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Jan. 12, 2024 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:34:46

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #827

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters episode 827 for today, Friday the 12th of January 2021.
	I'm your host, Connor, joined by Bo and Josh.
	Hello!
	Anyways, and today we'll be discussing how no one's fighting at the moment, talking about the low recruitment levels in the army, how American Airlines, not just American Airlines, the brand, but other American Airlines, are trafficking children, and the Houthi troubles, the situation down near the Yemen and the impacts.
	Is it Hooty or Houthi?
	I'm an Englishman.
	Yeah, I don't want to do the terrorist organizations.
	The Hutus, yeah.
	I don't feel like respecting them enough to pronounce it properly.
	But anyway, I'm sure we'll get corrected by everyone in the comments.
	No announcements today.
	Nothing particularly interesting going on.
	Thanks for joining us.
	So without further ado.
	Great way to start a podcast.
	Nothing interesting going on.
	Anyway, here's Josh.
	Well, let's get into your topic.
	How about something interesting for once?
	Well, what I thought we would talk about today is that nobody wants to fight for their country anymore.
	And this is interesting because in some ways it's self-evidently bad, and in some ways I think it's also good.
	And I think we're going to break down how and why in a sort of discussion.
	I'm going to go through just what's been reported recently and my main reason for talking about this today because this has been in the news for the past couple of months and I'm going to talk about some of the coverage on it but the main reason I wanted to look at it is this because I think this article cuts at why lots of countries certainly in the West are struggling to
	get the numbers that they want is that there has been a sharp decline in white recruits that hasn't been reflected in other demographics which I find interesting and I'm just going to read a little bit about this from the article, not too much, just to fill in some of the details and then we can sort of discuss what we think about it.
	So the army's recruiting of white soldiers has dropped significantly in the last half decade according to internet data reviewed by military.com.
	What's happened in the past half decade I wonder?
	The past five years.
	A decline that accounts for much of the service's historic recruitment slump has become the subject of increasing concern for army leadership in Capitol Hill.
	This is of course in the United States.
	The shift in demographics for incoming recruits would be irrelevant to war planners, except it coincides with an overall shortfall of about 10,000 recruits for the army in 2023.
	So it's interesting that when there's a sharp decline of white recruits, there is a massive shortfall in people joining the military.
	It kind of indicates that white recruits were disproportionately over-represented in the military, which I think anyone with any anecdotal experience with the military, or has been in the military, would probably be able to vindicate, right?
	Well, there were more British Muslims joining ISIS than the British Army.
	Yeah, that's not surprising, is it?
	No.
	There's a few reasons for this, I think, and I don't want to derail reading any more.
	First, obviously, is that the military are implementing diversity, equity and inclusion policies, so they are having preferential hiring schemes, as we saw with the RAF saying they don't want any more useless white male pilots in Britain.
	So that means that they're actively discriminating against the exact kind of white men that would have beforehand come to defend their country.
	But also, it's not just the racial demographic, it's because As white Anglo countries, the US, UK, Australia, etc, we're going to have a higher proportion of white men in there because that's our ethnic composition.
	But even in Japan, they have fallen short of their troop recruitments by about half for the last few years, and so it seems to be speaking to a kind of disbelief in the nation state and a Disaggregated sense of lost responsibility within developed populations?
	Because yeah, I think that there's certainly a certain amount of reaction against the discrimination that white people face in their own nations, in that, well, I wouldn't want to fight for my country if I was treated like a second class citizen, if there are legal barriers to me succeeding that aren't put up against other people.
	Well then, why would I serve that country if they're deliberately trying to discriminate against you?
	And also, you know, you hear about how evil white men are.
	Well, why should we go out and fight and die for our country then, if that's how we're treated at home?
	I saw a comment from Morgan Gotham, maybe Millennial Woes, someone on Twitter put it really well.
	They said, you know, if you've seen your country get hijacked by people that haven't got your best interests at heart and turn your country into sort of a retail park, Without any history and heritage and that sort of thing.
	Why would you fight and die and make the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of that?
	It's a fair point.
	It's a fair point.
	And also the idea that first or even second or third generation immigrants would join the British Army.
	I mean, of course, they're not inclined to do that.
	I once saw a year or two ago, just a popular street type thing asking people of color if they would ever consider joining the British Army.
	And their responses, as you can imagine, are like, Of course not!
	What a stupid question.
	Of course not.
	For them, as well, what instills you a sense of discipline and strength and reverence for your nation and gratitude is having a dad in your household.
	And disproportionately, those demographics do not have a present father, so it's not shocking that they would rather engage in street violence than hone their craft and go and defend their country either overseas or god forbid we ever be invaded it is also worth mentioning as well that some of the most patriotic people who are very sort of at least i spoke to the people in britain that are sort of king and country you know you know where their loyalties lie and it's here
	they're normally in the military and so when people are doing things that are anti-british and trying to demonize britain well if you hold those views you're far less inclined to think well i want to serve this because you are you see yourself as a true patriot, if you will.
	And so, As the sort of out group of the current regime, you don't want to strengthen them.
	And I think that that's a perfectly reasonable reaction.
	Although I've kind of thought about this myself and put myself in the shoes of someone who might join.
	And my sort of distinction is if it's going to be another foreign war, you can get stuffed.
	But if, you know, there were troops looking to invade the British Isles, sort of similar to a World War II situation where it's fighting for the survival of my country, well, even though it's a regime I don't like, you know, everyone I've ever known and loved and everything I hold dear is on these islands, so I would consider myself a coward not to fight and defend that at the same time, even though I wouldn't like the government I was fighting on behalf of.
	But that's the thing.
	If we were to be invaded, we would actually defend our homes, whether or not we were in the military.
	But if you join the military, the chances that you're going to be a conscript for the UN's global security police spreading bombing to the Middle East or acting as some kind of private security contact... It's already catching on.
	Yeah, acting as some kind of enforcer for Biden Incorporated, knocking over buildings in Afghanistan so his brother can go and seize up the development contracts there.
	Why would I want to fight for that?
	I'm not conscripted in some sort of moral crusade For the UN or the military-industrial complex, no thanks.
	You've discredited yourself on the world stage from Iraq, Afghanistan, the Vietnam War, etc.
	Why would I bother?
	Another small piece of perhaps anecdotal evidence is we've had Charlie Downs on, haven't we?
	Yeah.
	I really like the guy.
	And he talked to me about how he's considering joining the army, wants to be in the infantry.
	You know, that type of person, like Charlie, they're quite rare these days.
	Sort of super based.
	He wants to go in for the sort of personal virtue building, doesn't he?
	I think that's the impression I got.
	And yeah, he's a lovely guy, isn't he?
	Yeah, and the point is, I think young men like him are a dying breed.
	Regardless of whether you become a foot soldier on behalf of the Biden Inc.
	Just don't even care about that.
	It would just be a personal point of prestige to be in the British Army.
	I don't know very many young men that I don't want to discredit Charlie's motivation for doing so because he's a lovely bloke, but he has also said that part of the reason as well is it allows him to have some form of credibility before running for public office.
	So it's, of course, I'd much rather our politicians have some kind of public service role, which would mean he'd much more qualified than David Lammy or some jumped up academic.
	But that's also another thing that's happened, particularly with the American military.
	And it's that rather than be in the armed forces as some kind of accreditation mechanism to then go and serve your country in another way, one of the benefits that's tied to the armed forces is we'll pay for your college.
	Well also, college admissions for white men are not just disadvantaged because of DEI, but also the learning environment's not conducive to the way men like to learn, it's an incredibly hostile social environment, so if they're trying to use that as a selling point to get white men to go into the military as well, they're going, I don't want to go to college either because you just hate me there too.
	I think we do need military people in politics, don't we?
	Because you want a defence secretary that has a military mind.
	And so that is a clear advantage.
	We don't have one now with Grant Shapps.
	No.
	Yeah, we did have, you know, Johnny Mercer was involved, although, you know, questionable politics.
	But I know he's, you know, from Plymouth and I know secondhand stuff that he's very much on the side of the military being treated well and things like that.
	And he has done good work.
	It does make sense to have people with that background, I think.
	Charlie Downs just went up a tiny bit more in my estimation.
	That's deliciously old school.
	I need to have been in the services to be taken seriously in public office.
	That is really old school, you know, like in the post-war, post-World War II period, and when it didn't serve during the war, there's sort of a question mark over you.
	Nobody really thinks, like, you're not really forced to think in those terms anymore, are you?
	And yet, there is sort of a value to that.
	You know, it does make some sense.
	I suppose it lends itself well to this transition, at least in some European countries, of us largely focusing on having a sort of elite crack force.
	And those are the kind of people that are going to be in those kinds of forces, the people who are very internally motivated, determined, and have a good set of values behind them.
	This is also something we're in a bit of a technological transitional stage of where on the ground infantry for mass foot soldier fighting style warfare is on the way out as other nations and us outsource that kind of thing to drone warfare of where instead you'll need sort of specialist wet work units like the SAS or the Marines to have that human element.
	So you have strategic strike force teams rather than just loads of lads with guns.
	So that's also why I mean, troop numbers going down overall are to be expected, but it's the composition of the troops that's the worrying thing.
	Because if you're just packing it full of diverse lesbians who care more about... Well, they're not joining, so... Well, yeah, they're still marketing to them.
	Yeah, they are.
	I do think, and I may be proven wrong in the decades to follow, but I do think that having dozens or even hundreds of infantry divisions is a thing of the past, probably.
	Yeah, special forces and air forces and drone warfare is almost certainly the future of the needed 100 divisions to invade The dynamics change post-WWII to a certain extent as well.
	Europe or something.
	I don't think it's unlike, I might be proven wrong, but I think that's unlikely to happen.
	The logistics of it add up more in that direction, don't they?
	The dynamics changed post-World War II to a certain extent as well.
	The invention of the nuclear bomb, I think, has also given people a certain amount of security.
	You don't need a massive standing army anymore because people know you've got a nuclear deterrent That's the odd thing, like cocked all men.
	Well, yeah.
	Fewer men can engage in warfare because of nuclear arms.
