock him in for this leave.
	Yeah, I know.
	I mean, I would think to myself that to any normal person, you know, broad as that category might be, there is an innate sense and an innate recognition that being attracted as an adult to children is immoral and wrong.
	Whether it be something looking back on your own childhood and recognising how vulnerable and naive you were at the time, whether it be evolutionary desires that may have been inbuilt to us to protect children from a parental standpoint, or just instinctive gut disgust responses, such as the type that Jonathan Haidt would talk about, for instance.
	We know that being attracted to a child in a sexual manner as an adult is wrong.
	Absolutely.
	And they continue here.
	Alan Walker, who teaches sociology and criminal justice at Old Dominion University, made the controversial comment while discussing minor attracted persons and paedophiles during a November 8th interview with the Prostasia Foundation, a San Francisco-based child protection organization.
	There we go.
	Very charitable.
	You fell for it.
	Yeah, using that phrase again.
	Walker, who uses the pronouns they, them, was discussing their book, A Long Dark Shadow, blah, blah, blah, when they insisted it's important to use that terminology instead of paedophile because it's less stigmatising.
	And I'm sorry, paedophiles should be stigmatised.
	I think that's a line in the sand, culturally, that we can draw.
	I think stigmatising is the least you can do, to be honest.
	Exactly.
	In a statement made on Tuesday, the school said it placed Walker on administrative leave.
	"Reactions to Dr. Walker's research and book have led to concerns for their safety and that of the campus.
	Furthermore, the controversy over Dr. Walker's research has disrupted the campus and community environment and is interfering with the institution's mission of teaching and learning.
	I want to state in the strongest possible terms that child sexual abuse is morally wrong and has no place in our society, low do you." Bravo.
	Bravo.
	You can say bravo, but they were letting this go on until they got caught.
	Until they were caught.
	Until it suddenly became an optical problem for the university.
	So while I appreciate that they have put them on leave, I do not think it should have gotten to the point where this was being brought into the classroom in the first place.
	I understand that sociology is kind of a crazy subject that has a lot of...
	A cesspool of pseudo-intellectuals, one might say.
	Yeah, it's got a lot of badass, crazy nonsense that gets flung about in there.
	But when all of a sudden you notice one of your lecturers is going and talking about resilience on behalf of minor attracted individuals, I think that's where you need to stop.
	So, thank God that we're still at a place where we can kick pedos out of the universities before they infect the minds of our young adults.
	And if we go on just to this last one, this is just a reiteration.
	This is the official statement by them.
	Yeah, Old Dominion University plays Dr.
	Alan Walker, put out by libs of TikTok, who I think might have been the ones who broke this in the first place.
	They might have been the ones who put out, oh, hey, this person is advocating for pedophiles and speaking to a pro-pedo advocacy foundation.
	So, yeah, I just want to reiterate that this is the last statement Ground we will ever submit to any progressive cause.
	We need to gatekeep.
	We need to draw the line in the sand and say, listen, all of your other causes might have snuck through whatever the benefits and negatives of those causes are, but for the good of our civilization and for the good of our children, this is where we end it.
	And this is where we end it.
	Yes.
	And this is where we move on to the video comments.
	Some quite serious subjects there.
	Something that makes you a little bit angry.
	Certainly it's made me a little bit angry.
	Maybe puts you off your dinner.
	Yeah, probably.
	So hopefully the video comments will cheer us up a little bit.
	Let's see.
	So this is my favorite comic book of all time, Don Rosa's The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck.
	I am a bit surprised that the left haven't burned this yet because it's about the world's greatest capitalist who started from nothing, worked hard, got screwed over countless of times, but each time he just says, I gotta work smarter and harder.
	Luck has nothing to do with it.
	I just gotta work hard to finally win.
	And worst of all, He's a white duck!
	I might need to get my hands on a copy of that.
	That was fun.
	It does sound good, but as we discovered yesterday, many of our Democrats are, in fact, mega-capitalists.
	Well, yes, it doesn't sound they've taken the Scrooge McDuck work ethic in mind, though, do they?
	And, of course, the left would probably hate some things like that, just because of the fact it's advocating hard work and responsibility over your own destiny, which is...
	Absolute anathema to them.
	But, you know, if they do start burning them, make sure you keep a tight hold of your copy so that we can have at least one out there in the world.
