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March 10, 2022 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters
01:30:36
The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #346
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Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for the 10th of March 2022.
I'm John and I'm joined by Thomas.
Hello.
And today we're going to be discussing the deification of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, or Volodymyr the Impaler, as we've currently called him.
The wider ramifications of weapons of mass distraction in the Ukraine conflict and the de-Russification of Chelsky FC. But before we get into that, we have a load of stuff up on the site which we'd like to draw your attention to.
First of all, this article by Josh about why Russia invaded Ukraine, which gives more of the Russian perspective On why this otherwise almost unprecedented invasion has taken place.
It's got a lot of discussion in the comments, so feel free to weigh in and have a look.
We also have this premium video between Harry and Callum where Harry attempts to explain music to Callum.
Now, that might sound controversial, but as you'll notice, Callum has rather idiosyncratic tastes in noise.
Then we also have this new feature on the website where I've been uploading daily summaries of the conflict in Ukraine, trying to sift through the misinformation and disinformation to portray a roughly realistic picture of what is actually happening, both on the ground and in terms of Western comments on it.
And then finally, we have this new feature, which is Dispatches of the Lotus Eaters, which you can follow on Getter and Twitter.
And here we will be uploading via Rory daily updates on important things.
Finally, before we get into our subjects, just a quick reminder to our Gold Tier members to keep your video comments to 30 seconds, just to be kind to our editor, Michael.
Let's get into the topics for today.
So, Vlad the Impaler.
I don't know about you or anyone else at home, but I'm starting to wonder whether the deification of Vladimir Zelensky, which has been observed, is getting to people's heads to a worrying level.
I'll leave the idea to session for now and instead begin with a short update on what's happened yesterday, because the war, to say the least, has been a lot more taxing for Russia than the Russians expected.
They're resorting to yet more aggressive tactics to obviously get Ukraine to surrender, as shown by their bombing of a hospital in Mariupol yesterday.
At least, if we scroll down, at least 17 people have been wounded, including women in labour and staff, according to Ukrainian authorities.
The city council said the damage was colossal.
Sergei Lavrov has since dismissed this as fake news, saying that the hospital was actually a radical military unit or something like that, but I'll leave that to our viewers to Yeah, assess.
The various humanitarian corridors that Russia and Ukraine agree to open up have been broken several times too.
Yeah, and this is quite controversial, isn't it?
Because there are...
This has been tried several times now, and there are claims on both sides that it's the other side that's responsible for their failure.
So...
I mean, some civilians have managed to get out more than I think the media may be letting off at the moment.
We are speculating to a degree.
So there was footage of a convoy arriving in Zaporizhia, which is in the centre of southern Ukraine, from these areas.
So there are some humanitarian corridors which are working.
So we at least have that.
I get the impression that the last couple of attempts have gone slightly better than the first two.
So maybe there's something positive in that.
Yeah.
And there's many reasons why that might happen, of course.
So, one, obviously the Ukrainians allege that the Russians are deliberately shelling the humanitarian corridors, and the Russians allege that the Ukrainian troops are keeping the civilians hostage, like, to use us human shields and that sort of thing.
And there may be an element of both of those things happening, or neither of them, we don't know.
Again, we're just going to have to suspend judgments, aren't we?
But all we can say is we hope that these corridors actually do work better, because no one wants the civilians to get caught up, or at least unless you're a monster.
But yeah, as you can see, for today's attempts to create corridors to safely evacuate have stumbled.
But if we move on to Vladimir Zelensky's response to the increasing aggression from Russia, rather frighteningly, he seems to be resourcing to propagating the idea that That we shouldn't worry about the consequences of engaging in conflict with Russia because World War II, free, sorry, is destined to happen anyway, or at least that's what seems to be implied in this statement here.
This is a narrative which we've heard as well from the Lithuanian Premier, I believe, who came out recently saying World War III has already stopped.
We can really do without this, because it has not.
And the constant World War II comparisons are not blimmin' helping, because it's not the same person that we're dealing with.
It's not the same regime that we're dealing with.
And most blimmin' importantly of all, we're talking about very, very different military capacities here, which makes the geopolitical affair completely different and incomparable.
So stop it for crying out loud.
Yeah, it is rather a damning indictment of the education system that everyone immediately jumps on the World War II comparison.
I think there are better examples out there, and the Finland analogy is at least a little more subtle and interesting.
Well, as we know, Vladimir Zelensky made a speech to the UK Parliament at 5pm on Monday, and he pleaded for more help, of course.
He was very, very grateful to what the British have done, but nonetheless, as he said in the House of Commons, we will not give up, we will not lose, we will fight to the end in the sea and the air, we will fight for our land, whatever the costs.
It's important to remember, whatever the costs, we will fight in the forests, in the fields, on the shores and the streets, before going on to say, please increase the pressure of sanctions against this country, which we are doing, and please recognise this country as a terrorist state, which we pretty much have done, really.
And please make sure that our Ukrainian skies are safe.
Please make sure you do what needs to be done and what is stipulated by the greatness of your country.
And by asking for the skies to be safe, he is, of course, asking for a no-fly zone to be implemented in the west side of Ukraine, which would protect Kiev.
In a Sky News interview just a day or so ago, he went further to make the case for a no-fly zone, but saying that millions more will die if NATO does not intervene.
Now, there was an interesting statement on this by Ben Wallace not too long ago, who's the UK defence minister, the full tonto guy.
But he actually pointed out that such is the vulnerability of Russia's convoys at the moment, and they have failed to achieve air superiority, that Ukrainian air forces are actually doing quite well with the Bayraktar TB2 drone strikes and so on.
Yes.
So he made the point that actually, even if we did try to enforce a no-fly zone, it's not necessarily the case that would even benefit Ukraine's war effort.
No, it wouldn't actually be very effective.
Right.
Yes, which suggests that those who are dogmatically in favour of the idea aren't actually assessing the military situation, which again is worrying, given that it's not actually that difficult to actually work that out.
But speaking to Sky News' special correspondent, Alex Crawford, inside the leader's office in Ukraine's capital city, Zelensky reiterated his call for the West to impose a no-fly zone.
Nonetheless, he accused countries of being indecisive on the issue of closing the skies against what he called the Nazis, these interesting Interesting use of the term.
He said, Of course, he's looking at this in an entirely Ukraine-centric way, as he should.
He's the president of Ukraine.
And I have to say that, look, he's three times the man that I am for staying in the city, for being the wanted man that ultimately the Kremlin wants gone.
I don't know what they'll obviously do to him, but I'm starting to really, really take issue with how he is asking this of his allies when he knows that this would involve...
For all the horror we are seeing in Ukraine at the moment, we are talking...
This is on the scale of thousands, this massacre.
Asking the UK, which would involve all of NATO by extension to get involved, you are talking about extending that massacre to the hundreds of millions.
Why is he not being held culpable for this to the slightest degree?
I know he's trying to do what's right for you.
Well, let's break it down a bit, because there's three issues that really are going on here.
One of them is the question of whether Zelensky is a good or a bad or a heroic or a villainous leader.
And I think generally, from the facts on the ground, he's at least better than Hamid Karzai, who was the Western leader in Afghanistan, who simply ran away with suitcases full of cash as soon as the going looked remotely difficult.
So he's better than that.
And there is something heroic, I suppose, about staying in the capital city and fighting the war and leading the troops.
Incredibly brave.
Exactly.
He's not running away and leaving his army to fight his battles.
And it's a good military strategy as well.
Kings who fought on the front line often had armies that went on to win.
Absolutely.
So that's one part of it.
But then there are two other parts which are really what we're addressing in this segment.
One of them is the deification of Zelensky by our media.
And I do feel like what they have done is they've placed the white hat on Zelensky.
He is the protagonist.
He is the good guy.
He can do no wrong.
And they have conversely placed the black hat on Putin in that he is the villain.
And he is a madman and he cannot be reasoned with and so on.
And unfortunately, this simple sort of football game narrative is something we really take issue with here.
Because we, regardless of the facts on the ground, we are very sceptical in all of our coverage of these mainstream media fabricated narratives because we believe they lead to bad judgements, bad appraisers of the situation and ultimately catastrophic decisions.
And then the final aspect of it is the rhetoric of Volodymyr Zelensky.
Yes, you can understand why he wants other nations to get involved.
He does not want to be fighting this war on his own as Ukraine.
He does not want to be seen by his people as doing anything less than his utmost to try to bring allies directly into the conflict.
So, from that element, you can understand it.
However, it still has the capacity, when combined with the deification of him by the media, to escalate.
And that's, I think, what you're concerned about here.
And when he says things that the World War will start and only then you will make a no-fly zone, but it will be too late, he is presupposing something that has not yet happened.
There is a diplomatic way out of this.
But I'm afraid to say, if Putin has gone full tonto, which it does...
Given that he seems to be just making up his reasons as he goes along at this point, but why he wants to occupy all of Ukraine, let's just assume yes, okay.
Could you not make an equal case that Zelensky is full tonto in the sense that he has got his own red flags or red lines, that he's sustaining without respect to the consequences to the rest of the world, that could extend to the rest of the world beyond Ukraine?
When you have two...
There's only one outcome there.
And I'm not even going to say what that is, because it's so obvious.
But it's an insane thing to say from Zelensky at this point.
That's true.
I mean, I must say, at least from the Russian negotiating position, presumably because the war has not been going as well for them as they may have expected, their criteria have retreated somewhat from the initial standpoint.