	I do have that sort of inclination that I've missed something out, especially if I watch like the Lord of the Rings and you watch the Charge of the Rohirrim.
	I'm just like, oh, I want to die in battle.
	I've been robbed.
	I want to go to Valhalla.
	The Vikings used to think that there was something very shameful about growing old.
	And not getting yourself killed gloriously in battle.
	Being a greybeard is shameful.
	I have that sort of instinct.
	I don't want to think like this, but I kind of feel like I've missed the boat a bit.
	I should have died in war, damn it.
	But anyway, I'm going to carry on reading some of the details of this.
	Apparently the shift in demographics for incoming recruits would be irrelevant to war planners except... Oh yeah, I've already read that bit.
	Shortfall of about 10,000 recruits for the army in 2023 and it missed its target of 65,000 new soldiers.
	So a total of 44,000 new army recruits were categorized by the service as white in 2018, but that number has fallen consistently each year to a low of 25,000.
	So that is massive for a fall in the space of a few years.
	It's about a 5% drop, isn't it?
	Yeah, in five years.
	So that's Astronomical, that's a catastrophe for the military that they've lost that number of people.
	Are we still talking about America here?
	Yes, we are.
	Similar things are happening in the UK.
	Yes, and I'm going to be getting onto those, yeah.
	I think that, again, you may well get onto this, but the tactics they're using with advertising, both in America and Britain.
	I mean, if I had been inclined to join, I was younger and I saw the adverts, I'm going to be mentioning those, don't worry.
	It would be enough to pour cold water on your enthusiasm, wouldn't it?
	Well, yeah, because it makes the military look lame.
	And one of the selling points is that it's masculine, you know, it's being able to being capable of violence is the cornerstone of masculinity, isn't it?
	Of course, having the self-control to know when it's appropriate is also a very important part of it, but that's what the military is all about.
	Fundamentally.
	That's why it appeals psychologically to people.
	That's why I've got that, that craving for, for death and battle, even though, you know, I'm a, sort of house cat of a podcast host, right?
	Working in an office.
	Yeah, but the last thing you want to do in a firefight as well is have some Karen in your ear going, you know, we're held down and she goes, I don't know, what do you want to do?
	You know, that vision is put forward by the, I grew up in California with two mums advert.
	It doesn't inspire you to go off and die for your country, does it?
	Yeah.
	So I'm just going to read a little bit about some of the details.
	So during 2018, 56.4% of new recruits were categorized as white.
	In 2023 that number had fallen to 44%.
	During that same five-year period black recruits have gone up from 20% to 24% of the pool and hispanic recruits have risen from 17% to 24% with both groups seemingly seeing large flat recruiting totals but increasing as a percentage of incoming soldiers as white recruiting has fallen.
	So So even with DEI programs and relentless advertising about hating white men, they haven't recruited any more blacks and Hispanics.
	It's just that their proportion of the force has gone up because recruits overall have fallen.
	Yes.
	Also, thanks for scrolling down the article I was reading.
	That's okay.
	So now on to the most annoying headline I think I've ever seen.
	I think you might have actually heard me whinging about this yesterday afternoon.
	I don't know.
	You do that a lot.
	I like a good whinge.
	That's true.
	That's why I've not joined the military.
	They don't like that apparently.
	Um, the U.S.
	Army is falling short of its recruitment goals.
	She has a plan for that.
	Um, she, who's she?
	The cat's mother?
	That's why I was asking about that yesterday.
	Um, but yes, who, what are you on about?
	What a silly headline.
	And it says the Army is a woman.
	I know, but also they're doing it like, well, she has a problem, a solution for that.
	She has a plan.
	Just like so smarmy and annoying.
	NPR, by the way, if you're listening.
	So the American public are funding that?
	Yes, and I'm going to read a tiny bit from it.
	The Secretary of the Army, Christine Wormuth, is rolling out a plan to address the recruitment problems.
	The Army is bringing back its iconic ad with the slogan, Be All You Can Be, which was everywhere in the 80s, hoping to inspire new recruits and perhaps It's touching on that nostalgia nerve too, but more broadly the Pentagon is seeking to widen the net for recruits, focusing less on traditional pools and seeking to expand to new groups.
	So they're appealing to the 80s when it was normal-ish, and they're also bombing their own campaign by expanding it to other groups, which is probably part of the reason why it's not working to get white recruits.
	Yeah, but you need to market strategically to the exact kind of group that are most likely to sign up, which is patriotic American men.
	Like, all they need to do for their recruitment ad is capture the essence of American sniping.
	It's not difficult.
	But the American public loved that.
	It was one of the most successful R-rated movies of all time, despite being part of the Iraq War, which the American public were generally against, particularly as that was going on.
	And it's because it captured the hoorah spirit.
	I enjoyed the film.
	It's a great film!
	Yeah.
	Really sad.
	So, capture that spirit, rather than, I have two mums, I'll piss off.
	So, this has gone all the way up to the U.S.
	Department of Defense, as you'd probably expect, and they gave some reasons for it.
	They said, um, the COVID-19 pandemic limited the ability of recruiters to interact with potential recruits, which seems fairly reasonable, um, at least in the past, but now we're out of that time, and I don't think that excuse necessarily sticks anymore.
	Well, they shouldn't have stuck at the time, because, oh no, you're gonna join the military and get shot at?
	Let's not have a face-to-face meeting, we might catch a cold.
	Yeah, when you put it like that, you know what, you're right.
	Painfully dumb.
	And they say the US economy is booming with low unemployment.
	I don't know what economy they're looking at.
	And the number of adult influencers with experience in the military continues to drop.
	There aren't enough influencers in the military.
	I never thought I could read something so stupid as that.
	It's like, yes, what we need is more people on TikTok with military backgrounds.
	That's what they have been doing.
	Didn't Callum do that thing, the segment a little while ago, where they were paying women in the military who were attractive to make TikToks trying to bait simps into fighting?
	Yep.
	That's what we need, the beta male legion.
	But like, YouTube will actively sort of suppress or throttle guys like that anyway.
	I follow a number of YouTubers that are ex-military people and, yeah, obviously the powers that be at Alphabet don't want to promote these voices because, you know, they will be based, you know, someone like Don the Pleb.
	Yeah, they try to actively suppress people.
	Yeah, Jocko Willink.
	Absolutely.
	So another thing they're trying to do is using data to make the medical record checks more efficient and they're just using a new system to do that which I don't really see how that's going to get thousands of people in.
	Especially not if you increase the complications of medical records with your recruits by undoing Trump's transgender troop ban.
	Yeah, well, we mentioned ads.
	This is a more recent one.
	This came out in November time, so, you know, it's over the past couple of months.
	And it was just a regular, you know, what you would expect of a military ad.
	And I think that that betrays their desperation that they've actually returned to what they think works.
	Well, Israel gets attacked.
	Go on, white boys, strap your helmets on.
	That's genuinely their approach to it.
	And I would be remiss to not mention this one which I actually covered at the time in 2022.
	The Top Gun was actually a better recruitment ad than the lesbian wedding cartoon the army made which there's a screenshot of it don't worry I'm not going to subject you to it.
	We've already played it once on the podcast and that's too much.
	That is sort of at a glance kind of obviously Just so subversive.
	Oh, it's where it's absurd.
	Yeah.
	It's when something's been absolutely turned inside out and upside down.
	I remember it was quite a few years ago.
	Now, you probably remember this.
	There's in the UK, there was an advert to join the British Army where there's a patrol walking along.
	No, I have to stop.
	So the Muslim.
	I've got that in.
	I'm going to show.
	Yeah.
	He has to pray.
	I'm praying.
	I remember seeing that.
	Yeah.
	And yet I couldn't believe what my eyes are seeing.
	Is this real?
	Can this really be real?
	Well, I watched a documentary on the paratroopers for a couple of years ago.
	You know, they're real tough lads, really respectable, and most of the time the documentary focused on one black recruit and one kid who had been brought over from Afghanistan to then join the paras, and I think he ended up failing out anyway.
	And it was like, do you want to focus on any of the other recruits at all, or do we still have to insist on minoritarian concerns?
	So it's not just the US, it's in the UK as well and if anything it might even be worse than the UK because the Navy has so few sailors it has to decommission ships and this is a tragedy in my mind because I've seen many of these ships myself, you know, the Plymouth Sound.
	A place where lots of the military warships go, so it's going to be a shame to stop seeing them, but the HMS Westminster, which was recently refurbished as well, very expensive on behalf of the taxpayer, and the HMS Argyle will be decommissioned.
	This is probably the only time they could actually do a woke recruitment ad, because if they wanted new seamen, they could just go down to Pride Parade.
	Thanks, Dad.
	You're all weak!
	So apparently there will be some new Type 26 frigates on the way, but I haven't really seen much about them.
	I've only seen concept photos and they look similar to those really.
	They're not too different.
	You need an eye for warships to really be able to tell the difference.
	But not only that, but the Royal Marines, one of our Most elite forces has a shortfall of 600 troops and if I scroll down it's worth mentioning here this graph which kind of annoyed me because the axes don't go all the way to zero so you can't see the vast sum of the recruitment but we went from 7,200 down to 5,822 which seems too few anyway.
	down to 5,822, which seems too few anyway.
	7,200 seems like too few Royal Marines to my mind.
	Aren't we at the lowest number of reservists since the Napoleonic Wars?
	We've got 750 reservists.
	Not even a thousand reservists in the Royal Marines in the UK.
	Which, you know, the country that has ruled Britannia, Britannia rules the waves.
	Well, where's our Navy?
	It's shameful.
	I mean, you know, we haven't ruled the wave since the 30s, but nonetheless, yeah, the whole point of having a Navy is to project your power abroad.
	And not that I'm excusing it or anything, but we don't need, we don't do that anymore, really.
	We leave it up to America, really, don't we?
	And they do have a massive Navy.
	The US Navy is a behemoth.
	It's absolutely gigantic.
	It dwarfs all other navies easily.
	Yeah, just looking at the aircraft carrier metric, it's not even close.
	We're pretty close to the top by having one.
