Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Feb. 28, 2022 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:36:08

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #338

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Thank you.
	I am joined by John.
	Hello Lotus Eaters.
	And today we're going to be talking about Ukraine's very bad time.
	It's quite the bad time.
	Also the state, the absolute state of our statesmen.
	Goodness sake, yeah.
	Also the very worst of Ukraine responses, which are really bad.
	It's just Western cringe in the extreme.
	Mm-hmm.
	But some things to mention first on the website.
	So first things to mention being the new stuff that went up over the weekend just before.
	So this one first here being an article from you, so I'll let you sell it.
	Yes, so this was a summary of the first day of conflict in the Ukraine.
	I've been continuing to write these summaries and upload them, but this is just a good summary of what happened on day one.
	Obviously more reports have been coming in since.
	Absolutely.
	So if we go to the next one, we can also see an article from Josh who also wanted to write something about the reasons why Russia invaded Ukraine.
	So this is from the Russian perspective of like, well, why would you actually want to?
	It's adding a bit more historical context to the claim that everything just started this year or in 2014.
	Yeah, two weeks ago when I found out Ukraine existed on my phone.
	We'll go to the next one.
	We can also see Contemplations, the one up over the weekend.
	So this is on the philosophy of objectivism.
	Glad I said that right.
	So you can check that out.
	We were having a stark discussion about that before we started.
	Various opinions on objectivism and objectivists.
	So go check that out.
	If we go to the next one, we also have the newest epochs, of course.
	Historical mad lads with special guest Count Dankula.
	Yeah.
	I did catch a little bit of this as well.
	I saw him talking about Dragonlord.
	Yeah, I saw a bit of that.
	That's a disaster.
	So do go and sign up to check out that with Bo and Count Dankula, of course.
	But without further ado, we'll begin.
	Start with Ukraine's very bad time.
	It's been bad, bad, bad time.
	And again, not an expert on geopolitics.
	Spoken about this before.
	Especially geopolitical predictions or military predictions.
	And thank a lot for that, because quite frankly, a lot of people have made them and then look silly.
	So glad I'm not one of them.
	And we will just go through what we can find.
	Again, misinformation abound.
	It's a war.
	Please no bully.
	Please no shoot.
	We will do our best.
	So, we'll start off with some memes, because of course, we'll start off with a living meme, of course, being Miles, who was there, and this is him posting, I think it was last night, when they were being shelled in Kiev, and he's just like, oh, the lights just went out, how fun!
	And then there's a picture of him with a thumbs up, because it's Miles.
	If we continue, we can see some actual memes from Ukrainians there, of course, as well, which is a...
	A Ukrainian politician who decided to tweet out this image of him in uniform and then with his little badge there of the Imperial Inquisition.
	Oh my goodness.
	Faith in the Emperor, of course.
	I wonder if he knows what that is.
	I presume so.
	I presume he's having a good time with that.
	Right.
	If we continue, we can see footage on the ground of what is meant to be, at least at the time of the weekend, was meant to be saboteurs that were found throughout Ukrainian territory.
	At least the Ukrainians are saying they are.
	If we go to the next one, we can see more of these people.
	And there should be a different link in there.
	Yeah, we are.
	So you can see more of these people being arrested or neutralized, as being said.
	I don't know.
	Just that's the situation with that.
	If we continue, we can see some Western responses.
	So if we start with Slovakia, who have decided that they're going to send tons of ammo, apparently.
	To try and support the war, or at least that was the case a couple of days ago.
	That's Western support.
	But if we go forward, we can see some other Western responses, starting off with Australia, which decided to ban Russian today, because...
	Yeah, so did the whole of the EU, I believe.
	Yeah, so because it's Russian-funded, therefore we're going to ban the channel.
	Al Jazeera, not so much.
	Radio, make perfect sense.
	At least be consistent on these matters, you would have thought.
	Also, I don't really know what the damage is doing when you're just looking at news, like...
	There was an amazing take on the first day of the invasion, and someone saying, Russia today is promoting a pro-Russian view on this conflict.
	And it's like, yeah, of course it is.
	I am absolutely shooketh.
	Right, that's what it's there for.
	I mean, yeah, a lot of it's going to be nonsense and lies and literal propaganda, but sometimes you can get some information out of that.
	Al Jazeera, or AJ Plus on the internet, is funded by the Qataris, and will tell you that Islam did nothing wrong.
	Again, I'm fine with these things existing because, well...
	Yeah, and CNN, by the way, anyway...
	If we go to the next one, we can see some other responses.
	So you can see US and Canada decided that they were going to get rid of Russian vodka from their shelves, apparently.
	There was a whole bunch of footage of people doing this.
	Some people doing it to vodka that isn't even Russian.
	It's like Lafayette vodka, and they're just pouring it down the drain.
	I'm like, good job.
	Alright, thought that through.
	But that's a kind of, let's say, mini-sanction you could do on your own if you wanted to.
	If we continue, we can see a bigger, bigger sanction, though.
	Pornhub.
	Pornhub have taken action.
	Apparently if you try and sign on to Pornhub in the Russian Federation, you can't get in.
	You have to be reduced to the crippling poverty that is signing up to XHamster or some other such site.
	If we go to the next one, there is of course Twitter.com deciding to take action and no longer allowing people to register accounts in the Federation.
	Oh no.
	Oh no.
	This is not a punishment.
	This is a blessing.
	Honestly, yeah.
	This is an anti-sanction, this is.
	Oh, sorry.
	But if you can see the top comment there, this blows.
	Not only is our government trying to suppress people's voices, but now corpos are at it too.
	I mean, absolutely right.
	Yeah, random Russian people can't sign up.
	Good job.
	You've still got Putin's account and all the government accounts, but, you know, new rando wants to sign up.
	Nah.
	Okay.
	Right.
	If you guys need the next one, we can also see the frontline map of the situation, at least as best reported.
	So I decided to use the Institute for the Study of War this one because they just seem the most accurate.
	It's a little bit behind, but whatever.
	And as you can see, on the outskirts of the capital, taking a whole bunch of territory.
	Don't look great.
	So, not looking good there.
	Keep that in mind as we go forward.
	We go to the next one.
	I also wanted to mention I saw that the Chechens had turned up, which, um, very funny.
	At least, I feel funny.
	Why is it BBC Russia?
	Oh, I had to use BBC Russia for the rationale for a source on this, because in here, not only have the Chechens turned up, but the BBC got audio of, what is this, Kadyrov talking to other officials before the invasion, about the invasion.
	So, it's nice to know that they all knew as well.
	Well, they would have done the scale that it was and the number of people involved.
	Of course.
	So it's nice to get the audio.
	If we go continue, we can see them all screaming Allahu Akbar in Belarus before they went in.
	There is reports that a whole bunch of them have been killed.
	I don't know.
	Not going to say, because again, it's in the middle of fog of war, misinformation.
	We know that they were engaged in combat in Hostomel north of Kiev from, I think, day two, day three.
	So they are involved.
	And I don't know if you can hit view on that, because as you can see, this is a tweet that has violated Twitter's rules for hateful conduct, and Twitter has kept it about.
	This one here, this is the National Guard of Ukraine dipping bullets in pig fat to send Kadyrov's orcs, as they call them, the Chechen Muslims, who have come here to fight, to hell.
	Because if you get shot with pig fat bullocks, then you go, not to paradise, but instead to shaitan.
	Or at least that's what's going on there.
	That's their interpretation of Islam, and I doubt it's that strict.
	I actually don't know if this is against the Geneva Convention or rules of war or anything, because it is just psychological warfare, because for us who don't believe in religion, then it's just, okay, it probably is going to jam your gun.
	Well, do you remember in the Syrian conflict there was all this talk about, oh, Muslims believe that if they get shot by a woman in the Rojava, then they'll go to hell and all this, that and the other.
	I've never actually heard that, except for military propaganda.
	I don't believe that's part of Islam.
	I don't think there are prescriptions on that, but obviously you can let us know in the comments.
	Yeah, I mean, let us know what's going on with this.
	But this is what is happening, and the National Guard of Ukraine did decide to tweet this out, which of course has caused a lot of upset.
	Yeah, but it's not just the National Guard of Ukraine, of course.
	This is the Azov Brigade, which is, as far as we know, notorious neo-Nazis in Ukraine.
	So, you know, pick a side, but oh my god, they're both terrible in this case.
	Not all Ukrainian military units like this, but this one is, and they've got loads of footage.
	They're mainly based around Mariupol, as far as I can ascertain, which is a city in the south of Ukraine.
	I have seen these descriptions of, you know, the undesirable brigades or undesirable people, of course, engaging in war.
	And it's a war.
	So, yeah.
	The Northern Alliance and the Taliban weren't good guys.
	But there is a question as to how there are so many of them and such large formations in Ukraine at this point, given that they have also been seen as far back as 2013 in the Euromaidan and so on.
	They've been organising because Ukraine needs defence, presumably, and they're letting any old thing in, or at least that's what I would assume.
	I don't think that's quite the right reading, but I think it's too complicated to get into for a second.
	We go to the next one.
	Also, just a funny thing to mention, which apparently there are some Islamist forces also fighting with the Ukrainians, which means Allah is playing both sides, brothers.
	Yes, so there are Chechen guerrillas who are very anti-Putin, and so, obviously, Chechen is split.
	The Chechen and jihadis are more likely to come to fight for Ukraine, whereas the Chechen establishment, Kadyrov's lot, will fight for Putin.
	Crack out the Allahu Akbar music, and we'll have a lesson.
	We go to the next link, we can see Putin also saying he put nukes on standby, because...
	Uh, okay.
	Kind of worried about that, but okay.
	Presumably not going to use them, just him talking.
	Well, there have been about three stages where he's said this.
	The first was in his speech on Monday last week, where he says that they will use massive...
	I can't remember the exact quote, but he hints that they will retaliate strongly at any external involvement, i.e.
	NATO... Then on his speech on the eve of war, he said he would create, what was it, repercussions as you've never before seen, which is another direct threat.
	And now he's come out and directly said that he's activating Russia's strategic deterrence.
	And his claim is in response to the massive NATO support of Ukraine during this war.
	We also must remember that NATO has had nuclear-capable bombers circling Europe over the skies of Europe since this conflict started.
	So yes, things are moving on the nuclear front.
	No one is talking about it.
	Hopefully we're not sleepwalking into Armageddon by proxy.
	I imagine not.
	No one's that silly.
	I mean, no one has ever been that silly.
	We said that in the lead-up to this invasion even happening.
	Nuclear war is obviously a much, much different example.
	Oh yeah, it's a different conversation, but we shouldn't be complacent here.
	No, no, no.
	But I don't think it's as bad as some people are making out.
	But if we continue, we can also just see more of what has taken place.
	So this is Visigrad, the account for the Visigrad group on Twitter, who just have been tweeting out, obviously, quite a lot of pro-Ukrainian stuff or stories.
	And this is one of them saying on the Polish-Ukrainian border, Ukrainian men escort their women and children to Poland before returning east to the front.
	Because the Ukrainian border guards will say, no, no, no.
