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April 13, 2022 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:29:55

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #370

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for the 13th of April 2022.
	This is podcast number 370, which coincidentally is the number of MPs it takes to change a lightbulb.
	I'm joined by Thomas today.
	We're going to be talking about the mass surrender in Mariupol yesterday.
	We'll also be covering the fallout of Partygate, which never seems to end.
	And Boris Johnson's Downing Street parties.
	And we will also be looking at what on earth is happening in China.
	But before we get into that, I just want to make you aware of the book club, which will be going out live at 3.30pm British summertime today, with Callum and Carl about Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract, one of the most influential works of philosophy of all time, I think it's fair to say.
	And one of the most regrettable.
	Yes, indeed.
	So stay tuned for that.
	So without any further ado, let's get into it.
	So what's happened in Mariupol?
	1026 Ukrainian soldiers surrendered in Mariupol yesterday on April the 12th, including 162 officers and 47 female soldiers.
	Now, these numbers are according to pro-Russian sources.
	So take it with a pinch of salt.
	But with the footage coming out of both pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian sources, I think we can safely say that there's been a significant surrender yesterday.
	And the news of that has just been permitted to be released today by the various information ministries or propaganda agencies on both sides.
	This is believed to be the bulk of remaining defenders in Mariupol.
	Whether that proves true or not, we'll find out in due course.
	Most of the surrenderees are from the Ukrainian Naval Infantry's 36th Brigade, but other...
	But other units are also present, such as some from Azov, we believe, and also KORD, which is the Ukrainian police special forces.
	Now before anyone says, "Oh, why are they surrendering?" or anything like that, I'll Oh, they should fight on.
	They've been fighting constantly for 48 days, which is more than most of our viewers have, I expect.
	And even our viewers with military experience, 48 days non-stop against what is a materially superior enemy locally with their artillery and air power and so on.
	It's an awfully long time.
	Yeah, no, I think whether, regardless of your opinion on the Ukraine conflict, I think we can accept that it is a heroic defense that they've put up there.
	Yes, without question.
	And they have surrendered after they claim running low on ammunition, and food and water is also believed to be critically low among the defenders.
	When you run out of those things, it's pretty much over, isn't it?
	Exactly.
	So we have this from Euromiden Press here.
	Marines of the 36th Brigade shared a farewell video from Mariupol saying they are devoted to Ukraine till the end.
	However, no ammunition was delivered to them in the besieged city.
	They ask to finish the job and fight for victory.
	We just have a quick look at this clip.
	He's an interesting chap.
	This is just pre-surrender, so I tend not to show photos and footage of POWs because it's technically against the Geneva Conventions.
	So in the case where the POWs are being manipulated or humiliated or otherwise in states of distress and so on, it is against the Geneva Conventions to record and publicize and share images of them.
	That's interesting.
	Which is curious.
	There's actually a lot of detail and thought that goes into the Geneva Conventions.
	But this is pre-surrender and this is them recording a video basically telling their side what's going to happen, what they're going to do, fight on and so on.
	Now that chap in the middle there is rather interesting.
	He's not Ukrainian.
	This guy here.
	He is actually a British citizen, if we go to the next clip.
	This is Cossack Gundy, and this is another photo of him from earlier in the conflict.
	This is Aidan Islin going under the handle on Twitter, Cossack Gundy, who's been posting a lot over the past few months.
	48 days have passed.
	We tried everything possible to protect Mariupol but have no choice but to surrender to Russian troops.
	We don't have food or ammunition left.
	And again, this is from Euromaidan Press who are a pro-Ukrainian source.
	If they're reporting this, we can pretty much assume that it's going to be true since they wouldn't report that one of their guys is surrendering if they hadn't surrendered.
	And there's ample footage showing that this is true as well.
	Then the BBC have also run with this story.
	Next clip.
	So, here we go.
	Ukraine, British man fighting in Mariupol, forced to surrender.
	And they go through this here.
	They had a quick interview with his family as well, who are based in Britain as well.
	Is he a volunteer?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	He is a volunteer, and he is an official member of the Ukrainian armed forces, so that makes him not a mercenary.
	Okay.
	He previously volunteered to fight in Syria for the Peshmerga, I believe, the Kurdish troops.
	And yeah, he's 28 years old, former care worker from Nottingham, who just decided to, well, go out for a bit more excitement and adventure in his life, clearly.
	True freedom, Pfizer.
	You could say, yeah.
	And he's been part of the Ukrainian army since 2018.
	There's recorded footage of him swearing the oath of allegiance and everything.
	So as far as I can tell, according to the laws of war, he is a legitimate combatant.
	Now, there's a lot of info wars that are happening around here as well, because the Russians have been claiming for a long time that the defence in Mariupol is being orchestrated by foreign officers, like NATO officers, someone claimed a three-star US general and so on and so forth.
	And these are pretty wild claims.
	If they were true, that would change the picture of what's happening in the war politically quite significantly.
	But as far as I can tell, there's been no verification of these claims beyond this happened and this happened.
	So it looks like if you think this.
	So yeah, we can't verify that just yet.
	But there is tons of Infowars happening with the footage coming out of Ukraine here.
	So we have lots of videos and photos that are posted by pro-accounts on both sides, pro-Russian, pro-Ukrainian.
	Some of them are obviously and hilariously staged.
	It's almost like the worst actors in the Slavic world conspired to make them, you know.
	But others, it's very difficult to tell if they're staged at a glance.
	And some of the recent footage, this is not the whole Ukrainian war, this is just out of Mario Polo for the last few hours, It claims to show the following.
	Loads of Marines surrendering, which seems legit.
	Separatists looking after or evacuating civilians.
	Lots of videos of that on the Russian side.
	But then again, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that you've got a busload of paid actors.
	Quite.
	Yes.
	Civilians complaining about Azov neo-Nazi atrocities.
	Fighting aged men with Nazi tattoos attempting to escape the city in civilian clothes and being told to take off their shirts and jumpers.
	Oh, they've got like a swastika and a wolf's angle and you name it.
	Covered in it.
	A young woman sniper dressed in civilian clothes surrendering to Russian forces and complaining that the cameras were switched on.
	Looking very stylish in a handbag and so on.
	We're not showing all of these, by the way, because we have no idea whether they're true or not.
	So it would not be fair to propagate what is, in the most cases, almost certainly propaganda.
	Interviews with captured soldiers with topics including, for example, were you attacked with chemical weapons?
	Which everyone sort of goes, no.
	But then again, interviews with captured soldiers on both sides are pretty unreliable.
	I have to say from the off, I mean, some of these things that you've listed, you could say would be, Could be cited as BBC propaganda from 2014, particularly the exposure of the neo-Nazi atrocities that you mentioned, and the men of fighting age with Nazi tattoos, which of course has been seen to be objectively true.
	Yeah, it's hard to tell, fundamentally.
	Yeah.
	It's a very hard situation to read, particularly.
	I hope that the truth will out as people have more time to actually analyze the footage and say, okay, this is real, this is not, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	But there is, yeah, and the final thing was civilians trapped in the basement by Ukrainian fighters.
	This is a common theme of Russian conversation about this.
	So people claiming that they'd been, like, chucked in the basement and then it was all boarded up or even concreted up.
	Mm-hmm.
	And then pictures of Chechen militias bravely sort of breaking open the ground and a load of civilians come out where there was a concrete floor and so on and so forth.
	Again, seems a bit strange, might be true.
	Probably not.
	Did Chechnya not retreat?
	No, Chechens have been deeply...
	They retreated from Kiev, but they've been deeply involved in Mariupol.
	Oh, I see.
	And, yeah, and then also claims of sniper fire against everyone.
	There was one clip of a Russian journalist, state journalist, who claimed to have been shot in the leg by sniper fire and it did not look very convincing.
	But then there's been that sort of thing since the start of the conflict, so I'm not really surprised.
	Again, most of this appears to be fake news, but making sense of what's actually going on here can be a tricky matter.
	Indeed.
	One thing we can say for sure, though, is there has been a significant surrender of Ukrainian troops after being cut off for 48 days.
	Yes.
	And the other thing I wanted to touch on today is the Mariupol chemical attacks narrative.
	So what have you heard about this so far?
	Believe it or not, surprisingly little, given the extent of the anticipation of is Russia actually going to use them.
	So I would have expected, if had it actually happened, we would be discussing, or at least the rhetoric would have amplified somewhat.
	Well, certainly a lot of mainstream and Western sources have been talking about chemical weapons.
	I think the Pentagon has released statements about chemical weapons and so on.
	I don't believe they've got to the point just yet of saying definitively Russia used them, and they at least had the responsibility on the day that it happened, which was reported yesterday, that they were waiting for further evidence and further information.
	So this is the story as far as I can ascertain, so let's go into it.
	A separatist general, in an interview with RAA Novosti, which is Russian state media, said, We need to send in the chemical troops rather than storm the heavily fortified Azov-style complex.
	Now, Azovstal is a steel plant.
	It's a massive steel plant.
	It produces about 6 million tons of steel a year, or it did in 2005, which is one of the last times we have information of its production output.
	and so you've just got a large sort of post-Soviet style complex which is going to be very difficult to take as well as the fact that it's been occupied by troops for so long that it's going to be full of traps and entrenchments fortifications and so on so that's going to be a hard nut to crack so this general is coming and saying we need to send in the chemical troops
	and then on the same day almost at the same time it seems a small UAV so drone comes and drops a substance on three Azov fighters who reported symptoms consistent with a Okay.
	So the world then claims that this is evidence of a Russian chemical attack, of course.
	I mean, who else would be using chemical agents against azov fighters?
	And then you might say, well, Russia has, what, 40,000 tons of chemical weapons?
	There are people on one side of the internet who would claim this is a false flag from the US's part, but I wouldn't, obviously never, I don't think that's plausible.
	Well, this is what the Russians are claiming.
	So what they did today, they released a video which they claim is from Mariupol.
