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March 23, 2022 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:27:19

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #355

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Seaters for the 23rd of March 2022.
	Today I'm joined by Thomas.
	Hello.
	And we're going to discuss the disturbing spectacle of mob justice in Ukraine.
	The mysterious case of Send Her Back with regards to Nazanin Shahadi.
	Nazanin Zagari-Radcliffe.
	Zagari-Radcliffe.
	And finally, the prospect of food shortages incurred by the conflict in Ukraine.
	But before we get into that, let's check what we have on the website.
	So today we uploaded a new article from John Tangney, which is free to all, I do believe.
	It's called Ukrainian Fascists and Western Liberals.
	It goes into detail about just how delusional liberals are about the neo-Nazi presence in Ukraine.
	Then we also have a video by Thomas, Critical Base Theory, number 8, also free, Ancient Liberty and the Dark Enlightenment.
	So what's this about, Thomas?
	This is basically my overview of the merits of the Dark Enlightenment, why we shouldn't ignore it as an intellectual tradition, and essentially, well, why we should take its position on Enlightenment to reason more seriously.
	And for people who aren't aware, what is the Dark Enlightenment's main claim?
	The Dark Enlightenment's main claim is that liberal democracy is destined to collapse and is an illegitimate foundation through which to found a state.
	It's a big claim.
	Sounds like it's worth discussing.
	I've also seen the editing on this video and I think it's particularly good.
	Our editor also did a great job on this one.
	We also have Looking Beyond Greta, an article by Beau which has been republished concerning climate and the way that she sort of appears on the stage and discussing the stage management, perhaps, of her political career.
	And finally, we have a gold Zoom call, which will be this Friday at 3.30 UK time.
	Just keep an eye out for time zone differences.
	I believe in some parts of the US they've gone to British summertime, whereas we haven't yet.
	Okay.
	And finally, there was a hangout.
	What is Britishness?
	Britishness.
	Britishness.
	Is that this afternoon?
	Yes, it is this afternoon.
	Sorry, I'm struggling to keep up with all of the content that we're putting out on the site.
	We have a lovely portrait of Tony Blair in his aspect of us, the evil dictator, just glaring into the camera there.
	Right, but without further ado, let's get into the news.
	So, mob justice in Ukraine?
	What are we talking about?
	What does that mean?
	Well, it appears that Roma gypsies and Russians appear to be the target of witch hunts and abuse in Ukraine.
	We are going to cover some of these incidents and expand to a broader discussion of whether neo-Nazism is mainstream in Ukraine, or whether it's a tiny fringe movement dropped up entirely by Russian propagandists.
	Now, we're going to have to play some fairly unpleasant footage to illustrate this point, so if you feel like making yourself a cup of tea, now would be the time.
	So let's have a look at what we've got.
	- I love you, what do you want? - I'm not going to do anything.
	- It was a lie, it was a lie. - I'm going to beat you.
	- I'm going to beat you, you're a bad man.
	- You're a bad man, you're a bad man.
	- You're a bad man.
	- You're a bad man.
	- You're a bad man. - I'm going to beat you. - I'm going to beat you.
	- Yes, I'm going to beat you.
	- Yes, I'm going to beat you.
	I said, shoot!
	I don't hear you!
	You're a head!
	You're sick!
	What the hell?
	You're pregnant! - I'm pregnant! - You're pregnant? - Who did you get pregnant? - She's pregnant!
	She's pregnant! - We'll shoot.
	We'll shoot.
	You're sick!
	I'm going to get you in the head.
	I'm going to get you.
	That is absolutely disgusting.
	Absolutely.
	We're sorry we had to show you that.
	Absolute scumbag.
	It's vile.
	And, of course, there are two people involved in that.
	It's not just the guy on camera, but the guy holding the camera as well, involved in the beating and humiliating of those girls, who we believe are Roma, or gypsies in Ukraine.
	Rory geolocated the Incident 2 coordinates in Kiev, so from that part of it, it seems legit.
	But there's still a lot of missing context.
	The questions are, of course, when did this happen?
	It doesn't look like it's the middle of a war zone right now.
	Who are the victims and who are the abusers?
	Again, remember the person holding the camera.
	What are their motivations?
	Unfortunately, we can't speak the lingo and don't know.
	It happens in broad daylight, though.
	A police van even appears to drive past and nobody intervenes as these women are abused.
	It's really vile.
	I can't believe it, to be honest.
	Now, there's apparently more context here, but oh, look at that.
	The account's been suspended.
	Predictable.
	Some of the account is available on the archives, though.
	The clips are missing, but as we can see, it's just someone uploading clip after clip of what he claims is evidence of paramilitaries, criminal thugs and neo-Nazis running rampant in Ukraine.
	The guy's account is located to Glasgow, but...
	We must remember it's quite possible that this guy could be a literal Russia propaganda account, just uploading loads of things to make Ukraine look bad in the middle of a war.
	It is a war at the moment, and we do have the fog of war, which makes it hard to interpret some of this stuff.
	But it's also possible that it's just some normal guy trying to show that the Ukrainians, for all of their virtues, are not perhaps the saints that our media wishes us to believe.
	Whatever the case, it doesn't make the footage untrue, does it?
	But there's more, sadly.
	Let's go to the next one.
	The quote, the green paint signifies Russian speaker, according to this claim.
	They call the Russians orcs, hence the green paint.
	You won't see this on Western mainstream media.
	Now take that with a pinch of salt, because as we'll discover, there's a bit of a long history of this kind of abuse.
	But what you can see for people listening, there's what looks like a girl essentially duct taped to a lamppost with her hands behind her back and some kind of ugly green stuff smeared all over her face.
	Looks pretty grim.
	Just a bit.
	Then, is this the right context, the guy that's put up, or is it just war propaganda?
	Don't know.
	But there is quite a lot of footage in this vein.
	If it is propaganda, it's quite a concerted effort, and this clip is horrendous.
	We'll just show the first ten minutes of it.
	Ten seconds, sorry.
	Sorry, 10 seconds.
	So here you have two girls tied to a tree with their trousers and underwear pulled down, being beaten, abused by the locals.
	And it goes on and on.
	Let's move to the next page.
	It is absolutely vile.
	And then here's more who have had their faces painted with green.
	Again, are they gypsies?
	Are they Roma?
	Are they Russians?
	Are they Ukrainians?
	Are they looters?
	Are they robbers?
	Who knows?
	The context remains unclear, but these sorts of photos are appearing all over the country.
	And if we go to the next clip...
	What have you done, guys?
	I think we get the point, John.
	But you can see, at least one of those is a boy, and it might be a father and son or two brothers.
	They're tied to a lamppost, again, with green stuff on their faces and their trousers around their ankles.
	The caption says, forgive my pronunciation, which translates to sweet tooth marauder, implying the pair are being punished for stealing sweets.
	I wish I could say more, but I'm just genuinely so shocked by the barbarism of this humiliation.
	Now, let's get into the green stuff around their faces.
	So, this green stuff is a Soviet-era antiseptic mixture called Zelyonka.
	I can see where this is going already.
	This might, in fact, be the Ukrainian version of milkshaking.
	It's been used in Ukrainian and, in fact, Russian politics since at least 2014 and probably a lot further back.
	As we see from this article here, now this is Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, which is a very pro-Euromaidan website, but still.
	What is Zelionka, and why does Ukraine's opposition keep getting doused in it?
	And here, again, they're pushing the narrative that it's only the opposition, i.e.
	the pro-Europe people, who get this stuff chucked at them, which appears not to be the case.
	Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the chairman of Ukraine's opposition Batkivchina, a fatherland faction, donned a crisp white shirt before travelling to Kharkiv on February 12th to visit jailed ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
	That might have been a mistake.
	Yatsenyuk's shirt and much of his face was left dripping in deep green liquid after he and his first deputy, Oleksandr Turchinov, were confronted by a pair of assailants carrying spray bottles and more than a dozen vials of a Soviet-era topical antiseptic known as Zelionka.
	Zelyonka, which is frequently translated as brilliant green, has been used for years in Ukraine, Russia and elsewhere to treat minor cuts and scrapes, often giving its wearers a slightly ghastly, zombie-like aspect.
	But in recent months, Zelionka has also enjoyed a resurgence as an extremely distinctive form of non-lethal aggression in Ukraine's Euromaidan protests.
	Pro-government activists, mainly young people in the so-called Titushki enforcement brigades, have repeatedly used the antiseptic to attack prominent members of the political opposition and even protesters themselves.
	Pro-government activists.
	That was those, what, defending Viktor Yanukovych?
	That's right.
	So, again, we must remember, particularly in this era, there was a lot of criminality sort of mixed in with politics, and so you have gangs or even sort of state agents who are a little better than gangs who roam around attacking opposition members.
	This is quite common in Eastern Europe, I think.
	There's just more evidence of potential neo-Nazi presence at the heart of the Euromaiden movement.
	Well, in this case, it's actually not damning of the Euromaidan, according to this narrative, at least.
	No, but there's political opportunism within affiliating themselves with the movement, right?
	I think this actually, if anything, supports the Euromaidan position.