	They're not letting men leave the country.
	You're not allowed to leave.
	That's how that works.
	They're being conscripted and thrown into the fighting, as far as we can tell.
	In the next link, we can also see a friend of ours, or at least Slovak Border Guard, who I've mentioned has been sending me pictures and whatnot.
	And it's nice to see here.
	If you can click on these images, John, so we can get them a little bit bigger.
	He sent me these, and it's just nice, in a weird way, of course, to see refugees for once in refugees.
	Like, actual women and children, people who are fleeing a conflict that is right on the border, going to the first safe country, and then settling in.
	And not hordes of fighting-age men five countries' borders away from the first safe nation.
	Five.
	Five at a low.
	Yeah.
	We reported recently, like, about 90% of the men coming in the rubber dinghies are men of fighting age.
	They're not refugees.
	This is what refugees look like.
	50% were Iranian.
	Yeah.
	It's like, okay, well, there's no war, so...
	If you're gay, then you can get to other places easier, surely.
	And that's the situation with that, which is you can actually see some refugees.
	So nature is healing, lads.
	We are the virus, I don't know.
	But it's interesting, of course, because you see a response from a country that is actually being militaristic in its outlook, militaristic society instead of diversity and inclusion society or whatever.
	And you can see some other examples of this.
	So this is some pictures of the former president, some corrupt guy apparently.
	I don't know.
	I don't care.
	But he's in uniform here.
	He's donated some guns.
	If we go to the next one, we can also see supposedly the picture of the president there in uniform.
	Don't spoil it.
	So this is him there staying in Kiev.
	And he has stayed in Kiev.
	So you actually have some fortitude there.
	They haven't just got on a plane and disappeared with all the cash like a lot of others.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	But of course, this is an old photo.
	And there are a lot of old photos.
	Yes.
	A lot of misinformation about the whole situation.
	We mentioned this in our first section that we did about it.
	And this is why I decided a few days ago just to go and check out the Moscow side of the story.
	Okay.
	So just log on to Pravda and see what they were reporting on.
	And here are the headlines from the major newspaper in Moscow.
	So the first one is Residents of Liberated Villages of Donbass.
	We have been waiting for this for eight years.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	If you go to the next one, we can see other headlines saying, Don't let your children, your wives, and all people be used as human shields, says Putin.
	And if we go to the next one, we can see, Ukrainian military lay down arms on the island of serpents.
	Yes, Snake Island.
	And if we go to the last one, we have photos and video from liberated villages.
	So this is the Moscow side of press reporting, let's say.
	And this is why I'm a bit mad about the ban of Russia today, because this isn't proper.
	It's good to be able to see all the information, even if it is...
	The whole Western media has gone into war mode as well.
	They're very pro-Ukraine, and obviously you can understand why, but there is nothing coming out of the other side, and it is good to at least hear what the other side is saying, even if it's propaganda.
	Yeah.
	There's also the whole point of, well, we never actually guaranteed Ukraine's independence or made them members of NATO, so we have no commitments.
	Like, Russia is going to...
	We have been pouring lots of weapons and military advisors in for years.
	Sure, but that's not...
	We are definitely like, we must die for this nation situation.
	Right.
	We have plausible deniability.
	Right.
	Yeah, yeah.
	There is a third position other than just like endlessly screaming about Ukraine or Russia.
	Yeah.
	Which is just be like, well, there's a war and we can think about what to do in response.
	But that doesn't seem to be taking place.
	There is also on Pravda's website something funny I wanted to show.
	So if we go to the next one, I don't know if you can load it up.
	It's not...
	Is it there?
	I don't think it's coming up on your screen, John, because I don't know if you translate it.
	But there...
	Don't worry.
	Anyway, if you go to the main website, if you go at home, you'll be able to see there's a yellow logo, like one of the tabs at the top, that just says, like, special operations.
	And it's just like, okay.
	I love that that is the term that is being used.
	It is very funny.
	If we go to the next link, we can also see the response, at least from Russian outlets.
	So you can see Tassio saying, Zelensky execs Putin's proposal ready for peace talks.
	Not this floating around in Western sources, or at least hasn't been up until extremely this morning.
	I managed to find something on it last night.
	But essentially, there were discussions about where they would have these negotiations.
	Originally, they were going to take place in Belarus.
	But of course, Ukraine said no, Belarus is a party to the conflict.
	Russia is literally invading through Belarus.
	So they suggested a number of other cities, including like Bratislava, Budapest, and so on.
	And then as a compromise, they agreed to, I believe, with no preconditions and no ceasefire meet at a point on the Belarus-Ukraine border.
	Diplomats from both sides and discussed negotiations, which the US State Department came out against because they said, no, no, no, as a precondition for any negotiations or peace talks, Russia must unilaterally withdraw.
	Which, no, it's not going to happen.
	Don't be silly.
	So this is him back at the time saying he's refused allegations, he's refused to have talks, and instead he will have them and will accept Russian president's proposal for a ceasefire.
	At least this was reported in TAS at the time.
	And I only found this out from...
	Well, going and checking out the Russian sources, because this wasn't being reported in the West.
	Which again, okay, there's problems with foreign sources in the war, of course.
	But there is also information to be found.
	If we go to the next one, we can see the most modern news on this.
	So, as you mentioned, they agreed to have talks on the Belarusian-Ukraine border in some area that is not occupied.
	If we go to the next one, we can see footage, or at least this is meant to be today, of both sides sitting down with the little flags and bottles of water to have a chat and see where that goes.
	And then...
	And then they kicked out all the journalists.
	So, anti-journalist action.
	Very cool.
	I must admit.
	I'm not a fan.
	Like, the adults need to stand up in the room and actually solve this problem and save lives rather than journalists being there trying to get a few hits for their Twitter profile.
	How do I gin up more war talk?
	I was like, okay, let's just get out.
	So there's this.
	I don't know where it'll go.
	I don't know if the Russians will win.
	I don't know if Ukraine will capitulate tomorrow.
	Honestly, I think peace and everyone wins a few border alterations.
	Like, if the two sides are actually talking to each other and settling this problem, that's good.
	If external forces are coming in and meddling with the future of this region, that's bad.
	I don't know.
	I'm not going to make predictions or any talk on what's going on.
	No, but I just wish peace the best chance.
	Anyone can agree to that.
	But if we go to the next link, because this is also the aspect.
	You may have seen this meme.
	I did, because it was funny.
	And as you can see here, it's the don't step on me snick with Ukrainian flag and then in the background, which is the speech that was given to the Russian warships.
	Go F yourself.
	And if we go to the next link, we can see Moscow's newspapers, or at least Pravda again, saying that this was complete fake news.
	Remember, they were all killed.
	Apparently not, according to the Russians.
	Again, I had to go and find this out from the Russian sources, saying that no, they actually surrendered.
	We took them to Sevastopol, and then we're sending them back.
	Could be propaganda from Russia.
	I think the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense did confirm this on day two.
	To get to that, yes.
	So if we go to the next link, you can see other Russian sources reporting this.
	And then if we go to the next one, you can see Vizigrad suddenly saying that, oh wait, they might all be alive.
	And we go to the next one, we have some footage and the admittance from the Ukrainian national defense guy saying that, yeah, okay, this doesn't seem to have been the case.
	They have surrendered.
	Another perfect example of the fog of war in this whole situation.
	Well, the fog of war plus Twitter disinformation equals nonsense.
	Of course.
	If we go to the next links as well, I want to talk about some other funny things, which I don't know if they're true or not.
	Don't care.
	It's just hilarious.
	So this one starting off with the ghost of Kiev.
	I have no idea if this is even true at this point.
	I'm just going to ignore it.
	Again, just meh.
	Don't know.
	So make up your own minds.
	But this is a funny post I saw that people were throwing around.
	The ghost of Kiev is confirmed to be a pansexual transgender woman.
	And then a load of people being like, Yas Queen, isn't this great?
	He's knocking out those homophobic, transphobic, rugs and billigates from the sky?
	Okay, if we go to the next one, we can see other reporting on this.
	For Miles, for example, saying the Ghost of Kiev is a disabled trans non-binary woman, by the way!
	Why not?
	Just make up any of the nonsense, because nonsense doesn't seem to be stopped at this point.
	Because the next one, we can see the funniest of nonsense in this regard, which is some guy made a meme saying that the Ghost of Kiev was Samuel Hyde.
	And this guy, some verify checkmark, decided to retweet this, being like, The Ghost of Kiev has a name and is absolutely owns the Russian Air Force.
	Godspeed.
	More kills.
	Samuel.
	Stop.
	Just stop.
	But the level to which Western media is just uncritically parroting every pro-Ukrainian nonsense story that comes out to the extent of literal meme magic.
	Literal memes are being believed as true, because some people can't stop themselves for five minutes.
	And apparently this checkmark, I'm not familiar with him enough, but he has been calling for a no-fly zone on media to be taking place in Ukraine.
	So he wants NATO intervention in Ukraine.
	Great, yes.
	I can't think of anything better.
	Why don't we just get involved and create more...
	Okay, whatever.
	I don't want to dive into Kiev.
	We get to the next one.
	We can see also, as John points out, some of the funny aspects of this, which is it's a choose-your-own-adventure.
	So we have on the left, captured Ukrainians.
	Have on the right, captured Russians.
	And then on the right, captured Ukrainians.
	Pick your own version.
	Pick your own war.
	This reminds me of those old Spot the Difference games.
	Yeah, how do you know?
	I don't.
	But this is the thing.
	The misinformation abound is so ridiculous that this is why I'm not trying to make a comment on such things.
	Because, good luck.
	You've got to know what you're talking about immensely, apparently.
	Or at least more than most people.
	If we go to the other Western responses, I will quickly go through just to mention them, which is this video popped back up so you can see.
	An all-time Biden campaign moment from 2019.
	Imagine what can happen in Ukraine if Trump is re-elected.
	Peace, maybe?
	Are you imagining?
	Should we play Imagine in the background?
	Imagine people's houses not being blown apart by shellfire.
	I also know that we can only be saved now by some celebrities singing Imagine.
	Imagine if Trump was in charge.
	So if we go to the next one, we can also see some other sanctions.
	So this is countries that have banned Russian aircraft from their airspace, which is pretty big.
	The whole of Europe, basically.
	I mean, Switzerland hasn't, but that doesn't really matter, does it, looking at that map?
	No, I feel like the Swiss don't make...
	Unless they're going to space and they're back down or something, it's not going to matter.
	I saw people also complaining about Norway not doing it.
	I was like, again, does it matter?
	I don't think so.
	But there you are.
	That's the response there, or at least a response.
	If we continue, I did see a friend of mine, Mark, decided he would send sunflowers to the Russian embassy in London as a protest because he has ties to Slovakia and whatnot and is very upset what's going on.
	This is, for people who don't know, it's a reference to a lady who gave sunflower seeds or tried to to a Russian soldier saying that at least when you die something will grow out your corpse.
	It has become a form of protest to send sunflower seeds to Russians, apparently.
	So that is something else that is taking place.
	Let's go to the next one, just for some other stuff, because people were mentioning about the oil.