	There's only half a dozen countries, or maybe a few more, that have even got one aircraft carrier.
	Exactly.
	And America's got, I think, 20-odd, and there's 12 at sea at any given moment.
	Something in that ballpark anyway.
	I don't know the exact number, but something like that.
	So in other words, All the other world's navies combined couldn't stand against the US Navy.
	But nonetheless, yeah, only having a few thousand marines, it does seem too few, doesn't it?
	It's a little bit worrying, because I know quite a few marines myself, because some of my old school friends were in the marines.
	And you know, they're good people.
	You can tell they're going to be good soldiers.
	So it's a shame that one of our more prestigious forces seems to be crumbling away, shelving ships and losing recruits.
	That being said, the only concern is coming back to, okay, who gets to choose where said marines would be deployed?
	Oh right, it's Grant Shapps and Tobias Elwood and the like who say we need troops on the ground in Ukraine and in Israel basically to uphold the post-war liberal world order.
	That's why I'm conflicted about it, right?
	Because on the one hand, you know, if we had my utopia, we would have a strong military, because that would be one of the few branches of government left.
	And we would be able to defend ourselves quite comprehensively.
	But with this, we know that there are going to be potential foreign wars that are just money laundering schemes for weapons manufacturers.
	And so no one wants to die for profit margins, do they really?
	Couldn't have put a bet on myself.
	Moving on to here, this was this year as well.
	Female Army recruits are the key to solving the Armed Forces recruitment crisis.
	It is worth mentioning as well that my sister has recently joined the Royal Air Force for full transparency, although not in a combat role.
	I'm not necessarily against them joining the military if it's not frontline troops, right?
	But if you're in like a command centre or something like that, that's fine.
	Again, this is Grant Shapps, and I know someone who has worked very closely with Grant Shapps for many years, and he has said, my boss is an idiot.
	So Grant Shapps doesn't have his own opinions, it's always fed to him by whatever consultant or... He used to ring my mate up in the middle of the night and go, I've just been on the phone to Bill Gates and he's had this great idea!
	And I'm just like, Thanks, Grant.
	So, basically, Grant Chapps doesn't know what he's talking about, as per usual.
	I should have told you that.
	To say the British Army, or our foreign policy in general, we don't do much which hasn't been greenlit by the State Department and the Pentagon.
	So, it's not that we don't do anything without their say-so, but... We're close allies.
	Yes.
	The special relationship just means that we're their dog's body.
	Yeah, right.
	We do the dirty work.
	Yeah, am I going to fight and die for king and country or is it for the State Department or is it for the Raytheon shareholders?
	Yeah, whoever Nancy Pelosi invested in yesterday.
	Yeah.
	So it gets worse than that.
	The British RAF chief calls it unacceptable for China to recruit Western military pilots.
	So our pilots have been going over because the Chinese have been offering them better money and training Chinese pilots Which I think is treasonous and they shouldn't be doing it.
	They should have a moral conscience because they should know better than work for the Chinese.
	But also we shouldn't be in a position where we're letting our pilots go to China.
	But we also act post nation state in a globalized economy.
	Why should you have any national loyalty?
	That's genuinely the question that we ask to our elites because Rishi Sunak is the thumbnail of this article for all your listeners.
	Could you think of a more like I've spoken to Tim Davies who's an officer in the RAF.
	fella.
	You're hard pressed.
	Do you know he's in Ukraine today promising another how many billion?
	Because Grant Shapps told him so.
	Because the military industrial complex told them so.
	A couple of things I'll say is that there's, you know, I've spoken to Tim Davis, who's obviously in the RAF.
	Imagine you come out of the RAF, you're a pilot, say, and you've got to make a new life for yourself.
	There's civil aviation or like, you know, China or the UAE, Dubai or someone offers you loads of money to go and be in their air force and train their guys.
	You sort of can't blame them if your country's turned its back on you a bit.
	Also, another quick thing to say is this isn't new outsourcing expertise.
	One thing that sprung to mind is After World War I, or between the two world wars, Britain basically helped Japan become a first-rate naval power.
	We found ourselves at war with them in the 40s, during World War II.
	So this isn't new.
	It's not like this is suddenly a thing.
	The government shouldn't have allowed this situation to pass.
	But you know, there's some moral judgment can be passed on the people who choose to do it, I think is my view on it.
	But I'm going to go through these things pretty quick fire because we've gone on for a little while now.
	So there is this as well.
	This was the ad, see if I can get a picture of it, of the prayer British man.
	Yeah.
	It's worth mentioning as well, the number of Muslim recruits in the British Army is in the double digits, if not less.
	It's an even smaller minority than the Islamic one in the UK more generally, which isn't really surprising.
	Also, look, again, I'm not speaking from a position of authority here because I'm in no way in the military.
	Isn't that a massive tactical liability to just be standing around on the hillside waiting for your guy to finish praying?
	Yes.
	It's absurd.
	It's one of those things, when I first saw this, I was thinking, I want to know who were the consultancy companies that came up with this?
	Who were the people in the military or the defence department that greenlit it?
	It was the Council of Britain, probably.
	What is that?
	You know, and this is years old.
	This is quite a few years old. 2018.
	It's disgusting.
	And just to show that it's not just the UK and the US, I've got Australia here as well.
	This was May of last year, but they warned of a recruitment crisis as well.
	So it seems to be in all of the sort of former British Empire countries, sorry to refer to you in that way, United States.
	What's the Anglosphere?
	I don't like the term Anglosphere because it implies we're all Anglo, right?
	Well, we used to be.
	Australia may use defence exchanges with Pacific countries to tackle their recruitment crisis.
	So, recruiting foreign people.
	And I mean, they're most likely going to fight China, and a lot of the Pacific countries won't like China.
	But even so, there are lots of questions of recruiting individuals.
	It's like hiring mercenaries in a sense.
	Well Trudeau was doing joint exercise with the Chinese military recently.
	Well that's suicidal, yeah.
	It's ridiculous.
	They were actually scouting Canadian terrain and could you imagine how furious some people in the US military would be?
	That that makes an invasion from the north far more probable for them.
	It is a massive middle finger to south of the border from the Canadians in them doing that.
	Machiavelli talks about this and it comes up in Epochs surprisingly often.
	If only that he did what Machiavelli had said.
	Don't staff your armed forces with foreign people.
	That's a recipe for disaster.
	It will come back and bite you in the ass if you do that.
	It's terrible.
	To hit our quota, isn't that basically how the Roman Empire felt?
	They were outsourcing it to a lot of ethnic mercenaries and they just went, well, why do we have to fight for Rome?
	Can't we just sack it?
	We'll fill our legions with Germans and Saxons and Gauls.
	Oh, what a surprise, they've subverted the whole thing inside out and now we're powerless.
	It's a story as old as time, isn't it?
	So the final thing I wanted to mention, because we might think, okay, this is a Western thing.
	Well, it seems like there could potentially be a problem in China as well.
	And the reporting on this has been confusing because some outlets have been reporting that they're desperate to fill their ranks.
	Others have been saying that they're actually swelling their ranks and they're far exceeding the recruitment of the West.
	So this Newsweek one does give some sort of justification that seemed reasonable to me.
	China's struggling to attract talent has attributed to two factors.
	China's generation-long family planning regime known as the one-child policy, although now scrapped, it has left parents cautious about sending their only child to the military where they could potentially experience war.
	And according to a research report by Loro Horta for Singapore's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah school, I'm not gonna read it.
	And also salaries were another factor.
	Benefits offered by the private sector in China were far more attractive than the incentives to serve the state.
	This is why they banned girly man content on TikTok.
	Yes.
	They genuinely banned K-pop stars because they were saying that they're effeminizing our men and we want them to join the military in anticipation of something, I'm sure.
	So these reasons seem quite sound to my mind that, you know, you've got one child, you don't want to send them off to war.
	That's, you know, parental love at play there.
	That makes sense why that would motivate people.
	And also the private sector being more lucrative, you get better opportunities.
	That makes sense to me as well.
	It's not that, you know, oh, well, we're, we're trying to get women, but we can't.
	I mean, come on.
	But then, uh, Washington Examiner also reported this was in August around a similar time to this, this previous one, which I think was when was it um november so it's um shortly before trying to boost record high military recruitment so you know take it with a pinch of salt
	well it could well be that their targets changed in that time or it could well be that they've got a massive population so they've got far larger infantry than any of the west proportionate to their targets is for them sure or china which is lying in the middle of the year It's just propaganda.
	Heaven forbid the CCP might turn on a porcupine.
	No precedent for that.
	That's why I included both, because you can't really trust any figures that come from China, as a general rule.
	So, it seems to me that nobody's joining the military.
	On the one hand, it's bad news for the military-industrial complex, which had basically rigged our countries as some sort of battery farm for profit.
	And on the other, it does raise questions of national security if this continues to get worse.
	I think we're okay for the meantime, right?
	The US military is still massive.
	The UK still is able to defend itself.
	But if this trend is allowed to continue and there's no intervention that's successful, it could get into the realm of causing serious problems for our national defense.
	And I know that Russia is not particularly going to be a problem for a lot of Western countries considering how depleted their manpower pool is.
	Um, but the Chinese certainly seem to be recruiting a fair amount, um, just based on their, their standing military alone.
	And so that's what we may need to be paying attention to.
	Of course, there are questions about whether China is a paper tiger or not, but this has gone on long enough.
	So I think the moral of the story is, um, woke recruiting doesn't work and believe it or not, that telling white people they're bad, weakens your country.
	Alright then.
	America has been beset by a deluge of illegal immigration.
	I mean, we have an article here from NBC News, and this is even a left-wing outlet, so they can't help but not report reality sometimes.
	This has reached a new record, so in 2022 it topped 2.76 million.
	We don't have the final numbers for 2023 yet, but it's because a fair amount of migrant caravans have been bust up to the border, and the Biden administration have been very lax on border control, not completing Trump's wall.
	Within the first week of the administration, Biden said, we're going to see a surge at the border.
	And various migrants have said, Joe Biden is incentivizing me to come, because if the Democrat cities are just providing handouts in their sanctuary cities, if you're in the third world, you're poor.
