Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

March 4, 2022 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:32:08

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #342

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Hello and welcome to the podcast The Lotus Eaters for the 4th of March 2022.
	I am joined by John.
	Hello Lotus Eaters!
	And today we're going to be talking about the West's secret weapon, cancel culture, of course, the Russian, sorry, Russia's very Russian problems, and the cashless hell world that awaits us all.
	Oh.
	Which, yeah, is going to be a bit of a downer for the end of it, but hopefully the ones, well no, they're also downers, what am I talking about?
	Yeah.
	Hopefully it's fun, at least.
	So, some things to mention first on the website.
	It's the new stuff that's up.
	It's the first thing here being a new article from John Tangney.
	Trudeau, Putin, and the Free Speech Archipelago.
	So, I see that also has an audio track for listeners.
	If you're subscribed at silver gold tier, you can listen to it and start reading.
	But otherwise, subscribe to get access to that one on the website.
	So, if we go to the next one, we also have another premium video, which is 21st Century Human Sacrifice.
	This is from Josh.
	If you couldn't guess.
	Looking at the human sacrifices we make in the modern day.
	If we go to the next one, we also have another article.
	This one by Ashley J. Willis.
	A World Shaped by Invisible Men Part 2.
	So you may remember Part 1 as well.
	The advertising guys.
	And this also has an audio track for Silver and Gold Tier members to listen as well, of course.
	And the last thing to mention being that the dispatchers of the Lotus Eaters, so the breaking news of the stories, you can find on Getter at Lotus Eaters News.
	So if you want to follow just news aggregate, then go there.
	Absolutely.
	Otherwise, let's get into the news.
	So, the West's secret weapon is cancel culture, of course.
	It is the only thing we know how to do in response to a crisis, apparently.
	There are some sensible approaches, and this is obviously on Ukraine, and again, I'm just going to say it for the sake of consistency, if nothing else.
	Not my topic, so we'll be talking at this for my Western approach, again, or at least I will be.
	I know you've been following this intensely, so that is for you.
	But there is something that we said from a Western approach.
	How do we sanction Russia in response to what we've done?
	And, well, economic sanctions.
	That can work.
	That can be something you can do and can be effective.
	But sanctioning information exchange or sanctioning innocent people or ourselves doesn't seem to make sense.
	It's also the fact that many of these things weren't set up to be weapons, right?
	And now they're essentially being used as weapons with discriminatory denial of service.
	They're sort of treating Russia like a dissident on the internet, which is rather interesting.
	Yeah, but if you wonder what I'm talking about, we'll start off with some that you can, of course, say are just economic sanctions, therefore are worthwhile doing.
	So this one being Apple halts sale of products in Russia.
	I believe they also stop Apple Pay from working in Russia as well.
	And if we go to the next one, we have McDonald's, who have decided to also...
	Hashtag cancel.
	They are no longer servicing themselves in Ukraine, and also they're closing all of their change in the Russian Federation.
	So Russia's got 99 problems, but apparently junk food isn't one of them.
	Again, that's not really a sanction.
	Okay.
	And if we get to the next one, this is where we get to the silly that I've mentioned previously, which is an Italian university decided to sanction ourselves by denying students be able to read about Dovstoyevsky, even though Dovstoyevsky was a victim of Russian Tsarist oppression.
	Dostoevsky was very anti-autocracy, having nearly been shot by them.
	Yep, so the Italians decided they would stand in solidarity with oppressed Russians.
	I don't know if you know the story of him, but he was actually taken to Siberia, and he was put in front of a firing squad to be shot, at which point they came in, and there was a pardon given.
	So he had his life saved right at the last moment, and he lived with that for the rest of his life.
	I mean, phew!
	Probably you'd feel lucky if nothing else, that's for sure.
	Would you, though?
	It's quite the experience, and you can tell that in his writings.
	He's very cynical about human nature.
	There are other innocent Russian people who just seemingly are being kicked out of society, but God knows what the reasoning is here.
	So this is a chap, Russian conductor Valery Gergiev has been fired from his post with the Munich Philharmonic for not rejecting Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
	Yeah, so I looked into this, and apparently Dzerzhyev is a close personal friend of Vladimir Putin, and he also conducted the Russian military orchestra in the ruins of Palmyra after they liberated it during their campaign against ISIS. So he does have a bit more of a history, I've discovered, than just being some Russian guy, but still, I see the point.
	But it's also just like he plays music.
	I don't think Putin's going to be massively hurt by this.
	But it's also just you have 24 hours to denounce this thing or you're going to lose your job.
	Yeah, it's a kind of conspelled speech thing.
	I don't know why we would accept that as the right thing to do.
	Even as you say, he has those connections.
	We also have Freedom Fries Part 2, of course, as Shu points out, so we can go through a few of these.
	These are some of the other, I don't know if we can call them sanctions, but this is why I call it cancel culture, because it just looks like the same stupid crap.
	A lot of it is just virtue signaling, and I don't think they've exactly been able to find what the distinction is between an effective sanction and just a morally righteous virtue signal.
	Yeah, I mean, we start off here with a chap who, as Fox News labelled it, Vodka Rebellion bars, liquor stores, US, Canada, no longer to serve Russia's famous export, except you can see he's pouring out bottles of Stolich and I have vodka there, which is apparently brewed in Latvia, and is owned by a Russian man who is anti-Putin.
	Oh.
	So...
	Not really helping there, folks.
	There's that.
	If we go to the next one, we have some more Freedom Fries moments.
	So a Quebec restaurant has announced that it will be removing the word poutine from its menu because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
	Oh, come on!
	What are you doing?
	That is a real reach.
	Take that, Russia!
	This is what I mean by sanctioning ourselves.
	I can just imagine Putin being in the Kremlin saying, so what is poutine again?
	It gets weirder.
	Next one, we have the Chicken Kiev, which is going to be named the Chicken Kiev, of course.
	Again, we'll just rename the words.
	I know there's a debate about the fact that the word in Ukrainian is different.
	Foreigners, we speak English.
	We anglicize everything when we transliterate it into New Year's.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	John's saying the Ukrainians he knows spells it with I-E-V as well.
	Yeah.
	So it's strange.
	There's obviously, if you don't know what I'm talking about as well, just go and check out the debate between Peking and Beijing and the fact that we no longer use Peking because we didn't want to offend the communists.
	Funny thing, if you go to Russia and speak Russian, they say Peking.
	Right.
	Also Mumbai and Bombay as well.
	Some of these things.
	But you can argue it's, you know, a renaming could make sense, maybe, but with the idea that you will re-say the word, I mean, the most modern example of that is definitely Turkey.
	Right.
	Have you seen the renaming there?
	They want to be called Turkey-e in English.
	Not in Turkish.
	English speakers need to call Turkey Turkey-e.
	Yeah.
	No.
	Like, they don't get to determine our language.
	Anyway.
	But if we go to the next one, we can see more of these memes.
	Austin Restaurant Russian House changes its name to House to support Ukraine.
	Okay.
	Thanks, guys.
	We feel it in the trenches.
	Yeah, it's really like people have failed to make the distinction here between the autocratic regime of Russia and Russian people, Russian culture, etc.
	But it also doesn't do anything.
	Again, you've sanctioned yourself there.
	You've not actually affected anything.
	And you could say there's some of this in the past.
	It's not to be somewhat unexpected.
	Given the First World War, we renamed in England the German Shepherds to Alsatians.
	The royal family were renamed from the House of Saxagota, the House of Windsor.
	There's also an America I read this morning, which apparently I didn't know, which is Sauerkraut, renamed.
	Can you guess the name?
	Liberty Cabbage.
	Oh my goodness, that one didn't stick.
	You want to guess the rewording of Hamburger?
	No.
	Liberty's steak.
	It's not a steak.
	Well, in Japan, they actually call it a Hamburg steak.
	I remember being very excited about it.
	It's quite cute.
	I was like, oh, it's a steak, and then it came and it was a burger.
	I was really disappointed because they just take the bread away and they just have the burger, and you're like, what is this?
	Wait, so it's like when mum makes you cooking and it's just like a burger, some chips and beans.
	Okay.
	It's like being a kid.
	If we go to the next link here, we can see some other sanctions, as you call them, taking place.
	Mentioned before, the EU banning all Russian media.
	Sorry, banning Russian state media.
	So Russia today being banned, Sputnik being banned, because we cannot stand up to foreign lies.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	We are literal children.
	YouTube, of course, annexing the same kind of state powers to themselves.
	Mm-hmm.
	That's fine.
	That's not scary.
	Yeah, we'll have that power too, says YouTube.
	Nothing wrong with that.
	Although the funny sanctions continue, as we see here.
	OnlyFans accounts in Russia are being deleted or blocked in the wake of the country's invasion of Ukraine.
	Again, I don't think we're hurting Russia.
	No.
	I think we might be helping them there.
	If we go to the next one, this is the funniest of stupid.
	The International Hashtag Cat Federation has banned Russian cats from its shows.
	Great, because you go into, I don't know what they call it, cat fancying or whatever, because you hate Russians, you're involved in politics.
	Why does everything have to be subsumed into the current political issue of the day?
	Again, you're not really helping at all.
	Can not some of these people just say, look, we're here for a hobby.
	Yeah, we care about, we have deep personal views about this, but we don't allow them to infiltrate the professional space.
	I mean, not only are you not helping it, actually, then Russian outlets just run articles saying, you know, look at the Russophobia or anti-Russian sentiment that's going on in the West.
	And then the Russian people who see that are like, well, okay, some of them will buy into it and think, okay, well, clearly the West just hates us and wants us wiped out, so we'd better fight this war.
	But if you're reading that the West will no longer sell you cars, you can reason that.
	The West is no longer allowing Russian cats in the cat competition.
	It just seems petty and spiteful, right?
	That's how you would see it, and rightfully so.
	If we go to the next one, we can see some more difficult things to speak about.
	I don't really know what to take on this, but it is the case.
	So this is the Associated Press saying, Russian and Belarusian athletes have been banned from the Paralympics for their country's role in Ukraine.
	And they were banned.
	Didn't they have to compete under the Russian Olympic Committee logo instead of just Russia?
	I'm not 100% what that was about.
	That was because of doping.
	Yeah.
	So this time round they seem to be banned completely.
	At least the Paralympians.
	So the disabled Paralympics is taking place.
	Uh-huh.
	For the Russian and Belarusian delegations anymore.
	And of course, well, what's the response in Russia, as we said?
	Well, this gets spun.
	So if we go to the next one, we can see Pravda's headline on this, translated into English, of course.
	Sport is all that is left for Paralympic athletes in life, but hatred was stronger than their feet.
	That's the headline for the biggest newspaper in Moscow in response to this.
	What did you think it was going to go on?