	Yeah, it looks like a very, very austere copy of that.
	So let's move on.
	Him putting the fire extinguisher on the ground and then raising the gun.
	Aiming means lining up.
	There's nothing in it, but let's not take any chances.
	Lining up the target with the two sights on the front and back of the gun, looking through and making sure that it's all lined up.
	And then the firing part is another muscular activity, which is pulling the trigger finger like that.
	And when you're satisfied that everything's lined up properly, fire!
	God, it tenses you up watching anybody point a gun like that, doesn't it?
	I can't believe the absolute incompetence of Bingo.
	Have you been keeping up with the Rittenhouse?
	I haven't, no.
	I've just been getting the updates.
	It's been very, very interesting.
	I can be a bit more loose with how I talk now that we're in the comments.
	Binger appears to me to be an inscrupulous, unprincipled scumbag who is taking the sleazy prosecutor route of trying to go with any dirty argument that he can to try and make Rittenhouse look as guilty as possible.
	And even taking those tactics, he has not been doing a very good job of making Rittenhouse look anything but innocent when every single witness they've brought up has a...
	Blown up in the prosecution's face.
	But then, just to demonstrate his mass incompetency to pick up a gun so soon after Alec Baldwin and point it at the jury with his finger on the trigger, whether or not you've confirmed that it's not loaded and there's none in the chamber.
	Well, presumably, if I were being charitable, I would say that what he was trying to do was give the jury that feeling that you get when you have a gun pointed at you.
	So that that would influence their decision of saying, oh yes, if that were pointed at me, that would be scary.
	Rittenhouse is a bad guy.
	That's true.
	However, looking at it from a different point of view, that would also, if I was in that jury, put in mind of, oh god, if someone pointed that gun at me, I'd run the other way.
	What were these nutters doing running straight at him despite the gun being pointed at him?
	And it's not a tactic likely to injure them to the prosecutor.
	No, absolutely.
	Pointing a gun at them?
	Well, I mean, there's a few things wrong with the prosecutor.
	One, he's pointed a gun at the jury.
	One of the other prosecutors, Krauss, when he was doing a cross-examination with one of the defence's witnesses, asked them...
	You know, we came over to speak to you about your statement to the police.
	Is that correct?
	Yes.
	And we didn't ask you to change your statement, did you?
	And there's a pause and the witness goes, well, you did actually, which looks terrible.
	He has been shown a number of times to be argumentative.
	To the...
	towards the judge.
	He was very condescending in his cross-examination of Rittenhouse himself.
	Even in the closing statements, he was very condescending towards the jury.
	And then on the redirect of the closing statements, Krauss, the other guy, just got up and started yelling at them, basically.
	So, not doing an amazing job.
	Anyway, let's move on from that and carry on.
	So, remember when Callum said that I was wrong, when I said you don't necessarily need facial hair to be a man?
	Well, there was a reason why I said that.
	There are some people who essentially, their facial hair is their manli-hood.
	Just their facial hair.
	In SJWs, for example.
	Oh yeah.
	Now, the reason why I said this is you sometimes get people, like Carl Rittenhouse, who don't have a single hair on their face, yet they are the man within the room.
	Look at the kid.
	He's only 18, and yet he's 90% of the testosterone in that bloody room.
	I agree completely.
	I mean, he's only 18.
	I think in some of the pictures he still looks like 12, 13, to be perfectly honest.
	He looks scarily young, but at the same time, he went up on the stand and gave his side of the story, did remarkably well for his age, which is just another example of him holding himself...
	With great composure in a high pressure stressful situation.
	And also I agree that SJWs do all tend to have the really terribly kept scraggly beard that goes down there.
	It looks like just an off-growth of the neck beard.
	Almost as an overcompensation for the lack of manhood.
	Let's carry on.
	Now, I'm not sure who was the first person to send in a video of them Doing work over a time lapse.
	I think it might have been me, so I'm just going to take credit for it because nobody else is too.
	But anyhow, my question is, what do you guys think of the latest spat between Donald Trump and Chris Christie?
	I can see that they both have points, but I kind of got to agree with Chris Christie more on this.
	I think we got to look forward, not back, and looking back is only going to hurt the party when they're in such a great time that the Democrats are failing.
	It's only going to hurt them to look back.