	Right.
	And it shows UAVs, so little drones, like the civilian ones that you might buy yourself for 300-400 quid, I think they retail for, with liquid containers attached to them and spray nozzles rigged on them.
	And they're claiming that, oh, these have been found in Mariupol, and they're implying strongly that this is evidence that the attack yesterday was a false flag.
	Right.
	And so on.
	So what's the truth of these claims?
	Oh.
	I think it's unlikely, personally, that Russia would have used chemical weapons in this circumstance.
	And I think if they had used them, why would they use them in such small grounds?
	And again, there are Westerners commentators saying, oh, well, they're doing it because they're trying to just sort of touch the red lines and push the red lines and so on.
	It's hard to imagine.
	If the chemical weapons aren't giving them a genuine battlefield advantage, and we can't see chemical weapons being used in a way that is at all impactful to the conflict, then...
	You know, it's hard to...
	I can't think of a logical reason why you'd resort to it when there's so little to gain from doing so.
	Absolutely.
	So, to me, personally, I feel that the narrative that this is a false flag attack by the defenders to desperately try and get some help as they're surrounded and enemies are encroaching on all sides, to me that actually does seem plausible.
	Now, I don't know the truth of this.
	I suspect that the UAVs captured are not from Mariupol.
	I imagine they're in some...
	Sunny back garden of a film studio in Russia or something like that.
	I don't know.
	Who knows?
	But it's worth considering that as well.
	So this is what Mariupol looks like now.
	If we play this.
	There we go.
	Look at that.
	Good lord.
	And let's just go through the photos.
	So this is a guy wheeling his bicycle down a destroyed street.
	Looks pretty bleak.
	That's awful, isn't it?
	Yeah, just stacks and stacks of burnt-out apartment blocks, smoke rising from the sky.
	Yeah, a building that's just been completely caved in by bombardment.
	The next one.
	Yeah, it's just a bit of a wilderness.
	This is what a real war in a real city looks like.
	It does look like a scene from Fallout.
	Now, I haven't got the pictures up here, but I do have to remind viewers that not the whole of the city looks like this.
	There are areas which are a bit more green and pleasant, and Russian media does tend to show these a bit more.
	But then here is some clips of some firing in Mariupol.
	If we blow that up, so we can have a watch.
	Yeah.
	The tanks strolling through and abandoned.
	it's just the definition of bleak and I think it's fair to say that no one really wants this to happen to their city unless they live in London I'm not joking.
	Even London.
	Or unless your city is built entirely by the Soviets and the architecture is that bad that anything can be an improvement.
	Yeah, if it's a Le Corbusier city, then I think that's fair.
	I think that might apply to some of those buildings, but that's not to say that people, of course, want their property to be destroyed.
	No, of course not.
	This is a tragedy.
	No, it's awful.
	Of course, if we're to look for positives, then hopefully at the end of this, whatever happens in this war, then there will be an influx of capital.
	These old concrete buildings will be demolished because you can't salvage that.
	No, absolutely not.
	And then they'll be able to build a bright and beautiful modern 21st century city on the ruins of it.
	Hopefully that will happen.
	I think that's likely to happen in some parts of Ukraine.
	I think that if Mariupol remains in Russian hands, there won't be quite such a generous amount of capital going to the rebuilding.
	Probably not.
	Simply because Russia doesn't have the economy to do it and it doesn't have the friends to pay for it either.
	No.
	But if there were, I just want to say, if the war piece were to be declared and there were to be funds gathered to rebuild some of the destroyed areas, that's something I would very much strongly consider donating to myself.
	You don't think China might offer them some sort of aid in the same way that they've offered aid for road building projects in Africa, for example?
	Oh, I think that's quite possible.
	But I also think, as we'll discover later in this podcast, China at the moment has problems of its own.
	So finally, I just wanted to say that Mariupol has not actually, at the time of recording, fallen yet.
	There are still some defenders.
	How close is it to actually falling?
	Well, time will tell.
	But I think that the end is, if so many of these marines are surrendering, then probably the end is not too far away.
	But again, that may age terribly, they could still be fighting months into the future.
	And if so, that's regardless of what you think of their politics and so on.
	It is from a military human standpoint, quite heroic.
	Yes.
	But what would the fall of Mariupol mean for the war in Ukraine?
	And we have a map here of showing roughly the combat fronts as of the time of recording.
	You notice they've withdrawn from the whole of the north of the country.
	That's no longer a combat zone.
	So you have the front extending from Kherson in the southwest all the way up and around to Kharkiv in the east.
	And notably, you can see there's a pocket Like a little bulge in the Ukrainian territory which is surrounded on three sites by Russian troops.
	The area in red is the Donetsk and Luhansk separatist republics and then there are two combat fronts to the north and the south.
	One coming down from Izium and the other coming up from the direction of Polohi, Volnavaka and so on.
	Now the Russians have called this a cauldron and the idea of this is that So let's just backtrack a little.
	When you have a bulge in a line of warfare, a salient is the word that's used for it.
	And these are important because if you think about it, if you're on the inside of the bulge, then there are fewer lines through which you can actually supply your forces.
	If you look at the rail infrastructure there, I think there's about three major rail lines connecting East Donbass on the Ukrainian side to the center of Ukraine.
	And that's where all of the resupply And ammunition, new NATO weaponry, everything is going to be coming from.
	Whereas the Russians can resupply their combat front from loads of places along there.
	They have much more space to do that.
	And so the idea of the cauldron is that the Ukrainian troops in that pocket will just be subject to withering artillery fire, air strikes, missile strikes, you name it, as well as, obviously, assaults on the ground to take territory.
	And that even if the combat fronts don't advance, that will, over time, take a high enough toll on the Ukrainians that the Russians will be able to plead them up.
	It's a war of attrition that's going to go in Russia's favour eventually.
	According to that analysis, yes.
	There are a lot of other factors, though, and I don't want to leave anyone in the misapprehension that this war is going to be an easy win for either side from here on out.
	Absolutely not.
	But that's Russia's plan, basically.
	That's their narrative about how this war is going.
	What's going on in the Odessa region at the moment?
	Right, so Odessa is the, if you see that stretch of coastline from Mykolaiv down to Odessa, that's the only remaining coastline that Ukraine currently possesses following this.
	And coastline is, of course, very important to every country.
	Odessa has been shelled by Russian warships fairly continuously throughout.
	And they're still being shelled now.
	Yes, but not over the past few days as far as I'm aware.
	But it's the Black Sea Fleet, I believe, that's taking part in that shelling.
	And generally speaking, Russia's efforts seem to be concentrated on Mykolaiv, which is the headquarters of the Ukrainian Marines and another important port city.
	There are rumours, though, that, and there have been for a long time, that Transnistria, which is that tiny red line there, will get involved in the war on Russia's side.
	And so Ukraine has strengthened its border security there.
	But whether they will or not, they currently remain neutral.
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah, it wouldn't have made sense to me for the assault on Odessa to continue, given that they seem to have completely given up on the idea of a foregone occupation of the country.
	I wouldn't say they've assaulted Odessa, they've just bombarded it like they have with virtually every major population centre in Ukraine.
	It's an assault on some scale though, isn't it?
	Of course, yeah.
	But I would generally save the term assault for a genuine land attack intended to actually take territory, which we have seen all along this conflict.
	Yeah, that is the proper use.
	Yeah, so that's the state of conflict in Ukraine at the moment.
	Okay.
	And moving on to much more important things.
	Much more important things.
	Yes, Boris's partying penalty.
	Before I actually begin this segment, I'd like to make a correction on one of my previous segments last week, and that is, of course, on James Lindsay.
	I'd like, he basically, the last part of the segment was basically me reacting against what I believe that he called me a reactionary moron.
	That's what I believe.
	And of course I was rather cross about that given that I'm not reactionary and to my knowledge not a moron though feel free to correct me if I am.
	I've since found out that he wasn't referring to me, he was referring to Alwyn McIntyre, so it was a misunderstanding from the very beginning.
	Who's that guy?
	Alwyn McIntyre is another thinker in the dark enlightenment circle who I think got cancelled, or not cancelled, but blocked by James on Twitter because he'd been quite persistent in his criticism of what he's doing.
	Right, so he thought you were an acolyte of this guy.
	I think so, yes.
	Wrongly.
	But we've since discussed this.
	So you've spoken to him personally, then?
	Well, DM'd him on Twitter, yes.
	Oh, good.
	Yes, so there was a ceasefire, if you like.
	Excellent.
	Can't be in place.
	Yes, with that correction made, let's move on to Boris Johnson being legally penalised for partying.
	We've known for a long time that Number 10 is guilty of hosting various parties under lockdown.
	Obviously none of us would have had any issue with this whatsoever if we weren't under house arrest, but there you go.
	So let's begin with a Partygate rundown so we know where we are.
	Allegations about Number 10 hosting Christmas parties in 2020 started as early as November last year.
	At this point, there was no evidence.
	So when asked at PMQs, Boris simply said, no, didn't happen.
	Then a week later, there was some evidence.
	A video of a mock press conference featuring Angela Stratton, there she is, Downing Street's press secretary.
	This was leaked.
	The footage included a question about Number 10 being accused of hosting a Christmas party.
	This was involved in the mock conference, where she could be heard joking about there being no social distancing.
	So you can see quite clearly that they're preparing for this accusation.
	Why would you do that unless you actually hosted a Christmas party or were thinking of hosting a Christmas party?
	At this point, it pretty much descended into clown world.
	Number 10 continued to claim that the parties didn't happen, despite evidence proving that they were preparing to be accused of it.
	So Boris later said that, oh, if it did happen, I certainly didn't attend them.
	Due to public pressure, they announced a public inquiry into the scandal.
	This was on the 8th of December.
	This is what we now know as the Sue Gray Inquiries, if we get the next one up.
	Since the inquiry was announced, more photographs and testimonies emerged of these parties.
