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May 18, 2022 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:30:29

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #395

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for the 18th of May 2022.
	I'm joined by John.
	Hello Lotus Eaters.
	And today we're going to be talking about the Handmaid's Travesty.
	Elon is already exposing Twitter and the Pandemic Treaty, which I'm excited to learn about because I've seen a lot of news about it.
	I suppose we'll start with the Handmaid's Travesty.
	Yes, so let's get straight into it.
	So today I'm going to debut as the Lotus Eater's fashion reporter, hence the denim.
	Let's have a look at what nonsense the American left has been up to this week.
	So there's a popular type of protest attire for LARPers who want something a little bit more colourful than black bloc out there.
	If we go to this one.
	So in 2017, the New York Times is reporting on this.
	And we have a handmaid's tale of protest, if we scroll down, in state capitals and elsewhere.
	Protesters are wearing this, which is the costume from the Hulu adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.
	Women dressed as handmaids demonstrated against funding cuts to Planned Parenthood outside the National Capitol in Washington on Tuesday.
	Well, that's very interesting.
	So they're protesting at the Capitol there.
	But also just the idea that if we can't abort babies, we're basically sex slaves, we might as well dress opposite, which is a reason for the costumes, presumably.
	Exactly.
	But I love the way they phrase this, because if we scroll down a little more, silent heads bowed, the activists in crimson robes and white bonnets have been appearing at demonstrations against gender discrimination and the infringement of reproductive and civil rights.
	Some have drawn comparisons between the show The Handmaid's Tale and the current political climate.
	In Vanity Fair, one critic explored whether it was an allegory for the Trump era.
	You know, years and years before the Trump era.
	Anyway, in The New Yorker, a reviewer discussed its grotesque timeliness.
	Another at the same publication said that we already live, if you scroll up, John, we already live in the reproductive dystopia the show presents.
	Wow, that's bold, isn't it?
	I'm just bringing us back to 2017 to point out that these guys have been out there for a long time.
	But the New York Times is very much in favour, I think, of this.
	They talk about it as a symbol of a repressive patriarchy and so on.
	They can be handmade, repurposed, or ordered online.
	You can imagine how if you're that way inclined, you're reading this, like, oh, I could make my own, or I could repurpose some, I could order some online.
	Oh, a symbol of women's solidarity.
	That's amazing.
	Weird kind of protest though, isn't it?
	The kind of person who gets a uniform for their protest so they can, well, essentially have a moment with all the other people in the uniforms.
	I wonder if the next year's edition will have black shorts.
	Why?
	Or black shirts.
	Oh, right.
	You know, wearing uniforms to a protest is a very curious thing, isn't it?
	Demonstrating that visual solidarity.
	It is actually illegal in the UK, thanks to the black shirts, mostly.
	There's a law in Britain, if you organise a protest and you're wearing a uniform, they don't decide, well, that's a crime, and they can disband the protest on that basis alone.
	Very interesting.
	I'd like to see them do that to this lot, to be honest.
	We move forward to 2018.
	This comes to Britain.
	The BBC is now reporting on it.
	How the handmade became an international protest symbol.
	And yeah, so we have more photos of these sort of sombre-looking pro-choice activists, this time in Buenos Aires.
	I'm very much reminded of the obsession with Harry Potter at this point.
	It's the like, yes, remember the book, remember the book we all read.
	Yeah, it has nothing to do with this.
	But again, the issue they're campaigning about is abortion and abortion rights.
	So there seems to be a strong connection here.
	If we move forward again to 2018, The Guardian is talking about it.
	How the Handmaid's Tale dressed protests across the world.
	The red and white costume from Margaret Atwood's novel has been donned by women from Ireland to Argentina.
	And here's another load.
	Women dressed as handmaids protest against US Vice President Mike Pence in Philadelphia.
	Not against anything in particular, just against his existence.
	Eradicate Mike Pence or we shall continue.
	And of course Mike Pence was famous for not, was it, the Pence strategy?
	Not being alone with another woman unless there was a third person present or something like that.
	He was incredibly faithful to his wife and that was a problem for some people.
	No one else.
	But he instituted that policy so that he couldn't even be remotely accused of any kind of misconduct.
	But he was also very Christian and very open about being Christian in America, which is still, believe it or not, a Christian country.
	This is obviously too much for these fellows here.
	And if we move forward to 2019, we again have Wired talking about it.
	Handmaid's Tale garb is the viral protest uniform of 2019.
	The imagery of the book and Hulu show has once again become increasingly relevant, and I feel like they've chosen the picture where she's rolling her eyes as much as I am at this point.
	It's so cringe.
	Yeah.
	Don't do this if you're going to protests.
	It's just, it's so cringey.
	Like, ugh.
	Now, how has this become so popular, do you think?
	Why do you think this has such appeal?
	I think it's, again, like the Harry Potter signs.
	Like, people want to have a moment with people, especially women at protests.
	Sorry to down on women, but women do have this.
	Where they want to apparently seem to put on uniforms like the pink pussy hats or anything else.
	Leftist women I'm talking about.
	Right.
	Where they seem to want to have a big thing where they can be like, oh yeah, I brought the thing and look at me wearing the thing.
	No, this is cringe.
	Stop.
	There is an element of making it about you, isn't there, in a way, when you wear these elaborate costumes to protests and things.
	But I think there's also a feeling that if you just go barehanded, then you're not doing enough.
	It's almost like you're a bit lazy.
	The middle ground has traditionally been to bring a placard.
	A step further is, what, terrorism?
	I love the idea that it's like, oh no, you only came up and said you don't like the bill.
	Yeah, it's kind of the point of protest as well.
	Like, what else are you expecting the person to do?
	Yeah, but again, there's this culture.
	When you look at how protests are covered, there's a culture of trying to find the sign that's going to be eye-catching for the cameras or things like that, or the costume that's going to draw the attention to the protest.
	But I feel like that's also...
	It's playing into the narcissism of a lot of people involved in these movements of...
	Yes, they think they're drawing attention to the protest, but psychologically what's going on, they're just trying to attract attention to themselves, which I think is something of a problem in modern society.
	So all of this stems from the adaptation of the novel The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.
	And you have her here.
	Would you buy a used car from this woman?
	No, I haven't had much interaction with her, as I say, but I read that article she wrote previously, a couple days ago or whatever, and she was just arguing that if it doesn't have a soul, you can kill it.
	Yeah, we'll get to that.
	So, I was forced to read and study The Handmaid's Tale in school and pretend that it had any remote literary merit, and spoiler alert, it does not.
	It's a terrible book.
	And I'd be curious to see from chat in the comments whether you actually liked the book or whether you too were forced to study it and hated it and so on.
	So Margaret Atwood has created a successful literary career, in my opinion, out of putting the neuroses of the American Democratic Party into novel form.
	Their merit is entirely political and not literary.
	So it's little wonder for me that they were shoehorned into my curriculum for sixth formers to read and lionised by those who are eager to have the correct opinions about things.
	Atwood's novels are feminist activism first, and coherent stories are very distant second.
	And just to underline that point, the first thing that she published was a collection of poetry called Power Politics, which was followed shortly by a novel, and then her second novel, I believe, was The Handmaid's Tale.
	And then that's all she's done ever since.
	No, no, she's written about nine novels, but they circulate around these topics.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, if you're a novelist and you keep writing novels, that's fine.
	Yeah, sure.
	But the whole idea being that, as you say, putting the politics first.
	Yes.
	Yes, absolutely.
	And there is a tendency, which you can find in leftism, for a lot of people to just kind of lose themselves in this sort of liminal fantasy between reality and fiction.
	And The Handmaid's Tale is precisely one of those unreal settings that they create that they almost persuade themselves they're living in or heading towards.
	And I think these are actually terrible lodestones to guide where you're going politically.
	So I would like to contrast Atwood against another author who's beloved by the Democrats, which is Ursula Le Guin, author of A Wizard of Earth.
	Have you heard of this author?
	So she's also written The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed.
	Le Guin writes with a kind of political animus and is also a feminist, a civil rights-influenced author.
	But unlike Atwood, she can write...
	Her novels tend to be great stories, first, and challenging social critique, second.
	I've read...
	I really loved A Wizard of Earthsea.
	I enjoyed The Left Hand of Darkness, though it is quite a challenging book in terms of the ideas.
	It's set in a world where...
	It's an alien world where everyone is basically both sexes.
	So...
	Basically, you can tell where this is going from.
	This is 1969 as well.
	So in this alien race, everyone is basically sexually neutral for something like 23 days up to 26.
	And then in the remaining three days, they can become either gender, either sex.
	And then they revert to being neuter, which is a very interesting concept.
	And she actually explores it quite well.
	And she doesn't just present it as a modern author word as, hey, look at this amazing free trans, transsexual society, etc, etc.
	No, she actually explores what actually would it be like?
	What would the social difficulties be?
	And so on and so forth.
	And she does a reasonably good job.
	And I'm currently reading The Dispossessed, which is a bit more of a A slog, but it's about anarchists, an anarchist commune.
	It's exploring those.
	But again, she doesn't pull her punches.
	She lets the story tell itself without letting the politics rule the story.
	And so you can say, these are novels, they're not just nonsense.
	Speaking of nonsense.
	No, sorry.
	Another good writer with a political agenda is Philip Pullman, whose works and ideas about storytelling we've reviewed previously.
	Myself and Josh did this.
	We have a look at the thumbnail here.
	Do you remember this at all?
	The Northern Lights trilogy?
	I didn't get to watch it.
	I haven't got around to it.
	But yes, so Ursula Le Guin, Philip Pullman, I think are less likely to be read as first-rate literary authors than Atwood, who has mastered the art of the grift and been elevated to the special status, where she's not just a genre writer or a sci-fi fantasy writer.
	She's an amazing, like, overpowering, brilliant, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, etc.
	Does my head in, honestly.
	Studying this was enough to put me off English literature for life.
	But if we move to the next one, this is The Handmaid's Tale.
	A futuristic dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood from 1985.
	It tells the story of a handmaid, a type of concubine or sex slave, whose role is to provide children for a small elite of patriarchs in the religious theocracy of Gilead.