	Yeah, that's what I mean.
	Yeah, it's showing that...
	But not for Eurocentric ends.
	Right.
	If we move on, so this is an example from Russia, where Alexei Navalny has been attacked by brilliant Green Dye.
	Now, Navalny, he was allegedly attempted to be poisoned by Russian special forces, I think, and he's currently in a Russian jail, going through a Russian court for various things, because he is a major opposition leader to Putin, and quite anti-Putin.
	And as they quote here, he was also attacked with the die.
	With Navalny, it's worth pointing out that, according to various sources I've read, he is actually at least as much of a Russian nationalist as Putin is.
	So while we like to portray him as the pro-democracy opposition candidate, I think he's just the opposition candidate.
	But there we go.
	So what conclusions can we draw from this absolute mess?
	The first instinct might be to view these incidents and conclude that Ukraine is a tolerable place and Ukrainians are all nasty, but that's not true, of course.
	People carrying out this behavior constitute a small minority of the Ukrainian population.
	We've had plenty of correspondence with locals on the ground who emphasize that neo-Nazism in Ukraine is totally not mainstream.
	A common theme among people writing in is to make a hard distinction between old Ukraine, i.e.
	the USSR, And the Ukraine SSR and new Ukraine, a Ukraine attempting to develop, democratize and Europeanize.
	The old Ukraine is portrayed as corrupt, abusive and hopeless and often identified with the way that Russia is structured under Vladimir Putin, while the new Ukraine is likened to a European ideal.
	The general perception is that in modern Ukraine there is less corruption, less child abuse, less mendacity and that Europeanization is to thank for this.
	What do you think of that?
	I think it's...
	It does seem as if the use of this tactic is pretty politically indiscriminate.
	As in, its application doesn't seem to be backed up by, shall we say, a homogenous goal.
	The claim that it's only used to mark out Russians as orcs, for example, seems weak.
	Yeah, I mean, on the one hand, the Vauni is wrongly affiliated sometimes with that Euromiden vision.
	Given that he is, of course, an opposition to Putin, and you rightly correct that narrative by saying that, in fact, he's not.
	He's a Russian nationalist.
	He's just anti-kleptocracy.
	But...
	Well, certainly anti-kleptocracy that he's outside of.
	Yes, of course.
	Yeah, advocating for a change in the guard, if you like.
	I'm curious.
	No, I'm rambling.
	But many Ukrainians do not seem aware, from our correspondence, of the connection between the Azov Battalion and Neo-Nazism.
	No, they're oblivious to it.
	Many mistake their Wolf's Angle SS iconography for something like Cossack symbology.
	Let me untangle that.
	So this is Cossack symbology.
	I actually really like this design.
	Yeah, it's aesthetically pleasing.
	Very much so.
	And quite unique, and something that's now been seen all around the world, as all eyes are on Ukraine.
	But as symbols go, as far as I know, it seems to represent a bird, doesn't it, in a way?
	Yes, I can see that.
	Very nice.
	This is not Cossack symbology, this one here.
	No.
	No, you've got, what's that, a white sun or a black sun?
	That's the black sun symbol.
	Okay.
	Yes.
	And then in front of that, of course, is the very obvious Z crossed.
	Yes.
	Remarkably similar to a swastika.
	Yes, it does, now that you mention it, yeah.
	But that's apparently an SS symbol.
	And, yeah, I think it's hard to argue that this is not Nazi symbology.
	Yeah.
	You can make a case.
	If you want to make a case in the comments, go ahead.
	We'll read it.
	It'll be quite entertaining.
	But I think this is pretty obvious.
	The biggest clue is actually the black sun behind it.
	Yeah.
	So, many ordinary Ukrainians appear to support Azov, likening them to the don't tread on me guys, if you can believe it.
	In the woke side, guys, sadly, I can.
	Sign, value, all supreme.
	I would say that, because obviously there's no affiliation between the two, the don't tread on me guys are purely leave me alone.
	No, but that doesn't matter.
	What matters is being on the right side.
	Yeah.
	So this perception appears to be a spectacular public image success on the part of Azov, and an equally tragic misunderstanding on the part of the Ukrainians.
	But they are in a complicated position, and fundamentally, if the neo-Nazis are fighting against the nation that's invading you, say Russia, is decrying neo-Nazism really the priority during that conflict?
	I suppose it could be demoralising from one person's perspective, wouldn't it?
	So it is a complicated position.
	You have to have some forebearance.
	There are legitimate political reasons, if you look at this in a strictly Machiavellian way, to perhaps rush that fact onto the carpet about one of your most effectively and well-organised military forces.
	I don't know how effective they are.
	They're certainly very effective at PR. But I think the majority of the Ukrainian army is not Azov and is substantially better equipped, better trained.
	Courtesy of?
	Yes, courtesy of the West in many ways.
	So we need to have a little bit of understanding there.
	But it's also true that Azov are not the entirety of Ukraine.
	They should not be seen as such.
	And while we should absolutely decry the incidences of neo-Nazi abuse that we appear to have seen earlier, and I think Ukrainians absolutely should mobilize against that, and it's concerning that they appear not to have done, there is a war on, fundamentally, at the end of the day.
	So moving back to the footage we've shown earlier, it's clear that a kind of vigilante justice or mob rule is in action in parts of Ukraine.
	It's not pretty and much of it is downright disgraceful.
	Without fuller context, however, it's difficult to issue a blanket condemnation against the backdrop of a full-scale war where we don't entirely know the context of what's happening.
	Right.
	I mean, we have to suspend judgement, because as you rightly said, we don't know when this was filmed.
	We don't know what that, for example, that gentleman at the beginning that you said, I shouldn't even call him a gentleman, a Frank Mordyke, was assaulting those women for.
	It could be.
	It looks, from our view, to be pretty...
	I mean, I don't want to almost concede ground to the critical race theorists here, but it's the sort of behaviour you would expect from someone who's racially motivated.
	Oh, absolutely.
	I can't see any way of justifying that.
	And so it doesn't seem like too much run over.
	It should say, could this have something to do with the neo-Nazi presence in Ukraine?
	That might be a non sequitur, but it also might not.
	Yeah, I think so.
	Especially as we must remember that the gypsies were a favourite target of the Nazi regime and Nazi ideology.
	Yeah, and the purposeful humiliation that you showed, from my knowledge, is pretty...
	And again, I don't...
	I'm pretty sure that the specific form is not something that the Nazi Party itself did, but it did engage in similar ritualistic acts of humiliation.
	Humiliation and violence.
	And violence.
	Yeah.
	And pure thuggery at the end of the day.
	And another thing that came to mind as well is the possibility that the use of an antiseptic product Yes, well, that's the thing.
	That was the first thing that appeared to my mind as I was researching this.
	So, Nazism as an ideology is heavily motivated by discussed language.
	Someone a few years back did an analysis of a sample of Adolf Hitler's dinner speech.
	And basically discussed rhetoric turns up all of the time when he's just having normal conversation about things.
	It's a sort of mentality that's very easily associated with Nazism because there's this idea of purifying, of cleaning away things that are dirty and in the mind.
	They view other races, what they would say as lesser races, to be cleaned away.
	And so the use of antiseptic then as a political weapon does seem to have this element of cleansing, which is very distasteful.
	Yeah.
	And I think we have to take this very, very seriously.
	I think so.
	I definitely think we should not forget this simply because there is a war happening.
	I think we should be aware of it even if, as the vulgar war continues, we suspend fuller judgment.
	And on that note, let's move on to Nazanin.
	Yes.
	So, in March 2016, Nazanin Zughari Ratcliffe, who is an Iranian and British dual national, travelled with her daughter to visit her family in Iran.
	She only returned to the United Kingdom a couple of days after being held in custody by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard for six years.
	Wow.
	Six years.
	Now, for those unfamiliar with the story, here is the rundown.
	I don't know anything about that.
	If we scroll down a little bit to the timeline.
	In April 2016, just before she was set to go back to the United Kingdom, Nazanin was arrested on suspicion of leading a foreign-linked hostile network and plotting to topple the Iranian government.
	It is a big charge.
	For a cancelled arms deal which had been unpaid since the 1970s.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	The UK owed Iran money for an arms deal?
	Yes.
	How did that work?
	Because they were supposed to supply them with tanks or something like that.
	We were supposed to supply Iran with £450 million worth of tanks.
	Apparently, yes.
	So presumably when the revolution happened in 1979...
	for the order of tanks, but we hadn't given them the tanks.
	I presume that's the claim, yes.
	Right, okay, because a lot of stuff happened at this period.
	Like, for example, a lot of Iranian artefacts are currently still held by the Smithsonian Museum in America because they were sent over there, lent over there by the prior regime under Shah Reza Pahlavi and the last Shah of Iran.
	And then when the revolution happened, the Americans and the Smithsonian turned around and said, oh, well, we don't recognise continuity between the regimes.
	So our agreement was with the regime that's no longer there.
	But Iran is continuing to claim that they've been done a disservice here, apparently, anyway.
	We'll discuss that.
	But in September 2016, she was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison.
	In April 2017, she lost a final appeal in the Iranian Supreme Court to revert that sentence.