	I do actually, I mean, I know it is Pravda.
	It's only got one foot, not two feet, but do carry on.
	But there's a statement there at the end is that people go against each other in holy confidence of their righteousness.
	That just angrily describes some folks.
	But anyway.
	I must say, this is sadly the quality of English that I'm used to from the little bit of Bravda that I've seen.
	They don't seem very good.
	Oh, this was Google translated, sorry.
	Oh, okay.
	That would explain a lot.
	I haven't gone to the English language side.
	I wanted to see what was on the Russian one.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So there's that.
	If we go to the next link, we can see, again, this is why I keep an eye on things like Russia Today or whatever, because you can find out information.
	It's not an enemy to go and find out what they are saying.
	And the greatest list for just companies that have boycotted Russia or are leaving Russia is, of course, on a Russian website, being, again, Pravda.
	And so they've leveled it here.
	IKEA, are you there too?
	A list of companies and brands leaving Russia.
	And it's a long list.
	I don't know if you can scroll for some of it, John.
	I'm going to mention the names that I recognize, at least.
	So Apple, Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens, Dell, Canon, NVIDIA, Intel, Zoom, H&M, Nike.
	I love that.
	We make sweatshops.
	Okay.
	Boeing, Airbus, that makes sense.
	Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW, Volvo, General Motors, Hyundai, Warner Brothers, Sony, Walt Disney...
	Not missing much there.
	Star of Prominent Pilsnup.
	That's pretty bad.
	No Czech beers anymore.
	And then they have the BBC Studios and Netflix are pulling out.
	Again, okay, that's...
	Pulling out or getting kicked out.
	That doesn't harm them, I would have thought, especially the BBC there.
	You want to be there to influence society shortly.
	That is what Russia today is for as well, is to try and influence us in the West.
	So we're banning ourselves, preemptively.
	Strange.
	But anyway, there's a big old list of all the stuff, and it is getting bigger.
	Just before we started, John said to me that apparently Airbnb is also now not available in the Federation.
	So there's that.
	If we go to the next one, we can say, well, if you're Russian, I mean, don't worry too much, because apparently Ukraine's also going to get cancelled, this time for racism.
	So, this is a story that has been popping up, and there's some truth to this, and we can see some of the truth, but of course the American left has decided to take it to a brand new level of stupid.
	Oh, right.
	Well, because of course they do.
	So, this is an article from CNN saying that there are reports of widespread segregation, forced segregation, racism and abuse taking place for Africans and African students who are leaving Ukraine trying to get over the border.
	Oh.
	So, quote, And the African Union in this article have made a big old statement saying that this is despicable.
	Please don't discriminate against Africans who are trying to leave.
	So there's that.
	If we go to the next one, we can see some reports of this taking place.
	So in here, this is an article about some people who have raised £50,000 for students to flee.
	And they're alleging that racism is taking place as well.
	But we can look at what is true.
	There's a quote in here which is strange.
	Miss Daly said she had spoken to hundreds of black students in Ukraine, many of whom recounted racist abuse they faced whilst trying to flee.
	Quote, I don't think they have been treated differently at the borders because of their skin colour.
	I do think.
	Sorry, I do think they have been treated differently because of their skin colour at the border, Miss Daly said.
	Quote, racism is now happening even in situations where there is war.
	As if...
	I don't get that last bit.
	There's racism, but not in war.
	Come on.
	That's true.
	Was that the expectation?
	If you believe that racism exists everywhere, as these people do, then yeah.
	But even in war?
	Yeah, I'm not surprised that it's taking place in the war, especially if it exists everywhere.
	But there you go.
	go there's uh some examples or at least some allegations of uh racism taking place and as you can see actual racism of saying you're not coming on this bus you're not coming on this train if we go to the next one we can see some of these allegations so this is one reportedly to show the guys who control the ukrainian trains blocking africans getting on because they didn't want to get on again this is just all uh claims from the place i don't know uh or confirm it i can just show what has what's been claimed and uh as you can see there are women and men there as well so So it's not just men who are being discriminated against in that sense.
	If we go to the next one, we can see the BBC, BBC Africa, have this woman on saying she was denied entry to an evacuation bus because the guy kept shouting at her, Ukrainians only.
	Right.
	Don't know what the case is there, but there's her allegations as well.
	She had to walk to the border, apparently.
	So that was hell.
	She had spent, I think it was like 12 hours walking.
	Gosh.
	label but then we have the the strange ones because if we go to the next one we can see some other strange accusations or at least the non-serious ones so this is uh video i don't know if you can start this from the start john just so people can see what goes on but there's this uh black guy who is presumably being detained for whatever reason at the border if you could start from the start john just so he can uh get that but he sat down we don't need the audio because it's all in it's all in foreign anyway
	So he's there, and then they're clearly detaining him, and he resists for some reason, and then they're claiming that them stopping him resisting is brutality on the part because he's black, which from their own footage doesn't really make sense for this particular claim.
	So I think there are some people not taking this as seriously as they should as well.
	It's hard to understand what's going on as well without the context.
	Yeah, they're all in foreign, so again, it's hard to know.
	But that's a situation that has taken place.
	If we go to the next one, there's another one here, which is the Visigrad group have responded to.
	So this guy, Tahir Honey, says in spaghetti...
	Sorry, but Arabic does look like a funny language.
	Now that you mention it, it does, yeah.
	It seems that there is a kind of racist behaviour towards Moroccans by the Ukrainian and African authorities, he says, as they're not allowed to cross.
	And this is a journalist for France 24, so of course he writes in Arabic.
	And the Visigrad group responds, and in this case, fair enough.
	They just say, this war isn't about you.
	Poland is prioritising women and children, not healthy young men.
	If you scroll up again and click on those first two images, John, that the French provided us here...
	Well, yeah.
	If he was a Ukrainian, he would be stopped at the border, have an AK-47 shoved in his hands, and he'd be carted off to the war.
	This isn't to say they should be treated like that, of course, they should be allowed to leave, but when you've got limited capacity for the day to get people through, you prioritise the women and children.
	Yeah, I mentioned that just to give people here an idea of what's going on around all of this.
	And I think it's also pretty terrible that the Ukrainian men are being forced to fight in that way, for some of them.
	There's also that.
	But then there's the American left who can't help themselves for some reason and have to make this all about racial politics.
	Because of course they do.
	Because of course Russia is a white nation attacking Ukraine who is a white nation according to the American left.
	How strange.
	Why does the West all of a sudden care about Ukrainian refugees?
	What's that about?
	It must be racism.
	So this is an article by, as you can see, NBC News.
	Why are the fleeing Ukrainians being talked about with such sympathy?
	They're white.
	It's their crime.
	I don't know if the image is loaded up here, John.
	I don't know if it's not on your side.
	But in the thumbnail there at the top, there should be an image.
	And there was an image of two mothers and three children.
	That was the thumbnail the author used for this story, in which they were just like, why does everyone care about these refugees?
	It's because they're white.
	And it's like, no, it's because there are women and children with them.
	Like, they're holding toddlers in their arms.
	There you are.
	There we are.
	That's why we care about these refugees, just because they're white.
	They're actual refugees.
	Not because that is a literal child with its mother with another child, and then a mother and her child behind it.
	Of course not.
	Quote from this article.
	With Ukraine's whiteness...
	I really want to put a gun to my head.
	I don't...
	Look, I know I don't know much about geopolitics, and shut up.
	I really don't want to hear about geopolitical analysis from an American leftist racial ideologue of all people.
	Literally the worst takes in the world.
	You know this is going to be good.
	With Ukraine's whiteness, it has been difficult for Europeans to fathom a time when the region was ravaged by war and civilians were fleeing for their safety.
	No, it's not.
	We venerate World War II all the time.
	Never mind all the other problems Ukraine has had for our years.
	And the last, what was it, six?
	Seven now?
	With Donbass and all the rest of it?
	Journalists report from Ukraine in shock as if bloodshed is exclusive to black and brown communities.
	In reality, many Europeans have lived throughout the Yugoslav Wars of the 90s.
	I was like...
	Yes, white people have had wars.
	What is your point?
	We've had lots of wars, actually, if you go back further than that.
	But then he's trying to allege here that because we always think of war as a brown thing, we don't, okay, that therefore we're all shocked that war is taking place in a white country.
	Are Serbians white?
	I don't know.
	That's a joke, Serbia.
	So their parents and grandparents can also remind them of the atrocities of World War II. This is where it gets funny.
	But it is the Middle East that is deemed to be uncivilized and impoverished.
	During the horrors of World War II, it was this uncivilized Middle East that welcomed refugees without questions on education or affiliation with the Nazis.
	Really?
	I must have missed the huge trains of refugees going to Morocco and Libya.
	But look at what he said there.
	He's like, don't you remember the civilised Middle East who accepted Nazis without question?
	This person speaks English.
	They have written an article in English.
	There's no way they don't know this is a self-own, presumably, unless they are a Nazi.
	I don't know.
	And you could say there are a lot of Nazis who end up working for Egypt and whatnot in military capacity.
	So there's your refugees.
	Thank you, the civilized Middle East.
	What a stupid dunk, especially when you're trying to dunk on Europe for being a racist as well.
	But if you're wondering about the chief leftist in all of this, we can also go to Trevor Noah.
	Oh, right.
	Trevor Noah slams media for racist remarks on Ukraine.
	War is a European thing.
	On Monday's episode of The Daily Show, Noah...
	Hang on, this is the opposite opinion as the reason for the same opinion.
	So the last people were saying, oh, we're being racist because we think war is a brown thing.
	And now he's saying, oh, we're being racist because war is a European thing.
	That's strange.
	Anyway...
	On Monday's episodes of The Daily Show, Noah sharply criticised TV reporters stunned by the violence unfolding in a relatively civilised, relatively European country that is not a developing third world nation, as some broadcasters put it.
	Those are all true statements.
	Sue me.
	Son off.
	Journalists have garnered widespread criticism over the past week for implying that the predominantly white people of Ukraine deserve more sympathy than those living in places with mostly non-white populations.
	No.
	No.
	I wonder how many hordes of male refugees have caused that opinion.
	It's not to do with the whiteness.
	It's to do with the type of refugee.
	We look to the Ukrainian border.
	I mean, I have friends, like we mentioned, the guy at the Slovakian border, Vlado if you're watching, who is just having to deal with hordes and hordes of men leaving their families and saying, I can't come, and the women and children in tears pouring across, versus your hordes of sea people who turn up on our dinghies.
	These are not the same thing.
	No, absolutely not.
	Morons.
	And I'll skip over much of this because we don't have time, but it's just him whining about the fact that Iraq and Afghanistan don't get the same commitment.
	Yeah, a lot of Americans seem to think that Ukraine is as backward as Afghanistan.
	But Ukraine has a civilian nuclear industry, for goodness sake.