	Well, John, you go first.
	John, do you know the date on this?
	I haven't heard of this.
	I haven't either, sadly.
	It appears, sadly, that we are woefully unequipped to answer your questions.
	So, sorry to say that.
	If you want to ask it again when Carl or Callum is on the podcast, feel free.
	Because, sadly, we can't provide the answers that you're looking for or the opinions that...
	I want to note something about stock trading from yesterday.
	Investing in stocks is not a zero-sum game, only day trading is.
	On average, over time, companies do increase in value, adding to the total value of their combined stock.
	That doesn't mean the game isn't rigged against us normies, though.
	Finance is just so fascinating.
	Everybody should do just a little bit of research and some investing, even with just a few bucks.
	Also, do you think that some of this global inflation is not just the U.S. money printers going brr?
	What about all those cryptos?
	Almost 10,000 Dogecoins are being printed per minute and with no reserve.
	Those are contributing to the global money pool as well.
	Yes, so I did get a couple of comments along those lines.
	So, yes, that's right.
	I did massively oversimplify when I said that stock trading is a zero-sum game.
	However, I'm now going to justify that oversimplification.
	So, yes, it is true that the old-school model of investing is that you find a company that you like, you think, oh, they're doing well, that's a successful railroad company, I'll invest my penny shares in it, and that'll just help it along.
	And it's sort of the original crowdfunding in a way.
	Although it also worked for massive players, Wales and so on.
	However, I feel my impression is that the rapidity of modern trading and the sheer scale of it, the psychological factors involved in it, mean that even though there may be overall growth of the market and of the individual stocks, the zero-sum aspect to the stock market is predominant, would be my opinion on that.
	But of course, this is not financial advice.
	Don't trust me.
	I'm an engineer, not a banker.
	I could not possibly hope to comment on that sadly so far, but perhaps in the coming months I'll get a bit more knowledge of those sorts of...
	It's good fun to follow.
	Yes.
	Correction to yesterday's comment on the trillion dollar coin.
	Janet Yellen said it would be preposterous since she would oppose the idea.
	Let's not accuse them of things they haven't done.
	Very interesting.
	Yes, I think Carl brought up that point.
	But there was conversation about it, so they said it was preposterous about me, which is good.
	I do kind of love that there's always some form of meta-conversation going on in the background of these comments between the commenters themselves.
	I kind of like that interactive aspect of the community.
	It's really wholesome.
	Hey there, Lotus Eaters.
	I'm working inside of an attic today.
	The homeowners have knocked down a wall so I had to pull wires up into the attic to junction them like that one and those ones over there.
	Yeah, this space here is just barely big enough for me and then down there is less than half the space and this insulation is fairly empty to touch.
	Excellent.
	Good bit of loft insulation by the looks of it.
	Like the mask, that's what I'll be wearing if a mask mandate comes back.
	At least Pelosi has the decency to pretend like she's elected.
	Federal Reserve officials are appointed.
	The GameStop thing in January piqued my interest and I started digging.
	Almost a year later, with the collective autism of the internet working on overdrive, there's no way we're even close to half the bottom of this rabbit hole.
	At this point, I'm completely blackpilled that the entire US and global finance system is a massive scam.
	But I am whitepilled that we will succeed in beating them with their own game because we keep reverse engineering their cheats.
	Bernie Madoff just cooked his books.
	These guys have figured out how to make what they're doing legal.
	But that also exposes them to the legal contracts themselves.
	They can be hoisted by their own petard.
	AV, or is it Av?
	I don't know.
	Any thoughts?
	Is that alternative vote AV there?
	I wouldn't be able to say.
	I think you should be referring to the other commentator, do you think?
	Possibly.
	Possibly might be referring to one of the other commentators.
	I understand your black pills in regards to looking into just how much influence unelected people have on global politics.
	He's right, but I think he's also talking about the general system in itself.
	It does have a kind of, as Callum would put it, like orcs, orcs, orcs magic to it, in that it only works because everyone believes in it.
	Oh, yes.
	And I think we just have to trust in the orc magic fundamentally.
	If we keep trusting in it, it keeps working, and then...
	For the time being, we're okay.
	I mean, when it comes to the global institutions and their influence over financial markets, as far as I can tell, just looking at how much, like I say, how much influence a lot of unelected peoples, having looked into BlackRock a lot recently and the influence that they have over the US economy.