	In April 2021, she was sentenced to another year in jail, but she was allowed to serve for that sentence under house arrest in her parents' home.
	She lost the appeal against that sentence in October of 2021, and finally, after the UK government agreed to pay the £450 billion Oh, please.
	Look, this is exactly what China did when there was the hostage diplomacy between the two Americans, or Canadians, sorry, I think, who were arrested in China and held on serious charges of espionage, while the case of the Huawei executive...
	It was going on in Canada and she was held prisoner by the Canadians.
	And what happened?
	Well, as soon as the Huawei exec was allowed back to China, suddenly all charges were dropped against at least one of the Canadians and they were sent back.
	It's pure hostage diplomacy.
	It's very obvious.
	And of course they publicly state, oh no, there's no relation to it.
	Anyone with half a brain can see there is.
	But there are reasons to be suspicious.
	The begging question, of course, is what were the precise details justifying her arrest?
	The details of why she was arrested for the most part remain unknown.
	According to evidence submitted to Parliament, her MP Tulip Sadiq said Nazani was personally told time and time again, as you've alluded to, that her arrest was linked to the debt that the UK owes to Iran.
	One thing is for sure, however, this debt that was owed to Iran was never mentioned at the start of this entire affair.
	Not once, to my knowledge anyway, unless I'm just being ignorant.
	But if we rewind to 2016, then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was called to the Foreign Secretary Select Committee to discuss Nazanin's arrest.
	And in this meeting, he described what he believes to be the reason for her arrest, or her placement, sorry, in Iran.
	So let's give that a listen now.
	When you look at what Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe was doing, it's just, you know, she was simply teaching people journalism, as I understand it.
	At the very limit, she was...
	I hope that a way forward can be found.
	I must say, I find it deeply depressing.
	I think it's totally contrary to the interests of the Iranian people for this to continue.
	Okay, so he says openly he was led to believe that Nazaleen was teaching people journalism in Iran, but this wasn't the reason that she gave.
	So Boris' statements raised alarm bells for Iran, and of course made the whole situation worse.
	Some, of course, accused Boris of completely guessing and claimed he was to blame for her ultimate five-year sentence, but very few dared to ask the question of whether she may actually have been guilty of some form of foul play against Iran.
	Interestingly, no one really asked what her occupation was or who she was employed by.
	Well, as it turns out, at her time of arrest, she was working for the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters.
	The Thomson Reuters, you're quite right.
	It's the Thomson Reuters Foundation, if we get this up here.
	So, this is their corporate commitment, media freedom, inclusive economies, and human rights.
	And if we have a look at the media freedom part of this, they read as follows.
	The media is a crucial pillar of any free, fair, and informed society.
	Media outlets are facing unprecedented economic and technological challenges, and there is an alarming increase in attacks on journalists around the world.
	Let's have a look at the inclusive economy part.
	This is several steps ahead.
	But never mind.
	It's literally just on the right of the...
	Yeah, that's it.
	There's an increasing recognition that the mainstream economic world is generating a deepening divide and hurting our planet's modern slavery.
	The climate crisis and the impact of data and technology on people are among the biggest challenges of our time.
	And if we move to the final one on the right, which should be on the subject of human rights, human rights are inalienable.
	Universal rights belonging to every single human being irrespective of race, religion or creed.
	We raise awareness of human rights issues around the world via our news coverage and by training local journalists to report accurately on these issues.
	Does this not sound a little bit like the liberal democracy trichotomy?
	Absolutely, and it's also worth pointing out here that many, many journalists are actually trained via funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as we've covered earlier on this channel.
	Yes, they are.
	So if we move on to the About Us section of the website, it reads as follows.
	We are the Corporate Foundation of Thomson Wright Reuters, the global news and information services company.
	As an independent charity registered in the UK and the USA, we work to advance media freedom and Foster more inclusive economies and promote human rights.
	And that's a summary of what we've already discussed, pretty much.
	I think inclusivity and the Iranian ayatollahs aren't exactly on the same page, are they?
	But what we know is that when she was in Iran, she was working for the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
	Is it completely implausible that she may have, I don't know, in a...
	I mean, this is not to say that she was there of a specific intention, but is it really that implausible that she may have, I don't know, planted seeds?
	Being subversive.
	Or being subversive in any way.
	When was she arrested, sorry?
	She was arrested in April 2016.
	2016.
	Yes.
	But yes, of course, you could say this sounds very, very familiar, given some of the, I suppose, things that have been said to have caused the Arab Spring.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Wouldn't it be odd if the Thomson Reuters Foundation were found to have had a particular interest in the events of the Arab Spring?
	Would that not, perhaps...
	That would be quite interesting.
	Yeah.
	Well, let's move on to the next.
	Oh, no.
	I think it's the one after this, actually.
	Yes.
	You see, here we are.
	The Thomson Reuters Foundation used women's rights after the Arab Spring.
	Where are we at?
	So they've been engaging with the political affairs of the Arab Spring for a number of years now.
	Now, it shows that they have a prolonged interest in it, where rebels in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain at different points in between December 2010 and 2012 decided they wanted a taste of liberal democracy.
	But that's certainly the narrative, isn't it?
	That's certainly the narrative.
	Well, we can speculate on the level of influence that the US had, but Thomson Reuters were without question part of, you could say, you could almost say they were a neoconservative arm for liberal democracies.
	isn't it?
	It's not possible that Nazaleen may have...
	Is it not possible that she may actually have...
	I don't know.
	I mean, I've already said this.
	Am I being completely crackpotish in being skeptical about this narrative?
	This isn't tinfoil hat stuff.
	I think it's fairly obvious that there have been a number of international, predominantly Western organisations, whether it's media, NGOs, even intelligence services, that have been active in the Arab world and the Middle East in particular.
	And I think it's very plausible that some of these journalists, whether knowingly or unknowingly, were engaging in espionage and subversive activities.
	Yes.
	And do you not think that Boris may have had at least half an idea of what was going on, given that he'd let slip, oh, she's teaching journalism in Iran, and of course had the alibi of seeing her family as well.
	Are they not two, I suppose, ambiguous enough reasons to go to a country to actually hide a true, shall we say, political motive on behalf of an organisation?
	Again, maybe I am just being crackpot-ish, but nonetheless...
	Well, I think we've got to remember, I mean, we're certainly no friends of Iran here.
	No.
	And, you know, if the Islamic Republic of Iran were to become a liberal democracy, I think in many ways that would be a good thing.
	However, if it were engineered in the same way as the attempt to subvert Syria, and you end up with a 10-year civil war, millions and millions of refugees, and just general misery for forevermore, that doesn't seem like a good way of interpreting it.
	No, well, US-led interventions tend to not go very successfully.
	Libya as well is still a blood pressure.
	Yes, and of course, humanitarian crises that have come to the detriment of those who they call their allies, which is something that the UK continues to suffer from on a daily basis.
	Let's not forget that, of course.
	But anyway, we're going to fast forward to today, where Nazanin addressed the media at a press conference on her arrival back with her husband.
	Let's see an edited clip of that conference, because this caused quite a large reaction.
	My amazing husband, who...
	It has been tirelessly campaigning for me, so thank you so much.
	And my daughter for being very, very patient with mummy to be coming home.
	So I am so grateful.
	At this point, Gabriella, who's seven, is much more interested in the games on a mobile phone.
	Nezzanine flew home in the early hours of Thursday morning, along with another British national, Anousheya Shuri, after the UK repaid a long overdue military debt.
	But she wasn't keen to give the government any credit today.
	I was told many, many times that, oh...
	We're going to get you home.
	That never happened.
	So there was a time that I felt like, do you know what?
	I'm not even going to trust you because I've been told many, many times that I'm going to be taken home, but that never happened.
	I mean, how many foreign secretaries does it take for someone to come out?
	Five?
	It should have been one of them eventually.
	So, now here we are.
	What's happened now should have happened six years ago.
	She didn't want to answer the question.
	The part to take note of is when she says, why, how many Home Secretaries does it take?
	That's what has caused the upset.
	People took issue with that because they think she sounds ungrateful.
	I have to be honest, it's not the tone I would have expected, even though, yes, it doesn't help.
	We've had five Home Secretaries since the saga started.
	That's definitely not going to help anything.
	But you'd think she'd spend at least some time...
	To thank those who negotiated her release and perhaps express some condemnation of the regime that kept her there for six years, but she did not.
	Because of this, hashtag send her back and hashtag ungrateful cow immediately started trending on Twitter.
	This is, I believe, where it started.
	Let's get this trending.
	And indeed, it did trend for a while before, I believe, Twitter removed most of it for hate speech, presumably.
	If we move on to the next tweet, this actually expressed the mood quite nicely.
	Born in Iran, imprisoned by Iran.
	Her release was eventually secured by her adoptive country, which she now blames for acting too slowly.
	She has got future Labour MP written all over.
	Wow.
	Yeah.
	But of course, this has been met with a backlash which is unfolding as we speak, really.
	Unfortunately, it's hard to trace many of the other original tweets because the feed has since been smouldered by those condemning the tagline, the first of which is by somebody called Corbyn's Cynical Jewish Cat.