	The characters, though, are largely irrelevant because what Atwood is really putting front and centre of this book is a dystopian vision of a hyper-religious society in which women are treated like chattel, to use the old phrase.
	That's how she sees the old Puritan world.
	Yes.
	I also just, that's the weird aspect of the uniform there, which is we're essentially sex slaves, which is another weird thing to dress up as in a protest, especially when you're convincing yourself you live in that world, but you don't.
	Well, in the era of OnlyFans, some people would, but yeah.
	Protests against OnlyFans dressed so bizarre.
	You could argue that's what's going on on a deep psychological level.
	It's kind of like, yes, they're self-awarely presenting themselves as downtrodden, but on this deep psychological level, perhaps there is this thing where it is a reaction against the hypersexualisation of modern culture.
	I guess we'll see the anti-OnlyFans protest.
	Look, I had to study The Handmaid's Tale in English literature.
	I can come up with BS explanations about literature on the fly.
	So, yeah, we'll see you in the comments.
	But yeah, these women do wear those restrictive bonnets, as you've seen.
	The idea is they're supposed to impede the vision and so on and so forth.
	Funny story, when I was studying this, we had a Muslim girl in a hijab in the class, and while we were talking about this, it was quite a sensitive topic for the teacher who really wanted to sort of ask her, so what does it feel like to be constantly wearing a headgear?
	But she had to phrase it in a very delicate way, obviously, which is quite funny.
	Now Atwood defends the laughable inconsistencies of the setting in her novel here by claiming that all of the dystopian elements are present in some real or historical religion.
	And that sounds, on the face of it, quite good.
	It's like, oh, you can't say this is unrealistic, because it actually did happen in this religion at this point, and so on.
	That sounds like a reasonable defence.
	But if you think about it for more than two minutes, you realise that this is like defending a dish that consists of snails, macarons, and frogless legs in a garlic gâteau, by claiming that the ingredients are all French.
	They can all be found in French cuisine, so it's French.
	Well, no, it's not.
	It's a mess.
	Having authentic ingredients isn't enough to stop you from making a garbled mess.
	But of course, Atwood doesn't limit her criticisms to these dreadful novels, and I think we're going to get on to the article you've mentioned.
	She also writes opinions for The Guardian.
	Roe v.
	Wade, enforced childbirth is slavery.
	Margaret Atwood on the right to abortion.
	The US Supreme Court draft ruling on abortion is an assault on fundamental individual freedoms.
	She reflects on the issues at stake.
	I mean, this is what I mean by why I never bothered reading it, because it's just when you come up with opinions like this, like, if I can't kill babies, I'm basically a slave.
	I mean, we are dealing with someone who is definitely cuckoo.
	He's not there in the world with anyone else.
	Well, let's go through her argument here.
	So, she begins, Nobody likes abortion, even when safe and legal.
	Stop your love.
	There are some people celebrating it.
	But let's be charitable and say that most people don't.
	There are people on late-night TV going, Get an abortion!
	Get one!
	And all the crowds cheering and clapping.
	And all the left is sharing that clip.
	So, no.
	Yeah.
	There are people who like abortions.
	Mm-hmm.
	But let's be charitable and let's say that the majority or a significant proportion aren't going to be celebrating.
	Let's pretend the left don't exist, okay?
	No, I don't think the whole left are like that.
	A significant portion these days.
	Okay.
	Get that little effing sucker sucked out by the college professor.
	Yeah, that's a nutter, yeah.
	Yeah, but then everyone around her cheered.
	And those are average college people.
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah.
	She continues, it's not what any woman would choose for a happy time on Saturday night.
	Again, especially Saturday night comedy, apparently.
	But nobody likes women bleeding to death on the bathroom floor from illegal abortions either.
	What do you do?
	Now, come on.
	Can you get any more disingenuous dichotomy here?
	Like, that's the choice.
	Either abortions everywhere or bleeding to death on the bathroom floor.
	But also, you're not going to convince any conservative with that argument.
	I mean, again, I'm not one way or the other on this, so I'm still confused, let's say.
	But the conservatives who believe life begins at conception, if a woman goes out and tries to kill a baby and then dies from it, those people are not going to be convinced that that's bad.
	They'll be like, well, yeah, the murderer here got killed.
	No, that's true.
	That's a very good point.
	It also reminds me of the Argentinian abortion activist who died while having an abortion.
	Yeah.
	I don't know if you remember that story.
	No.
	It was like her fourth, and then, yeah, she died in the procedure.
	And, uh...
	Yeah, the Argentinian conservatives weren't too polite, to say the least.
	I bet.
	Wow.
	But she continues very slipperily.
	Perhaps a different way of approaching the question would be to ask, what kind of country do you want to live in?
	One in which every individual is free to make decisions concerning his or her health and body?
	Or one in which half the population is free and the other half is enslaved?
	This is the classic slippery politician answer, and we can see this from a fiction which is far better than any Atwood has come up with.
	Yes, Minister, if we go to this clip.
	This is how you deal with questions.
	If you have nothing to say, say nothing.
	Better still, have something to say and say it, no matter what they ask.
	Pay no attention to the question, just make your own statement.
	And then if they ask the question again, what you say is, that's not the question.
	I think the real question is, and then you make another statement of your own.
	Classic.
	Love Westminster, but it's also totally true.
	Yes, absolutely.
	But it's what she's doing here as well.
	Now, that clip obviously is very well done in both writing and delivery, and that's one reason why Westminster is essential viewing.
	Wish we'd studied that in English literature instead of the handmaid's goddamn tale.
	Also reflects reality.
	Mm-hmm.
	So we continue.
	Instead of engaging with the question of abortion, she's changing the conversation into one about a different question, right?
	So a much more vague and abstract question in which there are no dead babies.
	Nothing to trouble the conscience of the enlightened thinker.
	The setup is actually quite obvious.
	If you allow abortion, then everyone is free, otherwise women are enslaved.
	Well, are you a slave owner?
	You there in the comments, I can see you there.
	Yeah, are you a slave owner?
	That's what she's saying.
	I will.
	But she continues.
	Women who cannot make their own decisions about whether or not to have babies are enslaved, because the state claims ownership of their bodies and the right to dictate the use to which their bodies must be put.
	No.
	We dictate the right that you don't have the right to murder people.
	That includes the baby.
	That's how that works.
	I don't know why she's not able to get this.
	But it's also like, okay, there are many decisions leading up to just being pregnant, right?
	No, it's not you slip and fall.
	Women do have control and agency over these actions.
	It's not the slip and fall, right?
	So do we really live in a society where women will only even think of the question of whether to have a baby or not after they're pregnant?
	Is that really the world we live in?
	Because I think I have a rather higher opinion of women than our feminist author here on that question.
	She continues, the only similar circumstance for men is conscription into an army.
	Yeah, I mean, obviously such a great literary mind is able to construct far more elaborate analogies than us poor mortals could hope for.
	I mean, we were comparing it to murder because that's what it's described as.
	I mean, there's a human life you are ending, but it's the same as being conscripted.
	I don't get it.
	Yeah.
	In both cases, there is risk to the individual's life, but an army conscript is at least provided with food, clothing and lodging.
	Even criminals in prisons have a right to those things.
	If the state is mandating enforced childbirth, why should it not pay for prenatal care, for the birth itself, for postnatal care, and for babies who are not sold off to richer families for the cost of bringing up the child?
	What?
	I know.
	I don't know what fictional world she's thinking of here.
	I mean, I can sort of see kind of an argument, but she's got so backwards.
	Like, if you get unscripted, you are made to kill things.
	That is your job.
	I mean, it's the exact opposite of what the mother is doing there, which is, well, making the thing live.
	Yeah.
	Raising it.
	But Atwood, again, falls into the trap of thinking that the state is a person with a person's responsibilities here.
	And that's perfect for status, because they would just turn around and say, yes, no, the state will do all that.
	The state will pay.
	It will raise taxes to pay for it, and it will own all of you.
	Thanks, Margaret.
	And do you wonder now why she's so popular among the left?
	Okay, yeah.
	Whereas anyone reasonable and normal would say, no, it's the parents.
	Exactly.
	Whereas for the conscription, well, you are being brought into the state there.
	No, she seems to only see women having children from the perspective of the state owning the children.
	The state doesn't own the children, doesn't purport to yet.
	She continues,"'And if the state is very fond of babies, why not honour the women who have the most babies by respecting them and lifting them out of poverty?' That's assuming they're in poverty in the first place, of course.
	Again, as if this is the Third Reich?
	Because I'm sure you know, like, they would give medals to mothers for having more kids and loads of money and stuff.
	As if, like, the birthing of kids is just for the future of the empire.
	The race.
	Like, no, no, it's your decision.
	We live in a liberal society to have the kids.
	And if you have loads, again, that was your decision.
	It's not for the glory of the empire.
	If women are providing a needed service to the state, albeit against their wills, surely they should be paid for their labour.
	By not killing you, I'm providing a service to the state, John.
	I deserve recognition.
	Cheers, Mum.
	If the goal is more babies, I'm sure many women would oblige if properly recompensed.
	Otherwise, they are inclined to follow the natural law.
	Placental mammals will abort in the face of resource scarcity.
	Citation needed.
	What?
	But also comparing this to the West, basically North Koreans, so we must have bought babies to eat.
	Yeah, it's not like these women, these pregnant women, are being starved to death.
	That is not happening.
	Anyway, so this is just a grotesque mischaracterisation.
	Atwood seems to think that babies belong to the state here, rather than to mothers and fathers.
	She doesn't mention either word here.
	Entirely absent is any understanding of family or fathers, and she even avoids the word mother.
	Just what you want from a modern-day leftist author.
	I also love the chat.
	It's just like, against your will.
	Chose to have sex.
	Anyway, let's move on.
	So Elon Musk is already exposing Twitter, and we're seeing more and more of the snakes come out of the grass, and I thought we'd just go through it and enjoy, if nothing else.
	So I'll start this off with a little bit of a shill.
	This is a free article, so you don't need to subscribe.
	Go over to thelotuses.com to check this one out.
	Link in the description.
	As you can see, this is an interview with a Facebook whistleblower, Ryan Hartwick, who we did a long time ago.
	Great guy.
