Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for the 8th of March 2022.
I am joined by Leo.
Hello!
And today we're going to be talking about the SJWs, Screeching for Trans Kids, the Fog of War, and also International Whammon's Day, which I am really going to enjoy, frankly, because there's some wacky proposals.
Yeah, it's only once a year, and it's the best time of year.
I like it more than Christmas.
Yeah, it's the advent of the holy calendar that we use these days.
Yeah.
Intersectional.
Anyway, so first things to mention, so the new stuff on the website.
So the first thing here being the Epoch series, so as you can see here between Beau and Carl.
So this is on the French Revolution, starting off with the Life of Napoleon.
Sorry, it's Life of Napoleon starting off with the French Revolution, I've been told.
Bye, Michael.
Apparently I bugged that up for the outro, so sorry about that.
So go and check that out, especially if you're subscribed, because then you get access.
If we go to the next one, we can see new stuff.
So this is an article from Hugo, The Military as the Harbinger of the Future to Come, An Insider's View.
And this is an old article that's now been republished.
So this was an interview, I can't remember who, but it was someone inside the military about the future of the army, obviously.
And it has a silver and gold tier audio track for silver and gold tier members as well.
If you go to the next one, we have another video here, an interview with Simon Webb.
Some people may know from YouTube, History Debunked.
History Debunked is a nice guy.
Usually just, at least from what I've seen, absolutely destroys weird leftist narratives on history.
There was an obsession over, I think it was the first black person in Britain for ages from the BBC. And it was all based on one guy's speculation.
And then, well, the DNA evidence came back and, no, it wasn't true.
So it's just like, why did you have this weird speculation for ages BBC? Yeah.
There's a lot of weird leftist history.
History's a great thing for leftists because we don't have precise, for a lot of it, we don't have precise data because it's not observable because it happened thousands of years ago.
So, for example, the leftists say Britain has always been a country of mass immigration to justify the sort of, I mean, official figures of 350,000 but unofficial half a million people.
Per year immigration into the UK, net migration.
Since Tony Blair.
Yeah, since Tony Blair and the liberalisation of immigration and globalisation, which has brought a lot of economic benefits, but life isn't all economic benefits.
There's also sovereignty and sharing values and principles.
Community cohesion and pressure on services and stuff like that.
And wage pressure as well.
And Britain hasn't been a country of mass immigration, certainly not on that scale.
There's been incidents in pockets of larger immigration, tens of thousands of people.
The funniest one is when you see them bring up the Vikings as an example.
It's like, do you really want to go there?
It's not the best example.
That's the ideal immigrant, is it?
Some diversity.
We don't forgive the Norwegians.
Because the last one here, we also have another article.
This is quite topical.
The cynical politicization of Sarah Everard's murder.
So this is not one, but it's topical, of course, because, well, it's happened again.
And we'll see that in International Women's Month or Women's Day.
I don't know.
It's also a month.
There's a whole lot of things to get into.
So we'll start off with the news.
So we'll start with the screeching SDWs.
We thought we all left the SJWs, particularly the screeching variety, in 2016.
You may remember all the college campuses and how it would always just stay on college campuses, bro.
All the fights, the screeching, the pulling the fire alarms from the feminists.
I remember that.
Redheads.
You remember Big Red doing that?
Oh, yeah.
Then it really kicked off and we had things like Milo at Berkeley where the whole thing got set on fire and he had to be evacuated by a SWAT team.
So, again, the far right doing that?
No.
It's always been leftist on campus, and we have another example of that, this time with more screeching SDWs.
But before I show you the footage of them screeching, I thought we should go through the speaker to set the stage of what happened.
So this is an article detailing the speaker in this story, and he is listed here as a Texas father who lost custody of trans child, and now he is running for Texas House to outlaw child gender reassignments on the basis of child abuse, in his opinion.
So we'll start this off just to set the stage.
The author writes.
diagnosing his child, who goes by Luna, and claims that the doctor, quote, planned to put him on chemical castration drugs when Luna turns nine.
Quote, this is child abuse, as every conservative knows, Younger says on his campaign website.
Quote, end quote from Younger there.
Younger also accuses the nearby Copal Independent School District of right now actively teaching his child to be a girl.
Quote,"...when I took James to school in boys' clothing, the teacher gave him a dress to wear," Younger says,"...using his child's birth name," the author writes, because of course he still calls his son James, unlike Luna, which is being used by the mother, the school, and...
The school doesn't call James by his real name.
They use a girl's name.
They actively teach James that he is a real girl.
They even make James use the girl's bathroom.
Younger blames, quote, his mother, the courts, the school, and the legislature for the situation.
He blames the Republican-controlled legislature for failing to outlaw sex change surgeries on children in the past two sessions.
He refuses to refer to his child by the preferred name Luna.
I mean...
How dare he?
What were you expecting?
He doesn't accept that this is the situation.
He's very certain that this is his son and it's being...
Well, his son is being manipulated by people around him.
That's his view.
Younger's family first made headlines in 2019 when a Dallas County judge granted ex-wife Anne Gorgolas...
I don't know how you say that word.
I'm just going to call that Anne.
A pediatrician from Copel.
Joint custody of the twins.
Judge Kim Cooks defied the juror's earlier 11-1 verdict that awarded sole custody to Anne, declining to intervene in any parental decision over gender identity.
Presumably saying this is state overreach or something to be involved, which...
Anne admitted during testimony that she may have quote over-affirmed the child's female identity.
Judge Cook was heavily critical of Younger at the time, stating that he finds comfort in public controversy and attention.
The judge accused Younger of being motivated by political game after the father raised 140 grand for crown funding proceeds.
So two things there.
So we have it from the judge that apparently the mother is a bit mad.
I mean, she admitted to be overly affirming the child's gender identity.
I don't buy that she hasn't had a role in that, setting it up.
Certainly isn't the father.
And then the idea that he raised 140 grand to fight this in court makes him attention hungry?
I'm not sure.
I don't know him, but this seems pretty typical for someone who is going to fight in the courts.
However, Judge Cooks said she set aside the jury's findings because the state, quote, She's saying that the state has no position to compel speech.
Yes, fundamentally, if you're a liberal society, you cannot compel speech, even to this dad, even if you think he is a horrible monster, for saying that his nine-year-old is clearly being manipulated.
The case dragged on for more than two months, until four months ago, when Dallas County District Judge Mary Brown granted most parental rights to Anne.
She granted supervised visits to younger and barred the mother from beginning hormonal suppression therapy, puberty blockers, and or transgender reassignment surgery without the father's consent.
So that's the legal case.
That's what I laid out.
So you've got this guy who has had his nine-year-olds.
So the parental rights were granted to the father.
So he could have visitation.
He could have, or she could have.
She kept the kids that he could visit, and also the mother could no longer go ahead with puberty blockers or any transition surgery or anything of the sort without the father's permission.
So it has to be a joint thing.
So, okay, seems pretty like the best possible way to deal with that.
Maybe except where you put the kids, I'm sure that's a debate.
But anyway, that's the case, right?
Well, this guy is obviously running for the house, so he's going around giving talks.
And he went to a university in Texas to give a talk.
And as you can see here, if we can get this up, Andy Ngo, of course, reporting on it.
At the University of North Texas in Denton, a far-left activist shut down the Young Conservatives of Texas, event featuring a father who lost custody of his trans child.
The rag calls pounded on the table and shouted, F you fascist over and over.
And we can see some of this autism.
Let's play.
F you fascist!
F*** these matches!
F*** these matches!
I love how there's a level of conversation there.
Let's defeat him with our ideas, which are better.
We'll just screech and bang the table.
Just to be clear, the fascism that they're talking about in this situation is he's stopped his nine-year-old biological male offspring.
I won't say son because I don't want to misgender a nine-year-old.
Is the child actually younger than nine?
I believe it's at nine at the moment.
A nine-year-old stopping it from having a pretty severe and life-changing medical treatment.
So being put in puberty blockers, which lead to weakened bones and can lead to infertility and things like that.
just to sort of push, just to allow the child to develop so that then when it's a teenager, you know, in a couple of years' time, it can then make the decision when it's more informed.
Yeah, once you're an adult, do what you want.
Yeah, yeah.
Not the point.
Which doesn't seem like fascism to me.
No, the father is saying that child belongs to me, the parent.
Yeah.
The protest is saying, no, that child belongs to presumably the state or just the mum because she agrees with us.
Or the mob.
Yes.
The mob of masked leftists on the child and should be allowed to force it to have surgery.
Funnily enough, I think the father of the child might have more of a care for his own child than you random strangers.
It's traditionally been the case that in most circumstances, the parent of the child raises the child and is responsible for its care.
Yes.
Well, it also is the one that makes sense.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out Mel's Great Famine.
Wonderful book club we did on what happens when you give all the kids to the state where they all end up starving to death and dying.
Anyway, let's go to the next one because we can see more of this situation.
So the speaker who was disrupted, Jeffrey Younger, as they say here about the situation he has with his ex-wife and all that, so we'll skip over that.
Go to the next one.
There is also some footage of some shouting matches outside, which I didn't really find useful.
I don't know who this chap is, but I think he probably should have tried to talk to them more, though.
Then again, how much can you talk to these people?
Might be the case.
There are a few hundred outside as well, or screeching.
If we go to the next one, we can see the organiser apparently was being given death threats and can't return to the university campus for some time.
She was the lady with the MAGA hat up the front there.
So, again, movement of peace.
And then we'll go to the next one because we can see the literal screeches.
I'm not kidding.
Let's play.
Oh, good.
We are here!
We are here!
*Screaming* *Screaming* *Screaming* *Screaming* What can you even do with someone who has got to the point of, I don't have an argument, I'm literally just going to screech.
This dude has lost his nine-year-old son, and you know better, random stranger, and you're going to screech about it.
I've got to be honest, out of all this person's, out of all Fat Elvis's terrible lifestyle choices, by far the worst one is deciding to wear a crop top with that gut.
If we go to the next one, we can see there's more of that footage as well.
Not enjoy, but let's see some more of that.