	It reads this as this.
	Well, I think that there is actually an argument there.
	I mean, I believe that's Nigel Farage's angle on this whole thing as well.
	In that, essentially, we're at the situation now where, okay, we can't have Russian oil because we've sanctioned that, but we need to get some oil.
	We're not going to get our own natural gas because that would be bad for the climate.
	So we've got the Saudis or we've got Iran or the Israelis.
	Yeah, I get that part of it, but the racist gammon part.
	Well, of course.
	No, I mean, what do you expect from someone called Corbyn's cynical Jewish cat?
	Exactly that, which is the same for the next example that I have here, which is from Aaron Bastani.
	Yes, I know they want attention and this helps give it to them, but this stuff is seen as fair game.
	The game became Nazanin ZIs from the Middle East.
	That's it.
	Many British media and political personalities look at Arabs and Iranians as less than human.
	I mean, this is a pretty standard leftist tactic, really.
	It's all race.
	It's because people are race.
	Make an unfalsifiable claim, such as it's just racism, and to reify something that is utterly non-provable.
	And to, of course, sustain that climate of repressive tolerance...
	So that's the reification of the narrative continues.
	I couldn't find anything racist in how the tagline was used.
	They could have been removed, I don't know.
	But then again, this may also be...
	No, it's because they were removed.
	The internet hate crime bill also comes into force soon, doesn't it?
	I'm not sure if that's already...
	That's a good point.
	Yeah, I'm not sure if that's come into force just yet.
	But I thought Leo, of course, our Leo, summed this up pretty well.
	So if we actually give that a listen now...
	In a way, I can understand why she doesn't feel grateful because she probably recognizes that it wasn't done as an act of generosity towards her, was it?
	It was part of a reshaped political landscape in which it became necessary immediately to get on better terms with the Iranian people so that we could start buying their oil.
	I think it would have been better if she'd directed some of the ire towards the people who kidnapped her.
	I mean, it wasn't Britain that kidnapped her.
	It was Iran.
	She continues to have dual citizenship in Iran.
	Part of the reason that it was difficult to get her out was because, you know, her Britannic Majesty demands that she be allowed to pass without let and hindrance, but on the other hand, she's in her own country.
	In some respect, they have the right to hold her because she's an Iranian.
	So probably doesn't have any plans to go back there and train more journalists.
	I don't know.
	Because obviously Brexit has happened since she was in jail over there.
	I mean, maybe they haven't broken that to me.
	I don't think Iran's in the EU. You have a little more sympathy with Nazanin.
	I mean, I don't find anything to disagree with there, to be honest.
	I mean, she's out there, from my view, for potentially, again, ambiguous reasons.
	We can't obviously take her absolute word for the fact that she was just there to see her family, nor, of course, can we go the other way so as to claim that she was conspiring to subvert the Islamic Republic in Iran.
	But it does look somewhat suspicious.
	And if the latter were the case, I think she owes at least...
	A little bit more gratitude to the diplomatic efforts of the United Kingdom to get her out looking as healthy as she currently does, particularly given the fact that she was allowed to spend the last year of her sentence with, I believe, her parents?
	If I'm wrong, again, correct me.
	But, yeah, it seems a little bit odd that she didn't attribute any blame to Iran itself.
	It's very, very strange.
	It's very, very strange.
	But an important thing to ask is, who was actually responsible for this debt that the British owed Iran in the first place?
	The answer was Labour.
	So if she actually had to be in her bonnet about any political party, it should be the Labour Party.
	However, she nonetheless decided to pose with Keir Starmer here, as John pointed out, as John asserts.
	And so, yeah.
	If anyone is to blame for this, given that it was, I believe, John Callaghan's government that, of course, facilitated this deal, you would think she would at least make a passing remark about the government's opposition.
	There is absolutely not an iota of gratitude at all.
	She just felt utterly entitled to be ransomed for £450 million.
	Yes.
	And there is also something else about, and again, I think that the hysteria about how, surrounding how she kind of presented herself at the convent has, again, this goes without saying, really.
	It has less to do with race, nothing to do with it, in fact.
	I think more to do with the fact that she turned up in that room acting as if she knew everybody already in there.
	Also, Doing what politicians are currently doing at the moment, which is, of course, posturing allegiance, as you can see from the colour scheme of what she's wearing, with Ukraine.
	She did actually make some passing remarks about the situation in Ukraine.
	Pretty much the contemporary line, apparently.
	Aaron Bastani actually went as far as he didn't agree with that part of it.
	would probably be correct for not agreeing with it, not least because it's a biopic account of what's ultimately going on.
	But when the first thing that somebody does is attend a press conference, dress like that, in company that she seems to know, acts as if she knows, and start talking, shall we say, slightly ostentatiously about the governments that slightly ostentatiously about the governments that actually got her out of what could have been a terrible diplomatic situation, it doesn't rub off very well on the It's a terrible look.
	It's very ungrateful.
	And to be honest, it's exactly the attitude that people despise about Labour.
	They hate Britain.
	They are ungrateful to Britain.
	And obviously it's a different thing that they're ungrateful for.
	They're ungrateful to Britain, having been born into this country, in that they refuse to accept that they should be thankful for any of the things that you can enjoy living in Britain.
	She reeks of Jean Imela II. To me.
	As in, she's quite clearly all but in name on a path towards becoming...
	All of her behaviours suggest that she wants to become recognised and fully established as a Westminster politician.
	Within the bubble of Westminster.
	Again, this is just me speculating.
	She looks like she's been very well treated.
	She looks very well fed and happy.
	She looks healthier in that press conference, more presentable in that press conference than she had in any of the previous pictures that I had seen.
	It's more than that.
	She looks more presentable than anyone she's standing beside.
	Actually, you're quite right, yeah.
	Isn't that remarkable?
	It is remarkable.
	Yeah, I will conclude anyway.
	I get why she feels she is owed an apology.
	She is owed an apology.
	Six years is too long.
	But then again, it's a difficult diplomatic situation.
	I don't know about that, because I would say that...
	We do need to know the details a bit more.
	We do need to know the details more, but it really comes down to this question of dual nationality, which no one seems willing to address, because it's a thorny issue.
	If someone is detained in the country to which they have another nationality, is that really then the response of the British government, Her Majesty's government, to exert every sinew that it has to rescue them as if they were a British citizen?
	Especially if she's doing something that doesn't have the authorisation of the British government, such as trying to subvert Well, this is the thing.
	Even disregarding the charges, which no one is aware of, bizarrely, despite this being a six-year issue, even disregarding that aspect of the legal system, If she is dealt with under the legal system of a country in which she has citizenship, then surely that is an exception whereby we don't get involved.
	But the fact that she has a British passport in that instance should not be relevant, really, to us.
	But she should be grateful.
	I think so, yes.
	I agree.
	I do think there was an arrogant tone in her address, and I do think that the anger...
	I mean, hashtag send her back's a bit harsh.
	I wouldn't wish that on her or anyone in the case of Iran, but...
	I get the anger and can see it.
	She attributes a blame to the government who got her back.
	No one, not to the country that arrested her.
	That was pretty sus.
	That is pretty sus.
	I've always, I've already said that her purpose in alarm is suspicious.
	I wonder if she'll be back there on holiday in a few years.
	Watch this space.
	Yeah, and no, absolutely.
	It's very strange, and look out for her on the Labour ballot boxes.
	Yes, or when I'm a celebrity.
	Oh dear, and speaking of celebrity, food shortages are not something that celebrities normally experience, but perhaps going forward, you and I will.
	And that might sound a bit dramatic.
	And yes, we brought out the most dramatic and inflammatory site that we can bring out to talk about this stuff.
	Let's have a look at some extracts from Breitbart.
	White House warns of global food shortages after Ukraine invasion.
	Well, it's pretty obvious, but there we go.
	The White House confirmed Monday they expect certain parts of the world to suffer a food shortage as an effect of Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
	We do anticipate that higher energy fertilizer, wheat and corn prices could impact the price of growing and purchasing critical food supplies for countries around the world, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Monday.
	She said food shortages were not expected to hit the United States, but rather countries in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
	Okay, well, it's Breitbart, but it's Jen Psaki as well.
	So let's remind ourselves that Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus are reasonably important for the world's food economy.
	So let's go to another far-right news outlet, the Financial Times.
	This is from two weeks ago, but the economic fundamentals remain the same.
	Food crisis looms as Ukrainian wheat shipments grind to a halt.
	Russia and Ukraine supply almost a third of the world's wheat exports and since the Russian assault on its neighbour, ports on the Black Sea have come to a virtual standstill.
	As a result, wheat prices have soared to record highs, overtaking levels seen during the food crisis of 2007-2008.
	If farmers in Ukraine don't start planting any time soon, there will be a huge crisis to feud security.
	If Ukraine's food production falls in the coming season, the wheat price could double or triple, said a Dutch national who they interviewed for this story.
	He has been farming for two decades in Cherkasy, 200km south of Kiev.
	He's part of a farming union whose 1,100 members cover just under 10% of the country's farmland.
