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May 12, 2023 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters
01:31:21
The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #652
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Good afternoon, folks.
Welcome to the podcast, The Lotus Eaters, for the 12th of May, 2023.
I'm joined by Stelios.
Good afternoon.
And it's a Friday, so it can't be bad, right?
Before we crack on today, after the podcast, Bo and I will be doing a Rumble exclusive hangout.
Just having a look at how the media's getting hammered recently, and it's not just the mainstream media, it's certain giant social media networks who are congenitally evil, and various others, and it's going to be a good time, and it's going to be on Rumble alone, exclusively.
So, link in the description, go and find us over there, at 3.30 British time, and whatever that translates to, wherever you are.
It's not a premium hangout, by the way.
Just so you know, we wanted to do something exclusively on Rumble.
This will be obviously open to anyone who wants to watch, and it should be fun.
So, let's begin.
So, do you remember a few months ago when Elon was like, I'm going to step down as CEO?
Well, it seems he's chosen that new CEO.
But before we get into it, because this is going to be a stressful, stressful segment, if you want to support us, go to ludacris.com, sign up for £5 a month, and go and watch Stelios and I debating classical liberalism, in which I destroy him on liberalism.
I don't think you did this.
I don't think so.
Well, all I'm saying, right, is that Kenneth in the comments says, this was an absolutely riveting discussion.
I've bookmarked it for later review because there's so much ground covered in such a brief discourse.
This was two hours long.
It wasn't brief.
And he also says Carl was totally right and Stelios was totally wrong about everything.
So, I mean, no, he doesn't say that.
At least he accepts that I could speak English.
You need to be intelligible to at least be said to be wrong.
The response to this has been really interesting because we go into a deep dive into the philosophical foundations of liberalism and why it's untenable at this point and I think this is really worthwhile.
It's kind of a follow-up to the Articles I've been writing on it, which Stelios is taking exception to.
Not necessarily in the content, but in the interpretation, shall we say.
But it's really good, and I really recommend it.
I really enjoyed doing it.
And we're doubtless going to do a follow-up, because there's just so much to say on the subject.
Anyway, so you remember when Elon took over Twitter and just fired all the diversity hires and the diversity and inclusion staff, as you can see on peopleofcolourintech.com?
They weren't happy, and that made me very happy, because this sort of intersectional social justice way of looking at anything I find to be congenitally racist, sexist, and, I mean, honestly, I find it frankly illiberal, which is a strange thing to appeal to after we've just promoted, but I still have liberal instincts, and I don't like this kind of thing.
Because this is, of course, promoting people not because of the things of which they're capable of or the merit of the things that they've done.
It's because, oh, you're brown.
Oh, you're a woman.
Oh, you're gay.
And I don't like that.
I don't like that at all.
It's incredibly arbitrary.
And it creates bureaucracies within all institutions that they never produce anything good.
It also inserts a kind of ideology into the institution that is dangerous, as we know.
We call it intersectional social justice, which we're going to be going through more in a minute.
And in December 2022, Elon tweeted out a poll saying, I'll step down from CEO, or should I step down from CEO as Twitter, which he lost.
And so he replied to this saying, I will resign as CEO just as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job.
After that, I will run the software and server teams.
Well, it seems that Elon has found his fool.
He tweeted out the other day, excited to announce that I've hired a new CEO for X slash Twitter.
Yeah, Twitter is going to be renamed X at some point.
She will be starting in roughly six weeks.
My role will transition to being executive chair and CTO, overseeing product, software and sysops.
So, I mean, Elon being a tech nerd doesn't want to be doing the day-to-day managing.
Completely understandable.
Nothing to be concerned about there, apart from the word she.
I have a feeling that she's not the right person for the job.
Well, according- That was a wrong poll.
It was a mistake.
I feel that way too.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the lady who he's chosen is someone called Linda Yachirino?
I think I'm pronouncing that right.
I think that's an Italian surname.
I don't know.
I have no idea.
But as the Wall Street Journal tell us, she's NBC Universal's head of advertising and she's in talks to become CEO of Twitter.
So you can see the angle that Elon Musk is going for with this lady.
She has, as they say, she oversees roughly $13 billion in annual ad revenue, is well-known for tight relationships with marketers and ad agencies, and has a reputation for hard-nosed negotiating tactics.
And media buyers have described her as the velvet hammer in negotiations.
So what does that mean?
It means that she's got a soft approach, but there's always something strong underneath.
Teeth that bite.
Exactly, right.
So you can see why he's chosen this woman.
She's well-connected in the advertising industry.
I've watched videos of her preparing for this, and she calls it the advertising community, which I find is an interesting way of describing anything like that.
But she's clearly got a lot of experience in the job, so I'm not in any way suggesting she's a diversity hire or anything like that, because clearly she's not.
She's very experienced in this and apparently very, very successful.
I've seen nothing but glowing praise for her ability to wrangle advertisers onto your platform, and that's clearly why Elon's gone yes.
However, that does mean we are all getting banned, actually, as Jackson here points out.
Can I say something?
Sure.
They say that when you're applying for a job it's okay to be boastful, but global leader Well, Global Leader is probably a title bestowed on her by the World Economic Forum, of which she is the executive chair and has been for the last four years.
Hi, I'm a global leader.
Do you want to give me a job?
With the World Economic Forum.
Yeah.
Of all places.
She's the chairman of the WEF's Task Force on Future of Work and sits on the WEF's Media, Entertainment and Culture Industry Governor's Steering Committee.
Great.
Yeah.
Brilliant.
I don't know exactly what this means.
It means that she's a minion of Klaus Schwab.
It means that Schwab has penetrated the cabinet of Twitter, like he has done with Canada and New Zealand and various other governments.
My God, how is it that these people are everywhere?
How is this possible, right?
But you'll also see she's the chair of the Ad Council there.
And so I'm like, OK, well, I'll check that out.
I've never heard of the Ad Council.
So I went over to their website.
And this is what the, if you scroll down a little bit, the Ad Council's mission is to convene the best storytellers to educate, unite and uplift by opening hearts, inspiring action and accelerating change.
We won't stop until we live in a society where every single person can thrive.
Ah, they're woke jihadis.
Of course they're woke jihadis, right?
Let's have a look at their commitment to anti-racism, shall we?
The Ad Council's mission has always been not just to respond to culture, but to drive it.
To find insights that can change minds, spark new behaviours and move the country forward.
At times we've succeeded in this, and at times we've fallen short.
But the singular value that unifies each of us at Ad Council is the persistent desire to continuously improve ourselves and our society.
Our commitment to racial equality is no different.
Oh god, they're social engineers!
I don't want...
I find it funny that they don't put what is racism there.
They don't put a section on what is racism.
If they could, they could put Ibram Kendi's, when he was asked what is anti-racism, and he basically gave a circular definition.
He didn't illuminate anyone.
But it's just, as you can see, the Ad Council is firmly and unequivocally committed to fighting systemic racism, injustice, and anti-blackness within our walls and the world we create, not just today, but every day.
And every second.
Yeah.
I mean, they go on.
They go on.
If we are asking the country to be anti-racist, then we must be as well.
We have a lot of work to do up front.
We know that fully correcting our past mistakes and building new processes for the future will take time, but that doesn't take away from the urgency of our action.
We know that the only way to end the cycle of systemic iniquity and create a more just world for black, indigenous and people of colour individuals within our company, our industry and our country is to act every single day.
This is how bureaucracies are trying to justify their and perpetuate themselves.
And so they're going to, as you see, increase BIPOC representation.
Hello, non-white person, you're a BIPOC now.
Accept that label.
You sound like something you're a robot or something.
They're going to actively foster inclusion and launch a sustained racial justice work.
Oh, thank God someone's doing it, eh?
Anyway, I looked at her LinkedIn, and in 2019, she posted a few things that she had learned from working at the World Economic Forum.
She was like, trust matters, the future of work is now our present, be prepared to move fast, and of course, number four being the most important, diversity is the right thing to do, and it's good for business.
Oh, just no.
Why?
How?
Elon, you fired all these people because they were ruining Twitter?
They're costing you millions and millions of dollars.
They're ruining your platform.
I would like to think that Elon has something in mind, like, you know, keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer.
But that's maybe wishful thinking.
I think it's probably wishful thinking.
She goes on about diversity at the World Economic Forum.
However, we only made up 20 women, this is, made up 22% of the total delegates.
So while there's been real progress, there's still room to grow.
That's right, the World Economic Forum is sexist.
Probably institutionally racist, and it should be abolished.
The same goes for business, where a wide range of perspectives will foster new thinking and innovation.
Fortunately, there's already an awareness for the need for greater diversity, and it's now time to transform that awareness into action.
Just, just, no.
Here's a picture of her in a pink pussy hat.
Doing some world leading.
Yep.
Leading the world with that hat.
She runs it.
Hashtag, whatever women's hashtag this is.
Yeah.