- Hey, you got that job? - . - This is what leftist politics looks like.
He?
She, she, she, she, oh, I saw it.
Hey, police, I just got to spit on you.
That's my president.
He is.
You don't like it.
You suck my jackass.
He is.
I don't know what the hell is wrong with the West.
I mean, these are the kind of- This isn't the West.
This is like some people in the West.
Yeah, but this is very, very common.
Like, I thought we all left this in 2016.
Like, I thought this was a phase in 2016 that would just disappear after it was shown to be absolutely nonsense.
No, people have been doing that, like, for millennia.
There have been angry children screaming for millennia.
I know, but the adults in the room you think would have more, well, rules laid in place for this kind of thing.
And I like the father, who is just having a good time with it.
I'm not going to piss around, I'm just going to laugh at you because it is funny.
But I don't know if you notice there's a hammer and swastika?
No, there's a hammer and sickle.
I thought you were going to say a hammer and sausage.
There's a hammer and sickle drawn on the board by the protesters as well, so we know where they lie.
I don't know if you can see it just there behind them.
So that's a symbol of hate and murder and genocide, yeah.
Yeah.
You also have this person screeching, it's he, him, and he just goes, nah, she.
So I was put down, I was like, well, this is left-wing politics, isn't it?
It's like, eh, you're not wrong, I watched all of Labour Party Conference.
This was also a lot of Labour Party Conference.
Autistically screeching about pronouns.
But if we go to the next one, we can also see the absolute state of these people.
Let's go through more.
Why not?
Click on the first image, as you said.
What did you call her?
Him?
It?
Fat Elvis.
Fat Elvis.
There we go.
I don't know if the flag is behind them as well.
There's some of the other people there.
And then if we go to the last one, this is the best one here.
I don't know if you can read that very well.
On the phone, the person has written, Who says we wanted to be normal?
As you sit there, bang the table and screech, like a four-year-old.
But they're all doing it.
They're all following this sort of herd mentality.
It's not like, you know, oh, we're such individuals.
We're all doing the exact same thing, an entire room of us.
Well, they are all collectivists.
They're all socialists here.
They're all saying, well, you are a heretic to our religion, frankly, by saying that you don't believe in this for children.
And therefore, well, we don't need to argue with you.
You're a heretic.
Yeah.
Well, we just scream at you until you shut up.
Or, in Portland, kill you.
Because that's what happened there.
If we move on, we can also see Antifa International's response.
Because, of course, they have something to say, which is they stand in line with their comrades over there.
And they're very proud, saying this is the Texas to be proud of.
If this was Texas, it would be as much of a meme as Portland.
And no one would want to visit because it's an international embarrassment.
I'm glad it's not.
It seems to just be, as you say, at least in this section, these people.
If we go to the next one, we can also see some commies, or at least the fact that they are commies.
As you can see, this footage of them, and then the hammer and sickle again, behind, doing the fists, because...
None of these people look like they do very well under a communist regime.
I mean, I think the people who do well under a communist regime are people like me.
Well, no, people who achieve don't actually do well in a communist regime.
It's always the middle...
Yeah, you've got to be quite Machiavellian and also strong to survive under communism.
So, yeah, I think these people would find themselves down the salt mine pretty quick.
You say you have to be strong, but I mean, from the accounts I've read, especially in North Korea still, it's the people who make it to the top are the ones that aren't a threat.
Oh, really?
So all the strong people, the competent people, the people who actually do their jobs, they all end up gone because they're too smart.
You might remember...
Sorry.
In 1984, there's also a section there about...
Do you remember the character Zim?
I don't know if you read it.
And he is too smart for his own good, Winston says, and he's going to be vaporized.
Right.
He is.
Right, right.
It's not unrealistic.
Yeah.
But yeah, the anarchists, under most anarchy...
Like, if people actually had anarchy, we'd just hunt them.
All the anarchists would get hunted for meat and sport.
You have gold?
Yeah.
You're a walking fleshlight.
I'm going to hunt you from my helicopter with this whale harpoon because it's anarchy and I can do what I want.
We have seen what happened in Mogadishu and there's one way of describing it.
Yeah.
That was me as well.
There's the commies.
If we move on, we can see a response.
At least Andy noted here.
Apparently the left-wing journalist who was documenting all of this and uploading footage deleted their own footage because they realised it was being mocked because on the face of it you will look like lunatics, which I suppose is good, you know, on the face.
Also the fact that you're screeching F these fascists as you demand that the state steal his child.
If you go to the next one as well, we can see they also apparently tried locking in the police of those people outside.
The police turned up to, well, make sure nothing happened.
They tried to lock in the police cars, you say.
The spokesman said that the group of protesters surrounded the vehicles and allegedly began banging on them and impeding their movement.
Wise to do to a police car.
The officer driving the vehicle turned on emergency lights and sirens while honking as they moved forward and other officers began pushing the demonstrators out of the way.
One of the demonstrators in front of the vehicle alleges he was hit by the vehicle and was later transported to hospital where he filed a report with the Denton police.
I don't know what you were expecting to do.
You were hitting a police car, so I don't have much sympathy for that person.
I suppose the police car is also fascism.
But you might say, only on college campuses, bro, of course, as we've heard many a time.
Well, if you go to the next one, we can see that apparently Texas is probing all of this as child abuse already.
At least, not directly in response, but they've taken up this father's position.
So, from the Attorney General, his opinion...
The existing Texas law already considers making children undergo many elective gender transition procedures like, quote, reassignment surgeries that cause sterilization, mastectomies, removal of otherwise healthy body parts, and administration of puberty-blocking drugs, or...
I can't even say that word.
Supraphysiologic.
Doses of testosterone or estrogen illegal.
As the opinion of the Attorney General states, quote, The novel trend of providing these elective sex changes to minors often has the effect of permanently sterilizing those minor children.
This is why people say, if you're going to do this, wait until they're adult and then it's their own problem.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, there's no way a 7-, 8-, or 9-year-old has the capabilities and experience to give informed consent to something that's so incredibly life-changing.
And they're so vulnerable to coercion and manipulation by adults in their lives.
He ends this off with saying, Whether facilitating parents,
counsellors or coordinating doctors, medical procedures and treatments that could permanently deprive minor children of their constitutional right to procreate or impair their ability to procreate, before those children have the legal capacity to consent to such procedures, constitutes child abuse.
And the Attorney General has instructed the child services to look into anyone doing such a thing, not saying, oh, well, you know, my kid's exploring himself or whatever, but saying, I'm going to essentially sterilize the child because it's good for it.
That, no, you're a child abuser in Texas and the Texas, well, child abuse services will be coming after you.
And, of course, as you mentioned, this is because children cannot consent because they cannot understand the consequences, definitionally.
Yeah, but under law, children can't consent to lots of things.
They can't have criminal responsibility.
And it seems so obvious common sense.
It's why paedophilia is illegal.
If nothing else, the child can't consent.
And they're so vulnerable to people in their lives steering them.
It's become a sort of...
It's the dinner party.
Liberal dinner party one-upmanship.
Previously, parents hoped they had a gay child so they could brag about that.
Now, I mean, both our mothers...
We were telling a story before, which is...
I once got asked, Callum, are you gay?
I went, no.
She went, are you sure?
Can't you be?
I went, no.
She went, well, you know, Susan's got a trans daughter now, so she's on the talk.
Yeah.
Weird.
Yeah, and then we had to go through the pain, the psychological pain of coming out straight to our mothers.
And, you know, that can be very damaging.
It's tough.
It's tough.
It's brave.
So, you might say, well, okay, this is all obvious.
Child can't consent.
Of course Biden opposes this.
If we go to the next one, we can see a statement from the White House on this entire situation, because they're very personally touched by this matter.
This is government overreach at its worst, writes the White House.
Like so many anti-transgender attacks proliferating in states across the country, the governor's actions callously threaten to harm children and their families just to score political points.
I can't believe you would write such a thing.
I mean, they always accuse you of what they are doing, don't they?
I also love the idea that Biden is suddenly deeply concerned with state overreach.
I don't ever want to do any overreach, says Joe Biden.
Your entire party is that basis.
He just wants more little girls with hair to sniff.
He certainly does, and we'll get to that in a minute.
Because he writes it in here.
Children, their parents, and their doctors should have the freedom to make the medical decisions.
The children should have the freedom to make these decisions that are best for each young person without politicians getting in the way.
I love this, like, the children should have the freedom to do whatever they want medically.
And, uh, presumably the parents as well should have the freedom to do whatever they want with their children medically.
And I love, I was chatting with Michael about this, and you kind of run that logic.
You end up as an Ancapistan.
I love how Joe Biden is being like, yes, I should have the freedom to sell my child's kidney.
It doesn't harm him.
He doesn't need two.
And I need a new watch.
It's fine.
He also says, transgender children bring fulfillment to their parents.
Good to know.
Parents who love and affirm their children should be applauded.
I love the American.
Endlessly is like this clap.
Endless claps from the Yankees.
And you can affirm a child's gender without, you know, pumping it full of drugs, you know, puberty blockers, hormones, all that kind of stuff.
You can just affirm it's gender.
Gender's a social construct.
Very well, son.
So, yeah, I mean, I could say I'm a woman right now.
I'm a woman.
I just don't follow, you know, societal, patriarchal gender norms.
No, that's stunning and brave, Leo.
Yeah, it's brave.
It's actually braver.
It is braver than anything else that's going on.
It's braver than the Ukrainians.
I did see that take from some people, which is amazing.
Oh, man, yeah, I cover that in my segment, so yeah.
So we'll end this off with, he ends with, Jill and I are standing with the incredibly brave transgender children, their parents and families throughout Texas.
Of course he does.
And then I'll end this off with a bit of a...
I don't know how people are going to take this, but it's a story that was written on Reddit, and it again comes to trans children.
So this is someone who says they're a female-to-male transitioner.
They started it a month ago, and they've already had their top surgery scheduled for April 6th, so the removal of breasts.
They say everything is better for them, everything's going well, mentally they're all better off.
Quote, the problem is that I have a five-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and she is just not getting it.