	Funniest part of this interview is where he mentions the fact that, yeah, they do laugh at your memes before they delete them.
	I find them really funny, and they're like, yeah, but I get paid to do this.
	They don't have a choice of the matter.
	They're a third-party thing.
	But go give that a read.
	Otherwise, we should get into the snakes at Twitter, who are all coming out.
	So we've got the next one here.
	There are, of course, leaks from Project Veritas that have popped up, and I love covering stuff from Project Veritas whenever we do, so I thought we'd enjoy it.
	I've had to cut these down a little bit, but let's enjoy this first one, which some lead client partner at Twitter says that Elon Musk has special needs, therefore he doesn't respect him, and also Twitter is not there for three-speed.
	That's some pretty anti-special needs bigotry there, isn't it?
	Certainly is.
	Let's play.
	Well, right now we don't make profits, so it's going to say ideology, which is what's led us to not being profitable.
	The rest of us who have been here believe in something that's good for the planet and not just to give people free speech.
	Because again, these people really do believe in what we're doing.
	These are the policies we've put in place for misinformation or mislabeling media or whatever.
	Why do you think this should be taken down?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	It's going to be hard for him to be like, oh, because people should make their own decision.
	It's like, no, but people don't know how to make a rational decision if you don't put out correct things that are supposed to be out in the pub.
	As an advertiser, as my business, is what I do every day and why I go out is like, we want it to be as...
	Fair and transparent and accurate as possible.
	And if that means there's a level of censorship to make it If we're implementing all these rules, and Elon wants to dismantle them, then technically our ideology has led us to not making money.
	Because we're not making money.
	And Elon wants to turn it the other way so that we can make money.
	Your special needs.
	You're literally special needs.
	I can't even take what you're saying seriously.
	Targeting of tapes.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	You can read it.
	Let me see.
	And how to protect yourself.
	Groups like Project Veritas are active right now.
	What the f*** is that?
	It's like some group that's trying to just out the employees.
	They're trying to go on dates with them, like this, and get there with them, and then go sell it to the New York Times and say this is what the Turner employee just said.
	This is what's really happening.
	This is what they're telling us to not do.
	You're lucky that you met me organically, because I would be questioning everything about you.
	I mean, Project Veritas are the real goats in the world.
	You should totally have cut that into...
	The Seinfeld feed or whatever it is.
	Oh, God, yeah.
	You know, they're targeting people like this date.
	I mean, if I didn't know you organically, I would be questioning you while he says on camera to Project Veritas.
	Project Burritos?
	Who are they?
	Oh my god.
	That aside, I had to include that because that is golden.
	I mean, I imagine James O'Keefe has been thinking about getting that on camera at some point in his career there forever, and it finally happens.
	It's like they're warning us about you, aren't they?
	So there's that, but that's a side point.
	That's just gold.
	But the main point being, as he says, what we do is ideology.
	We ideologically have a position and, well, we prioritise that over money.
	As he said multiple times in there, we're not interested in making money.
	We're interested in, well, propagating the ideology.
	I mean, literally get woke go broke in a nutshell as well, which I find amazing.
	But then the open admission that, yes, our position is that you, the public, you and me, John, we're basically idiots.
	We have no ability to think about things ever, according to Twitter.
	We elected this guy as our babysitter, clearly.
	Yeah, and he is going to decide what is correct information for us to read, because if he doesn't decide, then who knows what might happen?
	He's going to be our chaperone through the internet.
	Do you think this hidden camera footage would be the correct information?
	Do you think he would show us this?
	I don't think he would, Cameron.
	No, I don't think that would be allowed.
	I think that would be incorrect thinking, and would have had to go.
	Why?
	Because it shows Twitter for what it is.
	Go broke company.
	And we have Elon himself, who has seen this footage.
	If we get this link up and scroll down.
	Elon's sad.
	To be honest, yeah.
	I mean, also being like, I don't trust you because you've got Asperger's thing as well.
	It's just like, what the hell, bro?
	That's just mean.
	Nothing else.
	We go to the next one.
	We then have the next leak from Project Veritas from the insiders.
	I mean, I love that this is all coming at the same time.
	I know they're stacked with tapes of all these dates they've had, but it's great to see.
	And Tim Pool saying here, well, a great point.
	It's the fact that breaking from Project Veritas, Twitter employees confirmed bias to Twitter.
	Seems I was right because conservatives tolerate leftist speech and leftists won't tolerate the right.
	Twitter opts to censor the right as balance.
	I mean, exactly the point he made in the chat here.
	He had Joe Rogan and Jack Dorsey and whatnot.
	He's like, look, the right will accept your nonsense and be like, ha ha, stupid, but whatever.
	Whereas the left go, no, you're evil.
	I must be deleted.
	I mean, you are on par with any Nazi group because you have said a thing I disagree with.
	And we can see it firsthand from this senior Twitter engineer that's Play This Club.
	Twitter does not belong to Facebook.
	What do you want to do with Facebook?
	Capitalists, if we weren't really operating on the capitalist mode, we were very socialist, like we're all like, call me a s**t.
	Ideologically, it doesn't make sense because we're actually censoring the right, not the left.
	So everyone on the right wing will be like, bro, it's okay to say, you just gotta tolerate it.
	The left will be like, no, I'm not gonna tolerate it.
	I need it censored.
	Or else I'm not gonna be in the capital.
	So it does go to the right.
	I don't know if the two parties can truly coexist on one platform.
	What do your colleagues say about me?
	They hate it.
	Oh my god, I'm at least okay with it, but some of my colleagues are like super left-left.
	Left-left-left.
	What do they say?
	They're like, this will be my last day if it happens.
	I basically went to work like 4 hours a week plus 4 hours.
	How would you describe communism besides Twitter?
	Essentially, like everyone gets to know about law and somebody that no one really cares about like OPEX capitalists care about how it works.
	I care about how to make business more efficient.
	Twitter is like, mental health is everything.
	If you're not feeling it, you can take a few days off.
	People will take a few months off, they'll come back.
	But you always do your best at any time.
	And that's the culture.
	We'll run the business as much as possible.
	Capitalists would be like, I mean, that is insane.
	I know we've all known this for a long time.
	Twitter is essentially a leftist weapon that they use to shut down conversations, particularly in the United States, in regards to anything they don't like, so they can control the narrative and how everyone is allowed to speak.
	And you can see that directly in what he says there, just openly, not only are we censoring the right endlessly because the left won't tolerate it, the right is tolerant, also the fact that I worked four hours a quarter He says himself, the last quarter he walked four hours.
	Four hours a week, yeah.
	It's just, okay, like, that's not work.
	No, it's incredibly dysfunctional and inefficient by the sound of it.
	Now, I will put the counter-argument out there.
	There is this kind of Silicon Valley culture where in order to attract the best engineers, you need to give them the cushiest working conditions and so on.
	But that is just taking the biscuit.
	That's way too much.
	And you can tell, like, that's why when you use Twitter, a lot of the time it's like, it does not feel like a hyper-modern platform.
	It feels clunky in places, badly engineered.
	Well, it's because the engineers aren't working.
	But there's also, we've seen previously, there was a guy who worked, I think it was Google, who just leaked the chats, being like, look, all the new kind of engineers we have now, because of this culture, as you say, which is just like, I'll just give them whatever, means that the new people they have there are just taking the piss.
	Like, lots of people are taking the piss.
	And it meant that, as he put it, the people we now have employed could not build what we are standing on.
	Like, they have no idea how any of it functions, they have no idea how to advance it.
	they're just sitting around twiddling their thumbs apparently working you know four hours meanwhile the whole thing just carries on and they get paid and it doesn't matter why because it is an ideological weapon they don't care about as he says the operating expenses burn all the money you want the money is not important money means literally nothing to this company because it is not about money it's about control well it's also worth pointing out that you don't necessarily need to re-engineer that business to be the most profitable streamlined business it can be in order to turn a profit right exactly Exactly.
	You know, you don't need to, you know, turn the, you don't need to make capital profit your demagogue necessarily in order to make the company work.
	But which is basically the dichotomy that he's saying.
	They're saying, oh, well, they'll just, they'll get really oppressive and everything and they'll actually require us to work properly instead of four hours a week and blah, blah, blah.
	It's like, well, they're probably not going to turn it into a sweatshop, but they could make it into a viable business without.
	Would you please turn up?
	For once.
	I mean, that's why he's hiring so many new people.
	And that gives so much context to his repeated statements that he would turn their headquarters into a homeless shelter.
	Because no one's there.
	If we go to the next one, we can also see he did take notice of this as well.
	But there's also the point previously, which is the fact that he is hiring so many people already.
	It's probably to replace this culture entirely.
	It's not just the people and their ideological problems, but the fact that they are obsessive and all the rest of it, but also apparently just not working because of the culture they've built up over the years.
	If we go forward as well, we can continue to see Elon, who has taken notice of quite a lot of things.
	And in regards to the fact that apparently Twitter is probably not worth that much money, as in the fact that the user base isn't real, as we'll see here.
	So we'll start off with him saying, whoever thought owning the libs would be cheap, never tried to acquire a social media company.
	very very true and also love that he's taking on the memes as well and And we go to the next one, we also see the fact that, well, the bots are angry at being counted, he says.
	This is in regards to the fact that, well, Twitter says in their filings that 5% of the user base around there are bots.
	That's still quite a lot.
	That's still millions.
	Yeah, but it's probably not 5%.
	That's the thing.
	And if they've lied, well, I'm sure there are consequences for that as well.
	So if we go to the next one, we have the fact that he talks about this, and he says, well, they say there's only 5%.
	He doesn't believe it.
	He says that he still commits to the acquisition, however.
	To find out, my team will do a random sample of 100 followers on Twitter...
	I invite others to repeat the same process and see what they discover.
	Right, right.
	And the thing is, there is a reason he mentions 100.
	Because if we can go to the next one, he says he got sent a message.
	Twitter Legal just called to complain that I violated their NDA by revealing the bot's sample check is only 100.
	This actually happened.
	What?
	So the way they're calculating the 5%, it seems, is by hitting 100 people, five of them a bot.
	That is absurd.
	Enough work for me.
	I only work four hours this week.
	Bye-bye.
	No more to do.