Just insufferable.
Anyway, let's watch a clip of her from 2020.
Maybe she's recanted all of these opinions.
I can talk about, you know, things that my company is doing to Accelerate right to accelerate what we were doing already, but realizing that it wasn't enough.
So what immediately started happening was that under the leadership of Brian Roberts and Jeff show.
Comcast set up a fund to the value of $100 million to fight social justice and equality.
And obviously supporting many, many important groups.
But it really made a very public statement that we're going to put our money where our mouth is.
We're not going anywhere.
And it inspired action across every corner of our company.
Because what it also did was made the leadership of our company accountable.
Right.
100%.
100 million to fight social justice.
Was it not the case that Twitter became great again because people like that weren't involved in it?
Yeah.
It's because literally Elon fired them all.
Twitter suddenly becomes amazing.
As Elon keeps saying, gets record numbers that Twitter has not seen before, and now he's going to bring this sort of person back on.
And you might be like, yeah, but that was three years ago.
OK, well, here's one from the end of last year.
And enough is never enough for them.
Yeah, but here's one from the end of last year.
Let's play the next clip.
At the intersection of diversity lives innovation.
So when you're able to bring together different groups of people who have different experiences, that's where innovation is born.
Okay, innovation isn't necessarily good.
No, not necessarily.
Making changes isn't necessarily good.
Could be good, could be bad changes, but I just don't see the point.
But the point is there, what she's showing us, is that the very nature of creativity demands intersectionality.
Insectionality is so deeply baked into her worldview that it can't be extracted.
And she retweets a lot of stuff like this.
I mean, she retweeted this only like a month ago.
The black woman on the stage.
Is that okay?
Brilliant.
She has a lot of this sort of stuff she retweets.
She seems to want to integrate herself into the elite culture.
She's constantly going on about things like the Met Gala.
The ones where she was like, I hope I get an invite to this one day and stuff like this.
I just, I just, oh god.
She has a history of being an advertiser though, which again I want to stress is obviously why Elon hired her.
This is talking about a husband who is another philanthropist businessman.
But she's responsible for overseeing all advertising sales and partnerships come across NBC, Telemundo, USA Network, CNBC.
She's been with NBCUniversal since 2011 and played a key role in the company's growth and success.
They have generated over $10 billion in ad sales annually.
Prior to them, she held positions at Turner Broadcasting System, Where she oversaw ad sales for CNN, TNT, TBS and other networks.
She worked at MTV Networks and Turner Broadcasting Sales.
She is just very well recognized in this industry for being very good with advertisers.
That's why she's been chosen.
But, of course, this brings us back to the, well, that's all well and good, but we're all going to get banned.
And if you scroll up here, as you can see, Luke Hradowski was like, well, look, we're all getting Shadowbanned.
Jackson's like, we're all getting banned.
No, we're just going to get Shadowbanned.
And Elon's like, no, that will not be the case.
Why should anyone think that?
What possible reason?
She seems like another version of Vijaya Gadd.
I really don't know.
I just don't see the rationale of Elon.
Maybe he has something in mind like what I said before, but I really think it's wishful thinking.
He seems to me to be more interested in other stuff like space exploration and technology and this, and maybe he is a bit...
Fed up with this?
Well, I think this was always the plan.
I think he never intended to spend his entire time being the CEO of Twitter, obviously.
But it surely is obvious to Elon Musk, as an intelligent man, and as someone who's obviously interested in both sides of the culture war, that you can't put a partisan of one side in command and expect the other side to be treated fairly.
And especially when it's something that you are involved in, like a project or, you know, you make something, you want to leave it in capable hands?
Yes.
And I don't see how, given what he did and what he has said in the last months, how he sees that her hands are capable ones.
I mean, I don't doubt that she'll get loads of advertisers on Twitter, but she'll do that by starting to sanitise the platform.
Oh no, these people need to be banned.
These people need to be banned.
These people need to be banned.
Yeah.
And then suddenly you'll be back with the old Twitter that everyone hated and that was cratering and losing money every month.
Advertising is a monetary issue.
She could bring more money.
The thing is that that could potentially harm the Let's say the social aspect of Twitter, where people who right now are facing an economic collapse are expressing themselves.
So she could bring money, but you know, this is another issue that... But it could be in a year's time that she's had demands from advertisers, for whatever reasons, and so she's gone the Susan Wojcicki route of starting to demonetize and ban people from the platform.
There's another scenario.
Maybe she didn't believe what she said before?
No, I looked through her Twitter feed and through her history.
It's too consistent.
I mean, unless she's been under deep cover for literally a decade plus, which I'm not going to rule out as an Italian spy maybe, but I Don't think so.
I think she's a creature of the environment in which she lives.
And that social justice is the environment in which she lives.
And this is what seems to be something that just informs what she does.
And she's the one who says it.
I'm not the one who's saying it.
You've seen the clips.
So I'm a bit concerned.
And so I replied to Elon saying, bro, of all the people on earth to choose, why the executive chair of the WEF?
This is like appointing the mouth of Sauron and expecting the hobbits to believe that the Shire is in safe hands.
I just... I like Scott's reply there.
Elon has god-awful taste in women.
And the thing is, right, Elon, the reason I signed up for Twitter Blue, and I know many people like me signed up for Twitter Blue, like literally tens of thousands of people, is because we wanted to support your project, right?
We wanted to support an actual free speech platform that wasn't being controlled by radical left-wing activists, and if you put a radical left-wing activist in charge, I'm far less inclined to continue that support, because that's not what I was signing up for.
I'm not, you know, going to leave Twitter.
I'm not going to delete my account.
I enjoy using Twitter a lot, right?
And it's nice to be back and I'm very appreciative.
But I'm not going to support that person.
So, I don't know, just something to be aware of really, right?
And there's probably a lot of people who feel the same as me.
And I've seen defences of this as well, which, I mean, I don't know, who's Chase Gazer?
I don't know who he is.
But I saw this going around, he is The host of One America Podcast.
And this seems like Cope to me, being like, oh well, it doesn't mean she hasn't got the authority to change content moderation policy.
And it's like, no, the CEO definitely will have the authority to change content moderation policy.
And this could be a way of Twitter influencing the WEF, rather than WEF influencing Twitter.
Nah.
It's just really optimistic.
I just don't believe it.
I mean, she is, you know, she is going to be their creature in Twitter in the same way that they used to have with the FBI agents.
I don't buy it.
I don't think anything good of this is going to come of this.
And I think eventually Elon will come to regret this, to be honest.
You know, not for anything I'm going to do, but just because of the decisions that she's going to make, which will be politically correct, Which will lead to the shrinking user base of Twitter because the people who aren't on board with the radical left-wing agenda will be like, oh well, that's just the same old captured site, I'm just gonna leave.
And all those people who signed up, well, why did they sign up?
And I have a sense that she's a micromanager.
This idea where she says that every day we need to do more and more and more and more and enough is never enough.
Seems to me like a micromanager and she gives me vibes that she's going to try to interfere with every single aspect of Twitter.
She's going to be just like Susan Wojcicki with YouTube, in which the progressive female CEO starts micromanaging and imposing things on the people using it that they don't want.
And so people are just like, OK, I want to start going elsewhere.
Places like Rumble, where you should go and check us out, frankly.
Anyway, I'll leave that one there.
Not good news, though, I think.
Right.
Do we move forward?
Yep.
Okay.
Now, let's go to... We are going to talk about Ireland and one of the most severe attacks on free speech in Western nations.
Now, last time I checked, Ireland was a parliamentary representative democratic republic.
And these types of governments are supposed to represent the people.
Now, how do they do this?
Representative officials are supposed to know what the will of the people is, and especially they need to come into grips with it and need to understand it when it is expressed collectively, for instance, in decision-making processes like referendums.
And elections, but also it works on an individual level as well.
It works on the level of speech and partaking in public discussion.
And here is especially where free speech is really important.
And right now, free speech is under attack.
And the thing is that the things that you're not allowed to say represent forbidden topics.
And those forbidden topics are topics that you cannot talk to your representatives about.
At best, if you talk about them, you're going to receive the reply, I may agree with you, but I'm not able to do anything, they'll eat me alive.
This is precisely the response that Callum got from Jacob Rees-Mogg when he confronted him about the censoring of Count Dankula.
Okay.
Precisely.
That's the best case scenario.
Worst case scenario, which seems to be the way the Irish government is heading now, is being prosecuted.
Now, before we say more about this… Which is what happened to Count Dankula.
Before we say more about this, why not visit our website?
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Josh has a really interesting take on this.
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And by all means, check it out.
So, free speech is under attack in Ireland, and the main weapon of attack is a new hate speech bill.
Now, the bill has totalitarian implications, and the core elements of it are two.
First, it has a list of protected characteristics.
We will see what they are.
And also, it has a very vague conception of the notion of hate.
By implication, this builds over notions such as hateful speech and incitement to hatred.