	It has factories that produce tanks and aeroplanes and all sorts of things.
	It is an advanced nation in the sense that it has a very intelligent population, even if it does have problems with it.
	Not a paedophile state.
	Right.
	But Americans are just...
	As a measure of civilisation?
	Can we start there?
	We don't rape kids.
	Yeah.
	There are just these observers from American Twitter who are just comparing it to Afghanistan or Somalia and they think that we're being bigoted because we're making a distinction between those places.
	How can you say the Taliban aren't civilised?
	Because they rape kids.
	Next question.
	Yeah.
	Like, what?
	God.
	And then Noah goes on to complain about the fact that how dare we say the Middle East isn't a civilised place, especially in recent years.
	Can you get the next image, please?
	Just for ISIS. I can't show the pictures that I'd want to show, to make this point, because they're just too graphic, aren't they?
	And we all remember.
	I'm just going to list them.
	But Noah, if he's watching, do you remember the lines of men who were being shot on the ground?
	Do you remember the crucifixions?
	The heads on spikes?
	The burning war prisoners alive?
	Drowning prisoners of war in cages?
	Two-year-olds executing prisoners of war?
	All just the endless beheadings that we got shown in the propaganda reels.
	Alright, is any of that taking place in Ukraine?
	Not yet.
	But that's the point.
	To say that this is a wholly civilised part of the world when in recent living memory everyone can remember the videos, at least anyone who looked at them, of them burning prisoners of war alive or just having two-year-olds execute prisoners of war.
	It's ridiculous.
	If we go to the next one, we'll also just make the point about S-hole countries.
	Here's an article.
	There's an old meme.
	Counterpoint Nigeria.
	So some white guy writes for this.
	Nigeria may be a developing nation, but it's rich in culture.
	What does the bad guy have to say?
	Get me out of this godforsaken hellhole.
	And there's a quote in there at the start.
	Ever since my parents and three brothers died in the gasoline explosion last month, my mind has been dead to the world.
	Please, God, let me leave this place.
	That's a much more compelling argument.
	And this is Nigeria.
	I mean, Nigeria is a pretty good place.
	Yeah, as Africa goes.
	As a lot of the places around.
	And, well, even then, you've got people from there just saying, get me out of this godforsaken hellhole.
	Yeah, much of the other world is not as nice as the European nations.
	That's just a de facto fact.
	There's nothing to say about that other than, well...
	If it's not true, look at the migration patterns.
	Simple as that.
	But anyway, I have one single take, because I have not made many takes about all of this, as you know, because I don't feel too.
	Let's have one, and I think we'll get some agreement on everyone on this.
	Silver lining, no matter what happens, we're all going to get some cracking Duma Russian music out of all this.
	Certainly will.
	Yeah, judging how bleak the situation has been on the ground for the Russians.
	But if you want to keep up with the situation as news comes out as well, you can always follow us on the new dispatchers of the Lotus Ears account there on Geller at LotusEatersNews.
	Otherwise, that's my take on the cancel culture.
	And speaking of horrendous problems that Russia is facing, it's occurred to me through over a week of following the opening of this conflict that a lot of Russia's problems are very Russian problems, and a lot of people in the West may not really understand them or know what's going on.
	So to explain this, let's watch a cartoon.
	You may think, why am I introducing a segment about Russia's army in Ukraine by showing you a cartoon?
	I've been following Russian culture for a while from a distance, and I think this short, depressing video does an amazing job of portraying dozens of cultural and behavioral features that make Russian society very different from the West.
	The premise of this film by Lazy Square is, what if the Simpsons were Russian?
	Let's take a look.
	Let's take a look.
	Well, that's not the entire video.
	There is an ending to it, which is quite depressing and violent, so I decided not to show it on the channel, but definitely go and check it out.
	It's only a minute long.
	But there are a few points to note here which experienced Soviet watchers or people who've grown up in the Eastern Bloc will recognize it being written by, I believe, a Russian.
	A dissident, in a sense.
	So the points to note, you have the depressing music.
	The kid gets robbed at the start, but the way it happens, it's just business as usual.
	It's like there's no emotion to it.
	It's just that our kid, yeah, beats him up, grabs his phone, grabs his skateboard, doesn't even break his conversation.
	I don't think he even takes his cigarette out of his mouth.
	Everything is bleak and unmaintained.
	It's just a polluted wasteland of brutalist concrete buildings.
	You know what's weird?
	Those towers, like, even when you just, anyone who's still been to Moscow these days, you fire it, you just see these towers in the middle of the city, and it's so strange, because you don't have it in western cities at all.
	Right.
	You don't see that.
	That's the Soviet vision of progress, from the looks of it.
	The only new thing in Russian Homer Simpson's office is a shiny new lamp, which he promptly steals.
	The office will likely get a new one tomorrow, which he will steal again, and barter for something he actually wants.
	Stealing stuff is considered a perk of the job, so no wonder the rest of the office is dilapidated.
	The shops, you see, have nothing in them worth buying, and the staff resent customers for interrupting their day.
	A bit like Scotland, really.
	There's no solidarity or fellow feeling, they just swear at each other and ruin each other's day.
	And finally there's the dark and depressing end.
	Do you say as well, this is obviously highly exaggerated for the purposes of making the point, though?
	Yes, and it is satirical, but it speaks to these truths, which I think Russians, especially in rural Russia, will understand to an extent.
	So in covering the conflict in Ukraine, we've all noticed a lot of Russian vehicles being abandoned, right?
	All over rural Ukraine.
	People were initially speculating that they'd run out of fuel or were suffering from logistical problems, and this may well be the case.
	However, an interesting analysis from a former US military contractor points the finger at poor maintenance.
	It may be that the Russian military machine is being hamstrung not by enemy action or sabotage, but by decades of characteristic corruption and incompetence.
	And this is an amazing story, so let's get into it.
	So he posts here.
	This is a thread that will explain the implied poor Russian army truck maintenance practices based on this photo of a Pantsir S1 wheeled gun missile system's right rear pair of tyres below and the operational implications during the Ukrainian mud season.
	You can see this is just an abandoned S1 Pantsir missile system.
	Very expensive piece of kit.
	$11 million, I think that is.
	I might be wrong.
	So, for the sin of being the new guy, I was the DCMA quality auditor in charge of the US Army's FMTV vehicle exercise programme at the contractor manufacturing them from the mid-90s to the mid-2000s.
	Then we got some new guys.
	Sorry, I see the chatter just like, get green flag on it.
	It was the AA when you need them.
	Right.
	So, short form, military trucks need to be turned over and moved once a month for preventative maintenance reasons.
	Can you see where this is going?
	In particular, you want to exercise the central tyre air inflation system, CTIS, to see if lines have leaks or had insect or vermin nests blocking the system.
	Let's have a look at the system.
	That's the image here on the right.
	That's the other image, just the diagram, the schematic of how it all works and how the pressure is fed to the tyres, because you want to control the pressure in the tyres when you're going over different types of terrain.
	One of the biggest reasons for the repositioning, per TACOM logistics representatives, was that direct sunlight ages truck tyres.
	Presumably that's homolytic fishing.
	Anyway, the repositioning of trucks in close parking prevents a lot of this sun rotting and cycling the CTIS keeps the tyre sidewalls supple.
	When you leave military truck tyres in one place for months on end, the sidewalls get rotted and brittle, such that using low tyre pressure setting for any appreciable distance will cause the tyres to fail catastrophically via rips.
	Now look at the same Pantsir S1 sidewalls after the Ukrainians tried to tow it, or drive it out of the mud.
	So that's after a tow, and you can see it's just completely collapsed.
	They couldn't get it to move anywhere.
	The right rear tyre fell apart because the rips in it were too big for the CTIS to keep aired up.
	So he asserts, no one exercised that vehicle for one year.
	One year, just sat there, $11 million weapon system.
	One of the more advanced vehicles is just parked there, just sitting there doing nothing.
	That's entirely believable.
	Yes, I know.
	And it's entirely the sort of thing that a senior commander, someone like Putin, would probably have no idea about that.
	And then his general staff as well, probably not very clued up on.
	And so you'd have to go quite far down the hierarchy to get someone who would actually understand that problem.
	And then to understand that it was a problem that the Russians have, because I think I can explain why this is happening and I will attempt later on.
	Yeah, it's surprising.
	I think he may have not realized that his army was as incompetent as it is in this sense.
	There is a huge operational level implication in this, he continues.
	If the Russian army was too corrupt to exercise a Panzer S1, they were too corrupt to exercise the trucks and wheeled AFVs now in Ukraine.
	The Russians simply cannot risk them off-road during the Rasputitsa or mud season.
	And there is photographic evidence of this.
	Go to this one in the next image.
	So there are 60-plus Russian army trucks crowded and parked on this raised roadbed to avoid the fate of the mug-bogged Panzer S1. And obviously that's a sitting duck right there.
	Like, if you had the capacity, I saw Laser Pig mention this, but you just have one helicopter, and you've taken it all out.
	Job done, yeah.
	If you don't have the capacity, you can't do it, obviously.
	But they have been doing that.
	They have been drone striking.
	Not this convoy, presumably, because this is north of Kiev, and there's a lot of assets protecting it.
	But in other parts of the theatre, they're constantly taking out these mini-convoys of Russian vehicles, because they're forced to stick to the roads.
	And he continues with a bit of military analysis.
	Given the demonstrated levels of corruption in truck maintenance, there is no way in hell that there are enough tires in the Russian army logistical system.
	So their wheeled AFV truck park is as road bound as Russian army columns were in the first Russo-Finish war.
	Do you remember that?
	The Winter War.
	What happened in the Winter War exactly?
	Absolutely destroyed.
	By the Finns, yeah.
	What that means is that as long as and wherever the Spring Rasputitsa is happening, the Russian army attack front is three-wheeled a piece wide.
	Yeah.
	When the Ukrainians can block the road with ATGM-destroyed vehicles, they can move down either side of the road, like the Finns in 1939, destroying Russian truck columns.
	The Crimea, on the other hand, is a desert, and the South Ukrainian coastal areas are drier, so we are not seeing this there, is his take.
	But elsewhere, the Russians have a huge problem for the next four to six weeks while this weather continues.
	I mean, everyone was kind of surprised that he did this now.
	I mean, like, famously, the whole place turns into a kind of swamp with the mud.
	So he would have seen this coming, presumably, as well.
	But then, if you don't know about the levels of failure with the tyres, I guess not.
	Right, exactly.
	Maybe you just thought they would blitzkrieg it, and they have completely failed to do that.
	So, let's interpret this speculation in the context of the Russian army.
	Imagine you're a junior commander in some godforsaken barracks in rural Russia.
	The pay is dreadful, and your officers are corrupt.