	Which is curious, actually, because that's a very small number of people and a very large amount of land.
	It is, isn't it?
	It is.
	Now, I have heard rumours through the grapevine from way back in the day of some rather shady practices going on in East Ukraine regarding the buying up of ethnic Russian farmland by large conglomerates and being sold off to Western farmers who occupy large amounts of land, obviously.
	I can't verify these at the moment, of course, but I think that's part of the large and increasingly intricate puzzle of dodgy dealing that surrounds Ukraine.
	The surge in prices, he continues, will fuel soaring food inflation, already at a seven-year high of 7.8% in January, and the biggest impact will be on the food security of poorer grain importers, warned analysts and food aid organisations.
	Ukraine accounts for 90% of Lebanon's wheat imports and is a leading supplier for countries including Somalia, Syria and Libya.
	They're all basically enemies of the West as far as this is concerned.
	Lebanon is really struggling with an already high import bill and this is only going to make things worse, said James Swanston, emerging market economist at Capital Economics.
	If these are all enemies of the West, why does the US care enough to declare this as an international problem?
	Well, I don't think they necessarily do care.
	That's the thing.
	I think it's rather blasé of Psaki to come out and say, well, there'll be few shortages, but it's only in the rest of the world.
	We'll be fine.
	That's kind of the vibe I get from the White House at the moment.
	Yeah, because it's not inaccurate.
	And there is the question as well, oh yeah, well, prices will go up in America, but I'm Jen Psaki.
	Look at my salary.
	Do you think I care about the price of fish?
	There's kind of that vibe that I get out of these announcements.
	Yeah, I can see that.
	It's a poor person's problem.
	Russia also provides its Black Sea neighbour, Turkey, with more than 70% of its wheat imports, according to the International Trade Centre.
	Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, inflation in Turkey had hit a 20-year high of 54.4% in February, as we've covered.
	The war is only going to exacerbate the cost of food, said Ismail Kemaloglu, the former head of the state, Turkish Grain Board, and now the director of the consultancy, IK.
	That's pretty concerning for NATO, because Turkey have been, despite the fact that their relationship with their NATO allies is somewhat fractured, particularly with Greece, who are in NATO as well, aren't they?
	Given that that dependence on wheat and wheat, Well, Turkey have been playing a very clever game, as usual, between NATO and Russia.
	And Turkey, for example, they've not closed their airspace to Russian planes and so on.
	They still, I believe, have a visa-free regime with Russia, so there have been many people paying a fortune to get on the last flights to Turkey.
	They are hosting Russian diplomats, and I believe they're hosting the main high-level negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, though I may be mistaken on that.
	And basically, old, crafty old Erdogan seems to be playing both sides.
	He's recently gave a speech announcing that there were, that the Turkish economy was actually seeing a boom in, for example, its tourism sector as a result of Russians.
	And so on and so forth.
	So I think if there are going to be any economic winners out of this, at least in the short term, Turkey might be one of them.
	as one of the only NATO countries that's been able to not sanction Russia.
	But there we go.
	We'll see how long that lasts.
	There's also the fact that many of the private yachts which have been seized by the EU and Britain and so on, the ones which have escaped these confiscations, have all gone and parked up in Turkey.
	Yeah.
	Brilliant.
	I know, geopolitics is where Mr Abramovich is now.
	Yeah.
	Now, there is still a danger in that the main route for importing grain into Turkey from Russia is via the Black Sea, which is obviously an active war zone at the moment, but we'll have to watch that.
	Didn't Turkey consistently close that off to the Russian Navy?
	No, they closed the Bosphorus to all shipping, but they are not allowed to close the straits to returning fleets because that would be an act of war.
	Of course.
	So it doesn't really affect Russia.
	Yeah, they'd be crossing NATO's own red.
	Yeah, exactly.
	So the last time we Oh dear.
	I still hate that term, Arab Spring, by the way, because it was anything but a spring for Syria and Libya in particular, and Yemen, too, is still a bloodbath.
	So, the places where it succeeded, you could say perhaps Tunisia.
	Egypt.
	Egypt, yeah.
	But Arab Spring was always a propaganda term, and the more we use it, the more it sounds like one.
	Maybe we should stop using it.
	Yeah, but I think the CIA-backed wave of Arab state coups and rebellions doesn't have quite such a ring to it.
	No, it doesn't, you're quite right.
	And we'll get people raging at me in the comments, but there we go.
	But there's also, we've talked about crops a little bit, but Belarus produces, I think, 10% of the world's potash, which is used to produce fertilizer, and that in turn produces crops.
	And one thing people have been warning about for a long time, particularly in environmental circles, is Is fertilizer.
	Because as we try to produce more and more food, we obviously struggle to ramp up production of fertilizer to create that food.
	This gives us a quick look of wheat production by country.
	That graphic isn't particularly illuminating, but if we scroll down, there's a nice graph there.
	John, if we can scroll down a bit.
	Here we go.
	So you can see right down at the bottom.
	What's that?
	Number three?
	With 86 million tonnes of wheat production.
	That's Russia.
	Yep, second only to India and China.
	Ukraine also produced 26.2 million tonnes of wheat, ninth in the world.
	Between the two of them, they account for about 14.5% of global wheat production.
	And it must be remembered that because they have small populations relative to the amount of crops they're producing, they are net exporters of these crops.
	So other countries like India and China, obviously they produce more, but they also have massive populations that need feeding, so they export a lot less.
	So when we talk about exports, they disproportionately affect the global economy.
	And of course, the more of a surplus there is, the cheaper food prices are.
	The less of a surplus, the more expensive food is.
	Now, for comparison, the USA only produced 47.3 million tons, so almost half of what Russia produces.
	Let's have a look at barley, which is another crop.
	Russia is the world's largest producer, with 18 million tons produced per year.
	Ukraine is the world's fourth largest, producing 9.4 million tonnes of barley, and together they account for 16% of world production, so even more proportionally than wheat.
	Germany is the largest Western producer for context, with 10.7 million tonnes.
	Now, proportional production of rice and corn is much lower than these principal crops, though still significant, but this is not really very good, I think.
	So let's just recap all of the economic pressures that we're likely to see in the developed Western world, even if we don't have problems with famines or anything like that.
	As access to these food markets is restricted and production is affected by war, we can absolutely expect significant price inflation when it comes to foodstuffs in the developed world.
	Added to the usual inflation from reckless money printing, extravagant public spending, billion dollar foreign aid packages and COVID recovery stimulus packages, the cost of food is also going to get quite significant.
	And add that to the hike in energy prices caused, again, partly by Russian sanctions, we can expect the cost of living to become pretty severe over the next two years.
	Without the Russian war, it was going to get to that, wasn't it?
	Yeah.
	It was moving in that direction already, and this just nudged it all along, giving it a big jolt.
	Oh, dearie me.
	So Josh and I recently did a contemplation on prepping, which you might be interested in.
	Not a scaremonger or anything like that, but I think it would be to everyone's benefit to have a few months of stocked food, tins, that sort of thing.
	Yeah, we're of course not anticipating that something explosive is going to happen, but rather you might want to be...
	A little bit more monetarily savvy for the foreseeable future to prepare for this extortionate hike in prices.
	Yeah, and also if there were a shock like COVID which caused a massive wave of panic buying, then you would actually be doing a public service by already keeping a stockpile of several months because you wouldn't have to participate in that panic buying.
	And so you wouldn't take part in these long queues, you wouldn't be stripping toilet roll off the shelves and things like that, because you would already be fine, you'd be being responsible and proven and so on.
	Building up an arsenal slowly, gradually, and without causing any disruption.
	Arsenal is the wrong word, because that specifically applies to weapons, which we are not recommending.
	It's illegal in most countries to be stockpiling weapons, but stockpile food.
	I think it's very, very good.
	An arsenal of food, I should have said.
	What's the word for an arsenal of food?
	Pantry?
	I've just created it.
	And then, of course, we have to think about the non-developed countries.
	So when prices are high here, the situations could be really bad in the developing world.
	Could we see famines and food shortages?
	Certainly, if it leads to more hoarding and more panic buying.
	And not just panic buying at an individual level, but at the governmental level where we start.
	I mean, you could say this is the natural result of nation-states looking after themselves, but is this going to be the renewal of a more isolationist political climate, do you think?
	I don't know.
	It's hard to tell because equally there are many in the sort of international bureaucracy that runs the developed world who would very happily alleviate a famine in Ethiopia, even if it meant the starvation and misery of the people in Britain.
	Oh, I know that for a fact.
	Right.
	Or as good as.
	So I think that that sentiment will likely predominate.
	However, if there are genuine rises in the price of food, then it will create civil unrest, I think, like we saw in the Arab Spring.
	Yeah, well if it caused unrest, like serious unrest, then what are we going to be faced with in the midst of this crisis?
	It's true that the seeds of unrest have already been very well planted with two years of COVID lockdowns, which have definitely proved that the government is not your friend.
	In the words of the great Michael Jackson, they don't really care about us.
	In fact, they might be deliberately acting against our best interests at times.
	How much do you think prices are going to rise then?
	Well, how long is a piece of string?
