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Dec. 19, 2024 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:31:34

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1067

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for the 19th of December 2024. I am joined by Bo and Stelios.
	Definitely got that round the right way.
	And today we're going to be talking about Britain's Sharia courts, a possible end to the war in Ukraine, and some good things that have happened over the past year.
	And we have no announcements, so Stelios, take us away.
	Right, I suppose we're going to talk about the paradoxes and problems of multiculturalism and the weird images we are shown by it, like the following one.
	Oh!
	I showed it to people and they literally couldn't believe it and they say, what's going on up here?
	What's happening?
	And I told them it's basically multiculturalism.
	Right, so...
	So that's the parliament and he was doing his Islamic noise.
	Well, what's going on is that there are several reports that indicate that there are 85 Sharia courts in the UK and that the UK has become a sort of cultural capital, Western capital for Islamic courts.
	Now, from a little research I did, these reports are new.
	I found an article, for instance, from the Daily Mail from 2009, at least, that said that there are 85 Islamic courts.
	But what is going on is that the practice of them Seems to be leading towards the establishment of a paralegal system within the UK that is used by more and more people.
	And there are several considerations about the way in which this could impact and could come into contrast with English law.
	Yeah, because if you have these Islamic courts one would have to assume that that means you're going to have Islamic laws and therefore a parallel legal system to that of the British system and that Muslims would basically be able to live by Sharia law in the British Isles and potentially that would mean they would be imposing their views On other people rather than simply just adhering to their beliefs,
	which I don't think should be allowed in the first place, even if they're just keeping to themselves.
	This is Britain.
	You either live as we do or leave.
	And you shouldn't have to put up with...
	Mosques blasting music out.
	Different codes of ethics.
	Different codes of law.
	Because there have already been cases of these Muslim patrols going out and, you know, admonishing people that they feel like aren't dressed properly, or taking alcohol off of people that are drinking it because it's against Islam, and they're going around enforcing it.
	And I know it's not that common, but if we allow this sort of thing to happen, it's going to be Yeah, the king's writ should run everywhere in this island and no other system.
	Simple as that.
	No ifs, no buts.
	So what seems to me to be really interesting here, and this shows precisely one of the major failures of multiculturalism as a cultural policy, is that there is a question...
	We should ask, why do we have law?
	We have laws because, for instance, in every society there are frictions and we need a way to coordinate and adjudicate all these conflicts that arise from social life.
	And it seems to me that this has happened throughout history.
	Every society has its own legal code, and there needs to be an authority to which everyone is answerable to.
	If you establish different legal systems, Then you are literally parting with a degree of your sovereignty because you recognize the different authorities who have the ability to impose their own rules and rules that are sometimes incredibly different from the rules of the country in which we're talking about.
	Some things like, if you don't have borders, you don't really have a country.
	If you don't have the rule of law, you don't have a civil society, you don't really have a country as such.
	Yeah.
	So it couldn't be more fundamental.
	We're talking about ghettos, and it seems to me that right now, across Europe, this is seen to be leading to very bad situations.
	It doesn't seem to lead to harmony, as lots of people would expect.
	It actually leads to failure of integration and assimilation.
	Multiculturalism is precisely saying that people shouldn't assimilate.
	They shouldn't assimilate to the dominant culture.
	They shouldn't play by the dominant culture's rules.
	That's why we have all pockets of different populations within Western countries, within European countries, that are allowed progressively more to have their own rules and their own way of life.
	And essentially we also see that there is a kind of woke approach to it and they get preferential treatment.
	Because it isn't just, okay, that's your neighborhood, do what you want there.
	We frequently see governments take the extra step and say, no, you're going to play by your rules.
	These are your areas, but I'm also going to guard you more than others.
	It's also worth mentioning as well that within these so-called communities, I call them enclaves really, it gets to a point of sort of critical mass whereby people increasingly have to give up less of their home culture the more people of their culture are there.
	So the first handful of people might have to It adapts significantly to the British way and then eventually it'll get to the point where it's a majority of that ethnic minority in a certain area and then you get the phenomenon whereby You can have someone who's lived there for 20 years and still not speak a word of English because they don't need to in their day-to-day life.
	And how this benefits the native British, I do not know.
	But what is increasingly happening is that they're taking this approach of community policing as well.
	We saw this in the response from Muslims in the Southport riots where they came out with loads of weapons and they were asked politely, can you take your weapons to your local mosque please and your imam will deal with all of this because the police don't want to touch it because they don't feel as if they have a right to police Muslims because they reject the notion that the British police have authority over them because that's what's written in the Koran.
	And if I remember correctly, it seems to me that when he was addressing the nation after the Southport tragedy, Keir Starmer had every opportunity to play the diplomat card, the pragmatist card, try to appease both communities, and it seems like he picked a side.
	He did pick a side, yeah.
	And I don't see how people don't see that this leads to balkanisation and, in the end, sectarianism.
	Because if at some point, as you call it, the dominant culture tries to stop the rot, then you get sectarian, you get full-blown sectarianism.
	Obviously multiculturalism left to run rampant will end in balkanisation and sectarianism and all the horrors that come with that.
	Obviously.
	We've got all of human history as evidence.
	Yeah, right, yeah.
	Exactly.
	And people are penalised for pointing this out.
	But we have here a really good post by Rupert Lowe.
	He says there should be zero Sharia courts in the UK. If you want to live in our country, you live by our laws.
	If not, leave.
	Quite right.
	He's the best out of all of the reform bunch, isn't he, Rupert Lowe at the minute?
	Robert Jenrick said something equivalent.
	None of these courts should exist.
	There is only one law in this country, and it is British law.
	Right, here we have also Peter Whittle says there are currently an estimated 85 Sharia courts in the UK. They don't need regulating, they need banning.
	Anything else is acceptance of a parallel system.
	And he points out that there are polls that show that around 32% of Muslims would prefer Sharia in the UK, which is a worrying number.
	Also, why don't we just send them home?
	It's like, you can have Sharia at home, but we're in Britain, so how about no?
	I was going to say, I'm not really for assimilation.
	No.
	I don't want these people to assimilate to us.