	One included a picture of Sean Bailey at Conservative HQ, then a picture of Boris and Carrie, among others, as you can see over here, as a Gowden party emerged.
	And then after that, an email was leaked which showed Number 10 to be proactively keeping all of this under wraps, which pretty much confirmed the content they had for their own rules, and by extension, the taxpayer who were going along with it in the belief that this was all part of the greater good.
	Last but not least, there was this.
	What you can see is Boris Johnson dancing at a Christmas party.
	Granted, this is in 2013, so just to be perfectly accurate, but this was at the time people believed this was genuinely him, dancing in COVID era, whilst we were all under lockdown.
	Well, I think whether they actually believed that or not, the timing of the imagery itself...
	It's very suggestive, because obviously no one saw or recorded Boris actually partying properly by video like this during COVID. However, if they were to imagine in their minds, it would probably look a lot like this.
	Or perhaps even worse, maybe.
	Who knows?
	But believe it or not, there is footage, and there is photographs, or at least we know there are photographs, because the Sue Gray inquiry has confirmed that evidence has been submitted.
	They just haven't released it to the public.
	But yeah, there we are.
	But on the subject of COVID and lockdowns, I'm going to present a shill here.
	The Pfizer documents that they don't want you to see.
	This is a premium video by Harry, where he basically explains the Pfizer documents that the information kleptocracy that we call the media doesn't want you to see.
	It's very, very spicy.
	Information kleptocracy is very good.
	Yes, it's far too spicy for us to discuss here, because we're of course on YouTube, but that is all the more reason to check it out.
	Pfizer's dirty little secret, please do it.
	But anyway, let's get back to Boris.
	So the Sue Gray report has since been finished, concluded, but not published under the anger of many, understandably so, to be perfectly honest.
	However, some findings have been declared.
	The 16 events took place over a dozen dates between May 2020 and April 2021.
	They all took place at 10 Downing Street or the Cabinet Office, apart from one in the Department for Education.
	Two of three previously unreported events took place at Number 10, with the other in the Cabinet Office.
	Twelve out of the 16 events have proceeded to be investigated by the police.
	I'm not sure why the other four haven't.
	Well, this thing as well, as people have pointed out, Number 10 is not exactly short of policemen.
	These places are surrounded by policemen for the security of the people doing it.
	But, you know, they must be very special policemen because they don't report crimes that go on right under their nose that they know are crimes.
	Anyway, yeah.
	No, it just makes my blood boil.
	They need to have an investigation to say, oh yes, no, there was a party going on literally about six feet behind me on this time.
	I mean, the depth of this scandal is just so insulting.
	It's extraordinary.
	Yeah, following this investigation that they held eventually, the Metropolitan Police claimed to have issued 50 penalty notices.
	So, they said on Tuesday that they had made a further 30 referrals in addition to a previous 20 for fixed penalty notices as part of the Operation Hillman inter-illegal gatherings at Downing Street and Whitehall as well.
	10 Downing Street has said it will make public notices that have been issued.
	And of course, some of those have decided to come out and make it easier for themselves, rather than to, of course, wait for their names to be dropped.
	So three of the 50 who have been issued with fixed penalty notices are: Boris Johnson, his wife Carrie and Richie Sunak.
	Interesting.
	Unsurprising, isn't it?
	I mean, we did, after all, see Boris and Carrie in that photo in the garden, so we expected that, and well, Richie Sunak is, after all, his Chancellor, so very much in the inner circle.
	So these people got the fines because it was their venues that these parties were taking place in, and according to the rules of the fines, it's the person organising the party, the shindig, the kvaffle, who gets fined.
	Yeah.
	Would you like to know how large these fines are?
	Yeah.
	About £100.
	Yeah, bearing in mind that, of course, if you are a politician...
	How will Boris pay the gas bill this month?
	How will he pay the gas bill with his infinite disposable income?
	Oh, no, wait, because his gas bill's already paid for with a taxpayer, isn't it?
	Yeah, that's right.
	I believe so.
	Yeah, so, yeah.
	On what grounds should we feel sorry for them?
	Yeah.
	Well, this is the thing.
	Whenever the punishment for something is a fine, then the law is there to patrol the lower classes who actually have to worry about money rather than the upper classes who don't.
	So, yeah, always bear that in mind.
	When the punishment is a fine, then it's a law for the lower classes, not for the...
	The people setting the rules.
	But to assure the public that he has learned his lesson, Boris has sought to offer a public apology.
	Shall we give this a lesson?
	Let's listen to the first bit.
	Today I've received a fixed penalty notice from the Metropolitan Police relating to an event in Downing Street on the 19th of June 2020.
	And let me say immediately that I've paid the fine and I once again offer a full apology.
	And in a spirit of openness and humility, I want to be completely clear about what happened on that date.
	My day began shortly after 7am, and I chaired eight meetings in Number 10, including the Cabinet Committee deciding COVID strategy.
	I visited a school in Hemel Hempstead, which took me out of Downing Street for over four hours.
	And amongst all these engagements, on a day that happened to be my birthday, there was a brief gathering in the Cabinet Room shortly after 2pm, lasting for less than 10 minutes, during which people I work with kindly passed on their good wishes.
	And I have to say, in all frankness, at that time, it did not occur to me that this might have been a breach of the rules.
	It was only ten minutes, was it, Barrett?
	Yes.
	I mean, how insincere does that look?
	I mean, to actually be so unsubtly reading a script like that, that's really bad.
	It's a good performance, I thought.
	If he's trying to make a mockery of an apology, it's a fantastic performance.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	But there we are.
	He confirmed he received the notice and he paid the fine.
	And in the spirit, I'm quoting him, in the spirit of openness and humility, he said, it was on the day of my birth.
	In other words, give me a break, please.
	After visiting a school in Hemel Hempstead.
	Well, good for you, Boris.
	I was doing all of this work.
	Yeah, there was a brief gathering for about 10 minutes.
	And if we...
	Well, there is some information on this brief gathering, apparently.
	And...
	Yes, because it is believed that there exists a photograph of Boris standing next to Richie Sunak and toasting the camera with a beer in his hand.
	If we actually scroll down a little bit, there is a picture here.
	You see, obviously that's not a real picture, but this is obviously an artist's interpretation of what is believed to have, of what has been described.
	Yeah, that's very obviously Photoshop.
	What is being described in the Sue Gray report.
	So Sue Gray gave this as evidence, not this particular picture, but the picture as evidence to the police, but the picture itself has so far not been released.
	Whether it will ever be released, we of course don't know.
	Anyway, he said that it did not occur to him at the time that this would be a breach of the rules, despite the fact that if we move on to the next, very quickly, he told the entire country to stay at home.
	Well, he was at home when he was partying, didn't he?
	Oh, yes, of course.
	Yeah, so he's forgiven.
	No, I know what you mean.
	Yes, if my home was an IB for nightclub, then, yeah, no harm done at all.
	There's absolutely no way this would be insulting to anyone, you know, being estranged from their grandparents at Christmas.
	No, absolutely not.
	I think the real crime here is the restrictions to start with.
	The fact that the government themselves setting the rules essentially never took them seriously is just the cherry on top.
	But the real offence is the fact that not only did the government assume to itself the powers to lock everyone in their homes, but also most people went along with it because they were worried and scared due to, again, government fear messaging about the pandemic itself.
	Yes, exactly.
	There are so many things that are wrong here before you get to the party and so on.
	All that does is underline the hypocrisy and the outrageousness of the powers which government has taken onto itself.
	And no one is really reporting about that.
	The media were fully in favour of that, if you recall, and still are.
	There's nothing about our mainstream media that sort of stops and wonders, actually, should the government have the power to lock us up?
	No, they were all in favour of it.
	And they got special exemptions, as you well recall, because they were essential businesses.
	And they committed a lot of hard work to try and ensure that those who believe, perhaps, we should maybe resist this a little bit.
	on the grounds of I don't know.
	Were denigrated as anti-vaxxers and so on and so forth and were dealt with very harshly by the police when they did try to muster protests and things like that.
	Not like Extinction Rebellion, you might think.
	Like, that is the real crime here.
	And let's not forget as well that the media, for whatever reason, is doing very well at the moment.
	And maybe it's got something to do with the unprecedented amount of public money by which the government has bought out the media via ads and campaigns about coronavirus safety and so on.
	What does it say about the attitude of the Met Police as well?
	Given that this was literally happening in front of them, as you rightly said, you compare that with how they responded to the lockdown protests that we had towards the end of last year where people were basically being assaulted in the streets for uttering the slightest part of dissent by the police.
	It's scandalous.
	Absolutely scandalous.
	But we have to remember that the important thing about this whole thing is not really about the party.
	No.
	It's about the context of the party.
	And all of the discussion you find is going to slowly sort of shift the narrative to who had what drink at what time, in what place, at what party.
	That's not the important issue here.
	The important thing is the civil liberties of the entire country being trampled on.
	By the government, but also with the complicity of the media, which is now asking you to trust it as it criticizes the government.
	And the fact that they clearly did not believe in their own polities in the first place, which raises the question, why on earth were you doing it?
	Is it perhaps not a motive beyond protecting people from COVID at here that drove that policy?
	And that's what has to be asked until the end of time, as far as I'm concerned.
	Anyway, shall we listen to the second half of Boris's apology?
	Let's do it.
	But of course the police have found otherwise and I fully respect the outcome of their investigation.
	I understand the anger that many will feel, that I myself fell short when it came to observing the very rules which the government I lead had introduced to protect the public.
	And I accept in all sincerity that people had the right to expect better.
	So it's basically, oops, I got caught.
	Pretty much.
	I attempted to, of course, to gaslight the public that I had done ultimately nothing wrong in the hope that this would somehow dissolve.
	The police found otherwise, and I respect the outcome of their investigation, so oops, in effect.
	It doesn't get more embarrassing than that, to be honest.
	He understands why people are angry about the fact that the government he leads lets people down.