Wow, where have we seen that before?
We have seen that before many times, but I'm willing to bet that when you see what the bill has to say, you will think that this is a step extra.
It's even worse.
Now, the thing is that this raises questions such as who has the power to interpret what constitutes hateful speech or not?
And who has the power to interpret what your speech implies?
Because the thing is, if we see and look closely lately, we have
people who refer an appeal to the notion of implicature and uh... and uh... we see that uh... the claims that you know whenever you say something there's always something implied and the more structures we live in become more bureaucratic the question is who controls language who controls implicature who has the authority to interpret what your speech is supposed to mean and who has the authority to prosecute you for it
The thing is, the most important implication, as you will see, because this is over the top, is that even the possession of material that is deemed hateful, will be, is potentially going to be prosecuted.
Even the possession, not just the use, the possession.
So that's, just to be clear, that's different actually from the United Kingdom, because in the UK it's the Communications Act of 2003, section 127, that punishes you for distributing, for publishing it and sending it as a communication across some sort of publicly accessible communications device.
So we actually have a softer hate speech law than this.
Yes.
This is not just a distribution.
It takes an extra step.
It goes not from the distribution to the possession.
I can't even have racist material in my own possession for my own private use.
Yes.
And the thing is that we know really well that people who are in favor of this agenda have a very vague understanding of what racism is, and they try to portray as racist everyone who disagrees with them.
Now, I will read the following tweet by political philosopher David Thunder, and then we are going to listen to something that he said on May the 1st, 2023.
So, I read from his quote.
Just as a quick thing, David Thunder is a cool name.
Yes.
That's a great surname.
Sorry, Carol.
I say this as someone with a lame surname.
I'm always envious of people who've got great surnames.
It's guaranteed to make some noise.
Yeah, right.
Okay.
The hate speech bill has passed through the lower chamber of the Irish Parliament and is now under consideration in the Irish Senate.
This is the most aggressive attack on free speech in the history of the Irish state.
Where's the pushback from media?
What happened to our political parties?
What happened to our political culture?
Citizens who value freedom can no longer count on their political representatives to defend their civil liberties.
This is tragic.
Citizens must mobilize in a different way and people who think they would never go into politics should consider carefully the quality of the individuals who are now deciding our future for us.
There's a problem with the representation, and I have said it many times with many of my co-hosts in the symposium series, that one of the problems with the classical notion of liberalism is that there is too much of a focus on the idea of negative liberty.
The idea of freedom from government interference.
I'm all for this.
I'm really in favor of having spheres where we are not interfered with.
But the thing is that, as we will say a bit more, it's all a balance of powers.
If people withdraw just into their private realm and do not engage in politics critically and do not do what John Locke said, that citizens have a duty to be critical of the government, there will be a tendency of the government to grow on the consent of the governed.
This is the oldest canard in politics.
I mean, Pericles, I think, put it best.
You might not be interested in politics, but politics interest in you.
Let's watch the video.
We've seen very recently the passage of a hate speech bill in the Irish Parliament, which would enable the government to monitor speech and prosecute speech that they deemed to be hateful even before that speech was uttered or published.
So the wording of the bill suggests that speech that is even on your computer that could be deemed hateful would be prosecutable.
This is an extraordinary intrusion into the private sphere and represents probably the most serious threat to freedom of speech in Ireland since the foundation of the state in 1922.
So it's merely the possession of hateful material on your PC.
For instance, what about memes?
Well, yeah, I was just going to say, if I ever visit Ireland again, I'm going to have to clear my meme folder.
And all the questions that I asked before, I didn't just ask them to ask them.
Who has the authority to interpret what counts as hateful speech?
Well, obviously the government is going to be the one who claims to have that authority.
Yes, and it seems to me that the Irish government at the moment is very keen on pushing forward the left-wing agenda, a woke agenda, that is very, let's say, hateful with respect to disagreement.
Now, an article was published on the 10th of May, a national review.
I won't read all of it.
It says, its new censorship law is so vague and expansive that it can only be applied capriciously.
Now we have included a link for those of you who are a bit more interested in seeing exactly how Irish legislation works.
If we could click on the next link a bit, please.
If you want to find out more about this, you can click on that.
If we can go back to the article from National Review, please.
Okay, so Ireland's lower house, the Dáil, I think, I don't know if I pronounced it correctly.
Don't ask me, I can't even pronounce it.
It's the Assembly of Ireland, has passed a hate speech bill that is almost comical when described.
You don't even have to offend anyone to be guilty of hate.
A judge can simply determine that the speech at issue was likely to incite hatred or violence toward members of protected groups.
Also, you can be convicted before uttering or publishing the speech.
That's amazing.
It's like mind reading.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We know that it's minority report.
We know that you are going to use this speech.
There could be someone who's offended by this.
Yeah.
I mean, at least again, Britain's hate speech laws are atrocious.
And in Britain, it is at least someone perceived that it could have been hateful.
But at least that requires an act first.
You said something and someone else perceived it to be racist.
Well, at least there's something you did that we're talking about here.
At this point, we're talking about things you haven't even done.
We are talking about turning the presumption of innocence into the presumption of guilt.
Yes, we are.
People just pose as authorities and they just tell you what it is that your content is and that it is hateful.
And they have ridiculously vague conceptions of what counts as hateful.
Okay, I continue.
A judge only has to determine whether you possessed the speech.
Perhaps in a drafts folder on a phone and had an intent to utter or publish it.
Oh, and by the way, the bill allows the state to compel a person to hand over the passwords to his phone or face imprisonment based simply on the allegation.
And finally, the law would presume guilt once possession is established.
In any proceeding under this section, the person shall be presumed until the contrary is proved to have been in possession of the material in contravention of the law.
You would have to prove to the judge and the prosecutor that you did not intend to publish it.
What could proof for that even look like?
It's all a shamble and it's putting people, it constitutes putting people into a sort of case where they try to prove that they're not an elephant.
Yeah.
Something like that.
Well this is literally the inquisitorial standard of justice.
Yes.
Like prove that you're not a heretic.
to people who claim to already have found you guilty.
Yeah.
So how can you prove that?
This is literally what the French and Spanish Inquisition used to do.
Exactly.
And again, I will repeat this, we are looking in front of us, we're staring at a very, let's say, shameful, I would say, Turn of the presumption of innocence into the presumption of guilt.
Now let's focus a bit on the hate speech bill and click on the next link please.
You'll see we have the document here if you want to read it more.
I will read a bit from page, we can focus on this page.
An act to amend the law relating to the prohibition of incitement to violence or hatred against a person or a group of persons on account of certain characteristics, referred to as protected characteristics of the person or the group of persons, and to provide for an offense of condoning, denying referred to as protected characteristics of the person or the group of persons, and to provide for an offense of condoning, denying or grossly trivializing genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace, and in doing so, to give effect to Council and in doing so, to give
on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law.
Okay.
Now, if we can move on page 8 of 40 of the document, we will see the protected characteristics.
We will see their meaning of protected characteristics.
They're underneath a bit.
It's race, color, nationality, religion, national or ethnic origin, descent, gender, sex characteristics, sexual orientation, or disability.
I love that religion is included in these, as if religious debate is just over.
You're not allowed to discuss religion.
And this is just unthinkable, you know, like the last 2,000 years with the history of the discussion of religion and now we're just banning it.
And I know many Christians who are able to discuss Christianity so why would that have to be there?
I mean that's an obvious question.
Okay now and let's go to page 13 of 40 of this document and here is where Things get very, very, very dark.
Okay, so it says, offensive preparing or possessing material likely to incite violence or hatred against persons on account of their protected characteristics.
So, it says, subject to subsections 2 and 3 and section 11, We will talk about them in a bit.
A person shall be guilty of an offense under this section if the person a. Prepares or possesses material that is likely to incite violence or hatred against a person or a group of persons on account of their protected characteristics or any of those characteristics with a view to the material being communicated to the public or a section of the public.
whether by himself or herself or another person and b. prepares or possesses such material with intent to incite violence or hatred against such a person or group of persons on account of those characteristics or any of those characteristics or being reckless as to whether such violence or hatred is thereby incited.
Now, this seems to me to be very dark and I will say just The subsection 2A.
In any proceedings for an offense under this section, it shall be a defense to prove that the material concern consisted solely of a reasonable and genuine contribution to literary, artistic, political, scientific, religious, or academic discourse.
Really?
atrocious, and basically it disrespects us, it treats us as idiots.
So just as a quick thing here, this is so snobbish, a comedian is no longer allowed to make a joke.
You are no longer allowed to make a joke, because no matter what you say or do here, you are never going to be considered to be giving a reasonable and genuine contribution to literary, artistic, political, scientific, religious or academic discourse.
I'm just making a joke, bro.
The joke and comedy is specifically an attack because humor is a way with which we cope with adversities of life.
And those who want the victimization agenda, they want us to stop having fun or making jokes.