	This is sounding like the start of a Choose Your Own Adventure, isn't it?
	So, just like Russian Homer, you find a way to get your cut from the Russian state budget.
	You do this by taking the money they give you for fuel...
	For exercising the vehicles and turning them over so the tyres don't rot, and pocketing it without even turning the key in the ignition of your IFVs.
	I mean, it's not like you're ever going to use the thing for a real war, right?
	Oh, wait.
	I think that may be what's happened.
	But of course, this is pure speculation.
	I just think this kind of embezzlement is a very believable scenario that would explain some of the disastrous maintenance we're seeing in the Russian army in Ukraine.
	And there are other problems, by the way, which I also consider Russian problems.
	Let's have a look at this tweet here.
	Quote, "According to Google Maps, there is a traffic jam at 3:15 in the morning on the road from Belgorod, Russia to the Ukrainian border.
	It starts exactly where we saw a Russian formation of armour and IFV APCs show up yesterday.
	Someone's on the move." I think you basically saw the Russian invasion on Google Maps.
	Yeah.
	I did see there was also mentioning some of the planes that are being used to drop paratroopers and not turning off their responders.
	So you can actually track them online and just see them move in and out, which is really funny as well.
	That's insane.
	I don't know if it's incompetence or a mistake.
	What else can it be?
	It's just ridiculous.
	Now, Google Maps tracks traffic by the density of smartphones using its service, right?
	Oh god.
	Yeah, you see where this is going.
	Everyone's TikTok-ing, aren't they?
	Yeah.
	Even if you don't open Google Maps, it seems to know exactly where you've been, by the way, at every moment dating back years into the past.
	So yes, Google is a creepy stalker.
	You can check this on Google Maps Timelines, and if you haven't already, it will probably be an eye-opener to do so.
	However, the fact that they can track a Russian invasion column implies that the Russian troops are carrying their smartphones into battle.
	Can you see where this might go wrong?
	What might happen if you're carrying a smartphone into battle?
	The Americans know exactly where you are.
	Yes.
	And then we'll hand that information to their friend.
	Uh-huh.
	And then what happens?
	Yes, right.
	Now, it just seems like a no-brainer.
	Maybe all of the high commander, like 60 years old boomers and don't know how to use a smartphone and can't appreciate these technical subtleties.
	That's not beyond the realms of possibility.
	But yeah, one can imagine Russian commanders and conscripts being loathed to part with their smartphones since they would likely go missing if deposited somewhere for storage before the campaign.
	It's just a perk of the job, after all.
	This is also, I remember the last segment we did on this, I mentioned the fact that it was surprising they didn't blow up all the telecoms infrastructure.
	And some people wondered why, because you're conquering the place anyway.
	And it's just like, well, so people don't know where you are.
	I mean, they did make an effort to destroy quite a lot of infrastructure, it just wasn't successful.
	So this seemed like a real failure.
	It does.
	And if they're having these maintenance problems with their army, then perhaps maintenance problems with the Air Force explain why the Russian Air Force, despite having lots and lots of planes, is not really using them.
	It hasn't even won the war in the air yet.
	Maybe they're just in reserve.
	I don't know.
	Again, speculation.
	Yes, exactly.
	There are other reasons there might be, but let's not get bogged down in that discussion.
	But yeah, now there is a lot of material floating around social media that could be military psyops against Russian troops intending to demoralize lots of videos of soldiers surrendering, being forced to say Slava Ukraine and things like that.
	Thing is, that kind of video can be staged very easily.
	We could probably do one in the car park if we wanted to, if we had a couple of Russian uniforms.
	So I take them with a grain of salt.
	You're doing this afternoon.
	Vince, how's your Russian?
	Would you hold a shot?
	Very good.
	But yeah, so take some of the stuff we're seeing with a pinch of salt.
	But this in particular does seem like it's, it seems almost too sophisticated to be set up as a sci-op and they seem to be, it's based on, I think, real people and analysing real footage that's really been taken from the battlefield.
	So there we go.
	And yeah, we can finally pull up the map just to see.
	So this is on Reuters.
	This is a look at what's perceived to be the current fronts of the battle.
	And if you have any questions, I thought we could go through it here.
	Yeah, because I did mention, because I know you've, basically the reason I definitely wanted you to talk about this, because as I've said, people who don't know I'm not going to pay attention to, but you've been following this intensely.
	Religiously.
	Yeah.
	Obsessively.
	Like, kind of worryingly.
	I've been hardly sleeping, guys.
	Because I've seen a lot of conversation about encirclements, because I'm an active Hoi 4 player myself, and I know that's where it's at, and so I saw two things.
	I saw apparently in Mariupol all the, well, a bunch of the Azov Brigade, so the neo-Nazis have all been encircled, Yep.
	So I wanted to wonder what the hell's going to happen to them.
	Do you have any thoughts on that first?
	So I don't know, I can only speculate, but I imagine, as well because there have been incidents in Mariupol dating back to 2014 relating to separatistist conflicts, and it's the separatists who are approaching it from the east, I don't think they're going to take many prisoners if the Azov Brigade are still there.
	So it's...
	Quite possibly.
	It's one of the places.
	So I know this is hard to believe for observers, but from what I can see, it seems the Russians are actually trying to be precise and restrained.
	They're just very bad at it.
	They do have the firepower to absolutely devastate these cities, Kiev and Kharkiv, but they seem to not be employing the will to do so.
	I imagine a lot of that is PR, because you don't want to be doing Chechen things.
	Right, exactly.
	They don't want to be pointlessly wiping out thousands and thousands of civilians just so they occupy an empty shell of a city at the end of it.
	They are trying to win a PR war here as well.
	I mean, the advantage of that would just be, I've grained some ground, but it's like, yeah, you've made everyone hate you.
	Yeah.
	Now, one place where I think they might change that strategy is Mariupol, potentially.
	However, Mariupol is surrounded and it does not look like the Ukrainians can reinforce it.
	So the ITV, their press crew, left it recently and they went past a Russian checkpoint with a tank in it.
	And when they left, they said, we have no water, no power, no food.
	So we can't do any more reporting here.
	Let's just leave.
	If that's the situation for the reporters, I can't imagine that city is going to hold for very long.
	Unless, of course, the defenders have hoarded all the food to the soldiers.
	The other aspect I had is just, I mentioned there was some speculation of Ukrainian forces all being on the east there with the borders of the separatist regions.
	Would they have been pulled back or do you reckon the possibility of an encirclement is probable?
	I mean, ISIS, so there's two arguments here.
	One of them would be that they would have been pulled back and strategically redistributed around the various fronts.
	That's possible because you would imagine there'd be more experienced troops.
	But curiously enough, there's been relatively little footage from those regions, and that might be because the civilian populations are smaller.
	So it's harder to gauge the intensity of the fighting down there.
	And it doesn't look to me like that's the major concentration of Ukrainian forces.
	But again, all the footage that comes out, the vast majority is of Russian movements, Russian vehicles, and so on.
	So it's quite hard to actually track where the Ukrainian military defenses are, where their force concentration is.
	Fair enough.
	I mean, I think those are the two questions I had, really.
	Yeah, in terms of being cut off there, if they are there, it would take...
	It's possible, but there's a lot of distance to cover between Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv in the north there, you can see.
	And that ground will be defended.
	You've got to go through Dnipro, which is a major, major city on the Dnipro River.
	So that's not going to happen anytime soon, even if the Russians do very well.
	Fair enough.
	Anyway, anything else you want to say on the map?
	No, not on the military side of it.
	I don't want to rush you on that one.
	Fair enough.
	Is that what that one ends?
	Yep.
	Sorry, I don't know where I am.
	Thank you.
	Not at all.
	This is why John has literally been following this in an almost autistic fashion.
	So I have definitely kept my thoughts out of it as well.
	One of the reasons I'm following it like this is I just know that the narrative on Ukraine is going to change in six months' time or 12 months' time.
	And all of a sudden, people are going to be talking about what's happening now by giving us the benefit of knowledge that we won't learn until the future.
	And so I want to cover it and record what the impressions are that we're getting from the information there now, so that we can counter that sort of narrative shift later on.
	In which case, we'll move on to the cashless hell world.
	So, we are over...
	English, Callum, let's go.
	I was speaking Russian earlier.
	Screw me up.
	So, the cashless hell world we are all approaching in the future is coming, and we eventually will get there.
	And I thought we'd better look into this or have a look at it, because it is ramping up, especially in Australia and the Netherlands, if nowhere else.
	And this has, of course, popped up as a major issue because of the sanctions against Russia because of the invasion of Ukraine.
	And as we start off here, this is a thing that popped up for a lot of people.
	So you can see Apple Pay and Google Pay no longer working on Moscow's metro system, apparently.
	Don't know.
	Just saying that.
	Yeah.
	Is that actual footage as well, or is that stock footage?
	It's quite hard to tell in these times.
	Either way, it's completely believable, even if it is not the case, right?
	So then the speculation has been made, and as you can see, this person here is saying, see why cashless society is such an effed up idea.
	Yeah, I mean, the fact that you could all of a sudden have no ability to pay for things.
	You can get deplatformed from trains.
	Yes.
	Just, I can't go on trains.
	De-platform from buses.
	You want to buy bread?
	De-platform from taxis.
	Not here so much.
	Yeah.
	So we use the next one.
	We can also see an example of this in the West.
	Because this is, of course, sanctions because of a war.
	But of course, the West also does sanctions against its own people.
	For political reasons.
	Yep.
	As we'll read through here.
	So how corporations can delete your existence.
	Laura was out in Leeds city centre buying some bits when her card was declined.
	Funny, she thought.
	She definitely wasn't in the red.
	But these things happen.
	So she left the shop, tinting crimson, and dashed towards the nearest cash point.
	But her card wouldn't work at the cash point either.
	she tried another one with the same result laura opened the banking app on her phone it said only error then automatically closed she finally abandoned her shopping and went to the nearest branch of santander a bank in the uk for foreigners don't know there is a count there the counter assistant seemed just as mystified after about an hour of waiting though laura was called through into the manager's office
	Quote, I'm going to read a statement out for you, the manager said, but I'm not going to be able to answer any of your questions after that.
	That's normal.
	He read out, quote, We have locked your bank account.
	We can't give you any more information.
	We might be in touch in the future with more information, but we don't know when that might be.
	From Santander.
	Basically, F you.
	Just...
	You have money?
	Too bad.
	Not yours anymore.
	It's ours.
	Could she have any money?
	No.
	She couldn't even get her own money out.
	Just the whole thing is frozen.
	Do you want to buy shopping?
	You need to buy shopping for this week?
	Too bad.
	Not allowed.
	Frequently, Laura would phone up Santander's customer services.
	She'd be put on hold for ages, and then the phone would just go dead.