She then explains about transitioning to the five and a half year old.
The daughter responded with,"'But mummies are supposed to be girls.'" Oh my god.
I hope this five and a half year old was cancelled.
She's going to be executed in the public square Thursday.
I mean, we joke, but we're about nine months away from this happening.
I also love the simplicity of a child.
Mummies are supposed to be girls.
That doesn't make sense.
And then she ends this off with a person saying, I felt worse since that conversation than I have in ages as well.
And then one last story to end this off, because I know I have run over time.
But you think, okay, nine, maybe you think that's fine.
Let's go to four.
Why not?
This, of course, is blacked out, so I can't verify it, but lives of TikTok put it out, so I presume she did her due justice.
And it's someone posting on Facebook about their four-year-old transgender child.
No one buys this.
This is child abuse.
Frankly, this person should be investigated, whoever they are.
And that's that.
Yeah.
I mean, it's just kind of like a four-year-old isn't, like you say, isn't equipped to sort of know these issues.
So it's only by somebody introducing it to them.
And it's always, I can already picture the mother in my head.
I know that's a prejudice, but I bet it's 100% correct.
Is it a prejudice if it's true?
I bet she doesn't live in a Ugandan slum or in Poland.
It's a sort of social fashion.
It's becoming a sort of mania that's going through the West.
It's very strange.
Totally agree.
Yeah.
And there's been an explosion in transitioning clinics as well.
You know, it went from like a couple of transitioning clinics in America to I think there's over 100 now.
So it's becoming an industry as well.
I don't know what the numbers are, but yeah, there's a lot of money to be made in American healthcare.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, so I don't know if that plays a role, but we'll move on to the next section.
Anyway, the next one, I'm going to talk about the fog of war.
I was going to talk about how green policy has funded Russia's war, but apparently that was covered yesterday.
So, can't cover it again.
So instead, look, these are weapons that are coming into Ukraine to arm the Ukrainian army.
So these are from Poland.
They're actually Soviet issue.
I mean, this is interesting because following the footage, following the coverage of Ukraine versus Russia, it can be tricky sometimes because a lot of the equipment is the same because obviously, you know, Ukraine's a former Soviet state.
Isn't anymore.
Definitely doesn't want to be again.
But yeah, so this is great to see.
Polish armaments arriving.
And then Swedish on the next one.
Swedish AT-4s.
So yeah, these are anti-tank weapons.
Can be fired from the shoulder if we move on to the next one.
There's loads of them.
Look at this.
A whole warehouse full of these things.
Not bad.
And Javelin anti-tank systems.
I don't know if you've played Call of Duty, but they're quite an exciting one.
Love them.
Yeah, I don't know if that's how they work in real life, but it's pretty cool.
They're great online, if nothing else.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think this is where Russia's miscalculated, because they think that when people in the West are going to fight in Ukraine, joining the Ukrainian forces, And they just think, oh, they're just, you know, lazy Westerners.
It's like, no, we've been playing Call of Duty for decades now.
And we know all the...
If we're sent to Pripyat, we know all the hiding spots.
I know how to reload a gun a million ways, apparently.
A hundred percent.
And you just run along, you just swap guns.
You find a gun lying down, you swap it over.
Good to go.
All the ammo just goes back in the bullets.
Yeah, totally, totally.
The magazine never runs out.
Um...
So yeah, nearly 20,000.
If we move on to the next one, nearly 20,000.
This is some combat footage of Ukrainian soldiers using UK-supplied anti-tank weapons.
Look at this missile.
See, it almost clips the side of that building that it's being fired from, which would have been...
Abu Hajar moment there.
Yeah.
Do you remember that from ISIS? Yeah.
There was a guy called Abu Hajar who just became a meme because some footage got released of on the ISIS side.
There was one fighter called Abu Hajar who had RPGs and kept firing them and they would just land on the ground.
Oh man, they were just talking about this!
Abu Hajar!
The missile just flops out of the front.
The one that we saw, I don't actually think it was Islamists, but it just flops out of the front of the launcher like that.
So they all absolutely peg it.
They all absolutely run before it pops off.
I don't know if they've got fail-safe systems that mean that if it does hit something too close to launch, then it doesn't explode.
But I wouldn't want to be hanging around to find out.
But yes, the 20,000 anti-tank missiles, hundreds of anti-tank aircraft weapons, and five Russian-made military helicopters seized by American forces in Afghanistan are amongst the consignments.
The UK Ministry of Defence, which supplied 2,000 anti-tank missiles to Kiev shortly before Vladimir Putin's invasion, confirmed yesterday that it's continued delivering weaponry since the Russian assault.
And it's all been done quite on the down low.
We're seeing Abraham's tanks being delivered by train, but, you know, wherever it can, it's being done covertly because obviously the West doesn't want to inflame tensions and appear to be getting involved in the conflict, even though they clearly are.
And yeah, there's reports coming through, but a lot of the information that's coming through is wrong or, you know, is deliberately incorrect propaganda designed to mislead, you know, coming from the Russian side and from the Ukrainian side.
Sometimes it's just mistakes because of the fog of war.
So, I mean, this has been widely reported that actually if we skip on to the Guardian one, so next one and then, yeah, this one.
So this is apparently a high-ranking Russian general has been killed called Vitaly Gerasimov.
There's not much information about him online, and then could they mean this guy?
So if we go back to the Wikipedia page...
The first one.
So this one, if you see, this is a cached copy of the Wikipedia page.
This is Valery Gerasimov, who is a very high-ranking general in the Russian army.
And if you scroll down a little bit more, you can see he was reported as having died on 7th March 2022, age 66.
And this would have been a huge result for Ukraine to hit somebody who's been a chief of staff and an advisor to Putin.
Very high-ranking general with lots of military success under his belt.
But then if we move on next, it's actually...
That was incorrect.
This is the trouble of Wikipedia.
Anybody can go in and...
I mean, this page is locked to avoid anybody editing it.
But anybody can go in and make changes.
And there's misinformation flying around.
So I'm just postulating here as well.
This could be more information, misinformation, but if we go back to the Guardian one in the next tab, I think they could have thought that this guy, because it's basically a very similar name, Russia's Major General Vitaly Gerasimov, sounds a lot like Valery Gerasimov, so I don't know if there's crossed wires there.
If we move on to the next one, Trump.
So Trump got involved.
He was speaking at a fundraiser, a Republican fundraiser.
I mean, one of the casualties of the Ukraine invasion has been Trump's credibility amongst much of the right.
You know, he's great on culture wars.
He's less good on war wars, although there are some who say that his unpredictability...
It made Putin nervous, makes China nervous.
They can't plan military operations.
They can't plan things knowing where they're going to go because Trump is such a wild card.
They really thought that he could.
He joked about or bragged about being able to nuke whoever he wanted, being able to nuke North Korea.
He's like, I've got a big...
Yeah, he's got a nuclear weapon.
I've got bigger nuclear weapons.
And it's like, well...
You know, so Moscow, you know, with Biden, you know, with a more stable government, know that they're not going to fire off nuclear weapons, you know, unless it's absolute doomsday and the ICBMs are heading our way.
I mean, I'm not, as I said, I'm not hugely into, like, understanding the Ukrainian war.
But I remember, Joy, there was a leaked document that China Uncensored went through from the Chinese Navy.
And one of the things in there, they were commenting on their enemies and just like, well, OK, the United States, how do we combat them?
What are their greatest strengths?
And in their greatest strengths was the fact that just, we have no idea what the hell they're doing.
The Americans were considered the most unpredictable enemy and therefore the most dangerous because of that, not just because of all the borships.
I think that geopolitical chaos also created an environment where Russia felt that it could invade Ukraine as well.
And the saber rattling from the West almost made it, obviously Iraq and Afghanistan, our debacles, we can't It's hard for us to, you know, take the moral high ground when we've done, you know, similar invasions for ideologically, you know, maybe better reasons, but with, you know, horrible outcomes.
They're Nazis, bro.
Trust me, they're not as good as, I think they've got WMDs.
Yeah, yeah.
And also, you know, Saddam Hussein, clearly a despot, clearly an absolute tyrant, you know, horrible for his people.
But then, you know, this naivety that we can go in and depose Saddam Hussein and by, you know, taking him and his apparatus out, a democracy, a European democracy is going to spring up in the desert.
It's absolute nonsense.
Democracy is absolutely dependent on institutions such as free courts, free judiciary that are unbribable and, you know, impervious to influence and, you know, a fourth estate that, you He's
joking, obviously.
I mean, he is joking, but I mean...
That would be funny as well.
Yeah, I mean, it's maybe not the time for jokes like that.
I don't know.
But other events, we'll move on to the next one.
Georgia has sped up its application to join the EU. So Ukraine as well has joined the EU. So if Putin wanted to weaken the EU and wanted to weaken NATO, he's certainly gone about it the wrong way because everybody's upping their funding to NATO. Everybody's upping their military.
Capacity and the EU has certainly come out of this much strengthened.
And funnily enough, I saw a funny troll post that Belarus had put in an application to join the EU, but, you know, maliciously.
And I believed it.
I believed it for a good while.
To be honest, you can imagine Lukas Lenko doing it for a laugh.
Yes, dictatorship.
No, no, no, we have a mission.
83%, remember?
Yeah.
And another strange Ukraine invasion news.
So a restaurant in Canada, in Quebec, has been attacked, has received threats because it serves poutine, which is sort of like gravy chips and cheese curd.
It's basically chips and gravy and cheese, but they can't call it that because they're not a takeaway in Newcastle, so they've got to be fancy.
Call it poutine.
And it's received threats because people think that's somehow linked to poutine.
They've renamed it what?
Like Vladimir Vladimirovich?
Yeah, it's spelt a different way.
It's obviously nothing to do with it.
Also, in the stunning and brave news on the next one, I can't verify this, but it's come from a Telegram group that has broken a lot of news before it gets into the papers.
And obviously you're not going to read this in the Guardian.
So this is a Ukrainian woman who transitioned, which I think we can all agree that that's incredibly brave.