But it's also, comedy is a way of disarming these things by taking away their seriousness.
And if you take away the seriousness of the thing, then the thing loses its power over you.
And they are specifically outlawing that.
Let's go to the next link, which is a video by Keith Woods.
This has been drafted specifically to silence the Irish people from opposing the social agenda and the mass immigration agenda that's going on right now.
The Justice Minister said that under this legislation another protected group would be migrant status, which means that people complaining about migrants or so-called refugees who are being dumped en masse now in small Irish towns and communities They could be targeted for hate speech.
We also had a government minister come out last year and he talked about these community protests that have been happening in Ireland against mass immigration, against this new plantation.
And he said that they were rushing to get the hate speech legislation through so that they could target the, you know, what they call far-right agitators, who are basically just people speaking up for these communities.
So it's very clear the purpose of this legislation.
It's intended to silence the Irish people.
It's intended to enshrine in law that you're basically breaking the law if you say that the Irish people are sovereign over Ireland.
I don't really like Keith Woods but he's correct on that.
I think he's correct on that and the thing is that right now we constantly see an attack on people who care about their community and people who care about the, let's say, national bonds of sentiment.
Apparently this is to be prosecuted according to this new bill.
This is effectively anti-indigenous legislation when it comes to someone like Ireland or Britain.
There's a Twitter account called something like Diversity in Ireland that catalogues videos of things that have happened.
against the Irish people by the diversity.
And you know that these people are never going to be charged with any kind of hate crime.
Yeah.
You know, the blade of this is only going to cut one way.
Because it's a protected blade.
Yeah.
Okay.
Now, if we can also listen to David Thunder, what he says on the Freedom Blog.
There's a vacuum, a vacuum in our politics, in our political establishment.
And as you know, it's very clear, 70% of those submissions on this law were against, were opposed to this hate offenses bill.
And then you see an overwhelming majority of parliamentarians just sort of nodding it through.
So what does that suggest?
That suggests that there has been some kind of radicalization of our political representatives.
And I would say a radicalization from what, broadly speaking, we could call as a militant left.
An extreme and militant left that is active across the Western world and is trying to push these sorts of identity politics in many different countries.
And I think that's exactly what's happening in Ireland, that small leftist lobbies, relatively small leftist lobbies, not representative of the rest of the country, are, for whatever reason, have access to our politicians and are influencing them and are co-opting the legislative process in some way.
Yeah.
I think he's spot on here.
I mean, I hate to say it, but it seems almost kind of like a local man who has just discovered the left-wing jihad against our civilizations is going on.
Yeah.
Well, they're trying to create a perfect world in which there's literally no difference between any people at all.
So an Irish person who's been in Ireland for a thousand years, his family's been there for a thousand years, is morally and legally identical to someone who literally just stepped off a plane.
That's what they're trying to create.
And they're trying to make it so that there is no justification for social pressure for these people to conform to Irish norms either.
Because, again, I hate to say it, but Keith Woods is right on this.
The Irish people are no longer sovereign over Ireland.
What is sovereign over Ireland is the kind of end point of the Enlightenment, which is the radical isolation and atomisation, the imposition of the social contract and the breaking of all social obligations and sentiments.
That's what's happening to Ireland.
It's been happening everywhere else as well.
And it's very important to point out, to show how unpopular this is, this bill is.
That's another good point.
I did see, actually, the poll, because 70% of Irish people when asked did not want this.
I think it's close to 80% and more than 90% of the politicians voted for it.
Yes.
So, only 14 people out of 160, which is less than 10%, voted against it.
So, just a quick thing here.
This is why I did the concept of representation book club.
I keep referring to, because Hannah Pitkin would have us ask, well, what is being made present in the Irish Parliament?
It isn't the will of the Irish people, because obviously that's overwhelmingly against, so whose will is it?
And so when Mr. Thunder there is like, well, you know, the left appear to have captured them.
That's absolutely right.
That's what's being made present in the decisions made by the Irish politicians.
Yeah, I think that when it comes to explaining the political phenomena, political realism is an indispensable tool.
I think one of the principles of political realism is the following, that especially it starts when we are looking on the geopolitical sphere, that if a country wants to project might on a particular region, it allies itself with the weaker players of that region against the stronger place, against the stronger force of that region.
Why?
Because unless it does so, that strong player in the region may become a regional superpower, which would challenge other nations.
So it's a threat.
Now, the same thing applies not just on the international level, it applies on the domestic level.
And I think that this is how we can explain intersectionalism and the woke, authoritarian, leftist, cultural politics that we see here, because we see an alliance of, let's say, a few elites, we could say, Almost all of the elites, apparently.
Yes, and the protected minority groups, all of them against the middle class.
Yeah.
And when you say the middle class, what you mean is the native population of Ireland?
Yes.
All of them against the Irish?
Yes.
And if we add economic calamities that we face, the middle class isn't particularly robust at the moment.
No.
So and one thing to say is that universities have are very much are also complacent in this and there's a reason why because the thing is that I was reading some books and they were talking about economies becoming economies that are really structured in that they require degrees.
So, what do I mean?
That universities have become accreditation institutions.
People go to universities just to get a degree.
If you want access to the upper echelons of the economy now, if you want access to just the mainstream economic positions that people would have, in my father's generation, expected to have just been able to work into, you have to have gone through a university.
Yes.
And the thing is that right now universities, because they compete for funding, they focus very much on student satisfaction.
So, for instance, if you have, let's say, 150 educational institutions, higher education in the UK, I think there is more, Most of them are not able to compete with institutions like Oxford and Cambridge who have centuries of history.
Many of them are plate glass universities that just want funding.
And they focus on student satisfaction.
That means that there is a lack of discipline on students.
And the students of today in the universities will be the elites tomorrow.
So what is banned in universities now will be banned tomorrow.
And this is something that concerns everyone.
It doesn't concern just people in Ireland or people in the UK.
It concerns people throughout the Western world.
Because let us see what is going to be banned.
Let us see what happened in Cambridge.
A documentary about declining birth rates And the demographic problem was banned.
So it means if we connect all the pieces together, we will not be able to talk about the demographic as being a problem.
Anyone who talks about the demographic collapse and the demographic problem will immediately be portrayed as a racist, a xenophobe and an anti-feminist who wants to tell women what they want to do with their bodies.
And they will literally in Ireland be prosecuted for those opinions or even just watching the documentary.
Let's just watch this video.
Can I ask you, were you surprised about this response from students at one of the world's most prestigious universities?
It's remarkable.
I would say just first, though, I don't like to use the term pitfalls of feminism.
Other people may have used that term, but I think it's important to explain the breadth of people who I met around the world.
It was filmed in 24 countries.
I met 230 people.
Those people, I think, could only be defined as highly representative of the world we live in today, filmed in every continent.
And it's been so warmly received by colleges around the world, by film festivals, So to suddenly have a reaction like this really raises questions to me about what it is that perhaps people feel About this movie that might be threatening to them, and I'd love to meet these people, I'd love to talk about it if they're willing, but it's quite stunning.
Absolutely, and thank you for correcting me on that, that you didn't actually use that phrase, pitfalls of feminism.
It is indeed a phrase that was used about the film, but as Charlie was saying, used by people who haven't actually seen the film, so they don't really know what it is about.
I mean, surely part of the reason for making the film is you want to start a debate, to start a discussion about these issues, and to disagree potentially.
Yes.
And you know, the wonderful thing is when people do watch this documentary, the conversations start by themselves.
You don't need me to be there at all.
Wonderful conversations about the future.
I mean, falling birth rates is going to become the biggest challenge or one of the very biggest challenges of the 21st century.
And the people who are going to be impacted most are younger people.
And this is a documentary that simply examines pathways through life and encourages conversations.
So yes, it's quite surprising.
What was the name of the documentary?
It is called... I have it here.
It will be... Sorry if you don't have a tan, I'm just curious.
It's called Birth Gap.
I think it's called Birth Gap.
We'll find more of it in... Yeah, well, I'm going to go watch it.
Yes, yes.
Okay.
Frankly.
So, last thing to say here.
We had another video.
We don't have time to show it, but the thing is, it seems to me that free speech is incredibly important.
This has been a very severe attack on free speech.
Well, it's an entire country that's going to lose free speech.
Yes, and the thing is that when we want to have, let's say, a functioning society, speech is the fundamental way in which we connect with each other as intelligent beings.
So curtailments of speech are curtailments of thought and communication.
So it's how we settle differences without violence?
Yes, exactly.
And final thing to note is that when we talk about, let's say, speech, and when we talk about When we talk about people who, let's say, who want to withdraw from politics and they want to, let's say, go back into their private sphere, they forget that there's a problem with the plasticity of concepts.
People can twist concepts into meaning anything.
And unless people are really mindful of of what the government is doing and what other governments are doing across the world.
They will miss how language will slowly and steadily become distorted and how we are going to look at legislative aberrations such as this bill.