	Of course, you're going to take the treacherous journey, probably with illegal smugglers and risk your life to make a better life in America.
	It's not wise in terms of your own public safety, personal safety rather, but we shouldn't be shocked that the incentive pressures are driving people there.
	So...
	These are just the ones apprehended, of course.
	Nearly three million encounters.
	Some will have slipped through the net.
	But the reason this is being reported on, the reason this has reached a critical consciousness, is because people have noticed that their flights are full of illegal immigrants.
	In the last few months we've seen a lot of videos going around on Twitter saying, why am I in first class on Delta and American Airlines and there's someone from Honduras with all of their belongings in a plastic bag stamped from the Migrant Processing Center with their boarding passes with no name given on it sat right next to me when I've paid to be here?
	And it's because it seems that the Biden administration, various NGOs and various state governments are all in cahoots to ship nameless adults and unaccompanied children who are illegal immigrants apprehended at the border from border states to democrat states to try and fudge the population numbers ahead of the 2024 election.
	That's your taxpayers money hard at work there America.
	I know we're not one to talk in Britain but Well, yeah.
	It's very frustrating.
	Proportionate to size.
	I mean, our problem is a lot worse, but you're being demographically and electorally displaced.
	So be very aware of this.
	So I thought I'd do a roundup for everyone's benefits of the evidence just becomes irrefutable.
	And if people say this is a conspiracy theory, you're welcome to send them this video.
	So it started with Ashley Sinclair.
	She was waiting in a line for Delta flight at Phoenix airport.
	And she just said, Well look at this line.
	It's full of illegal immigrants.
	I can tell it's full of illegal immigrants because they're holding bags from the processing centers and they're accompanied by translators.
	So what's going on here?
	Why have Delta Air booked up my flight with illegal migrants?
	Have these people been vetted?
	Have they gone through TSA?
	Because since 9-11 I've had to go through all these background checks and pre-flight checks, I've had to take my shoes off, but these people just seem to be walked through and given the same privileges.
	How strange.
	Well, she noticed this and then Delta representatives started tailing her at the airport lounge, harassing her, obviously trying to stop her from reporting on it.
	Very odd.
	The airline.
	The airline.
	Because it's not like, you know, the FBI or the American version of a border force or Homeland Security.
	No, No, the airline.
	The airline battalion.
	Weird, right?
	Yeah.
	Just weird.
	Clearly they're being subsidized by the federal government.
	These are very lucrative contracts they don't want getting out and losing out on.
	So Ashley, because she flies a lot to various conferences, flies in first class or premier seating.
	And she sat there and The migrant from the detention centre with his transparent bag, her transparent bag rather, is just sat next to her.
	The migrants, who broke into the country illegally, haven't paid anything, have been given premium seating alongside Delta's valued customers.
	So, they are breaking into your country, taking your money, and getting privileged seating on flights at your expense.
	And the airlines and the government don't want you talking about it.
	Very curious.
	So it's happening all across the country.
	This is also in Arizona.
	This is Tucson.
	This is Bill Malugan, who works at Fox News.
	He's saying, flying out of Tucson airport tonight, the terminals full of illegal immigrants released into the US with their DHS paperwork.
	So you can see where the people have come from.
	They've come from the migrant detention centers, but it's all right.
	Don't notice.
	It's just a conspiracy theory.
	And the migrants started walking into women's bathrooms.
	So they've already integrated?
	Yeah, the rapey migrant is a personality type, genuinely.
	It doesn't matter which country they enter, it seems that because these people you don't know where they're from, you don't know who they are, they have predatory intent, and so if you don't vet them and you just let them into the country, criminals are going to exploit that at the behest of vulnerable women and children.
	I think they're probably too stupid to know the difference.
	It's got an image.
	You can't excuse it.
	Genuinely.
	Don't give them any leeway.
	It's not like, oh, they can't speak English, they can't read male and female.
	That's not really giving them the benefit of the doubt, because I don't doubt there's malicious intent, but also it may well be blended with stupidity as well.
	Also, group of African migrants from Guinea.
	What are you doing at the southern border?
	How curious.
	I thought that.
	That is one of the sort of genuinely curious things that it seems that there's people from, yeah, from Sub-Saharan Africa or the Indian subcontinent crossing the Mexico, Texas or Mexico, New Mexico border.
	People from all over the world.
	It's very curious.
	Genuinely, how does that come about?
	I wonder how they flew there.
	How did they get to Mexico then?
	What's the story there?
	I wonder if there's someone with lots of money that would do that.
	I don't know.
	Genuinely.
	Is it NGOs, Soros type stuff?
	Yes, so to organize the caravans during the Trump administration, the Open Society Foundation admitted to busing loads of Guatemalans and Hondurans up through Mexico to create surges at the border.
	So that... Sorry, that makes some sense.
	You take people from India or Bangladesh or the Congo or Nigeria and then get them to Mexico.
	Yes.
	That would be, NGOs are doing that as well.
	That is presumably what it is because internally the NGOs are conducting this and we've got evidence for that here.
	I would be interested to see if there were further investigations into exactly which players, which NGOs are facilitating taking people from other continents to the border.
	We haven't covered exactly which ones in this segment, but if I hear of anything, obviously I'll bring it to you.
	But this is Nuance Bro.
	This is him again, just reporting it from on the ground.
	Also Current Revolt for filming this.
	So these are just people going around airports, taking their phones out and posting it to Twitter.
	And of course, it's caught the attention of folks like Elon Musk.
	So these videos have been shared around.
	But it's so present, so undeniable, so across loads of states and loads of airports, that it's a massive problem.
	And it isn't being ginned out of nowhere, but there you go.
	All right.
	So he notes in this that apparently one of the NGOs in particular that was cited by these migrants was the Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona Incorporated.
	I'm going to blame the Jesuits here because I'm just going to presume it's them because they usually find it all.
	But this is them.
	It's not.
	The Jesuits have within their charter... It's autism.
	Within their charter they have the Global Abolition of Poverty as a name.
	So they're basically the avenue for communist infiltration into the Catholic Church.
	So they are cited.
	By the Arizona Department of Child Safety and the Immigration Advocates Network as sources.
	So this is an NGO deeply entrenched with the Arizona State Government and the other NGO Open Borders Bureaucracy.
	And they have an address on their website, it's publicly listed as you can see there, so you can send them an email or a letter if you're not particularly content about that.
	Keep it peaceful and polite, but Make sure that you, if you're an Arizona resident, don't appreciate your state being flooded with random illegal migrants who enter women's toilets.
	But also, happens in O'Hare Airport in Chicago.
	So, this is Libs of TikTok.
	Blimey, that looks like a bed shop, doesn't it?
	Yeah, it's... Well, not so much now, it looks like a homeless encampment.
	Oh yeah, it looks like one of the streets of LA.
	It's appalling.
	Everywhere's going to become California, eventually.
	Ugh.
	Yeah.
	And there's a reason for that.
	It's because Democrat states want to pack their populations to give them electoral college advantage ahead of the fact that loads of people have fled Democrat states for places like Tennessee, Texas, and Florida, which would swing it in Trump's favour.
	King of the ashes of America.
	What a disgusting notion.
	Yep.
	So also in Phoenix, Arizona, this is James O'Keefe, just walks up, interviews a young man with a child accompanying him.
	And he says that Joe Biden is giving us an opportunity.
	So he's citing the Biden administration, encouraging him to come.
	He's also trying to interview a man who's busing the migrants around.
	I remember actually covering when Biden assumed office and there was this massive spike in illegal immigration because he said, oh, come to America, the doors are open.
	And then they actually had to roll it back because something like a hundred thousand Haitians just turned up in like a week.
	Kamala Harris flew out to believe it was Guatemala and said, do not come.
	They had to walk it back.
	But once you've said that, you've damage is done yeah yeah so james has been on this because james does great on the ground investigation and he went to a jet limo bus driver outside phoenix sky harbor airport and the bus driver had a cordial conversation with james and the drivers themselves are not really let in on the program it seems like there's not much communication so that this sort of thing can't get You can't source which detention centers they've come from, which states they're going to.
	It just seems to be trundling along.
	But when he spoke to him, he said he works for Jet Limousine, makes multiple trips per day.
	He doesn't know who's contracted him, but when James says to him, okay, who can I get in touch with?
	He goes, you're going to have to talk up with the city or the state.
	So, there is some sort of local government coordination with the federal government and these NGOs to redistrict the migrants somewhere.
	So, interesting stuff.
	This is also in Texas.
	There's of course another border state.
	This is Taylor-Hanson.
	He said an American Airlines rep, so it's not just Delta, it's American Airlines as well getting these contracts, told him that more illegal migrants fly out of the airport on a daily basis than Americans now.
	And he also said, are they screened for infectious diseases like tuberculosis or COVID?
	You know, that thing that you were locked down for two years and stopped going everywhere because you were so at risk for, and they just went, no, not here.
	Right, okay, so they could not just be bringing drugs and crime and unvetted minors across the border, but also infectious diseases.
	That sounds like a great plan.
	Well, TB is, you know, potentially lethal.
	It's a horrible thing.
	You know, you've got to take a drug treatment for six months just to get rid of it.
	So to let that in the country potentially is a catastrophic failure to keep Americans safe.
	Yeah, and I think it was Title... Oh, what was it?
	It was Title 42, which was the emergency COVID legislation that ensured that all southern border apprehensions were turned back.
	Biden ended up repealing that, but it was on the basis of the COVID lockdown that was meant to be stopping people from coming across.
	So... Pick your poison, I suppose!
	Oh, sorry.
	It's just a very quick thing.
	I was just going to say that one of the reasons that human beings have an innate Um, distrust of the sort of outsider, if you will, as explained through evolutionary psychology is that they carry diseases and it seems to be something that has been selected for that the people who are distrustful of outsiders are less likely to die of disease.
	This is a Paris right stress hypothesis where a lot of the time more authoritarian measures or more in-group preferential measures like strict border controls are enforced on the basis of public health concerns or infectious disease.
	Sorry, Bo.