So some of the key demands for demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine have dropped, which is one of the three things that they demanded.
So that's an implication that the war is not going too well for them.
No.
But that also implies that there is a universe in which they will accept a diplomatic resolution with relatively minor de facto concessions from Ukraine, which would seemingly be a good thing for the Ukrainian people, but of course it's for them to decide.
It is, and they are in high-level talks at present about these things, and of course we're very much hoping that something positive comes out of this.
We are, but it's possible that there are some in the West who would rather the conflict were prolonged.
Of that, I've no doubt.
Thankfully, the NATO powers for now have continued to hold the line on the matter of the no-fly.
The first was from the Secretary of State, Anthony Blankton, until we get the next clip up here.
Speaking in Washington, he warned against implementing a no-fly zone in Ukraine as it would bring NATO directly into conflict with Russia, which, yes, absolutely it would.
And thankfully, Liz Truss followed suit, saying that a no-fly zone would lead to a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia, so that's very much he's peddling the same line.
That's absolutely true.
The idea of a no-fly zone is a very artificial and recent propaganda concept, a bit like a surgical strike.
What it literally means is shooting down all of someone's planes but pretending you're not at war with them.
So the people in power seem to be, shall we say, well-advised at this point, but that can't be said for those who are buying into the deified Zelensky.
No fly zones work with, to be blunt, backwards North African and Arabian nations that don't have a conventional military and cannot face up to the overwhelming air power of NATO. They would not work with Russia.
No.
But Zelensky is, of course, very much setting the dogmatic mood of what you could say is the centrist liberal response, which is to join in with perpetuating this idea that we're already in a world war situation and that we have nothing to lose from being TV. Isn't this very much like the catastrophizing that we experience with COVID, again from the media?
Yeah, and there were points in the Cold War, like with Vietnam in particular, where this argument was probably being made but didn't spread on the scale that we're seeing.
That's because we have Twitter nowadays.
Social media, but mainly Twitter.
And Twitter is phenomenal for taking a situation and just agitating everyone into a state of the most extreme, short-sighted frenzy.
If we move on to the Ukraine Member of Parliament, who is, I believe, Kira Rudik, I mean, this response is, of course, reasonable, given that she is, of course, acting on Ukrainian interests, saying that, look, we need a no-fly zone.
Vinitsia is a peaceful city in southwestern Ukraine.
No one deserves what is happening here.
Right, but I should point out that eight cruise missiles from the Black Sea hit Vinitsia airport, and an airport is a military facility in times of war.
Yes, it is.
So it's not as indiscriminate as has been.
It's not the same thing as bombing a hospital.
No, it's not.
That's a very important point to make.
But unfortunately, the tweets that you're about to see from, shall we say, our own, what shall I call them, armchair military generals are just expressions of sheer insanity.
Let's begin with Piers Morgan.
Oh, goodness me.
Does anyone still listen to Piers Morgan?
Unfortunately, they do.
Yes.
So if we have a look at the tweet up that Piers Morgan...
Yeah, but NATO is the greatest collective military power in the history of Planet Earth.
Yes, it is.
We should use it now.
You first, Piers.
Yeah, go on, Piers.
How old is Piers Morgan?
Not old enough to get out of the draft.
Oh, I see.
Yeah, I mean, Piers Morgan has consistently said that there's absolutely...
No chance that Putin would ever go as far as initiating a nuclear war.
I personally don't want to take that chance.
No, well, we didn't think he would go so far as invading Ukraine in the first place.
Nor did I, and I got that dramatically wrong, of course.
But yet more insufferable than Piers Morgan, I'm afraid, is a very famous chess player called Garry Kasparov.
Arguably the most famous chess player.
The most famous chess player, yes.
I mean, he's one of the best of all time, in fact.
As if you move on to Garry Kasparov, You can see.
I mean, he's been pretty insufferable on this.
He is something of a successful chess player and a failed politician.
He was an opposition politician to Putin for a long time in Russia as well.
Quite a bit of a legend in the chess world.
That's certainly true.
Yeah, but that sadly is not really reflected in his political analysis.
Because, as you can see, he's saying, why is the greatest military alliance in history letting Putin define what is and is not acceptable action to stop a humanitarian catastrophe?
He is mass murdering civilians, so he has veto power over NATO. No, find a way to fight or you don't want to.
This moralising, I'm sorry, is dangerous.
The moralising is dangerous, but I can also propose a hypothetical way to fight that NATO could have adopted over the last eight years.
Go on.
How about spending eight years building up the Ukrainian army from 6,000 combat-capable troops out of 157,000 total strength to a force of 200,000 fully equipped, well-armed with Western weapons, Western technology, trained by Western military advisors by NATO, with 900,000 people in a military reserve.
And then when a conflict happens, we pour as many anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons into Ukraine as we possibly can.
We could do that.
Oh, but wait, that's what we are doing.
That's what's literally happened.
We are literally doing, and never mind the military intelligence assistance as well, the satellites over Ukraine and so on and so forth, which is an absolute game-changer as far as this war is concerned.
As far as I can see, we are helping Ukraine's war effort as much as we possibly can without starting... we are helping Ukraine's war effort as much as we As in, he's being presented as a monster throughout.
If he was genuinely as monstrous as he's being betrayed, he would have resorted to far, far stronger weaponry.
Far stronger weaponry than he has so far.
He's grown into this very, very slowly.
My analysis of this conflict shows that Russia could certainly cause much more death and destruction among civilians if they...
If they wanted to.
Yeah, and this is mainly because he misjudged this as almost like an easy operation.
Now, I know it's very popular to assume that the Russians are just indiscriminate monsters who want to exterminate the Ukrainian people, but that is clearly not what's happening on the ground.
No, it's not.
But thankfully, people like Garry Kasparov and Piers Morgan don't have much political power, or at least now.
However, someone in the UK does.
Mm-hmm.
Would you like to guess who it is, who actually thinks that it's actually a good idea, or at least thinks we should entertain the idea of intervening?
It's not we Jimmy Cranky, is it?
It's the anti-trident to Nicola Sturgeon.
Trident to know World War Yes.
Cognitive dissonance seems to be quite popular in the SNP. Yeah.
So she is actually the very, I believe, the very first politician in the United Kingdom to have publicly come out in favour of entertaining this idea.
Thankfully, she has actually been held to account for it with some sound criticism.
and the first being from, we're going to move on a little bit, John, to Ian Murray, the MP for Edinburgh South, who says quite rightly, a no-fly zone would require to be policed, which would mean an RAF pilot would have to engage a Russian military plane.
That's an act of war and would do nothing to resolve the situation.
It would mean World War III.
Is that really what the First Minister wants?
Again, Nicola Sturgeon is young enough that we could just give her an M16 and send her to Ukraine and see the back of her.
I mean, I would crowdfund that personally.
If you move on to Karl Kolinsky's response, he says the media has done an atrocious job educating the public on this.
No-fly zone is World War III. Direct military confrontation between two nuclear powers.
This is psychopathic.
And I would say the coverage of the media has at times been psychopathic too.
Yes, the media shapes the public conception.
It manufactures consent for military intervention.
Yeah.
I mean, a certain sketch from Brass Eye actually comes to mind on this.
Oh, right.
Yes.
Well, perhaps I should have included it in this segment for a little bit of a joke.
But funny enough, Alex Salmond actually came out against the idea as well.
Even though we have to, again, consider this with an open mind, given that he was until very, very recent employee of Russia today.
Alex Salmond is probably my favourite Scottish nationalist.
Probably, yeah.
We don't exactly have the glory of choice, do we?
But he says, thus keeping an open mind on enforcing a no-fly zone is contemplating direct armed conflicts between nuclear powers.
Nicola should reflect.
Yes.
Not a particularly controversial thing to say, to be honest.
But, anyway, I would like to end, at least, by giving some consideration for the Russian considerations of withdrawal.
If we could move on to that.
Of course, I believe the demands from Russia were to have Crimea recognised, Crimea, the Hansk, and the Donetsk regions recognised as breakaway states.
Yeah, that, also the demilitarisation and denartification of Ukraine, and finally...
And the confirmation of its permanent neutrality on the NATO question.
Would you be able to explain what's wrong with that idea?
Not in a short amount of time.
We'll leave that for another segment then, perhaps.
But nonetheless, it's actually, in short, I think more of a...
I didn't actually expect this to be Russia's position.
It seems that they've actually made all these steps to...
More concessions than I anticipated.
By dropping the upfront demand for demilitarisation and denazification, they're signalling a significant concession from their original position.
Now, it may be that they're just adopting that position in order to divide their opponents, but it also could be signs that… They didn't even mention the withdrawal of troops from the Baltics either, which is a huge concession.
So that suggests to me that they're actually willing to talk more than perhaps the media is giving out at present.
And that's a good sign.
But I'm afraid, as we know now, Ukraine stonewalled this, in effect.
And I'm very, very worried that the more that Zelensky digs his heels in about his own...
Well, the real sticking point for Ukraine is the recognition of Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea, because as far as they're concerned, that's sovereign Ukrainian territory.
And they have been fighting an eight-year war in Donetsk and Luhansk to try and seize those areas.
And fundamentally, particularly the nationalist and extreme elements in Ukraine are not going to be happy with any conciliation or concession on those points.