And the best example of this is, of course, the concept of racism, right?
What does racism mean anymore?
What is a woman anymore?
And one of the best defences I've seen against this is actually in the Second Amendment in the United States.
I really like the way the Second Amendment says, shall not be infringed.
That's actually very clear.
And it's nice to see American Republicans really standing on that battlement and defending it to the hilt.
It's very, very good.
The opposite of what is a woman, basically.
But yeah, that's terrible.
Bad luck Ireland, basically.
Anyway, so, what a miserable Friday we've had so far.
Everything's going wrong, the world's becoming hellish, but one good thing did happen.
One giant glorious orange thing happened that made my day yesterday.
Trump was given a CNN town hall which was surprising with a very happy young lady who was very pleased to speak to him and he absolutely crushed it and there's been a lot of salt that's flown from this and so I thought it might be fun for the last thing on Friday afternoon to just go through some of it just to have some
Have a bit of a light-hearted laugh at their expense, because finally, something good has happened, even if it's very small, and just a very, very brief blip on the constant downward trajectory of Western civilization.
But before we begin, if you want to support us, go to lowseas.com, check out Dan's latest Broconomics, Universal Basic Income, which has been this canard that people have talked about for many years, that I hate, I hate UBI, I hate the implications of it.
I hate the concept.
I think it's terrible.
Look at the picture we're using in the thumbnail.
You're going to become a serf.
You're literally going to become someone else's slave.
Totally dependent on them.
Don't do it.
Anyway, let's begin with Trump under accusation of being a rapist, which is found not to be the case.
But then they were like, well, you just sexually assaulted her, sexually abused her.
And do you not think that's going to... I mean, that's how it works now.
I'll accuse you of rape, but we'll just negotiate it down to sexual assault.
It's like, really?
Is that how that works?
Or sexual harassment or something like that.
But the lady's like, do you think that's going to affect your poll numbers?
This is Donald Trump's response.
Speaking of New York, I want to ask you about a significant verdict that was reached yesterday.
I know this is something you want to weigh in on as well.
A Manhattan jury found that you sexually abused the writer E. Jean Carroll and defamed her.
You've denied this.
But what do you say to voters who say it disqualifies you from being president?
Well, there aren't too many of them because my poll numbers just came out.
They went up.
Okay?
I think I'm... I think I'm...
I'm the only person in history who had a charge like that.
And usually you leave office, you say, I'm sorry, but I'm going to back home.
I'm back home to my family and everything.
I'm going to be resigned.
My poll numbers went up and they went up with the other fake charge too.
Because what's happening is they're doing this for election interference.
This woman, I don't know her.
I never met her.
I have no idea who she is.
I had a picture taken years ago with her and her husband.
Nice guy, John Johnson.
He was a newscaster.
Very nice man.
She called him an ape.
Happens to be African-American.
Called him an ape.
The judge wouldn't allow us to put that in.
Her dog.
I just love Trump so much.
Just this unrepentant BS merchant.
I don't know her.
I never met her.
I had a picture taken with her husband.
This is a jury of nine people who found you liable of sexual abuse.
Do you think that that will deter women from voting for you?
No, I don't think so.
I just love Trump so much.
Just this unrepentant BS merchant.
I don't know her.
I never met her.
I had a picture taken by the husband.
He was a lovely guy.
Come on, man.
Dog's name Vagina.
What are you talking about?
It's like in Austin Powers with a lot of vagina.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I absolutely love Trump, frankly.
But, I mean, to be honest with you, he's asked some serious questions once she gets past the nonsense ones.
And he has some good answers.
Let's watch this one.
Can you say if you want Ukraine or Russia to win this war?
I want everybody to stop dying.
They're dying.
Russians and Ukrainians.
I want them to stop dying.
And I'll have that done.
I'll have that done in 24 hours.
I'll have it done.
You need the power of the presidency to do it.
But you won't say that you want Ukraine to win.
You know what I'll say?
I'll say this.
I want Europe to put up more money because they're in for 20 billion.
We're in for 170.
And they should be.
And they should equalize.
They have plenty of money.
They should equalize.
I got with NATO.
But I'm asking you about Ukraine right now, Mr. President.
When I sat down, I got them to put up hundreds of billions of dollars that they weren't paying under Obama and Bush and all of these other presidents.
That's why they're able to help them fight the war because of the money I got.
But let's talk about what's happening in Ukraine, Mr. President.
Excuse me.
I want Europe to put up more money because they're laughing at us.
They think we're a bunch of jerks.
We're spending $170 billion for faraway land, and they're right next door to that land, and they're in for 20.
I don't think so.
I love how Trump didn't answer that question at all, but makes his position very clear.
But I suspect he's going to be aiming some sort of negotiated settlement, which is why he's not answering it directly.
Of course, if you are going to take a position in favour of one of them, the other side is going to find you non-credible for the role.
But I also love the way he gives the French and the Germans a lashing.
You know, we're paying 170 billion or whatever and you're paying 20.
Come on, let's crack on.
So another good answer he actually had was on school shootings, to be honest.
Now, there's going to be a lot of contention over this answer from a European perspective, because this is an American problem.
But I think that Trump actually has a handle on that, which is remarkable, to be honest, considering he's a 78-year-old boomer, BS merchant.
And I say that with a great deal of love.
That's why I like him.
But he's got a really good handle on this.
Let's watch.
Mr. President, you dealt with a lot of mass shootings when you were in office.
This year, there have already been more than 200 mass shootings in 2023.
If you are re-elected, are there any new gun restrictions that you would sign into law?
I would do numerous things.
For instance, schools.
We would harden, very much harden.
And I also am a very believer.
I believe in teachers.
I love teachers.
I think they're incredible.
And they love the children.
Not quite like the parents, but they love the children in many cases almost as much.
Many of these teachers are soldiers, ex-soldiers, ex-policemen.
They're people that really understand weapons.
And you don't need 5% of the teachers would be more than you could ever have if you're going to hire security guards.
But in addition to that, have security guards.
You have to harden your entrances.
You have to make schools safe.
And you can make other places safe.
But it is a big Mental health problem in this country more than anything else.
And remember, we have 700 million guns.
700 million.
Many people, if they don't have a gun, they're not going to be very safe.
I mean, if they don't have a gun, it gives them security.
Now, you need them for entertainment, you need them for hunting, you need them for a lot of different things.
But there are people that if they didn't have the privilege of having a gun in some form, Many of them would not be alive today.
You know, there is a certain country that had a very strict policy on guns, very, very strict.
Which country?
Brazil, okay.
Brazil, very strict.
And the former president of Brazil's, and the killing was incredible.
They were walking into people's homes and killing people.
They had no protection.
Said go out and buy guns.
People went out and bought guns and it went way down.
The numbers went way down because they had security.
If you look at Chicago, Chicago has the single toughest gun policies in the nation.
They are so tough you can't breathe.
New York too and other places also.
All of those places are the worst and most dangerous places.
So that's not the answer.
He's right about all that.
A very good friend of mine went to Chicago last week and he went to a mall and the security officer there started telling him, leave, leave, because he started hearing screams and looting and stuff and gunshot and then he saw another person robbing a lady with a gun.
Jesus Christ.
But he's not wrong about any of that.
Like, the problem, like, A, Americans should feel that they can be armed and secure, right, for their own self-defence.
He's not wrong.
There are doubtless many people alive now who are alive purely because they had a gun when someone was trying to attack them.
And it's obviously a mental health issue, and it's a very much American phenomenon as well.
Doesn't tend to happen outside of America, actually.
And he's not wrong about any of the points he was making there.
Like Chicago and New York, way worse despite the fact they've got massively restrictive gun laws.
He's not wrong.
This is a very difficult topic, obviously.
And one thing is, a friend of mine who's from Texas, he told me that his mother lives in Virginia, and she's two and a half hours away from a police station.
So he asked me, what is she going to do if...
If something happens.
Exactly.
Well, is she going to phone the police and see you in two and a half hours?
Yeah.
And that's assuming best case scenario.
But yeah, so he gives a bunch of really good answers, actually.
And he gives a bunch of really funny answers as well.
This was undoubtedly my favorite clip from the entire thing.
Let's watch this.
You did not testify in person in this trial.
There was a tape deposition of you from October, and you defended the comments that you made on that Excess Hollywood tape about being able to grab women how you want.
Do you stand by those comments?
I said, if you're famous and rich or whatever I said, but I said, if you're a star, you are, and I said, women let you.
I didn't say you, Graham.
I said women let, you know, you didn't use that word, but if you look, women let you.
Now, they said, will you take that back?
I said, look, for a million years, this is the way it's been.
I want to be honest.
This is the way it's been.
I can take it back if you'd like to, but if you're a famous person, if you're a star, and I'm not referring to myself, I'm saying people that are famous, people that are stars, people that are rich, people that are powerful.