Have they or have they just put tissue paper?
No, that's transitioning.
Right, okay.
So, you know, they've gone through the...
Well, they identify as a woman.
For the five people who don't know, men how conscripted in Ukraine to fight in the war, the women and children can leave the country.
Yeah, but I'm sure this is completely unrelated to that.
I mean, the fact that she then tried to leave the country is absolutely fair because she's a woman now, because she says she's a woman.
So, I mean, it's interesting.
Some people are saying she's not brave because she's trying to leave the war zone instead of fighting.
Yeah.
But surely that's offset by the bravery of transitioning.
Yeah.
I did actually, we've got a border guard who sends us information in Slovakia.
I asked him this question because people kept asking me and I was like, look, I'm sorry, mate, but the West is now whole.
What's going on with the trans women?
And he just wrote back, he's like, what?
He eventually ended up just saying, I'll just let them leave because I don't want to deal with this.
Right.
So that's the Slovakian policy.
Yeah, yeah.
Presumably the Ukrainian side of it, they're not so...
And a lot of Ukrainian women are staying and fighting.
I'm sure Ukrainian trans women are staying and fighting as well because, of course, in the West...
For LGBT rights.
We're fighting.
Well, yeah, absolutely.
And we're fighting for freedom.
We're fighting for the freedom to, you know, if you want to have daft pronouns, you know, absolutely go for it.
You know what I mean?
That's absolutely fine.
You know, I don't like when they then scream at us and stuff, but I'm absolutely fine for people to have whatever pronouns they want.
As long as, you know, if it's difficult for me to remember them and stuff, then, you know, I might not get them right.
Thank you very much.
But, like, you know, that is in the West, you know, we're fighting for this liberal democracy, which you can't have in Russia.
So, you know, if I was a transgender woman, and I am because I identify as a woman, which means that I'm now a transgender woman, then I would be fighting Russia.
Luckily, I'm a Scottish man, so I can just sit on my bum in safety on an island.
Still very brave.
Yeah, and still be brave, yeah.
LAUGHTER And yeah, the Daily Star has got involved.
The Daily Star, if we've got any viewers, the UK has got this tradition of having weird newspapers that just print made-up nonsense.
And the Daily Star is one of them.
So they're saying that a UFO unleashed a lightning attack against Russian tanks after Ukrainian people prayed for God to intervene.
And I don't know.
I think, you know, maybe this is one thing that the Daily Star can just step away from and just not have stories about.
You've got other stuff.
To write nonsense about...
I don't think this is...
I think they also...
They may have been the ones who reported that the Nazis have gone to the moon and they're on the dark side of the moon.
Trust me, bro.
Yeah, yeah.
But they reported that 60 years after the Nazis had been vanquished.
So, you know, that made more sense.
This is happening right in the middle of a live military conflict that's killing, you know, women and children and men.
It's also sad when men die.
So yeah, and Lotus Eaters, I'm going to do a bit about Lotus Eaters being infiltrated by Momentum, because I got here today and somebody was like, oh, so you've been, so you've been, well, I won't say the word because it's the C word, ing off Lotus Eaters, and I was like, yeah, I probably have.
Then I was like, well, what are they talking about?
I couldn't remember.
But yeah, I've seen a lot in the sort of, you know, I don't know what we'd call ourselves.
Are we alt-rightish?
No, that's white nationalism.
What is, what is, what is, like, just sort of unwoke?
Liberal.
Liberal.
Classic, classic liberal.
English liberal.
English.
This American weird definition where it's including socialism.
Yeah, classic English liberal.
So I've seen, I've seen a lot in the sort of, on the right, because I'm a conservative.
I'm a sort of Reaganite, you know, conservative.
I'm quite patriotic.
I believe hugely, you know...
Very strongly in Western liberal democracy.
I think it's the best system out there.
And I think it's a tragedy that across the world, only 6.4% of people live under democracy.
I thought it was much higher, but it was actually terrifyingly small.
And democracy is very rare.
And it's the only place where the masses can have a happy, free life.
And I think that's what we need.
We need to feel free and to say what we want and stuff like that.
So I've been posting about it.
So I posted this.
And somebody replied on the next one.
Wait, are we missing one?
Oh yeah, so somebody replied saying, I've not watched Lotus Eaters in days because I just know.
So there are some people, this isn't my criticism, that's just what somebody replied.
No, but I mean, where?
Like, where are we pro-Putin?
So, well, if we go to Yakunt, actually, but I mean, I can't watch all the videos, man, it would take ages.
But Karl did post this.
So if we look at this, this is the sort of thing I'm talking...
I'm talking about.
So I just, you know, I commented on this.
You know, Carl, I don't think we're now unfollowing each other.
I don't remember doing that.
So I don't know what happened there.
But I think this is such a sort of a misdirection.
Like to say that, you know, people are just sheep following the herd.
Like Biden and Harris.
Fair enough.
You know, liberals follow the herd.
They're all like, oh, yeah, I'm going to vote for Biden and Harris.
And quite often they'll say that and actually vote for Trump.
Then the face mask thing, yeah, there's, you know, all right, a lot of people were wearing it, you know, because they're worried about COVID. A lot of people were wearing it because they thought it was the, you know, the right thing to do.
But a lot of people are just doing it, you know, because they're following the herd.
I think COVID was, you know, one of those things where, you know, there's a strong case that our rights are being threatened.
But with the Ukraine crisis, this isn't a partisan.
This is where the culture wars fall down.
This is something that we should all be.
People aren't sharing the Ukrainian flag because they see other people doing it and they think it's the cool thing to do.
People are seeing the footage of children and women being killed and maimed and all these artillery attacks by Russia.
Completely unnecessary.
Artillery attacks.
And people say, oh, it's provoked by the West because the West got involved in Ukraine.
It's like, man, the West is involved in Ukraine because the Ukrainian people want to be part of the West.
They don't want to be part of Russia.
They're not having revolutions.
They're not having people who describe it as a coup.
It's not.
It's a civic uprising.
People want to, like, in the 90s, 90% of the population voted to be independent from the Soviet Union.
People want to be part of the West.
Zelensky got three quarters of the vote because he was a West-leaning anti-corruption candidate.
Obviously, it's always been a proxy war.
Russia's been sending people in, especially to Donbass to destabilise Ukraine.
It's got saboteurs all the way through Ukraine.
Russia does far more to destabilise the West than the West does to destabilise Russia.
Russia is destabilised by the West just...
Purely from the fact that people want to be in the West.
They want to be free.
They want to be prosperous.
They want to be able to do what they want to do, work where they want to work.
Well, authoritarian governments shut down all the criticism.
Yeah.
Just any kind of criticism of the narrative.
Yeah, yeah.
I should say, I think you're not seeing this for what it is, which is we did a segment on this effect.
So it was about the fact that the George Floyd effect, as it was dubbed.
So people see a thing and then just jump on the thing, even not knowing anything about it or speaking about it ever before.
And you can see this with some people when you see them talking about Ukraine.
And when they say things like, Ukraine is George Floyd, or non-binary children and Ukraine, they're just saying, do you think these people have any idea what the hell they're talking about?
But that's a fraction.
That's real, you know, fringe.
It's easy to just take some obscure fringe tweets.
Well, no, because you remember, what was it, the writer, Mr.
King, and all the rest of them, they've got like tens of thousands of likes on Twitter.com.
And these are tens of thousands of people hitting like for the dumbest of dumb takes you've ever heard.
And it's like, right, you're a Yankee living in California, or apparently New England for him, who don't know anything, couldn't point to Ukraine on a map, and yet obsessed with, I have the strongest opinion.
It's just like, please, please leave.
Please leave Yankee leftist.
Like, I don't want your opinion on this.
Yeah, but you're not going to...
I mean, Ukraine is one of these things where you don't need to pore over history books and obsess over geopolitical theory to know that it's bad that Russia has gone into a sovereign state and just started killing people.
Illegal war bad, yes.
Yeah, illegal war bad.
That's simple, but that's not what's being discussed, especially by those online, which we can see, getting huge traction, saying the dumbest of dumb things.
Yeah, but I mean, like, that's social media.
Because I've noticed that with my video about the Ukraine crisis.
So I was, you know, I pointed out, you know, the ridiculous opinions on the left from Corbyn, Diane Abbott, you know, people like that.
And then, but then I was like, but also, you know, there's crazy takes on the right from Trump, Pompeo, Carlson, you know, blowing smoke up Putin's ass and, you know, basically feeding the Russian propaganda machine.
And...
If I had just gone after the left, I would have got a lot more shares.
Social media really prioritizes really highly partisan, you know, ends of the horseshoe, extremist viewpoints.
If you take a nuanced, balanced view, then you sort of please nobody.
People are so tribal these days, and it's not just wired into our brains, it's actually wired into the algorithms that feed us stuff.
I think it's quite a sort of dangerous...
I don't see this from the right from the same extent.
I mean, I see the leftist takes, and they're so far from reality, to the point of Cenk Uygur talking about racial politics in regards to a white nation invading a white nation.
Yeah, yeah.
And then you see Tucker Carlson who will say stuff like, geopolitically I can see why Russia are doing this, and we are partly responsible for it.
But you expect it from the left.
Well, no.
Those two takes are so different from looking at reality that it's not even comparable, in my view, to talk about them.
Because saying, here's an example of why Russia feels this way versus this is about racial politics...
I mean, that's another level of, like, what on earth do you want?
You expect nuttiness from the left.
I mean, I think this meme that's crept into the right of centre, that anybody who speaks out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a sheep following the herd.
I think the real sheep are the people following that idea, to be honest.
I think most...
I think Reagan would be spinning in his grave to see the response from people on the right.
I've seen it in WhatsApp groups as well that I'm in with right-of-centre people where they're talking about being Putin-pilled and saying how Putin is strong and the West is weak and decadent.
And it's like, no, actually, Putin can't even invade Ukraine.
It's been like two weeks now.
He's still not done it.
I mentioned before, I remember the last time he can't even guard his own borders.
Yeah.
So, no, this is silly.