	That's a very, very subtle way of distinguishing his responsibility as Prime Minister from the actions of the government.
	That's true, but it's also, I think, sadly true that the Prime Minister in this country has...
	Less direction over the country than you might think.
	It seems like civil servants, ministers, lobbyists and cronies seem to decide the direction of the country.
	Yeah, but in this case there's absolutely no sign that he was a dissident to the attitude within Number 10.
	Of course not.
	Yeah, he's just trying to transmit the idea that he only had partial knowledge of what was going on, but has been caught out red-handed, so we know that everything he's saying is pretty much nonsense.
	The big question, of course, is should Boris resign because of this?
	He has, at least to my knowledge, broken the law.
	Has he not?
	I'm not a lawyer.
	Well, if it's the case, then there is some dispute over this.
	But if it's true that he has, he's the first prime minister to do so.
	He's definitely broken the rules.
	But there was a lot of criticism in the first place for the government calling its coronavirus guidelines rules.
	Because rules is neither guidelines nor...
	If they are laws, then you cannot break them because that would be criminal.
	But a lot of them were never actually laws.
	They were just perceived to be laws, most importantly by the public, but also by the police who enforced them as if they were laws.
	And in parts of the country, a lot of the fixed penalty notices which were issued over COVID were subsequently rescinded or even refunded simply because there was no actual legal basis to them.
	So there is a grey area there to my mind, but the precise regulations were...
	No one was actually criminally charged by dissenting against the rules.
	So maybe he's going to get away with this.
	Anyway, Keir Starmer obviously thinks that both Rishi Sunak and Boris...
	Rishi Sunak is a bit of a Freudian slip, isn't it?
	Yes, it is.
	He thinks both of them should resign, obviously.
	Starmer said that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor had broken the law.
	Again, we don't know this is the case yet.
	He said he repeatedly lied to the British public, but he's true there, and insisted that they must both resign.
	He then added that the Conservatives are totally unfit to govern.
	Britain deserves better.
	The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey and Nicola Sturgeon, have both said pretty much exactly the same thing.
	So the opposition says that the government should resign.
	What a shock.
	Yes, indeed.
	But you know what's even more shocking?
	This picture here.
	If we get it up quickly, yes, which is, of course, Keir Starmer having a pint indoors, which I believe at the time that this was taken, was prohibited.
	Oh no.
	Yeah, so maybe you should resign as well, Mr.
	Starmer.
	Yes, but someone else who thought they would weigh in is the now independent MP, Claudia Webb.
	This is what Claudia Webb had to say.
	So just to recap.
	This is the Member of Parliament who was issued a suspended sentence for trusting to throw acid on a potential love rival and has refused to resign to this day despite being found guilty.
	Wait, what?!
	Yeah, well, she's not actually flowing acid, but threatening.
	She's threatening an acid attack.
	Yes, I believe so.
	Crikey.
	Yes, and she had to resign from the Labour Party, but she's still an MP. An independent.
	An independent Member of Parliament.
	So, yes, Claudia, perhaps you should take, um, David's advice and sit out on this one.
	If Boris Johnson had been...
	Plotting an acid attack, I think that would probably be bigger news than holding a party.
	Oh, just a little bit.
	God, that would be bigger news than Ukraine, probably.
	Speaking of chemical weapons, anyway.
	Another person who should probably sit this one out is David Lammy.
	He should usually sit most things out.
	In fact, by the size of him, he spends most of his time sitting on something.
	Lee says, the British public were banned from visiting dying relatives, forced to miss funerals and weddings.
	All the while, Boris Johnson was hosting illegal parties at number 10.
	The Prime Minister is taking the public for fools.
	He must resign.
	Well, this point about missing funerals isn't exactly true.
	Because funerals, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, were permitted, but limited to 30 people.
	Yes, but that's going to mean that some people who would otherwise have attended the funerals were forced to miss them because they weren't in...
	Yes, that's very true, and it's still an atrocity, don't get me wrong.
	However, the reason why I brought this up is because if we get the next one here, we can see Tahir Ali, another MP, in April, who attended a funeral himself, only that was found...
	There weren't 30 people in attendance here, there were 100 people in attendance.
	Yeah, but I think you forget that the rules only apply to the...
	They do not apply to Tahir Ali and his segment of the population fundamentally.
	Oh, why would that be?
	They always do what they want and everyone turns a blind eye when it comes to things like this.
	Okay, so the crime is essentially where you politically ally insofar as other things are concerned.
	It's whether the police cares whether you break the law or not.
	Yes, quite.
	And of course, it isn't quite the same as having a party, I accept, but hypocrisy is hypocrisy.
	The police were there again as well.
	They just sat back and let it happen.
	Imagine my show.
	Again, contrast that attitude with how they treated the anti-vaxxers outside, who are protesting outside Whitehall, I believe.
	Was it Whitehall?
	Yeah.
	and well there are other reasons why as well maybe if you're to dive deeper into this and think about how they treat shall we say some preachers at Speaker's Corner for what they can and can't say and leave others to do as they wish I will not go into it too much more I've heard plenty of anecdotal evidence of the police turning a blind eye to fundamentally Muslim minorities in British towns breaking lockdown rules and many other rules whereas they police almost everyone else and
	And fundamentally, the reason they turn a blind eye is because they don't want to damage the racial peace.
	There we go.
	That's modern Britain.
	Yes.
	Speaking of modern Britain, Owen Jones had something interesting to say on Britain.
	Britain removed both of its Prime Ministers in World War I and World War II when the country was actually at war, and in a big way, so nice try Daily Mail.
	He's referring to this article from the Daily Mail.
	If we scroll down a little bit here, yeah, there we are.
	So the Daily Mail are quite clearly saying, why on earth does this matter at the moment, when what's going on in Ukraine is currently, of course, underway, still unfolding as a crisis.
	And Owen's saying that this is an absolutely pathetic attempt to defend the Prime Minister, given that in the previous two world wars, of course, there were prime ministerial changes.
	But I'm going to say that whilst I think this is a fair point that Owen makes, I would say he's actually still incorrect.
	Because as much as I'm not...
	Well, for a start, we're not in a world war yet.
	I don't think Boris...
	Also, we're not at war.
	No, we're not.
	Not officially.
	We're involved in a war, but we're not at war.
	And I don't think that Boris, for someone who is...
	The entire establishment is, of course, pro-Ukraine, peddling the dogmatic pro-Ukraine line without any nuance, really, at all.
	But insofar as how he's managed this, I think that there are far worse people who could be in charge than Boris.
	And given that Owen is very much part of the camp that's trying to prevent a world war from breaking out, I think he's tripping on his own shoelaces a little bit here by suggesting that a better person could actually fill Boris's boots at this point.
	Well, who's that person going to be, fundamentally?
	I dread to think.
	Please not lose trust.
	But you know what will happen?
	We'll probably get a general election.
	God knows what could come of that.
	Well, there's just no one in Parliament that fills me with any confidence whatsoever.
	And it seems to me that all of the power is actually held outside of whatever the elected representatives are doing.
	So they're just like a formalized scapegoat.
	Again, with a lot of these parties, civil servants are present.
	Civil servants are very influential in shaping the agenda of what this country actually does with your money.
	And yet no one actually reports to them.
	They actually airbrush their faces out or blur them out a lot of the time because, oh, the public doesn't care about that.
	The public wants to know about the politicians.
	And so it seems to me like the politicians are kind of a ritualized scapegoat for everyone to hurl abuse and insults at.
	Mm-hmm.
	Whereas a parade after parade of incompetence rolls through their ministerial seats, and yet they seem rather irrelevant in the long term to what this country actually does.
	They do.
	That's probably why all of the Conservatives that have the best, or shall we say the most honourably Conservative ideas, have absolutely no chance whatsoever of ebbing mounting a serious leadership challenge.
	Oh God, that's depressing, isn't it?
	But anyway, I'm going to conclude.
	So in any political scenario, I think it would be, any other political scenario rather, it would probably be right for Boris to resign, but not now.
	He should have resigned when, in effect, he was proven to have been dishonest and lied to the British public.
	Lockdown restrictions of the kind that the government imposed were an awful idea from the start, as everyone, I'm sure our viewers will agree.
	No one would care in the slightest about number 10 being, I suppose, A secret IB for nightclub.
	Had they not kept us all under house arrest.
	It would have been hilarious, probably, without the context of COVID restrictions to find that politicians were boozing it up.
	Provided they were paying for it with their own funds, of course.
	I mean, on principle, I still hope that the findings of the Grow Inquiry are fully published for the sake of...
	Transparency of information.
	But I doubt that's going to happen.
	No, absolutely.
	And as we talk about COVID, let's move on to the fallout of COVID in China.
	So China has a zero COVID policy.
	And in the next few tweets and images, we're going to sort of show what a zero COVID policy can look like when it is implemented by an authoritarian state.
	So this should not be taken, by the way, our showing these footage as endorsement of any of the comments with which Twitter users upload the images and clips.
	I know there are some people out there who see what the tweet is saying and assume that we've put it up because we agree with them and then they get mad.
	That's not what happens.
	But yeah, let's start with Jordan Peterson, who's an unusual person to be weighing in on this.
	So we have this video here.
	Could this be any more soul-chilling?
	Is it real?
	Does a fate such as this await us?
	And below, screams from souls tormented in authoritarian hell.
	Well, that's a bit dramatic, isn't it?
	Well, what this video shows...
	Oh my god.
	So the glaring lights from the top.
	Yeah, the lights blinking and so on and so forth.
	Jesus Christ.
	Now, that could, obviously, you could say, oh, well, it's easy to put a sound file over something like that, but I've heard a lot of people talking about this and so on, and I do not believe this is fake at all.
	And you can tell from the echo as well that this is shouting coming out over a large and sort of echoey distance.
	Do they literally have the police or the army on the doorstep of the apartment?
	So, as I understand it, there's security, whatever that means, sometimes building security and so on.