	And then him saying that 100 led to them messaging him being like, no, you can't do that.
	You violated the NDA. It's like, nah.
	I think it's worth it.
	I think it's 100% worth it to show that you guys are taking the piss.
	If we go to the next one, we also have the fact that he said this in an interview recently, and just everyone, even in the audience, the hosts in this interview he's doing, just start bursting out laughing when they can't take it seriously.
	Let's play this clip.
	Said another way, the number of real, unique humans that you see making comments on a daily basis on Twitter is above 95%.
	That is what they're claiming.
	Does anyone have that experience?
	I mean...
	Really?
	There's a bridge I'd like to sell you, you know.
	You know.
	And also, you can buy the Brooklyn Bridge.
	He's got a great evil laugh.
	Yeah, it really does have a super villain laugh, but also I love how no one in the room could take it seriously.
	None of the hosts, none of the audience, everyone was just like, yeah, that's ridiculous.
	There's no way that's the case.
	Well, because no one has that experience, as he says.
	Also, when we go to the next one, there is a statement he also made in this interview, which I find quite interesting.
	He said that he'll vote Republican this time around.
	So, quote, I have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats, historically.
	Like, I'm not sure.
	I might have never have voted for a Republican, just to be clear.
	And he makes the point, well, this is clearly not a right-wing takeover of Twitter.
	It is a centrist takeover of Twitter from the left.
	And the far left don't like that, so who cares about their opinion, though?
	He also says, now this election, I will vote Republican.
	Because he talked about Biden, and it's not great.
	If we go to the next one, we can see a statement on Biden, which is just the real president.
	It's whoever controls the teleprompter.
	Because it is just a joke at this point.
	We were out to drinks yesterday with one of the video commenters, and he made a great point.
	He was just like, who do you think is in charge?
	And Karl would occasionally say, oh no, it's Saki or it's Kamala Harris.
	It's no one, really.
	No one is in charge of that institution.
	I think the chap yesterday is absolutely right.
	It's an institution that seems to be running on just inertia and nothing else.
	No one's at the head there.
	I mean, he mentions himself.
	If someone leans on the teleprompter, Biden will just start reading out like A, B, exclamation points, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, as if he's just running on inertia, because that seems to be how the place is.
	I think Elon's right about that.
	If we go to the next one, we'll see the fact that there's also this complaint about the bot count here.
	So, Parag being like, oh no, there's reasons for why we do this.
	Yeah, the leftist CEO is like, oh no, we've got reasons for being crap, and Elon just responding with a poop emoji, just being like, I am calling BS. There is absolutely no way that you can only count 100.
	I mean, at one point, I don't have it in here, he just messaged Parag publicly, just being like, have you tried calling them?
	Like, you have to have a phone number to sign up.
	Just call the 100 people.
	See who answers.
	They won't.
	If you go to the next one as well, there's also the fact that this really, really does affect the situation.
	So if you scroll along on this, there's an account pointing out that the $44 billion deal is on hold because it actually seems way too high for what is being asked for because apparently about 20% of users are fake spam accounts.
	that account and elon responded saying 20 fake spam accounts what uh well four times what twitter claims could be much higher much being with uh asterisks around it my offer was based on twitter's sec filings being accurate yesterday twitter ceo publicly refused to prove that has left them five percent bots and the deal cannot move forward until he does
	yeah i think he's being very intelligent here because he's essentially dragging out the acquisition process which keeps him in the headlines, which is good.
	It keeps Twitter in the headlines, which is also good.
	It casts doubt on Twitter's viability as a social media platform as well.
	He's being very canny.
	It's actually much more effective than just grabbing it and going.
	Absolutely.
	I mean, he's sort of ripping it apart, and it's not costing him a penny because he hasn't paid anything.
	And the fact that he's doing this in the public eye completely, the demonstration of, okay, how much of Twitter is real human beings, is really good.
	Yeah.
	And also, you can see the pressure this whole situation gives.
	I mean, endlessly, the guys at Twitter, when they're there in the office, are having this pressure put on them in the public eye, and then are leaking constantly to Veritas journos, who are on wonderful dates with them as well.
	So that's also great to see.
	But the fact that apparently 20% of the entire place is...
	auditing of Twitter compared to their SEC filings then brings to the question of well why did you lie and also surely that's criminal like surely your valuation is based on this data you've lied you know you've lied or you've done the 100 bots so then you can say I'm lied by omission They'll probably be able to say, oh no, according to the best test we did, it was 5%.
	The fact that our test was laughably inadequate for the thing it was proposing to solve isn't our fault, Governor.
	At least they can demonstrate that they weren't in possession of that information, it seems, at the moment.
	They'll claim, and it's obviously BS. But the fact that this is happening in the public eye, everyone can see that's BS. It's not happening in some closed courtroom or anything like that.
	It's out in the open.
	And speaking of a certain somebody who has a lot of fake followers, Joe Biden.
	Oh.
	Half.
	Half of all Joe Biden's Twitter followers are fake.
	I'm not surprised.
	He's probably got more fake followers than anyone on the platform.
	Yeah.
	Certainly on YouTube.
	Certainly in other places as well, but we can't talk about that.
	At least half of President Biden's 22.2 Twitter followers are bogus, a new audit has revealed.
	The audit, which was done for the social media giant by software firm SparkToro, found that 49.3% of the president's followers are fake followers, according to Newsweek.
	Spark Tarot has defined fake followers as accounts that are unreachable and will not see the account's tweets, either because they're spam, bots, propaganda, etc.
	Or because they're no longer even active on Twitter.
	Just 50% of the account's not there.
	But also just the fact of he's only got 22 billion.
	Remember how many Donald Trump had?
	No.
	What was it, like 60, 80 million, something ridiculous?
	Really?
	Whereas the new most popular man on Earth can't even get anywhere near that, even though, well, he's off the left and all of them are terminally online.
	They can't even be there.
	Even on the leftist platform as well.
	Leftist platform Twitter can't even muster up the numbers.
	And when he can muster up a number, half of them are fake.
	Wow.
	I mean, it's just ridiculous.
	And if we go to the next one, there's also Elon Musk taking notice of all of this.
	He's just like, huh, so checks calculated, that would be 10 times more than 5%.
	That would be 50%, which is as bad as it gets.
	So I don't know how much this affects the stock price and how much he should be paying, but if like 50% of all the accounts on Twitter are just spam bots, surely that's like 50% of the valuation or something like that.
	Just shouldn't be there.
	So, I mean, again, as you say, masterful tactician here.
	Just dragging it out, making sure everyone can see the whole thing is a joke, and also getting the leaks endlessly from the staff, constantly under pressure.
	God's worked by Project Veritas as well, getting those leaks out there so that the common people can actually see how they're being manipulated online.
	I mean, we've known about it forever.
	I mean, anyone in the right-wing use figure has definitely seen this.
	But it's always nice to have an admission, up front and open, that yes, we are scum.
	Thank you.
	Thank you, Twitterbots.
	Let's move on.
	Yes, so let's talk about the Pandemic Treaty or the WHO power grab.
	So we'll just have a quick summary before we start here.
	So WHO, World Health Organization, Pandemic Treaty, TLDR review.
	There's going to be more surveillance, more power to the WHO, more funding to the WHO and more restrictions on information.
	To counteract that, there's going to be less privacy, less free speech, less personal freedom, and less national sovereignty.
	Swings and roundabouts.
	Yep.
	So he then finishes with an appeal.
	Do one thing for me.
	Consider the loss of civil liberties around the globe in the last couple of years.
	If you don't like the way that went, you really won't like where this is heading now.
	Time to speak up.
	Spread the word.
	And if we go to this petition, there is actually a petition out there.
	It's growing in signatures.
	It had about 100,000 last I checked.
	I had about 117,000 before I went on, and now it's at 119,000.
	It would be really good if that could stick up a bit higher by the end of the podcast, I think.
	But yes, so this petition is asking the government to not sign any WHO pandemic treaty unless it is approved via a referendum, which I think is a reasonable request, don't you?
	Yeah, it's also already got 100,000, so we'll have a debate in Parliament and a government response.
	And we're used to how these things work.
	We're not deluded about how the government will react, usually.
	But it's always good to get something out of them, because then you can see how their mind works and get another admission at least.
	Yes, and if there are a lot of signatures to that, then politicians do sort of wake up to that and start to think, hmm, maybe this is something I should factor into my calculus.
	Sometimes.
	Slippery double-dealing and triple-dealing.
	And on this subject, I will just point out we have an article on our website from the middle of the pandemic called It's Not the Government's Job to Keep You Safe.
	This is by Luna, one of our external writers with recent voiceover done by John Crow.
	And no, it's not the government's job to keep you safe.
	It's worth meditating on that, I think.
	But let's move back to the pandemic treaty.
	Let's get into the details.
	So, in a few days, officials from your country are meeting to discuss a pandemic treaty.
	A draft proposal sits before the WHO in Geneva.
	56 pages of acronyms, obscure references and nonsense.
	I spent 12 hours translating it into English so you can understand it in 12 minutes.
	The official title gives you an idea about the tone of the whole report.
	You can see why most commentators have adopted the term pandemic treaty.
	for the rest of the thread.
	I'll call it the Zero Draft in the title there.
	Zero Zero Draft Report of the Working Group on Strengthening WHO Preparedness and Response to Health Emergencies, the 75th World Health Assembly.
	Just by reading that title, you know that it's going to be a bit of a snooze fest to wade through in the original language.
	Purposely done.
	Probably, yeah.
	So what's the deal?
	And why are people worried about this thing?
	Why do you think people are worried about this thing?
	Do you trust them?
	I mean, I love doing segments about anything to do with the UN or World Health Organization.
	You can literally sit there and be like Alex Jones and say, yeah, so the damn globalists.
	Because it's 100% true.
	I do not trust globalists to make any decision on anything because they don't take into the effect of the constituent nations.
	They're not relevant.
	Well, that's the thing.
	They are best served in a mediation capacity, right?
	So one example of a successful global organization is the World Trade Organization.
	And that acts in a mediatory role to ensure that trade disputes between nations are restricted, more or less, and don't spiral up into warfare or anything like that.
	And I think that's a reasonable use.