	I want them to go back to the land of their forefathers, ideally.
	And that 32%, I don't buy that anyway.
	It should be more.
	It will be way higher than that.
	I have some data about some other countries.
	They fluctuate.
	In France, for instance, it's 29. I'll show you.
	In Ireland, it's around 36. It fluctuates, but it seems to me that it is a bit higher.
	These people, they show a strong preference for their native culture and that sort of reveals that the only reason they're here is economics.
	They're sort of here for more mercenary reasons and I feel like that's also a losing deal for them.
	I think one way in which we could actually make people voluntarily go back home and prevent these sorts of things from expanding It's by pointing out, if you want to live by, you know, the laws as laid out in Islam, you're probably better off doing it in a country that doesn't, you know, undermine that philosophy, that theology.
	That image, what a perverse and disgusting thing.
	I mean, that looks like they're on Whitehall.
	It looks like they're outside Downing Street.
	Well, that's the Ministry of Defence in the background or something.
	That image should never have come about.
	The people in the last generation or two or three that have allowed such a thing to happen.
	Despicable.
	And you see here that it says, this was an article that was published, I think, yesterday, and a lot of people are talking about it, from the Times, how the UK became Western capital for Sharia courts, and says it's by Dominic Kennedy, the investigations editor.
	They say Muslims are increasingly turning to Britain's Sharia courts, which are not part of UK law, and operate as informal bodies issuing religious rulings on marriage.
	And I'll read a bit from here.
	It says, Britain has become the western capital for Sharia courts with men able to end their marriages by saying divorce three times.
	An investigation by the Times also discovered that polygamy is normalized in their community.
	And it says that they have a nap and it's approved by a Sharia court and it gives daughters half as much as inheritance of sons.
	So what is going on here with this is that they are...
	They say that we have a law for family and for religious reasons and we are going to adjudicate according to that law and it doesn't matter so much what the law of the country is.
	And there are concerns about Let me just say, they say that there are concerns about how women are treated.
	And that's the main thing here, at least as it's being said, that we have a particular legal system in the UK, you could say also in the West, that treats women in a particular, that says that women deserve a particular treatment.
	And there are many worries that this treatment isn't allowed in these courts, and actually that there are many court rulings and the philosophy behind these court rulings that seems to be, you would say, very oppressive to women, as we would say.
	Well, Sharia law, more generally, which the Sharia courts will be enforcing, is a deeply immoral thing to the eyes of a European person.
	And it's antithetical to our way of life.
	And to allow this to happen is to admit that we're allowing something that...
	We universally see it as immoral.
	I don't know very many people who are non-Muslim Brits, say, that think dressing a woman head to toe in a black bag, basically, is a good thing.
	But there are also other problematic issues with it.
	So we have a BBC article that is talking about Sharia law in 2021, on the 19th of August, when they're talking about what does it mean for women in Afghanistan.
	They say a bit about what it is.
	They say that it is Islam's legal system.
	It is derived from the Koran, Islam's holy book, as well as the Sunnah and the Hadith, the dids and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad.
	And they have a sort of panel of Islamic clerics and they try to interpret the book.
	When they say that it is clear, they follow the guidance.
	But in cases that aren't particularly covered from what the sources already have, they come together as a panel and they try to see, to interpret the spirit of it.
	And it says, what does it mean in practice?
	It informs basically all aspects of the daily life for a Muslim.
	And when it comes to women, they say that there are several harsh punishments.
	For instance, some women are flogged for adultery.
	There are several issues there that seem to be antithetical to the Western way of life.
	Yeah, like they have enforcers who enforce the Islamic dress code as well.
	And I've seen videos from Iran where there's a woman telling another woman off for not having her hair covered and things like that.
	And there's a further issue when it comes to legislation is that legislation also contains the element of habituation in it.
	When we allow different legal systems, we allow people to be habituated into different ways of life.
	And the problem is when these are inconsistent, there has to be a choice.
	It can't be avoided forever.
	There has to be a choice.
	There has to be one legal authority that people are answerable to.
	And what frustrates people and makes them really, really worried is that a lot of Islamic scholars are saying that this is consistent with their faith and they want the adoption of Sharia law, which shouldn't be surprising.
	Because they're pretty honest about it.
	They're pretty honest about it.
	Here we have British Islamic scholar Anjam Chowdhury says democracy will most likely be replaced by Islamic Sharia law in the UK, Belgium and France within 15-20 years.
	Well, not by him because he's in prison.
	I was going to say now convicted terrorist Anjam Chowdhury.
	So we have people who are really honest about it and they're pushing this.
	And it looks like there is tremendous weakness on behalf of Western states in dealing with that.
	Multiculturalism is not the way forward.
	As you said, it leads to balkanization, sectarianism and all the horrors that come with it.
	And there is literally zero excuse for not knowing it, especially in Europe.
	For instance, in the early 90s, Yugoslavia broke down precisely for this reason.
	It's not like it happened somewhere completely far away from England or from France or Germany.
	It's literally three hours by plane.
	Well, like it was centuries ago.
	Yeah.
	It was like the 90s.
	It's also one of those wars that didn't happen for many people, because they say the last war was World War II. Some people have this illusion, operate under this illusion.
	It's also worth mentioning as well that it was an ethnic thing that broke down Yugoslavia.
	When there's a different ethnicity and religion as well, if you had shared beliefs, it at least is somewhat possible.
	But when it's both theologically and ethnically different, well, you've got no reason to associate with one another, really.
	Exactly.
	And here we have a state that allows this to happen.
	Not only allows it but enforces it and promotes it.
	Exactly.
	Right, so we have here several reports.
	That's from 2016. It says around 29% of French Muslims reject secular laws.
	Again, I think that this is too low, but it is a big number.
	They say the same for Ireland.
	I saw this from 2006. It's around 36%, and they say that there are calls to implement Sharia law in Ireland in the event of a Muslim majority.
	As a senior Islamic cleric has said, I don't think that this should be allowed.
	It's a tremendous sign of weakness.
	That's putting it lightly, yeah.
	And one of the other things to mention, because if you try to talk about this issue, you're guaranteed to hear people saying, well, that doesn't mean that there is no police here, that doesn't mean that the police does nothing.