And with Putin being held up as this sort of bastion of Christendom, when actually Putin is using Chechen Muslim militia to attack Ukrainian Christian troops, it's, you know, Putin is absolute poison.
They are both really most orthodox, so it's...
I get your point, but that's not...
No, but the Chechens are Muslim.
I know, but there are also Chechens fighting on the Ukrainian side because they want an independent Chechnya.
Yeah.
Because the Chechens were invaded when they declared their independence because it was unlawful and I'm not getting into that.
Yeah, and they see...
What's he called?
Kadyrov.
Kadyrov.
So Kadyrov is leading the...
The side who were accepting Putin...
Sorry, Putin's deal.
Yeah.
And there are guys who are like, no, independent Chechnya were with the Ukrainians on this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We'll fight here.
Yeah.
So they're going to fight incredibly bitterly against who they see as a traitor.
Yeah, there's also them there.
But the idea that we've been pro-Putin I don't get because we've not really taken a position on any of the war.
But the idea with Putin, I mean, I've mentioned to you previously, the dude literally kills his opposition in public and gets away with it.
Yeah, yeah.
Kills people in the UK and gets away with it.
Yeah, he makes all these myths about how he's a strong guy on immigration and stuff but can't even control his border with Kazakhstan.
Militarily, let's not get into that.
And all the rest of it.
A lot of this is online memes.
Yeah, yeah.
If someone just falls into that and has never visited Russia and actually seen or gone to talk to people...
Yeah.
But anyway, I disagree with this meme.
I think I posted valid reasons.
I don't see that as mugging off Lotus Eaters.
Or if it is, I should be allowed to mug people off.
So the next tab, which is...
No, the one before that.
Not that.
Sorry about this.
This is...
Alright, I thought there was another one.
If we don't have it, you can just describe it.
I can't remember what it was.
Actually, we're probably running out of time for this section.
I was just going to talk about the sanctions against Ukraine.
They've cut Netflix social media.
You mean against Russia?
Oh yeah, against Russia.
Sorry, yeah.
So the sanctions against Russia, basically all Western companies have cut deals across all industries have just stopped providing.
The only thing we're obviously still doing business with is the oil and gas because we need it.
We've left ourselves completely exposed and it's a huge amount.
It's $800 million a day we're still feeding to Russia.
We've cut off their payment systems and stuff, so we're going to have to find a different way of paying them.
We've cut off their foreign reserves.
We're still going to have to pay them.
It's ridiculous.
I do respect the hustle of the West right now in this regard, because we're selling weapons to the Ukrainians while buying Russian oil, and we're making money off both.
And quite frankly, okay, I can respect the hustle in that.
It's just like, right, we're going to make money.
Yeah.
All right.
Yes, and money makes the world go round.
And also, if you stop people earning, as Putin's going to find out soon, if you stop your captain's earning, they're going to be angry, and they're going to want their nice money and their nice lifestyles back, and they're going to want their houses in London and their private schools for their children back, and they're going to execute you.
So I predict that happening to Putin soon.
The longer shot is China annexes Russia.
But yeah, so Netflix, social media, including TikTok, which is a Chinese one, which is interesting, Pornhub have all stopped doing business in Russia, which I think that could backfire.
That's just going to lead to a spike in Russian productivity.
OnlyFans too.
Apparently that's back up now, but they did take them all down.
And Apple have stopped selling products in Russia, so they won't be able to get the latest iPhone.
But again, that's going to feed into Russian military strategy, because everybody's going to switch to the Nokia 3210, which is a phone built for the battlefield.
It's indestructible.
And the battery charge lasts for about two weeks.
I don't know what battery technology they were using 30 years ago, but they need to get that in Teslas.
Teslas can only go about 200 miles.
If you had a Nokia 3210 battery in a Tesla...
You could play Snake all day.
All day.
Oh, you could play Snake while you're driving.
While you're circumnavigating the globe.
Don't.
I better stop there because we've only got a little bit of time left.
But basically, freedom of speech.
The right needs to look at itself and think...
I think Reagan would have been firmly against Putin and what he's doing.
And when we talk about...
Man, I know the culture wars are going on, but we're on the same side as all the leftists.
I'm not talking about the extreme leftists, but we're on the same side as Guardian readers when it comes to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
I don't know what, like, happening with your WhatsApp groups.
I mean, you mentioned other people.
But, like, the only thing I've seen we've been criticized on for saying, like, is potentially pro-Putin.
It's like, I don't want Russia to day-bend or Sputnik or whatnot in the West because I think it's important to be able to see the propaganda and know what's going on.
Yeah.
I mean, number one, so you can know what your enemy's up to and what they're thinking and what the Russian people are being told because then you know how to speak to them in a way without knowing what you've been told.
And also because I don't like the idea that we are no longer a liberal country.
I mean, if you say that we cannot have a discussion which does not include anything that can be critical of Kiev or NATO, then, well, we're living in a world where we can only praise our own propaganda.
It's like, well, that's not liberalism.
That's not the world I want to live in.
I want to be on the side where we know we're right because we've gone through all the arguments and damn well we definitely are right and we can prove it.
Yeah.
So that's why I think these things should be allowed and therefore we can, well, show them up for being wrong.
Yeah.
Okay.
I guess we'll move on to Women's Day.
I'm looking forward to this.
It's a holy day, folks.
It is International Women's Day.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's also International Women's Month, or at least International Women's History Month.
As we can load this up, you can see International Women's History Month there.
John, I don't know if you can see that little logo on the top left that's jumping out at you desperately to be clicked.
Can you give it a click?
Let's see what happens.
There we are.
Don't you know it's Whammon's Month?
It's magic.
It's Whammon's Day.
If we go to the next one, we can see the story about this, because it is, of course, International Women's Day.
And there are some funny takes in response to this, which there always are to holy months and holy days.
This is some lady saying, I wish all the women a happy International Women's Day.
Let's break the bias together.
If you could scroll down a little bit, John, for the photos she uploaded for International Women's Day.
Yep.
Okay.
Right.
This reminds me of the OnlyFans sale.
Promo code Ukraine.
If we go to the next one, we can see some more funny responses.
This one from some noodles company.
It was like, little girls with dreams become women with vision.
Happy International Women's Day.
Hashtag instant noodles.
Harry made the joke that, of course, it's like, yes, women, one day you could grow up to be in the kitchen and make instant noodles.
Oh, shit.
Even as being a chef, I mean, could you get lower?
So we go to the next one as well.
We have more of these.
So this is the Royal Mint, who have launched a new coin for International Women's Day.
What have they included?
They have three women there.
The coin, released on Tuesday, March 8th, features three figures of Britannia.
So is that...
Can I just guess them?
Is that Boudicca?
I don't know if they gave them names.
I don't think they did.
Emmeline Pankhurst.
And the other one...
Dread of Thumbugs.
But they say that apparently there must be three figures of Britannia on the design.
Disturbing that there's no women of colour there.
It celebrates all ages of women as equal.
No, they're not.
One's a child.
Children aren't equal to adults.
And they're not women.
They're not women either.
They're children.
They're girls.
So, don't know what you failed on the first hurdle.
Let's go to the next one because we can see the Guardian's response to this.
The media, what are they going to make of this holy day?
Well, we have the Guardian who went with, want to help women on International Women's Day.
Let's start by giving all the migrants the vote.
What?
How's that going to help women?
Women?
What's I got to do with it?
As you can see, the Burger King memes are strong, and they go through this, and I don't know if I could be bothered with this one, because quite frankly, oh god, where do we even start?
Yes, we'll give all the migrants the vote.
Let's move on to the next one, so we can see International Women's Day, of course, is a day to talk about the Australian welfare system.
Don't know.
Again, not really seeming to be on point, but whatever.
And then we also have to remember the International Women's Day and things like this, or also the International Forum for Hate.
Intersectional hate, in which the intersectionals hate each other.
So you can see our article here again by The Guardian, because this is a very special day for them.
Black women photographers on what International Women's Day means to them.
Written by Matt Fiddler.
A white man.
Okay.
Quote, Which, the way he's written that makes it sound like their entire existence is to facilitate diversity, which makes it sound like that's their only role in life.
Which, kind of, I... It's also patronising.
It's like, you know, and also, how can some be facilitating greater diversity if it's just focused around one particular demographic?
If you're completely identity-focused, you've got to be a black woman, then that's not diverse.
That's a singularity.
There is, of course, the discussions.
I've left them out, but there's a lot of them being like, well, it's International Women's Day, but white women?
A bit privileged, so really we should rename it.
So they have some statements from people.
They say the Black Women's Collective Photographers, established with COVID-19 Relief Fund, is approaching its second year of promoting and empowering black female photographers, as well as increasing the visibility of their work.
Above all else, International Women's Day is like all other days.
Every day I am a woman, and every day is my day.
Right.
it's not weird at all and there's someone who goes on to say that it's obviously a marketing gimmick in which case why bother i would have thought but moving on we go to the next link in which we have uh sorry this article i mentioned earlier and in here she says something really funny she says uh in the 90s we celebrated in pubs international women's day because whether or not women drank pints was one of feminism's critical questions back then do you remember this Not really.
I'm not old enough for it.
It sounds like simpler times, frankly.
Women have always been able to drink pints.
They weren't given metric units to drink instead?
No, and they weren't automatically given a white wine spritzer either.
Have a sherry, darling.
Obviously, they shouldn't drink pints because they're much smaller.
So they'll get drunk.
That's your drinking advice.
But she goes on to write, most of the noughts was lost to arguing on social media about why there wasn't an International Men's Day, ignoring the boring reality that it's on November 19th, or whether or not on every other day of the year it's also International Men's Day.
This is another, like, redundant trope from the left.
They always say, like, right-wing comedians, they've only got one joke and it's about identifying as an attack helicopter.
It's like, no right-wing comedian has ever done a joke about identifying as an attack helicopter.
Except big man Tyrone.
Yeah, except for one guy, who's not, I don't think he's a comedian.
No, he's a guy who's probably not right-wing.
And this thing, you know, oh, where's your international men's date?
Like, nobody, nobody says this.