	Rory and I might be working on some research at the moment about BlackRock and their influence with the World Economic Forum and Klaus Schwab and their integration of those sorts of ideas and the ideas of investment into private companies being almost solely based nowadays on how woke they are because that seems to be what BlackRock is using as their measuring stick for how worthy of investment you are.
	So stay tuned for that on the website.
	That might be quite a long article that's coming out relatively soon.
	Depends on how long the research takes.
	But it is quite blackbilling, to be perfectly honest.
	When you look into any of this sort of stuff for a long enough time, it becomes a rabbit hole that you dive deep down.
	And I can't see the light at the top of the hole yet anymore.
	I like to think of it as the equivalent of...
	Imagine you have a nice...
	It's all clean and everything.
	And then, for whatever reason, you decide to take off the panel that shows you everything under the bath, and it's never cleaned, and there's spiders and cobwebs and things like that.
	Yes, it's decay.
	Right, and there's this kind of feeling where you think you're living in this perfect environment, but all you have to do is take away one panel and there's all of this unclean, untouched area.
	Absolutely.
	Well, now it's spewing forth in my clean bathroom.
	That's basically the economy, yeah.
	Yeah, sadly, at the moment.
	But yeah, let's move on to the next video comment.
	Tony D and Little Joan, and I want to get in on the Star Trek discussion.
	Two books to recommend, Star Trek Memories by William Shatner about his time on the show and playing practical jokes on the rest of the cast, and also to City on the Edge of Forever, which is Harlan Ellison's original teleplay.
	Gene Roddenberry rewrote many episodes of the show, and I think it's important to make the distinction between his vision, which was very consistent on all the episodes he rewrote, and later incarnations of the shows and movies.
	Yes, I think the original series is fantastic and definitely merits a good discussion.
	As it happens, I do believe that the podcast we're recording tomorrow may end up taking more influence from the next generation for reasons which I will explain.
	But we will have you covered, don't you worry?
	To be fair, the original series is the one that I'm most familiar with.
	I need to actually give it another good watch.
	I was not aware Harlan Ellison was involved in it.
	I believe he wrote the short story that the first Terminator film basically ripped off, and James Cameron got sued and had to include at the rear end of the credits at the end, just like, oh, by the way, I kind of ripped this off from Harlan Ellison.
	Ellison, which is very interesting.
	It's interesting how all these sorts of franchises can wrap around one another in terms of influence.
	Like, are you aware of Jodorowsky's Dune?
	Jodorowsky's Dune?
	Yes, the outpatient of the Frank Herbert novel.
	Was that the original one which failed?
	Yes, and how that kind of spun off into an offshoot as a result of H.R. Geiger's involvement in that and a few of the production members.
	Spinning off into what became the first Alien film.
	Very interesting timeline of events.
	I like how these things kind of flow into one another, personally.
	But yes, let's move on to the written viewer comments.
	On the Milo segment, first of all, we've got FreeWill2112 saying,"'When the hard left ideologues identify someone as an enemy, they are an enemy for life.
	As O'Brien says in 1984,"'The future is a jackboot stamping on a human face forever.'" Whether physically or metaphorically, the hard left will always hand Milo now and chase him from platform to platform, and this goes for many of their opponents.
	A kinder, gentler cancellation.
	I do think Orwell is exactly the person to cite here.
	We were just having a conversation before the podcast, actually, where we were talking about how the hard left is, a lot of the time, it finds itself actually wanting the same things as the right, but they cannot possibly cooperate because they have essentially...
	Oh, yeah.
	And just on a more basic level than that, it just seemed really mean-spirited.
	Like, oh, look at how pathetic Milo Yiannopoulos is selling Virgin Mary statues on a televangelist network.
	I'm like, okay...
	Who cares?
	He seems happy.
	Why are you so bothered about it?
	Whatever.
	George Happ says, I did not know that either.
	I'm not too familiar with Milo, personally.
	I've got some kind of offhand information about him here and there.
	This is kind of the first time I've taken a proper look into him.
	But overall, he seems like a pretty fine kind of guy.
	I think you need a tremendous lack of charity to treat him how he's been treated over the last few years.
	Oh, well, I mean, that's the left in a nutshell currently, isn't it?