	She wrote to Santander to complain.
	They wrote back.
	They weren't interested in her complaints, and wouldn't be taking it any further.
	Meanwhile, her rent, standing orders and direct debits stacked up.
	The late fees and penalties mushroomed around them, as life tumbled towards chaos.
	Nearly a month later, she received a letter from Santander.
	Quote...
	Under the terms and conditions, we can withdraw banking facilities at any time, and in line with company policy, we won't go further into details.
	The account had been closed.
	Apparently, without irony, the balance had been appended as a cheque bot.
	Here's all your money in a cheque.
	Good luck cashing it.
	Yeah.
	Don't know where you're going to cash it.
	That's your problem, not ours.
	Here, have a worthless piece of paper.
	Laura could be any of us, but she is also Laura Towler, this is who this article is about, one of the founders of Patriotic Alternative.
	Towler is the sort of next-gen BNP type, a net-savvy white identitarian who campaigns against mass immigration and occasionally winks to her Telegram followers about, you know who, they know all right, the Jews.
	So she's a white nationalist, anti-Semite, this kind of thing, right?
	And that's her crime, therefore she's not allowed a bank account in a Western nation in the United Kingdom.
	So, obviously, disavow those views completely.
	I said that was a discussion.
	What's going on here is that she is essentially being deplatformed from money, and all of this is in response to no legal action, no actual action or behaviour on her part necessarily, but simply because of a thought crime.
	There is no reason you could not then turn off her power and water, if you accept this.
	Right, indeed.
	In which case, is that human?
	Is that a human thing to do someone?
	Why should she be allowed to get food then?
	I don't know.
	Maybe we should build a camp where she could stay in instead.
	Then we could put all those people...
	But it's the fact that just through discriminatory denial of service, just through cancelling people, they can, in a completely technologified world, they can just delete your entire ability to interact with the world.
	Yeah.
	But also, where does this lead?
	I mean, okay, you can say white identitarism bad.
	Yeah, I agree.
	And Nazis and all that.
	Okay, yeah.
	You know why bad?
	Because it does this kind of thing to people and ends up killing them en masse.
	It's like, yeah, these are part of the reason we don't want to end up like those folks.
	Exactly.
	And in which case we should have some tolerance for political views.
	What would someone like that have to lose if they have extreme views?
	There's the other aspect.
	They get deplatformed from money because of their extreme views.
	What have they got to lose?
	They can't move, they can't leave, they can't use cash if we have a cashless society.
	The best thing to do to an extremist is give them nothing to lose.
	Right.
	That won't go wrong.
	Yeah.
	That's not going to lead anywhere.
	And of course this doesn't just happen to someone who you could say is an extremist here, of course.
	It also happens to political moderates, as you can see, the bad man.
	I love how a political moderator in our country, we have to call the bad man.
	And he also has PayPal, as you can see in this article, closed on him.
	And also he has said in live streams that his banks have just closed in the same way.
	There's no more banking.
	Bye-bye.
	Enjoy.
	And then the discussion here is, oh, it's a private business.
	They can do what they want.
	And all of the private businesses decide to do exactly the same thing.
	At least it's not the government oppressing me.
	Right.
	Okay.
	And if we go to the next one, you may be wondering why on earth do I call the bad man a political moderate?
	It's because he took a political compass test and literally got that result.
	I don't know if it's low resolution, if people can see.
	It's literally two squares down, one half a square to the right.
	That's it.
	Did he film the video and the responses and everything?
	Yeah, and that was his result.
	And he's just like, okay.
	He has no real views.
	He seems to really have views on Islam and Islamification, and that's...
	That's as extreme as he gets.
	And even he ended up losing his bank, of course.
	And if we go to the next one, we can also see just people in mainstream parties.
	So, I mean, you've got here Laura Loomer, who's, you know, you could say a bit wacky or whatever, if that's your opinion on her.
	Laura Loomer?
	So she is a Republican.
	She was a candidate that ran for election.
	And in here, as you can see, Florida conservative firebrand Laura Loomer, 27, tells why she was banned from Twitter, PayPal, and Uber and her bank account frozen for anti-Muslim hate speech and dyed her hair blonde as she vies to become a youngest person in Congress.
	Now, again, you can disagree with what she said.
	It doesn't matter.
	These are not important.
	They're views.
	And then she has her bank account frozen.
	Can't access her money to pay for food.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	I'm particularly blackpilled by this segment so far because we are going to be the absolute first people on the block for this kind of thing.
	I'm just putting it out there.
	If you've been following our content, it's not extreme.
	We're not advocating for violence.
	We're not advocating hate against any personal group or anything like that.
	But we are questioning the narrative, which makes us dissidents by definition.
	And dissidents are the first people to have this kind of treatment.
	And if you are sat there and think, well, I don't care about these people, they're all, you know, right-wingers or whatever, or you maybe think that, ah, Laura Taylor, she's a complete extremist, why do I care if she loses her bank account?
	It doesn't end.
	As you can see, it keeps marching.
	It will eventually march here as well.
	First they came for the White Nationalists, then they came for the Freedom Convoy.
	Yes, we have the Freedom Convoy as well, and you can see their Canadian Freedom Convoy having their bank accounts closed.
	They actually got theirs back in the end, apparently, or at least the people who donated them.
	A whole ten buckaroos.
	But it was more the fact that they froze the bank accounts of people who donated.
	Exactly.
	There was no justification for that whatsoever.
	Remember, he was only going to do it with extremists, and now it's people who donated ten buckaroos to a protest for workers' rights.
	They're gone now.
	Okay, yeah, it's going to end there.
	It's not going to go any further than that.
	It's really scary.
	reasons for the arguments that you could say that we could uh not only get away with all this but then have a cashless society in which you don't even have the ability to hold money anymore because this is the real scary combination and as you can see boris johnson making an argument here as he did at cop 26 in which he said uh we've kept the 1.5 degrees commitment alive that made huge promises on coal cars cash and trees
	now in this one he was actually speaking of foreign aid cash but it's not reasonable that people took this as him also saying that he's going to get rid of physical If we go to the next one, we can see plenty of articles on the exact topic of what if we just get rid of money?
	We'll be able to save on the ecological impact.
	But you know, all the notes are plastic now.
	They don't degrade anymore.
	They could survive forever.
	We'd better get rid of them.
	And the reason, sorry, really the reason for this is seemingly unstoppable is the convenience of cashlessness, of course.
	The fact that we are keep marching towards the fact because when I go to the shops, I imagine you're the same.
	It is just easier to go dip rather than going around with your coins.
	There's also the fact that a lot of people cannot do arithmetic anymore.
	There's also that as well.
	But of course, this also comes with measurable horrors in store for us.
	And if we go to the next one, we can see some of these as a man, Peter Sweden, who has lost his verified checkmark, which, again, he's no longer Peter Sweden.
	He was.
	No more.
	Yeah, and then I love it when leftists are like, guys, people complain about this, this verified checkmark.
	Like, it just shows that it verified your identity.
	I mean, oh my god, come on, guys.
	Then you have it revoked.
	Okay, how does that work?
	How does that make sense?
	No, it's a badge of honour.
	It's like an armband, in a sense.
	Yeah.
	So you can see him giving an example.
	The year is 2031, a cashless society where all your money is stored in a digital wallet.
	Access to it is with a digital ID that is tied to a social credit score.
	Those with a low credit score get their accounts frozen by the state.
	Well, maybe I'm exaggerating.
	We'll go to the next one.
	Of course, we did a segment on exactly this, because Majid Nawaz was warning us of exactly this, and he mentioned the Bank of England doing exactly this.
	So if we go to the next one, we can see more information on this.
	So you can see, oh, there should be a Bank of England link in there, John, if you can load it up, which is on the Bank of England's website.
	They have said, well, everything that Majid said is true, and we are planning it.
	And it's great!
	And it's going to be great!
	Like, we're going to troll everything in your life!
	So this is the Central Banking Digital Currencies page.
	So in here, I don't know if you can scroll down, there should be a graphic, as you can see there, that graphic, issued by the Bank of England, banknotes, digital money exists, what if we put them together?
	Central Banking Digital Currencies.
	Your money will be issued by the Bank of England and will be digital and controlled by the Central Bank.
	Hmm.
	Not Santander anymore.
	We'll even be with the Bank of England.
	Directly controlled by the state.
	No even intermediaries between there.
	Not the smaller banks are that free in these regards.
	Anyway.
	But what they say in here, try to rest assured about the whole situation.
	Any central banking digital currency would be introduced alongside, rather than replacing, cash and bank deposits.
	Until it's not.
	And then it's gone.
	Forever.
	No one buys that.
	Quote, We have not yet made a decision on whether to introduce central banking digital currencies.
	In March 2020, we published our discussion paper on central banking digital currencies, which outlines one possible approach to the design of our currencies, and asks for feedback for the payments, industry, academics, and other interested parties.
	That is the consultation where they came to the conclusion that they couldn't be trusted with something so powerful.
	And they literally said, I mean, we mentioned in the previous segment, I said we did, in which they just said, we don't understand or can't have the responsibility to determine who gets access to the bank account, so we'll give it to the government.
	Whoever runs the Bank of England has seemingly never read a book.
	Who can we trust above all else to have our best interests in my...
	I know!
	The government!
	Imagine making a secret weapon, effectively.
	It's just like, this is so powerful, not even I, the person who's made it, should have it, so I'll give it to the state.
	That'll never go wrong.
	Absolute idiot.
	And if we go to the next link, we can see some of this cashless society moving forward.
	It naturally will, because of just the way society is.
	Just advancing relentlessly.
	So this is hundreds of Dutch ATMs closed permanently.
	What does this mean?
	Well, less cash.
	For anyone looking to take out a little cash, it's likely that your usual ATM isn't there anymore.
	Nearly 900 ATMs were permanently closed last year.
	Some were relocated.
	The reason?
	People in the Netherlands are using less and less cash, and more banks are closing their branches.
	Yeah, and I seem to remember with this, so they were saying that, yeah, so they have a total of 4,916 ATMs currently, so they've got rid of almost a sixth of the ATMs in one year.
	And then in two and a half years, another report was saying that they got rid of a third of their ATMs in two and a half years.
	I imagine it's only going to be accelerationist as well.
	Yes.
	Once you've only got a couple.
	This is the thing, right?
	The utility of cash is somewhat dependent on the availability of ATMs.
	If you don't have ATMs, are you really going to go to the bank all the time to get your cash withdrawals?
	And how long are banking branches going to last as well?
	That's another thing to mention.
	As he says, those banking branches are also just gone.
	So let's...
	Yeah, so let's see.
	If we end up with no banking branches and no ATMs and no cash, then digital currency is the only option.
	And it's going to be one of two.
	It's going to be Bitcoin, of course, or it'll be the central bank's digital currency.