	But the problem is, once they start evolving to themselves powers to which they are not accountable to anyone, that's where it gets kind of scary.
	Because they're not accountable to the people democratically via the ballot box.
	At best they're accountable to the governments, but then that's kind of tenuous.
	And then, of course, they're accountable to their own private donors.
	And it's worth pointing out here that the second biggest donor to the World Health Organization is apparently the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
	Interesting that, isn't it?
	Well, let's continue.
	So, it's a proposal right now, but it's a scary proposal.
	If enacted, the WHO will have far greater authority in relation to your health, particularly if there is a pandemic, and they will inevitably declare one.
	This thread is not based on hype, speculation or conspiracy theory.
	This is my assessment of the original Zero Draft published by the WHO and sourced from their website.
	The document contains 131 recommended proposals that fit broadly into 10 categories.
	High level.
	The plan is to increase power and funding for the WHO. It would solidify the WHO as, quote, the directing and coordinating authority on international health.
	record and whether you trust them to have that role.
	Yeah, no.
	Just as a little icebreaker, I did a quick search and counted how many times certain words appeared in the zero draft.
	The V word, 33 times.
	Surveillance, 30 times.
	Misinformation, 7 times.
	And privacy, just 5 times.
	Interesting.
	That should give you the general vibe of the thing.
	Let's return to those 10 categories now.
	We'll work through them in order.
	The proposal assigns responsibility for each action to one or more of three parties.
	Member states, countries, the World Health Organization, and non-state actors, other stakeholders.
	Mailgate!
	Ha ha!
	I mean, literally, though.
	Like, this is not anything that's conspiratorial.
	No, the guy gives the money, and they take the money.
	Okay, then they're compromised by the money.
	Simplest politics.
	Now, political leadership, more funding for the WHO, regular simulation exercises, and non-state actors to help fight disinformation and use their considerable data to help the WHO. I'm presuming this is going to be, say, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, Apple, so on and so forth.
	Great.
	You know, those companies that make devices that everyone carries around with them all the time Cooperation and collaboration.
	More research to inform and expand public health and social measures during pandemics.
	More support for the WHO Research and Development Blueprint.
	Read Accelerated Vaccine and Diagnostic Development.
	WHO at the Centre.
	WHO to act as the Direct and Coordinated Authority on International Health to depoliticise recruitment, especially at senior levels, and focus on merit and competency.
	That sounds great, and he comments, they should be doing that already, no?
	Well, it's worth pointing out that Tedros is, I think, the first director in the history of the organisation to not be a doctor.
	I mean, isn't he also a communist, probably a genocide?
	From Ethiopia.
	Enjoyer?
	I don't know about the genocide claim, but there was an allegation that he was involved in covering up a cholera outbreak.
	And there has also been an allegation that he was involved in covering up another outbreak of greater significance, but there we go.
	I swear he's been accused of either engaging in genocide or aiding genocide.
	Let me load it up.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Aiding genocide in Ethiopia.
	Yeah.
	Just who you want looking after your health.
	Anyway, yeah, so actually more meritocratic recruitment and promotion would be great.
	Less genocide than our employees.
	Financing.
	Member states to give the WHO more money.
	I saw that one coming.
	More investment to support the development of innovative V-words and therapeutics.
	More transparency in relation to funding.
	It's good, but it's pretty transparent.
	But it's also alarming if we see this...
	This is the top contributors to the WHO. We have Germany, then the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, then the USA. China's dropped their funding.
	They used to be way higher, didn't they?
	Yes, they did.
	I can't even see them on there.
	They're in the middle there, just about Norway.
	But this is for 2020 to 2021, so that's changed, which is interesting.
	Yes, it has been quite fluctuating.
	But China has other ways of influencing the organisation rather than just giving them money.
	I think it was like last year, Trump just pulled the funding.
	It was just like, nope, not doing it.
	Yeah, a few years ago, but USA immediately jumped back on when Biden got into power.
	Sustainability of C-19 innovative mechanisms.
	Temporary initiatives developed as a response to C-19 made permanent and expanding their focus.
	Examples include the ACT accelerator brought into other diseases like disease X. Sorry, what does that mean?
	I have absolutely no idea, but I'm just going through it all so that you can work out how...
	Is that the next pandemic?
	We're just going to call it Disease X until it happens.
	Might be.
	Might be.
	Yeah.
	Global surveillance.
	Implementation of a One Health approach to reduce risks posed by emerging diseases of zoonotic origin.
	Zoonotic diseases and infectious diseases, he says, transmitted between species from animals to humans or vice versa.
	But again, this globalist mindset, one health approach.
	Because, you know, there's never unique circumstances in a unique place.
	Therefore, it'd probably be better for that country to figure out how to deal with it.
	No, no, we need a mighty, enormous galaxy brain sitting in the middle of Geneva to plan how healthcare should be run in the South Sudan.
	This stock solution that works everywhere at all times and all places.
	And if it doesn't work for you, well, you're not in Geneva, so you can't hold him accountable.
	Strengthening the international health regulations, more capacity for genomic testing, development of plans for emergency preparedness, surveillance and response, development of national focus points with sufficient authority in each country, and WHO to guide NFPs on best practices and conduct regular targeted training...
	Development of travel and trade regulations.
	More sharing of public health data and information with the WHO. Increased capacity for proactive countermeasures against misinformation.
	I don't even know we're allowed to say about that.
	And stronger approaches to information and infodemic management.
	And he has his own opinion.
	What does that mean?
	Well, there is an argument that, for example, do you remember the whole 5G conspiracy?
	Like that nutty idea that 5G towers cause a certain disease.
	That's what they call an infodemic.
	It's misinformation that's harmful when applied that spreads throughout social media networks and then leads to people, say, burning down 5G towers.
	Oh, trust them with that.
	No.
	No.
	I'm also very sceptical of how the 5G theory came about.
	I wouldn't be surprised if that's a psyop.
	I wouldn't be surprised if it actually comes from the John Hopkins guys or whatever.
	Like someone releasing it as an actual paper and then it got taken into where it was.
	No, I doubt that.
	I mean, it's the same with, like, what is it, the autism thing.
	Like, that was, you know, it's all nonsense, but originally it did actually come from some journal, and then...
	Yes, Andrew Wake?
	Yeah, I can't remember the details.
	Yeah, no, that was a genuine hoax, but I think there are many other sources of bad misinformation than just the scientific literature, and especially here, I think national intelligence agencies are probably more culpable, but there we go.
	Yeah, and they continue.
	Universal Health and Preparedness Review pilot collaborating with various countries to identify best practices, whatever that means.
	Travel measures.
	Development of a digital certificate of vaccination.
	Now, there is, I hate to be the devil's advocate all the time, but there is an argument why this would be useful.
	Because at the moment, vaccine monitoring, forget COVID, but for other things, is quite clunky, right?
	You have to, before you're traveling to a country that doesn't have various reciprocal agreements, you go to your doctor, you get a piece of paper filled out and signed verifying that you have all of these, you've had all of these vaccinations that you need for your travel.
	There is an argument that you could just get that done once, it's digitally stored.
	You don't have to worry about it at all when you're traveling, you just show it and you move on.
	That could, in that case, be an example of that assisting travel.
	But of course the question is always, what if you don't have the vaccine?
	What if you even have legitimate health reasons as to why you don't have the vaccine, right?
	There's not going to be a button on the app saying, I don't have this, for so on and so forth, unless this digital certificate, like the way that it's implemented, also figures in medically justified exemptions.
	I can see this being very tyrannical, because it basically gets to say to you, oh, you didn't have this vaccine, you can't leave the country now.
	No one said you couldn't.
	Like, there's no law necessarily in place saying you can't leave the country, but the system has just been designed to exclude you.
	That is really dystopian.
	I mean, we're already having some of the vaccine requirements to go to certain countries dropped.
	If we had this global implementation system, I don't think any of them would have been dropped.
	No.
	You'd just be screwed.
	And it's a much worse world, so I don't want to...
	No, absolutely not.
	And development of digital contact tracing in the international context.
	Now, again, there's a world in which this could be a good thing, but if we see how digital contact tracing has panned out in the developed world, it's been a...
	My understanding is it's been a complete fiasco from start to finish.
	What do you think?
	I don't know, I just hear in the UK it just never worked.
	No.
	We had the, what was it, the pingdemic?
	Yeah.
	Which was where so many people were getting pinged saying, oh, you may have been in contact, so that businesses were unageable to function, trains cancelled and so on and so forth, because people were getting pinged.
	With false flags.
	Yes.
	Meh.
	So it's not just about...
	Now, I'm not saying digital contact tracing is per se bad.
	There is a world in which it can work, but we need to be careful and sensible in our approach to it, not hysterical.
	And quite frankly, if there's anything guiding our response to pandemics, it's hysteria.
	So there we go.
	Equity.
	Increased vaccine development, manufacturing capacity and regulation.
	That sounds pretty good.
	I hate the way they use equity.
	I don't know where they're going with this.
	Initiatives to ensure people with limited means receive vaccines and other countermeasures.
	That's also good, generally speaking.
	But they have a whole definition here.
	Let's have a read of this.
	It's definition of equity based on its constitution.
	Equity is a principle that can be defined as the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health.
	Well, that's...
	That's not...
	That's not possible, because if you have a chronic health condition, then you, by definition, cannot have the highest possible level of health.
	So, anyway, this was Ferb that elaborated as follows.
	Health is the state of complete mental, physical and social well-being.
	Yeah, that's also an unattainable ideal.
	Well done.
	The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.
	Yes, but...
	Yes, okay, fair enough.
	Highest attainable, though, they qualify that by.
	Yes, but...
	There are certain religions that don't accept certain surgeries, for example, so that's also wrong.
	But claiming health as a right, of course, is another controversial standpoint, because it requires the mobilization of a huge amount of resources in order to give you access to that right to medical treatment and care and so on and so forth.
	And anyway, I don't want to get too deep into the weeds there.
	The health of all peoples is fundamental to the attainment of peace and security and is dependent upon the fullest cooperation of individuals and states.
	You will cooperate!
	It's quite ominous the way that's written, isn't it?
	The achievement of any state in the promotion and protection of health is of value to all.