	We could just go to Saudi Arabia and make them bob it out.
	The Saudis have told us to F off, apparently.
	There's some surprising news out of Saudi Arabia, because in the middle of all of this, they've announced they've discovered, I think it's five massive natural gas fields.
	They're just, oh yeah, we've just discovered this just now, and you're thinking, hmm.
	Yeah, but there's also the aspect of like, oh, we don't need Russian oil, we can go to Saudi Arabia.
	It's like, why don't you just make your own?
	I'm sorry, but we all remember.
	None of us forget what happened immediately after Biden came to office and decided to go full war on gas and oil.
	Yeah, shut down the Keystone Pipeline.
	I tweeted just before we started some graph of just US production.
	It's just like, Biden gets into office and just nosedives.
	Doesn't need to.
	It's a completely policy decision.
	Right.
	And, well, okay, we have a shortage of oil thanks to this.
	Make some more.
	It's funny how Germany refusing to certify Nord Stream 2 is a major strategic international geopolitical blah blah blah.
	But Biden cancelling the Keystone pipeline is just good for the environment.
	Or fracking on government-owned land for however long he feels.
	That's just good for the environment, again.
	If you go to the next one, I can also see that I saw the Ukrainian account was tweeting out you could donate cryptocurrency.
	And this was an interesting response because, of course, the Ukrainian currency and the Russian currency are doing all kinds of things.
	So they were getting Bitcoin and Ethereum instead.
	And apparently they've got, what was that, $3.4 million in Ethereum and $700,000 in Bitcoins.
	Yeah.
	There was also someone saying that they'd basically fled Ukraine to Kazakhstan and obviously all of their Ukrainian cards stopped working, so the only way they're able to survive is by using cryptocurrency.
	So that's another good reason for it.
	Proven that it actually works.
	And I thought we'd own this off because that's all the news that I have for that.
	It's a situation.
	God knows if they're going to be capitulating tomorrow in those talks.
	Or not.
	But let's end with a meme, because let's try and smile throughout the horror, and we'll have this Carl Rittenhouse meme.
	But did he cross state lines?
	I think in this case we could say definitively that yes, he did.
	He did indeed cross those state lines.
	I only think he had maybe more than one assault rifle.
	Why was he so far from home with all the tanks?
	There's that.
	Anyway, that's Ukraine's very bad time.
	And related to that, I want to talk today about the absolute state of our statesman, because I think there's an argument that this conflict wasn't necessarily inevitable.
	The airwaves are currently resounding with footage of explosions and scenes of heavy fighting from Ukraine.
	We might be tempted to ask ourselves, how did we get here?
	And we absolutely should, because that is a question the Western media is refusing to answer honestly.
	As I've been covering over at ukraineobservatory.org, which is this, the corporate media is now in full-on war mode.
	While I'm, of course, very much on the side of the Ukrainian people in this conflict, the biased and uncritical repetition of Ukrainian propaganda by the Western media is particularly concerning.
	As we saw from the last segment, like, literal memes.
	Literal meme magic.
	Yeah, that's true.
	Samuel Hayati.
	I heard he's also leading the Chechens.
	LAUGHTER It's mad.
	Supplied by various NATO forces have been having a real effect on the conflict.
	They're very effective weapons.
	And if anything, it's a testament to our military advisors that that small shipment of 2,000 rifles, 2,000 anti-tank weapons rather, has had such an impact on the conflict.
	It's almost as if they knew more about what would help an allied military than journalists on Twitter.
	No, no, no.
	You send memes.
	You change your profile to include a Ukrainian flag and then Putin is destroyed.
	Well, if only.
	But yeah, if this does go nuclear, and I don't think it will, there is a small but real chance, it will be Armageddon by proxy because at the moment we're supplying all of the weapons that are blowing up a lot of Russian troops and we don't have a single boot on the ground.
	It's like a dream scenario as far as we can see.
	The latest move, however, by Twitter-addled Western politicians is the British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, directly encouraging British citizens to volunteer to fight in Ukraine.
	I mean, I don't think they've got a flak jacket small enough, but maybe she can get there.
	Asked on BBC One's Sunday morning programme if she would support individuals from Britain going over to Ukraine to help in the fight, Miss Trust said, I do support that, and of course that is something that people can make their own decisions about.
	The people of Ukraine are fighting for freedom and democracy, not just for Ukraine, but for the whole of Europe, because that's what President Putin is challenging.
	Is anyone else getting flashbacks from the last 20 years of international politics of British fighters going abroad to wreck other countries in places like Iraq and Syria?
	Well, at least they won't come back and scream Allahu Akbar at a kid's concert.
	I'm hoping.
	You can't rule anything out at this point.
	But regardless of her politics, which, to be fair, do contain some actual conservative ideas.
	I mean, wasn't she the one who banned critical race training when she was Equality Secretary and so on?
	Her and Kemi Badenoch.
	Her and Kemi Badenoch.
	So she has done some reasonable things.
	But the quality of our statesman...
	Has been on a relentless decline over the past decades.
	Where we once produced titans like Gladstone, Wellington, Castlereagh, the best we can do now is apparently Boris Johnson, Keir Starmer and Liz Truss.
	And I blame social media.
	And let's look at another tweet.
	This came up, I believe, yesterday.
	No, it's not that one.
	Anyway, she posted today, important meeting with G7. We are clear Putin must fail and sovereignty restored.
	We agreed to continue to supply defensive weapons and equipment to Ukraine, escalate sanctions to debilitate the Russian economy and call out Putin in global fora.
	But viewers may recall Liz Truss heading over to Russia less than two weeks before the first shots were fired for negotiations with her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
	She did not come home declaring peace in our time.
	Instead, she used the excursion for a photo op, if we go to that tweet we had up just now.
	You scroll down to the button.
	Yeah.
	So this is her.
	She's got that photo op going there.
	She's wearing very warm, looks like black fur, maybe mink, who knows, looking very toasty.
	But apparently it was a thaw, unlike when Thatcher went there, and it was actually winter.
	So she must have been absolutely boiling in that.
	And, yeah, and it's not the first time either, because she has form for this kind of thing, basically using the prospect of war and conflict as a photo opportunity.
	In December last year, Peter Hitchens reported on another Margaret Thatcher impersonation attempt, and this time she was perched inside a British tank in Estonia.
	Anyway, so she says, you will have to forgive me if I laugh when people say that the Foreign Secretary Liz Truss resembled the Iron Lady when she clambered into a British tank in Estonia last week.
	Poor Miss Truss, despite the efforts of her official photographer, was engulfed by the warlike garments she had unwisely donned.
	Lefty liberals, such as she is, never look quite right in combat gear.
	It's a Hitchens impression.
	I do love some of the ways he comes out with this.
	His brother was also very good at these very sort of snarky comments, takedowns.
	The ugly helmet she was persuaded to wear makes her look as if a tortoise was nesting on her head.
	She looked much more like the failed US presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, who in 1988 unwisely rode on top of a US army tank to try to look tough.
	Most people cackled at the sight.
	And I must say, I did have a bit of a cackle when I saw that.
	She looks like a kid who's got to ride on a school bus.
	You know, you get to ride up at the front and pretend you're driving.
	It's like, oh, look at this.
	Isn't this wonderful?
	I mean, if I did it, I'd just want to do the whole thing with the sword.
	You'd just pull out a sword and be like, get me closer.
	I want to hit them.
	I don't think she's got quite the level of meme magic that you do, Callum.
	Damn.
	Have some more memes lists.
	Indeed.
	But going back to her negotiations in Russia, Truss was widely panned for a series of spectacular gaffes.
	And as the Moscow Times reported, which is an independent Russian news source, the British embassy in Moscow was forced on Thursday to clarify a series of remarks made by Foreign Minister Liz Truss during a tense meeting with her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.
	In the closed-door meeting, Lavrov had asked Truss whether the UK accepted that two Russian regions, Voronezh and Rostov, belonged to Russia, and that Russia had the right to move troops and equipment to the areas.
	According to Russia's Commissant Business Daily, Truss replied that the US will never recognise Russian sovereignty over these regions.
	Those are Russian Federation territory.
	They've been Russian for centuries.
	Like the Russian Federation territory, not Ukrainian.
	Yes.
	So, okay, she just doesn't know what he's saying, presumably.
	No, she thought they were referring to Donetsk and Luhansk, clearly, and she was quickly corrected by the British ambassador in the meeting.
	So I'm glad there are some adults in the meeting.
	I don't know.
	I mean, maybe that was a trap laid there by the Russian.
	Oh, almost.
	I want to see what she knows.
	Yeah, nothing is the answer.
	At least on that.
	But it also implies that she went there with the posture of basically deny everything, saying, no, no, we'll never do this, back off, no, and not to, I don't know, what's the word, negotiate?
	Have a chat.
	Yeah.
	She had previously confused the Baltic Sea with the Black Sea, 700 kilometres away.
	Why is it that our foreign secretary lacks a basic grasp of geography?
	Well, let's think about that.
	After the meeting, Lavrov refused to shake Truss's hand and apparently described the meeting as like a mute talking to the deaf.
	And I think this is emblematic of our approach towards Russia.
	We have been ignoring their repeated concerns about NATO expansion and interference and subversion in Ukraine for many years.
	Perhaps instead of playing tough and taking photos, we could have actually listened and talked, actually negotiated and actually potentially avoided a war that is killing many Russians and Ukrainians.
	You could argue this, but you could also argue, of course, that we've been signed of death on their advances.
	I mean, like the taking of Crimea, the two territories, of course, as well, and then, well, just poisoning people when they try to run for president or anything else.
	I don't say I agree.
	That is a good point, but there is a problem that a lot of commentators are beginning the discussion of this issue with the occupation of Crimea, which was, in fact, directly precipitated by the coup against the pro-Russian president.
	Yes.
	Which was sponsored, and we have this on record, I'll be reporting about it later this week, sponsored by the US State Department, and aided and abetted.
	So it depends where you draw the lines to this conflict.
	Basically, there have been some bad people involved all across on all sides, and I think...
	Yes, I'm not exculpating Russia or Putin of blame because they are a bad bunch.
	They're the ones actually invading with troops and taking territory.
	That is not to be mentioned.
	Absolutely.
	But you may be wondering how we got here with these gaffes.
	How does a country that used to rule a quarter of the world's land area find itself a foreign secretary with a D in geography?
	Well, let's take a look.
	Have you heard of this thing?
	Conservative A-list?
	Oh, is this the diversity hiring?
	Oh, yes.
	Yeah, I remember mentioning this in the video on parliamentary procedures.
	David Cameron was just like, yeah, I want diversity hires because I'm an idiot.
	Because Labour did this and they got terrible female candidates who are still an embarrassment to this day.
	And he was like, yeah, I want some of that.
	So...
	And his rationale for it was, oh, but that'll make us look more trendy and more modern if we've got more, well, more non-white people, more minorities, more women, and so on and so forth.
	Yes, but you then end up with Diane Abbott.
	Or Liz Truss.
	Oh, is she an A-list candidate?
	Oh, yes.
	Oh, for being a woman, I presume.