They're just basically asking Russia to completely capitulate, go home and act like this didn't happen.
And that's not going to happen.
The only way we're going to get out of this, I'm afraid to say, and some viewers will find this utterly repugnant, is you're going to have to give concessions to Vladimir Putin.
And that, I'm afraid, is going to entail coming up with a better idea than he must just fail.
Because this is only going to increase the escalation.
This is just me trying to solve a very difficult problem.
I'm not approaching this as an idealist.
I think the thing which people don't realise is that if Putin goes home with nothing, with his tail between his legs, then he will probably be eaten alive by parts of his power base, who are fundamentally Russian nationalists.
So he can't do that.
If Zelensky accepted that proposition, in short, he would come back looking like he was victorious to some degree, and Ukraine would still...
We'd still have the territories that are committed to its European identity.
The really important thing, I suppose, is that if Ukraine were to accept those terms, then there would be very little de facto change in the borders, because these areas have been outside of the control of the Ukrainian state for eight years.
But that ties into a whole broad geopolitical discussion, which we don't have time for today.
Yes, of course.
And with that, we must move on to weapons of mass distraction.
Yes, so there's been a fair amount of news coming out of Ukraine, and one of the interesting things which I always keep my ear out is signs of America talking about WMDs, because this always ends well, historically.
But let's just remind ourselves of the situation in the West at the start of this conflict.
What did Joe Biden do when he got into power in 2021?
He signed a record number of executive orders.
He blocked fracking exploration, he banned the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the US, and he printed an absolute ton of cash.
If you look at this graph here, you can see from Trading Economics that as soon as he gets into power in 2021, what happens to the inflation rate?
Straight up.
It's nearly at 8% now.
A historic high.
That basically means...
Essentially an 8% annual tax on all of your cash savings.
It's enormous.
And very depressing, personally.
But there we go.
So, he's printing money like it's going out of fashion, and it might well be.
The abolition of cash in favour of central bank digital currencies, as we covered last week, would appear to be a major part of the World Economic Forum agenda and threatens to establish an iron grip of governments over their people for many years to come.
Oh dear.
Long before the Ukraine crisis started, there were concerns that the US economy would struggle to recover from the money-printing financial regime, with some commentators speculating that the Federal Reserve might slam on the brakes to the money printer and bring much of the economy screeching to a halt.
Oh, yes.
Yes.
In Canada, you have the truckers' protest, of course, immediately before the invasion of Ukraine.
And in the UK as well, there's a lot of animosity towards Boris Johnson's completely unconservative government.
As a result, they're all rather unpopular with voters.
But fortunately for them, the Galtieri effect is at play.
Conflict abroad distracts from troubles at home.
Of course.
And that's all anyone is talking about at the moment, really, is Ukraine.
Covid has gone by the wayside.
The shutting down of the economy for two years seems to have taken a backseat.
It's like it never happened.
Exactly.
As a weapon of mass distraction, the conflict in Ukraine has been a godsend for Western leaders.
But will they respond to the crisis appropriately, with the firm and measured actions of national statesmen?
What do you think?
To be honest, I'm quite concerned.
Yeah, I don't think they will, personally.
As we've covered previously, cancelling people is seemingly the only thing that the Twitter adult political class seems capable of doing.
It's quite remarkable how effective discriminatory denial of service can be, whether you're unpersoning loan dissidents, shutting down alternative tech platforms, or even cutting the world's largest country by land area out of the global economy.
But in order for sanctions to be effective, they have to be universal.
Sanctions do not simply mean we will boycott you.
They mean we will smite any company on the face of the earth that even thinks of trading with you.
Yes, and currently Russia is experiencing probably the biggest cancelling of that kind in human history.
Yes.
As a result, the US has recently issued warnings to Chinese companies against trading with Russia.
We have this article here.
Chinese companies that aid Russia could face US repercussions, Commerce Secretary warns.
I wonder if she's another diversity hire.
Yes.
Gina Raimondo, the Commerce Secretary, said the US could take devastating action against Chinese companies that defy Russian sanctions.
Raimondo, the Secretary of Commerce, issued a stern warning Tuesday to Chinese companies that might defy US restrictions against exporting to Russia, saying the United States would cut them off from American equipment and software they need to make their products.
The Biden administration could essentially shut down Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation or any Chinese companies that defy US sanctions by continuing to supply chips and other advanced technology to Russia, Mr Raimondo said in an interview with the New York Times.
Are we getting Napoleonic continental system vibes here by any chance?
Yes, I was actually going to say, I think this is very much falling into that picture.
So for those who aren't aware, the continental system, when Napoleon essentially won the Napoleonic Wars on the continent, he was still at war with Britain.
And so in order to essentially cancel Britain or sanction Britain, he forbade any of his client states and vassals in Europe, the whole of Europe, from trading with Britain to try and choke out Britain's economy.
And it completely failed and essentially resulted in him invading Russia, getting his backside handed to him on a plate and his ultimate downfall.
They continue.
The United States, the European Union and other governments have issued sweeping sanctions and export controls in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The export controls prohibit the sale of certain high-tech products, including advanced semiconductors, to Russia and Belarus.
The US export controls apply not just to American companies, but to companies anywhere in the world that use American software or technology to manufacture their products, which includes many Chinese companies.
This would hurt China quite a lot, wouldn't it?
It would.
Now, people who haven't studied China much get the impression that China's economy is massive and invincible, but I think it is vulnerable and fragile in many respects.
We, in effect, have the button to bear downfall because of how dependent they are on imports.
Yes, but the argument is that we are so dependent on their imports as well.
So who would it really hurt more?
Now, I'm generally in favor of being strict on Chinese companies operating in the West, and I personally believe we should have woken up to the problem of Chinese intellectual property theft and predatory outsourcing practices 20 years ago.
Yeah.
But is now really the time?
Probably not.
Like, we've already seen the scale of disruption caused to people's lives by the cancellation of Russia.
We've had metal prices skyrocketing, energy prices through the roof, cost of living going through the roof as well, and this is all being borne by the ordinary consumer.
Russia's economy is minuscule compared to China's.
Is the Biden administration really prepared to start an economic war on two fronts?
It would be an act of insanity, but it would nonetheless be the action of a dying world order.
That's what worries me.
Well, the thing which concerns me is, yes, forget all of this hyperbole about World War III, but we may be seeing a kind of economic world war playing out before our eyes.
The autocratic regimes of Russia, China, and much of the non-Western world can clearly see the problems with American global hegemony.
The infiltration of their societies by Californian social media corporations.
These big tech empires that see themselves as holding the God-given right to, for example, indoctrinate children into LGBT ideology, to manipulate public discourse in foreign countries and sway national elections, to foment unrest and even facilitate revolutions.
Let's not forget how much they pander to the Chinese market as well.
There's indirect coercion there as well.
Activision Blizzard.
But make no mistake, the Saudis, for example, Saudi Arabia knows that Washington would wipe them off the face of the earth in an instant if it were politically feasible, right?
The Saudi regime is in many ways morally anathema to the diversity, inclusion and equity regions of the West.
And the Americans have been broadcasting this exceptionalist, totalizing ideology for a long time.
They have decided what is right.
They have defined the direction of human progress, and any nation, culture, or creed that stands against it will be swept away.
Yes.
That's the impression that these regimes...
International law is their system of ethics, in effect.
Yes.
Isn't it?
And that's why China's acting in such open contempt of it on the intellectual property front, because it just doesn't recognise it as a universal system of ethics at all.
Absolutely.
And then in the recent January joint declaration between Beijing and Moscow, one of the things which they identified was this totalizing, moralizing force coming out of the West.
And they said, well, that should just be your international order, and countries that want a different international order should be able to have one.
And when we were willing to come to the table, you basically said no, in the case of Putin, anyway.
Yeah.
They also see the immense technological advantage that the West possesses as transformative transhumanist technologies are appearing on the horizon.
They see the strength and sophistication of NATO and the unrivaled power projection capability of the US military.
They see atomized societies, weak ideas, paralyzing culture wars, anti-meritocratic ideologies of diversity, inclusion and equity.
Maybe, just maybe, they can see the writing on the wall.
They can see what's happening to Russia's economy now happening to them in the future.
And if that's the case, then we could be seeing a rather interesting geopolitics from here on out.
Oh, yes.
Much of this has been discussed in terms of a move away from the dollar and towards either a gold-backed currency or the replacement with the Chinese-run minbi as the currency underpinning an international financial system outside the orbit of the USA. And let's not forget, this is very important because in order to set up an alternative international relationship, Yes.
to ground it in, as they report here in the Financial Times.
China, Russia, and the race to a post-dollar world.
Financial markets are going to become a major field of battle, a place to defend liberal values and renew old alliances.
Consider China's long-term goal of building a post-dollarized world in which Russia would be one of many vassal states settling all transactions in renminbi.
Getting there is not an easy process.
The Chinese want to de-dollarize, but they also want complete control of their own financial system.
That's a difficult circle to square.
One of the reasons that the dollar is the world's reserve currency is that, in contrast, the US markets are very open and very liquid, whereas the Chinese market is quite closed and controlled.
Still, the Chinese hope to use trade and petro-politics of the moment to increase the renminbi's share of global foreign exchange.
One high-level Western investor in China told me he expected that share would rise from 2% to as high as 7% in the next three to four years.
But that is, of course, still minuscule compared with the position of the dollar, which is 59%.
But the Chinese are playing a long game.