	Well, a loaf of bread at the moment costs about a quid, or just over that.
	There's so many factors that it would be irresponsible for me to speculate, I think.
	But we've already got inflation at about 7.5%, and maybe at as high as 9%, I think, in America.
	And then, on top of that, we're going to get inflation of especially food.
	And then, depending on how severe the pinch is, that could be...
	I mean, this farmer was saying it could double or triple the fundamentals for food.
	So, if that were the case, yeah, you could be realistically doubling or tripling your food budget over the next two or three years.
	Of course, we're sanctioning Russia for reasons that everyone is familiar with.
	But what about Ukraine's ability to trade?
	I mean, the longer this war goes on, I mean, how productive is Ukraine at the moment?
	Yeah, absolutely not at all.
	And that's one of the major effects from this, is that as the war goes into March and now moving on into April, having missed the first planting season, that's going to massively dent Ukraine's agricultural production capacity, let alone all the fact they have to build up the entire country again after the war finishes.
	And then again, if the peace settlement is made with Russia grabbing a load of Ukrainian land, then you can bet your bottom dollar there will be very little foreign development aid coming in to build that up.
	Yes, and if Zelensky continues his no-quarter position, you could say.
	But that is not his position.
	He has made some concessions at the negotiating table.
	But let's just say he takes it to the point where Ukraine becomes a part of the Russian Federation.
	Oof.
	Where does that leave us?
	Right, yeah.
	Because we've, of course, lost an entire trading partner.
	Well, that would be...
	And one of the most productive.
	I don't think that would happen.
	And I think that if that did happen, the West would be busily engaged in essentially funneling weapons to start guerrilla uprisings against the Russians.
	What, have you been not doing that already?
	Well, they have been doing it for eight years in some manner of speech, but I don't think that's going to happen at all.
	No.
	But it is nonetheless the most kind of black-pilled grim conclusion.
	Well, it does pose an interesting question.
	The question there is that, suppose that were to happen, I don't think it will happen, Then would our sanctions on Russia be justified, even though we're punishing the people that we put the sanctions on Russia to protect?
	But then we're putting it on...
	But anyway, it's one of these intellectual hypothetical exercises that isn't very useful.
	There we go.
	And let's move on to the video comments.
	Set in a future apparently suffering environmental collapse, only man-made food of limited availability, a world grossly overpopulated where New York has 40 million people in it, and grocery shopping for natural food is something only the ultra-wealthy can afford to do, Charlton Heston plays a corrupt cop with a huge backlog of crimes who is more interested in robbing his clients for food and luxuries.
	One murder nets him two books on oceanographic studies.
	These books are the crux of the plot, not the ultimate truth revealed at the end.
	Eat the Soylent Bigots, because the future is now.
	Okay, we have to include this as part of the segment, don't we?
	Yes.
	Fantastic.
	That was just perfectly done.
	Thanks, Alex.
	So as a reward for getting ranked number one overall by the audience at the event, we were given the opportunity to fire the 105mm howitzer that the National Guard brought to the event.
	So, um...
	Take that, Leo's dad's punt gun!
	So that's not in Ukraine, I take it.
	No, that's got to be America.
	Mind you, the American military is everywhere, so it could literally be anywhere.
	That looks great.
	Well done, man.
	Hey, Lotus Eaters.
	I wanted to ask you guys for some advice.
	I have been thinking about this since the lockdowns last year of leaving Australia for the UK, and if there is another lockdown, I might just do that.
	I don't want to, but I feel like I have no choice.
	If I do, what area should I live in, in the UK? I say this as a last resort.
	I am not giving up on Australia yet.
	And I wouldn't give up on Australia either, because you can, of course.
	There is also always the opportunity to have a change of government.
	If you're going to move anywhere in the UK, and I would certainly welcome you myself, I would look at Kent, and North Yorkshire in particular.
	North Yorkshire is very, very similar to Kent and actually a little bit cheaper, but it's one of the most rural picturesque parts.
	For now.
	Yes.
	And without question, even though, of course, our government is not here to stay forever, as it currently, in the form that it currently exists, you're going to, in the case of another COVID lockdown, you'll get something much closer to what true human freedom is here than you would in Australia.
	What Australia's method of dealing with that is appalling beyond measure.
	Crime against humanity.
	Yes.
	Incredible.
	Yeah.
	I do get sad about this because basically everyone in the former British Empire and Commonwealth is looking elsewhere in the Commonwealth to see where they can run away to.
	And they're all running away to each other's places because there is basically no home for them.
	The same problem is afflicting all of these places.
	And at some point you just have to fight it where it is.
	I'm just so sad that this is happening in the Anglosphere.
	Particularly in Canada as well.
	I think it's a tragedy of epic proportions which no one really wants to address.
	But to a point, Britain's stiff upper lip does persist on this matter in a very weak and delineated form, but it nonetheless persists.
	So if you want to come here, we will welcome you and you'll probably be happier under lockdown here.
	Yeah, and there is something to be said for when you move to a new place, even if you...
	Maybe it's just a refreshing thing.
	So maybe you can more effectively carry out that struggle in the new place by...
	By removing some of the emotional and associational baggage from home.
	But at the same time, maybe it's better to stay in the place where you are, at least to an extent, where you understand what there is to preserve.
	Stay away from the cities, by the way.
	Cities are bad.
	Awful.
	Let's go to the next one.
	My brothers and I basically don't hold anything back when we're sparring with these foam swords and every now and then we catch each other in the face or somewhere tender and it smarts pretty good but it doesn't actually hurt.
	So it makes it a lot more intense when sparring and it's really fun and my Epic Armoury brand swords have held up for Some of them actually like about 10 years, and they're still doing fine.
	See, I used to absolutely love sparring.
	I didn't use those swords in particular, but I used, what was it, those really, really cheap lightsabers.
	Oh, right.
	I used to spar with my brother, and we did it much more dangerously than what you see.
	You seem to be showing an awful lot of restraint there.
	Hmm.
	Yeah.
	I've lost my train of thought.
	Do you have anything to say?
	We used sticks briefly, but then my brother got too many whacks and never played with me again.
	That's a shame.
	I know.
	Aluminum's actually softer than steel, so I'd prefer tough heavy steel over light fluffy aluminum any day.
	But the flashing is just to test out the templates anyway, so no big loss here.
	Crinkles like foil.
	Don't want that anywhere near you, dong.
	So let's see how the 22 gauge steel holds up.
	We have a clear winner.
	So when you get the black-pilled gloomies, just remember me hitting my power armor's dong.
	Nimechworks on YouTube.
	So I think what we just watched was the construction of Vladimir Zelensky's battle suit.
	When he emerges as the boss of Kiev.
	Vlad the Impaler.
	Not on my watch!
	I'll stop.
	Tony D and Little Joan with another legend of the pines, the haunted mansion of health in Surf City, New Jersey.
	Built in 1822, in 1854 there was a terrible shipwreck and 300 German immigrants along with the entire crew perished.
	The bodies washed up on the shore and they were put in the mansion.
	They were subsequently robbed by a man named Edward Jennings, who was then haunted by the spirits of the dead.
	He eventually was driven out of town and died in a barroom bra in San Francisco.
	So he grave robbed them.
	Yep.
	I did hear that correctly.
	Serbs the sod right.
	Good job, ghosts.
	That's him attempting a triumph of vulgar materialism over the spiritual respect.
	Anyway, let's move on to the next one.
	Because that's my fetish.
	Oh, you should not have given me this.
	Jen Psaki's feet.
	They look like chicken feet.
	That's my fetish.
	Too much information.
	Sorry, I just erased the last 20 seconds of my life.
	Let's go to the next one.
	Well, that's it.
	Oh, okay.
	Let's move to the comments.
	On mob justice in Ukraine, we have Bald Eagle, 1787.
	The situation developing in Ukraine is exactly what the West wants.
	They want Russia to keep levelling the country and giving Ukraine a reason to keep fighting back.
	The West wins, despite how this plays out.
	Either Russia has been made a laughingstock on the world stage, or Russia has won by levelling the entire nation, and this makes Ukraine look to the West for loans and investments, making them a puppet state to Western influence.
	I think they were already.
	The only way this ends in a peaceful situation is Ukraine realising they will never get back the south and east of their country.
	You can see why this is a pretty easy situation for the United States, really.
	Because they have a war that is effectively being, you could say, fought on their behalf in accordance with the system of ethics that they want to spread.
	But without...
	It being official.
	They've never wanted NATO to subsume Ukraine as a state, the United States, to my knowledge, or at least that's the impression I got from an interview Tucker Carlson did with someone else.
	And that means they have the perfect scenario whether they have a non-member of their, I suppose, alliance fighting against that which they believe the encircled enemy standing in the way of what they would like for the world order.
	I mean, you could tie that in with what Biden said recently about a new world order that needs to come to fruition.
	That's certainly true.
	I do feel that it is a very strange situation, isn't it?
	Whereby Ukraine was never officially part of NATO and yet their entire army was trained by NATO into interoperability.
	Yes, and they've been in advance talks.
	Officially for what, two or three years?