	Yes.
	Right.
	So, this is the Conservative Party's version of a diversity hire.
	In the run-up to the 2010 elections, Cameron compiled a short list of prioritised, trendy candidates.
	In April 2006, a Conservative Party committee on candidates was set out to deliver a province by David Cameron to transform the Conservative Party at Westminster into something that's not Conservative.
	The committee reduced 500 aspiring politicians on the party's list of approved parliamentary candidates to an A-list of between 100 and 150 priority candidates.
	The result was a list on which more than half of the names were women.
	Interesting.
	It's not quite as bad as Labour's all-female shortlist, but it's not far off.
	This shows the extent to which the ideology of affirmative action, diversity and inclusion has undermined meritocracy and produced laughably inept politicians to fill the highest ranks of government.
	So who else do you think was on this list?
	Let's have a guess.
	What Luminaries?
	Yes.
	Damn it!
	I knew it!
	I knew it!
	So Anna Soubry, for those who don't know, was the fanatical Remainer who left the Conservative Party to start the Independent Group for Change and was promptly booted.
	The Cuck Party.
	Yes.
	And what happened to her at the next election, can you remember?
	Yeah, she was booted out of her seat by the electorate, which is what should happen.
	Anyone else you can think of?
	Perhaps slightly less controversial.
	Perhaps in higher places of government.
	No, it's not going to be Theresa May, she's too old for that.
	No, no.
	I have no idea.
	So we have Baroness Worsi, Saida Worsi, who is now in the House of Lords, and Priti Patel.
	Oh, really?
	Yeah.
	Interesting.
	I wonder how she feels about being the diversity hire.
	She said some pretty base things about those problems in the past.
	Yeah, maybe it's a burning resentment she feels, or maybe it's a version of pulling up the ladder.
	Who knows?
	I'm gone now, right?
	Bye.
	Yeah.
	So perhaps if we had a competent set of ministers chosen on merit rather than promoted through identity politics, the world wouldn't be quite such a shambles.
	But yeah, I do agree with your point there.
	Obviously, I'm not trying to say, oh, it's Liz Truss's fault entirely that there's war in Ukraine, because that's ridiculous, right?
	But she is one factor.
	She's one of the...
	The cogs in this enormous, complicated issue that has completely failed.
	Could have been better.
	Right, exactly.
	Absolutely.
	You could imagine if you replaced her with someone who was competent, an actual statesman who could go there and negotiate and not just look tough and take photos.
	Who knew where Rostov was.
	Right.
	Yeah, who even knew what the territories were that they were talking about, then maybe we would have had a better outcome.
	Fair point.
	Alright, let's continue.
	Let's go to the very worst Ukraine responses possible, which are terrible.
	There are a lot of responses to the Ukraine war for independence or invasion by Russia, whichever term people are using these days, I don't know.
	All of them are terrible, or at least a lot of them are terrible, because they're made by people who found about Ukraine through the hell brick that is their phone, like, two weeks ago, and then have started, like, retweeting footage and photos from four years ago or whatever, and be like, this is happening right now.
	No idea.
	And so have just decided to also go on Twitter.com and vent their opinions.
	And opinions are crap.
	And we'll start off with some crap opinions.
	Let's start off with occupied Democrats.
	Verify checkmark.
	So this is them a while back.
	So some nostalgia to start off with.
	Retweet if you're glad our president is no longer a Putin puppet.
	Because the Russians were talking about invading.
	I can't believe Americans who seriously think that Trump was a Russian spy.
	You know what you do is you, at enormous expense, as Razor Fist was saying, I saw a video on this, you get your puppet in position, and you wait four years, you wait for him to leave, and then you invade!
	It's like...
	As Sun Tzu said himself!
	Oh, it's dumb.
	But let's go to some more, let's say, contemporary responses.
	There is one, which we played previously.
	So if we go to the next link, please, you can see this lady.
	Dear Mr.
	President Vladimir Putin, because the worst weapon the West has at this point is the psychological warfare that we have, unparalleled by any other power.
	It is cringe beyond belief, and in which case we're not going to play the full thing again because I'll kill myself.
	So let's just play a short clip of this.
	Dear President Vladimir Putin, I'm so sorry that I was not your mother.
	If I was your mother, you would have been so loved, held in the arms of joyous light.
	Never would this story's plight the world unfurled before our eyes, a pure demise of nations sitting peaceful under a night sky.
	If I was your mother, the world would have been warm.
	Yeah, that's enough of that psychological warfare.
	It goes on, and it's awful, and I can't be bothered.
	But we'll go for some other responses, because...
	But it does tie into this whole mindset that a lot of the progressive left has, that all we need is more peace than love in the world.
	Well, I wonder what her mother would have done in Grozny in 1994.
	There's no discussion of reality.
	Right, exactly.
	Everything seems to be this cloud world that they're living in.
	Sorry, we're getting told that there's a fire drop.
	So if you hear a fire alarm, soz.
	But everyone just lives in this fluffy, cloudy, American Twitter sphere world where everything is perfect, where you can get food on delivery, where you can live in a nice apartment, blah, blah, blah.
	Where you can win a war by changing your profile picture.
	Right, exactly.
	And the real world is not like that.
	The real world is not California.
	No.
	Have some Californian responses.
	I don't know if he's in California.
	I just assume with these people.
	So we'll start with Stephen King, another verified checkmark, because the checkmarks are out in force, aren't they, being bloody stupid.
	153,000 likes on this one.
	Mr.
	Putin has made a serious miscalculation.
	He forgot he's no longer dealing with Trump.
	Remember when Trump was there?
	There wasn't an invasion?
	There was an invasion, therefore it doesn't make any sense.
	You're an idiot.
	Stephen King's tweets, by the way, on this conflict have been far more entertaining than his writing, which is quite something, because his writing is generally quite good.
	But if his writing is generally a genre of horror, his tweets are a horror of a whole different genre.
	I saw him tweeting about how basically Putin is a bully and to solve the crisis we need to punch the bully in the face.
	Do you feel your IQ lowering?
	It's like the worst geopolitical take ever.
	It's dreadful.
	I hate it.
	Let's continue with these terrible takes.
	Let's go for Gary Lineker here.
	You can see Julie Hartley Brewer had to save it because he deleted this one because he looked at tit.
	He tweeted out, All those trillions spent on so-called nuclear deterrent.
	Madness.
	Gary Lineker.
	Actual idiot.
	Does nothing.
	For maybe, if Gary is watching, as I've mentioned before.
	If you're watching this one, Gary, Ukraine had nukes.
	They gave them to Russia for a guarantee of non-invasion.
	And, uh...
	Well, technically they were the USSR's nukes and never in possession of the Ukrainian state.
	That's a stretch.
	Well, I don't think...
	No, it's not a stretch.
	I get your point.
	I get your point.
	But it's like there were Ukrainian nukes.
	But yeah, you're right.
	If Ukraine had nukes right now, we would be having a very different conversation.
	Would there be war?
	It's a big no.
	Probably not.
	And Gary apparently was told about this and then deleted the tweet and ran away to go and kick a football some more or just comment on the football or letting more refugees into a farm with his wife, I don't know.
	Let's go to the next one so we can see also if Gary wants to find out more from a Ukrainian expert.
	We can always go to a Ukrainian expert.
	Coach Redpill has turned up, so there we go, Gary.
	Wait, what?
	I don't know.
	I just found this really funny.
	I have no idea what he said.
	I didn't have time for the stream.
	I just find it funny that Coach Redpill apparently is in Kiev just wandering around.
	Just being like, hello.
	There's that.
	Let's continue.
	So if we go to the next one, we can see Cenk Yuga, Mr.
	Chunky himself, who decided to say right-wing doesn't love Putin just because he is an authoritarian, tyrannical leader.
	They love him because he's a white authoritarian leader.
	Race has become more important than even nationality.
	They've turned on democracy and even America in favor of the white warlord.
	News, Chank.
	Ukrainians are white too.
	Yeah, do you ever get the feeling that there's a bit of projection in this commentary?
	It's because he's white.
	White people fight white people.
	This must be about supporting white supremacy.
	I don't know.
	Racist Checkmark, who talks about nothing but race, decides that this is all about race.
	This has got to be of race.
	Even though they're both the same bloody race.
	I mean, they're both Slavs.
	In fact, arguably, that's the problem.
	That's why this whole conflict has started.
	It's because they are so close.
	Because so much of the population of Ukrainian is Russian.
	There's such an ethnic population of Ukrainians in Russia.
	And their history is so interlinked that there are people in Russia who feel like Ukraine should be Russia.
	It's this sort of thing.
	Your explanations are not welcome here.
	We are purely about Cenk Uygur, who has stared in his phone and gone, this must be about race.
	He's not listening to any of that.
	That's not going to get into it.
	This is the problem with Americans and geopolitics.
	They just don't understand how the world works outside America, most of them.
	Particularly leftists.
	I mean, Cenk Uygur being a particularly...
	Something is happening in the world.
	It must be because of the very narrow American leftist paradigm of how the world actually works.
	There couldn't be, as you say, complexities about who's who and the whole history and the relationship.
	No, no, no, no.
	It's white supremacy and the white authoritarian leader.
	I wish these people could just be flown out to Ukraine to take a stroll around.
	That's all I wish.
	That should be a deal.
	There should be a button, and if you press it enough times, that person then has to go and fight in Ukraine.
	If you're going to do something that stupid, it's just, right, okay, you've got to learn the hard way, apparently.
	Someone else who has to learn the hard way, or at least is learning the hard way, another stupid leftist.
	As you can see here, F's in the chat, boys, for Hassan, because apparently he's an idiot.
	Always has been.
	So he decided to tweet out, this is the hill I will die on.
	Russia cannot launch an urban counter-insurgency war in a neighbouring country with 44 million people, with or without NATO support.
	Why the fuck would they have NATO... Why would they have NATO support?
	This is why I have been saying he won't invade Ukraine, not because of anything else.
	He's a bad person, not a mad one.
	Hassan.
	Dumb man.
	Dumber than bricks.
	This is why you don't make stupid predictions about a thing you know nothing about if nothing else.
	Generally speaking, but that's not the dumbest take out there.
	No.
	Honestly.
	Like, there is reason for that.
	NATO's spot, he'd be talking about the West arming Ukrainian insurgents, which was a conversation that was happening before the war broke.
	I hope that's what he means by that.
	I don't think he thinks Russia would get NATO's.
	I wouldn't be surprised.
	Okay.
	He also did a segment, or at least there was a clip floating around of him being like, yeah, well, if the Russians change the borders, it's just borders, so what matters is just like, stop.
	But this is the thing, right?
	It's like you were saying the other day, the thing about a lot of people in geopolitics, it's not necessarily the take they've got, it's the fact that they are so certain.
	But he's convinced himself that this is the only possible outcome.
	He's absolutely certain of it.
	120%.
	There are Islamists who take religion less seriously than some people take their geopolitical predictions.
	And it is...
	I don't even want to say a brick wall.
	That's not good enough.
	It's like Russian concrete.
	It's impossibly dense to have to interact with and listen to.
	I don't even know.