	The Land of the White People says, I'm now wondering whether the academia is so keen on open borders is so that they can import a certain ideology that is in line with their views on child relationships.
	Haha, well...
	Probably.
	To be perfectly honest, French philosophy seems to have a very light touch on whether it condemns relationships between adults and children.
	That light touch being none at all.
	Well, a completely different kind of...
	Got a lot of touching in a second.
	Yeah, maybe.
	Yeah.
	Chechers Olm says, As one of the biggest Ghostbusters fans there is, I stand with Milo.
	That 2016 movie was an abomination and complete S. Agreed.
	I don't even have to have seen it.
	I just know.
	I just know on a spiritual, fundamental level that it was terrible.
	The Minichist Monarchist says, These weird alphabet ideology news outlets seem to have incorporated a very Hegelian view of ideas into their worldview.
	There is a progression from straightness as the starting point being synthesized with its antithesis and ending in you being queer.
	The other way around is seen as a bad thing, just as with the Hegelian views of political history, going backwards as if there is such a thing.
	Yes.
	Now, another way to look at this is that it's sort of a philosophical version of the Whig history, which Hugo recently described very well in an article which I believe was premium on our site.
	Was that a premium article or was it for...?
	I think it was free.
	It might have been.
	I'm pretty certain it was free, actually.
	So you don't even need to be a member.
	You can go check that out on the website right now.
	It's a very, very good read.
	And you are right that this can all sort of be traced back even in terms of the attitudes to that wig conceptualization of history as progress being something that can never be stopped, as ever marching.
	Anything that could be considered as a different form of progress is reactionary.
	The thing is, it's a literal one-dimensional view of everything.
	Like, it is the most reductive and primitive way you can think about things.
	If you say that you're gay, you can never go back now, which is, you know, frankly speaking, we don't really know enough about what causes people's sexuality on those sorts of gay, lesbian, bisexual in the first place to be so certain.
	Well, I certainly don't.
	Yeah, exactly.
	We don't know enough about it to be so certain on these topics, so I think it's foolish to try and imply that we can have any level of certainty as it stands at the moment.
	Alex Ogle, that Pink News Milo article had a side headline that one in three queer people of colour experience racism in LGBTQ plus spaces.
	It's nice of them to admit that they're more racist than normal people.
	Yeah, they'll always put it in terms of those...
	Frame it in the right way of the pyramid of oppressions as well.
	Yes, they do it in very, very vague terms, not wanting to admit that within certain communities in America and other such places, there tends to be a greater concentration of homophobia and negative attitudes towards people within the alphabet soup.
	North Antonian night, so Milo was digitally burnt at the stake for announcing his conversion to the gay branch of the alphabet denomination in the woke church.
	How kind an understanding of them really reinforces their doctrine of diversity and inclusion.
	I think not.
	Yeah, basically, never expect a leftist to hold themselves to their own standards.
	It's probably the easiest way of putting that.
	Would you like to read your comments out?
	Yes.
	So on the fighter jet we have Kevin Fox saying the F-35 list of abilities brings to mind an old saying, Jack of all trades, master of none.
	I think in this case, junk of all trades might be the better way of putting it.
	AI Man says, if only we hadn't sold the rights to the Harriers to the US. A modernized version would be perfect for our carriers and the land-based warfare we seem so keen on conducting.
	But what do I know?
	I'm just a regular civvy.
	I can't comment on that.
	I'm sure Rory will have a strong opinion.
	He's our resident RAF nerd.
	But yeah, that's certainly an opinion.
	The Land of the White People says, I'm now wondering whether the academia...
	No, that's...
	Hang on.
	That's the wrong one.
	That's already been said.
	Alexander Holt says, the Air Force says that the F-35 is a failure.
	They also said that the F-14 Tomcat was a failure and the F-18.
	Give it time.
	With military gear, always give it time, especially in peacetime when you don't need things to get done now.
	If it were wartime, you'd see these getting resolved within a very short time period.
	And that is true.
	That's why I did include a disclaimer that the F-35 is still a capable, functional fighter jet.
	Just don't fire any bullets out of it.
	But I wouldn't buy it.
	Harry G-Man says, that jet has everything but a pair of tweezers and a toothpick.
	Yeah, I have a knife like that.
	I wonder if they'd fit a kitchen sink in there.