	Which one do you think the government is going to promote?
	Which one do you think the government's going to try and ban?
	Have a guess.
	Well, we'll have a look at the government, the one that really runs the country, the World Economic Forum, who has something to say on this about the benefits of a cashless society who are pushing this relentlessly.
	So if we go to the next one, we'll see Right Said Fred decide to say something about this, because, of course.
	And he says, a cashless society is a war on the poor and another step towards total digitalization.
	Sounds like another one of those pesky conspiracy theories coming to fruition.
	And this is the same situation in Australia.
	I imagine it's every country, frankly, this trend.
	So as you can see, the end of ATMs in Australia, thousands of cash machines are being removed across the country as banks get digital.
	So they say in here, an analysis has revealed the closure of 460 bank branches in the nation in recent years, dating back to 2020, and approximately 3,800 ATMs have been removed in Australia in a single year.
	Still gone.
	New South Wales alone now has 140 fewer in-store banks and almost 300 suburbans don't have a single ATM to withdraw cash.
	It is a similar story in Victoria where 120 branches have permanently closed their doors to customers.
	Quote, jobs are lost, business is impacted, and other local services.
	Is it me?
	Okay, I know I'm looking over the long view here, but as banks have basically monopolized, they've become bigger.
	Do you remember we used to have lots of small banking branches and building societies and things like that?
	But now we have big monopoly banks, and instead of providing a service, they can just close all of their branches, and that's fine.
	So they don't actually have to provide that physical service anymore.
	What do they actually do for their money at this point?
	Like...
	They don't give you any money in interest payments, that's for sure.
	No.
	And, well, everything you do with them is now just click, and then it's all handled in the cloud.
	It's like, okay, well, that's all automated.
	Yeah, it's like they make money out of nothing, in a way.
	Even worse than they were before.
	But also, you could say, from that statement there, jobs are lost from the closing of the bank branches and whatnot, and they say, well, you could argue that money is saved and the system is streamlined and all that.
	Except that, well, that's kind of the problem.
	Another key factor for the branch closures and reduced ATMs is the fact that banks are bringing in a small fortune from daily digital transactions in Australia.
	As Australia accelerates towards a cashless society, fees from either the customer or the vendor for online banking have become commonplace, apparently.
	And you may wonder, I know card payments here, cashless ones, they used to have a card charge, what is it, if it's under £5, you'd have to pay £10 or whatever.
	Our government just got rid of that.
	The vendor still has to pay it, just you don't, which doesn't really make any sense to you, whatever.
	It still gets passed on to you, doesn't it?
	Yeah.
	In a modern-day digital world, an estimated 80% of Aussies prefer to bank online, but the remaining 20%, namely the disabled or those who are not digital savvy, have been left behind.
	I mean, the real losers in this situation are boomers, old people, pensioners.
	What the hell do you do when your whole life is based around...
	When you solve problems, you go to a place and you speak to someone and you solve...
	No.
	Nowadays, you have to go...
	You have to ring up a number.
	You have to speak to some automated...
	Which takes you round and round in circles, like something out of Black Mirror.
	You can't get to a human to solve your problem for you, so you just end up having to get shafted by whoever it is that's screwing you over.
	It's really grim, really miserable.
	You could make the argument that, you know, times change and we change with the times, but...
	And that seems to be what is the future in store for us.
	I don't know how they're actually going to stop this.
	Yeah, I don't know how you keep cash alive at this point, because it seems like the decisions have already been made for a start, and the economic incentives are also unstoppable for this kind of change.
	So yeah, how do we stop this?
	Well, there is, of course, a few responses we could say.
	So there is the funny response of, like, the Luddite position, if we just start smashing machines.
	Go around burning machines, building a pirate ATM. Yeah.
	We make, I don't know, cash just part of the constitution.
	Imagine you're in a car with, like, dark windows driving along a suburb at night, and it's got a special symbol on it, and people go up, you open up the boot, and there's an ATM where they can I know Lambda would actually make this argument, probably, which is just that we could, as a nation, just to say, right, we're banning cashless payments.
	Just in the United Kingdom, we don't have those.
	We won't.
	We won't, but you could do it and then be like, we only use physical money and return to monkey and all that.
	But it's, as you say, not going to happen.
	The other alternative, at least the one that presents itself, is, of course, digital currency, not regulated by the bank.
	So if we go to the next one, you can see a lot of memes being made in response to a lot of this situation.
	So the Federal Reserve also looking at doing this for Americans.
	You will owe nothing and be happy.
	No, I won't.
	And Bitcoin absolutely destroying that vision for the future.
	Yeah, it's one of the only things I feel standing in the way of this central bank digital currency thing.
	And I think there's going to be something of a massive political struggle for the next 5-10 years between cryptocurrencies and centralized digital currencies.
	But there's also the evident reality, because we have a war in Ukraine.
	We can test when the chips are down what the people do.
	And if we go to the next one, we can see an example.
	Cryptocurrency exchanges refuse Ukraine's request to freeze Russian accounts.
	So Russians are having all their rubles disappear in their hands, thanks to the exchange rate and all that.
	Well, they can just use cryptocurrency, and the cryptocurrency people, the people who run the institution and all the rest of it, Don't care for your weird vision of the future, where we can freeze accounts and all that.
	It's cryptocurrency.
	Go to hell.
	We can't even do many of these things we think we can do, as they had that response a while back as well.
	And if we go to the next one, we also have Ukraine, who themselves are taking absolutely advantage of crypto donations.
	Yes.
	As mentioned, they are taking donations in Ethereum and Bitcoin to fund their war effort.
	Mm-hmm.
	Because, well, that's actually valuable compared to the paper crap that is existing in the nation.
	Well, it's also the fact that I think their central back has been subject to relentless cyber warfare.
	Sure.
	That's not true.
	But it's just the fact that when the chips are down, in an example of a war next door, well, what's everyone doing?
	They're rushing to Bitcoin and Ethereum and so forth.
	Yeah, that's that.
	I suppose that's our future.
	I don't have a Bitcoin account.
	I need to set one up.
	I need to get a wallet.
	So, be prepared.
	Otherwise, let's go to the video comments.
	Sorry, John doesn't have his ears on yet, and this is definitely a question for you.
	Sorry, guys.
	Sorry about that, John.
	Hang on.
	Oh, no.
	This bloody thing's popped out again.
	Oh, no, it's not got stuck in your ear, has it?
	Okay.
	Would you believe it?
	One of our presenters had to go to A&E, apparently, for one of these things.
	Okay, I'm in.
	It's a dangerous job, this.
	I'm in.
	All right, you're in.
	Sorry.
	Let's play.
	So the best explanation I've had of Ukraine is, so, Ukraine's democratically elected leader, which is to try and leave the EU. Spontaneously, riots and civil unrest emerge.
	They then stage their own January 6th and take out the capital.
	At which point all of the capital's MPs vote out the current president.
	And so this is the coup that Putin was referring to.
	Was his election legit?
	Was their voting out of him legit?
	I don't know!
	And this is the problem with having no faith in your elections.
	The war in Ukraine is exactly what happens when people can't trust their elections.
	Yeah, I think that's a very good point.
	I have a video coming out in less than an hour, actually, at three o'clock today, which explores the very murky events surrounding NATO, or rather, American involvement in the Euromaidan coup and the coming to power of Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the pro-EU stooge.
	But there is also a lot of destabilization involvement from the Russian side as well.
	And yeah, you are absolutely right.
	When you don't have trustable elections, credible elections, This sort of stuff will happen.
	That's the cornerstone of legitimacy in a republic.
	And, well, if you don't have legitimacy, you have no right to rule.
	And the whole thing collapses.
	Yep.
	I mean, I remember when I first made my animation trying to explain this, I could see, of course, I could see there are two sides to the argument pre-invasion of what has taken place, you know, the accusations of coup and blah blah blah and Russian involvement and NATO involvement and blah blah blah.
	But obviously since, and given actually at the time as well, I mean, the Russians just poisoning people, invading Crimea and Donbass and Luhansk, and yeah, someone is definitely doing worse out of this, but this is not to say that there was not NATO involvement or US involvement, to be frank.
	So, go to the next one.
	Evening, fellas.
	Oh, don't mind that.
	Thanks to Sadiq, they send the nukes early.
	Anyway, since the world has become a living meme, I was wondering if you guys had any favorite characters coming out of all of this?
	Real or fictional?
	The Ghost of Kiev?
	Miles of Kabul?
	Mine will be...
	the late, great, Senator Armstrong.
	Because this man is goddamn amazing.
	So...
	What do you think?
	How the hell did you get elected?
	I've seen a lot of people respond to Ghost of Kiev stories with a clip of him.
	It's like, why don't you back it up with the source?
	The source says I made it the f*** up.
	I don't know.
	So one character who I came across while doing my research is a Russian politician.
	Okay, there's two.
	One of them is a Russian politician called Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who is the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, which is about as liberal and democratic as the DPRK, as far as I can gather.
	And the guy is just a meme.
	He comes out with ridiculous statements.
	Go and look him up.
	There's some entertainment there.
	Sounds like a horrible guy.
	And then another one in a similar vein is Lukashenko, of course.
	I don't know the LDBAR...
	That guy.
	The Liberal Democratic Party of Russia.
	I can't do the analogy.
	But Lukashenko is so funny.
	I mean, horrible for Belarusians, but for me...
	Just watching it.
	It is something amazing, isn't it?
	Especially when he was so serious about, I want to be a colonel in the Soviet army.
	Why shouldn't Putin bring back the Soviet Union?
	Yeah, you hear stuff coming out about Lukashenko, and anyone else who would say, ah, yeah, it's just propaganda, and then you're like, but it is Lukashenko!
	Europe's last dictator and the world's funniest meme on the international stage.
	I would say he's like the ex-USSR version of Diane Abbott.
	Yeah, that's not a bad comparison.
	For people who don't know, the Secret Service in Belarus is still called the KGB. I didn't know that.
	They still have Soviet parades every single year.
	It's weird.
	Soviet nostalgia is real.
	I really want to go.
	Just for a holiday of nothing else.
	It's a mad place.
	I would wait.
	Depending on how things go, it might not be a country by the end of the year.
	Maybe.
	Go and it'll get nuked.
	Or absorbed into Russia is another possibility.
	I can end up at a milestone.
	Invaded by NATO. I mean, there's so many branches to this wild ride we're on right now.
	Let's get the next one.
	To be fair, on the projections that I've seen on maps as well, dropping a bomb on London, we'd be just outside of the zone of any effect whatsoever, so we'd be fine.
	For an all-out attack on the London region, this is a realistic scenario.
	Up to 30 large and medium-sized weapons, many exploding in the central area.
	Amidst this incredible destruction, a further nightmare.