Apart from, maybe, ironically.
It's also because people don't care about...
Yeah, but people don't care about International Men's Day because they would care as much as, I don't know, Black Catholic History Month.
Something made up like that.
Let's go to the next link.
Black Cafe Hickish Month.
It's real.
I have a segment coming on the intersectional calendar.
We'll keep that for now, though.
But anyway, back to this Bint, who had some more points to make.
Where were the origins of the women's movement?
She says, What are the pressing issues now?
She's realised she's run out of things to do.
So she says, Yeah.
That she ends it with, but for migrants, instead.
Do you know every migrant is a woman?
They're a representation of international women.
Well, it really depends where they're coming from.
If they're coming from Syria, they tend not to be women.
No, coming from Ukraine, different matter.
Yeah, coming from Ukraine, mostly women and children.
Of course, this is not to do with women at all.
It is about...
Globalism.
She says, what would have happened if the nearly 3 million EU migrants living in the UK had been able to vote in 2016?
We wouldn't be in this mess.
What would have happened to immigration policy?
Indeed, the very language around migration, if immigrants were recast as people whose votes you wanted, it might be humane.
What would have happened in 2019's general election if the long-term UK residents whose lives were about to be upended by some blowhard promising to get Brexit done had had a say in this matter?
He wouldn't now be Prime Minister, she writes.
Yes, I know you are very salty.
The citizens of the country do not agree with your globalist nonsense, lady.
I believe she's one of the mean characters, Zoe.
Like, I don't know if you've seen The Guardian Generator.
You ever seen that website?
No.
You can type in whatever you want and make a fake Guardian headline.
So loads of people did.
Right.
And loads of them were believable.
So Owen Jones got really butthurt and then got The Guardian to issue, like, a notice against the website saying, take this down.
This is copyright infringement.
It's a meme.
You absolute losers.
So The Guardian literally cannot take a joke.
Right, yeah, yeah.
They had to shut it down.
Right.
Yes, they did.
Did they shut it down?
Yeah, it's gone.
Oh, man, that is such a shame.
That is such a sort of blow to...
Because humour should be outside of...
Humour exists outside of...
The left don't have any humour, man.
Humour is a defence against saying stuff.
When I said what I said on Twitter about Lotus Eaters has been infiltrated by Momentum, that was a joke.
But it's a fence against authoritarianism.
That's what humour is, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And then you had the guys at The Guardian who literally sent a letter to the guy running it.
I think we actually spoke to him at one point as well.
He was just like, well, I'm not fighting it because I have the money.
Yeah.
But what the hell?
Yeah.
Like, it's a fake headline, Owen.
What the hell's wrong with you?
Yeah.
He was like, well, I get angry letters about how I've written this headline that I haven't done.
He was like, yeah, it's because it's believable, though, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, sometimes things like that are an opportunity to look at yourself and be like, well, should I be so ridiculous?
Like, I'm literally reading from a headline about how International Women's Day is about why we should give votes to migrants.
Yeah.
Yes, the Guardian will literally print anything if you ask them.
She ends off with, But the sad counterfactuals weren't really the point.
It's just morals in it.
Gotta love English.
This isn't really a defensible civic agenda in which some people's voices are in perpetuity more important than others.
Wrong answer.
No, some people's views are more important.
The citizens of the country are more important than random nomads who turn up and have no routes to the country in which they don't vote for its future.
They can decide the entire constitutional future is what she wants without having a single route in the country other than I'm visiting.
Remember, if you're even on a tourist visa, I think you can probably register to vote in Wales because it's a hellhole, not to mention children and prisoners.
But let's have a last try for policy.
It's International Women's Day, so let's try one more.
Well, should women go to prison?
Ever.
Women need support, not prison, this International Women's Day.
I don't know what you've done.
You shouldn't be sent to prison.
In 2021, the Ministry of Justice announced plans to create 500 more women's prison places, somewhat counteracting its own proposal to steer women away from crime.
Which implies that if you build a prison...
The women just really want to be in the prison.
They've seen the free prison spaces and they're like, well, I'm going to have to do some crime now.
The luxury of a prison space.
No, that's not how reality works, of course.
It's just that the people can't resist a good prison out there, especially not women.
They continue.
The majority, 80% of women, are in prison for non-violent crimes, such as shoplifting.
The vast majority could serve their sentences in the community, says Pradlin, avoiding the harms caused by prison to themselves and their family.
So, the argument being that women are in for lower crimes, therefore women shouldn't be in prisons at all.
Well then, the same goes for men, who suffer the same kind of deficits from being in prison, presumably.
So, if you're in for shoplifting, you should just be let out.
That's the argument.
We have the next link.
I don't know if you can, uh, if you control F and find the...
Oh, you have got the section here.
Perfect.
A statement from the government on the statistics of crime.
And they say in here that of the 34,300 defendants convicted of shoplifting, 28% were female.
The custody rate for this offence was lower for female offenders than for males.
19% versus 26%.
So already, women who are done for shoplifting are less likely to be in custody.
Yeah.
Women are far less likely to receive custodial sentences for the same crimes.
So, I mean, it's one area of gender imbalance that I'm very concerned about.
You need to lock up the women.
Yeah, the other area is...
There's no equality until that happens.
I'm very worried about the gender pay gap on OnlyFans.
So I've done some preliminary research and I think women make more money on OnlyFans than men do.
So that needs to be addressed.
Anyone who's got an OnlyFans account should get paid a flat rate.
Right.
I agree.
I completely agree.
Anyway, so that's all the policy points.
Terrible ideas, obviously.
But what about meaningless gestures?
Again, it is a holy day, so let's do some more things.
As you see here, National Portrait Gallery boosts female representation with five new self-portraits.
And if you can scroll down, John, just so we can see this masterpiece of art.
Don't you want more women represented like this?
Isn't this what you want in your art galleries?
Women are not being represented, so we got this, I don't know, smudge to be the painting instead.
If we go to the next one, I want to ask Leo, do you think maybe this would be more appropriate?
Showing women at the beach, perhaps?
I recognise that picture.
Do you recognise where?
Is it from The Guardian?
Almost.
It's literally what they use in their culture section.
It's like the heading.
I don't think it's the precise one, because this one was painted by Adolf Hitler.
Oh, really?
But yes, very close to the Guardian.
If only he'd been encouraged in his artistic endeavours.
He would have done...
We could have avoided all that nastiness.
Yeah, there's actually the founder of Al-Qaeda, the ideological founder.
He ended up really radicalised because he just kept running into Western whores who were trying to sleep with him and he didn't want to.
Random strangers.
Can you not just avoid the whorehouses?
Apparently not.
One of them knocks on his door on his boat and is just like, let me have sex with you.
And he's like, no.
There's also that.
We could have avoided Al-Qaeda.
As well, for other things.
If we go to the next one, we also have something I think you'll find funny.
International Women's Day.
Women's boxing is still in the shadows, but the Commonwealth Games could change that.
No, it won't.
Moving on.
Let's go to the next one.
So we have Dawn Butler, who decides to politicize this.
She brought up Sarah Everard, of course, as well.
But this clip in here, I think, is the best.
And we will play it in which she says that we must take away the ladder you have to climb to get in corporate world and instead replace it with an escalator where you do nothing but end up at the top.
Let's play.
We have to call out the burden that the government has placed on women.
87% of the cuts have fallen on the shoulders of women.
Madam Deputy Speaker, cuts have consequences.
We've heard today about knife crime and the NHS and when funding is cut on all these vital services it has devastating consequences and especially for women.
Under a Labour government, we will remove the career ladder which has held so many women and people of colour back for too long, and we will replace it with a career escalator, so that the journey to success in the top will be smoother and unhindered.
Madam Secretary Speaker, Labour will be going much further, making it mandatory for large companies to conduct audits alongside action plans.
Those with good gender practices will receive government certification, while those that fail to take action will face fines.
We will not just monitor the pay gap, but we will close it.
You're going to get your dream, Leo.
OnlyFans is going to be shut down by the British government if everyone's not paid exactly the same.
That's a gender pay gap.
And there's an escalator to the top.
Yeah, she wants to replace...
I can't believe she said this.
This is what they do in shops, though.
I've noticed this.
They have an escalator up, and then you've got to get the stairs back down to try and encourage you to go up there and put you off coming back down so you buy more trousers.
Oh, it works.
I love the example she gives.
This is a metaphor she's giving, right?
They're going to get rid of the ladder that women have to climb to get to the top.
Remember, a ladder.
What do you do when you get on a ladder?
Well, it's an effort.
You have to do the work to climb the ladder to get to the top.
Whereas she wants to replace it with an escalator.
What do you do on an escalator?
Nothing.
You stand there and you move to the top without doing a damn thing.
Without doing a damn thing of work.
It was built by men.
And it was also built by men.
And maintained.
So that's Vision of the Future.
If we go to the next one, she's also, of course, talking about Sarah Everard and how this proves that women are under attack more than ever and being murdered left, right, and center.
The data on this is no.
Let's go to the next one.
So you can see the data itself, which is no.
It's a flat line for the last 10 years.
Stop it.
Stop what you're doing.
There's no reason to be so enraged by something that's not accelerating.
If we go to the next one, we can also see the conservatives decide to jump in on this.
You can see Liz Truss here saying she marks International Women's Day by paying tribute to the brave women of Ukraine.
Hmm.
Okay, it's, again, I don't like the Conservatives ever engage in intersectional politics because it is inherently left-wing, but fine, okay, you want us to pray that Ukrainian women are doing brave things rather than just, I want to be going to the top without doing any work, Dawn Butler, literal diversity hire, fair enough.
If we go to the next one, we also have another conservative, well, at least the spokesman for Boris at the time, saying something ridiculous.
And this is where, if you engage in identity politics, you will end up, especially as a conservative.
Number 10 hints that Johnson will increase the number of women in cabinet, saying that on International Women's Day, his aide said he would like to improve representation in the next reshuffle.
So I'm going to pick 50% of the cabinet to be women.
Why?
Are they any good?
No, but they are women.
He wants the most woman, not the most competent.