	Or quarantine security who are at the foot of the buildings.
	And if anyone tries to get out, they will stop them or call the police and so on and so forth.
	So people are stuck in their high-rise apartments.
	So they're all potentially starving without water.
	Yeah.
	And this is Shanghai as well, which is one of China's poster cities.
	One of its best, most international, most free or least authoritarian cities.
	And this is apparently happening there.
	It's really bad.
	So some stories that I've heard about this are that the government has taken control of food distribution, perhaps not in Shanghai, but in some regions, some cities in China and so on.
	And so you can order food on an app.
	But of course, everyone is doing that at the same time.
	The infrastructure can't cope.
	If you do get stuff, you get a few vegetables and that's it.
	And most people, there are people who've put videos out of them just repeatedly trying to order on this and it just says, can't order, can't order, can't order.
	And that's it.
	That's the only way to get food.
	So it just looks like everyone's panic buying.
	Yeah, yeah.
	But then again, they've...
	It's a long story.
	Let's go through the tweets.
	So here we go.
	China, 25 million people in lockdown in Shanghai, policed by drones that have facial recognition and give orders.
	People who go out onto their balconies without masks are fined directly from their central bank digital currency account.
	So China has quite an advanced digital currency system.
	And then she adds, coming soon to a new world order near you.
	Well, I don't know about that, but this is certainly one of the problems you have when you put things like access to food or distribution of food in the hands of the state.
	They mess it up just like the state messes everything up if you let it.
	But if by new world order she's talking about the vision that the World Economic Forum has, then that may not be inaccurate, given that they want to abolish not just private property, but privacy in its entirety.
	And by deduction...
	You must have a completely planned economy.
	And planned economies, as we know historically, can cause this sort of thing.
	Absolutely.
	If we go to the next one, so this is Jack Posobiec claiming 193 million people are now under full or partial lockdown in 23 cities across China.
	And again, this is because of coronavirus.
	This is because there are coronavirus cases that have been contact traced.
	If we go to the next one, so this is what contract tracing means on the ground.
	Pfft.
	So the quote here, remember contact tracing, this is what happens in China when one person tests positive.
	So they appear to have shut the whole thing down.
	And of course the frustrating irony of it is that they've put so many people in such close proximity that they're basically spreading it.
	It's madness.
	I'm actually lost for words at how stupid they are.
	Not the poor souls who have stuck here because they don't have a blimmin' choice of the state.
	Absolutely.
	This is why the state should never be let in charge of something as vital as food and medicine and whether you can leave your house.
	And there are also lots of footage of dogs and cats being killed in the streets.
	Plenty of videos of that, which we will obviously not show.
	No.
	Because this is depressing enough.
	Without that, like pictures of sackfuls of cats and dogs on the street.
	I'd also recommend not searching it in your own time either.
	It's really not.
	Yeah.
	And then here we have a load of people.
	This is allegedly a quarantine facility where they've literally just put out these beds in the middle of a hangar or a warehouse.
	Again, in close proximity so they can cram as many in as possible.
	Obviously, they're not going to give them proper burials, are they?
	No.
	Well, they're alive, as far as I'm aware.
	Oh, are they?
	Okay.
	But still, that's not particularly reassuring.
	If you've got COVID, that's probably not the first place you want to be.
	No, well...
	If we go to the next one, so this is people allegedly ransacking an area for food.
	Apparently there's a shop there and so on, they're just going and grabbing what they can and getting out.
	Again, you don't normally see disorder in China, especially not somewhere like Shanghai, one of the better cities.
	No.
	I mean, as authoritarian as their form of order is, one thing you could credit China with is actually keeping order intact.
	That's one of the benefits of a one-party stage, or it looks like.
	They have a very, very tight rate on the news that comes out of China, of course, and that's why we're approaching it in this way.
	No, absolutely.
	And they probably don't want you seeing, for example, this one, which is the next one.
	No.
	So this is someone recording from their balcony, and oh, look, they're just arresting someone there who tried to run away.
	And you notice the quarantine police or whoever they are are just dressed head to toe in these sort of biological warfare suits.
	And there's more like this if we go to the next one.
	Again, this looks like someone beating someone up.
	Yeah.
	I know.
	For your health, guys.
	For your health.
	If we go to the next one.
	Again, so we have some people, one of them's in the uniform and everything, the others look like volunteers because they're in casual clothes, and they've got, what do you call these things?
	It's like a stick with a hook on it so that you can hold someone, but you can maintain your social distancing from them.
	I've no idea.
	All I know is that they use similar tools in The Walking Dead for collecting zombies.
	Right, okay.
	And yeah, it does not look very pleasant.
	If we go to the next one.
	Yep.
	This is just what it looks like on the streets.
	There's a child in there, apparently.
	They say it's a child.
	It could actually be a small old person, but still, it's not very good, is it?
	No, it's not.
	And the reason I'm showing you all of this is because this is what authoritarianism does when it gets a bee in its bonnet.
	It comes out with this ludicrous stuff.
	It's horrendous.
	Like, this is genuinely dystopian.
	It's just tyranny for tyranny's sake, surely?
	Yeah.
	How fatal is this new variant that they're trying to suppress, or the new variants that they're trying to contain, I should say?
	Yeah, exactly.
	And there have been protests about this as well, if we have a look at the next one.
	So, yeah.
	And actually, they make a good point here that normally they're very sceptical about the information that comes out of China because it's often curated to put perceptions in your mind or something like that.
	And with the start of COVID, you must remember, there was a lot of so-called COVID theater, whereby we saw stuff happening in China that looked unreal, but where there was a lot of severity being placed on quarantining people and people like fainting in a shopping center and so on as if they had Ebola or but where there was a lot of severity being placed on quarantining people And the argument is that this was used to essentially control our perceptions of an emerging unknown disease to make us more a malleable, more amenable to harsh restrictions,
	If that's the intent, as alleged, then it certainly worked.
	So we have to remember that when footage like this does come out, even on Twitter, which is a supposedly free platform, there is a possibility that it's to curate our perceptions and so on and so forth.
	But I think also there's a lot of stuff just happening in Shanghai, as they admit.
	There's something very dark and very wrong happening out there.
	Oh, yes.
	And we should pay attention to it, because no one in the West seems to be talking about it over Ukraine.
	No, as a matter of fact, I don't think any major broadcaster has talked about this.
	Yeah, there will be notes here and there, but this is major.
	This is a really big issue, I think.
	If we go to the next one.
	Yeah, Shanghai is China's most populated city, and what's happening there is one of the biggest stories in the world.
	People are suffering starvation, pets being put down, stores getting looted.
	This civil unrest should be much bigger news.
	Yes, it absolutely should.
	Does not happen very often in the sense that if you are restless in China, the police will not appreciate your human right to protest very much.
	No, most don't entertain the idea of revolting because of, well, Tiananmen Square.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So something must be going down if the Chinese...
	Have deemed it rationally necessary to revolt against their monolithic government.
	Yes.
	Yeah, it must be pretty serious.
	Yes.
	And if we go to the next one.
	So this is a drone going over saying, please comply with COVID restrictions.
	Control your soul's desire for freedom.
	Bit of a weird translation there.
	Do not open the window or sing.
	Yeah.
	Control your soul's desire for freedom is a disingenuous translation, I think.
	Do not open your window.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	We're not that far away from them actually filling them up with bricks, are we?
	Well, there was footage early on in the pandemic of them sealing people's doors, but they don't appear to be doing that on such a scale now, for various reasons.
	Partly because the optics are terrible, but also because there's a lot of doors to seal.
	It's monstrously inhumane.
	Yes.
	And just to bring a bit of context to all of this footage, let's go through this thread here.
	So day 24 of my Shanghai COVID lockdown.
	So it's been going on for exactly half the time of the Ukraine conflict.
	Today, the new policy went into effect that classifies each house and apartment community into three categories according to the risk level.
	We were classified as the highest risk level.
	We are in the lockdown tier, he continues, with the highest restrictions, if we scroll down.
	The best-case scenario is that we can't leave our apartment door for the next week, then are allowed out of our door, but not our community, for another week.
	And this is a Westerner, by the way, living in Shanghai, so they're going to be treated better than the local inhabitants in some ways, because they're sort of trying to make Shanghai a show-shit city, a nice place to be, where all of the best things of China meet all of the best things of the world, and so on and so forth.
	And a lot of this reminded me of a recent podcast we did.
	It reminded me of The Capital from The Hunger Games.
	We were talking about this recently.
	I did this premium video with Carl.
	Because it does seem like the capital in China is woefully out of touch, in a sense, with what's actually going on in the ground.
	And now you might think my reference to the Hunger Games is a bit facetious, but as we muse upon the relationship between teenage sports celebrities and authoritarian dictators here, let's spare a thought for the Chinese Winter Olympic skiing star I covered a few months ago, Eileen Gu.
	Go to the next one.
	Yeah, she was mentioned by President Xi Jinping a couple of days ago.
	A nice little crack about red bean buns and her love of food.
	A big old chuckle, a round of applause.
	Isn't that lovely?
	And she was present in the speech.
	Oh, isn't that wonderful that China produces such lovely young people?
	Isn't it?
	And then in response, we have another video, which is her improvising a melody on the piano.
	Again, not staged at all, just spontaneous.
	And a Chinese government official putting that out.
	All the great things from China.
	Young, beautiful, talented people.
	Isn't that amazing?
	And this all reminds me of a little bit of Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games.
	Of course, she's much more of a voluntary part in China's state machine.
	But she's still a teenager and she's being dragged out as things are going really badly in some parts of China to be like, oh, look at this.
	Isn't this wonderful?
	In a bit of the way that The Hunger Games are, in a sense.
	No, I can definitely see that contrast.
	And not all Chinese netizens have been so kind to her.
	So a quick post here.
	I'm heading back to the US now.
	But next time there's a game in China, I'll still be Chinese.
	Well, how convenient.
	Yeah.