Finance is a key pillar in the new great power competition with America.
Currency, capital flows and the Belt and Road Initiative trade pathway will all play a role in that.
Beijing is slowly diversifying its foreign exchange reserves as well as buying up a lot of gold.
This can be seen as a kind of hedge on a post-dollar world, the assumption being that gold will rise as the dollar falls.
So, the West is relatively weak at the moment.
Its leaders are Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, for goodness sake.
If the anti-democratic forces were to combine to challenge the international economic system that America has written and ruled over for many years, could they secure a future for themselves outside the American hegemony, set up their own trading bloc with its own rules and its own technologies?
Well, that's in effect what they're doing with Africa, isn't it?
In China.
They are certainly creating a lot of influence in Africa and in Latin America as well, I believe.
Aren't they actually giving them loans to start up coal mines whilst closing down their own?
I believe so, but there's a lot involved in it because it's the same kind of, you could call it, hybrid warfare that's waged by the IMF, the International Monetary Fund.
It's just a different set of standards in a way, and in many ways harsher and worse for the people taking them over.
But of course the IMF has been operating for a long time and has a rather poisonous reputation.
I mean, look at its role in Greece or even in Ukraine.
And you can see why a lot of Third World leaders would be suspicious of it.
Well, it has a frontline role in the very pretext that led to the Ukraine invasion.
Yes.
I mean, it quite literally bankrolled, what was it, or at least gave a considerable help to Boris Yeltsin's campaign, who was, of course, the – which was the point to, I suppose, Putin kind of smelt.
So you're talking about the early 90s here, just after the breakup of the Soviet Union, and you've got Yeltsin essentially stripping the remainder of the Soviet economy bare for his mates and the oligarchs, and the IMF bankrolling that.
But it's with this narrative in mind that I see the White House and the State Department simultaneously releasing statements concerning alleged chemical weapons false flag attacks being planned by Russia in Ukraine.
U.S. officials say they are concerned Russia could potentially be preparing to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine after the Russian Defense Ministry accused Ukraine of possibly planning a false flag chemical weapon attack.
An administration official told NBC News the U.S. is worried that the Russians are making this claim against Ukraine to justify a false flag operation on them or them using chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine themselves.
Does this sound familiar?
It's like a stuck record at this point.
It's very, very familiar, but I don't want to comment on it, because whatever I say, my take is almost certainly going to be the opposite of what turns out to be true.
We do believe that we should be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons, the official said.
The US is also concerned that Russia could be making the claim about Ukraine to justify its continued invasion of Ukraine.
Now, many of our viewers should be aware that when the US starts talking about weapons of mass destruction, WMDs, like chemical weapons, it always ends well.
So the two major examples I can think of are the Iraq WMDs, of course, which were, as far as I'm aware, completely fabricated.
So they made up the story that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, invaded the country, overthrew the regime, and then just sort of quietly said, oh yeah, there weren't any WNTs, of course, now what are you on about?
Anyway, regime change, that's all well and good, right?
You'd think that would be a war crime, wouldn't you?
Yes, you'd think so.
Well, it's one of the reasons why these dictatorial regimes, autocratic regimes like Russia and China, are very sort of dismissive of Western concerns in this invasion.
Because they point out that, well, when you want to invade people, you just do it.
As they see, it's a structure of power that is designed to uphold the prevailing...
Hegemony, if I'm to use critical theory's language.
Absolutely.
And another case, which is somewhat more controversial, are the alleged Syria chemical weapons attacks.
Now, it seems to be adopted as a truth by the mainstream media that there were 17 chemical weapons attacks by Assad's regime against rebels in Syria.
But I think that's a rather murky allegation.
I remember at the time there was a lot of doubt over whether it had actually happened and it seemed to be quite a transparent attempt to manufacture a casus belli.
So it was never proof, was it?
Not to my satisfaction.
I may be wrong, but let us know in the comments if that's so.
So finally, I just want to conclude by saying, what we are seeing taking place in Ukraine may just be the start of a titanic struggle over world hegemony, waged between the USA and its allies, and those foreign states that stand against the moralizing globalist agenda of the World Economic Forum.
The new world is unveiling.
And this applies to, well, Chelsea Football Club as well, as it turns out, who have of course been caught up in this effort to ostracise Russian oligarchs.
As the viewers may or may not know, I'm a huge football fan and a huge Chelsea supporter.
I've supported them my entire life, and it's because I liked the colour blue when I saw it.
But as part of a massive clampdown on Russian other gods in the UK, Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich has been forced to put the club up for sale.
He tried to get around this by passing on the stewardship to Chelsea's Charitable Foundation Trust, but because of intensifying sanctions and pressure, he's been forced to put the club up for sale anyway for £3 billion, I'm led to believe, if you happen to have that lying around.
Bung in price.
Yeah.
We can confirm today that he has since had his assets frozen entirely.
Abramovich has owned the club since 2003, which inaugurated the most successful era in Chelsea's history.
They've proceeded to win everything there is to be won, accumulating, I believe, five Premier League titles, two Champions Leagues, most recently last year's Champions League, and actually more recently than that, a Club World Championship, among several other FA Cups and League Cups over the years too.
He's just boasting because it's his team.
I'm just boasting because it's my team.
It is a genuinely sad, sad day.
But if we move on to the Telegraph article, you can see Roman Abramovich has put Chelsea up for sale while astonishingly confirmed that he will not ask for his £1.5 billion loan to the club to be repaid and will donate all net proceeds to the victims of the war in Ukraine.
That's multi-billion dollars.
Yes.
Wow.
Yes.
Even for a billionaire, that's big.
Yeah, for someone who is, you know, supposed to be a close friend of Vladimir Putin, or close associate of Vladimir Putin, that is quite a commitment.
Quite remarkable, yeah.
It is.
But if we scroll down a bit, Labour leader Keir Starmer used Wednesday's PMQs to question Prime Minister Boris Johnson over why Abramovich had not yet been sanctioned.
But the fact he's prepared to make a huge donation from the sale of Chelsea to those impacted by Russia's invasion of Ukraine could ensure that his assets are not frozen or seized, at least in the short term.
That was wrong, right?
That was wrong, clearly.
Three hours ago, I think, Liz Truss announced that they were frozen.
Yes.
If that was indeed his intention, it hasn't worked.
But in a statement released on Wednesday evening, Abramovich said himself, That's, of course, the partners, I think, would take serious issue if he didn't at this point.
News broke today that, again, as you've said that already, a lot of Chelsea fans, myself included, are rather upset.
Not because I don't think it's the right thing to do.
I fully understand why.
But it does mark the end of...
But I must point out, what has Abramovich done directly to cause the conflict in Ukraine?
Well, the question is how he got his wealth in the first place.
But you could make the same argument, not just for the Russian oligarchs, but the Ukrainian oligarchs, the Chinese oligarchs, the Saudi Arabian billionaires.
But...
So, the moral case for this, I think, while I can understand why people are doing it, I don't think the moral case is as clear-cut as we would like to think.
No, it's not.
There does seem to be a bit of Russophobia underwriting this a little bit.
I did actually search for quotes from the Labour Party's insistence to actually clamp down a Russian oligarch.
But I think Labour is more concerned about clamping down on rich people...
To begin with, because they have an ideological bent that believes being rich is evil, unless you're rich.
To the Labour Party, if you're Russian and you're rich, that means you must have got that money badly.
Or at least from the tone that they've been addressing this anyway.
To be honest...
According to the historical record, that is probably likely.
However, it's not demonstrable proof.
Does it apply to every single person?
And the fact that there is uneven treatment between oligarchs from the ex-Soviet countries on this matter gives the lie to that argument, I think.
The truth is, I honestly don't know what Abramovich has done to get this money, or to be in the position that he is at all, or what it took for him to be considered as an ally to Vladimir Putin.
All I do know is that as the owner of Chelsea, he's run the club in good faith.
He's made substantial investments for the benefit of the club at a global level.
He's provided what we mean with many happy memories.
I know that doesn't amount to much given what's happening in Ukraine at the moment, but for this reason, a lot of the...
A lot of the Chelsea players have taken this view as well.
One of whom was actually the ex-captain John Terry, who's over here, who actually called him the best.
And for what he's done for the club, it's hard to refute that.
But of course, this went down very, very badly with some, one of whom was Labour MP Chris Bryant.
I think John Terry should take this down as soon as possible.
The people of Ukraine are being bombed, shelled and murdered, which, while you celebrate Abramovich...
Abramovich is in the bomber planes, isn't he?
This is just guilt by association, again, isn't it?
Again, this is...
This is really just demonising an ethnic minority at this point.
This is another case of obnoxious moralising from Chris Bryant.
And this isn't the worst thing he's said on this matter.
Right.
Before Putin even uttered the words, when Boris Johnson made his first major address about this issue, he was speculating that this is just Hitler too that we're witnessing at the moment.
But it's such an irresponsible thing to say at the moment.
Well, some people, particularly Labour MPs, they are some of the most mediocre minds in this country, and they are on Twitter all the time, so they're just basically plugged in and creatures of this information network.
So when Twitter gets hysterical, they come out with terrible takes like this.
But I mean, irrespective of that, I think that John Terry doesn't strike me as the most politically sensitive or aware fellows.
I think he deserves a little bit of a break.
He's quite clearly looking at this from the position of his professional career.