	There is a very worrying story that shows how these people These practices habituate a large amount of the population into living in a world of life that seems to be anti-Western.
	And here we have the case from last year, March the 5th, March 2023, where we had...
	A mother, an English mother, going to plead to a panel of that sort for her son, who I think did some...
	He wasn't autistic.
	Yeah, so...
	Something at a school.
	What happened was he was a 14-year-old kid and he brought a Koran in school, which he damaged accidentally.
	I think it wasn't even on purpose.
	And it caused outrage in the Islamic community.
	And we see here something that could be interpreted as a, you could say, humiliation because she goes there and the police officer doesn't seem to act as a diplomat.
	A mediator between them.
	That's not the job of the police.
	He's basically overseeing the communication between the two.
	But the problem with this was, other than the obvious, is that a mother shouldn't have to go begging to a bunch of random Muslims, just like, please leave my son alone, because as David Averton points out in that post there, they received plenty of intimidation and arson threats and, you know, I think the boy was potentially suspended from school, if I remember rightly, it was quite a while ago now.
	So lots of negative things happen to them that if, say, you dropped a book that wasn't a religious book of any kind, or even, say, a Bible, I don't think that there would be that same reaction from Christians.
	They wouldn't.
	They would at least understand that the kid didn't mean poorly, in that the intention was important.
	There's not even that level of attempt to understand the motivation.
	It's just, you've done something against us, therefore we want you to pay.
	Right.
	And I think that there is an attempt from mainstream media and sources to obfuscate the gravity of the issue.
	For instance, if you see here, if you put Sharia judge on Google, you only have women judges.
	That's very misleading, isn't it?
	And there are also articles, I'll show you just one from The Guardian and the other from The Telegraph, that are trying to minimise it, rather than speaking about courts, they're speaking about councils.
	And here we have this article from more than seven years old, it says, Inside Britain's Sharia councils, hardline and anti-women, or a dignified way to divorce.
	Hang on a minute, would I be able to go back and have a look at who wrote that?
	Homer Halili.
	That's the best I can do.
	I wonder why she wrote that article, Stelios.
	Yes.
	It beats me.
	It seems to me that they are trying to say that there is a dilemma here, but the way they present the dilemma is obfuscating the third option, which is the most important one.
	They're trying to divert the conversation to a place where people don't talk about the solution.
	And they say, well, in some cases they could be perceived as anti-women, but in other cases they could be perceived as pro-women because that council could exert pressure from a theological standpoint, from the community standpoint, to their husbands, to observe their religious obligations.
	But what is most important is again the element of habituation.
	If we go down this and examine this merely in terms of whether it is good or bad for the particular woman that we're talking about on each court, it's going to be a very ad hoc approach that is going to actually blind us towards the most important.
	The most important is that if you allow a paralegal system, you're breaking down sovereignty and you're habituating people into not playing by your rules and to thinking that they can be allowed to play by their own rules.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Right, you've got a chat.
	Would you see if I interrupted you at some point before I saw you?
	Sorry.
	That's alright.
	No, please go ahead.
	Right, so we have Dragon Lady Chris.
	Scoff, just like last week, a Muslim MP claimed to be protecting women's rights while advocating for cousin marriage.
	Women are abused under Sharia law.
	Surely you jest.
	Yeah, just deport them, it says.
	Yeah.
	We've got some good news, Beau.
	Well, I think we need to talk about the Ukraine sitch as it's going on right now.
	In a very casual way, apparently.
	Yes, time to check in with old Zelensky and what's going down.
	So...
	I was just going to ask, is our money being well spent?
	Is it finally going to come to an end?
	Well, it might come to an end quite soon, if the Donald's got anything to say about it.
	So it does seem to be that the consensus on all sides is that once Trump gets in, he's going to sort of crack the whip and sort of insist, at least from the Ukrainian side, draw this thing to an end, dude.
	For God's sakes.
	Ridiculous.
	So, a few things have happened in the last few days, a couple of days, or in the last week or so.
	A few different things, I just thought we could run through them, keep everyone up to date with what's going on.
	I've said before, somewhere or other, that sometimes wars sort of fizzle out, but often they reach a pitch or a crescendo near the end, in terms of body count, if nothing else, quite often.
	This is going to be one of those, where they know they're going to be forced, more or less, in inverted commas, forced around a table, A negotiating table at some point quite soon, well in the early New Year.
	And so, trying to do everything that's in their interests before that happens.
	Both sides are doing that.
	So, okay, we are entering what seems like the final act of this particular tragedy.
	So the first thing to mention is the idea that the line was always for as long as it takes.
	I remember everyone from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the top bods at the State Department to Biden himself Our leaders, the NATO leaders, anyone and everyone of every importance saying we will stand by Zelensky in Ukraine for as long as it takes.
	Or until the end of this current administration.
	I've added that bit in.
	Because it's not going to be as long as it takes.
	So anyway, three or four or five developments we could just mention and talk about.
	So Starmer talked to Trump on the blower the other day, on the telephone, didn't he apparently?
	And he said, what's the headline there?
	He's supposed to have said that he begged or asked Trump to stand with Ukraine.
	Because for some reason, Starmer is particularly bellicose on the Ukraine thing, isn't he?
	He's particularly hawkish.
	I wonder why he really cares one way or another.
	What dog in the game has he got?
	Well, it's not the British people's business which side wins because, of course, we've put the most money out of any European country into supporting Ukraine.
	I do wonder what we get out of it, being the most geographically separated from Russia out of any European country.
	Right, yeah.
	I just wonder what the calculation is.
	Because, you know, I can understand, I completely don't agree with it, but I can understand why planners at the State Department or the Pentagon or wherever, the American Intelligence Services, I can understand their calculation that on the broadest geopolitical stage, Russia is a competitor or a threat.
	Especially when you look at just sort of the chessboard when it comes to resources, when it comes to energy.
	I get it, from America's point of view, that Russia is, to put it mildly, a competitor.
	I get it.
	Why would someone like Starmer be way more bellicose than others?