	But what happens in China, of course, doesn't stay in China.
	This is a globalized world economy.
	And if we go to the next one, this will have a knock-on effect in the economy.
	As they say, only semiconductor factories and a few other key industries are still working.
	Apart from the human and animal tragedy in China, the rest of the world should prepare for massive consumer goods shortages with huge business and livelihood consequences here.
	Utter carnage.
	And that seems to be right, because if we go to the next image, this is port congestion outside China.
	All these ships waiting to go into Shanghai, Dingbo, Zheoshan, Qingdao, Rizhou, Tianjin.
	There's just big queues outside of all of them, because the cities are locked down.
	They can't land these facilities at speed.
	And that would have a lot to do with the food shortages.
	Well, China does produce a lot of food.
	I believe they produce more food than they consume by a significant margin.
	They're some of the world's biggest producers of cereal crops.
	So the problem seems to be food distribution.
	Yes.
	Not food production.
	And the problem fundamentally seems to be the state saying, oh, we can do food distribution.
	No, you can't.
	You just completely fail.
	Even in China, which prides itself on having a very interfering state, the state is no match for the free market when it comes to distributing food.
	It's one of the best things the free market does.
	You have to credit it for that.
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	And meanwhile, economic integration of the West with China is a big issue.
	So there's this report here.
	On the UK dependence on China for critical minerals.
	This is by the China Research Group, which is an advisory group at British Parliament set up by some Conservative MPs.
	And I'll just quote a short extract here.
	Global demand for critical minerals is set to soar in the next two decades.
	As a result, a race to secure supplies of critical minerals is underway.
	One nation has a huge head start.
	China dominates the refining and processing of critical minerals, controlling up to 90% of this stage of the midstream of the supply chain.
	While its dominance was partly fuelled by Western offshoring, the Chinese government has systematically supported its rare earths industry with strategic industrial policy.
	This raises clear concerns of strategic dependence at a time when Beijing is deepening its state control of the rare earths industry.
	This is compounded by the ethical questions of opaque supply chains and environmental issues of high carbon supply chains.
	so the last point they're alluding to the fact that there can be things which we would consider slave labor factories we've all seen the famous netting outside iphone factories in china to catch people jumping out of the windows because the working conditions are so bad now that was a long time ago but this is still china yes uh and with high carbon supply chains they're referring to western carbon offshoring which is where they get the same good made in china instead of the uk so they can say oh look we've lowered our carbon emissions
	aren't we so green when it's still made with chinese coal yes anyway anyway But that's not the only thing, if we have a quick look at this one here.
	The Takeover of Newport Wafer Fab by the Chinese.
	And this is a real...
	This is quite close to my research field, and it's a real, like, head-desk moment sort of thing.
	So, let's go through it.
	Newport Wafer Fab is a silicon and compound semiconductor foundry in Wales which was bought in July 2021 by Chinese-owned firm Nexperia.
	Excellent.
	On 1st April 2022, the government said no decisions had been made on its national security review of the takeover.
	As well as being the UK's largest semiconductor plant, Newport Wafer Fab was one of the anchor companies for the UK's first compound semiconductor innovation cluster, CSC Connected.
	As the chip foundry for CS Connected, NWF was a partner in at least 14 Innovate UK programmes to develop gallium nitride and photonics devices, including a project to develop high-frequency GAN designs for 5G defence radar systems.
	So, Innovate UK essentially manages public grants to business.
	Right.
	So this company has had at least 14 public money grants for research, and then it's just been sold to China.
	Just been...
	Yep.
	Fabulous.
	Brilliant.
	Great capitalism, guys.
	Keep it coming.
	Whose policy was this?
	Well, it's not policy.
	This is the thing.
	This just happens because there aren't the rules to stop foreign companies coming in and poaching our major innovators like ARM, which was bought up by SoftBank.
	But it's a result of a lack of market regulation.
	Well, I wouldn't put it that way.
	It's the result of...
	It's a complicated issue, but fundamentally in the UK, we don't have safeguards for keeping IP advantages that we have.
	We just allow foreign companies to come in, buy up, outsource, job done.
	And we've been betraying our innovation sector for decades doing this with computers, with cars.
	Many people forget that the computer was technically invented here.
	We've got Charles Babbage and Alan Turing and so on.
	And of course, many of the major innovations happened in America and some in Japan and so on.
	But we did, by some arguments, have the first computer here, and just poor economic conditions and policy resulted in us having no computer companies.
	You can see how an argument in favour of protectionism can be made here.
	Yes, yes, absolutely.
	It's a complicated question, though.
	I don't claim to have all the answers.
	But certainly when the buyer is China...
	I think we ought to be a little more circumspect regardless.
	Especially after what we've seen happening in China.
	Yeah, and forward thinking, especially given that their focus on, shall we say, influencing and investing in the African region has led them to be able to make the claim that they're reducing their carbon emissions by shutting down coal plants in mainland China, but building the same amount of coal plants in Africa.
	Absolutely.
	So just to continue, China's 14th five-year plan from 2021 to 2025 specifically identifies compound semiconductors as an area where China could take the lead in a field where it isn't as far behind as it is in conventional silicon-based chipmaking.
	So the idea of compound semiconductors is they could be the next generation of semiconductors.
	Now, obviously, the West and so on are very good at silicon-based chips.
	That's what all of our devices are using at the moment.
	But in the future, it could be compound semiconductors overtaking silicon in many of those areas.
	China is behind in some ways in silicon-based, but they could, if they are able to successfully move into compound semiconductor manufacturing, they could sort of jump ahead, which would be very good for them strategically.
	Very sensible policy.
	Nextperia is owned by the Shanghai-based Wingtech.
	Almost 30% of Wingtech's shares can be traced back to the Chinese government entities, investment screening specialists Daytona found.
	And this is not uncommon at all.
	You have a Chinese private company which is actually state-owned.
	What a surprise in the world.
	Imagine my shock.
	It's just the way they run their economy.
	And it's a way of exerting political control over corporations, which, although they generate lots of money and prosperity, can be a political threat if not managed.
	And the way the Chinese do this is that they integrate them within the party structure, often by placing party members on the boards or behaving in a sort of tyrannical and arbitrary way towards billionaires.
	It was what used to be called corporatism.
	Yes.
	As in that's quite, or at least that was the term used for how the Nazi party actually structured its economy.
	Wow.
	The parallels are quite striking.
	I didn't realise that was called corporatism.
	Yes.
	It has been referred to as corporatism, yes.
	And finally, they say Shanghai's next science and technology plan focuses on building the silicon carbide and gallium nitride compound semiconductor industry with ambitions for a silicon carbide valley.
	Which is quite a nice buzzword.
	Silicon Carbide Valley.
	Yeah, because Silicon Carbide will be the next day after Silicon.
	It's smart, at least.
	And then finally, I thought just to bring it home, we have this lovely story just to demonstrate how interrelated the Chinese economy and the West are.
	China Energy paid $4.8 million to Hunter Biden.
	Oh, brilliant!
	I know.
	The documents show that over a 14-month period in 2017 and 2018, a Chinese firm, CEFC China Energy, which was founded by Yi and whose nonprofit wing was won by Ho, paid $4.8 million to an investment vehicle controlled by Hunter Biden.
	During that same time frame, Hunter Biden's firm transferred $1.4 million to James Biden's consulting firm, according to bank records and a report released by Senator Charles Grassley, Republican Iowa, ranking minority member on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
	So yeah, it's amazing how far the tangled web stretches.
	The mind boggles, doesn't it?
	I know, it does.
	And on that note, let's move on to the video comments.
	So thanks to John for reading out the Kipling collection.
	It's been an absolute wonder to listen to, and it's actually reinvigorated my own interest in writing poetry.
	Good.
	I'm no Kipling, of course, but you have to start somewhere.
	Currently, I'm writing a poem called The Unremarkable Heroics of John Smith, and it's a story about how a normal, everyman, reasonable person can become dragged into extremism and the culture war by, you know, a careful narrative set by the media and an echo chamber.
	And hopefully, you know, who knows, maybe it will be something worth publishing at some point.
	Excellent.
	Well, one of the reasons that I do this series on culture is because I think that culture is undervalued.
	They used to be like an establishment in the education for recognizing, for example, people who love poetry, and then there'd be poetry competitions and things like that.
	And at some point, about 20, 30 years ago, that all got washed away in favor of postmodernist poetry.
	So, for example, if you wrote a rhyming poetry, it would just not get through.
	But if you wrote like whale duck refrigerator, that's apparently a poem and you would get awards and things like that.
	And that doesn't mean that humans have lost their capacity to appreciate rhyming or to make poetry or to appreciate poetry and so on and so forth.
	And that's actually an important part of our culture.
	And so for people to engage with old poetry and be like, actually, I like that.
	I enjoy that.
	And I can produce that.
	That's amazing.
	That's a real white pill to that you've taken that series and you're going on and creating.
	Yeah, I really, really like the concept of the book as well.
	Absolutely.
	Thank you.
	John, today I want to thank you for your coverage.
	Your non-stop thorough educational and fair coverage is probably the only one that I trust at this point for Ukraine.
	As well as the way that you present information as fair, such as talking about your stepping stones and crocodiles.
	I like that very much.
	Also, your tone that you always present things in, your unwavering, monotonous tone, gives a certain gentlemanly sophistication that I appreciate very much.
	Good work.
	Oh, well, thank you.
	Yeah, he's not wrong, is he?
	Apart from the monotonous part.
	But I think he meant well.
	Well, that's a really heartwarming comment, so thank you very much for that.
	Cheers.
	Maybe a man is better when he's a dangerous man who's being good than he would be if he was just a good man who wasn't capable of being dangerous.
	And I believe that because the best men that I've ever met are very dangerous men.
	You don't mess with them.
	And you know that as soon as you meet them.
	Do you think weak men can be virtuous?
	No!
	Yeah, I agree.
	It's an amazing clip.