He's not making a political pro-Russian statement, so I think Chris Bryant needs to just drop this.
He wasn't, of course, he was held to account for this, thankfully, if we move on to the next.
Where in response to someone who showed support for Terry, he said that he's the same MP that claimed fortunes and expenses of the taxpayers' money, also the same MP who voted that we invade Iraq.
So actually, John Terry's actually turned out to be more politically aware than I thought.
But where is he wrong?
But the hypocrisy is pretty...
Yeah, yeah.
So he, like, the MP actually does have agency in the bombing of Iraq.
Yes, he literally does.
And the destruction of that part of the world leading to the creation of ISIS and the ongoing, like, over 10-year civil war.
Do you want to start contemplating the death toll of that?
So he is more responsible for death and war than Abramovich?
Yes.
Goodness me.
So he's in no position whatsoever to be telling John Terry the virtues he should be signaling.
You could argue that Chris Bryant was kind of caught up in Blair's misleading of the House.
That's the only thing I can say in his defence.
But if we move on slightly, in Chelsea's latest match against Burnley, a section of the Chelsea supporters during the minute dedicated for expressing solidarity of Ukraine just before they take the knee, were heard chanting Abramovich's name over the top.
I thought you might want to hear this, so let's take a listen.
Okay, so what you're hearing, those applauding, they're just expressing solidarity with you, and for the Chelsea fans who are booing, I mean, I mean, I wouldn't go as far as saying that that is enough to qualify as pro-Russian sentiment, but it's pretty, I think, disrespectful.
I hate virtue signaling more than most people do.
But I really don't think it's...
I understand that they want to show appreciation for Roman Obavich and that that platform has almost been taken away and glossed over by the situation in Ukraine.
But that's not the time to do it.
I do dislike the fact that every nook and cranny of life has to be turned over to the political issue of the day.
And I'm very much sympathetic with Ukraine here.
I have very little sympathy for Russia in this invasion.
But having said that, like, where does it end?
We've covered earlier about Russian cats being banned from a cat fancying competition, things like that.
Or when you go and play a hobby, play chess, for example, should you have a minute silence for Ukraine before each game?
It seems like an unacceptable horseshoe again.
Fast forward 50 years, we're going to have a long list of virtue signals that we're going to need to carry out, one in favour of diversity and anti-racism, another in favour of Ukraine, whatever comes of that, of course.
And whatever other media narrative catches the public imagination.
And eventually that will be longer than the 90 minutes we actually have to enjoy the football.
Well, there is that possibility, yeah.
So, again, I imagine that all of those things are underwriting the hostility that the Chelsea fans have to this.
I think we can respect Chelsea fans, even though they're being disrespectful, for taking a stand in defence of essentially the neutrality of football and their right to view football through the lens of football fans.
I don't think they have to view football through the eyes of geopoliticians.
So I respect them to that degree.
I do think that Thomas Tuchel has got this right by saying that, look, it's just not the right moment to be doing this.
He criticised the Chelsea fans for interrupting the moment of applause for Ukraine by singing about their billionaire Russian owner Roman Abramovich.
Again, I'm citing this in the article.
It's not the moment to do this, the Chelsea manager said of the charts that were heard from a significant contingent of the travelling support before the Premier League game against Burnley.
He said, if we show solidarity, we should show solidarity together.
And again, I think we both agree that that's problematic.
Yes, I'm not a fan of solidarity.
I know some people say Douglas Murray has spoken in defense of solidarity and asked why there's very little on the right and so on.
But I think the concept of solidarity itself, a lot of it is very much just unthinking collectivism.
Yeah.
But the Guardian have reported this, in effect, if I proceed.
The gesture, which was met by booze from the Burnley fans, marred a planned minute's applause for the Ukrainian people and felt particularly provocative, given that the Chelsea owner has as yet failed to condemn Vladimir Pusin for his expansionist war in Ukraine.
So, compelled speech, again, from the Guardian.
Look, if I'm being perfectly honest, I think Mr.
Abramovich is either...
Just trying not to get involved.
Or may even be fearing for his life if he says the wrong thing.
Because let's not kid ourselves that, well...
In my research, I've come across a large number of assassinations of oligarchs and their henchmen and people related to them in the history of Russia and Ukraine and their diaspora over the last 30 years.
So if I were him, yes, I probably would be fair enough.
Besides, I mean, perhaps you can read his position or at least understand the presence of...
Or at least some nuance in his position through what his daughter has apparently been saying.
Again, I couldn't find any direct sources about this, but apparently on social media she's been sharing anti-war sentiment and stuff like that.
And if she feels free enough to do that, that she's not going to get a big, I don't know, spanking from her father or whatever, figuratively speaking, of course...
Does that not suggest that perhaps there is some genuine sympathy on Roman Abramovich's part?
Again, I am speculating.
Potentially, but many families do tend to have very different views when it comes to politics.
They do.
But Tickle proceeded to say, we also do this because of what we are as a club.
We show respect and we need our fans to commit to this minute of applause in this moment.
We do it for the people of Ukraine and there is no second opinion about the situation.
No, there aren't.
We are not robots.
There are as many opinions as there are people.
And if that is not the case, then that means people are suffering from, by definition, a psychic epidemic.
I do disagree with him on here.
He's basically saying there is one narrative.
I hate that idea for anything, really.
Yes, absolutely.
Uncontroversial points, he says.
Anyway, they have our thoughts and our support and we should stand together as a club.
And I think we can all stand together and acknowledge just how tragic this situation is.
But just to say that we should get behind one idea of how that tragedy has unveiled...
The idea of cancelling people across the political spectrum simply because they're Russian, I find deeply distasteful.
Yeah.
Well, I would argue that's actually...
What's got us here?
To a considerable degree.
Anyway, would you like to see who's in contention to buy Chelsea?
Oh, go on then.
Yes.
So let's have a look.
Up to ten parties interested with most interests set to come from the United States.
The states are most interested in buying Chelsea.
We're going to get...
Oh, who are the owners of Man United?
The Glazers.
The Glazers.
The Glazers, yes, who are quite literally sucking the capital out of the club and investing it in some stake they have in the NFL, I don't know.
Yes.
It's such a tragic situation at Manchester United that I'm actually...
I've always hated Manchester United and always will, but I'm actually...
Cue the hate comments.
Cue the hate comments.
I actually feel sorry for Manchester United supporters on this issue because they're genuinely sacked.
Say what you will about Roman Abramovich.
He at least respected the football club as an institution.
Yes, he did.
And he didn't invest in it for money.
He invested it to launder money, don't get me wrong.
But he nonetheless did actually invest something in the community, in the club.
And actually made Chelsea one of the elite clubs in the world, to the point where we were actually considered for the European Super League, as awful an idea as that was, of course.
But that can't be said of the new breed of owners that we've seen of late.
Not least those who are most impassionately in favour of the European Super League, such as the owners of Liverpool.
I think Manchester United were another one.
I mean, I don't know how much you know about the European Super League.
Bits and bobs.
It basically would have completely severed itself off from all of the other sporting bodies and being just a standalone league with its own rules for all times.
There would be no interaction with the Champions League.
Because they would be ostracised from it.
No interaction with the domestic leagues or anything like that.
There's a lot of arguments here, to be honest.
It probably deserves a podcast all of its own.
But I can see several things.
One of them being that the sort of island of these super high-paid professional teams seems a bit strange to me.
But it would have seen the death of the sporting elements, actually.
Right.
For a start, it would have been an entirely monetary-driven decision.
But secondly, you don't have the threat of relegation.
And the threat of existential survival is inseparable from what we appreciate about the league format that we have.
It would just be an entertainment business.
And then there would be nothing...
Because it would be entirely internal, almost like a totality in itself, it would become like wrestling.
Yes, it seems to me...
Because the entertainment value would transgress the sporting element.
Right, absolutely.
I also think that...
Well, we'll have to have this discussion another time.
But fundamentally, I think the professionalisation of sport, which has mainly happened in the era of American hegemony following World War II, is something that I'm actually against.
And I think most people...
Don't really realise that this is even a discussion because, for me, sport was basically a British invention.
We invented all of the sports and now we get the privilege of losing at all of them.
But we invented them and spread them all across the world, the various colonies, cricket, football, rugby, so on.
And it was very much an amateur endeavour.
Do you think that the professionalisation of the game has led to it actually being taken away from civil society itself?
Absolutely.
Football has recently become an elitist phenomenon, like the whole crackdown and campaigns against football hooliganism.
Yes, there's something admirable in that.
But what they've largely done in many top clubs is that they've drained away the atmosphere and the soul of the area to turn it into just another sort of upper middle class, global bureaucracy, entertainment venue.
Like, almost interchangeable with any other sports venue.
The fact that the players of Chelsea, for example, have no connection to the area of Chelsea.
They're just millionaire footballers who are talented.
At best, you'll get someone like Romelu Lukaku, who's Belgian, who has been a Chelsea supporter all his life and wears the bands with pride for that reason.
But there's nothing geographical that cements him to that, which can't be said about, for example, John Terry and Frank Lambard, who grew up in the London area.
And yes, Frank Lambard did have to leave West Ham.
To then identify with the west side of London, the better side of London.
I'm sorry, but it's an objective fact.
But nonetheless, that's what made that generation of Chelsea players actually so good.
And almost...
Yes, but it does seem like the association in big-name clubs between the players and the clubs is very, very arbitrary.