	I think the current paradigm for most things in politics, both domestic and geopolitical, Is that quite often things will be wrapped up in a sense of morality of right and wrong.
	But that will be a cover for the reality of a situation which is normally just resource extraction.
	It's all about material goods a lot of the time.
	And once people stop taking it at face value and look at what people have to gain from it...
	And materially, it starts to make a bit more sense why so much money is being thrown at it.
	Yeah, I mentioned in a podcast last week, there was an interesting podcast with Joe Rogan on that Mike Benz fella.
	He was talking about, you know, it's a fairly good take, I think, that when you view the whole Russia-Ukraine conflict, if you view it sort of purely through the lens of power and energy and resources, then it does start making a lot more sense than who actually controls Crimea.
	Right.
	Although that is important.
	Because, of course, Britain, historically, didn't really much care.
	We did have the Crimean War, but then when we won the Crimea from the Russians, we gave it to the Ottomans of all people, which wasn't a good decision.
	Well, yeah.
	It's a different world.
	I was about to say...
	That was the Ottoman period, the mid-19th century, but still, yeah.
	So Keir Starmer, it seems like it's sabre-rattling though, it's just rhetoric and words, because most people now, the serious analysts, think that the Donald is going to bring it to a close, or at least dial it down to a one or a two quite quickly.
	So when Starmer asking him to, you know, stay the course, it's just words.
	I think all of the discussion in the media has been setting up for a Donald brokered peace agreement in that recently the news came out that a majority of Ukrainians support a peace deal.
	The admission that, you know...
	We're all getting on to that.
	Alright, I'll save it.
	Okay.
	Can I just say that I don't treat these statements in terms of whether they're true or false, I see them as expressions of resolution.
	So it seems to me that one of the reasons why Starmer could do this is to say that, you know, wherever, I can be a useful ally.
	In any kind of alliance, if you have me on your side, I'm going to be a hawk.
	Right.
	Just a way to look at it.
	You mean power projection?
	Yeah, maybe I'm a bit too charitable.
	I think Starmer wants to keep the quote-unquote special relationship alive wherever possible.
	He's happy to be the State Department's bitch.
	No, no.
	Go in full Tony.
	I didn't say this.
	Never go full Tony.
	No, it's just that when it comes to foreign relations, I sort of like that.
	That's going to be cropped out of context.
	So another bit just from the UK side is that our government apparently is considering sending troops to train Ukrainians.
	Well, for a start, we've been doing that for a while.
	I think there has been special forces, SAS, SBS, whatever it is, sort of training them for ages.
	I think it's a matter of record.
	It's not a conspiracy theory.
	And whether we'll send loads more over, Well, it's all coming to an end.
	So it feels to me like this is...
	I mean, who knows?
	What I'm saying right now, this take could be proven completely wrong.
	And in two years' time, we've got loads of regiments over there training hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians.
	Could be wrong.
	But I feel like this is just a little bit of last-minute sabre-rattling, it feels like to me, right?
	Well, when you're going to come to a peace agreement, you want as much collateral as possible, don't you?
	That's what this is, I feel like.
	I've mentioned before in the Vietnam War that it was prolonged for many a year and all sorts of big military kinetic campaigns were held just so their position at the negotiating table would be slightly better.
	So that's definitely how war is conducted often is that a lot of money, treasure, material and blood, human misery is spent just to get a slightly better deal when you do have to sort of come to time.
	I think you're absolutely correct that now just before it looks like it's coming to a close there will be an escalation Because presumably the Ukrainians would want to gain a part of Russia to try and exchange it with parts of Ukraine they've lost.
	As you say, because wars sort of intensify frequently before they come to an end.
	Like the Kursk region.
	Currently there's Ukrainian troops in the Russian Kursk region.
	I feel like the Ukrainian government's thinking is that we'll exchange that back for some of the land that Russia is occupying.
	I think what's likely to happen is that Russia is going to say we'd like some of the land we've captured and the promise that Ukraine will at least try to stay neutral as much as possible so they have a buffer between themselves and Europe because you can understand that if you have enemies right on your border it is an uncomfortable situation and perhaps they'll say don't join NATO or the EU or something like that but it might be the case that There won't be enough
	bargaining power on behalf of the Russians to have both the land and making these demands about Ukraine.
	I think it's more of a matter of how good a deal are they going to get.
	It will be interesting to see, I mean, interesting in a fairly dark, morbid way, but it will be interesting to see how it does shake out, assuming the Donald does get them round a table and insists they stop actually firing missiles and machine guns and drones at each other and things, how it will shake out.
	Whether Putin will in fact keep all the land that he's currently occupying and the Crimea and all that, or not.
	I mean, No, no, the pacifist.
	Stop this senseless violence.
	The peacemaker.
	Yes.
	Three times Nobel Prize winning we're talking about here.
	In the way that a 44 Magnum is a peacemaker.
	Yeah.
	So, one of the big developments in the last few days, this is actually from this morning, right?
	This particular Sky News article, but in the last day or two, Zelensky is now sort of changing his line.
	The whole idea that we'll never ever sacrifice any of our land ever and we'll stay for as long as it takes.
	Well, that line has now changed.
	And he's saying that it's just not possible for us to remove the Russian army.
	I nearly said the Red Army then.
	To remove the Russian army from their land.
	So, I mean...
	There you go.
	There seems to be a change of rhetoric.
	That's the new reality.
	I mean, we've known this for quite some time, but it's different that he's admitted it.
	That's what this article and many others that are in exactly the same vein say.
	They all say, something we've known for a while now.
	Yeah.
	Since right near the beginning, to be perfectly honest.
	I wonder where all those billions and billions of dollars worth of material really went though.
	That's what I was surprised.
	Was it this summer just gone or the summer before that was going to be a big push from the Ukrainian side, a big summer offensive, and it just petered out and didn't really go anywhere at all?
	At that point, for me anyway, that was sort of the final straw, where I was like, well it'll end with something like this at some point then, because if you weren't able to really make any significant gains then, then you're probably almost certainly not going to.
	I think also a fair amount of the resources that have been provided particularly the financial resources have gone into people's pockets because of course one thing that everyone's forgotten is that Ukraine is the most corrupt country or at least was before the war when people actually talked about it in all of Europe and throwing money at a very corrupt country is not good.