	Unequal development in different countries and the promotion of health and control of disease is a common danger, especially with communicable diseases.
	And yeah, the fact is, highly developed and not so developed countries will have asymmetric outcomes when it comes to pandemics.
	Sorry, I hate to, you know, be the bearer of breaking news here, but...
	I mean, all I'm getting from this is just would you sign this if it was given to you for your life?
	And the answer is no.
	So just why the hell are we signing this as a country?
	It's like you must give your full cooperation to the WHO. Go to hell.
	I don't see what we get out of this.
	F off globalists.
	Yeah, I mean, if you're going to lean hard into this equity orientation, then what that means is taking the resources of developed countries and redistributing them to less developed countries.
	And in some cases, that's a worthy thing.
	But I think we should have the agency as a nation to do that on our own initiative and not be forced into it by some unaccountable global organisation.
	He finishes, I'm a fan of Don't Trust Verify.
	In that spirit, here's the link to the Zero Draft info on the WHO website.
	It's hard to read.
	Don't say I didn't warn you.
	And that will be there.
	And also, if you follow the links in the podcast, you'll be able to follow through this thread to find it.
	A few outlets are talking about this, though.
	It's not been a complete media blackout.
	We've got a short clip from Dewey News here.
	This thing hasn't really been covered by most mainstream news outlets.
	And you would think it would be a pretty big deal.
	I think it's 194 countries now, which is basically everyone, who've signed on to this new pandemic treaty with the WHO. Right.
	You'd think that the first step to world governance would be something that people would be interested in.
	But as per usual, the whole thing surrounding this is that this is not a democratic process.
	This is something that is diametrically opposed to the democratic process, and that's why we're not hearing about it.
	Because what they're doing now, they're working on a treaty of which we will see the first draft on August 1st of this year, which is called the World Health Organization Pandemic Treaty, which, as you said rightfully, will be a legally binding treaty for practically every single nation on the earth.
	So once a new pandemic hits, and those are their words, not mine, we will have a united response to how to deal with the pandemic, meaning that there will be this organization that is not democratically elected, that we didn't vote for, we don't even know exactly who is in it or who we can hold accountable for the things that they will impose on us.
	It's going to basically create laws that will decide how our respective nations are going to respond to a new crisis, a new pandemic.
	So this is huge news and it's very dangerous, but indeed we're not hearing anything about it.
	Yeah.
	And again, the silence of the mainstream media is just depressing.
	I was loving the chat there, just being like, yeah, Mark Stein just looks like a base Charlie Brooker.
	I never thought of that, but that is definitely true as well.
	Yeah, that's absolutely true.
	So Eva Wladenbrück has a little more to say on her substack here.
	Our rights to national sovereignty are about to be handed over to the WHO in an unprecedented way.
	The MSN is silent as the grave.
	And she continues and I will just close out.
	So it's worth pointing out these amendments to these regulations in conjunction with the new WHO pandemic treaty, she's talking about some internal regulations being changed in America here, give the WHO virtually full control over our society's response in the case of a new pandemic.
	And that's not what we want for multiple reasons.
	One being that this is the start of a post-democratic society in a world government in our opinion.
	And let's also not forget who will be ruling.
	The second largest financial donor to the WHO is, of course, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the man who wants the whole world to be vaccinated with vaccines that he coincidentally has major stakes in.
	Bill Gates at this point has major stakes in everything, but it's true.
	Surely there's a conflict of interest here in the sense that he has large investments in pharmaceuticals, and also he is the biggest private donor to the WHO. Is this not slightly concerning, guys?
	Ah, anyway, and I will just point out, so with these international health regulations that are being amended by the Biden administration, the general trends are twofold.
	The first is, in the case that provisions are added, they always give the WHO and the Director General substantial additional powers, and where provisions were scrapped, they were always regarded as safeguards to state parties' rights to take their own decisions.
	In short, national sovereignty everywhere around the world is under attack by these amendments put forward by the USA. I heard that John visited the Yasukuni War Museum, a place that's well known for being revisionist and anti-Gaijin based I guess, but I was wondering what his experience was interacting with the people that were running it and if they were as hostile as they're made out to be in the media.
	On that note, though, has John been to the Universal Studios Japan?
	Apparently they have a devoted Waterworld exhibit where they have like a live show reenactment of the entire movie because Japan?
	I don't know why they have to be like this.
	I mean, who is this even for?
	I want to see it, so it's for me.
	So on the Yushukan side of things, actually everyone was just very normal.
	It felt like I was going around to any other museum.
	You know, there were families there, people brought their kids, and I was probably the only person finding it funny because I was walking around and I was just like, that's not what happened.
	That's a complete fabrication.
	That's a very interesting way of writing massacres.
	It was a very selective view of history, but it was actually very educational in terms of understanding what the Japanese revisionist perspective is.
	But no, there are occasionally these fairly regular parades where you get ultra-nationalist groups who go up to the Yasukuni Shrine in a big parade, all marching together and screaming and shouting.
	I obviously wasn't there at that time, though I have passed such parades.
	And when those guys aren't there, it's pretty normal.
	It's just fine.
	It's just ordinary.
	There's nothing really sinister or ominous about the place.
	And I know that comes as a shock because it gets trotted out so often by mainstream media as, oh, this is the birthplace of Japanese ultranationalism.
	Oh, if the prime minister visits or the emperor visits, it's the end.
	It means Japan's going to start another empire and so on and so forth.
	He's like, no, it's like a place of religious significance.
	That's it.
	Other countries should probably just back off a little, is my view.
	Did you get a tour guide when you were going around that museum?
	No, because I could speak Japanese and read Japanese.
	I was wondering, because I had an experience where I went to the Imperial War Museum with my parents, and there was this German guy, this other German guy, next to us.
	And we're looking away at stuff and going, oh, you know, V2s, all that.
	And then we overhear the German, and we're like...
	Huh?
	Turn around, we hear him going, yeah, yeah, the fewer, the fewer, the fewer this, the fewer that!
	And it's just like...
	They're literally calling him Defura still.
	It's a leader, yeah, that is a bit weird.
	Comes off as strange, we're like, oh, we can get the German perspective over there.
	We could call it, we say Hitler, don't we?
	Which is arguably more, I suppose a more general term is better.
	Whenever I've heard Germans talk about it, who are normal, they always say Hitler.
	Oh, really?
	Not Defura, so that's why it's especially like, eh, okay.
	So I was wondering if there was a guy going around in Japanese and going, yeah, so Banzai.
	It's a museum.
	Everyone was very quiet, obviously, because it's a museum next to a shrine.
	It's a very interesting place.
	One of the more unique places in the world, actually.
	I recommend visiting.
	You should totally visit if you are in Tokyo.
	Obviously, don't be an idiot or a prick.
	Just go around, treat it like a museum, make up your own mind.
	But there's relatively...
	No, but the thing will get fixed bayonets and charge it.
	No, that was another day.
	But yeah, I will just finally say on that that there isn't that much English language support.
	Go to the next one.
	Fire!
	Hey puppy.
	I like dogos.
	Come to the fire!
	You see it, fire?
	You see it?
	I appreciated that.
	I always appreciate the dog videos.
	Make me feel much better.
	Do you notice how people's vocal intonation always changes when they talk to animals?
	Yeah.
	With girls, it almost always goes much higher.
	I mean, you can see it there with Sophie.
	So I have no idea what she's saying in Danish there.
	I'm sure her normal Danish isn't normally that high.
	No, it's more Danish, usually.
	I mean, I've said it before, but there's the joke about the Swedes and whatnot.
	The Swedes sound like they're singing all the time, and then you have the Danes who sort of sound like something in the throat.
	That's very good, actually, yeah.
	But it's real.
	That's the thing.
	Like, where you have to pretend is that you're choking, and then you're there.
	So, I'm just playing, but it's kind of true.
	And so, yeah.
	But otherwise, I really appreciate the video.
	Thanks, Sophie.
	It's going to be cool.
	Okay, so here's the theory.
	As we know, the left believes that presentation of beautiful women is sexual exploitation and sexual objectification, and keep trying to have these sorts of things removed.
	However, sex sells so people generally won't agree with them.
	So what they do instead is they infiltrate a franchise which has nothing to do with sex, slap on a sex scene, make it average or kind of unattractive, and then start complaining about it until it becomes too much of a hassle for people to want to include sex scenes, and they argue that sex should not be involved, therefore winning.
	It's 4D chess, because the alternative is they are genuinely just stupid.
	I mean, that's one interpretation.
	Genuinely stupid does also actually have some ring to it, I'll be honest.
	I'll think about that.
	Let's go to the next one.
	So I had a thought the other day and I wanted to know your guys' opinion on it.
	I feel like a lot of people in this community like Trump and many people want him to run again.
	But I have come to this decision that I like Trump but I do not want him to run again.
	And this is because while there are many people who absolutely love him and will crawl over broken glass to vote for him, there are also many, many people who absolutely hate him and will crawl over broken glass just to vote against him.
	I've come to this conclusion after talking to many of the liberal and left-leaning people I know.
	They just absolutely hate this man.
	And while it may be irrational why, they still do.
	Well, I've said previously, as a dirty foreigner, we don't really have that much of an opinion, or at least we can't, because it's up to the Americans to decide who runs and who they pick as their candidate and blah, blah, blah.
	Who reads the teleprompter, yeah.
	Yeah, but I must admit, any of the main candidates, so obviously being DeSantis or Trump being the ones that are thrown around, Trump obviously being the main one, I'm far with either.
	I think both of them would be good leaders as to whether or not they get elected.
	It's not our business, right?
	Yeah, but I think he's right in saying that Trump's weakness, arguably, is that he does mobilise the opposition, at least as much as he mobilises his base.
	But this is also to assume that DeSantis won't be in the same position, for example, if he runs.
	I mean, the reason there are such autistic losers who hate Trump on an inhuman level is presumably because of all the bad media press, the endless smears, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	And if DeSantis became the candidate, he's going to have the same treatment.
	It is 100% going to happen.
	So it's just, to me, the difference between them in that regard is more to do with their initiatives.