	Bilbo Swaggin says, Britain once had a fantastic range of aircraft manufacturers.
	Exporting our manufacturing of key military equipment like this was a mistake.
	We should be making our own.
	I strongly agree.
	I've recently been reading up about the Imperial airship scheme in the 1920s, which is great fun.
	But sadly, such and such makers are very few and far between nowadays.
	Northamptonian Knight says, The Tempest already seems like it's the better aircraft.
	Just a shame it still has some way to go in development.
	Sure.
	HR Slave.
	I worked as a recruiter for Rolls Royce, the manufacturer of engines in military aircraft.
	In recent years, Rolls Royce have rolled back their hiring standards so that they can be more accessible to diverse candidates.
	Can't help but wonder if there's a link here.
	Hmm.
	And that sounds like the sort of thing that I might be covering in that article.
	Yeah.
	I have some Rolls Royce comments, but I can't say them in public.
	Oh, can you not?
	That's a shame.
	Robert says, a certain level of specialisation is required for most craft to operate effectively.
	Absolutely.
	Every additional role a craft is to fulfil will hinder the performance in another role it is also supposed to fulfil.
	Trust the science.
	And that goes for most things in general, not just aircraft.
	If you try and spread out your priorities over too...
	spread it too wide, it'll just be...
	make it so...
	I mean, that's the jack of all trades, master of none.
	Spread yourself too thin and everything's just going to break.
	Yep.
	But it's the kind of thing where the sheer extent to which the envelope was pushed, someone along this chain of decision-making should have said, hang on a minute, I smell a rat.
	Can we really do this?
	Yeah.
	I think the fact that it was pitched, what, 27 years ago is perhaps part of the reason why, if you think about it, what technology will you have in 27 years' time?
	Even a scientist has absolutely no idea.
	Everything changes in 27 years.
	It sounds like the result of a board meeting where someone just got up, turned around and said, what if we built a plane that does everything?
	Yeah.
	And they all just went, yes, give that man money!
	Give him money!
	And finally, M1Ping says, add the F-35 to the stack of reasons for pessimism about a war with China.
	I think in a hot war with China, there's a lot of reason for optimism, actually, not pessimism.
	But yes, it does go on the stack.
	Well, if you'd like to drop any white pills on that at any point, then go for it, man.
	I'll keep them to myself for now.
	Keep them to yourself for now, that's great.
	Well, we'll move on to the pedo-advocacy comments.
	Not that we're the pedo-advocates.
	So let's hear Harry's pedo-advocacy comments.
	So we've got Bilbo Swaggins leading the charge in pedo-advocacy, saying, I think you'll find their pronouns are kiddie slash fiddler.
	LAUGHTER Honestly, they would deny it at first, but then give it a few months and you know how these things go.
	Land of the White People is the same.
	That's been included in all of them.
	Callum Dayton.
	Stigmatizes pedos should not be a line in the sand.
	It should be carved and engraved in stone and iron.
	Yes, and to be fair, thankfully it seems like one of the only places so far that our culture is standing its ground and going, listen, we have never approved of kiddie fiddlers, and we refuse to approve of kiddie fiddlers.
	I'm honestly shocked that people are still standing that ground, but pleasantly so.
	David Shipton, minor attraction is a disgusting watering down of language.
	Let's stick with pedo, so we're all on the same page.
	Absolutely agree.
	If they want to be okay to play out their horrible thoughts, then perhaps moving to the East would suffice, because in the West we see pedos as vile.
	I think my understanding is that the East also sees pedos as vile.
	In fact, it seems to be a fairly universal cultural standard, as far as I'm aware.
	Yes, I'd say, as much as people go on about human nature as opposed to cultural things, seeing people try to abuse children is something that most people don't like, but they might be referring to the Middle East, to be fair.
	So that might be where they're going with that.
	Some very different attitudes, some vile barbaric attitudes you could describe it as.
	Catastrophic Regression Threshold says, I feel like most people have one or two majorly screwed up urges, but the big difference is most people understand the urges are wrong in one way or another, so they don't indulge them.
	It's not terribly hard.
	And that's one of the things that these people are trying to say is that, oh, these are just people with natural urges.
	Well, this philosophy is something along the lines of no urge should be unindulged, which, if you take that to its logical conclusion, essentially relegates humans to animals, because every single urge must be acted upon.