	Yeah, vast sums of those money has just been embezzled by people.
	Absolutely, yeah.
	It's one of the most corrupt things.
	I mean, sometimes I get accused of being pro-Russian.
	I'm not pro-Russian at all.
	It goes on in Russia as well.
	I'm just anti-Zelensky.
	I'm anti that completely corrupt government.
	And I think it's an absolute tragedy how many Ukrainians and Russians have died unnecessarily.
	Because, you know, the Russians might be the aggressors in the situation, but they're fighting with conscripts who might not agree with the war at all.
	And to be grateful or, you know, delight in Russian deaths when it's just young men, some of them, you know, might not even be out of their teens, and they're dying for effectively nothing.
	I haven't been sold entirely on this rhetoric, not because I think that Ukraine isn't profoundly corrupt.
	It is.
	But I want to look at it from a historical perspective.
	And it seems to me that if we look at the countries of Eastern Europe, especially after the fall of the USSR, we cannot just expect them to be as non-corrupt as we like to think.
	We are in some places.
	So it seems to me that rather than look at it as an either-or, corrupt or non-corrupt, it's much better to see it as an issue of trajectories.
	Is it going towards a less corrupt state or towards a more corrupt one?
	That's the question I put.
	I respect the rhetoric.
	Before 2014, Ukraine was teetering between being more European-aligned or more Russian-aligned, depending on who was in office at the time, and so it was quite unpredictable which direction it was going.
	I mean, that's one of the things you said, Russia is the aggressor here.
	And, well, yeah, I mean, it's their army that's on Ukrainian territory.
	But, come on, the reality was they were endlessly goaded.
	Of course.
	Endlessly goaded.
	I should have probably qualified that it's not as simple as that.
	It's that classic thing, you keep poking someone in the ribs or in the eye with a stick, and then when they throw a punch, you say, oh, you're the aggressor, you started to fight, you threw the first punch.
	Ignore that I kept poking you with a stick.
	But...
	Anyway...
	Yeah, but that is the rhetoric from the legacy mainstream media.
	It's just merely Putin's aggression.
	That's it.
	There was nothing.
	It was a completely peaceful situation.
	And then Putin, just because he's an aggressive dictator, decided to snatch a bit of land from the completely innocent, sort of NATO-aligned bloc.
	I know Ukraine aren't in NATO, but, you know, from the...
	Anyway.
	Well, there was an agreement in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which the West went against.
	That was the main thing that goaded a response, wasn't it?
	Yeah.
	I thought we could just watch a little clip from Sky News here.
	Are we seeing the start of a path towards the end of war?
	After nearly three years of fighting death and destruction, Ukraine's president has admitted reluctantly that his country may have to relinquish territory to Russia.
	In an interview with a French newspaper, he struck a thoughtful tone.
	We cannot give up our territories.
	The Ukrainian constitution forbids us to do so, but we do not have the strength to recover them.
	We can only count on diplomatic pressure from the international community to force Putin to sit down at the negotiating table.
	He's come to Brussels, the heart of European diplomacy, to meet NATO and EU leaders.
	I think it's a very good opportunity to speak about Security guarantees for Ukraine for today and for tomorrow, as you said.
	Almost everything said.
	But it's really very important to use these two days in Brussels to meet with all our partners.
	Alongside him, the head of NATO. You get the idea.
	I thought I'd let Zelensky say some stuff, so it's not just me accused of making stuff up or whatever.
	Alright, so the next thing, the next sort of development that's happened, people might have heard that North Korea, of all countries, sent quite a lot of men and some materiel to the front in the order of 10,000 men.
	And BBC saying that 100 have died fighting.
	Some of the other headlines say it was in the hundreds.
	But certainly they have actually been thrown into the meat grinder.
	I saw recently that Russia had donated 100 elite goats to the North Koreans.
	I don't know what qualifies as an elite goat, but...
	A goat for every man.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	I mean, they are capital, if you think of it.
	They could be used as capital.
	Outside of Europe and North America, they're used as capital pretty explicitly.
	Goats.
	Goats as in, you know.
	You need to be a shepherd.
	I'll marry your daughter for free goats sort of thing, right?
	No, I didn't mean this.
	You could use it as a source of income.
	You could produce...
	Food.
	Food and sell it.
	Which the North Koreans do not have much of, yeah.
	Milk and cheese and meat.
	Yeah, yeah.
	That's, you know, the last thing lactose intolerant North Koreans would want, but there we go.
	Okay, I couldn't exploit it.
	The Guardian's saying it's several hundred.
	That was a surprise to me when this happened.
	And it does sort of beg the question, beyond just sort of the immediate sort of surprise...
	What's the deal?
	What's going on there?
	Serious losses, ABC is saying.
	And even AP News saying that the North Korean troops are being thrown into it.
	So, you know, like, the relationship between the Kremlin and the North Koreans, what exactly is it?
	Well, apparently it is that, I mean, they're going to get, the North Koreans are going to get a bit of money, but more importantly, almost certainly, sort of a technology exchange.
	Probably, we don't know, because it's all behind closed doors, more or less.
	But, yeah.
	No, like, missile technology.
	Yeah, okay.
	So I can see how, as I say near the beginning, I can see how the Russians are viewed by not just the Americans but the West as a competitor.
	I mean you look at the Litvinenko and the Novichok stuff and all sorts of things.
	The Russians flying fast jets near our airspace and all sorts of things.
	I get it.
	I'm not pro-Russian.
	One guy on record is just explicitly saying that.
	And so, yeah, it leads into this.
	Like, they're giving the North Koreans missile technology.
	Come on.
	Really?
	In exchange for 10,000 guys fighting in Kursk?
	Western governments are not going to look kindly upon that, are they?
	It's only going to make things worse in the long run, isn't it?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Of course.
	Yeah.
	CNN going for a slightly different one.
	They don't underestimate the North Koreans.
	Because in those articles, they were saying that the Koreans had made a load of losses because they're really inexperienced and they're sort of crap combat troops.
	Unnourished.