The association is basically they were bought, they signed up.
There's very little more to it than that.
You get more atmosphere from smaller clubs, local clubs, places like Colchester or Cambridge.
Yes.
They have more of a connection, but they're still professional players.
You almost feel as if the fans are actually on the pitch with you.
Whereas in these huge stadiums where the stands are so far away, they almost feel permanently abstracted.
And so it almost becomes, that has a transformative effect on how you perform and how you see it together.
That, I always think, has been Arsenal's problem.
Now, the thing is, of course, people will point out that the game is far better now that the players are professionals.
To a degree.
great as in the quality of the game in that sense has got better because it's much more scientific and they go to greater lengths than ever to ensure that the players have the right diet that physically fits and that their heads in the right place.
I think this is fundamentally that there is something unnatural about this and while it may work out for those who succeed the John Terry's and the Frank Lampard's and the Romelu Lukaku's there are many people who want to become footballers at a young age this spend a huge amount of time and sometimes expense into trying to be footballers and they don't get there and this is especially true in other sports such as for example table tennis where international table tennis starts have quite often been trained to play table tennis from before they could walk properly yeah
and i feel like there there are many lives sort of being destroyed by this constant funneling into this this industry this economy and i feel like this would be better if it were not professional if the best players of these sports had a day job fundamentally yes and i know that that's going to be an unpopular opinion but i think that even if it reduces the quality that the playing skill it increases the sporting spirit of the game
i think that there was a stage when you had a perfect balance between the two extremes as as in when when you actually go back to what was it 1993 when the premier league the premier league actually came into existence there was a time when yes you you still had like the grassroots aesthetic that drew people to the game but there was more money being pumped into it you still
The likes of Frank Lambert and John Terry still very much grew up and were trained within that dynamic that you talked about, but they had the interest at an entertainment level that actually allowed more people to watch it, allowed them to play with better players, and then you actually had this...
Another thing that you did see during this time was a huge rise in diving, which, as far as I'm concerned, has made a lot of football just unwatchable.
And that's because the financial stakes are so high that just making a pathetic dive, if it gets you a free kick or a penalty that changes the game and changes the league, is worth it.
That is a reflection of how, again, I suppose, market forces that have encroached in the game are actually having a transformative effect on the players.
They earn so much money.
Whatever club they ultimately go to, they're fine.
Lionel Messi earns about £500 million a week after tax.
That's insane for any job that you do.
But that is the amount of money...
£500 million?
Surely not.
No, sorry.
Blah!
No, £500,000 after tax.
Still.
Yeah, we're only 50 years away from that.
Shall we wrap up by actually seeing who's actually on the shortlist to buy Chelsea Football Club?
Yes, let's do that.
Let's scroll down a little bit.
There is a genuine Chelsea fan actually interested in someone who I've never actually heard of.
A little bit more, a little bit more.
It's not Liz Truss, is it?
It's not Liz Truss, no.
It's not Bill Gates?
It's not Bill Gates.
I did have a nightmare.
So it's either Roshin Bayrak, Turkish businessman, Thomas Ricketts, chairman of Chicago Cubs, Nick Candy, who apparently is a property developer, and Chelsea supporter.
So he's probably the most promising.
The other is interesting.
It's Conor McGregor, who I never realised.
Conor McGregor?
Yes, he's a Manchester United fan.
So please, no, not Conor McGregor.
Oof.
But yes, it is indeed, whoever buys the club, it is the end of an era.
I'd like to say, on an apolitical level, that is, and not hold me to a political account for this.
Thank you, Mr.
Roman Abramovich.
It has been one hell of a wild ride.
And, well, yeah, that's all for now on that.
And without further ado, let's go to the video comments.
So I had to watch the Angry Birds movie with my nephews a while back, and I was surprised at how aggressively red-pilled this movie was for something that was made by Hollywood like a decade ago.
It's basically a massive screed against a migrant crisis where the main character is the one sane man in a degenerate clown world populated by normies and coomers who then get their children stolen by these pig refugees.
And then they have to bring out their inner dinosaur to get back at those mus...
I mean, pigs.
Yes, pigs.
That's what we call them.
I'm not sure that motivates me enough to watch the Angry Birds movie.
No, I'm not sure either, but I wonder how much of that interpretation is in the eye of the beholder as well.
Yeah.
But it does sound hilarious.
No, it does.
No, thank you for that insight, nonetheless.
Just to remind everybody again, all you new guys who skipped the blue hell holes and moved over to Texas, if you want to stop the insanity that's going on, like what you're seeing in Dallas and all that, you need to establish your residency, register to vote, and actually vote.
It's about a year.
Y'all should be able to do all that.
And this is what I was saying earlier about how that we're basically under siege on the local population.
We are losing.
We need reinforcements.
Yep, make sure you register to vote.
Voting is good.
Yep.
Let's go to the next one.
I've finally come to the decision of what I can do for you guys on the next Gold Tickle.
I've got a treat for all of you.
I'm going to tell you guys, after I'm done hearing different people's opinions on different politics things, I've got a treat for you.
I'm going to tell you guys about the Dojo Wars.
The Dojo Wars.
It's more stupid than it sounds, I promise.
And also as well, yes I was eating raw steak.
Deal with it.
Brave man.
Then again, it depends on the quality of the steak, whether that's actually going to result in imminent...
I could make a long comment here, but anyway, let's carry on.
What Wocus would describe as a story about privileged, white, heterosexual, cis men is actually the compelling telling of two men struggling to train for their beloved sport, one against anti-Semitism, the other with a profound faith in God.
Strong characters and principles abound in this film, for example the Christian refusing to compete in the 100-yard dash due to it being held on Sunday.
Additionally, the masterful Vangelis theme was played by the crew of the Afro-Vulcan bomber on the return from the successful Operation Black Buck.
Have you seen the film?
I haven't, no.
It's been on my list.
What do you reckon?
Oh, I've heard it's a classic.
And that does sound really good.
I'll put it on the list.
Yes.
Let's go to the next one.
The interesting thing about Audius is it's based on the blockchain.
They sell a coin, the audio coin, and you basically can earn cryptocurrency by listening and by uploading and getting streams on your own music.
Pretty interesting stuff.
Check out Bandit Man's first release, Telekinetics, March 25th on Audios.
That sounds good.
If any of our audience wants to check that out, then go for it.
It was a little difficult to hear over the music.
Yeah, I don't know.
Audio Bitcoin?
Amen, I don't know.
Audio currency or whatever.
I haven't looked into it.
No, but I will now.
Thank you for that.
Cheers.
So the last couple of days, I've just tried to figure out what is going on in my own country.
And believe me, there is a lot going on and there's a lot of propaganda in the news networks.
This hasn't been easy.
We are already part of NATO, but this June, we are going to have a referendum to see if we are also going to be a part of the EU army.
Which would mean we would be part of two alliances and pay into both of them, even though we are facing an economic crisis just like everybody else.
Through NATO, the United States has offered to build some military bases on Danish soils, which would include having some nukes on Danish soils.
The Americans really, really want some nukes here, and our Prime Minister hasn't outright rejected it.
She had to say no, because it would be massively unpopular among the people of Denmark, but she has been open to further negotiations.
So all in all, it feels like we are preparing for a potential war.
And I also can't help but question, it really feels like that there are people on top who wants it, who really wants to start a war.
I mean, everything that has been done It feels like they are escalating the war and the animosity rather than de-escalating it.
Everything feels like an escalating thing.
I'm just asking who on top is it that really, really wants us to be at war?
It just feels that way.
I don't know what you think, guys, but thank you for the videos and sorry for the long comments.
Thank you.
No, not at all.
That was quite interesting.
So there's a similar case in Slovakia, a commenter let me know recently, which is that Slovakia basically installed some American airstrips or allowed the Americans to use their air bases in January of this year while the Ukraine crisis was kicking off, despite the fact that it's apparently against the Slovakian constitution and it was massively unpopular as well.
Because, of course, the Americans can just fly new B-52s down there.
What are you going to do about it?
Yeah, well, they're the Americans.
Yeah, but with regards to NATO, I thought you were going to say the referendum was to leave NATO, because that is a referendum I would be interested in.
Just on the subjects of an EU army, given what's currently happening, and I think I know what your answer is going to be, does it seem like a better or worse idea to have an EU army at this point?
I would say worse.
Well, given that Ukraine are literally in it now.
Yeah.
I would also...
Well, they're not yet, but...
In transition.
But transition takes a long time in the EU. Yeah, they're speeding it up.
Yeah.
The last point I wanted to make was with the regards of this all seeming like there are people at the top who want it.
My impression is a bit different.
I think while it can seem like there is an evil will directing this...
I think it's more like, there's a famous poem that Churchill wrote in his account of World War II, which is, who is in charge of the clattering train, he quoted.
And basically it feels like, again to quote that Pope from back in the day, you'll be amazed with how little understanding the world is actually run.
It's like a machine with no director that's just sort of careering out of control sometimes.
And that's what it feels like to me at the moment.
Yeah, that's what happens when you base the bold order on rationalistic principles that don't serve human interests.
That's what happens when your leadership are all on Twitter.
Yes, and that.
Let's go to the next comment.
I've been thinking about white privilege, appropriately Anglo-privilege.
Sophie's changed.
And what about the discussion bothers me?
What I've realized is I'm irritated not that it's real or that I obviously benefit from it, No, what bothers me is that it isn't an exclusive privilege, despite accusations that it's tied to skin tone.