	You mentioned, or the bus driver mentioned, that you need to appeal at the state level or even the federal level.
	I think it was mentioned the DHS, the Department for Homeland Security, I believe, I think they're in charge, ultimately, of the borders.
	It's Mayorkas, isn't it, that's the Secretary of State for that.
	He's a mayor, Mayorkas.
	Mayor of Chicago, I believe, no?
	No, no way.
	I'm pretty sure Mayorkas is Homeland Security.
	Anyway, it's at that level where, you know, there's Senate hearings and Congressional hearings and all sorts of things trying to hold his feet to the fire.
	Yeah, he's Secretary for Homeland Security.
	Right, yeah, and just the actual government trying to get him to do his job.
	And him just endlessly prevaricating and just saying, yeah, yeah, we're trying, yeah, yeah, no.
	And then eventually will admit things.
	And it's just a complete dereliction of duty.
	He seems to me to be some kind of, well, a true sort of enemy of the people of the United States.
	How they can't remove him.
	I did see something just the other day, again, someone in the Congress or Senate calling for his impeachment and removal and even prosecution.
	But whether that will ever happen or it's sort of too late, it's already happening or has happened.
	I mean, he's not an enemy to their democracy, is he?
	Because he's actually swinging the ballot boxes in the favour of the Democrats.
	But yeah, he's a Biden pick.
	Yes.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	So they very deliberately put him there and kept him there.
	Yeah.
	So it's controlled demolition, not just incompetence.
	You're right.
	He's an absolute traitor, but he's not a traitor to the regime.
	That's why the regime are more than happy to keep him there.
	Again, just mentioning American Airlines, they're also giving priority seating to the immigrants as well.
	So you'll be sat next to someone possibly with TB who can't speak English in first class.
	They said they're from Guatemala and he just wants to work and study.
	Great.
	And he said that he's going to be shipped to Washington.
	Interesting.
	Interesting that they're shipping them to Democrat states rather than just leaving them on the Republican border towns as well.
	There's a reason.
	Anyway, so the pilots for American Airlines told Ashley Sinclair, whistleblowers, that they are required to download software for their phones that ensures that all of their phone activity is tracked so that they don't blow the whistle on this stuff.
	Wow.
	Yeah.
	So they clearly want to keep this quiet.
	Oh, just on the prior bit as well, when Taylor was asking these migrants, they said that none of them speak English.
	They say they were transported, had no problems with cartels, and quote, interacted with an NGO who bought their flights.
	It certainly seems the NGOs are bringing them across continents or at least countries to then bring them into the United States and then hand them off to another NGO to fly them into a different state.
	There's a chain of command here.
	If you're also wondering, well, at least they're not going to cause any troubles on the flights, there are so many border crossings that air marshals are being taken off flights and stuck at the border.
	So that's not good.
	Also, the boarding passes have no name given on them.
	You don't even know the names of the people coming across.
	So they board the plane.
	You don't have to vet them at the border.
	You don't have to vet them while on the plane.
	If I remember rightly, we at least do the names of the 9-11 hijackers.
	Like, yeah, genuinely, would you want to get on a flight in America at this point if it's packed full of illegal immigrants who don't give their own name?
	Do you know they've been through security checks?
	Do you know who they are?
	Do you know what they might do?
	I don't want to be hyperbolic, but The only flights I'm really comfortable getting are ones internal in Britain, really.
	Well, yeah, but most Americans, a lot of Americans, get internal flights in the States.
	It's the months of the sky.
	You don't even need a passport for it.
	Now, there are random unvetted foreigners on your internal flights.
	Your own country is just not safe.
	Yeah, well, if terrorists, which may be more likely to be crossing the southern border because of the strikes in Yemen, and they said that there are going to be Retributions against America and the UK, then they could be flown to the southern border by an NGO, cross the border, be flown to an American city and carry out a terrorist attack, seemingly without any barriers in their way.
	Yeah.
	So really major concern there.
	Now, of course, this is just, we've got to take Ashley's word for it, but then James O'Keefe actually obtained one.
	So we've got it here.
	And it says in the text, please help me print my boarding pass.
	I am a refugee and I do not speak the language.
	Thank you.
	It's been automatically printed.
	So don't have to speak English.
	Don't have to give their name.
	Not subjected to any checks.
	OK.
	Not great, that.
	Now, we've known this has been going on for a little while.
	This was two years ago.
	This was a Biden whistleblower who was speaking specifically about a child trafficking operation from the border.
	So this was spoken to Savannah Hernandez.
	It's printed in the Postmillennial.
	And she interviewed an anonymous whistleblower who works as a travel youth Care worker for a federally funded contractor called MVM Incorporated.
	He said, quote, tens of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children are being bused and flown throughout the U.S.
	and being handed off to unvetted adult supervisors.
	He went on to share that just in his office alone, employees will move up to 5,000 children per week.
	MVM Incorporated has three other offices throughout Texas in El Paso, Houston and San Antonio.
	Between all four offices, the whistleblower speculates that around eight To 10,000 children are moved every week, with estimates that they reach up to 40,000 per month.
	And so because of the volume of border crossings as well, he said that new hires for MVM aren't given proper background checks, a lot of people get hired and their background hasn't even come in yet.
	So you don't know who brought them to the border, you don't know who these children are, you don't know who might be accompanying them because they don't have to give their own name, they don't have to speak English, and the people who are working in the processing centers also aren't being vetted for things like if they have any child safeguarding risks.
	It's fresh blood for the Democrats, isn't it?
	Quite.
	Why are you obsessed with trafficking children?
	That's not even hyperbolic.
	You've got a giant NGO government infrastructure that's obsessed with flying children and handing them off to God knows who around the US.
	Yeah, the Department for Homeland Security has got some questions to answer.
	Yeah.
	Except they just refuse to.
	Yes, quite.
	They've given MVM $136 million in 2021 for the transport of migrant families and unaccompanied minors in government custody.
	They also served as a contractor for the CIA and NSA in Iraq.
	I'm sure there's no connection there whatsoever.
	What was that about economic hitmen you once covered with them?
	How curious that is.
	The New York Post also broke a story on this, so this was in October 2021.
	The Post saw two plans laying at Westchester County Airport where most of the passengers who appeared to get off were children and teens, with a small portion appearing to be men in their 20s.
	A Post analysis of online flight tracking data suggests around 2,000 of the underage migrants arrived at the airport outside White Plains on 21 flights since August the 8th.
	The most recent figures from the U.S.
	Customs and Border Patrol show that just during July and August, and this was 2021, 37,805 unaccompanied minors were caught entering the U.S.
	from Mexico.
	Again, 40,000 minors every week being flown to random states, given to who knows, and just disappearing into the system.
	So, even if you weren't just opposed to the fact that your demographics are being changed and your voting is being disenfranchised by random, unnamed, unverified adults, where are the children disappearing to?
	I feel like it's something a bit beyond worrying, you know?
	It's horrifying.
	It's sort of a monumental crime, like a civilizational level crime, this is.
	In any other era this would be a scandal that would last forever and it's not even in the news that significantly is it?
	You get one article here and there and that's it.
	I'm sure the Republicans will write a really strongly worded letter about this.
	I think, I hope, I hope.
	that in future decades, people will look back at this period, the very beginning, first few decades of the 21st century, and see it as sort of an age of Satan or something.
	Speaking my language.
	An age of evil, where the world is being controlled by completely evil people.
	Yeah, spot on.
	There's no other excuse for it.
	Now, obviously, I will be accused of saying it's a conspiracy theory for saying they're trying to change voting demographics.
	It's not like it's just been the Democrat Party platform.
	But back before the narrative was controlled, back when things were a little bit more honest, I've got this old article here.
	From the 2008 election, from CBS News, so again, not a far right outlet, illegal immigration affects electoral votes.
	So, not just that Illegal immigrants don't have an effect on the popular vote, but they are changing the electoral vote and this benefits then-presidential candidate Obama.
	Hispanic voters historically vote Democrat, and as reported by USA Today in July 2008, Hispanics will become decisive swing voters in future elections, with the Hispanic population set to double to 30% by 2042 because of a relatively higher birth rate and immigration, And leaders like John McCain and Obama supporting amnesty for illegal aliens, this traditionally Democratic-leaning population will likely tip future elections in favor of Democrats.
	Indeed, the effects of Hispanic voters on this election, 2008, are already being felt.
	Pew Research showed 66% of Hispanics favored Obama to McCain's 23%.
	USA Today reported the Hispanic vote is now large enough to determine outcomes in key battleground states like Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Florida.
	And it specifically determined them in California after the 80s because Ronald Reagan did a mass amnesty program, which then made California permanently blue, despite him winning the governor's race and as a presidential candidate, California as a Republican.
	And even up until the mid 2000s, they had Arnold Schwarzenegger as a Republican governor.
	Now, just guaranteed to be blue forever.
	Because, of course, if you have mass illegal Hispanics that are then suddenly legal, they will vote in favour of Democrat policies that will enfranchise their family members in the future.
	So, they're just going to pack their states with illegal immigrants, awaiting a second Biden term, where then they say, well, we've had a mass crisis at the border, we've got so many illegal immigrants here, we can't deport them all, that would be heartless, so how about we just hand citizenships to the ones we're here now, and then we'll get tough on the border.
	And it just so happens they'll always vote Democrat.
	And we know this is going to happen.
	It's what AOC just turned around and said.
	You can either fix the border crisis by trying to build a wall, or you can fix it by documenting people.
	That's what safe legal routes means.
	It means giving voting rights to people that turned up yesterday, that they're already giving handouts to, paid for by working Americans, and then they will vote to import more people to give more money and create a permanently leftist state.
	That's their plan.
	It's nuts.
	But even the leftists that are in support of this, their wages are going to be stagnant or even go down because of increasing numbers of people in the workforce, as well as the price of housing going up.
	So they're going to feel the consequences of their own suicidal decisions as well.
	But they don't understand the solution, so they're just going to vote for more stimulus checks, more money printing, and more state handouts so that manufacturers consent for expanding the size of the state.