	And it's in their constitution.
	It's in their constitution.
	It has been since 2019.
	But it's in a way a dream scenario for the West because we don't have any obligation to defend them with our own soldiers.
	So our governments have the ability to just pour weapons into the area.
	Wash their hands clean as their enemy is destroyed on the battlefield.
	So I can't remember who it was that said Biden will fight the Russians till the last Ukrainian, which is a grim but somewhat true pronouncement.
	S.H. Silver says the neoliberal West needs to realize that their allies in tin horn regimes are not as liberal and tolerant as they project.
	The people of these regimes still have preference for their in-group to the exclusion of neighbouring out-groups, especially those with historical animosities.
	100%.
	Yeah.
	You can see this, of course, very, very trivially in the culture wars, but the...
	The whole Brexit affair, I think, really brought to attention just how deep those fault lines were, not just amongst the UK citizens, but in terms of how the rest of the world actually viewed us, and almost looked on us as if it was utterly contemptible for us to ascribe more value in being free, self-determining, sovereign individuals in a sovereign nation than having an unelected foreign power telling us how we should conduct our affairs.
	Yeah, well, the thing is, Brexit, or leaving the EU, betrayed the internationalist agenda.
	And the international bureaucracy, which represents that and which basically calls the shots across the developed world, could not accept that and still cannot to this day.
	It's really quite tragic in a sense.
	A rogue clan of charlatans.
	Yeah, as far as the EU certainly is concerned.
	Oh, of course.
	Yes, indeed.
	Nuff said.
	Yeah, I love the way that fact-checkers can come out and say something is mostly true when what they actually mean by that is not completely, entirely, utterly proven.
	Do you know what we could do?
	We could start a meta-fact-checker site.
	So whatever the fact-checkers or the most established fact-checkers say just confirms it to be wrong.
	That could be fun.
	I think Josh might have some strong words to say about it.
	Yes, I think he would.
	Tomo de Tank says, Yuri Bezmenov gave some great insights as to the use of journalists to push subversive narratives and so discord within a nation.
	I think this is more pointing to your segment, actually.
	I think it might be, yes.
	And if that was the case, then, well, it's plausible that Nazaleen may well be taking pointers from that.
	Yeah, it's actually quite depressing, really, because if you genuinely wanted to be a journalist in a foreign country, going around the world, finding stories, things that no one was talking about and making them heard and so on...
	And you wanted to do that genuinely and honestly.
	Would you not have the perpetual danger of being mistaken for someone who's literally a stooge for Western imperialism?
	Yes, you could.
	And that is legitimate reason as to why she may have been arrested.
	Mm-hmm.
	Lee Buttle says, Why is there a man walking around an active war zone with a big pink dildo?
	Clown World is getting too intense.
	Well, I'm not sure that was actually taken during the war.
	I think it's maybe old footage.
	No, it didn't look like a war zone to me, but it doesn't make it any less displeasing.
	In fact, it almost makes it more displeasing.
	It makes it worse, I think, that it doesn't happen in a war zone, because there's no excuse.
	What makes it worse than that is that this wasn't actually circulated before this point.
	Of course, as we discussed in the video that was going to go up later on, We saw some pretty extensive coverage committed into exposing the Azov Brigade.
	We didn't see anything to do with that.
	And again, that might have absolutely nothing to do with any form of neo-Nazism in Ukraine.
	But my God, it deserves some answers because that was vile.
	And if that was going on in Kiev, could it have something to do with why Putin opted to march his troops there?
	Well, one can ask the questions.
	But I do want to emphasise that I might...
	My perspective is that this is a very minority thing.
	I think he used this for a pretext, for his justification.
	Absolutely.
	But...
	The more you look, the less unfounded it seems.
	That's what I'm saying.
	George Windsor says, R.E. the beating.
	Thomas, with no context, we do indeed need to suspend judgment on the overall situation.
	However, it is abhorrent, as I'm sure you agree, for any man to so brutally assault essentially defenseless people, women or otherwise.
	I feel my supposedly toxic masculine urge to inflict grievous injury on that, quote, man rising when I see some drugs.
	No, I do.
	I think that's absolutely...
	No, and if I were there, I certainly wouldn't have been standing idly by filming it as it was happening.
	I question...
	I think it's deeply unmasculine to not get involved in that situation.
	Yes, it is.
	There we go.
	And above all else, it's deeply unmasculine to attack women like that, or at any level, unless in the case of self-defence.
	Freewill2112 says, Whatever Ukraine's problems, Russia also has all the same problems and neo-Nazi groups who abuse people with safe approval that Ukraine has.
	And Russian action has again been endorsed by Corbyn and Abbott, who seem to think the West are to blame.
	These two would back Satan over our country if we were at war with him.
	Oh, I don't doubt it.
	That endorsement is enough to say Russia is wrong.
	Well, I wouldn't go that far.
	No, that's a bit of a non sequitur.
	Some on the right seem to think that Putin is a champion of anti-globalism.
	He might be anti-globalist, but he is not a champion of individual rights or freedom or libertarian valiance.
	Never said he was.
	He is a despot who murders his political opponents without regard for collateral damage, and any attempt to characterize him as morally superior to the Ukrainians is just nonsense.
	Well, it's lucky that we weren't saying any of those things then, is it?
	I don't think even his supporters are characterizing him as morally superior.
	They're merely saying he's acting as a Machiavellian strongman who's ultimately...
	Almost negating the moral dimension of politics for the sake of delivering what he sees to be necessary.
	If anything, they're making a virtue out of that.
	There is a line here.
	So he says, some on the right seem to think that Putin is a champion of anti-globalism.
	He might be anti-globalist, but...
	So you're not actually refuting that point.
	You're actually reinforcing the idea that he is a champion of anti-globalism, even though he is abhorrent in many other ways, particularly with individual rights, freedom and values.
	There is also the conspiracy theory that he is...
	He's agreed to be the pokey man for the body.
	I do not believe that.
	Neither do I, but it's entertaining.
	It's entertaining.
	I don't think that's the case.
	I think it speaks more to the danger of over-focus on one thing, a sort of monomania, rather than anything more.
	Kulain Sloan says, I had seen posts on Reddit claiming this was done to looters.
	Yes, there was a...
	This was, particularly in the first week, a load of these sprung up and people were saying, yay, this happened to looters and saboteurs and stuff.
	Isn't this great?
	Yeah, rough justice, like street justice.
	Don't need the state.
	It's just people sorting out their own communities.
	But some of this footage is vile.
	It's not just a case of a short comic punishment or anything like that.
	It's like the level of humiliation that we saw in those clips is way excessive.
	Yeah, well, in the case of the first video that we saw, the victims weren't acting as if they were looters.
	If they were looters, then, of course, they would be running away from those making the accusation, because naturally they'd have things they want to keep.
	In any case, the punishment far outweighs the crime.
	Absolutely.
	Lars Petter-Simonsen says, Ukraine has really messed up by not taking advantage of the low morale of the Russian army.
	Mistreating prisoners or saying you will give no quarter only means people will fight with desperation instead of surrendering.
	Ukraine's bargaining position would be immensely strengthened if they had tens of thousands of Russian sons as prisoners that their mothers wanted to get home.
	have been some people campaigning for essentially Ukraine to adopt a honeypot strategy, where instead of using Western aid to buy lots of weapons and things like that, they essentially try and bribe over Russian soldiers who are already pretty fed up, I think, from the state of their army.
	So for example, there was footage of a captured Russian canteen, and I would love to see Gordon Ramsey's take on it, because it was like kitchen nightmares turned up to 11 years.
	Could you imagine a bunch of conscripts of IQ50 trying to run a canteen in the middle of a war zone in winter?
	You know, I think I might actually pay to see it.
	I know.
	It sounds like the plot of a drama in a way.
	But if I was eating that every day, I probably would switch sides.
	Could you imagine Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmare, the Ukraine special?
	LAUGHTER We've already entertained the idea of a Top Gear Ukraine special.
	We each have £1,000, but between us and Kiev is a massive war.
	Whose tractor can pull the most of largest amount of military hardware in 24 hours?
	Tonight, I get bored, Richard Hammond has a crash, and James May shoots down a Russian jet.
	Well, anyway, Jeremy, if you're listening, we've got ideas.
	There's an idea for you.
	Yeah.
	And finally, Yuri Polo says, mob justice in Ukraine is against thieves and marauders caught stealing, and gypsies are always looked on.
	They are not that tolerated in Ukraine.
	Anyway, from day one, there was zero tolerance of stealing.
	Well, clearly.
	Clearly, indeed.
	Right, so Nazanin.
	Could Nazanin's response be Stockholm Syndrome?
	No, I don't think so.
	I mean, she does not look like someone who has endured harsh confinement in prison for a long period of time.
	She was very well fed and satisfied.
	She looked very presentable.
	She was acting very, very collected to me.
	She seemed compass mentis in every way.
	She was, of course, living with, I believe...
	Well, she was living outside of prison under house arrest the year before she was released, so if she was suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, she would have had a chance to recover from it in better company than, obviously, you would get in an Iranian prison.
	So, in short, it did cross my mind, but I don't think so.