	That's from the Dutch interview of him in 2018, I think, February, if I recall correctly.
	It was shortly after the Cathy Newman thing.
	And yeah, that's just a really good point.
	He's made it on a number of occasions.
	If you don't have...
	If you don't have a blade to wield, then you can't be good for not wielding it.
	It's that kind of idea.
	I honestly think that we almost have a duty to point out that weakness is probably the greatest vice that that ultimately is when you break down everything Wow.
	That seems to be collapsing around us at the moment, or at least in the way that Peterson alludes to.
	Weakness is the ultimate moral vice.
	It can take centuries to build something up.
	It can take days, perhaps even hours, to pull the whole thing down to the point where it looks like it never existed.
	But there are multiple levels of that.
	I think weakness in a position of responsibility is the ultimate moral failing.
	So if you are the king of a country, or the tzar of a country, let's say...
	And because you effed up, the entire country plunges into ten years of civil war rebellion, and tens of millions die, and you're ruled by...
	Weakness is the cousin of chaos.
	That's another way of putting it.
	But, yeah, in that sense, obviously weakness is the ultimate moral failing.
	Of course, Genghis Khan, you can hardly accuse of being weak, and you could argue that he had moral failings which eclipse...
	Oh, certainly.
	That's not to say that the order is in and of itself virtuous, but...
	It's necessary for virtue to exist.
	In many cases, I think that's true.
	Weakness is an ultimate moral failing.
	Not in all cases, though.
	I think you have to have some nuance, but certainly on a personal level, and especially as a man who is expected to have responsibility simply by being a man in society.
	Then yes, you have to have that strength as a prerequisite almost to being good and to anything else you would do.
	Do you not think that it's almost universally valid though to say that weak men or at least weak people in general creates hard times?
	Absolutely.
	There's a reason that quote is so popular.
	It's, yes, simplistic, but it's true.
	And sometimes the best truths are simplistic ones.
	So one could posit it as a moral virtue to bully those things out.
	Yeah, I think we should talk about bullying at some point.
	Because I often make the point that if Harry Potter, right?
	Okay, if Harry Potter had not had Dudley Dursley, Vernon Dursley, Draco Malfoy to contend with, then how on earth could you expect him to stand up to Voldemort?
	These people were like an obstacle course, a training course for him to go there.
	And this is a very common trope in popular fiction.
	People encounter the small-scale, petty-minded bullies that And that encounter trains them to actually fight the real evils that exist.
	Yeah, having said that, bullying nearly turned Professor Snape into an actual shit.
	Yes, of course.
	But he didn't, because he stood above it.
	Of course.
	But I am...
	I'm not saying, of course, bullying is great, guys.
	No, of course not.
	But...
	You have to view it in the context of human society, and it's not always evil.
	In fact, it's kind of a part of life, like a rite of passage that you must contend with.
	You know, let's move on to the next one.
	Great comment, by the way.
	Combining sketch comedy with a story narrative and an all-star cast of the day, I'm going to get Yusaka neatly lampoons black American culture of the late 1980s.
	Sadly, its humour seems to have completely bypassed the cultural creators of today.
	Hey, man.
	Are you sure you've got enough?
	You can never have enough, brother.
	That's the most glorious...
	I presume that's a death scene that I've ever seen.
	That is fantastic.
	That's amazing.
	I've got to go and watch that now.
	Cheers, Alex.
	Let's go to the next one.
	Want the ball?
	Get the ball.
	Aw.
	Get the ball.
	Good boy, Gunther.
	Gunther's been living with me for a little over two months now.
	He's four months old.
	He's lovely, isn't he?
	As he was growing while he was still small and cute.
	But getting away from grad school is a pain.
	It looks like you're taking good care of him.
	Yeah, thanks for that.
	Go to the next one.
	I am not saying that there's any fortifying of an election going on.
	What I am saying is that Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf is now allowing everyone in Pennsylvania to vote by mail, no matter what the reason.
	And then, based on polling and recent data and recent endorsements by Trump, it sounds like I'm going to be voting for, and my next senator is going to be Dr.
	Oz.
	Now, for those in the UK that don't know, this is just some talk show guy.
	Like, he just does daytime television where he just talks to people about, I don't even know, I've never watched it, but, like, Dr.
	Oz might be my senator, and that's just kind of weird.
	It is a bit strange.
	Honestly, I am concerned about the flimsiness of the American election system for many reasons.
	Whenever anything goes wrong in government and policy, it's not like there's a shortage of that with inflation at 8.5% in America.
	You kind of think, well, at least the voters will show their displeasure at the polls.
	And then it's like, yeah, but will they?
	Anyway, but you at least have to try.
	Let's go to the next one.
	Like most things, when it comes to mechs, there's probably a good half-hour fiddling for every minute of cool awesome footage.
	As for the look, I'm basing it off of the Halo Legends prototype suit.
	Two joysticks on either side of the chest make it so my arms aren't in risk of getting crushed by the robot arms.
	Have you thought about putting a search bar on the Lotus Eaters website?
	Then we could easily find all the different bits of content that cover the same topic.
	I can assure you that we are working on one.
	I can't tell you when it's going to be introduced, but it will happen.
	Just can't say when.
	But it is much needed.
	I agree.
	Everyone agrees.
	And we're very enthusiastic about introducing it.
	Yep.
	Cheers.
	Let's go to the next comment.
	Hello, Lords of Seekers.
	I'm just at the Royal Easter Show.
	And I'm with C.S. Cooper.
	CSCooper.com.au!
	Buy it now!
	And never forget it, Callum.
	Never!
	No!
	Oh, you actually set up a store and collaborated.
	That's great.
	That's brilliant.
	I hope you got some good sales and some good publicity as well.
	Yeah.
	Excellent.
	Let's go to the next one.
	There's a kitty.
	I was actually homeschooled from second grade all the way through 12th, graduating with honors and getting my diploma and stuff.
	When I was in first grade, then I caught pneumonia and had to take a week or two off of school and they gave me textbooks so I wouldn't fall behind.
	Mom and I enjoyed doing the schoolwork at home so much that we decided to give it a try and never looked back.
	It was awesome.
	You have experience of homeschooling, don't you?
	Just a little bit.
	It's so much kinder to the human spirit to do that than to be placed in the Prussian military-style establishment that we view as a fundamental part of childhood existence.
	I don't think it's a coincidence that I've learned much more since I've left school and have found it easier to engage in meaningful subjects, I suppose, since I was free of that structure that you just described.
	I mean, I recently published an article called The Meaning of an Education, which I think came up today, possibly yesterday.
	And it sort of alludes to that as well.
	But I think I will be writing more about education.
	I think it's so important.
	Like, when you have the freedom to actually choose, actually, what do I want to learn?
	You suddenly have to think, well, actually, what's important to learn?
	And then you have to think, well, what's important about learning?
	And these are actually the big questions that you should be solving through an education, right?
	Not just getting a few crumbs of information from your teachers that you digest a bit at a time.
	Yeah, and then doing an end-of-year memory test.
	Exactly.
	That's just brutal.
	Yeah, really.
	That's a system designed to produce conscripts who get blown up in an industrial war of the 1800s.
	It's not a system to produce thinking minds for the knowledge economy of the 21st century.
	No, absolutely right.
	Let's go to the next one.
	From NewJerseyHauntedHouses.com comes the story of the watch case company Clock Tower.
	This eight-story tower was built in 1908 and was part of the extension for the Pavilion Hotel, which has since been torn down.
	However, the Clock Tower remains, and it is considered very haunted, full of ghosts and spirit orbs.
	And you can see by the picture, it's very creepy looking.
	It is today used as an office building.
	Really?
	That is used as an office building?
	I'm glad we don't work there.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	It looks like something out of Ghostbusters, doesn't it?
	It does.
	Just looming there.
	I don't know why clock towers are so creepy, but they just are, aren't they?
	Why?
	Maybe it's the sound.
	Maybe it's the fact that it looks like the Eye of Sauron at the top a little bit with the clock face.
	I think most cocktails are quite nice, just not that one.
	I think that's it for the video comments, so let's go on to the comments about Mariupol.
	Kevin Fox says, Was actually Portland on a Sunday morning.
	No, Portland in reality looks far worse than that, for sure.
	Yeah, a lot more munitions floating around as well.
	Oh, God, imagine if in 10 years, 20 years' time, that's what it looks like, how things are going on.
	Don't, don't.
	Bald Eagle, 1787, says, Unpopular opinion.
	we need to end the war in Ukraine.
	The disruption of wheat shipments from Ukraine and fertilizer shipments from Russia are going to kill millions more than the war in Ukraine ever could hope to do.
	If the West cares about its people, it will acknowledge the realistic situation that continuing the fight will kill their own people, as well as Ukrainians and Russians.
	But who cares about human life when national egos are being stroked, and the pleasure that is felt when Russia is being hurt?
	We're no better than China at this point.
	I've long said, I know that I'm not the most politically aware insofar as this subject is concerned, but I think the best way out of this is to accept the I don't think we will get the best possible ending with the understanding that I think most endings are bad out of this.
	One thing I'd like to point out is so I've been following developments in Peru, and Peru is having a crazy bad time with the fallout from COVID, with the fallout from sanctions against Russia and so on and so forth.
	And no one cares.
	This kind of seems to be the eternal story of Latin America, right?
	The rest of the world is busy doing its sanctions and fighting its geopolitics and everywhere.
	And then somewhere like Peru, which doesn't get a seat at the table or a say in how any Ends up with major internal problems.
	Partly, obviously, because of its own internal setup.
	But also partly because they're just being completely screwed over by what the great powers are doing.
	And no one cares.
	Like, who read about Peru today?
	No one knew about the war with the cartel that's going on just south of the American border.
	Yeah, in Mexico.
	No one cares.
	And that just tells you the power of the media.
	Not just the things that they make you focus on, but the things that they don't.
	Yeah, and that that's literally right on...