It is a privilege offered to every person on the globe, as it is simply a worldview.
White privilege is a way of life that every human on the planet is free to pursue.
When people complain about white privilege, what they're really saying is they want the results of the Anglo worldview without the burden that comes with that worldview, such as hard work, sacrifice, delayed gratification, Real tolerance and humility to name a few.
What do you reckon?
All-white privilege is always referred to as those who happen to have the, I suppose, the privilege of inheriting an immediate connection with the parents' culture.
You can't just collapse that into whiteness and it's egregious to think that you should.
It's the result of being born into a community that naturally accommodates you.
And that's something that applies to several nations and races across the world.
If you wouldn't white have...
There's no such thing, for example, as white privilege in, I don't know, sub-Saharan Africa, for example, that you would be received very, very differently in sub-Saharan Africa than we would here.
And so presenting it as almost like a metaphysical entity that must be resolved by diversity is based on a misnomer of what...
Yeah, but he's also making a very interesting claim there because he's saying he's basically trying to equate white privilege with the Anglo-Saxon mentality, so to speak, as defined by, oh, was it the Smithsonian did an exhibition this a while back?
So he's attempting a new definition of white privilege.
In that it's hard work, graft, blah blah blah, like this mentality, and then saying that people who complain about white privilege just want the benefits, they feel entitled to the benefits and are resentful for not getting them, but they don't have the mentality that makes them work hard to achieve.
I understand the point of it, but we have to understand that the term white privilege is set up from the start to have a reifying effect on how you understand whiteness.
It's It's a fundamentally toxic idea in its construction.
We shouldn't even call it white privilege because you don't have privileges in virtue of the race that you happen to be.
They're simply cultural affiliations and to call them privileges and that you shouldn't be able to enjoy them.
And much of it is negatively defined.
They'll say that not being hungry is a white privilege and things like that, which is nonsense.
It is.
It's reversing everything so that with the white privilege perspective, every good thing in your life is turned into a bad thing.
So there we go.
And as John points out quite astutely, it's not a privilege if you are earning it, by definition.
Let's move to the next comment.
So what do you guys think about the whole Kiev-Kiev thing?
I mean...
I don't know, maybe the last couple years of people demanding that people use their assigned names and pronouns shite has just jaded me, but I hear people telling me to use a different name and all it does is just click the back of my head into going, no you fucking virtue signaler.
I don't know.
What do you guys think?
You guys haven't really talked about it that much.
I do have an opinion on that.
But first of all, get Jordan Peterson moment, right?
Get your sleep schedule in order.
Get your diet in order.
Go out, get some sunshine, get some exercise.
No excuse for lifelessness.
Sort yourself out.
On the Kiev-Kyiv thing, do you have an opinion?
Yes, I've always used Kiev and will continue to do so, because I have no other reason.
But there is a reason why we do this, which most people have not seen comment on, and this is that when we talk about foreign language words, there is a convention in all languages, as far as I'm aware, not just English.
That you express the foreign word using the phonemes that are present in your vocabulary, your native language.
So you don't hear people saying, oh, I went upstairs, I had a croissant the other day, and I had some au sushi for lunch, because it sounds ridiculous.
It would sound like you're insulting them.
John said, by the way, that all the Ukrainians he knows actually use that spell in Kiev.
Yes, but I want to lean on that point that we do not use foreign phonemes generally as a principle.
And it's because of that that we try not to use words like Türkiye or Kyiv and things like that because it's importing strange phonemes.
And another part of it is custom.
Everyone knows what we mean by Kiev.
Kiev has been Kiev for literally centuries.
It goes back to the Kievan Rus, not the Kievan Rus, and so on.
And that's why I think we're perfectly justified to not alter our pronunciation because of a recent political fad.
Absolutely.
Let's go to the next one.
Why would I read a book on thermonuclear war if the best way to win one would be to have a preemptive strike, place Triton missile submarines 100 miles off the coast of your target and fire away so as to lessen the time that they have to react?
Of course, there's going to be a fallout and other considerations such as, oh no, That person's a mass murderer, but anything different could result in losing that war.
We'd be better off reading poetry, the beautiful poetry of Donald Trump.
Yes, I think I'd much rather read that poetry, if I'm honest.
Yeah, the thermonuclear war is not very cheerful, is it?
No, it's not.
Next one.
Stop me when I'm wrong.
For the past seven odd years, the same people who have called me a Nazi for...
Thinking that, you know, our borders are secure, should be secured, and the guy who wants to bring jobs back to the United States is a good dude.
But all of a sudden, they've decided that the Azov Battalion, genuine Nazis, who crucify people and post the videos, are good dudes.
I think so.
Am I taking crazy pills?
Hey.
It is amazing how Nazis have almost been the most common reference, or shall we say, the pejorative term for those who fall outside the woke zeitgeist, and now the woke has suddenly almost...
Abandoned that.
I remember saying in the first week of the conflict, if you told me that in three to five days the entire progressive sphere would be cheering for literal Nazis and not even Antifa, I would have thought, no way, dude.
I never thought I would live to see the reification of reified progressive politics.
You're going to have to break that down a bit more.
Well, I've always said that woke politics is the reification of progressive politics because the image of delivering change is more valuable than actually delivering change for those on the receiving end of the social strata.
The reification of that would entail actually subsuming far-right politics into those ideals.
So you would basically have the intersectional flag with the swastika on the front of it.
Bloody hell.
Yes.
Damn.
Right, let's move to the next comment.
So I have a friend in Russia who asked me a month ago, I really want to come to America.
Will Americans accept me even though I'm from Russia?
I said, yeah, of course.
I was proud to say we're the best in the whole world at that.
We'd love to have you.
And today she told me she's getting a new bank card from a Chinese bank because her PayPal has been canceled.
She asked me, so what is NATO anyways?
It seems like it only exists to hurt Russia.
Is that right?
I don't even know how to answer that.
I don't even tell her anymore.
That's the direction that it has been developing in, yes.
That was always its objective.
Pretty much.
It was defensive in some senses, but military alliances are never purely defensive.
no oh that's Tony D and Little Joan I see the western elites now as guys in a crap game who bet they don't pass bar When you are betting in craps, pass line means you're betting with the die roller.
Don't pass means you're betting against them.
The odds are with you, but you have to bet more money.
So, the Western elites, I think, are betting against their own economies, which they happen to control, and they're going to tank them to enrich themselves personally at the expense of everybody else.
Unfortunately, that analogy is entirely lost on me.
It doesn't help that I'm not familiar with the game that it's using.
But our American viewers can tell us if that analogy makes sense.
Let us know in the comments.
Let's go to the next one.
I do wonder about sanctions on Russia at all from the start.
Sanctions might have indirect effects on the military, but it has a very direct effect on civilians.
If sanctions are to be used as weapons, then you're making no difference between military and civilian involvement on either side.
You're making it a total war.
I think the West needs to be clear in action and response.
I think we need to show that there is a clear difference between military and civilian involvement.
I think it should have been on Russians to start sanctions, at which point it would be fair to respond in kind.
Thoughts?
Yeah, but we do know, though, that the intention, or at least half the intention for the economic sanctions is to destabilise Russia from within, so as to cause an uprising against Putin.
Hence why Putin now is doubling down on the pro-Russian propaganda, as Callum covered yesterday, I believe.
Yes.
Yeah, that's why he's done that.
One of the problems that we have in the West is that we can't, because we are so left-wing generally in terms of the political establishment, they struggle to define boundaries, clear boundaries.
And obviously with the technological infiltration of the entirety of the political and economic sphere...
It is very murky.
First of all, who has power, what constitutes a powerful entity, a political entity, and what the difference is between a civilian and a military person.
So because of this, they have thrown themselves full tilt into this economic war, and we are the ones who are going to bear the price.
We are, sadly, yeah.
Let's go to the next one.
So I wanted to show you guys this video, but unfortunately it's a bit long and I didn't have time to edit it.
To give you guys some context, this audience member here was telling the panelists about the current conflict in the Ukraine from a Russian point of view.
However, this panelist here just ignored all what he said and told him to leave simply because he didn't agree to his opinions about Russia's involvement in the Ukraine.
We know, we fully understand because we've been accused of this many times ourselves, haven't we?
Baselessly, I would like to add.
Yes, 100%.
Yeah, so the thing is, right, the attitude of the West towards Russia has been described as deaf, dumb and blind for the past 10 years or more.
And that is just a perfect analogy of it.
As soon as anyone says anything vaguely explaining or...
Russia might take the steps that it's taken, they are immediately apologists.
Yes.
And so it doesn't matter what they have to say.
It's actually an SJW cancelling tactic, really.
No, it is.
That's precisely what it is.
Yeah.
So it is quite frustrating.
And when that happens on a geopolitical scale, my opinion is that it contributes to causing wars.
So well done.
Yeah.
On that note, let's go to the written comments on Vlad the Impaler.
Yes, so Students of History says, I can understand and respect Zelensky being an aggressive and zealous advocate for the people of Ukraine.
Of course, we understand that too.
He's the president, it's his job, I get that.
On the other hand, we have the exact same situation of, is it worth it?
And that's the thing, isn't it?
The last thing the world wants is for the conflict in Ukraine, right?
To go beyond Ukraine.
And it seems utterly awful to be in this position where we're just watching Ukraine sink to an army that's to a regime that quite clearly wants something particular with it.