Yeah.
Like Biden, when he appointed his Supreme Court justice, and he said, it's going to be a black woman.
It's like, which one?
He's like, I don't know yet.
I don't care.
Yeah, I don't care.
And it just, it makes it so obvious that it's tokenistic.
Yeah.
Or like Trudeau, who did exactly the same thing.
Yeah, yeah.
So, anyway.
Well, and this off very quickly, just to mention, of course, because it's a holy day, it is also being invaded.
And you can see the, what do you call them, trans rights activists who are saying that International Women's Day is really about trans women, not really the women.
They've got everything they need.
It's the trans women who are really impressed.
If we go to the next one, of course, we can see the TERFs responding to this with Meet Karen from Fair Play for Women.
That's, we've spoken about that case long enough for people to know who it is.
If we go to the next one, we also have Suzanne Moore saying it's not a woman and it's Well, that's just transphobic.
Karen is a woman.
Karen.
Mr.
Karen.
Karen with the big...
No.
I saw him at the women's only party that I threw for women like me and Karen.
Cheers.
Let's go to the video comments.
Oh Leo, goddammit!
Don't mention the batteries.
You and your goddamn batteries.
Look, look.
Batteries, it's fine.
You've got a big old battery.
It's all okay.
It's not going to run out.
Just need to relax, Leo.
Just take it easy.
Relax.
It's like having a mobile phone.
You don't worry about your phone running out.
Yeah, you do.
The car's going to be fine.
Yeah, I do.
And I've got an extra battery in my bag for my mobile phone because I'm so worried about it running out and sometimes it runs out.
And also, any time you accelerate in a Tesla, I mean, super accelerate, super fast, which is the only good reason to get a Tesla because they're super fun to do that and then go like a million miles an hour and it goes like a rocket ship.
But when you do that, it's ruined.
The thrill is ruined by seeing the number...
Just going...
Your range just goes...
Because you're using up lots of energy because you're accelerating.
I've never been in a Tesla, so I can't say.
I've been in a Tesla.
It's fun.
My uncle has one, but I need to go and visit him again.
They should bring out a petrol-powered one, though, because then you wouldn't need to worry about running out of electricity.
This is the hybrid again.
No, no hybrid nonsense.
Oh, no, just petrol.
Just petrol Teslas.
Internal combustion engine.
All right, let's go to the next one.
So Leo in a recent video said that the culture war and foreign policy aren't connected in any way, which I think is a dangerous concept since the culture war very much determines who we interact with and how we interact with them in a foreign policy sense, as well as from the footing from which we approach them, hence why the Russians are able to lead us by the nose with their gasoline leverage.
Yeah, no, that's a fair point.
But, I mean, I wasn't meaning there's no interplay between culture wars and foreign policy.
I mean, with Ukraine specifically, when you talk about the invasion of a sovereign state by a military dictatorship, that's something where, you know, we can't say, oh, you know, Putin, I like Putin's attitudes towards whatever, you know, pronouns.
So I like the fact that he's bombing kindergartens in Ukraine.
Yeah, that's a point.
That's where it falls down for me.
And I've genuinely seen, not that specific, obviously I'm using hyperbole, but I've seen that attitude in a lot of right-wing people.
They say, well, my side has abandoned me.
They've cancelled me.
They criticise me.
I'm a straight white male, so I'm the bottom of the pile for these people.
And I disagree with the pronoun nonsense and all that sort of stuff.
Whereas Putin is this masculine military...
Alpha.
So I respect him.
He's not.
He's not.
He's like five foot two.
It's an image.
Yeah, it's an image.
It's PR. But then, you know, all this stuff kind of is.
But yeah, I think culture wars fall down when it comes to something like Ukraine.
I think it's...
It's somewhere where we can all...
There's some common ground.
You know, everybody, Guardian readers, most of them, and, you know, Economist readers and Lotus Eaters fans, all are fans of Western liberal democracy to a certain extent.
And it needs some tinkering.
We've got some arguments and all the rest of it.
If someone is saying, you know, because of Putin's image, therefore everything he does is gold, that's silly.
But, yeah, I can see the, like, I don't want to say categorically, though, because I can see when some people criticize what NATO has done and whatnot, it's not because, yeah, illegal war is going well, and I love that.
Those people, yeah, obviously silly.
But to say that there are more things to be spoken about than just, it's definitely bad and then no more conversation.
I don't like that attitude.
Not saying it's from you, but I've seen it some places where people...
I do love some of the responses, especially the verified checkmark Americans who are mouthing off and clearly don't know anything.
And then people are just posting underneath links to go and join the Ukrainian army.
I'm just like, go ahead.
Like, you can.
I mean, if you want to, they're accepting volunteers, apparently.
They're accepting everyone.
Yeah.
And some people seem to have a hard time letting go of COVID. You know, we went from two years of, you know, having a government, to a certain extent, lying to us and stripping away our human rights.
And people seem to think, you know, Ukraine is an extension of that.
So, you know, they lied to us during COVID. They must be lying to us now.
And, you know, I don't think...
I trust the Guardian's coverage of Ukraine much more than I trust its coverage of COVID. Yeah, but I mean, Elon Musk has said this earlier, and I think he's right, which is all news to some extent is propaganda.
It's just to what extent.
So you end up with state-funded propaganda, which is just, okay, yeah, state-funded propaganda.
And then everything else has got its own agendas for whatever it wants to push.
I mean, a great example of what I imagine a lot of people have found themselves distrusting the West for...
I mean, you remember the story, Snake Islands, these guys said, and then they bombed them, killed them all, very sad, and then it turned out it wasn't true.
And the failure here, at least from what I've been able to follow, is that the Ukrainian defense ministry initially said they'd been killed, but they didn't actually know.
So they just either lied or were misled.
It's unclear.
But they hadn't had contact from them, and I think there's, you know, in the fog of war, and also, it's impossible to verify either way.
It may be on purpose for morale value, it may be accidental.
I might be so yesterday with that Russian general being killed or possibly not being killed.
We won't know until it's properly verified.
Yeah, but there are reasons I imagine people are very distrustful of everything that's going on.
And I can sympathize with that.
But some people seem to want to distrust.
They're looking for reasons to distrust and looking for reasons.
Like somebody was telling me, oh, there's neo-Nazis.
There's neo-Nazis in Ukraine.
It's like, I already like Ukraine.
You can stop selling it to me.
But there's, you know, obviously, like people, and suddenly the right-wing people, the right-wing people have turned into the wokest who are saying, oh, Ukraine isn't perfect.
It's not, it doesn't have San Francisco levels of liberal wokism.
Like, obviously, there's going to be Nazis and, you know, elements in Ukraine that are unpalatable to a Western sensibility.
But it doesn't mean that, you know, a sovereign nation should be attacked and, you know, Children and women and many civilians.
I feel like we should have a button that doesn't justify a legal war.
Like, yes, there is a Nazi battalion.
Yes, they are part of the National Guard.
Yes, it's not unsisable.
They're now all encircled and presumably going to be killed.
So there's that.
So they're fighting Chechen battalions.
So it's a situation where everybody wins.
The one thing I have been...
I've tried to stay away from the whole topic because I just don't know and I don't want to give a take and end up being completely wrong is that I don't want to get NATO involved in a direct way.
We're selling weapons, which is great.
More money.
But this is two parties and we're a third party to this.
And I see some people saying that we are definitely at war.
And I'm like, no.
We're funding our favourites.
I guess I feel more ideologically aligned with Ukraine.
I feel like an attack on Ukraine is an attack on Western liberal democracy.
And I think by showing strength and solidarity with Ukraine, we're showing that if countries want to come...
If they want to join us in liberal democracy and basically embody British democratic values of tolerance and equality and all the rest of it, then I really love them to do that.
I think we should be spreading freedom and democracy around the world.
Okay, well, we'll go to the next one because I know we're running out of time.
ground.
When I suggested the footage she claimed to have seen may have been out of context, she closed her mind completely.
It reminded me of Besmanov saying, "Despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country." I think he's right there as well.
I saw...
Because I came up today with...
As I said, I go and check out the Russian propaganda and see what they're saying.
Because there was this footage of destroyed apartment blocks and this was saying, look, the Russians are happy to kill civilians and stuff.
It's like...
No.
Because you can then go look up the Russian side of the story, which is like, well, no, there were guys in that building shooting at us.
What are we to do?
I mean, this is a war zone and these are combatants.
So there's that as well.
Not to say that they have not been firing unguided weapons, which are just going to kill civilians.
Like, there's no way to do that.
Of course, still, you know, I hit the button.
LAUGHTER I saw, I don't know if you saw, um, what is it?
I forgot his name now.
Alternate History Hub, I think he runs another channel now, but he did a video yesterday and he was just like, keep a button, keep press, and it's just like, doesn't justify a legal war, but they're all things to say.
We've got the next one.
This is a response to Hayden Yeomans.
All authority is through violence.
It's just how authority works on this planet.
Um...
It sucks, but it's true.
I'm not sure I followed that one.
Did you?
No.
Sorry, mate.
If you can send it again, maybe I'll get it, or if it's just over me.
Sorry about that.
We'll go to the next one.
Alright, so before going to bed, I thought I'd just say something.
I thought I'd just say something, actually.
What I thought I'd say is, because as far as I'm aware, Alex would like my new book reviews, but I've only done one new one so far.
I'm not doing more because I want to essentially just proofread through older books, so apologies for being slow, Alex, if you find him interesting.
That's some bloody good steak, actually.
Is that raw?
I don't know, but that wasn't even addressed to us.
That was like raw sushi steak.
Let's go to the next one.
We saw what the old world order was.
It was ruled by one, a priest or a king.
The new world order is you have a government on top of the structure.
So now we're doing the same exact structure, ruled by violence, and built on the false claim of authority over other people.
And all you're doing is you're divesting that so-called authority, that power, granted to the king, and you're just divesting it into a few people in the institution known as government.
I think that's a bit simplifying evolution of systems of government.
Yeah, and also the beauty of democracy is that any government overreach is balanced by the fact that you can get rid of the government at any point and get somebody else in.