	I'm not even an expert on Ukraine or any of that.
	We've already said all this.
	This is why I said I didn't care about the matter because I don't know enough.
	But I know some people are stupid, and this is one of them.
	If we continue, we'll go for more stupid.
	There's another stupid in here.
	As you can see, Lauren Chin collecting the stupid in her stupid bucket.
	And there's one here who decided to tweet out, Lots of people in Ukraine crowding together inside.
	Only 35% of Ukrainians have been vaccinated.
	Less than 2% have been boosted.
	Someone's missed the latest NPC update.
	We don't talk about COVID anymore.
	We talk about Ukraine.
	Dead.
	The anti-vax COVID deniers now polluting my mentions.
	No, shut up, you idiots.
	And if you think disease isn't a major factor in a lot of wars, you're pretty effing stupid.
	You're the retard in this situation.
	Yeah.
	Do you even interact with these people?
	Do you even...
	Could you reckon this person can drink without assistance?
	Or do you think you have to be there to hold the cup?
	Yeah.
	Right, exactly.
	Imagine it, when there are cruise missiles landing in your city, when there are, like, I don't know, MLRS systems blasting it to pieces.
	Your first priority is, oh, someone might give me the goof.
	Could you imagine the guys, you know, the underground, who are just like, no, no, no, we're not letting any more people into the bomb shelter.
	Oh!
	You've got to keep six meters apart or whatever the hell else.
	Oh, could you imagine that?
	You can't enter the bomb shelters because of COVID. Imagine that.
	This is what these people think the world should be run by.
	That's what they would do if there were an invasion in our country.
	They would come up with something that stupid.
	If we can go through some more of these photos, please.
	So this, you have Cenk Uygur being dense.
	And if we go to the next one, this is somebody saying, this isn't discussed much, but Putin very much benefits from white privilege.
	Took that long, did it?
	I just can't see a scenario in which a black or brown man running Russia...
	Shut up!
	Shut up!
	I don't even want to make the argument.
	Just shut up for a minute.
	Learn something that America isn't the rest of the world.
	Would be allowed to invade Ukraine with no devastating consequences.
	See Crimea in 2014.
	Right, if a black man ran Russia, if we was Russia, and we ran Russia, and when we invaded Ukraine, we would get criticised, unlike that damn Putin man, who don't get criticised because he's white.
	Yeah, why is it that a black dictator can't catch a break these days?
	You know, going round invading countries, everyone's okay.
	Zimbabwe's a brother, give him a break.
	What the...
	These people are painful on every day of the week, but when it comes to it, then there's a war.
	I love how we get more focused as a society and a people, and we start realising what's important.
	We start realising these people are absolute lunatics, rather than trying to pretend that they have more than three brain cells for three years.
	But in peacetime, we debate with them.
	In wartime, I just cringe.
	I'm not even going to talk.
	This is stupid beyond belief.
	She ends up with, of course, a classic line that I'll get on the history books.
	White supremacy will destroy us all when white people nuke each other.
	Right.
	Let's go to the next link.
	Sorry, the next photo there.
	I think there's one more.
	Some stupid lady.
	Toxic masculinity is going to get us killed, isn't it?
	And or capitalism, which is hard to disentangle from toxic masculinity.
	Thank God for that.
	So that whoosh was the sound of them zooming off into stratospheric abstractions that have nothing to do with reality on the ground.
	How do I make you create about me?
	How do I make it about feminism?
	I want it to be about me for a minute.
	Why are people talking about me?
	That's these people.
	If we continue, we'd see more of this.
	All virtual signals, but no bullets being sent to Ukraine, because that would cost money.
	And you can see some chap here pointing out this is essentially how this is going.
	Ukraine, I want help.
	Celebs, I stand with Ukraine.
	Bye-bye.
	That's enough from me.
	I have done my bit.
	And if we continue, we can see some people doing exactly this.
	We'll start off with Sadiq Khan, who decided to light up the...
	What is that?
	The Trafalgar.
	That's the Nelson Column.
	The Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square.
	As you can see tonight, London lights up in solidarity with friends of Ukraine.
	You are not alone.
	How about you donate some Bitcoin or Ethereum?
	Sadiq?
	Crickets.
	Crickets.
	Can't do that.
	I've lit up a light.
	Okay.
	I'm surprised, actually, that Sadiq came out against this wall, because I would have thought that being blown up by a cruise missile was just part and parcel of living in a modern European city.
	But there we go.
	Part and parcel of European nations, man.
	Nothing to worry about.
	We'll go for the next one.
	Another person who decided to do a big old light up a light.
	This is Nadia Witham, who decided to tweet a thing.
	If we can click on the first one here, John, the first image there, then you can get her tweet in which she has decided to be mad because the home office decided to tweet an image of Ukraine flag and put a Ukraine flag up and then clap, clap.
	Very well.
	And Nadia is like, this is sickening gesture politics.
	This is disgusting.
	How can you just put up a Ukraine flag and move?
	That's horrible.
	Aren't you concerned with the realities on the ground?
	Next photo, please, John.
	Let's have that one.
	This is her.
	Tweet now.
	The day before.
	Day before.
	Nottingham stands with Ukraine.
	Now do you want to?
	Clap, clap.
	Sickening gesture politics.
	So she didn't even raise a real flag, she just posted one on Twitter.
	No, she changed her profile.
	There we go.
	Don't you know I've made a tweet?
	I stand with Ukraine.
	I don't know why she's American in my mind.
	Either way, she's certainly not from here.
	So as you can see, she says, this morning I spoke with Ukrainian constituents who were distraught with worry for their loved ones back home.
	Not being funny.
	You can look up her constituency and the demographics.
	I don't think it was more than three people.
	Let's be frank.
	And then she decided to put up a Ukrainian flag and be like, well, that's my work done.
	Take more time off for having post-traumatic stress disorder from emails.
	She actually did that for people who don't know.
	Oh, for goodness.
	Let's go to the next one.
	We can see some other Western responses.
	Gold, MI6. What?
	Yep.
	This is the leader.
	Chief of MI6 here.
	Why MI6 on Twitter?
	What a weird world.
	So, with the tragedy and destruction unfolding so distressingly in Ukraine, okay, fair enough, we should remember the values and hard-won freedoms that distinguish us from Putin no more than LGBT rights.
	That's what this is about.
	This is about trans rights, boys.
	This is about plus rights.
	Forget the other letters.
	What are they, man?
	There's a plus.
	Why don't we just start tweeting plus rights?
	Why do you need the LGBT if it's got a plus there?
	I wonder what the neo-Nazi Azov battalion's attitude towards LGBT plus rights is.
	And I would love for Richard Moore to go out there and have a conversation about it.
	To be honest, the number of online Nazis who turn out to have femboy fetishes.
	That is also true, yeah.
	So the Azov are all there with their femboy GFBF. Who they snuggle at night.
	The self-hating gay Nazi does seem to be a real thing.
	Trans rights for Ukraine.
	Stop it.
	He says, so let's resume our series of tweets to mark LGBTHM2022, of course being the year, and then the big old book there that's in Colours of All the Rainbow, including Black and Brown, because you have to segregate the black and browns.
	And in fact...
	It looks like they've segregated in the pages of that book the actual rainbow flag for LGB and the trans pride flag, the race pride flag and all the other race flags on the left side of the book.
	How interesting.
	Can you hover over his account there, please, John?
	Just so we can get out of wonder about...
	Yeah, look at the he-him.
	Look at the he-him in the description.
	Oh, profiles in the bio.
	MI6! It's just, look, no, no.
	Like, national defense, defense of the realm, whatever the hell you want to call it.
	Should be handled by patriots for the nation.
	And if the nation has been subverted this badly by intersectionality, who is going to risk their life for intersectionality?
	Do you want to?
	Do you want to risk your life for intersectional dogma?
	Is that how you want to do?
	And also, there's the point here as well.
	I can't remember who it was.
	I think it might have been the EDI jester who messaged me.
	These people will literally have the country turned to ashes before they give up on their intersectional ideology.
	Yeah.
	They will have all of the defense of the realm be destroyed before they care for such things.
	He ends it off with introducing P and then some Stamen, which I can't be bothered with, frankly.
	Well, it's just cookie cutter as well.
	You hear this sort of stuff in any corporation.
	You could copy-paste it anywhere.
	What's your take on the Ukraine-Russian war flag?
	There's also the point some people have mentioned, this also seems very corporate, as you said about the cookie-cutter nature.
	The Stonewall organization is handing out their awards for best employer.
	Russian military, Vladimir Putin, can I get one this year?
	I think, yeah, the Ruska army is part of that.
	But also the fact that in there, there is guidelines for your tweets, because if you want to be part of the Stonewall gang, then you must have your tweets in line with Dogma.
	And one of the Dogma is you must tweet support for such things.
	So this could just be him doing that, because MI6 is a number one employer for LGBTism, according to Stonewall.
	Not a number one employer for people who are white, because they offer internships against white citizens, but what do they know?
	They're only depending on the realm.
	Let's move on.
	So if we go to the next link, we can see, yeah, the EDI gesture pointing us out that he's doing it for Stonewall.
	And if we continue, we can go to the next one.
	We can see Amnesty International, who decided to do a big old job.
	They did a lot of things for Ukraine.
	They tweeted, protect civilians in Ukraine.
	What is that?
	Five times?
	There!
	Who destroyed?
	Again, the same Amnesty International.
	It's a magic spell, don't you know?
	You say it enough times and...
	It's gone.
	Same Amnesty International who was silent on the truckers and also literally threw Dankula under the bus.
	I'm never going to forgive them for that, if nothing else.
	But then, of course, highly concerned with the war in the East and is going to do a tweet and then go back to sleep.
	If we go to the next one, we can also see some other pointless actions.
	The Simpsons.
	Decided to tweet this out.
	I mean, I know The Simpsons is just a corporate shell at this point.
	All the old episodes are there, and all the new ones are Lady Gaga-esque.
	And it's The Simpsons all holding Ukrainian flags, emotionless.
	I mean, Marge is a walking Ukrainian flag at this point.
	Yeah, but there's not even a smile on the characters.
	Yeah.
	Like, you didn't even make the effort.
	Well, that's because you've got to be serious, because it's sad.
	It's very sad.
	The Simpsons have been...
	You know, the guys on the front line in Kiev who are being shelled, they can log on to their phones, and they need words of encouragement, and they check the Simpsons' Twitter account.
	They're like, stands with us.
	I'm gonna...
	All right, let's charge, boys.
	Fix bayonets.
	No, no, stop.
	It's just creepy.
	Corporate stuff.
	I don't like it.
	If we continue, we go more of this.
	So we have someone else who had another terrible take, which is some guy called KFC Verified Checkmark.
	The people who S on the Ghost of Kiev for being a fake story are the worst.
	Why?
	How about maybe just getting behind a badass story to support Ukraine rather than priding yourself on being a little snopey B-word narc?
	Yes, how dare you care for...
	The truth.
	Yes.
	I'm a journalist, and I don't care about the truth.
	I am a journalist.
	I'm interesting.
	Classic.