	Yeah, they don't know what they're doing, really.
	But CNN decided to say, sort of, no, don't underestimate them.
	Don't really know why CNN is doing that, just being contrarian.
	God knows what or why.
	Well, I suppose if you make out the Russian side, it's more formidable.
	It justifies more money being sent to Ukraine, doesn't it?
	Yeah, yeah, and we know CNN is, well, a cutout for the intelligence services in all sorts of ways, it seems to me.
	Okay, another talking point, another thing to mention that's gone on recently is an assassination, a murder of a Russian general, if anyone saw this in the news cycle the last few days.
	The guy was quite important.
	He was a Russian general that was in charge of their nuclear, biological and chemical side of things.
	So quite a really important dude.
	He was coming out of his flat, his house, his building, and a bomb went off.
	One would have to wonder why he's being targeted when the things he's in charge of are not in play currently.
	Is that a sign that they're anticipating it?
	No, well they are.
	So one of the things that came under his purview was the use of...
	CS gas.
	Apparently, on that battlefront, because people think of CS gas as something that just makes your eyes water in a riot and makes people run away.
	And it can be that.
	Watered down CS gas is that.
	But very, very strong CS gas can be fatal.
	Absolutely.
	And apparently it's being used massively by the Russians all over the place in that war zone, in that particular theatre.
	And that does come under his command, all that sort of stuff.
	So someone, and it was definitely Ukraine, because other headlines just say it was definitely Ukraine.
	Like, Ukraine admitted it.
	Yeah, we did this.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So someone somewhere in the Ukrainian defense establishment, or God knows where or who, decided they're going to target this dude.
	Yeah.
	Ukraine saying, sort of unapologetically saying, yeah, we did it.
	You know, it's what we do now.
	That sort of thing.
	Yeah, we did have a clip, but I don't know if it's worth playing, because it's not really very explicit, because you just see a massive cloud of smoke.
	But that clip is all over the internet, if anyone wanted to see it.
	The other thing is, they're just sort of saying now...
	Because it's coming to a close, at least from the Ukrainian side, they're becoming slightly more desperate, just saying they're openly prepared to resort to...
	Well, it's essentially terrorism, because that happened right close to...
	in the middle of Moscow, just a few miles from the Kremlin, blowing up a general in the middle of Moscow.
	It's difficult not to...
	I mean, it's not the battlefield, is it?
	So it's difficult to argue it's anything other than terrorism.
	In fact, if we could watch this clip...
	The apparent assassination of General Kirilov is the most significant since the war began, and it happened just four miles from the Kremlin.
	But it's not the first time.
	In July, a Moscow car bomb targeted a military intelligence GRU officer and his wife, severely injuring them both.
	Russia blamed Ukraine, probably rightly.
	And last year, a pro-war military blogger, Vladlen Tatarsky, was killed in the cafe bombing in the centre of St Petersburg.
	The first such attack like this, since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, was also a car bomb, killing Daria Dugina in August 2022, just west of Moscow.
	She was the daughter of the ultra-nationalist Putin ally, Alexander Dugin, Now, Ukraine denies that it carried it out, but Moscow blamed them, and the Western Allies reportedly said that they believed that Ukraine had ordered the attack.
	What makes Kirilov's assassination so significant is what it tells us about the way the war is going and where it might go in the coming months.
	Kirilov was in charge of CBN, Chemical Biological Nuclear, by which we mean radiological, and he was in charge of the protection of Russian troops from those elements, chemical, biological, radiological.
	But his role went far beyond that.
	His actual behaviour was that he was involved in the planning of chemical warfare in Syria, and he's had a great deal to do, and that's what the British government thinks, with chemical warfare all the way around the front in Ukraine.
	The K51 gas grenade, a grenade that carries CS gas, but in some cases in lethal concentrations.
	It's ubiquitous all along the front.
	It's used all the time.
	And there have been traces of sarin and cyanide in a number of chemical attacks.
	The Ukrainians have said that the inauguration of President Trump, because we all believe...
	That the political dynamics behind the war will begin to alter after the inauguration of the new president.
	And so both sides, both Russia and Ukraine, are pushing as hard as they possibly can for every ounce of military dominance before Trump takes over.
	And what the Ukrainians are doing, they're sending a message, not just to the Russians, but to the rest of the world, that we are fighting for our lives and we'll do whatever it takes.
	And if assassinations, which technically are terrorists, if that's what it takes, that's what we will do.
	That's the message to the incoming president.
	Oh, right.
	Oh, all right, Lev.
	What?
	Really?
	I'm surprised, honestly a bit surprised that Russia has shown such restraint in the broad, broadly speaking.
	Because they could do tit for tat, they could decide to do that.
	They could drop some sort of precision munition on Zelensky if they wanted to, I'm sure they could.
	Or do some sort of...
	I mean, the Russians definitely assassinate people, don't they, all the time?
	It's one of their things they do.
	They'll get some sort of polonium 210 or whatever and murder their political opponents.
	They're showing some restraint, to be fair, I think.
	But anyway...
	It could be that they've got American intelligence helping the Ukrainians, which is also preventing the Russians from doing the same.
	Or it could be that they want to keep Zelensky in charge because it's better him than someone more competent.
	Someone they don't know, an unknown entity.
	Some general who's even more crazy.
	I just hope the thing can come to a close as soon as possible.
	It's as simple as that.
	Me too.
	The more Ukrainian and Russian lives, and anyone else, North Koreans, any other country that's sending men there, just stop the killing.
	You're not going to throw the Russian army out of that part of the world.
	It's not happening.
	So, stop it.
	So, last thing to say...
	Zelensky, you've heard it here.
	Nobel Prize for Bo.
	Yeah, pack it in.
	Peace Nobel Prize for you.
	So, last thing to say is that it's just about Trump.
	And yeah, he didn't like the killing of that general, which is essentially terrorism.
	And yeah, hopefully he'll bring an end to it in January.
	So, we'll see how much it escalates between now and then, how down and dirty it will get in the last few weeks.
	Okay.
	Alrighty.
	I'm going to pinch that mouse.
	Oh, I'm spoilt for choice.
	Are you alright, Stavros?