	And I will say it is true that in recent times, you can definitely see, maybe because DeSantis is just a governor and Trump isn't, But the things he's coming up with, things he's doing, good, consistent, As soon as he's pissed them off at one thing, he doesn't sit there.
	No, let's go to the next one.
	And you've already forgotten about the thing he's already done.
	He's making progress.
	He's making moves.
	Yeah, with Trump I would be sceptical because I think he would repeat the failure of his first administration in the particular sense that he was unable to...
	Soft.
	He was unable to occupy the administration, the civil service, essentially, with his own people.
	So he was surrounded by enemies in almost every direction, which frustrated his attempts to get anything done.
	And I think he would just have the same problem.
	Well, the easier thing to do there is probably just stop purging, as in like just cutting...
	Yes, which is what he didn't do.
	And he didn't have or find his own people to replace them with.
	But if you can't get your people in, just abolish the position.
	I mean, I love Harry was telling me the old beautiful speeches of Ron Paul back when he was running.
	He was just like, look, what I mean by get rid of the IRS is get rid of it.
	And then don't replace it.
	It's that simple.
	Yeah, I'm very sympathetic.
	Let's go to the next one.
	I'm going to be starting a workshopping and accountability group for aspiring authors.
	If you're interested in a workshop with some competitive aspects to it, check the comments below for a link to the Discord server.
	We're going to be starting soon.
	Come check us out.
	Excellent.
	I think one of the greatest things you can do if you're creatively minded is create stuff.
	So, good luck with all that.
	Also, another good boy.
	So, happy there.
	Otherwise, we shall go, presumably, to the written comments, because that looks like where we started.
	Mm-hmm.
	Is that correct?
	No?
	We got more?
	Okay, we'll go to the next one.
	Call me weak, if you will, but I find the subversive tactics of Project Veritas to disguise dates as investigative journalism highly distasteful.
	However, watching the revelations coming from within Twitter, it is apparent that those being exposed have no moral compass, but instead only their identity, sexual or otherwise.
	Therefore, I reluctantly accept the use of date traps to expose the truth from these people, even where I wish there were a more honourable way.
	I think you're 100% right.
	It's always been a little bit gross, but it's nothing they wouldn't do to anyone else.
	So it's, you know, the golden rule, treat people as you want to be treated, and we will treat them as they would treat others.
	Yeah, the amount of slippery shenanigans that they've been doing for the last 10 years and more, especially with how they manipulate consciously and biasly against people on their social media platforms, I think they deserve what they're getting in this case.
	Yeah, I mean, just on an individual level as well, when they destroy an individual by removing him or censoring him so he thinks he's going mad and not getting any engagement, when no, he's perfectly popular, he's been artificially killed off, and then that individual gets exposed on a date, I don't care, I think one is worse than the other, and ruining someone's life is definitely much worse than exposing someone for who they are.
	Yeah, and in a sense there is an argument that by being exposed as the horrendous people that they are, they will get that shock which encourages them to put their lives together and be better people.
	I can hope.
	With all the darkness that we see in the news every day, we have the duty to ourselves and humanity to look for beauty wherever we can.
	So I decided to go for a hike.
	That's beautiful.
	No, absolutely.
	Get out of the house.
	Don't spend all day sitting indoors.
	Take advantage of the sunshine, the fresh air, the good weather when you can.
	Also, I did like that recently in Jordan Peterson's tweet.
	Did you see him about that?
	Oh, right.
	Just like, oh, look, plus-size model.
	And Jordan was like, no, not attractive, disgusting.
	And, yeah, correct.
	I also saw, of all people, Sean had put a funny meme out recently.
	I'll have to show you afterwards.
	She's like, yes, body positivity.
	And it's all these women who are just fat as hell.
	And then just below, there's the men's section and all the images there are men with six packs and everything built up and walking around in underwear.
	It's like...
	Okay.
	Let's go to the next one.
	Tony D and Little Joan here with two announcements.
	Number one, I took the look of the Jersey Devil comments from the past week or so and did a supercut and put it on my YouTube Odyssey Bitchute Rumble channels.
	So you can check that out if you missed some of the comments.
	Also, the audiobook for The Piney's Book One, My Cousin the Piney, is now available at Amazon.
	It's about three and a half hours.
	I did all the narration and the voices, and Little Joan was absolutely no help.
	I hope you left in a couple of barks or a blooper at the end where you're just like, would you shut up?
	Otherwise, we'll go to the written comments.
	First one here from General Hyping says, A big thank you to John and Carl for the discussion and analysis of Four Lions.
	Thank you.
	I was surprised by some of the conclusions you drew, but having rewatched the film since, I can't say I disagree with you.
	Interesting fact, according to Christopher Morris, Barry, the jihadist leader group, was based on a former BNP member who, in an attempt to out-knowledge the Asian use, he regularly assaulted, studied the Quran as a result, accidentally converted himself and became a Muslim.
	That is friggin' intense.
	That's amazing.
	That is so true as well.
	Do you think back of Barry?
	No, it's not a real Muslim.
	You don't know what's going on.
	I only listen to Islamic arguments.
	Is that an Islamic argument, Omar?
	Yeah.
	That makes so much sense!
	Yeah.
	Anyway, let's move on to The Handmaid.
	On The Handmaid's Travesty we have, George says, To this day I'm baffled how The Handmaid's Tale became so popular.
	It's a weak 1984 rip-off with an absurd premise with no basis in reality where women are both valuable but also oppressed.
	I guess gynocentrism and the strife of female victimhood saw it as a useful tool to perpetuate propaganda.
	Also more clips from Yes Minister, please.
	Yes, I'll try to smuggle some more in but I have to be careful with fair use, of course.
	But they may also just get cut in the YouTube clips because of the copyright.
	So we'll have to see how that goes as well.
	Yeah, I think I am criticizing it.
	But I do love them.
	Yeah, they are really good.
	Freewill2112 says, What about the fundamental freedom to disagree and hold an opinion?
	Does she reflect on this?
	Some people are very selective on which fundamental rights they defend.
	Of course they are.
	She talks about freedom of the individual but neglects free speech.
	If you cannot speak your mind and debate ideas without fear of a violent reaction or state oppression, you are not free, and free thought means the right to disagree with full-term abortions.
	Yeah, it's a very good point.
	Baron von Warhawk says, the costume was worn by women protesting from Argentina to Ireland, not in places like Iran and Saudi Arabia.
	Interesting.
	I didn't think of that.
	Just on that hemisphere.
	Yeah, just in the Western world.
	Curious.
	Presumably it would be overly revealing in Saudi Arabia.
	I don't know if I told you about Miles' last trip to Afghanistan, but he was with some guys and they saw a woman walking past with a niqab, where you can only see the eyes, and we've got a translator, but apparently one of them basically just went, cool, look at her eyes, how beautiful they are.
	And Miles sort of jokingly was like, what the fuck?
	And then went, oh, look at her hijab, it's so tight, right lads?
	And they were like, yeah.
	Weird people.
	Theodore Pinnock says, I went to sixth form with a girl who, though she was otherwise quite a nice person, was known as being the feminist progressive of our year.
	Once I came across her in the common room reading A Handmaid's Tale and politely commented that it was an interesting book.
	She replied that it was biting social commentary on the oppression of women in our real world society.
	Yeah, that was what we were told as well.
	I wasn't buying it, to be honest.
	I wish I'd had a bit more self-confidence as a sixth former to just say to the teacher, no, this is absolutely rubbish.
	I probably would have got an even lower grade on that book.
	I did much better on Shakespeare, goodness me.
	Longshank says, forced pregnancy is one of the ugliest abuses of language the baby killers have employed to date.
	It changes the agency from the women who choose to enter situations where they could get pregnant to the state preventing them from killing their children.
	No, the state is there to protect innocent life, not protect you from your poor choices.
	The state is there to protect an innocent life.
	I think the state shouldn't be there at all, but then, there we go.
	I think that society should take on that role, not the state.
	Maybe ideally, but if everyone in the room is a murderer, they've all decided to murder a child, then yeah, you call the cops.
	The cops turn up and defend the kid.
	Alfred Betas says, Margaret Atwood is compulsory reading in Canadian schools as our literary great.
	Yeah, but I feel like she's far more American Democrat than Canadian, I think, but there we go.
	Longshank says, we told them to read another book besides Harry Potter.
	And Handmaid's Tale is the one they've chosen.
	Goddammit!
	Oh dear.
	Maureen Peters says, nobody is outlawing contraceptives.
	Nobody is forcing women to become pregnant so that they can carry a baby to term.
	The only change is that from now on, in some states, the amount of responsibility you take for your actions is going to increase to reconsider things before you act.
	All I see here are some spoiled women, nay brats, cosplaying characters from an overrated book in desperate need of a spanking.
	Look, responsibility and consequences of my actions are basically slavery, John, so I should be able to do whatever I want whenever.
	Mashallah, brother.
	Omar Awad says, some of these protesters are so inorganic and organised, same uniform, placards, chants and mindset, they look like employees of a company, woke ink.
	The only thing missing is paperwork, or I'd assume they were an arm of the government.
	Well, as mentioned, we do have that in the UK with stand-up to racism.
	Well, it's also the fact that these people have protested around the capital many, many times.
	Sure, but the corporate nature of them.
	Yes.
	Standard Doresum is literally a company that brings placards that are all the same to every protest as vests on with their logo on and paperwork to be handed out.
	I mean, it really is corporate.
	Yes.
	So the idea that this doesn't exist in the United States as well, I wouldn't be surprised by.
	But it is state corporate as well because it's always backing up the dominant, like, moral fashion.
	Shut down the dissenter.
	Yes.
	Callum says, I have never read the book.
	I did not hear of this book till today's podcast and segment.
	Quickly googled some images and reading some quick blurbs about this book.
	Whoever wrote this or constructed it has no grasp of reality of human beings.
	Well, they are a feminist, Callum, come on.
	I've heard it said somewhere that the best sci-fi and fantasy books are ones written by people who understand human beings, people and reality.
	And this person sounds and feels like someone who's never been a mother and will never be or even know what a woman is.
	Do you have kids?
	Check that out.
	I was going to Google that.
	S.H. Silver says that even before Roe v.
	Wade was threatened, these activists were putting on this LARP and saying we live in a reproductive dystopia shows what a crock this whole debate is.