	I don't have any interest in the facts, the reality.
	I just want to write a good old fiction story and then say it's true.
	That's your job.
	Literal smear merchants.
	Oh my god, these people are the worst.
	Yep.
	There's also some Labour shenanigans and all this that I'll quickly go over because it's strange.
	Labour decided to tweet out that they had been subverted by the party for something.
	I'm not really sure, but if we go to the next one, we can see apparently this is the tweet that did it, which is them saying...
	It is not time for further ratcheting up of tensions.
	Boris Johnson has done nothing to end the crisis in a peaceful way.
	He has instead continued on the path of warmongering.
	And it's just like, okay, they're saying that Boris is bad and therefore young Labour have been removed because they haven't denounced Russia hard enough, presumably.
	So there's that.
	If we continue, there's also some more stuff.
	There's OnlyFans.
	Which is on sale for Ukraine.
	Special code.
	Free Ukraine.
	This is a tweet.
	Someone put this out.
	As an effort to help people in Ukraine during the Ukrainian invasion, I'll be having a sale on OnlyFans at 50% off for everyone in Ukraine.
	Hashtag free Ukraine.
	Hashtag paying for Ukraine.
	I don't know if this is real.
	I don't know if it's real.
	I did see a lot of these.
	Apparently they aren't real.
	Cue Russian soldiers signing in from a Ukrainian bank address.
	Yes, the Russians are also in Ukraine getting that discount.
	Let's go to the next one.
	I hope people are making fun of this.
	Some guy here, making fun of it.
	If you live in Ukraine, I'm doing a bit to help you out and offering 50% off one of my OnlyFans as well.
	Even in these dark times, we can have some happiness.
	Yeah, let's have a look at that image.
	Yep.
	I enjoy the memes.
	I can tell he's having fun.
	Let's get the hell rid of that image.
	No one wants to look at that.
	Let's continue to the next slide.
	Stop waging psychological warfare on our viewers.
	No.
	Everyday psyops with me.
	There's one person here who pointed out a lot of this is this.
	As you can see, read: "5 tips for making the crisis in Ukraine about you!" Many people are concerned to discover a major crisis that does not easily conform to their prior assumptions of self-absorbed white liberals.
	Here's five easy strategies for getting yourself and your ideological preoccupations back in the center of attention.
	Remember that absolutely any development, even those in a far-flung country with a unique history of its own, can be shoehorned into your pre-existing accounts of who and who is bad and who and who is good.
	And of course, obviously, if you were in Ukraine, you would be on the good side, fighting for the good things.
	Therefore, just shoehorn any old crap in it and that'll be fine.
	Great, great series of mockery from this chap here.
	And you might think, okay, I'm being a bit over the top with some of those descriptions of some people responding to this.
	Maybe?
	Nah.
	Nah, really not.
	Let's go to the next one.
	The best one.
	I'm in tears for every trans and non-binary kid.
	I'm in tears for Ukraine.
	These things are connected.
	Please get that.
	I've finished the sentence.
	Putin split this country on hate, and now he wants to kill everyone who stands in his way because he knows the opposition has been broken by hate.
	He saw our vulnerability, white supremacy.
	It's, again, shoehorned in.
	Anything in a foreign country, doesn't matter what it is, it's definitely your weird microcosm philosophy in your Yankee-Californian apartment.
	That's what's going on.
	Stand at your standing desk.
	And it's always struck me that for a political movement that prides itself on empathy and peace and love, leftists have been pretty hateful themselves in the sphere of politics over the last few years.
	Absolutely.
	Again, like, how do you make it about yourself?
	Just like that.
	There you go.
	There we go.
	As for all the late night hosts.
	Of course, she, her as well.
	I'm starting to think of that more and more as a warning sign.
	You know, like the colours on a frog?
	Yeah.
	If we go to the next one, we can see leftists whining that this is a serious conflict.
	As you can see, Mehdi Hassan here.
	Always back.
	Who described non-believers as cows.
	And, what was it, pigs?
	Good guy.
	As you can see here, decides to say that this is a civilized city.
	They're blue-eyed and blonde-haired.
	This in Europe, not in the Third World.
	And then, oh my god, isn't this racist?
	Because people care about Ukraine, and they don't care about all the hordes of men coming from quote-unquote Syria.
	No, because this is a real conflict.
	But you can actually see the people being conscripted en masse.
	You can see the women and children that you can't see in all the European convoys of refugees.
	And if we just go to the reality...
	There is an idea that yes, we should care about some of these conflicts and revolutions and things in Middle East and North Africa and so on and so forth.
	But this is on another level.
	It is a full-scale industrial war between two very well-armed and very well-equipped nations.
	It's a proper war, in which one side is engaging in conscription, and it's proper.
	Like, you can see them actually wanting to do the fighting, and it's serious.
	Hundreds of thousands of men on either side.
	Fronts which stretch across hundreds of kilometres.
	Right, this is mega.
	And people are saying, oh yeah, but you should care about Palestine.
	It's like, have whatever opinion you like on Palestine.
	It's not this.
	This is something completely different.
	It's also this stupidness of like, oh my god, how dare the Europeans care that war in Europe is rare.
	It's because it is.
	If we go to the next link, we can just see Wikipedia on this, and just reading through the conflicts in the 21st century.
	What do they have?
	You've got Georgia, Kosovo, and Ukraine.
	That's it.
	That's all you got for the 21st century.
	If we go to the next link, you can see the Middle East.
	I don't know if you could scroll, John, because there's no easy way to do this.
	If you scroll to the bottom of the list, then you can see the 21st century examples.
	I counted 23 conflicts in the 21st century alone.
	One of them you can blame on the West, being the Iraq invasion.
	As for the rest, no.
	So, yeah, this is why.
	This is why war in Europe is rarer and therefore more interesting.
	But we'll end this off with some rightist stuff as well, because, of course, there's always things to be said.
	And someone saying the Ukrainian flag should be flying on all government buildings in the U.S. And then David Raboy pointing out the obvious, which is everyone else is nationalism.
	Never our own.
	Never allowed to do that.
	That's a very good point.
	One thing happens in Ukraine and we're like, yep, we'll have flags everywhere.
	Right.
	Interesting how that worked.
	Let's go to the next one because we also have Boris Johnson in the UK with a similar circumstance.
	He went to some Ukrainian cathedral and got a big old standing ovation and people chanting glory to Ukraine and thank you Boris Johnson.
	Could you imagine if he had just done things that make the British people like him instead?
	You reckon he would have these things going on with him instead of not doing those things and then doing lockdowns and then becoming deeply unpopular?
	Yeah.
	Like, Boris, I know why he's doing this.
	He's doing this for the praise.
	I mean, you can see it.
	And if you're doing that, just do it for your own people as well.
	Always someone else's national.
	He never sees the British people, really.
	He just sees the people in the Westminster bubble and then whichever sort of mascot minority that they can put in front of him, which is never the British people.
	In this case, it's the Ukrainians.
	Again, nothing against the Ukrainians here.
	No, of course not.
	Of course, it's not you, but it's just our leader is not like yours.
	He is not concerned with us by the looks of it, because he promised things and then didn't do them.
	If we continue, we can also go to the next link, so there's a debate on refugees...
	This I hate, because all of a sudden, because it's what it is, people are saying that whatever numbers want to come to England, they should be able to come.
	Should we check the papers?
	Nah, let's not bother.
	Let's just take anyone.
	Did we learn nothing?
	Did we learn absolutely nothing?
	Right, these people are all women and children, or at least are the ones who are getting through it.
	Okay, for sure.
	So it's not, you know, all the men and all the buddies who are totally children, they swear.
	Of course.
	But, still, keep them in Poland, keep them in Slovakia, keep them in Romania, wherever the hell they got through, and then process them there, if they're desirable, and it's good for them, bring them here.
	I don't know why that's something people aren't saying.
	A lot of people suddenly, especially right-wingers, are like, yeah, sure, we'll take any of them, and it's just like, okay.
	There's also the fact that we're assuming, for example, that Ukraine isn't going to pull itself up by its bootstraps and rebuild after this conflict, that Ukraine's going to lose this war and become part of Russia.
	All of these assumptions are built into the idea that we just take a load of refugees forever.
	One problem Ukraine has had in the 30 years preceding this conflict is that its population has shrunk from about 52 million to 44 million, which is enormous, and that's purely because of people fleeing the region to the west.
	Mm-hmm.
	Let's go to a left-wing response, who of course are always more stupid on refugees, as you can see some lady here.
	If you want to see the UK give visas to refugees from Ukraine, but not from Yemen, Afghanistan or Sudan, I'm going to need you to think very hard about why that might be.
	The lack of Ukrainians saying Allahu Akbar.
	There you go.
	They're Lala Hoakbaring themselves in schools, or at Westminster Bridge, or at kids' concerts.
	There you are.
	There's your answer.
	I would say, imagine, you'd probably in peacetime walk around the streets of Kiev or Kharkov at night without any problem, but perhaps not in Yemen, Afghanistan, or Sudan.
	And maybe that should inform...
	Why that opinion might be the way it is.
	But also, we've taken refugees from many a place over the years as well, and we did not end up with Paris.
	And, well, then we did, from some of the worst places on Earth.
	So, there's your answer, you stupid lefty.
	And, of course, I want to mention, I don't know if you can hover over our account again, of course, there is the she-her in the bio.
	Because you can't tell by looking, you have to be told.
	Of course.
	Let's go to the last one here, because this is the dumbest of dumb, and we'll end on the dumbest of dumb.
	Ukrainian lives don't matter until black lives matter.
	Alright, what can we learn from all this?
	Twitter is a cesspit that should be wiped off the face of the earth.
	Yeah, and people who don't know things should probably just not.
	If nothing else.
	Especially Hassan of people.
	Jesus Christ, that would be dumb.
	Let's go to the video comments.
	Just a quick correction for John is that The Legend of Galactic Heroes was originally a book series.
	There was an anime in the 80s, and there are some manga adaptions.
	I don't know about their quality.
	I've only seen the show and read the books.
	Those look really cool.
	The novels were only translated less than a decade ago, so people only really know about it through the anime, unfortunately.
	Although you can't find the books on Kindle and Audible at this point.
	I'm pretty hesitant to actually recommend the series since it is a time sink, but with it being like 16 novels long and the show's like 250 episodes.
	Although, it is a very good treasure trove of liberal axioms.
	Interesting.
	Yeah, this was recommended to me by my Japanese friend.
	It's a long-running Japanese novel series aimed, I think, at young adults about intergalactic war that really explores the differences between autocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and so on, which is unusual for a Japanese series to actually engage with these topics.
	But I haven't been able to get hold of them in Japanese, and I feel like it would be a waste to try and read them in English.
	But if anyone can get hold of them, I would absolutely love to give them a go and review them.
	Well, there's the advertisement.
	Go to the next one.
	The Rogers Company in Canada provides telecommunications services to companies and the public, these being wireless, cable, and telephone.
	Given the uncompetitive landscape in Canada, Rogers is an extremely wealthy company due to their rather high fees, even if data rates in Canada do tend to be reliable and high.