	I have breathing issues, yeah.
	Do you need a drink of water?
	It's okay.
	I'm sounding very husky.
	I'm sure there are lots of swooning ladies in the chat.
	If you need some water, you can steal some of mine.
	We've got a couple of things there.
	We do, actually.
	Dragon Lady Chris says, it'd be nice if we took care of our own problems first rather than worry about Ukraine.
	Just a thought.
	Yeah, right, yeah.
	The one for Stelios there, Sharia, is Arabic for street or road.
	Sharia is meant to be the road to paradise.
	They will not accept other law systems as superordinate to Sharia.
	Also, Islam means submission and jihad means purge.
	Indeed.
	Right.
	I'm going to lift everyone's spirits now because I actually have some good news about good things that have happened this year.
	And it's not necessarily political because we've covered most of that stuff already.
	If you follow our channel, you've probably seen some of it.
	You only need to go back through our videos and see that stuff.
	And it's the stuff that slipped through the cracks that we don't talk about and doesn't get the same attention as political things, but I think is just as important to human beings and human civilization and advancement As anything else.
	And one of the first things is something that was not on my 2024 bingo card, and that is India making a contribution to hygiene and medicine.
	I know.
	Pinch yourselves, everyone.
	That's an oxymoron.
	I know.
	They're a petri dish for all kinds of bacteria.
	However, I'm going to read a little bit from this because it's a little bit over my head.
	Enmentazobactam, developed by the Chennai-based orchid pharma, is the first antimicrobial invented in India to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.
	That's quite an admonishment of them.
	This injectable drug treats severe conditions like urinary tract infections, pneumonia, bloodstream infections, by targeting bacteria's defence mechanisms rather than the bacteria itself.
	And this is quite important because bacteria often produce enzymes like beta-lactamase to destroy antibiotics and that's how they become resistant to antibiotics.
	This also preserves the effectiveness of other antibiotics, which can still remain as a sort of last line of defence.
	But by targeting bacteria in a different way, it basically immobilises the bacteria's weapon without triggering the resistance to it particularly easily.
	And this is very, very good.
	It gives clinicians more options when treating bacterial infections and bacteria.
	You know, they're very unpleasant things.
	Having to live with such a thing would be horrible.
	And if it were untreatable, well, that would be awful.
	And so this is an unequivocally good thing, I think.
	Yeah, no, sounds like it.
	Yeah.
	So there's also this as well, that there's been a new triple drug combination to treat antibiotic resistant bacteria because at one point people were worried that bacteria was winning in the arms race.
	Well, we were coming out with antibiotics and the bacteria was adapting faster than we can come up with new ones.
	And so that's great news.
	I find it annoying.
	I've been to the doctor or perhaps the dentist or something, and you've got an infection and you're in pain and they won't give you antibiotics because you've just got to go through the pain and you will get better.
	But they don't want to give you antibiotics because you will get resistant to it in the end.
	It's like, I've got a terrible earache or something.
	I need like eight amoxicillin.
	Come on, just write me a prescription.
	Just give me.
	Just give me like three or four days worth of amoxicillin.
	Please.
	I'm in extreme pain.
	They're like, no.
	No, I can't do it.
	Won't do it.
	It's like, bastards.
	I'm in pain over here.
	So Bo's ears are going to benefit from this?
	I've never had an ear infection.
	That was just an example.
	Okay.
	Well, you never know.
	It's almost time, Bo.
	I'm due an ear infection.
	I haven't had one for 44 years.
	It's like volcanic eruptions.
	I had this ear.
	An ear infection?
	Yeah, when I came here.
	Back after the summer.
	Listening to us can do that.
	No, I think it had to do with the sea.
	Yeah, if you get dirty water in your ear, I think that can sometimes be the thing.
	Yeah, the only time I've ever had it was when I was swimming a lot.
	So there you go.
	Don't go swimming.
	It's bad for you.
	Yeah, there's also this.
	This was in Oxford.
	They found a new combination that's particularly good at treating it.
	And another thing as well is Alzheimer's as well.
	Apparently it's now been found that there are five distinct subtypes of Alzheimer's.
	So type 1 is characterized by neuronal hyperplasticity, meaning that your brain is hyperplastic.
	It changes quite a lot.
	2 is innate immune activation.
	3 is RNA dysregulation.
	I wonder how that maps into modern medicine.
	Type 4, choroid plexus dysfunction and type 5 blood-brain barrier dysfunction.
	None of those sound particularly good to me.
	I won't pretend to understand these because it's a little bit beyond my area of expertise.
	This is more into medicine than it is psychology, even though a lot of this is to do with the physiology of the brain.
	It's good news though because this is one of those diseases that are horrible.
	It is, yeah.
	My grandparents had it and it was truly awful.
	My grandfather as well.
	He died.
	It's one of the things that I'm, you know, it's probably number one for something I wouldn't want to get.
	Yeah, no, it's sort of nightmarish.
	A heart attack or something, you can, lung or heart disease, you can sort of, or just a cancer, you can sort of get your mind around.
	But the idea, like, it's scary, isn't it, the idea of Alzheimer's?
	It's very much, it's much scarier when it's for one of your close ones.
	Because you don't understand it if you have it.
	It's also very strange as well to see someone physically and then them not be there, if you know what I mean.
	I know what you mean, Josh.
	So another good thing, and I think you'd have to be very cold-hearted not to think that this was a good thing, that children with food allergies are now better able to live with their food allergies because the NHS in Britain has actually done a good thing.
	I know, pinch yourself.
	They've been using immunotherapy, which is basically a daily dose of the food allergen, which are taken under medical supervision, to train the person's immune system not to react to the food they're allergic to.
	And apparently they're already seeing children on the study who can consume and tolerate food which would have otherwise triggered a severe allergic reaction which is really good.
	It also means that they no longer have these severe reactions so that's positive in and of itself and also it means it's easier to avoid cross-contamination and also they're less likely to die.
	Less dead children I think is a good thing.
	This is a good development I'm sure the food industry is going to have a ball.
	Speaking about the food industry, there's been some good news about that as well.
	You know how we've been told continuously that meat is bad, that you'll die, you'll get cancer and heart disease.