	They want to be...
	S-word, without consequence to themselves, and any minor restriction is tantamount to tyranny.
	Yes, that was why I brought that up before, because, I mean, the USA, state by state, has far greater term limits than the EU when it comes to abortion, and yet they're most vociferous in their advocation for it.
	Hammurabi says, We do live in a country where one has the freedom to choose what one does with one's body.
	The same country also demands responsibility for one's actions.
	Choose to have unprotected sex.
	Deal with the results.
	Simple as.
	And finally, Sweden says, The Handmaid's Tale's narrative structure is loosely based on the Swedish book Dr Glass.
	Atwood just replicated it poorly.
	The only decent book she has written was Oryx and Crake.
	The use of handmaidens as a protest is really odd.
	It's more of a cry against environmentally induced infertility and patriarchy than abortion.
	Women are by and large sterile in Gilead.
	I felt throughout the book that there should have been an elite matriarchy based on the few women that could birth.
	Very interesting point.
	Have you found it?
	Yeah, she's got one daughter.
	And to be honest, I must feel awful for her.
	Because imagine, every day of your life, you're basically just reminded that your mother just really wants to do an abortion, or thinks abortion should be normal, and you're the only kid.
	It's like, how much did they ruin your life, really?
	Goodness me.
	And moving on to Elon already exposing Twitter.
	So Omar Wad says, Yeah,
	that everyone else would call a dystopia.
	It is true.
	I mean, that is probably the worst aspect.
	Omar is right.
	They think, oh yeah, we're censoring speech, but it's fine because we're gods.
	Okay, there is no one on this planet in the West that deserves more to be removed from power than you people.
	I mean, even politicians have term limits.
	Edward Woodstock says, Yeah, they probably also have some real self-hatred for the fact that they don't do any work.
	I don't know.
	I mean, some people do just have the mentality that they feel they're getting one over on life in that way.
	But they do nothing.
	They just do four hours and I'm done.
	Oh, they'll have some kind of internal narrative that justifies it.
	I can't imagine not feeling like a C-word.
	Lord Nerevar says, While I can absolutely see how Elon Musk's stuff could go sideways, at this point I'm struggling to see how he can come out of anything other than a hero.
	Absolutely, he already is a hero, frankly, in that regard.
	Robert Longshore, Elon having too much fun from the Twitter thing.
	Show what kind of person he is.
	He's just another lovable internet spurg.
	Yeah, there is spaghetti falling about as pockets and I do like it.
	Chipotle Aristotle says, imagine thinking an autistic man, who is the richest person on the planet with his own rocket company, didn't get there because of his autism.
	And so they're refusing to take him seriously.
	Weaponized autism is an actual superpower.
	Hashtag change my mind.
	I think debauched me, I can't.
	Well, I do want to say that I think there is a certain romanticization of autism that we have to be careful about.
	But yeah, certainly there are very successful people out there with autism and more power to them.
	Andrew Narek says, love the mispronunciation of their own organization.
	I do too.
	Veritas?
	Veritas?
	Project Veritas are doing a thing.
	What was it they said?
	Veritas?
	Veritas.
	David Freitag says, I will say that as a software developer, it's not unusual to only work 4 to 20 hours in a week.
	Software development is extremely mentally taxing, like the code eventually just stops making sense.
	It's generally expected that when you are working as a developer, you will not even come close to a 40-hour week since you need so many breaks to actually keep up producing code.
	It takes a very special developer to be able to do eight hours a day.
	I can get that argument, but doing four a week, there's not even an hour a day.
	I'm wondering what on earth you do with the rest of your day.
	Yeah, I mean, he's right that software development is very mentally taxing and interruption.
	I remember I have done a bit of coding and I remember you really just have to focus and shut down everyone, everything else out because it's like you're building this elaborate structure in your head of the code.
	And it's not done until you've got the final piece in place, and then you can leave it, and it's solid.
	But until then, if you go away and do anything else, it just kind of collapses.
	You have to re-memorize what the hell you're doing.
	I was a tiny bit, but I did a bit at university as well.
	We used, what was it, Fortran?
	Crap language.
	We were the last year to learn it as well, so I've got a special skill there, apparently.
	All these old crappy machines need that.
	But it's true that, yeah, that aspect of it is the case, but just working four hours a week, I think, is not enough.
	Even for someone dealing with code, I don't know how it's that taxing.
	I find it hard to believe.
	I have no experience of working in the kind of environment you described there, but I would have to be persuaded, I think.
	20 hours a week, though, I could understand.
	I could understand if you're a really good coder or something like that.
	Mr.
	Spaniard says, the admission of those Twitter employees that it's about their ideology and not money is the way all leftist companies and institutions work.
	They are social engineers with no expense can be spared in bringing about their utopia.
	It annoys me how people can live like that.
	Burn cash, it doesn't matter.
	There's so many leftists, every single time.
	There's millionaire leftists, left, right and centre.
	Every time we do a show, we just find someone else who's made a million dollars doing bugger all except being like, yeah, did you know socialism?
	Sorry, just pay your mind.
	Longshank1690 says, I have never seen a person about to become the head of a company that not only hated him, but was determined to stop him from being able to change it according to his vision.
	I love the little drama he has between him and Parag.
	Gold.
	General Hai Ping again says, I've seen vast swathes of leftist media trying to push the narrative that Elon just simply wasn't rich and powerful enough to purchase Twitter, as their feeble explanation on why it seemed to be a hold-up with the acquisition.
	That's retarded.
	What a stupid narrative.
	Yeah.
	Good to know that it's simply because Elon may have dropkicked the wasp nest, and it's shock at what lurks within, and rightly has some questions for going ahead.
	Yeah, I saw someone put that perfectly.
	He's basically just checking what's in the bag.
	Yeah.
	Just like, look, is my Happy Meal in there or not?
	And it's not, by the looks of it.
	But let's move on to the pandemic treaty.
	Yeah, sure.
	So Ignacio Junquera says, WHO should be a group focused on research, foreign aid coordination, and general health advice, so then countries and people can make their choices.
	But they cannot even be trusted to do that, as they are, like the Twitter employees, social engineers focused on reaching the utopia at all costs.
	Now, I do want to stress that there are a lot of, like, doctors in the WHO who I'm sure are there for the best of reasons and intentions.
	They're also pulling their hair up!
	Yeah.
	But, of course, there are a lot of questions here, and one of them is you can have a lot of well-meaning people in an institution that is designed so as to be not well-meaning.
	And also when you look at the financial incentives, particularly the Bill and Melinda Gates funding, you can see how their purpose might be warped towards some kind of greater agenda that the doctors could very well be sold on.
	But I'm not going to go stoops or lows to say they're as bad as the Twitter employees, I think.
	At least they have medical degrees, you know, they work in medicine.
	There's something to respect there.
	Well, they're not actively thinking about how can I destroy my political opponents from even engaging in politics.
	Yeah, and I dare say most of them find the whole international global stuff a headache they'd rather didn't exist and didn't want to deal with rather than a grand plan that they want to engineer.
	Hey, the doctors may be strange, but they're generally not malicious and nefarious.
	Longshanks says, If Boris signs up to this tyrannical globalist conspiracy, he can stop referring to Brexit Britain, as he clearly neither understands what it means, nor is the principle actually important to him.
	To quote the Arbiter, we've traded one villain for another.
	So disappointing, what happened with him, because you can see it's definitely Dominic Cummings as well, who was orchestrating the base aspects, and then pandemic happened, ended up booting him from his circle and then firing him.
	Yeah, and Carrie happened as well.
	Stupidest move in all of British politics, just because of your stupid girlfriend.
	We must get Dominic as an interview at some point.
	Yes, we should.
	If you're out there watching the channel, Dominic, see if we can get him on.
	We could have a very productive chat, I'm sure.
	But also, just to document, British politics could have gone in such another direction, so positive, and instead it went so negative.
	I mean, the best one I saw from him, the best reform he was bringing about, was the fact that, oh, the media want to have a chat, do they?
	Yeah, too bad.
	They just don't talk to them.
	They can go to hell.
	They have no privileged access to what the Prime Minister has to say.
	You know, we have all these channels online that we never used to have.
	And well, that's how the government speaks to the public and the media.
	And if they want to ask their disingenuous questions, well, no.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And then the pandemic happens and they got their own little press room, which is a stupid move and...
	Beggarhero says, so is Musk's long-term goal to see how far Twitter is not a great platform, buy cheap than the 44B, implement common sense reform and profit?
	Could be.
	Joseph Smith says, one of the best quotes from Star Wars, so this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.
	That was from the second one, the second movie, was it?
	Or was it the third?
	That's the third.
	Yeah.
	The least bad of the prequel trilogy.
	No, it's weird.
	That one seems to have gone down in meme history, at least.
	I do go back and watch some of the scenes sometimes.
	You were the chosen one!
	Yeah, not that one.
	The purge scene.
	I love that scene.
	Execute Order 66.
	Yeah, it's gone.
	It's a very well done scene, actually.
	M1Ping says, Remember that many of the politicians that will support handing your sovereignty to the WHO would be happy to see you die of Ukraine's sovereignty.
	Is it die for or die of?
	Yeah.
	Adrian of the Fountain says, Man, I wish the WHO officials would even feel 1% of the misery and death that they will bring with this single step.
	I can't wait for the next congressional amendment in which I'm directly made a slave.
	Oh dear.
	I don't think it's quite that bad yet.
	And Bleach Demon says, Considering that in recent years things from questioning infections to guns to racism have been labelled as public health crises...
	That's a good point.
	This WHO treaty will undoubtedly be abused, no end.
	There is the potential there, isn't there?
	There is that potential.
	And finally, Longshanks says, Infodemic is just a way to make misinformation, already a dubious term, sound even scarier by associating it with the pandemic and make you more likely to trust the experts.
	I also love the tweet from Elon.
	We didn't have time for it because it's not relevant.
	You know the disinformation unit.
	He just tweeted out disinformation.
	I'm scared of it.
	But otherwise, we're out of time.
	If you'd like more from us, of course, go to lowseers.com.
	Otherwise, we'll be back tomorrow at 1 o'clock.
	Thank you and goodbye.

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