Uh, they tend to do pretty well in a lot of different ways, okay?
And you would like me to take that back?
I can't take it back because it happens to be true.
I said it's been true for one million years, approximately a million years, perhaps a little bit longer than that.
So you stand by those comments?
Well, I don't want to lie.
Mr. President, we have a lot of questions.
Here's what she wants me to say.
I love it.
I just love it.
It's this woman who's really offended.
She's like, I don't want to lie, it's true.
They do let you do that.
It's like, yeah, I mean, he's not wrong, obviously.
Like, you know, he just framed it in a way that was very rude.
So the question that the left wing commentary out on Twitter were asking is, is this a win for Trump?
Oh, yeah, it seemed to be.
Andrew Yang, making a good point here.
Clear win for Trump, certainly in the Republican field, probably overall.
Nobody was happy with that.
Sean King had to admit, yep, Donald Trump crushed this town hall for his base.
The audience loves him and his answers.
He's able to spin the questions however he wants and always pivots back to making his own records sound amazing.
It's a win for him.
You can tell by the laughter in the audience.
This is a very favourable audience for Trump.
Everyone was there having a good time.
Like one of his rallies.
Brilliant.
So AOC was of course furious on Twitter.com over this.
CNN should be ashamed of themselves.
They have lost total control of this town hall, to again be manipulated into platforming election disinformation dispenses of January 6th and a public attack on a sexual abuse victim.
The audience is cheering him on and laughing at the host.
This falls squarely on CNN.
Everyone here saw exactly what was going to happen.
Instead they put a sexual abuse victim in harm's way and there was a choice blah blah blah blah.
Oh my god, just cope and seethe.
I just can't stand her.
No, of course not.
I know Dan has a soft spot on her, but I can't stand her.
Terrible.
So she went on MSNBC and continued malding about this.
Let's watch.
You know, I know you said earlier that you will not comment on the platforming of such atrocious disinformation, but I would.
I think it was a profoundly irresponsible decision.
I don't think that I would be doing my job if I did not say that.
And what we saw tonight was a series of extremely irresponsible decisions that put a sexual abuse victim at risk.
That put that person at risk in front of a national audience, and I could not have disagreed with it more.
It was shameful.
Shameful.
The way she uses language, she speaks as if it has happened.
Yeah.
Yeah, she does, yeah.
I don't know, but the way she does, it seems as if she has already judged him.
Yeah, well, where's the harm?
But, morning, Joe.
Joe Scarborough.
Ah, look at that body language.
Look at that body language.
You can see he is furious.
And he had some thoughts.
Let's watch.
But it is, I can't believe I'm going to use catastrophizing language here.
But it was just, it was disgraceful on every level.
It showed, I wouldn't say it's dangerous for democracy because we passed that a long time ago, but it showed the corrosive effects of Trumpism over eight years.
He goes on actually I've cut out bits in which he ends up swearing as well which I'm amazed he's allowed to do online on air.
But yeah, you can see just the body language.
This is a total defeat.
Total moral collapse.
And so you got people like Jonathan here posting on Twitter.
And this got, you know, 11,000 likes.
I've been a lifelong viewer of CNN through the ups and downs and choice decisions.
This decision, however, is the last straw.
As of tonight, MSNBC is my new news channel.
What are you talking about?
I have a particular news channel that I watch and love all day.
Apart from viewers of lotuses.com, of course, I know that you watch and love us and we love you too.
But like this?
No.
I just find this really amusing.
And so CNN had to address this because they got a lot of kickback from their own audience.
So Anderson Cooper had to go online and go live on TV and actually make a good point about what they'd done here.
Let's watch.
And according to polling, no other Republican is even close.
That man you were so upset to hear from last night, he may be President of the United States in less than two years.
And that audience that upset you?
That's a sampling of about half the country.
They are your family members, your neighbors, and they are voting.
And many said they're voting for him.
Now, maybe you haven't been paying attention to him since he left office.
Maybe you've been enjoying not hearing from him, thinking it can't happen again, some investigation is going to stop him.
Well, it hasn't so far.
So if last night showed anything, it showed it can happen again.
It is happening again.
It is.
He hasn't changed, and he is running hard.
Yeah.
You have every right to be outraged today and angry and never watch this network again.
But do you think staying in your silo and only listening to people you agree with is going to make that person go away?
That's a great point by Anderson.
Trump is inevitable.
It's happening.
Get used to it.
You're going to have to be exposed to the giant orange king forever.
But yeah, so I mean, I'll leave it there because you can see there's just a million articles of him coping and seething and being very angry that Trump said things that they don't approve of.
I must say about this that I really like Victor Davis Hanson and he very frequently has really interesting things to say and he said something like the following that because there is this rumor that DeSantis is going to run for president, I think he will, for the Republican primaries.
Hanson said that the Democrats and the establishment that supports the Democrats We'll try to lift Trump into the Republican audience, and when he wins, that's the rationale, then they're going to attack him even more with all the legal stuff.
Quite possibly.
Yeah, just an interesting take.
Victor Davis Hanson always has good things to say.
Yeah, he's always a very interesting man to listen to.
But yeah, so we'll leave that there.
As Anderson Cooper said, Trump is inevitable.
Get used to it.
That's a small victory.
Let's go to the video comments.
So over here we have a bunch of Parvifolis californica, which are the California buttercup.
They're one that I see around a lot, which is pretty good because it's hard to grow things in this weed-infested landscape, and I'll have to talk about that sometime.
But you can always tell because it's kind of hard with these yellow ones.
If you look real close, you can kind of see how really shiny the petals are.
And that's how you know it's a California Buttercup.
That's very interesting.
I hate California.
Moving on.
So these are all meters for trailers in the trailer park.
I'm hooking up a new trailer and I'm labeling a couple of wires that are in other lots.
Um, so I've got the wires crossed on one of them.
And so it's not that one.
That's the one.
So now I know which wire is fed or which lot is fed from this one.
And I've already found the one for the trailer I'm hooking up today.
So yeah, fun stuff.
That is good stuff.
Berlin, California.
Go for it.
How's it going, guys?
I just wanted to remind Callum of something very important.
Shut up!
I just wanted to mention to you my white teeth.
Serious question, though.
Do you guys know how to use the PMT function in Excel?
Seriously, it's a really important question.
The hell is the PMT function in Excel?
First time I hear this.
Yeah, no.
No, we don't.
I think the answer is no.
John, have you got any ideas?
I don't believe there is a PMT function, I think you've made that up.
Craig Cooper dot... AC dot... What was it?
CS Cooper dot... What was his... I can't remember the name of it.
Craig... dot co dot u... com dot u or something.
Right, okay.
Risto says, Tom from MySpace would be the best candidate.
Good point, actually.
Why didn't Elon choose Tom from MySpace?
Diogenes Nutz says, uh, hypothesis.
Elon, as the sole owner, ultimately has control at the end of the day.
With the company 80% gutted, it's much easier to control it from the top down if need be.
This chick is just a convenient shield to stop criticism of Twitter.
She bought the narrative, and thus, any leftist criticism can be shut down by the same group, defense of a woke woman.
She's also connected to the WEF.
MSM will now either have to run defense for Twitter, or attack the agents of their own WEF connections.
But how?
What do you mean?
I mean, the whole idea was to get rid of people who wanted to say, OK, Twitter has a good profile because we have people of A, B and C group.
Well, I mean, I can see the argument that they're making here, right, in that if Elon is effectively given the sovereign command that no All of these people have to stay on Twitter, then OK.
And if she's accepted the job despite being woke, she's going to have to run defence for Twitter, be the sort of Jen Psaki of Twitter, in the face of media attacks saying, oh, you're allowing all these terrible people, blah, blah.
And at the same time, she's very good and has connections with the advertising industry, then that Is a plausible explanation, right?
But the problem is, the amount of pressure that's going to be put on her, and therefore that Elon is going to have to deal with, I think is just insurmountable.
I don't think that this is going to play out nearly as cleverly as people are suspecting this kind of 4D chess.
Oh, sorry, we have a quick update.
Excel PMT function for loan payment.
PMT function calculates payment for a loan as constant payouts and a constant interest rate.
I don't know, I didn't take any loans.
I paid for this myself!
I don't know how to use this.
But yeah, I think it's very optimistic.
I think that Elon will find himself just being surrounded by people who will implement a certain kind of agenda, whether he likes it or not.
And his absence means that he'll come back in like a year's time and have to clear out a bunch of things that they've done in the intervening time.
And he'll be like, oh, that was a mistake.
And I think that's what's going to happen.
I mean, I don't understand why you invite these people in.
You know, I can only assume it's because she was like, hey, look at my credentials.
He's like, well, I do want money.
And it's like, yeah, okay.
Omar says, I think picking a WEF stooge is peak Elon.
Going by his past relationships, he's never had a good track record in selecting women.
Yeah, he doesn't seem to be a brilliant judge of character.