	Over a third explode on the ground.
	These make fallout.
	Yeah, I mean, we were joking for the whole thing, but I don't know if you've seen Threads.
	There was a movie I watched recently about nuclear war.
	Okay.
	So it's kind of strange as well, because what was it, like 80s or something?
	So it's almost foreign to me in a weird way.
	But the premise of the show is it's normal life and the nuclear war happens.
	Then it's whatever.
	That's not important.
	It's the life after.
	How would Britain actually regrow her for 100 years?
	What would it be like?
	Mm-hmm.
	Right, yeah.
	Right, yeah.
	Like, it's the weirdness of, like, you've got all these cities, and you can go in, and there are TVs, but you live as a medieval serf, practically, in your daily life, and it's this weird dichotomy of, like, how the world is.
	Must be what the Dark Ages were like, in a way.
	All these Russian villas, Roman villas and things.
	Well, it's almost as if you were walking through an alien civilization that had fallen, and you almost can't make sense of the fact that everything's there.
	Yeah, but you've probably stripped the cities for resources as well.
	There's that as well, but I found that idea wonderful for a video game setting.
	Oh, right, yeah.
	I'd love to play that.
	Absolutely.
	I think what people don't tend to realise is that we have all of the amazing things we have in modern technology because we are such a specialised society, right?
	And this has been a relentless progress which some people describe along the paradigm, the framework of industrial revolutions that have made this all possible.
	But it's true that if we suffered a major system shock, then it would probably be like the Bronze Age collapse in the sense that you have these civilisations like the Egyptians and the Hittites and the Mycenaeans And then they just disappear because they suffer some calamity through famine or plague or invasion or whatever it was that means there's a critical break in the different sorts of people you need to make the civilization work.
	So the whole civilization comes crashing down.
	You have to build it from the ground up.
	So in this country, we would then have to face the problem that without modern agriculture and with no imports, how the hell would you feed 60 million people?
	And I honestly think that All over the world, yeah.
	You would just see an unprecedented famine and the population would go down to what can be supported on subsistence levels.
	I think in the movie it goes down to 8 million.
	Probably lower.
	You could say, the threads of society collapse.
	See?
	Name of the movie came back in.
	No, that's true.
	They never say the name of the movie in the movie, so you don't have to turn off.
	But I think that's really interesting.
	When you look at the population of Britain, for example, when the Romans were around, it was much, much lower.
	Maybe a million people.
	I think it was even much less.
	I think it was in the 1500s.
	We're still getting famines on this island.
	So, yeah, that would be the future.
	And normally what happens with population, by the way, is every time you have a boom, it is subsequently followed by a famine.
	It's just the way it works.
	So anyway, on that optimistic note, let's see the next one.
	So here's a vacation horror story for you.
	Me and my girlfriend just went to Orlando, Florida for our six-year anniversary.
	Our flight got in at about 11.30.
	By the time we got the rental car and got to the hotel, it was nearly one in the morning.
	And to that point we find out that the code our Airbnb gave us didn't work, and they had no backup key at the hotel, and there were no other vacancies in the entire Orlando area.
	We called over two dozen hotels.
	No vacancies whatsoever.
	Eventually we managed to find a place, but for about five to six hours in the morning we were effectively homeless.
	Wow.
	Yeah, that kind of been fun.
	Yeah, that sounds awful.
	I suppose it's only good to have friends then.
	I don't know what else to say.
	It's just bad.
	Why is that?
	Is that because so many people are fleeing to Florida at the moment?
	Probably.
	Although I did see, what is it?
	If you book a room at the Disneyland Star Wars hotel, you can buy a room for three adults and one child.
	So presumably it's you, your wife, your son, and your wife's boyfriend.
	I don't know.
	Weird circumstance.
	Yeah, that is weird.
	High demand for that, apparently, in the United States.
	Let's go to the next one.
	Attention, meme smiths!
	The World Wide Web needs you!
	The world has gone mental, banning everything related to Russia.
	Westerners are banning vodka, even though most of it's made in Western Europe.
	Diners have banned poutine from their menus because it sounds too much like Putin.
	Anastasia has been removed from Disney Plus for...
	Oh, come on!
	Even cat breeder registries are decertifying the breed status of Russian-born cats.
	What will happen next?
	We need you to decide.
	Will the World Atlas ban Russia?
	Will St.
	Peter ban all of St.
	Petersburg from heaven?
	Show there's Russkies just how we'll ban Putin's ass next.
	Yeah, you're absolutely right.
	Have you seen the map of Berlin from the Soviet era that did exactly that?
	What?
	Because you have West and East Berlin, right?
	So in East Berlin, if you brought a map of Berlin, there was just a big cutout and nothing in the middle.
	Nothing, nada.
	You don't know to see what's going on over there.
	There is nothing.
	This gap in space died.
	So if you want to redo the Russian maps where it's just blank, it wouldn't be the first.
	Let's go to the next one.
	When someone thinks they're being persecuted, it's not exactly a good idea to go persecuting them.
	I mean, look at the worldwide Jewish embargo on German goods before World War II. Germans thought the Jews were out to get them, and that made the Jews want to go out to get them.
	Well, we're certainly seeing some psychohistoric elements of Weimar Echo in Russia, but my calculations don't predict anything global kicking off until 2026, and it's hard to factor in individuals.
	The point about the embargo I don't really think makes sense.
	I think they're anti-Semites either way.
	But the point about it's absurd to make someone who's got nothing to lose even more isolated.
	I mean, with Laura Taller, as we saw, that's not a good idea.
	No, absolutely not.
	And if that's hundreds and hundreds of people, you are creating a real problem there.
	I mean, this actually happened to the bad man as well.
	Like, he said on, I think it was the Oxford Union speech he gave, where he had two businesses.
	He was a successful businessman, but he occasionally went out and said, I think all this islamization is a bit bad.
	And then he did some rally for the EDL, first thing.
	And then his businesses got shut down, his assets frozen.
	He was like, right, what else am I going to do?
	Right, and then he became a real thorn in the establishment side.
	That's when he turned into the full-time organiser for the EDL, running the whole thing, and then became what he was.
	Right.
	It was because the state came in and just shut him down.
	Like, he wasn't able to trade anymore.
	He wasn't able to run his tanning salon, making Luton browner.
	LAUGHTER He's a white nationalist.
	I literally make people browner for a living, mate.
	It's browning the country every day.
	I didn't realise that.
	Yeah.
	Let's go to the next one.
	Tony D and Little Joan with another legend of Swindon.
	This time it comes from the BBC, so you know it's true.
	There was a couple on Westbury Road by the name of Pellymounter who were haunted by poltergeists.
	The poltergeists would make so much noise, opening and closing drawers, moving things around...
	They eventually called their local vicar to perform an exorcism.
	This was broadcast on the BBC on March 6, 1973.
	After the exorcism, the ghost never bothered them again.
	Okay, yeah, fair enough.
	Been proven.
	It was on the BBC, lads.
	Must be true.
	I love these.
	By the way, everyone I speak to about our segments, like the video comments, they always mention the ghost stories, and I'm like, man, that's the best part.
	Thanks, man.
	Also love this shirt.
	Let's go to the next one.
	So I think the UK government has actually put a ban on Russian-born athletes competing in any sporting event, which means things like soccer, hockey, Nikita Mazepin in Formula One.
	I don't think that this is right.
	I don't think we should be punishing the athletes, especially when they're not even playing for Russia.
	But I guess give me your guys' thoughts on it and whether or not you think this is good or not.
	I'm glad we did the segment.
	Yeah, if economic sanctions are a valid response, I think, in a way, to punish a nation for doing something like invading a sovereign nation, right?
	I don't think they work, but there is an argument for them.
	It's very easy.
	Banning information exchange, punishing innocent people who have no influence, or not even playing for Russia and certain things.
	All banning ourselves.
	Financial exchanges, too.
	None of these things were designed as weapons, yet all of a sudden, when there's a war on, they are suddenly used as weapons, which basically means they were weapons all along, in a way.
	Apparently we've got a few left, so we should get through the rest of them.
	Let's get the next one.
	Question for Beau, Carl, today's host, and any fellow Lotus Eaters.
	Can anyone think of a past war that was started due to an assassination threat?
	We all know about Ferdinand, but his assassination was a success, not a threat.
	Jesus.
	Lindsay!
	For people listening, Lindsay Graham's tweeted out that he wants someone to assassinate Putin.
	Which, don't tweet that out.
	You send it in a bottle to the CIA. You don't make it public.
	I mean, nothing else.
	I don't know.
	It seems to me that a lot of things which were threatened but didn't happen disappear from the historical record because they're not so prominent as things which threatened and did happen.
	Because, as he points out, was there a Brutus in Russia?
	Well, when Caesar was assassinated, that started a civil war.
	So that's one example.
	But just from the threat, I can't think of anything off the top of my head.
	To be honest, I'm not sure it makes things better either, just having been assassinated right now.
	Yeah, and it's kind of the fact that in history, people are always throwing threats around, just relentlessly.
	Yeah.
	I can't think of a historical event that started with a assassination threat, like a war that was died.
	Maybe they all know, so...
	Yeah.
	Go to the next one.
	I just want to say that I fully support the rights of the blue checkmarks to fight for the freedom of Ukraine.
	I'll even pay for the rifles and the plane tickets myself.
	I mean, such bravery.
	Just, I salute you.
	And this is my kitty Luna.
	Oh, that was perfect timing.
	Hi, Luna.
	Anyway, we should really start a give-send-go.
	Let's just, like, send checkmarks to Ukraine.
	And just, like, start tagging them every time.
	And just be like, yeah, we've got the money.
	We'll send you.
	Don't worry.
	Because they're accepting volunteers.
	So, if you want to go, Mr.
	American Leftist, we'll sort it out.
	Let's go to the next one.
	So something not a little more topical.
	For the Russians though, I did have my doubts on the capabilities because if you look back into their operations down in Syria, whenever they were aiding, they were basically operating on a shoestring budget and they had to go through monumental efforts to even accomplish something that was against ISIS. And the equipment they were using kind of became meme-worthy within the whole technical community.
	You should look into that.
	It's kind of funny.
	I will check that out.
	One thing I have heard from the Russian campaigns in Syria is that they made extensive use of drones, not big drones, but small drones for like artillery strikes and things like that.
	And we surprisingly haven't seen any of that in Ukraine that's confirmed yet, which is interesting.
	Sorry, from the Russian or Ukrainian side?
	Russians.
	Because the Russians are involved in Syria, of course.
	Okay, sorry, yeah.
	Because I'm thinking that may also come down to the lack of air superiority again.
	You're not able to have your stuff up, it seems, in a way that the Americans could or you could in Syria.
	Potentially, there's various explanations offered.