But worth saving it, or trying to save it, would almost certainly drag us down with it in a more complicated sense, and that analogy gives credit too.
Yeah.
Yeah, Free Will 2112 says, No matter what lies the media tell, no matter the hype about Ukraine, is a sovereign country and has every right to defend itself from an aggressive invader.
Even up to their total destruction, if they so wish.
To their total destruction, yes.
And we have no right to stop them defending his country.
Of course we don't.
He also has every right to ask for external help in any way he can.
And we have every right to deny him this.
You cannot support the right to self-defense and deny Ukraine its right to self-defense.
I do not think we should be militarily involved in Ukraine, but we have no right to stop them defending themselves.
We're not castigating them as villains.
I would push back on that massively.
But I do think we have every right, in virtue of our own interest, to take issue with the fact that he is guilt-tripping at this point.
Yeah, I think so.
I think it's the combination of that and...
Where the Western media has placed him.
They've placed him on such a pedestal that these utterances have disproportionate impact rather than just the head of a foreign state.
I'd also like to point out that despite the spicy thumbnail of this segment, we are absolutely not casting Ukraine as villains.
Absolutely.
That was entirely playful.
Salih Minon says, I can understand Zelensky being obsessed at Britain and NATO for not getting directly involved, but whilst he's right that it's awful in Ukraine rights now, what he's asking for from Britain is to bring the same levels of destruction and death to Britain as well, maybe even worse, given its two nuclear powers directly squaring off.
Absolutely, that is exactly my position.
Student of History says, Are these guys going to be on the front line?
Presumably Piers Morgan and Nicola Sturgeon.
Yes, quite.
I wish.
Almost certainly not.
Or are the first landing boats hitting the beaches at St.
Petersburg, Mamansk, or Arkhangelsk?
Arkhangelsk.
No?
Then quiet them, please.
Yes, I really hope that they take your advice.
Fran Drieger says, we promise to protect Ukraine.
And we are protecting Ukraine within what we can do without actually causing mass destruction beyond Ukraine.
As I've pointed out in the segment, we've been supporting their militarisation for eight years and we continue to funnel huge amounts of economic and military aid into the country.
There are a few signs that that's going to stop.
If that's not protection, then I don't know what is.
Exactly.
Silly Midon says, Can Briss and Ivic Scotland from the Union move Trident south of the border first so they're not a nuclear power, then give them a plate and let them take off using themselves?
I would love to see that.
Kevin Fox says the media are doing with the Ukraine situation exactly what they did with COVID, as you said.
Zelensky, vax are good.
Putin, anti-vax are bad.
I think the distinction here is a lot genuinely clear on the Zelensky-Putin front, but they seem to have an inability to see any nuance in anything, just as they called the Canadian truckers anti-vaxxers, even though the majority were vaccinated.
They are pushing Zelensky as a titular hero, regardless of the openly neo-Nazi troops he has on the ground.
Don't get me wrong, Russia should have stayed out of Ukraine, but Ukraine isn't the defenseless and pure babe in arms the press are making it out to be.
Yeah, they're just turning it into like a football match and you root for the underdog and it's simple as that, but there's far more murky stuff going on in that region.
There's so much corruption, you wouldn't believe it.
Oh yes.
Reece Sims says gas prices are now roughly £1.80 per litre in the UK and $1.20 per litre in the USA. At this rate, if we did decide to go to war, which by God I hope we don't be too...
We'd have to bankrupt ourselves a thousand times over just to get our military vehicles to Ukraine, let alone the cost of the war in both price and lives, in and of itself.
Seems that the dollar and the sterling gets more and more meaningless by the day, and worst of all, our leaders just seemingly sit and watch it happen.
Well, I'd like to point out that America, at least, has a massive strategic reserve, and its military will be more than fine, I think, in going to war.
People tend to dramatically underestimate the military capability of NATO. It is quite formidable.
It's huge.
And last on this segment, Chris Wolfe says, History is playing out very similar to Ender's Game and the Ender's Shadow series.
After defeating a monstrous enemy The banning world leaders begin to see The enemy in each other Chinese aggression leads to war with India A modern caliphate spans half the globe The Allies become opponents Russia plays a large role as well Including with biological tests and research I presume that's what happens in Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow Yeah, I'm not familiar with it, but people can smell this, Chris Wolff says.
Again, I'd have to familiarise myself with that before I can add any more, but thank you for that.
Thank you.
On weapons of mass destruction, Ignacio Junquera says, the virtue signaling about Ukraine is especially disgusting to me.
People from all around the world are actually cheering at images of destroyed Russian vehicles or tales of their defeats, ignoring the fact of how many actual teenagers are suffering and getting killed on either side, and cheering for a team with no nuance or empathy for the poor grunts.
Yeah.
It's not football.
No, it's not.
Student of History says, Someone can pop the Chinese housing bubble and the whole house of cards would collapse.
If they don't advance quick enough to solve 35 years of one-child policy, they will collapse.
China does have weaknesses.
It certainly does.
Yeah, absolutely.
The scale and fragility of those weaknesses will only be revealed by history, but they do have weaknesses.
S.H. Silva says, Trump was smart to try and get the Saudis, Brazil and India more on side in future trade conflicts with China and retain the supremacy of the dollar, even willing to come to the table with Russia until it was derailed by Democrat-manufactured scandals.
Absolutely.
Biden seems intent to pee that all away in his stance on Russia, in effect driving all these states to China and now looking to beg to states like Iran and Venezuela for oil and gas.
We did that before Russia and Ukraine even happened, arguably.
Yeah.
But this is the problem with virtue signaling as a foundation of national policy.
You end up doing silly things.
Christopher Brinkley says all weapons are chemical and through the lens of the extended phenotype all weapons are biological.
Come on.
I know where you're getting at.
Not trying to be pedantic, but just something I think about when the legacy media bombards with their buzzwords.
I think there is a difference.
But I expect when you've spent some time on the battlefield, the idea of a humane weapon is a little bit laughable.
Yes, or a legal war.
Certainly the thermobaric stuff is just an entirely media-inflated nonsense hysteria point, as we discussed last weekend.
Freewell2112 says, but do the Chinese and Russians have their own problems?
Yes, demographic decline not least amongst them, especially for Russia, and are the Chinese popular in their areas of influence?
Perhaps not as much as we think.
Yeah, also worth bearing in mind.
George Hap says, maybe these celebrities think they are so untouchable that even World War III with nuclear weapons will not affect them.
How about we follow the ancient tradition and send these warmonkers to the front lines to lead people into battle?
I'm sure they won't mind.
Frandriga says, Biden.
Who is actually Biden?
One erroneous action after another.
It goes without saying, but I'm saying it anyway.
Here's an embarrassing situation for this country.
Absolutely.
And finally, Bradley says, It's hard to say how much Russia has misjudged the invasion since we don't know their timetables or what they planned for.
It hasn't been a long invasion for the amount of territory they've taken.
My real concern is that Russia and China have estimated exactly what could happen and have been preparing for a while to create a parallel economy.
It could be that our politicians are just blundering their way into exactly what opposing powers were hoping for.
I have to be honest, I think that this narrative at the moment about China and Russia being best friends ever since they made that joint statement in Beijing is a little bit...
Simplistic.
Simplistic, yeah.
And again, I don't have the space to explain why that is, but it's a friendship in...
It's a friendship of mutual convenience, like a lot of these.
It's a friendship of mutual convenience.
And a unification against the problems of the present world order, that members of the world order have actually acknowledged the problems as well.
So I would...
Approach that with healthy scepticism.
On Chelsky FC, Alexander Schoberg says, I think it is imperative for many states to have a war or conflicts.
There is a lot of pent-up rage from Covid, so it acts as a catharsis.
Hate is the most unifying of human emotions.
That's not on Chelsky, is it?
I actually think that there are good things that come out of war psychologically in the broad sweep of history.
I'm not saying there are good things coming out of this war, but in war generally.
That is not one of them in my books, but there we go.
Rowan Alcock says, Gentlemen, is solidarity really worth anything, but it must be bullied out of the individuals assembled?
Yeah.
For my part, I have had a gutful of public events being reduced to the expected virtue signalling and the approbation of those who fail to comply.
There's a great statement by Milan Kundera, which is that the Great March is the keach of communism.
So there's just this aesthetic of everyone being sort of coerced and bullied into this false solidarity, that they must march together and wave the flag.
And it's a little bit grotesque.
It is, though it's not just communism that that has entailed.
Of course not.
But Ignacio...
Juncker, I think.
Juncker says, "The steady growth of Russian hate condoned by Western governments and corporations makes me fear that the Russian diaspora will end up internment camps and air assets seize if tensions continue.
We really are sleepwalking into redoing the 20th century." Again, I would push back on that.
It's not the same situation.
It's not the same regime.
It's not the same man.
No, and putting them in internment camps would probably be humane by modern standards.
What they would actually do is just suspend all of their access to money and drive them onto the streets to starve to death like humane civilised societies.
But I don't think it's that bad.
Because that's equally civilised, isn't it?
And on that note, I think we are out of time.
Oh yes, we are.
Thank you for tuning in.
Hopefully you weren't lured by the overly clickbaity Vlod the Impaler thumbnail, but I think John had great fun putting that together, so go and blame him, not us.
Anyway, thank you for listening today, and we'll catch you next time.
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