I mean, he used to date a woman called Grimes.
I don't think he was married to her.
Risto says, the WEF knows something compromising about Elon.
Entirely possible.
Yeah, I'm definitely not going to rule that out.
Drew says, thanks Elon, you took one of the biggest platforms for expression and speech on the internet from technocrats in Silicon Valley and handed it over to the League of Communists.
Yeah.
I just, like, what they're going to do, they're not going to do high profile bannings.
They're going to slowly whittle away the small people who are the large mass of people when, you know, like when Donald Trump Jr.
retweets, posts something and it's retweeted 10,000 times, well now it'll only be retweeted 4,000 times.
Yeah, 3000 times.
And because all the people who would have, the activists who had like, you know, 30 followers each, they've all been siphoned off.
And because no one knows that person, you don't know that they're gone.
And then so it'll be an incremental job that they do there.
So, Alexander says, so can we stop claiming that Elon is our guy yet?
He's never had a rock-solid ideological core, which ultimately means Elon's spine is made of jelly and will bend to wherever he receives the most pressure, which of course is from the left.
Twitter will go back to how it was, maybe even worse.
As always, Gab continues to be the actual only free speech platform around.
Yes, Gab is the sort of free speech absolutist choice, and I've said this before, Gab will be the last one standing because it's funded by its users.
I haven't used Gab in ages, actually, because I've had my Twitter back, but I still support Gab's mission of existing.
I must add here that I don't like the thing with the chip that Elon is doing.
No, I don't either.
I'm not saying he's, like, our guy.
He's a conservative or anything like that.
But he is at least a lot more fair-minded than the average liberal.
Yes.
I think that's accurate.
Yes.
Screwtape Laser says, Bacer pay entirely on financial performance.
Leave the algorithm open source and forces will align for good.
Give her a golden parachute and unfettered control and it will go as badly as you think.
To be fair, that's a good summary and it wouldn't surprise me if Elon did have some proviso like that.
Okay, you can say what you like about Elon, but he is a canny businessman, and he has a proven track record of getting things to work, so at least that's something to rely on, to optimistically look at.
Unlike someone online who says, so Twitter's going to do a u-turn on all of its improvements.
I expect the banned pedos to be reinstated as all the non-Maoists are banned.
I don't think it's going to go like that.
I think it'll be the slow salami slicing of the user base to fit advertiser demands, quote unquote.
Yeah.
Right.
Should I go?
Yeah.
Okay.
Irish government versus free speech.
The letter M is not for mutilation.
If a speech falls in the forest and nobody's around to hear it, it will still get arrested.
Yeah, that's literally the Irish government's position on this.
It's a racist thing on your hard drive.
Well, okay, but no one's seen it.
Yeah, but it's on your hard drive and it's racist.
We are here to expunge racism from not just your entire life, but like your very thoughts.
Exactly.
It's like thought crime.
Yeah.
Alpha of the beaters.
Irish hate speech legislation enshrines in law the bureaucratic vision of the global citizen.
The interchangeable widget, without beliefs, morals, hopes, dreams, history of a culture.
Just a cell in the globalist hive, one as good as another.
This is literally what I'm talking about in my attacks on liberalism, is that this is exactly the point.
They want the year zero self-made individual atomized man who is indistinguishable, undifferentiated from every other man.
I see this, but to refer to our debate, I'm not defending a liberalism with open borders.
I know you're not, but the point is, and this is another debate we'll do, the comprehensive liberal has the edge on the political liberal, because the political liberal essentially has to admit hypocrisy and cowardice.
I don't think so, but it's okay.
Let's keep that for a bit.
But they essentially do, because they'll be like, look, so you think it's right to have a racist institution?
No.
Well, no, the political liberal accepts that the values say that that's a racist institution, and the comprehensive liberal will say, well, then you're in favor of racism.
And the political liberal will be like, kind of.
No, because it's not being in favor of something that you disagree with.
It's understanding the need for having a sort of tolerance Yeah.
In that if you want to live in a free society, you expect that people won't have the same idea of how they want to live their life.
So there needs to be a common ground, a common element with respect to how you structure society.
But you've already accepted that under no circumstances is racism acceptable.
Right?
Racism from the liberals' perspective, even the political liberals' perspective, is an unacceptable thing.
There's no positive argument to justify the existence of racism, right?
That depends on the liberalism, on the form of liberalism one puts forward.
What liberal says racism is justifiable?
No one, but the thing is that there were liberals who said that, for instance, there is a right to discriminate.
Sure, but now they'll say, yeah, but not on grounds as such as race or gender.
That happened.
Yeah, but here is a switch and this is nice.
I see what you're doing.
It's not what I'm doing, it's what they're doing!
I'm in favour of what you're saying!
But who is they?
It's the contemporary liberals.
Yes, the comprehensive liberals, who think that everything should be made according to liberal standards.
And they're the ones who are winning at this point, because they keep winning the arguments against the political liberals.
Because essentially they say, look, you're either a racist or you're a hypocrite, you're a coward.
And the political liberal has to be like, well, I'm definitely not a racist.
And so the charge of hypocrisy and cowardice sticks.
I would just tell the philosopher who said this that it's not hypocrisy if I actually understand that I have to be tolerant with some, not every behavior I disagree with, but with some.
I think that's the exact opposite of hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy would be when someone would say, for instance, I am tolerant, but A, B and C, I'm not going to be tolerant about.
It's the exact opposite.
But even the nature of the term that you're using, tolerance, implies that you accept that this is a wrong and shouldn't exist, right?
And that's the problem?
They've got everything in the framing here.
Like, they've already got you here.
Like, the fact that I tolerate this, it's like, yeah, but wouldn't it be better if it didn't exist?
You'd be like, yeah, I'd prefer if it wasn't racist.
But the thing is whether we can move from morally unjustified to persecution worthy.
Sure, and the comprehensive liberal.
at least has you on the ground that you accept it shouldn't exist, and now they can just sit there making their argument.
This is how the dialectic is continually processing forward.
We're not even debating whether it's right or wrong now.
We've already agreed it's wrong, and now the debate is, well, should it exist and shouldn't it exist?
And if you're like, no, it should exist, well, what are you, a coward or are you a secret racist?
But it's not hypocritical, because we understand, for instance... I'm not saying it is hypocritical, I'm saying that's the charge they put forward.
And now you're not even talking about the justification for these things existing.
Now you're defending yourself from allegations.
And so it's just like, the comprehensive liberal is constantly on the attack and has all the weapons to punch with, and the political liberal has nothing to punch back and is constantly on the defence.
And that's why this is inevitably going to be a... There is a punch!
What's the punch?
The punch is to show from history that very frequently people who had the comprehensive view, in other words, the view that liberals will have that we are going to put forward the view of the good life and we are going to enforce it, they ended up invariably in tyranny.
Yeah, but we're not going to be like them.
I don't believe them.
I don't trust them.
I don't either.
But the point is they're going to be like, yeah, but that wasn't me.
And so, you know, this time I'll do it right.
And you know, every time they always do this.
They'll always say this.
And they always lead us into tyranny.
I can't control what they're going to say.
Everyone will say, OK, the point of view that they put forward has never been really tried.
But the point I'm making is that's not a persuasive attack on them, right?
It's not something that makes them stop in their tracks.
Showing that they result to tyranny invariably.
Yeah, no, they don't care about that.
Because they're convinced that they're the ones in charge.
Okay, so I don't care about them and I will put them in jail.
You're not in charge of the government.
These people are in charge of the government.
That's a small thing I didn't think about.
And they got there, because their argument punches through the political liberals' argument.
Anyway, let's carry on.
You can understand how really great our debate was, and you ain't seen nothing yet.
R.J.L.
Never thought I'd see the day where memers would be treated the same as pedophiles, except the memers would be more likely jailed.
Just memes, hateful content.
Pedophiles in government are going after the memes.
Not even if you retweet it or send it somewhere, just possessing it.
It's just on my phone, bro.
Lord Nerevar, so the Irish government had one of the best rates of tax in Europe, became one of the most prosperous small countries on the map, made themselves extremely attractive to outside investment, and climbed nearly to the top of the quality of life index.
And then they decided that human rights just weren't that important and cracked down on hurty words.
I'm effing through with this utter clown show.
It's pathetic.
You know, just a quick side of that.
It's actually insufferable that Britain has allowed Ireland to do this.
For example, Google is located in Ireland.
It's got its headquarters in Ireland.
Loads of Silicon Valley companies have their headquarters in Ireland.
Because their corporate tax rate is 12.5%, I think it is, and ours is 25%.
And the EU is worried that when we came out of the EU, we'd be like, yeah, 10% corporate tax or something like that, which is what we should have done.
Because like, why wouldn't we want to make ourselves a really competitive place to be?
But for some reason, we haven't done that.
And we're increasing the corporate tax rate.
It's like, And everyone's wondering, why is everything falling apart?
Why are we growing poorer every day?