	Yeah, and one has to wonder what sort of prison she was kept in, whether it was a really nasty Iranian prison, as I'm certain exist, having what I've heard of Syrian prisons and so on, or whether it was not really that bad, as Iranian prisons go.
	We don't know.
	No.
	But Free Will 2112 says, We're
	who knows that that is actually a very very reasonable point i want to say it's plausible it's plausible that she may have been perhaps given advice by either the british government or the iranian regime to say well as to say as a condition for you being released back to the And it may well be the case that she dealt with that by putting all of that anger, that anxiety, the frustration...
	It's very easy to use the British government as the object of your frustrations, usually because most of the time you're right.
	The British state is everywhere, intrusive, incompetent, and otherwise frustrating.
	I'll never forget, for example, this is a classic political tactic.
	Who was the shadow opposition chancellor to Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell?
	He, of course, had close connections with Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.
	And upon the commemoration of the Good Friday Agreement, He basically cherished this as a victory for the IRA that justified the long bloody struggle.
	And of course, this was awfully received by everyone in the Arctic Kingdom, and many rightly so, utterly repugnant.
	But he, on question time, several years later, came out and said, look, we had to say that.
	We had to make this look like a victory for the IRA because we wanted to stop The fighting.
	Yeah, that seems like a...
	Yes.
	I think there is a degree of apologia at play here.
	But you can see the political merit in what he's saying.
	In order to actually stop a worsening crisis, there is a point that you have to appeal to appeasement to some degree.
	As unfashionable as that may be, but it is an ugly part of attaining a political solution sometimes.
	I just think...
	What have we got with this person coming back?
	What good is she going to be for the British people?
	And time will tell.
	Probably the next leader of the Liberal Democrats.
	Anyway, Joseph Smith says a typical woman spent over £400 million getting her out and she's still ungrateful.
	Who was it that crossed out the word woman?
	Yeah.
	Yes, who did that, I wonder.
	Yeah.
	And Chris Wolfe says if Iran wants to call foul on the UK, they should reference the Anglo-Soviet invasion during World War II. Yep.
	Almost makes you think that World War II was a cooperative endeavor to solidify the newly emerging world of nation states.
	It was like the race to colonize Africa was on a global scale and under the fog of war.
	Oh no, I think that's going a bit far.
	First of all, most of it was already consolidated and I don't think that's the correct analysis to take out of the occupation of Iran.
	Now, subsequently, there were a lot of dodgy dealings when Britain essentially went in there.
	And Britain had essentially set up the oil fields, I believe, in Iran under BP and was taking all of the profits while paying the Shahs of Iran a pittance and supporting their regimes to keep them in power.
	And this lasted for a while until I think the 50s when Churchill was in power, when there was a revolution against the Shah.
	And essentially, the Americans came in and they said, well, we'll help you sort out the deal, but we want a part of the pie.
	So ExxonMobil and so on got to move in and take over what BP had predominantly owned up till then.
	And this founded OPEC.
	And then what we did was we organized a coup, which put the Shah of Iran in power as a puppet.
	This is Reza Pahlavi, I believe.
	The same Shah who was deposed in 1979, possibly his father, but I think the same one.
	And yeah, that was the history of Iran.
	That's really what you want to point to, but that happened after World War II. And I think calling World War II a cooperative colonization race is misleading the situation.
	On food shortages, Zen Chan says, speaking as someone who's worked in supermarkets, we throw out a lot of food, so I wouldn't worry about serious shortages just yet.
	I can second that, having worked in a Sainz Fries warehouse for one and a half years.
	We actually spent, we gave most of the bread, I'm pretty sure we baked, ended up going to the pigs for the farms that supplied us.
	Wow.
	So there are ways in which we can be more resourceful with food.
	Yeah, but food waste is horrendous in a way.
	If you think it could be, if it were possible to store it, for example, long term so that we had some kind of strategic buffer against food shortages, that would appear to be amazing.
	Yeah, that's about even mentioning this stuff that is needlessly thrown away because it's out of date.
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	No, that's true.
	No, food wastage is a massive problem, and one which perhaps a few food shortages would go some way towards solving.
	Perhaps we should consider allotsments investments.
	Student of History says, Pinko Patty at the White House doesn't give AF. These are the same people who, when the gas prices spiked, said, let them drive electric.
	Yes, Turkey is a very interesting case.
	They're basically strategically independent from NATO and have been for a few years.
	And they have been running their own agenda for a while, haven't they?
	In the north of Syria.
	And there has been talk of it.
	I think it's been involved in Libya and so on and so forth.
	But yeah, interesting place.
	Silly Mid On says, I'm waiting for the American elites to gloat about the wheat price increase because they're gluten-free.
	That's quite funny.
	Chris Wolfe says, are food shortages keto-friendly?
	Bread lines aren't.
	We'll just have to ask Carl.
	Freewill2112 says, Biden speaks.
	Expect his parrot Boris to squawk the same word soon.
	Parrots are quite good at mimicry.
	Yes, well, hasn't Boris been parroting this because of the allegiances of his wife anyway?
	Potentially, yes.
	Matthew Griffiths says, food shortages and famine is when the real fun begins.
	Strap in, lads.
	It's going to be a rough decade.
	Possibly.
	Possibly.
	It could be a transient blip.
	Possibly.
	It could also be the start of something new.
	So there we go.
	New isn't always fun.
	A student of history says, if food prices hit 40%, S goes wild.
	That was part of the background of the Arab rut row.
	Nice framing.
	Do you want to do the honourable mentions?
	Yes, yes I will.
	Okay, so Matthew Taylor says there already was a Ukraine Top Gear special where they had to drive towards Chernobyl with eco-cars, where the winner was the worst vehicle that stopped furthest away.
	That's true, but it wasn't technically a special.
	It was a small segment where they went to Chernobyl.
	I must say, it was absolutely fantastic, and I would genuinely love to know how much radiation damage Jeremy endured, because his car literally ran out when he was right next to the, what was it?
	What was it called?
	The Elephant's Foot?
	No, it's where the theme park is in Chernobyl.
	Pripyat Park?
	Pripyat Park.
	I don't know.
	Yeah, but it's, anyway, one of the areas where the Guy Goldman was going absolutely nuts, it was very entertaining.
	They basically had to, their task was, when they crossed the border, to ultimately run out of fuel before they got there.
	Jeremy's car was so efficient that it actually took him right to the centre, actually right next to Reactor 4, virtually speaking, even though, of course, Reactor 4 was safely covered over by that point, hence why they were allowed to film there.
	Yeah.
	But, yeah, I've always wanted to visit Chernobyl, but I guess that won't happen for a while now.
	Well, I don't know.
	If things quieten down, you could maybe do a load-seater's Top Gear special, go and find some abandoned APCs, get them in working order, go driving up, cruising around the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
	Could happen.
	Yeah, I'm sure the BBC will be game for that idea.
	I doubt it.
	Yeah, Chris Wolfe says we should have a symbol that represents our values for when the world falls into chaos.
	It would be useful for quickly identifying other survivors who have goodwill.
	I propose the Lotus.
	I agree.
	I've been thinking about this for a while, actually, because there is a difficulty here.
	It's kind of a shibboleth, right?
	So you want a symbol that is well-known enough that you can show it to someone else, and they recognise it if they're on the same side, and you can see you both have good intentions.
	It's like, okay...
	But it doesn't want to be too well known because then everyone can imitate it.
	It's quite difficult actually.
	There's a problem, a puzzle to be solved there.
	But it would be good to have some kind of symbol that you could use in that way.
	Yeah.
	I'm just trying to think of an alternative.
	Yeah.
	I don't know, I'll have to get back to everyone on that.
	I quite like the idea of the Lotus.
	Freewell2112 says we invaded Iran to stop the Germans getting the oil.
	The same with Iraq, where Rashid Ali was a pro-German-Arab nationalist.
	Yeah, that's true.
	And Large Mammal says, Someone who could take Russian military and turn it against the thieves running the mafia and government.
	I would be very, very nervous about that.
	Because isn't that precisely what we did with Boris Yeltsin's election in 1996?
	Yeah, there is that.
	Yes, which you could say...
	And that, combined with Putin's denial of being a part of NATO, arguably created the person that he is today.
	Yeah, but I think it's also harder than you might think to separate the...
	The deviance from the thieves and the mafia and so on and so forth.
	It's very hard.
	They're very closely intertwined.
	And as we've covered before, the military is systematically emasculated so that it is not a threat to the main power of the state.
	I definitely don't think we should get into the business of finding clever ways to sponsor candidates whom we prefer in Russia's case.
	I don't know.
	I think it's something we've been doing for a long, long time without success everywhere.
	And Russia does it as well everywhere else too.
	Yes, but that doesn't make it.
	Maybe that's just what the game of geopolitics is all about.
	Perhaps, but where does that leave us?
	Where indeed.
	And on that note, we are going to leave you.
	Thank you once again for tuning in to the podcast of The Lotus Eaters.
	We'll be back tomorrow at one.
	Don't forget the Hangouts at 3.30 UK time today.
	And we'll see you soon.

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