Ideally, but of course it's really complex.
That's the theory, I get that, and that's good, so I don't disagree.
But in reality, of course, you end up with oligarchs and ancient systems that don't map onto a democratic system.
I mean, the criticism of the House of Lords, for example, you could bring up.
The way the media is, at least the corporate media, is controlled in this country by a handful of people who can get Boris out of office if they want to, seemingly.
They will try and do that.
I mean, that's the beauty of the fourth estate holding government to power.
So getting Boris out of office would be, you know, I mean, they can do it if the public are behind it.
I mean, I know there's a lot of power concentrated in a lot of people, but overall, we're never going to have a situation under Western democracy where it's like Putin.
And the trouble with unconstrained power is it always escalates.
I mean, they have elections, but they're not free and fair elections.
But I mean, in a sense, you can see when the media turn on whoever premier we have, like him or not.
I mean, during the campaign, for example, you could see them desperately trying to get Boris constantly.
It's just like, interesting that all of you all of a sudden agree on this thing.
And they do it so often, or at least the Sky News, BBC, ITV, all of them so often coalesce on a thing in a way that the public aren't with them, and yet they're able to get things moved around.
People lose their positions, people have to leave, or whatever else.
Yeah, yeah.
Which...
Yeah, that's, I really think, an affront to the citizens in a way that our power is not being respected.
Yeah.
And in the ideal situation, nobody's got power over anybody else.
Unless they've done something awful.
Oh, yeah.
I don't want to get into prisons or oppression.
Doing something awful is power over somebody else.
If you murder somebody, take their money, take their property.
Let's go to the next one.
No, I don't approve invasion, but I've been wondering for a while, is Russia really our enemy?
Why have we been sanctioning them constantly?
Are we just punishing them for the Cold War?
Russia used to be a traditional Christian nation.
Is there enough of that left after the Soviet era for it to be compatible with the West today?
It must be.
The proof is that if the Russians were bad for the West, our socialists would decry Russ-phobia and beg them to erode England by the thousands.
And our overlords will be just as eager for war when China invaded Hong Kong as when Russia invaded Ukraine, but they're not.
So as we continue to punish Russia because Russia bad, I can't help but wonder.
Are we the baddies?
So, leading up to the illegal invasion, after illegal invasion, of course, it's a different situation, but leading up to it, I've seen this criticism from Peter Hitchens, and I think it's very true, which is, after the fall of the Soviet Union, our new enemy is definitely China, ideological enemy as well.
I mean, Russia's this backwater kind of gangster state that is about as moral as Saudi Arabia, but we're still able to have a professional relationship with Saudi Arabia.
And yet, we never tried to do that with the Russians, even though they have all the oil and gas we could also want.
Yeah.
Which is weird.
And of course it comes down to, well, where is all of Wall Street's money?
It's in China.
That's why we don't have that kind of reaction to a bunch of commie bandits who should be on just a war footing 24-7, but instead we have a polite relationship and we trade and, oh yes, we have a difference agreement on policy.
No, we don't.
In commies!
Saudi Arabia does similar things, like the...
Khashoggi murder.
Military invasions.
Yeah, the Khashoggi murder in Turkey.
And the military invasion in Yemen.
Open executions over un-Islamic things.
It's just like, you guys are barbarians.
Yeah, yeah.
They've actually got worse women's rights and LGBTQ rights than the West, which will shock people that are at the University of North Texas.
Worse than Chechnya?
Yeah, yeah.
Sorry.
Yeah, so I can see, yeah, pre-invasion, absolutely.
I don't know what on earth we were doing, but post-invasion I can understand the economic sanctions.
Let's go to the next one.
So I'd like to add a little bit of context to that tweet that he had about Russia House and how weird it was that they were going to be removing Russian.
So the owners and the people who work there are all Ukrainians, and they're only putting houses there as a placeholder until they figure out what to name it afterwards.
That being said, though, it is weird when you walk in there, it's very communistic.
You have a high-marchical stuff everywhere, very, very Russian and all that.
Good food, good people, expensive though.
All right.
Fair comments.
I believe we're out.
So we'll go to the written comments on the side because I've only got five minutes left.
So I'll just read a couple on the Screeching SWs.
So XYNZ says they should treat people who are pushing this type of ideology on children as a form of conversion therapy.
I agree.
Freewill2112 says the irony is that the Soviet Union would not have tolerated these people and put them in the gulag.
They did.
Quite a lot.
So, there's Stalin looking down, smiling.
Well, actually, in horror of what his movement is in the West, at least.
There's actually a funny thing.
We did a series on KGB operations, and the KGB just despise working with leftists in the West.
They can't stand them, at least during Soviet Union, because they're just like, what the hell's wrong with you people?
You guys are...
Sorry.
It's older's time.
Against the Fog of War, if you want to read some of yours.
Okay, cool.
So, David Ford, or Fjord, says, Nah, sorry, Leo, people are 100% sharing the Ukrainian flag because other people are doing it and they want to signal that they're a good person.
I just, I don't buy that.
I think anybody who's seen...
Depends on the person.
Because if you're a Ukrainian or a Pole or a Slovak or whatever, yeah, obviously.
None of this applies to you.
No, I think the vast majority of people in the West who are sharing the flag are doing it because they feel like it's an abhorrent war.
And it really is.
It really is abhorrent.
It's like, you know, it's really making me see Iraq in a new light.
And I was watching that being like, yeah, bomb those tower blocks.
No, I mean, obviously we weren't.
But I mean...
All war is a total failure of diplomacy, and it's abhorrent, and it's the weakest that bear the biggest brunt.
But I think with this one, people are seeing that.
For all the people who say, oh, it's nuanced, and there's all this history of geopolitics, there's no nuance when you're sending a missile into kindergarten.
No nuance there at all.
The invasion itself, I don't think people are debating about whether or not that's justified.
I think most people are like, yeah, a legal war is a legal war.
But there are other things going on that people don't know because they haven't studied it and watched some 2014.
I don't think they really need to.
And I think you can show the Ukrainian flag.
It's for understanding.
Show your solidarity with the Ukrainian people and, you know, to show that, you know, you feel bad for what's happening to them.
And I don't think people are saying, oh, I need to look like a good person and do that.
Because the people who are saying that are the ones that are posting the ridiculous, you know, leftist things saying like, you know, Ukraine is George Floyd and stuff like that.
There's a lot of them.
There's not that many, and it's the real fringe lunatics.
There's a lot of fringe lunatics on the left.
I mean, it's mostly fringe lunatics.
It's got a huge fringe.
How many people in your lives have just all of a sudden become obsessed with it and don't know anything about it?
I suppose it's for people to decide.
Well, me, for a start.
Captain Charlie the Beagle says, Hey Leo, who needs to donate javelin missiles when you have your dad's punt gun to give to the Ukrainians?
Very good point.
Any Russians who try and come up the Thames are going to get that right in the face.
And Alexander Sjoberg, who's a Russian bot, says, Leo, your take on Ukraine is absurd.
Ukraine was actively destabilized by the West over decades.
This is...
Again, this is nonsense.
Ukraine wants to be in the West.
Obviously the West has been involved in Ukraine, and it's been part of this low-level proxy war between Russia, because it's the buffer zone between Russia and Europe.
But to say that the West has been trying to destabilise, the West has been trying to bring...
Stability to Ukraine and trying to help it function as a sovereign country.
And obviously Ukraine's got problems with corruption and all the rest of it.
But the biggest destabilization is coming from Russia.
When they seized Crimea, when they send all these Russian troops into Donbass and fund any saboteurs and pro-Russian elements in Ukraine, which there are many, obviously, because it's a former Soviet bloc.
But the people in Ukraine, I think what we need to do is listen to the people.
They want to be in Europe.
They want to be in the West, overwhelmingly.
Well, it's for them to apply.
They have that right.
And we have the right to say yes or not, of course.
But I think the point there is, obviously, Russia has done multi-stabilization.
Literal invasion of Crimea.
Literal invasion of Lohansk and Donetsk and Lohansk.
And then the invasion of the whole country, obviously.
But I think I know what he's referencing, which is a video John made, which is very interesting, because I remember seeing the phone call at the time.
Do you know about the Newland phone call?
No.
So the Secretary of State.
So when the revolution happened with the Euromaiden and all that, there's a phone call that got leaked by the Russians in which the Secretary...
Sorry, the State Department were talking to the ambassador in Ukraine, and they literally pick who is going to be the Prime Minister after the revolution.
Like, they debate it on the phone call.
You can go through, and then they name the guy who's going to be it, and he wins.
He's literally picked to be the Prime Minister.
And they also in there say, F the EU, and this became the big line that everyone focused on because it's more catchy...
This was about the fact that the EU didn't want to go as brash as the Americans were.
So there is American interference, but there's American interference everywhere as well, of course.
I mean, the figure John gave was there were three billion US dollars spent on influencing Ukrainian politics over this period of time.
And we'll know what that means for, you know, where are you spending that money?
So it's not to say that there is none, but Russia is obviously worse.
Russia's also been destabilising the West.
It's been getting involved in American elections and also British elections.
What is Russia today?
Yeah, exactly.
That is what it's for.
Which I've been paid by.
I've worked for her in the past, but never again.
Do they have an office in London or not?
Now that they've lost the ability to pay me.
Yeah, I think they did have an office in London.
Well, I think they still do.
But yeah, I just did it over email, obviously.
Because it's a funny thing, because when I was in Moscow, they have a huge centre in Moscow, right?
But no one in Russia watches it.
Right.
It's entirely made for a Western audience.
Right, right.
And they're just transmitting from Moscow to all over Europe, and it's just...
That's strange, but okay.
It is what it is.
And I think that's evident.
We'll end on with just a comment from International Women's Day.
I'll find a short joke, hopefully.
So, George Hap says, Happy International Women's Day.
Congratulations to women for being the second best gender.
Well, no, third.
Trans women.
Of course.
So we'll end on that.
So if you want more from us, of course, go over to alertseers.com, subscribe to get access to all the premium content.