	They can then use their profits to fund good causes, such as enabling education.
	My only concern is that you know an education has resulted in failure if it puts this expression on one's face.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	I am sick of the good causes people as well.
	It's always like, I'm funding this thing and then it always turns out to be left as garbage.
	So...
	But I... Thank you for that, Alex.
	Yeah.
	It was nice speaking to everyone on the gold tier call.
	And, Alex, I'm glad to hear that you like my book reviews.
	Don't worry, we'll make this a thing because I have plenty more to go.
	With that said, some people may remember on the gold tier call when I said I shave based on self-esteem and...
	Stuff in the lockdown kind of led me into a depression spiral.
	So how much better am I feeling about myself as of late?
	Well, about this much.
	You know, considering that I shaved and also cut my own hair, it's not the best shave in the world, but I'd say this is much more presentable.
	Ah, it's good to know that you're feeling better.
	Excellent, great.
	It's also strange that I can, like, visually see that.
	Yeah, it's amazing.
	There's huge contrast between the two images as well.
	Anyway, might be alright, man.
	Let's go to the next one.
	Hey Lotus Eaters!
	I hope you guys are doing alright over there in the UK. Here in Australia, as you can see from the flag behind me, we're coming out of restrictions.
	Don't worry about the anime shirt, my friend gave it to me.
	So one of you guys mentioned about New Zealand and you guys were wondering what's happening over there.
	Well, being from Australia, we actually know a little bit about New Zealand and from what I've heard about the mandates, they scrapped them.
	Well, good to know.
	Yeah, I didn't know if they were still living under Jacinda's fist.
	Well, I think they are.
	It's just released its grip slightly to allow a few grains of sand to trickle out.
	She's doing some other stuff right now.
	Well, it's good to know.
	Thank you.
	I know it's been a while, but I wanted to show you my awesome new state license plate.
	I love Armado.
	And then my awesome new pupper.
	Technically, my boyfriend's dog.
	Come here!
	Oh yeah, so I finally got my face.
	I mean, it's all in boxes still, but I have this super cute pupper, huh?
	Indeed he is.
	He is a very good boy.
	That's really cute.
	I enjoy dogs.
	Could you imagine just going outside and there's like that thick snow and you've just got your dog running around and it would be amazing.
	Yeah.
	Sounds super wholesome.
	Yeah.
	Anyway.
	Was that a Left 4 Dead sticker on your car?
	I have no idea if I just got the wrong thing.
	But otherwise, very good.
	See you again.
	Let's go to the next one.
	I've heard that one of the conditions for the Ukraine's independence from Russia was that they try not to join NATO. Russia didn't want a NATO nation in its backyard.
	But the Ukraine tried to join NATO, and here we are.
	Yeah, there's that perspective.
	I know a various amount of Ukrainian Russians, or whatever the hell they call themselves, have that contention as well.
	Well, it's true.
	Russia put that clause in its constitution.
	Ukraine put it in in 2019.
	It was one of the last acts of Petro Poroshenko before he got voted out in favour of Vladimir Zelensky, who's the current president.
	And...
	One of the reasons he got an overwhelming 73% of the popular vote was that the Ukrainian Russians voted for him en masse because he ran on a platform of rapprochement with Russia and solving the crisis through diplomatic means, the problem in the East and Crimea and so on.
	Yeah, that didn't happen.
	That didn't happen.
	And allegedly it's because the so-called Ukrainian deep-spect state, the various influences around Zelensky, meant that he wasn't able to do that.
	Let's go to the next one.
	There's been a lot of confusion over why President Putin is doing what he's doing, and I think it's because a lot of people are projecting their own perspective onto him.
	But President Putin is neither a classical liberal nor a civic nationalist, and from Putin's purely nationalistic perspective, it is within the best interests of Russia to remove within their sphere of influence a globalist toady like Zulensky, who isn't even ethnically Ukrainian.
	Yeah, that's another perspective as well.
	So I've been going through quite a lot of different analyses on the origins of the conflict, and Josh put one up on our site recently, which is very good.
	And yeah, I would just say that there's a lot of different analyses, and that's one of them you can take.
	Yeah, I don't want to speak too much about Putin's ideology because I don't know enough.
	But I think psychoanalyzing Putin is the wrong way to understand what's going on, which I think you agree.
	Let's go to the next one.
	Tony D and Little Joan with a legend of Swindon all this week.
	First up, from hauntedbritain.com, the tale of the Ledyard House.
	Built in 1420, it was owned by Sir John St.
	John who still haunts the house to this day.
	He's seen strolling around the grounds and it gets super cold when he shows up.
	Other entities include a woman who's invisible but cries uncontrollably and an evil entity in a gray cloak.
	Okay, thankfully that's nice and far from my house.
	I've actually been there for a walk several times since I moved here.
	I've got a load of photos from there as well.
	Yeah, it's a lovely part of town.
	But it's Lydiard, as far as I'm aware, not Lydiard.
	So, Lydiard.
	But thank you for the local ghost knowledge.
	I should keep an eye out for the weeping woman and the strolling landowner next time I go.
	I could go up there.
	Yeah, there's the Asda up there that I was around campaigning at.
	So, yeah.
	It's a lovely park.
	Great for a walk.
	Just making sure I'm not going to be running into any ghosts.
	Hey guys, what do you think about when do we retreat and when do we fight?
	I moved to Oklahoma for a better life for myself because America's cities are turning to hell, like Los Angeles, Portland, you know how it is.
	I have a friend who's staying though.
	He says, no, I'm fighting, we can't just run every time.
	Makes me wonder, when do we retreat?
	And when should we fight?
	And how do we coordinate to make sure that we're working together?
	Because it's going to be hard if we don't.
	Let me know what you think.
	I suppose it depends on how tight the place you are, as in how many routes do you have and all that, and how much of a battle is really to be had.
	Because California, I think it's KitKat, she used to live in California, and then she's like...
	Yeah, this is a whole amount of here.
	She wasn't even in LA or anything.
	I don't know how to give hard and fast rules on those things, but you just sort of...
	If you're making hard and fast rules, you're generally making a mistake because it really depends on the individual situation, the opportunities you have in the place you are and the new place in terms of your life, but also the people and contacts you can build there, how attached you are to the area.
	There's many things you need to take into account.
	And ultimately, there isn't really a right answer, I don't think.
	I think can you save it is going to be one of the big questions.
	Because as you mentioned, Portland.
	No.
	The hell with that place.
	So anyone who moves from there, you just have to give them a big old...
	But it's a good question, and I'm sure many of us will have thought about that.
	And I was very much considering that when I was making the decision of whether to head to Japan or stay in the UK. And I stayed, and I'm enjoying the fight.
	So sometimes it can work out.
	Let's go to the written comments on the site.
	So, where am I? Let's go for Ukraine's very bad time.
	Sorry, bads.
	So, Reece Sims says, Honestly, it's so frustrating how many celebrities and influential people suddenly became experts on Eastern European geopolitics as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine.
	Indeed.
	They can either genuinely help those in need or shut their gobs and stick to what they know.
	Most of the time, they just end up making the misinformation and situation worse, yet never learn to wait a minute before tweeting.
	Mm-hmm.
	I've had a long-standing interest, especially in Russian history, and gone a few times and whatnot.
	And then I see people from California who have never spoken about Eastern Europe, have never been to even Europe, and yet they have amazing insights into how everything is going on and whose incentives are where and who will do what.
	And it's just like...
	Shut up.
	Shut up.
	Get off Twitter.
	Get a life.
	Joseph Smith says...
	Not you.
	Californians.
	All Californians, stop.
	This is a no-California zone.
	Imagine.
	Joseph Smith says dumping Russian vodka on store shelves does nothing to financially hurt Russia because it has already been paid for.
	What they need to do is block imports of Russian goods so that stores won't be able to restock, but they can still make back the money they already spent.
	It's a giant virtue signal.
	No one cares about the economic impact.
	Yes, I think that is much of it.
	And it's a hate virtue signal as well.
	There was a story I was reading the other day.
	Apparently the population of the Orkney Islands, north of Scotland, has come out protesting the fact that a Russian-owned civilian oil tanker is stopping at the island.
	And they don't want the tanker to stop.
	They want it to be blocked.
	And then the harbour authorities are like, well, we can't block it because that would be a breach of international law and maritime restrictions and everything.
	We can't just turn it out.
	There are other ways to do these things rather than just taking your risky standard out of your fridge and shoving it down the sink.
	Anyway.
	George Windsor says, That's a very good
	point.
	For those firing weapons.
	This own is likely the result of more own goals than condemned Muslim souls.
	That's very well put, actually.
	Yeah, that's a good point.
	There is a section in the Quran as well talking about intoxication, because I remember I had some, I don't want to say her name, but she was a Saldi that I lived with in university, in halls.
	And she wouldn't even be in a room where people were drinking.
	She was like, oh, it's forbidden.
	And in the Quran, it literally just says, like, you can even take alcohol if you don't know.
	Or, you know, in the form of, like, orange juice is alcoholic in a very small percentage.
	It's the intoxication that matters.
	So, yeah.
	I think maybe it's just in the hope that these people take the extremist positions, like that lady, and they'll take it too far.
	Reesem says, turns out Lord Miles is a better war correspondent than 99% of our war correspondents.
	Honestly, just glad we have someone with balls of steel like Miles to go in to some of the worst places on Earth and offer what help he can.
	Godspeed to him.
	Absolutely.
	I saw, for people wondering what the hell he's doing there, he's reporting, of course, doing live streams, goofing around, as you do.
	And also, he's giving a hell of a lot of money to people who just need it, or to the, what was it, Chocolates for Kids charity?
	Right.
	Like, he did an interview with GB News, got paid 300 quid, and then gave 340 quid to them.
	So he's just like, look, anything I get paid, I'll just give away to them.
	It's the right thing to do.
	So, a lot of Mars bars for the Ukrainian kids.
	Yeah, good.
	Christian Anderson says, wouldn't it be very funny and meme-worthy if the Taliban showed up in their US equipment on Ukraine's side?
	We want to test these toys.
	Stranger things have bloomin' happened.
	Someone should do it.
	Just one Taliban, if you're watching, if you're a big fan, you've got some keys.
	We do not support military intervention in other countries.
	We do not encourage any of our viewers to take up arms against other people.
	But I do endorse the Taliban doing a funny meme.
	Just hover around in the sea for a bit off the border.
	Why not?
	George Happ says, I'm really starting to believe that Miles may be the reincarnation of Jesus.
	That aside...
	It's a bit strong.
	I do think that some of the worst cancellations of Russia may backfire and create a utopia.
	Russians no longer have McDonald's and porn.
	How is that a bad thing?
	I can see the argument.
	I think McDonald's are not pulling out, because McDonald's are not...
	Yes, they are more interested in green, hopefully.
	You'd hope.
	I mean, do you remember when they donated, what was it, a million dollars to BLM in the middle of the riots?
	Why not?
	Yeah, burn some money.
	Yeah, but that's protection money.
	That's completely different.
	Well, it didn't work.
	They still burn it down.
	Justin B says, I don't know.