	And speaking of, you don't even need to enfranchise them because it turns out Arizona...
	Say, you do not need to submit proof of citizenship for federal only ballots.
	So that has only federal races and no state, county or local races.
	So in the 2024 election, if you're in Arizona, you can't vote for your local state rep or your congressman, but you can vote in the presidential election and not require proof of citizenship.
	So in Arizona, illegal aliens will be voting for Joe Biden.
	That is not a conspiracy theory.
	That is printed in front of you.
	Mental.
	Alright, so how are the Republicans responding?
	I'll quickly wrap this up.
	So America First Legal have launched an inquiry into this, particularly because the TSA obviously interrogate American citizens, but they don't interrogate this lot.
	And combined with Dan's recent segment earlier in the week where you've got diversity hire pilots and bits falling off of planes, would you have much faith in the American airline system?
	I wouldn't want to get on a plane right now.
	I suggest some other airlines that aren't taking federal government contracts might want to support this effort, otherwise their bottom line will take a hit.
	Matt Gaetz has also called on the CEO of Delta to testify before Congress, asking if Delta has ever transported illegals on behalf of NGOs.
	How did NGOs reimburse Delta for the tickets?
	Does the reimbursement come from the federal government?
	And have the TSA ever required ID checks for illegals?
	Because that would be Pretty good.
	Follow Ashley for further developments because she says that she's got some whistleblowers coming forward.
	And so we should hear more about this in the coming weeks.
	But sorry, Americans.
	It turns out that a bunch of undocumented children and unnamed illegals who may or may not actually be terrorists are flooding your country to permanently change your electoral and demographic map.
	All the best with that.
	You want a mouse bug?
	Blimey, this is going to be a depressing one today isn't it?
	I know, sorry!
	I thought it was very important to cover.
	No, it was all great stuff, from a sort of information perspective anyway.
	Okay, well I thought I would talk about the airstrikes that happened overnight on the Arabian Peninsula, in Yemen.
	Because I thought it shouldn't really pass without note.
	Okay, so overnight the US Air Force and the Royal Air Force did, to be fair, quite a limited strike in Yemen, including their capital, Sanaa.
	My understanding was that it was very targeted, which indicates that there was intelligence that there were actually Houthi rebels there, the people who'd been attacking the ships.
	In terms of what the USAF and the RAF are capable of, it was a small thing, really.
	30 or 40 minutes long, I think about 10 different targets.
	Just a light shelling, really.
	Yeah.
	If you're on the receiving end of it, it's probably unpleasant to say the least.
	Leave you with a bit of a headache.
	Nonetheless.
	Um so yeah I just wanted to talk about that because it's much bigger the story really is much bigger than than just that than just some some piracy in the Red Sea and some some retaliation on that it's sort of it is all about
	The Cold War between Iran and Saudi Arabia, or even bigger than that, between Western powers, Israel and the US, and Britain and Australia and countries like that, versus their enemies in the region, whether that be the Houthis, whether it be Iran, whether it be some people that arguably stand behind Iran.
	People are worried it might scale upwards to BRICS.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Even China and Russia.
	There's this idea in the 19th century, there's this idea of the Great Game, which was really a contest in the broadest global sense, really, between the British Empire and the Russians.
	playing out largely in Central Asia.
	But there are modern versions of the Great Game, perhaps between Beijing, Moscow and D.C., various power groups or even, you know, the Israelis.
	And it is complicated, of course, it goes without saying, all the different structures and power games that are played.
	But I think the tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran It's sort of the main thing.
	And it's interesting to see, isn't it, that a country like Israel and Saudi Arabia can have common ground against Iran.
	And then as a really small country, a really, really impoverished country like Yemen, I think it is one of, if not the poorest country in the region.
	It's been very unstable for quite some time, hasn't it?
	And so it's not really developed along similar lines, you know, comparing it to Saudi Arabia now with all of that oil.
	Well, well, it's not even comparable.
	Oman and Yemen are by turns mountainous and deserty.
	Very, very, very little wealth there.
	Yeah, the Red Sea, where the Red Sea comes out in the Gulf of Aden, the Straits of Aden, they are very strategically important.
	I'm sorry to cut you off.
	I think it's 13% of all world shipping passes through there and then through the Suez Canal.
	So that's not a small proportion at all.
	And you would definitely feel that if it were disrupted permanently.
	Part of the worry is that traffic is dropping.
	And I believe around the mouth of the sewers at the moment, going off of Philip Pilkington's coverage of this, it's dropping to similar levels when the Ever Given actually blocked it.
	And it's not because there's some kind of obstruction, it's because they are concerned that if the Iranians are flying drones over, the Iranian drones are cheaper than the anti-drone missiles that the naval forces stationed there by the US and UK.
	can use to fire at it and they're not going to catch them all.
	So the insurance companies are not licensing the ships.
	And so oil transports dropped by about 30%.
	And so that's going to massively increase the prices of shipping goods in the future.
	You only need to follow the oil to follow the missiles, don't you?
	Well, the White House released a statement saying, to begin with, at least in part, today, at my direction, Joe Biden's direction, military forces, together with the United Kingdom and with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada and the Netherlands, successfully conducted strikes against a number of targets in Yemen used by Houthi rebels to endanger freedom of navigation in one of the world's most vital waterways.
	And it goes on and on.
	Yeah, so, Jon, could you put up the second link?
	It's alright, I'll just use the button.
	Well, okay, we'll show this now.
	So this came out a few weeks ago now.
	That helicopter and these guys are youthy rebels, and they're sort of storming, boarding and storming a big tanker, maybe it's an oil tanker or something.
	But you know, international shipping, basically.
	And, you know, they're doing their best to larp as special forces, aren't they?
	That's not exactly the best cover as it is, stood in front of the corner.
	With his gun pointed at his buddy's back, yeah.
	They're not supposed to burst.
	They're only capturing unarmed people, to be fair.
	Can, John, can you put up that second link?
	It says it's got a map on it.
	Because I think I wanted to make clear, that's it, The thing I wanted to make clear is that this sort of thing isn't just sort of a one-off.
	There seems to be a fair amount of it.
	Yeah, that.
	Be left on that.
	Scroll down a bit.
	That.
	There we go.
	Yeah.
	So you can see that that's just in sort of November and December and January this year, that it's not sort of one or even two or half a dozen instances.
	It happens quite a lot.
	And, you know, that region of the world also, a year or two back, there was a spate of Somali pirates became almost a trope, didn't it?
	But it just seems that, well, it is the case that that waterway, the Gulf of Aden there, going into the Red Sea, they're dangerous waters.
	And, you know, the White House weren't wrong or lying or exaggerating when they said it's one of the most important, busiest waterways in the world.
	Because if you go up to the top of the Red Sea, there's the Suez Canal and you get into the Med.
	One thing I thought was interesting to note, that it does seem that a lot of the targets recently from the Houthis seem to have been northbound shipping, perhaps a lot of it going to Israel or in support of the Israeli conflict.
	Well, they've said explicitly that it's in retaliation because after October 7th, they actually amped up their attacks on shipping because it happened a few times over the years to a limited extent of oil tankers getting captured along they actually amped up their attacks on shipping because it happened But it's really elevated recently.
	They also have the Palestinian flag on their thing.
	And one of the arguments they've made is that if the Houthi rebels get recognized as the legitimate government of the Yemen, then they will have the seat at the UN instead and will be able to lobby on behalf of the Palestinians for some kind of ceasefire.
	So they're looking for legitimacy.
	And so that's why they're allying with the Palestinians.
	Right.
	It's not just oil, it's all sorts of shipping, commercial shipping, containers, all sorts of things, just to disrupt, well, there's all sorts of reasons why they would do it.
	But it does seem that the powers that be, the big naval powers of the world, the United States and Britain and a few others in the Anglosphere, as far as my opinion is, they're perfectly within their rights to try and protect themselves.
	I would be a lot more sympathetic to that.
	themselves being boarded by who the is or whoever.
	It's just like the rule of law, the rule of international law.
	Piracy should be thwarted.
	I would be a lot more sympathetic to that.
	I agree, piracy should be thwarted.
	But we also wouldn't be in such a precarious position had all of our elites not signed up to net zero and outsourced all the oil manufacturing.
	One, by making the price reliant on the global market.
	And two, by not exploiting the North Sea or not making America energy independent as the Trump administration once did through fracking because Joe Biden decided to shut down all domestic fracking and then made itself reliant on oil exports.
	So you would be a lot more insulated from this and need to intervene less if your crucial goods weren't flowing through this area and you weren't reliant on the Saudis.
	I know that the British Navy goes out and takes some pot shots at Somali pirates, just as a bit of sport really.
	I'm sure it's not put like that, but we do have a presence in that area and have done for many years, it's worth noting.
	I mean for me it's less about the supply of oil.
	I don't think UK or Australian or American infrastructure would grind to a halt if we weren't able to ship oil through the Gulf of Aden.
	It's more, for me, the principle of it.
	Well, the Treasury have said they're expecting this could actually lead to a 0.3% decrease in the UK economy if this situation continues.
	I saw that, so 0.3 is tiny.
	Yeah, but that's still significant compounded with inflation.
	The broader point I wanted to make really is that it's not really, it's not necessarily about shipping and Yemen.
	It is, but the broader picture is that the Cold War, the proxy war with Iran, The United States, ever since the 50s, ever since Mossadegh and the Shah of Iran, let alone the Islamic Revolution of 1979, have hated Iran.
	Really want to get rid of Iran.
	I mean, just look at W, George Bush, naming an axis of evil.
	Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
	If America could, if the Pentagon could, they would change the regime in Iran.
	Israel despise Iran.
	Iran is, as far as I understand, Iran is Israel's first enemy.
	Saudi Arabia despires Iran, for perhaps more cultural and religious reasons.
	The Saudis being Sunni, of course, and the Iranians being Shia.
	So, most of the world's Muslim population is Sunni.
	80-90% of them.
	Iran is sort of the only big country that is Shia.
	There are a few other smaller ones, aren't there?
	Some of the smaller A lot of Islamic countries have a Shia minority as well, don't they?