	It's the exact opposite to Stoic philosophy.
	I mean, that is how we end up with a kink at pride in public areas where children can just wander into them and see all this stuff that they should not be seeing at that age whatsoever.
	Agent 000 says, no wonder why the left wants weapons and self-defense banned when they are also planning on forcing paedophilia upon the people.
	And this is one of the things.
	It's not just the paedophilia.
	They want weapons and self-defense banned just so that they can get...
	Everything they want done, ever.
	I mean, Australia should never have given up their guns, if it's anything to go by.
	But yeah, guns are a great way of protecting your children.
	I must admit, as a fairly classical British thinker, I have been very much eye-rolling about the whole guns thing for many a year, but I have not eye-rolled, because Americans talk about guns all the time.
	It's the kind of thing, any time you bring up a problem, If you say it to an American Republican, you generally get something, well, you should have guns.
	You're like, but that's not going to help my school curriculum.
	It's like, you should have guns.
	Well, honestly, the last couple of years, if they've taught us anything, it's that actually, maybe we should have guns.
	Yes, I agree that we should have guns.
	I mean, in the UK, you can't even have, like, pepper spray or a taser to protect yourself, which is absolutely ridiculous, and no wonder the Americans...
	You can't even carry a pocket knife around.
	Yeah, no wonder the Americans laugh at us.
	I'll simply paraphrase Shakespeare.
	I'll just say, I agree.
	M1Ping, the Rittenhouse response to minor attracted people is probably the best one.
	Yep.
	And Rosenbaum was a convicted paedophile with charges against five children, so Rittenhouse did society a favour.
	He was also in the act of laying hands upon a minor.
	Exactly, exactly.
	I think someone posted that he went out as he lived.
	Was that Tucker Carlson who said that?
	Yeah, he said he went out as he lived, trying to touch an unwilling minor, which is great.
	Also, I agree, I don't think we should just put guns in the hands of the adults.
	We need them in the hands of the children as well, so that they can keep the pedos away.
	Yeah, let's carry on.
	Where are we here?
	Baron Von Warhawk with...
	I got to ask, how are they winning?
	They're utterly repulsive, insane, degenerate, yet on all fronts, the pedo-left have been beating us in the culture war.
	It should be easy to beat these guys, yet we are losing because the Conservative parties are full of George McClelland, who are too cowardly to fight, or Benedict Arnold, who are actively betraying us to the enemy.
	Well, it goes back to the Whig history, I think.
	I'm going to shill for Hugo's article again because I really think it's important to understand this.
	The whole philosophy behind which all of the West modern institutions were set up is under the idea that there is one way forward and it is progress.
	And the only responsible alternative to that is let's just progress more slowly.
	Yes, that's what conservatism has become.
	So there is no political force present which allows us to advance in a direction other than that which has been seized by the left.
	I would also put it down to the infiltration of our academic and educational institutions.
	Like I say, these all come from the universities, these ideas which are like gender ideology and other such.
	And this person, Alan Wood, has got a position in a university.
	Well, thankfully, they're on leave at the moment, hopefully forever.
	Mm-hmm.
	It's also not worth pointing out that they are not necessarily winning.
	This is the sort of game that you can never really set the right timescale on to judge properly, and in many ways I think they are getting their comeuppance, but it's a long game.
	Edward of Woodstock says, Dignity, I'd be far more on board with their search for Dignitas.
	Alternatively, a wood chipper.
	Oh, you missed Alexander Earl's comment there.
	Funny how the Prostasia HQ is directly opposite a middle school, isn't it?
	Well, that was very convenient for them.
	Let's move on to some honourable mentions.
	So, just one honourable mention.
	I'll ask this to you directly.
	So, Freewell2112 says, Was this plane recommended to us by the Chinese or the Russians?
	No, would be the answer to that.
	But you would not be wrong in thinking so.
	Yeah, and just to sum up a lot of what we've been talking about here, Alpha of the Betas says, invest in woodchippers.
	And on that note, on that bombshell, I think we're out of time.
	So thank you very much for joining us today for this episode of the podcast of the Lotus Eaters.
	Be sure to join us again tomorrow at 1pm UK time, where you can catch us there.
	Thank you so much for tuning in, and have a great day.

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