	I think it's mostly like a lot of soldiers.
	It's dark humor and I don't want to say memes, but in a way, you know what I mean?
	It's psychological warfare or like trash talk or whatever.
	I don't know what the right words are for describing this.
	Magician of Sweden.
	On Ukraine, being completely unabashedly pro-Ukraine is an impossible stance to take when factoring in the sketchy history between Russia, NATO, the EU, and so forth.
	I know Ukrainian media is doing their best to squash the last real Western nation that's a threat to the EU-wef NATO supremacy.
	But they can at least try to be a bit less transparent.
	Peace meetings are currently being held between Ukraine and Russia in Belarus.
	Debates on immediate EU membership for Ukraine also being held right now.
	What an S show.
	Also, the Ghost of Kiev was confirmed.
	Fake video game propaganda.
	Big L for the red-a-tards.
	On that last part, absolutely.
	The idea that the Russians are the last ones standing up to WEF or NATO, I don't buy it.
	I think that there's a lot more problems going on than we're thinking.
	There are a lot of problems, but it is true that Russia, as well as China, operates outside the Western global financial system, and that is one of the axes upon which Ukraine has been destabilized over the last 20 years.
	Sure, but it does not mean that suddenly Russia look like the good guys because they're anti-economic forum.
	No, no, no.
	That's all I'm making sure I've said.
	Oh, of course, yeah.
	No, I'm not saying that at all.
	If you don't say these things, people don't know, apparently.
	Yeah, but I think it's also clear that because of that, that makes them more of an enemy than other people.
	Do you want to read your section?
	Yes, indeed.
	So on the state of our states and the minichist monarchist says, even after years of it being common practice, politicians and state institutions posting on Twitter seems like a bad joke to me.
	It still seems weird.
	What the hell is MI6 doing on Twitter?
	Yeah.
	Secret organization.
	Here's our Twitter account.
	There is something inherently unprofessional about sharing important news and statements on a platform infested with culture war memes and general idiocy.
	A good start for improving the quality of our politicians would be to get them the hell off Twitter, in my opinion.
	Absolutely.
	There's also, we know why, but there's the obvious point of why Twitter not Getter, or anything else.
	And, yeah, I mean, if I was in charge, just ban every government organisation from being on there.
	It's just, you don't need to.
	There's no real advantage.
	I don't know.
	I think there are some things like sometimes it is useful for an organisation to just be able to put out a quick bulletin that can reach everyone who needs to know.
	But this has always been done in the past and it's been fine.
	Everyone else can say these things.
	You don't have to be on the platform to say the things.
	So I just find it unnecessary and it causes problems.
	Yeah, I think you could work out what the...
	I think you could separate the practical uses of Twitter from the nonsense, the destabilisation, the culture war stuff and the general degeneration of people's intellects.
	I think it's all the same crap.
	The Minicus says as well, It seems to me like the West should have picked one of two approaches to Russia.
	Either be cooperative and seek peace and friendship, or do big-stick diplomacy and be tough on them.
	Our politicians did neither.
	They blame Russia for everything and are unwilling to give them anything.
	Yet when Russia annexes parts of other sovereign countries, all they do is wave a warning finger.
	Honestly, pick one approach.
	The way things went, we just look pathetic and petulant.
	I can't see that aspect of it, but I also think there is an angle of analysis from which the West is like rivers of champagne levels of winning in this war because, like I may have said before, they're supplying masses of modern weaponry to Ukraine, which is being used to blow up Russian troops and Russian tanks and stuff, which is great for NATO because Russia is their enemy.
	And they're not even having to put a boot on the ground or declare war or really lift a finger.
	So for them, it's win-win-win-win.
	The military-industrial complex must be laughing their heads off.
	Germany's just doubled its defence budget, gone up to 100 billion from 53 billion euros.
	And yeah, it's a seller's market for military hardware right now.
	There's also a great silver lining that people are waking up to the fact that you can't just base your economy on green nonsense, you actually have to base it on energy policy and take it seriously.
	So I mean, this somewhat net win for the West.
	Yeah, you can't take that for granted, and hopefully it'll help us to throw in the bin some of the lunatic progressives who we covered in your second segment.
	Yeah, yeah, we can always bring up, you know, well, if we follow you, we're going to have to rely on Russia or some crap.
	Right, yeah.
	If nothing else works, apparently, we'll have to, you know, science doesn't work or reality.
	A student of history says, okay, Liz, one, why are you saying go fight for another country instead of perhaps we should build our military capability?
	Well, that's because it's warfare by proxy.
	Again, like, oh, all of these British volunteers are not affiliated with Britain, even though they're carrying British weapons.
	Oh, no, no, no, nothing to do with us.
	Look elsewhere, Governor.
	I do want to see a volunteer brigade, though.
	This guy's going, teleho!
	Two, freedom and democracy in Ukraine.
	That's a strong comment.
	I'd say more of a petro-oligarchy.
	Nothing against the Ukrainians, just the state of their peacetime government.
	and there has been a long history of corruption in the Ukrainian history.
	Silly Mid On says, personally, I wonder if a lot of the bloodlust from the statesman journos, etc. is just to provide a nice distraction from whatever's going wrong at home.
	I use how loud Argentina are about the Falklands as a way of measuring how screwed that nation is.
	In the West, we're facing...
	That's so true.
	Inflation's up.
	How do you know?
	They're whining about Falklands again.
	That'd be it.
	In the West, we're facing cost-of-living spikes, the US is falling apart, and Canada is seemingly ruling in the style of the mid-century Germans.
	It all seems quite convenient that every opportunity to de-escalate the situation has been spurned in favour of inflaming tensions, certainly from the West's perspective.
	On the other hand, Hanlon's razor is the thing, and the level of background-level incompetence is too damn high in the UK. So Hanlon's razor being don't blame Malice when you can blame incompetence.
	Why not both?
	Would be my response to that.
	Yeah, there is that.
	Yeah, you see the Germans were like, maybe we should do what Trump told us to, and raise spending to 2% of GDP. Yeah.
	Okay.
	I'm always worried when the Germans start getting anything.
	I know.
	Oh, it's not going to end well.
	Genetically, you just start feeling like...
	Catastrophic Regression Threshold says, Can we just create a policy to ban all government agencies and officials from having a Twitter account and any official court-making decisions based on Twitter input run out of office in disgrace?
	Get my vote.
	Chris Wolf says, people around me seem to think they have a grasp on the Ukraine situation.
	However, this is one of the first world events in the past three years that actually doesn't have a clear path forward, and that has generally been my take on it.
	I really don't know what's going on because I'm not sure any one person does.
	That's life.
	I'm not sure anyone at the top does.
	No, no.
	I don't think anyone has a clue right now.
	That's why I've used the expression sleepwalking over the abyss a few times because I think there is a small but real possibility we could do that and it would be a laughable story to tell if we lived to tell it.
	Free Will 2112 says, many of these cabinet ministers have the education level of a mitwit, but the powers who pull the strings behind the scene don't want high-quality politicians in charge, or their shadowing activities might come to light.
	They want people they can control.
	So cynical and black-pilled take, but you might be right.
	On Cringe Ukraine.
	So, Israeli Crusader says, Cringe weapons should be banned.
	Change my mind.
	I can't.
	They should be banned.
	They're awful.
	Although, we could weaponize the celebs.
	Get them all singing songs whenever we need them on.
	Let's get them doing anti-CCP action for once.
	Yeah, very quiet on China, aren't they?
	Very quiet.
	Chris Wolfe says, the clown world John referenced is insufferable.
	People complain about true dangers, but then Russia invades Ukraine and all our health restrictions are going away.
	Now the real problems returns.
	They are snapping out of it slowly.
	Except apparently not that person who's like, well, what about the vaccines?
	So Joseph Smith says, on the plus side, if we do go to war with Russia, we have plenty of gender studies graduates who will seemingly have to use as cannon fodder.
	Well, probably more likely a sandbag, but there we go.
	No, they're all going to be the commissar shooting us in the back of the head for not wanting to die for intersectionality.
	Sorry to blackpeller, but that is how it's going to be.
	Yeah, it's like, what, you don't want to die for Klaus Schwab?
	They're going to be there with their little lapels, with the rainbows on and the triangle flags of the segregated black and brown people, with their pistols being like, you don't want to die for black women?
	Yeah.
	You're a white supremacist?
	They're going to be killing 41% of our own people before we even get there.
	I'm sorry, but David Raboy was writing something, I don't know if he still is, on the fact that a lot of patriotic people, who have been patriotic for the Western side and NATO and all that in the past, all of a sudden have started siding with Russia in there.
	So just out of spite, if nothing else.
	And people are very surprised.
	And it's like, well, no.
	Because, I mean, look at the state of NATO, look at the state of the RAF, the individual things that we have shown...
	Officer level down.
	All of these things which this group of people, the patriots, would historically have supported have become the card-carrying enemies of these people.
	So are you surprised that they're not picking up the flags to fight for their own countries?
	They don't advertise themselves as defenders of Britain.
	They don't advertise themselves as defenders of freedom.
	They would be embarrassed at doing so.
	They advertise themselves as defenders of intersectional ideologies.
	Defenders of the international economic order as well.
	And who wants to die for that?
	Yeah.
	Do you want to die for the World Economic Forum?
	I don't think so.
	It's not inspiring at all.
	Anyway, Joseph Smith says, on the plus side, if we do go to war with Russia...
	Oh, sorry, I mentioned that one.
	Student of History says, send in the Western Cringe Brigade.
	It'll be better for everyone.
	Certainly will.
	No, that'll escalate.
	We'll get nuclear in five seconds.
	Tom Wei says, by the way, the Russian asset Trump moved US bases from Germany to Poland, closer to Russia, exactly as Putin wanted.
	Wait, what?
	Lots of that.
	He also didn't lift any sanctions, as Biden did.
	Stephen Smith, could anyone seriously imagine Boris Johnson fighting with the troops if the UK was invaded?
	I just imagine him.
	Do you remember the 2012 Olympics when he's hanging stuck in the middle of the air?
	Just imagine that, but with a parachute instead of a felt.
	Sorry, that's my dark sense of humour.
	Charlie Beagle says, in Irish news, they had a segment about Ukrainians in Ireland flying out to Poland and driving out to Ukraine in order to enlist to fight for their country.
	Yeah, there was a segment in the BBC as well.
	But then, you know, serious country again, like something that's actually worth dying for, if you were Ukrainian, of course.
	And Edward Newmanter says, he got blown up by the Russians, but at least he didn't test positive for the Omicron variants.
	Lauren Chen, probably.
	And the last one here being, oh God, not this effing woman again.
	Presumably that's Liz Truss.
	I cut it short just for us.
	So we don't...
	Oh, well, the...
	Yeah.
	The lady.
	Oh, anyway.
	That's the end of this.
	For showing the oveki.
	Or everything else is going to be fine.
	So, if you want more from us, go to losis.com.
	Subscribe to Gags.
	That's all the premium content, as mentioned.
	Otherwise, we'll be back tomorrow at one o'clock, hopefully.
	Goodbye.

▲