	I think the Houthis are Shia as well.
	So that's why they would be bedfellows.
	But the thing I think is interesting, or maybe we could drill down to in a bit here, is that relationship between Tehran and the Houthis.
	To what extent do the Houthis take direction directly from the Mullahs in Iran?
	Because, you know, the State Department or various hawks, war hawks, would have you believe that the Houthis simply act on behalf of Iran, the way you could maybe argue Hezbollah do.
	I don't think that's the case.
	I don't think that's the case.
	My question is that I don't know.
	Two things about that, if there is some kind of network between those two and Hezbollah.
	The first one is the recent reinstatement of the Iran deal for a return of US hostages from Iran.
	As much as I've read from the New York Times reporting piece, which is a great mouthpiece for the Biden administration regime because they try and run cover for it, John Kerry turned around and said, yes, we promised them six billion.
	It was in a South Korean bank account because South Koreans were buying oil from the Iranians, and we froze it under penalty of withdrawing our troops from South Korea.
	That hasn't been paid to them yet.
	But we did promise it to them.
	So who's them in this?
	So the Americans reignited the Iran deal and promised Iran 6 billion in exchange for its hostages.
	So the Republicans have turned around and said, well, obviously, if they're expecting 6 billion, that frees up another 6 billion to then spend on other people sponsoring other regimes in the region.
	And the fact that the Biden administration are going out and saying, no, no, no, don't worry, they didn't get the money yet, means they at least acknowledge there's a bit of reputational damage that might have happened there.
	And the other thing about Hezbollah I was going to say, something that we were discussing earlier, was that there was recently a leaked report from Washington, the Washington Post published leaked in air quotes, they probably leaked it through the press directly, telling the Israelis, if you try and fight in Lebanon, because they did a controlled airstrike on one of Hezbollah's leaders and they've killed him.
	So they're worried that can ignite direct tensions there.
	If you do that, you're going to lose a war on two fronts, so don't do that.
	AKA wink, wink, nudge, nudge, don't do that in election year.
	So those two things that have happened recently indicate there might be some kind of connection between the Iranians, Hezbollah and the Houthi rebels.
	Oh, sorry.
	Well, I'll just say there is massively, obviously, well-documented connection between Hezbollah and Tehran.
	I mean, the way Iran is involved in Lebanese politics and Hezbollah is, that's sort of beyond any doubt.
	The Houthis are something very different, it seems to me.
	That's sort of what I was going to go on to say.
	So when I did digging into this, it was maybe a year or so ago now, so I'm sorry if I'm misremembering, but the Huskies are a sheer minority in Yemen and it wasn't necessarily a large minority either.
	It wasn't like 40, 60 or anything like that.
	And so the fact that they were, you know, they're a tribe, they're an ethnicity within Yemen, they're not just like a political group.
	So saying the Houthi rebels, it's a group of people.
	And the fact that they can overthrow the majority government previously, it wasn't necessarily a very nice government, and it probably was legitimately doing things to them in an oppressive way, but they overthrow them as well as they've got Saudi Arabia on their border. but they overthrow them as well as they've got Saudi So they've got a hostile majority government in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, and yet they have done quite well.
	They've still taken hold of a lot of territory.
	So to my mind, that suggests that if they're just an ethnic rebel group in Yemen, and they've seen this level of success already, there must be some sort of collusion with a more sophisticated power of some kind, right?
	Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know.
	That's sort of the question I'm asking.
	It's almost like you can see footprints, but you don't know who's stood there, if you will.
	But also, just because that seems to be the case, also doesn't mean that John Bolton is right to be salivating at the prospect of celebrating in Tehran this time next year.
	It doesn't mean that the American military-industrial complex therefore have a license to wage another ground war in another Middle Eastern country.
	It's like, can the Biden administration or just the United States in general tell Netanyahu what he's going to be doing or not doing today?
	No, not really.
	They have influence, they have power, but they don't just ring him up and say, strike this now or don't strike this now.
	So anyway, I thought I'd talk just a little bit about the Houthis and the ongoing war and a bit of the background of it.
	And if there's anyone in the comments that knows this stuff inside out, I'd be happy to read it.
	In Yemen, they've been Shia since the 9th century.
	So I think ethnically the Houthis are something like 35% That was the figure, roughly.
	It's like 30, 35, something like that.
	It's a decent chunk, and they come from sort of the northern mountainous bit.
	It's like the northeast, pointing at a map that the audience can't see.
	Right on the border with Saudi Arabia.
	And in the 60s, they were sort of basically deposed as sort of the ruling class, for want of a better way to describe it, in Yemen.
	But in the 1990s, there's the original guy, whose name is Al Houthi, and he wanted to sort of go back to the way it used to be.
	But the government in Yemen didn't like that, wouldn't have that.
	And so there were tensions for decades and decades, all through the 90s.
	Eventually in 2004, the authorities in Yemen, the police, Got him and killed him.
	But that didn't sort of stop the Houthi cause.
	If anything, you know, he's a martyr now.
	So if anything, it sort of, you know, spurred things on.
	And as far as I understand it anyway, you know, it's all been going on, really, since 2004.
	But all through the 2010s, it sort of just kept getting ramped up.
	I mean, the leader, Salah, Ali Abdullah Salah was the leader of Yemen for a long time and in conflict with the Houthis.
	But at some point in the early 2010s, 2012 I think it was, he was eventually ousted from power and then he turned and became, they teamed up together.
	And then eventually he got back into power and then eventually he tried to turn his back on them and they just killed him two days after that.
	And then the Saudis get involved because it all spilled across the Saudi border.
	And of course, you know, the people in Riyadh are not going to stand for, you know, the House of Al Saud are not going to stand for these Shia rebels exporting their conflict into Saudi Arabian territory.
	So they got involved in like, what, 2014-15 time?
	2014, yeah.
	Ramped it up in 2017.
	15 time and 2014 ramped it up in 2017 it's still ongoing now but it does beg the question you know it's just a very very broad uh description of what's going on uh But it does beg the question, how are these sort of mountain people from northern Yemen so successful?
	And you say, well, it must be that they're being directed or maybe just funded by Iran or any other Shia power.
	Maybe, maybe not.
	Maybe it's just that Yemen society, Yemeni culture is something that has always been susceptible to something like this.
	that their history for centuries and centuries has been has been, you know more Houthi based Well, my eyebrow would be raised that yes, they are boarding ships and doing Somali style piracy but the recent spate of drone threats that have caused us to station the US and UK Navy there to shoot them down the Houthi rebels aren't
	aren't launching said drones and they don't have the money for that so who is it seems to be an iranian thing it just it seems to be but the other question might be might be broader is what implications does this have for the brics alliance and that because they clearly the chinese and the russians are courting the iranians the saudis are in bricks and they hate the iranians but the saudis are also far less friendly to the west considering the biden administration keep annoying them
	so what's going to play out in that little bit of a kerfuffle there my kind of perspective is it Iran's going to be involved in some way but it's just a matter of how involved they are.
	They could be giving them money on the sly, giving them weapons perhaps, or maybe they could be helping orchestrate stuff.
	I think it's a matter of determining the scale because to my understanding the Iranians wouldn't necessarily pass up an opportunity to expand their influence and perhaps put Saudi Arabia in a difficult position because of course then they'll have enemies on Two different sides wouldn't they?
	You'd have Yemen to the south and Iran, you know, although not necessarily sharing a direct border to the north.
	One thing I want to make clear here is that my opinion, personal opinion alert, is that Iran are involved in it.
	I'm just questioning to what extent that is.
	If I had to put money on it I would say that Iran are definitely helping the Houthis.
	I think on some level there's no doubt but it's just to what extent are the Houthi rebels out-and-out puppets of the Iranians.
	So if you look at sort of, if you look at it from the Saudi perspective, you know, the house of Al Saud, MBS bin Salman, Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, you know, from his point of view, the Iranians are the enemy, the Yemenis, the Houthis are the enemy, America are his ally, And even on some level the Israelis are his ally to the extent that they both despise Iran.
	They're also in the Abraham Accords so they're capable of having an enemy is my enemy of my friend relationship.
	Well they were on the cusp of recognising Israel as a state before the outbreak of war.
	It was in discussion at least.
	So that goes to show the extent of the The absence of hostility I suppose.
	They're able to be pragmatic.
	Just realised we're getting on for time a bit so to sort of conclude basically.
	The worst case scenario, or the worry is, that there's going to be some giant war, boots on the ground, fast airstrikes, on Iran.
	At the end, the net result of all of this is whether it's the Israeli Air Force, or the Israeli Air Force with the Saudi Air Force, or just the United States, the UN, NATO, Britain and Australia and Canada are involved in Massive, massive airstrikes on Iran or even invading Iraq style, the whole of Iran and changing their regime.
	That's the worry.
	That's the worst case scenario.
	They've got a very large standing army though, the Iranians, don't they?
	Yeah, but so did Saddam.
	It doesn't count.
	That's true, yeah.
	Fair enough.
	They're of poor quality.
	I can believe it, yeah.
	Right.
	And the Iranian Air Force versus some coalition of the Israelis, the USAF and the RAF and on and on and on.
	There's no contest.
	Yeah, the Saudis as well.
	They've got a fair few jet fighters.
	We sell them to them, I think.
	Like we mentioned in the previous segment, the US Navy alone could easily it will easily best any any laughable attempt an iranian navy a thousand times over ten thousand times the worry is it cascades into many bricks allies they might be right so yeah the worst case scenario of the worst case scenario is that you end up with russia and america each other's face or china and russia at the throats of nato countries with the help of israel and so
	Whether a third World War scenario starts playing out, we're on a slippery slope towards that.
	Personally, again, personal opinion, I don't think that's very likely.
	But it's a possibility at this point.
	You know, the future's cloudy.
	No one knows the future.
	No one can know what's going to happen.
	But it does become an increasing worry, an increasing concern with this sort of thing.
	But I do think the idea of a World War III is imminent.
	is not likely.
	But there you go, everyone's got their different takes on these sorts of things.
	We've come much, much closer to a third world war in the second half of the 20th century than this.