	One of them is that it's electronic warfare on the Ukrainian side.
	Another is they don't have enough of them for us to really notice, or only elite units are using them, stuff like this.
	Maybe.
	I imagine like a portable drone, for example, like one you would buy in a shop and just whack a camera on that you can fly up quite high.
	I think that's the sort of small-scale drone that they were using before.
	I'm not sure if those are even large enough to be taken out by enemy aircraft.
	Anyway...
	I don't mean aircraft.
	I mean, what's that thing called?
	Not the stinging missiles.
	The other wonderful Russian invention.
	No, where you just...
	Strela?
	Shilka?
	Loads of bullets come out to take out aircraft.
	Is that not the Shilka?
	Is that the Shilka?
	I think it's the Shilka.
	Yeah, the Daka Daka, as John says.
	It's beautiful.
	But on the comments, so we'll start with Magician of Svidestan.
	It says, I don't believe I said this, but thank you.
	The leader also refuted claims circulated by some media outlets that the payments amount to 11,000 rubles.
	$100.
	Those who were wounded are eligible for a lump sum of $3 million, $28,000, whilst servicemen with permanent disabilities will receive lifetime pensions from Russia, according to the president.
	Yes, and then they have to actually get to the destination person, which is where Russia gets involved and creates Russian problems.
	But also, I don't know how much...
	If that's true.
	How long that commitment's going to last, because it's all good for a politician, as Putin is, to make that commitment, but then when the ruble collapses more, and suddenly your pension's $100 a month...
	Yeah.
	So M1Ping says, soon the phrase put in will be removed from the English language because of the invasion of Ukraine.
	Certainly will.
	Can't rush anymore.
	We have to go slow.
	Yep.
	M1Ping again says, if the war in Ukraine is still going next week, American of Russian descent will probably be getting sent to internment camps.
	What?
	You could get some reparations.
	You could whine forever about more reparations, so maybe not a bad deal.
	Ignacio Garcia says, I'm getting the let's take them to the camps vibes with all the Russian hate springing up in the West.
	This is damn near collective punishment.
	Yeah, again, if you want to punish the Russian state, that's one thing to just ban Russian cats.
	And isn't it amazing, right?
	We consider ourselves so enlightened, and yet in the space of five days we went to full-on Russophobia.
	I don't want cats in my competition that are from Russia.
	Yeah.
	What are you doing?
	What the matter with you?
	Alexander Dake says, Remember when we taught how artful it was of America to persecute...
	How awful it was to...
	Not artful.
	Callum and his Freudian slips over here.
	How awful it was of America to persecute Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor, Petruch Farm remembers.
	It certainly does.
	Bleach Demon says, It's curious that the current crisis that every Russian references is scrubbed from public square, yet after 9-11, the religion of peace was the zeitgeist.
	Yeah, I mean, these are different things, because it's a state rather than a religion, but I suppose if Putin was to call it an orthodox crusade, well, on the other side, it's also orthodox, it doesn't really work either, but...
	Yeah, no one's saying don't look back in anger over Ukraine, are they?
	Sure, but these things are.
	Yeah.
	So, Brandon Napier says, corporations boycotting Russia but not China is the most annoying part of this.
	Yeah, I'm annoyed I didn't mention that.
	Which is, you're all happy to be like, oh, Russia's bad because they've invaded Ukraine.
	Yes!
	And the Chinese genocide...
	Get back to me on that.
	We're going to consider that question.
	We've decided the biscuits we're going to have at the meeting, about the meeting, as Lady Pig would say.
	There's a comment here.
	If the Russian military is failing because of incompetence and poor maintenance, why did we not see them have these problems with their military operations in Syria?
	Now, not an expert on their ops in Syria.
	One of our video commenters just said they did have these problems.
	And I would also point out that Syria was a very limited commitment for Russia compared to Ukraine.
	Far more troops involved in Ukraine than in Syria.
	So obviously, you can't just...
	You can afford to send the ones that work.
	Exactly.
	In Syria, you can just send a few of the best units with the best stuff, in theory.
	Whereas in Ukraine, the front is so large, they're attacking from all directions.
	You have the whole army and you see it all, warts and all.
	I mean, we're seeing the conscripts for other professional army guys.
	By the looks of it, yeah.
	Lord Nerevar says, it's so strange how we're basically treating Russians in the West as Jews and Nazi Jews.
	No, it's not that strong.
	It's not that strong.
	If they don't want to stoke sympathy for Russia and Russians, persecuting them in their culture is a bit of a crap way to do that.
	Yeah, and that is true, because you can see how Russians are already responding to this, which is, the hell's wrong with the West?
	Maybe they do really want to just kill us all or hate us that much.
	Just average people, not the state.
	Brandon Napier says...
	Sorry, I've read that one.
	Freewell2112 says Russia was banned from the Los Angeles Olympics in 1980 because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
	Yeah, that's a case you can make, and I can see it, but just...
	Particularly with the Paralympics, it just...
	I don't know.
	Maybe it's just because...
	Paralympics, but it just seems weird.
	Anyway.
	I don't know if you want to move on to the more Russian issues there.
	Okie dokie.
	Let's have a look.
	So, Student of Fisheries says, I'm going to level with you.
	Russian society looks horrific.
	Rampant corruption, horrific social interactions, and the only relief to any of this is the bottle of vodka you can just barely afford.
	The birth rate amongst the Russians is in the gutter, and the only thing stopping the Russians from having major elderly care costs in the future is the simple fact that they drink themselves to death before they even get that old.
	Yeah, Russia's messed up then.
	What can I say?
	I would disagree on the vodka, though.
	The vodka's cheap as bugger.
	Is it?
	I went to a corner store in Moscow, we got a bottle of vodka for a pound before we went on the train to St.
	Petersburg.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I suppose most of the...
	I wonder how much that is for a Russian, though, on a Russian salary.
	Maybe, maybe.
	But still, one thing which is common throughout Russian society, so apparently, I don't know if this is true, you might be able to correct me, But during Lenin's period, they tried to essentially get a lot of Russians to stop drinking.
	It didn't really work.
	As soon as Stalin came in, he was like, look, a drunk population is a compliant population.
	So guys, have all the vodka you want.
	But also the money.
	Because it became a state monopoly, like the Tsarist monopolies.
	Do you want money or no money?
	Okay, I'll have the money.
	Kevin Vox says, this idea of make what you can by Russian soldiers is not just a Russian thing.
	Back in the 50s, my mother was lucky enough to be on leave when the RAF police came to her camp to investigate fuel thefts.
	The women, my mum included, were running a scam where they would refuel a convoy.
	The convoy were meant to get, for example, four gallons per vehicle.
	The women would put the correct amount in the first two vehicles, then only 80% in the main part of the convoy and the full amount in the last two vehicles.
	The fuel left in the tanks would then be sold to officers for their private vehicles after the filling point was closed.
	Nice little earner.
	Even when I served a common call was, if it's not nailed down, it's mine, and if it is nailed down, I have a claw hammer.
	And we've covered some of the grotesquely inflated prices of things for the US military as well in previous segments.
	It does seem like there's a hell of a lot of waste there.
	I mean, the funniest instances of corruption I've seen are definitely of Afghanistan, the Afghan army we were funding.
	There's one instance in a film I've mentioned called This Is What Winning Looks Like.
	They go to a police base, and they've got five police cars.
	They've all got the wheels off, scrapped up, everything's been scrapped, but the husks are still there, and they're claiming fuel on every single one of them.
	Oh my god.
	Dick King Ilessar says, as someone who also works for DCMA, US Department of Defense Agency for Military Equipment, there's an old saying that the Soviet and now Russian Air Force would be at 100% capacity for a day, 50% capacity after a week, and 25% after a month.
	Not because of what losses in war, but because they can't keep the logistics up.
	And that's how a war is won.
	Not solely with tactics and strategy, but with beans, boys, and bullets.
	Do you want to go into the cashless world for the last minute?
	sure so george winder says seeing tr's poll compass is enlightening i'm more politically extreme than him and i'm pretty milquetoast centrist with a little conservative leaning yeah i was surprised by it too but it's uh that is the truth so uh cool and sloan says it should be illegal for a bank to just decide to close your account with no prior notification or reason giving it's your money and you allow them to hold it it's a private company bro They gave her a check.
	It's not your money, though, because once you've given it to them, it's their money.
	I mean, this is the point of fractional reserve banking.
	No one can actually get all their money out.
	If we all went down to the banks and told us, give me money, there isn't.
	It's not there.
	It's a tenth of it.
	Yeah, and it's the central bank's money once digital currency comes around, and they're sort of being benevolent by letting you have any of it.
	It's really, really dystopian.
	Sophie says, being, sorry, basing everything on technology and the internet always seem like a very short-sighted and bad idea to me.
	We are now basing our entire infrastructure on how things, sorry, on things that only works if there is electrical power, so what happens if the power goes up?
	This is another main point of the invasion or an air war.
	Turn off the power in a modern day and you've really screwed everything.
	Mm.
	Seriously, I mean, if Russia really wants to destroy the entire West, bomb the power plants!
	We have so many complaints now that power is limited and we are facing a power crisis, and yet the only way we can pay for stuff is through an app.
	Seriously, how dumb is it to build everything around the assumption that we will always have electrical power?
	Doesn't that make it very valuable in so many ways?
	Vulnerable.
	Sorry, vulnerable.
	Also, remember, everything that exists on the internet must have a physical server somewhere, so a bomb, that server farm, there, done, the West has fallen.
	I mean, that is true.
	Well, I think a lot of things are stored in a decentralized manner.
	I get that with the server, but on the electrical part, I mean, if the electricity turns off, a lot of the West is just unfunctioning.
	Yeah.
	If it's off for more than, like, $700.
	Very fragile society we have.
	And there are various reasons that could make that happen as well, so...
	But I also remember this happening in the North Korean books I read, because this was the problem, like, the power went out, so the factory didn't run.
	So he came to work, and they said, okay, we'll clean the machines, day one.
	Come back the next day, it's still not working.
	Okay, sweep the floors.
	The next day, it's not working.
	All right, right, I can't really afford to pay you, because I haven't been getting any money from the central government.
	So everyone just went out and scavenged.
	And after, like, day seven, the machines are just rotting.
	No one's even taking care of them.
	There's no point.
	And so, yeah, get rid of the power, everything collapses.
	And on that optimistic note...
	Is there a joke I can read?
	Yes, Brandon Napier says, in Russia, President votes for you.
	That's the end of that.
	If you want more from us, go over to LotusEars.com, of course, subscribe, get access to all the premium content, and also help fund the show.
	That's how we play for everything.
	Otherwise, we'll be back tomorrow.
	No, we won't.
	It's Friday.
	We'll be back on Monday, 1 o'clock.
	Thank you and goodbye.

▲