Why has Ireland literally got... an average salary in Ireland is twice that in Britain.
It's just mental.
It's absolutely mental.
But the people running this country just don't care about us at all.
Peter R. Those who rejoice in the continuous decay of free speech fail to grasp the value of what we once had, the ability to engage in debate and express dissenting opinions.
Speech is the very foundation of peace, and in its absence, peace is nothing more than a veneer put in place by despotic authoritarians.
So the issue that we have is that the comprehensive liberals have calculated The end goal of free speech, right?
If free speech is appealed to through, and Mill does this all the time, if free speech is appealed to by the internal goal of dialogue, which is to arrive at correctness, arrive at truth, then the comprehensive liberals believe that they are there, right?
It is always wrong to be racist, sexist, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And therefore, any of these opinions are categorically and definitionally wrong from the start.
And so they can just be banned because they're wrong.
Right?
So you can't appeal on that internal thing.
You're not appealing for yourself as an intrinsic right to be able to speak.
The thing is that if people have a moral view, it doesn't mean that they are fanatic about it.
So you could engage.
I think Peter R is really correct here in that you can engage with people who have some ethical views.
I'm not saying that's my opinion.
That's their opinion.
I agree with Peter as well, but they don't agree with Peter on these grounds.
I understand, but it seems to me that, at the end of the day, we are talking a bit about two different things.
Because if someone is hell-bent on basically presenting everyone who disagrees as enemies of the state, The way to combat them is not through dialogue, because they already pretend to engage in dialogue, but they're really not.
That's when the state basically falls down.
Sure, but what I'm saying, though, is that It's not that they have to pretend to view certain forms of speech as racist.
They do sincerely view certain forms of speech as racist.
And no one can make an affirmative defense for the racist speech as racist speech.
And so this is why we are constantly at the point where it's an unjustifiable thing.
No one can really justify it.
Therefore, the comprehensive liberal sees that it's been completely justified, and morally and sincerely so, to be censored because it is racist speech, right?
I understand, but this seems to me to be the exact opposite of what the idea of dialogue is supposed to be.
I agree.
And so, for instance, I wouldn't say that these people are Democrats.
No, I agree.
Because Democrats are in favor of dialogue.
Those who are not in favor of dialogue, they can't be called Democrats.
So by the same rationale, we wouldn't call them... we should just... I mean, the Stalinists, as far as I'm concerned.
But the point is... So in the same way, I don't think that they're liberals.
They're not in favour of liberty?
Well, they would call themselves liberals.
They are using liberalism.
They're just using the non-Rawlsian comprehensive view, right?
But the point is, if it's about achieving truth, as far as they're concerned, the truth has been achieved, because the dialogue doesn't need to be had anymore, because the right answer has been found.
And so there's no need for the dialogue on this thing.
So essentially, what people need to do is formulate a positive case for why it is good to be a racist.
And no one's going to do that?
No one's going to listen to it.
And that's not the issue of someone saying why it's good to be a racist.
That's not the argument.
The thing is that they put forward an agenda that is very restrictive and there's no room for disagreement there.
But the thing is, I don't think that this should be called Liberal, in the sense that it does not promote liberty.
They would call themselves liberal, as you said, but they would also call themselves Democrat.
And they would not be, because they would not engage in dialogue.
They would argue that actually this does promote liberty, because of course every liberal since Hobbes onwards will admit that you would permit others as much liberty as you would have them intrude on your own personal liberty.
And so they would argue that actually being racist, sexist, whatever, actually infringes on the liberties of others, and you wouldn't want that happening to you, and in their defence, they would be right.
I wouldn't want them saying, you're a man, you can't do this, you're white, you can't do this, you're whatever, you can't do this.
And so in their defence, they actually have a point there, from a liberal perspective.
I understand what the I think that this is a feature of the plasticity of concepts, because for instance, I totally agree with what you said, and I think that's very insightful, because if we think Mill, who has the harm principle, that's where I think modern liberalism comes in, which is an aberration.
And it comes with a very bloated interpretation of the notion of what harm consists in.
That's absolutely correct.
Now everything is portrayed as harm.
So the way, it seems to me that the only way to defend against, there are several ways of defending against this, but intellectually speaking, I don't think that I have to give them terms like democracy, freedom, community.
No, I agree.
Sentiment?
I agree.
I view them as a bunch of invasive parasites that are currently destroying the things that we like.
But the point is they're doing it from within the paradigm that we have agreed is good, and that's the problem.
Because from within the paradigm, they actually have the whip hand here.
We can't actually route them out using the liberal methods.
And so what can be done?
You know, and it seems not.
We'll definitely do a follow-up podcast on this because we're going on.
I'll go on to the Trump section.
Omar says, as much as I love Trump destroying establishment media, I kind of think that they have ulterior motives.
I don't doubt, actually.
I get the feeling that this is CNN looking at their ratings, cratering, and being like, we need Orange Man.
We need him back.
We're going to do a town hall with him, where he makes one of our interviewers look like a clown.
And then it's going to go viral, everyone's going to be watching it, and we'll have loads of eyeballs on us, right?
But he says, broadcast live instead of in editable chunks.
Well framed instead of adjusting camera to make him look small and weak.
Good sound, lighting and colour instead of making him look shadowy, evil and orange.
Letting him make valid arguments.
A friendly audience on CNN.
Either they're trying to make sure he's the nominee, Trump has Epstein blackmail on the CNN execs, or they really missed the Trump bump.
Yeah, I think they really missed the Trump bump.
I think that's what this is.
And Anderson Cooper is post hoc rationalising it, being like, well, I mean, we need to talk to the other side.
You know, it's like they've been stoking the fires of division for the last five years.
With a grin he had.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, I think they just want the ratings, to be honest.
But S.H.
Silver says, What I found interesting about the supposed town hall was structured more like a debate with the moderator with only a small handful of questions coming in from the audience.
And the audience CNN got wasn't concerned with the topics that CNN was pushing, like the trials or cross-comments.
They were interested in the actual issues Trump had answers for.
Yeah, and what's more is they were clearly having a great time with Trump.
You can hear the laughter in the audience, the applause.
And you can tell the moderator was just seething.
Like there are loads of screen grabs of just her face where she's just, you know.
And it seems to me that journalists want him because he generates drama and news anywhere.
So yeah, the CNN people there would want this to say, you know, we make news.
Yeah, I agree.
Bleak Steven says, I can't express how much watching the left eats CNN fills me with joy.
The lack of self-awareness is a wonderful thing.
Yeah, I know.
I really enjoy it.
Nasty French woman.
Yeah, that was another bit.
I should have put that in where he's trying to explain himself and she keeps interrupting and goes, you're a nasty woman.
And then she shuts up and it's just like brilliant.
When CNN realised Town Hall didn't go the way they wanted, they started taking ad breaks and then ended the show a good 15-20 minutes early.
Yeah, that's another thing I noticed, actually.
The first, like, 25 minutes, there were no ads, and suddenly, in the last, like, 20 minutes, there were, like, two or three different ad breaks.
That was weird.
I didn't think about it at the time.
But, yeah, anyway.
Couple more before we go.
Kevin says, just so you know, CNN execs are scared to death that their channel is about to disappear, and they're willing to have a town hall with a guy who they've fought tooth and nail to destroy for eight years.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's entirely cynical on their part.
I'm just glad Trump did it, you know, because Trump's just good content, you know, it's fun.
Joan of Arc says, CNN won that town hall, they got their favourite punching bag, they got ratings, and Trump became the story, they don't have to cover the Biden crime family revelations the day before.
I didn't even know there were revelations the day before about the Biden crime family.
Conservatives are going right along with it.
Well, that is fair, Joan.
I have no idea what happened with Biden, to be honest, and so you are right.
As Desert Rat says, only a gun isn't a privilege, Mr President.
It's a right.
We're going to have to talk about the concept of rights now, because a right, in my opinion, in the classical liberal opinion, is something intrinsic to a person.
You weren't born with a gun in your hand, you actually have to acquire one.
There are going to be times when you don't have a gun, and therefore when Trump says it's a privilege to have the gun, he means something that you don't always have.
But yes, I agree, it's enumerated to the right to own a gun is a right in the Constitution, but the actual possession of a gun is a privilege.
Anyway, we're going to leave it there.
Right.
I'm sure there's nothing, no bad comments from Kyle, that's the last statement.
Anyway, Bo and I will be back at 3.30, where we're going to be having just a nice, I don't know, victory dance over the burning fires of the media.
Callum did a segment the other day talking about the death of Vice, and he was like, yeah, Kyle doesn't want to gloat, and I'm like, I don't.
That doesn't mean I won't.
I think the reception was that you were a bit soft.
Yeah, well I am soft, you know, and I am a bit soft-hearted when it comes to these things.
But they have earned it, and so we're going to go over that, and it's going to be great fun.
So we'll see you over on Rumble.
Bye.
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