	Next to American soil.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	It's extraordinary.
	I still think we're a bit better than China, but I agree.
	It's not a nice set of options.
	Alpha of the Beta says, The battlefield advantage of using a small amount of non-lethal chemical warfare, especially against blockaded, demoralized and starving troops, is the implicit threat that a larger lethal amount could be deployed at will.
	Who knows what the real story is, but there are plausible propaganda reasons on both sides.
	Yeah, I think that's a fair point.
	Yeah, I think that's entirely fair.
	Yeah, I agree with that.
	Paul Neubauer says, Mario Pol achieves Alamo status.
	That's a good...
	I have to think about that comparison.
	What is Alamo status?
	Sorry.
	Oh, so the Alamo is a place in...
	Oh, God, it's in Texas now, isn't it?
	Yeah, but it was part of the Mexican-American War where a group of Americans were surrounded, and I believe they were killed to the last man after a heroic last stand that Americans often compare to Thermopylae and so on.
	Okay, I can see that.
	Free Will 2112 says, the Russians used chemical and radioactive weapons on our soil against people Putin perceived as enemies and we were not even at war with them, so it is not beyond the realms of possibility.
	He's referring, of course, to the GRU and FSB alleged poisonings of Skripal and Litvinenko.
	So, yeah, no, it's not beyond the realms of possibility at all.
	Callum Dayton says, Mariupol held out for longer than expected.
	Odessa, and it's still holding out, by the way.
	Odessa during World War II held out for only eight days, but was forced to evacuate and given up to save the fastfall in Crimea.
	But quite impressive by the defenders of Mariupol nonetheless.
	And the damage suffered to the city?
	Well, this is what real war looks like.
	Freewell2012 says, Warfare in urban areas leads to massive destruction.
	Berlin, Stalingrad, Cannes all spring to mind.
	And finally, Kevin Fox says, so, the Ukrainians have their own version of the Maglai finger in the Bosnian conflict.
	The big difference was that the Maglai finger had the added problem of being made up in tears.
	Croat, Bosnian, Croat Muslim, Bosnian Muslim, used to live there, and getting in or out back to the UN bases was a nightmare, even though we were neutral.
	I don't understand that reference, I'm afraid.
	No, no, I'm not familiar with this either, but...
	Yes.
	I shall look that up as you move on to the next segment.
	Sure.
	So we'll begin with Alpha of the Bases.
	Then, when the punishment for breaking a law is a fine, it is a law to patrol the lower classes.
	I think that's yours, actually.
	That's actually quite profound and so obviously true.
	It's amazing it's not a well-known truism.
	I'm stealing that phrase, John.
	Oh, thank you very much.
	I didn't come up with it.
	I learned it from someone in the podcast, and I think it might have been Josh, actually, but I can't remember.
	I'm pretty sure it's Josh.
	No, but it certainly is profound.
	Longshanks1690 says, I'm unsure of how to react to party gates since Boris is still the best of all the actually plausible options rights now.
	As regressible as that is, I think that's actually true.
	But he decided to fill a pool with sharks and jump in.
	Why should we on the right to pull him out because of a situation he could have avoided?
	He didn't need to do and practically admitted at the time was the wrong choice.
	I just want to point out here that...
	A lot of the furore against Boris does just feel like the leftist media flexing its muscles saying, yeah, we can drum up a crisis that removes the prime minister.
	Yeah, go us.
	I'm not defending Boris at all.
	I agree.
	But what's the other option?
	I fully agree that in any other political scenario, it would be a given that he's got to go.
	He's completely lost legitimacy.
	The second you'll seem to be acting in contempt of your own rules is when it's over.
	And he's done that almost with a veneer of arrogance.
	But the possibility of someone like Liz Truss coming in, who is even more a mole than he is.
	Also Rishi Sunak.
	Rishi Sunak.
	And he's been implicated enough that it probably won't be him.
	Priti Patel, really?
	I don't like his policy in Ukraine, but he's shown conviction that I didn't think he had.
	A conviction that I don't think you would see with Liz Truss, who's not exactly the most careful with words.
	The fact that she used the build-up to the war in Ukraine as a photo opportunity to try and impersonate the iconic images of Margaret Thatcher in the 80s, that just shows a level of shallow vanity that we should be disgusted as anywhere near the top of our political establishment.
	Yeah.
	So, as flawed as he is, I think he's probably the least bad bet for us at this moment in time.
	I don't know where to stand on party yay's eve, not least because it's contingent on the severity of everything else.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	I reckon the only way we get a good man out of Parliament is we give them all weapons, let them fight it out, and the last one's standing, we can respect at least for winning the brawl.
	Yes, I agree.
	Harry G Man says, Tony Blair is a war criminal and he stayed in office.
	Quite right.
	Yes, if anyone is committed, should, or deserves to have the status of being a Prime Minister and a criminal, it is Tony Blair.
	Absolutely.
	Without question.
	Then again, I wouldn't just give it to him, I'd also give it to Peter Mandelson and many others, actually.
	Anyway, Ignacio Junqueira says, sorry if I've pronounced your name wrong, one of the biggest problems for Western democracies, in my opinion, is the lack of accountability for politicians and public workers.
	Politicians are drunk with power and abuse it while public workers...
	Feel invulnerable for being almost unfireable so that they can slack off or use their station to be political activists.
	Well, there is a serious question to be asked about British democracy, really.
	Oh, there are many big questions.
	Because nearly all of the figures who you could say were accepted at some point as potential prime ministers in waiting and had enormous public support or have actually influenced UK politics on a scale that prime ministers haven't even asserted.
	Absolutely.
	Have never had the slightest chance of becoming prime minister.
	And that expresses a serious problem about the functionality of our democracy.
	Yeah, you're alluding to Farage, for example.
	Farage, and well, someone like Enoch Powell before him, for example.
	Yeah.
	At the time that he made that Rivers of Blood speech, whatever you think about the speech, he was the most popular, or one of the most popular conservative politicians at the time.
	Not within the party, but among the conservative voters.
	That he was ousted by the party, yes.
	Yes.
	What does that say about our democracy?
	Perhaps it's not a democracy at all.
	No.
	No.
	Anyway, Free Will 2112 says, The acid queen speaks, no one listens.
	Quite right.
	Here, here.
	Alpha of the Beta says, Boris Johnson's lightsaber dance is more entertaining than the last three Star Wars movies.
	As low as that bar is, I think he might be right, actually.
	Yeah, so Callum Dayton says, Churchill must be so proud of Boris Johnson at this point and impressed with the character of all our politicians these days.
	Depressed sigh.
	Yeah, well, I think once you stop expecting quality from your politicians, it's a lot less depressing.
	But yeah, fundamentally, change has to come from outside of our elected representatives.
	X, Y and Z says, the worst thing is that the opposition party is just as rubbish as the incumbents.
	So there's no use in giving them points.
	Quite...
	At least in the US, if the Republicans can primary out their rhinos, they're maybe worth something.
	If Australia can vote in a similar cohort of the Freedom Party, they can scare the rubbish out of the two majors and stop them from de facto implementing the Greens' agenda.
	Yeah, and yet here we get the Green Industrial Revolution, which is nicked from Jeremy Corbyn, who nicked it from AOC's Green New Deal, and it's like, wow.
	I'll read one more from Brian Tomlinson.
	If all the political activists masquerading as journalists want Boris out, that's a lot of reasons why he should shrug off this witch hunt and start implementing policies that the electorates voted in favour of.
	Yeah, we're still waiting, aren't we?
	Doing Brexit properly would actually be a start.
	Yeah, can we have Northern Ireland back yet?
	How about that?
	Anyway, so go on to COVID China.
	Marcus Melville says, the North Koreans had an even more extreme zero COVID policy.
	One case, zero cases.
	One case, zero cases.
	And now I'm not an expert on North Korea, but I'll let Callum talk about that.
	A student of history says, imagine selling your strategic industries to anyone but your closest of allies.
	Well, that's true.
	But I also think some of our allies make you prefer your enemies, as Sir Humphrey would have put it.
	I'm just going to say it.
	Market forces.
	Sorry.
	BaldEagle1787 says, all I'm going to say is that it's convenient.
	There are massive COVID spikes in the, quote, problem areas of China.
	The lockdowns are now a more effective method for governments to starve and eliminate their opposition.
	In unrelated news, in the US states of a particular ideology are starting to push restrictions again, and full-fledged lockdowns seems kind of convenient like the 2020 election.
	I mean, that would be a workable policy for actual liberal democracies, but in China, when you already have a one-party state, you have to wonder what is the end here, or are they just that incompetent?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it's curious, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	Very strange times.
	Lee Buttle says, the stuff we see coming out of China is horrific.
	It really makes you wonder how any sane government could look at that and think, hmm, what bits of this authoritarian nightmare could we use for ourselves?
	We all know what they're planning to, and yet we sit waiting for the inevitable to happen.
	Will and will you rise up like in V for Vendetta, which John did a fantastic breakdown of?
	Thank you very much.
	Never, I think, is the case.
	But I think, yeah, we live in interesting times, but not V for Vendetta.
	Casey Darling says, you can't drink the water anywhere in China, even Shanghai.
	Boiling it doesn't remove the heavy metals.
	People rely on bottled water.
	No food or water.
	Babies taken from parents with no way for parents to find out where they are or when they'll be returned.
	Pets in an entire block, beaten to death when one person in a building tests positive.
	The CCP is evil beyond worst nightmares.
	You'd think they would have enough decency to at least...
	Yeah.
	Chris Bird says, civil unrest happens all the time in China, but on a small scale and is shut down quickly.
	This widespread unrest is uncharacteristic and is a true sign of desperation, as they all know the consequences of challenging anything related to the party.
	Yeah, and it's mad.
	And finally, just to close it all off, Longshank1690 says, You better start believing in cyberpunk dystopias, Lotus Eaters.
	You're in one!
	And on that note, let's leave it there.

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