	Much, much, much, much closer.
	But there you go, people out there might think I'm being naive and short-sighted, so I would like to read your comments.
	Yeah, I agree with you.
	With that, let's go on to the written comments.
	Can I nick one of the scrollers?
	You're first, Josh.
	Okay.
	John, would it be alright if we had an extra five minutes?
	I don't want to, you know, skirt over the comments, if you will, because we've only got seven minutes to our usual finishing time.
	You guys keep our lights on, so...
	Yeah, I actually like hearing what you have to say.
	So for my segment about no one being signed up to the military, Captain Kirk Shagging Aliens, which is a name that never fails to make me laugh.
	Military, we don't want any more white people.
	White people, well we won't join then.
	Military, shocked Pikachu face.
	Yeah, I mean, Shooting yourself in the foot used to be what you used to do to get out of being conscripted to the military and ironic enough the military are now doing it themselves.
	It's very strange.
	Even in ancient Rome it was a thing that you would cut the fingers off your right hand to get out of military service because you can't hold a sword properly.
	Blimey.
	Bjorn Furrenbach, I'm currently a serving soldier of 10 years and I joined as in my heart I knew from a young age it was my duty to serve as it was my grandfather's and my great-grandfather's and I agree that those who serve in politics should have served first in some regard.
	My loyalty is to the king and country, not ever changing Parliament.
	Good man.
	Yeah, I respect that.
	Sophie Liv, honestly, why would people, especially white men, join the military now?
	We've seen how they are treated there, we've seen how veterans are treated, and in comparison to illegal immigrants, it's just embarrassing.
	Well, yeah.
	Illegal immigrants get free hotel stays, they get their accommodation paid for, they get free meals, they get an allowance, they get thrown in... They're housed in military barracks.
	Yeah, they get flown first class.
	I mean, they're living the dream.
	I want to be an illegal immigrant now.
	You've been asked to throw your life away for what?
	For what exactly?
	So you can be abused, spat on and be continually abused by a country and system that hates you.
	Why?
	Dude, if I had a son, I wouldn't want him to join.
	No way.
	Yeah, my parents have been very strong on me not joining the military.
	Not that I considered.
	I'm not a big fan of following rules.
	I'm a libertarian.
	It's not really surprising.
	You'll grow out of it.
	Josh and I sit next to each other, we constantly poke each other back and forth.
	I'm too wise to bite these days.
	I would have maybe, initially, but no.
	Freddie, 65, with a $20 donation, thank you very much.
	Foreign wars, Afghan disaster, Biden, veteran neglect, unwillingness to negotiate when the missions are not pointed at you, 1935 Book of War is a racket, disrespect for maleness.
	Very true.
	Conor's Music Hour now.
	That's a really important book.
	It was Smedley, a guy called Smedley, that book.
	Yeah, I've heard it before.
	It's a really interesting one.
	And Freddie again with $10.
	Thank you.
	You're spoiling us here.
	Fudge, I mean missiles are not pointed at your head.
	Let many civilians feel the same way.
	I'm looking at you, NATO.
	Yeah, it's not really affecting us personally so much anymore.
	It might be very indirect, as in warfare, but we're not getting the missiles towards us.
	But anyway, I think I've read enough.
	Sure.
	Matt, vote Joe Biden for first-class deportations.
	Deportations away from one state to another.
	Unfortunately, they're not flying them out, they're flying them to you.
	Someone online, unaccompanied minors, the state kidnapping foreign children.
	Yeah.
	Quite.
	I mean.
	Very interesting, isn't it?
	This day and age that all of a sudden they're flying in lots of unaccompanied children.
	Well, you know.
	No, no insinuation here.
	The warden of their island dried up, so they decided to repatriate.
	There we go, you stepped on that landmine.
	It is so weird and perverse and disgusting and wrong and I just don't almost have the words for it.
	Yeah.
	Tens of thousands a week.
	I mean, that's mad.
	It's not even a landmine.
	We know that Bill Clinton was on the Epstein client list.
	Okay.
	I'm very nervous about being sued.
	That's why I've skirted around it and made allusions.
	Well, the guy who debunked Pizzagate was prosecuted for possessing child pornography.
	It's funny that, isn't it?
	I do want to talk about that at some point.
	I might do a premium podcast about talking about that and the media reporting because it's very interesting.
	Yeah, it's worthwhile.
	Derek Power.
	So, DEI, the morbidly obese and migrants with unaccompanied children are taking over the airlines.
	All the more reason not to fly ever again.
	Yeah, I did make a joke the other day saying, what if this is just a long game by the climate lobby to get jet zero via racism?
	So they don't want you to fly for climate emissions.
	So all they do is appoint you a DEI pilot.
	You're too afraid to fly because you might die in a plane crash and therefore jet zero.
	Well, yeah, that and the sort of weight of the plane is down on one side because you've got a clinically obese person.
	So the stability is affected and you have a potential terrorist on board.
	I mean, Who would want that?
	Speaking of which, our moral award!
	Mobile phones are the modern-day Pandora's box for all the evils they've unleashed on the world.
	Between the Jews in the sewer and now this, imagine trying to explain what's going on in front of your eyes to someone from 20 years ago without a camera recorder permanently in your pocket.
	That's very true.
	It allows us to document decline in real time, I suppose.
	Being a political satirist now must be the most difficult job in the world.
	Look at Jonathan Pye, he's no longer funny.
	Freddy65, 10 pounds.
	Dollars, rather.
	Thank you very much.
	500,000 dead Ukrainian men to be replaced with migrants eventually.
	Seems like a plan someone must rebuild for Blackrock.
	Oh, have you seen the new Japanese government that turned around and said, well, because we have a low birth rate, time for immigration.
	Same with South Korea.
	Oh no.
	Immigration is causing the low birth rates, but it's alright.
	The problem doesn't matter.
	The solution is always infinity Africans.
	One last one.
	Arizona Deseret, no need to worry about child trafficking in the US, the government will take care of that for you.
	And with that depressing reality, do you want to do a couple of yours, Beau?
	So thank you, Freddie, again.
	Sophie Leaf says, honestly, ever since the Ukraine war broke out, is that the end of the sentence?
	It's just felt for me like all the big powers are trying to bait each other into attacking first.
	They know that whoever attacks first will be deemed a bad guy, but they all really want to be at war, so they desperately need justification and thus keep on pushing.
	And yes, that's scary.
	Yeah, I mean, that could well be the case.
	Um, if you've got militaries that need to keep their budgets high or increase their budgets, and you do that by going to war.
	Um, some people said that the reason why the US military industrial complex was prepared to give Ukraine so much hardware is that it's just sort of out of date stuff.
	They want to get rid of it, get it off their inventory.
	You're giving them the hand-me-downs basically.
	Yeah, like hand-me-downs, right?
	So now we need to commission and buy all brand new stuff.
	It's rife in the military.
	I was talking to someone who is in the military and they were saying that they would just be given a day and a bunch of rounds and they say we've got to get rid of these rounds because otherwise we'll get awarded less if we don't use them all up.
	So there's this ever-expanding budget, as you get with all government programs, that you waste things on purpose to get more resources in the future.
	Two great examples of that.
	Firstly, loads of the ULEZ scrappage cars, the Transport Secretary and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, were fighting over whether or not to send them to Ukraine, because Sadiq Khan was saying, well, they're not ULEZ compliant, therefore imagine the emissions that would be going on if we used them in a war.
	Clearly acting on our behalf.
	And the other one is, Nikki Haley, as soon as she stopped being UN ambassador, before she ran for president, she went on the board of Boeing.
	And now wants, essentially, boots on the ground in Israel, against Iran, and in Ukraine.
	I wonder why, Nikki.
	Wonder why.
	Le French Soldiers Merchant said, they call it a coalition strike, but it really is just the US using its quote, allies unquote, to fight against their enemies.
	This alliance game will not end well.
	Yeah, I mean, that's fair.
	I think there's more going on to it than just that, but I mean, that's fair.
	The big power blocks are, in the whole world I mean, Are really Washington, Beijing, and then maybe you can argue Moscow, London, Riyadh, Tel Aviv.
	So, you know, I think if we had, I mean, Rishi's so weak and obviously a stooge, that is not a great example of what I'm about to say, but if the British government, the British establishment really didn't want to go along with what the Pentagon was doing, They wouldn't, I think.
	But, I mean, who knows?
	We don't just do... Again, we're not just the pure puppet of the United States.
	Israel isn't a pure puppet of the White House.
	You know, Netanyahu... Like, for example, where the White House said, you know, can you not bomb in Lebanon, please?
	Netanyahu's response to that is, no, I'm going to do whatever I want.
	I think part of the reason of that is obviously because Israel manufactures a lot of things like microchips and pharmaceuticals and so the supply chain from Israel as well as the compelling post-war Holocaust narrative of we must protect the Jews at all costs with our foreign policy.
	That has cast a disproportionate spell over the Washington establishment so it's bi-directional but Israel can leverage more of that moral guilt so Washington feels that they need to ask their permission whereas Washington just tell us what to do.
	Nonetheless, just to be clear, what Le French Soldier's Merchant said there, I almost entirely agree with.
	It's true.
	It's true what he said there.
	I'm not saying he's wrong in any way, shape or form.
	Because there's this idea, isn't there, of the pre-World War I world of these giant alliances, and you end up in some sort of global war because there's no way to sort of back out or back away from these alliance systems.
	You know, the world is different to that, but not that different.
	We're not that far removed from that type of world.
	I just don't believe that there's anyone in possession of nuclear weapons that is dumb enough to use them yet.
	And yet is the operative word.
	Not planning on risking it, but there you go.
	That's a fun note to end on.
	Enjoy the apocalypse, everyone.
	Thank you very much, gentlemen.
	It was a very high-brow podcast for a Friday afternoon.
	Really enjoyed it.
	Yeah, there we go.
	Hope you did as well.
	Thanks very much for staying subscribed to the website.
	If you haven't already, please do, because we've got great content like Contemplations and Epochs.
	We'll be back on Monday at one o'clock.
	Until then, take care.
	Have a nice weekend.

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