	Everything's cancerous.
	However, there's been a really big study recently looking at 175 contemporary populations of human beings and they found that total meat intake is associated with life expectancy.
	I'm going to read from the abstract of this and then explain what some of the terms mean because it's a little bit wordy.
	So, results worldwide, bivariate correlation analyses revealed, and that's basically looking at a linear relationship between two variables that are continuous, revealed that meat intake is positively correlated with life expectancies.
	This relationship remains significant when influences of caloric intake So those are loads of factors that are controlled, and it still has this positive correlation with life expectancy.
	And then they carried out what is known as a stepwise linear regression, which basically adds or removes variables from a set of explanatory variables.
	Gradually and for each iteration the statistical significance of each variable is tested.
	What this means is that they're basically trying to create a model of how meat affects your health by looking at the various factors and how they interact with both your life expectancy and also the level of meat consumption and all these different factors Determining it and even then there is a positive correlation with life expectancy and actually In contrast,
	they say, carbohydrate crops showed weak and negative correlations with life expectancy.
	So you're saying too much pasta will kill you?
	Yes.
	Shit, I love pasta.
	A lot of meat will not.
	Which is really interesting, actually.
	And this is their words.
	Conclusion.
	If meat intake is not incorporated into nutrition science for predicting human life expectancy, results could prove inaccurate.
	Josh, please speak English.
	Can I eat burgers?
	Yes.
	Okay, good.
	Burgers are good now.
	Also, what you said about pasta, it's the same with love.
	Too much love will kill you.
	Depends how old you are.
	I think it's fair to say, and maybe I'll get a stick from the types of people like Rorik Nationalist or people who are actual dietitians and things, but just have a balanced diet.
	Don't go crazy on any one thing, right?
	Just have some green veg, have some carbohydrates, have some red meat, just balance it.
	Everything in moderation.
	Yes, because everyone just comes up with an idea.
	Just don't pig out exclusively on Monster Munch and ice cream until you're obese.
	And you'll probably be alright, right?
	That's my diet there.
	Monster Munch and ice cream.
	That's all I eat.
	It's not really.
	So it's also worth mentioning as well, fake meat products linked to heart failure deaths, a study has found as well.
	So there's Bill Gates there, very appropriate.
	So it has found that these fake meat products, such as the Bill Gates-owned lab-grown beef, are linked to cardiovascular diseases and heart failure-related deaths.
	They claim this in this article.
	The results of the study are a major blow to the narrative that vegetarian and vegan diets help to lower the risk of cardiovascular diseases.
	They don't.
	No.
	So, there's also been findings that plant-based foods are linked to heart disease as well, and particularly the ultra-processed kind.
	So basically, the picture that's emerging here out of all of this is If you have food that isn't very processed, it's good for you.
	And the number of processes seems to dictate how bad for your heart something is, and your risk of stroke.
	So just avoid processed foods, and you don't need to worry so much about eating too much meat.
	As long as you're eating good quality stuff, it seems like you'll be fine.
	So Savaloers are off the table.
	Yes.
	Some sausages, I'm afraid, out the window.
	So this has been picked up recently by outlets, and there have been things like this, where Identical Twins went on separate vegan and meat and dairy only diets.
	And the changes that they saw, and you know, even mainstream outlets like this, are talking about How the guy on the meat-only diet gained 10 pounds of muscle over the course of 12 weeks, but also put on fat.
	It only went up 2% from 13% to 15%, but it was also more muscular.
	And then, in the case of the vegan guy, he lost more body fat.
	He dropped 4 pounds and lost 1% of his body fat, but didn't put on any muscle.
	So, I would argue for men, I think meat is better there.
	It doesn't matter if you have a bit of fat, you just want mass.
	I was going to say, it depends if you're starting from being too heavy to begin with.
	That's true.
	Or if you're a skinny boy and you want to put on some bulk.
	I'm talking as a, you know, someone predisposed.
	Also depends on your goals.
	Maybe in a cutting period.
	If you want to expand your field of gravity, maybe take a different approach.
	Cultivating mass to hit the big two hundo.
	Get on the red meat.
	Talking about mass and gravity, let's move on to some space news.
	So, something that's obviously unequivocally good was this.
	This is a first.
	I did a pre-record segment with Harry yesterday where I talked about this, so we're doubling up a little bit here.
	It's alright, I'm only talking about it briefly.
	No, I didn't want to stop you.
	Sorry, carry on.
	This is the last you're going to see of me because Agent 47 has now called out a hit on me for treading on his turf.
	But this was one of those things where when I watched it live...
	Yeah, I'll turn the volume off.
	It was one of those things where sunset, a rocket was caught in the arms of the thing.
	I was just like, that is a historic moment.
	This is amazing.
	And the fact that we can now have these rockets that go up into space and back down again and can be caught.
	That's amazing.
	That's a truly wonderful thing.
	And if we're going to have, you know, things like the colonization of Mars, what people don't realize is this is going to massively decrease the potential cost of that because we can reuse the rockets.
	You know, it's not a one-use rocket and then it comes back down like NASA. SpaceX, because they're run as a private company rather than a government entity, has an incentive to make it as efficient and therefore cost-effective as possible.
	And here's just another angle of it, and you can just see how amazing it is, not only just the footage itself, but the fact, I'll skip ahead a little bit, but you can see just the precision in this.
	And the scale, it's giant.
	I mean, that whole thing's like the size of a block of flats, basically.
	It's absolutely massive.
	Yeah, I count it as among human civilisation's greatest engineering feats.
	I would say so, yeah.
	Quite remarkable.
	You sort of can't believe your eyes, right?
	And speaking of great things, the James Webb Space Telescope, one of Beau's favourites, has found that early galaxies were shaped like surfboards, about 80% of them at least, well, 50 to 80%.
	And apparently this was a bit of a surprise, and here are the different shapes that you can get.
	But most of them are surfboards.
	I didn't know that, but there you go.
	And also, NASA launched a new mission.
	They launched the Europa Clipper, which sounds like an alternative to a Turkish barber.
	It's not.
	In fact, it is a mission to go to Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, isn't it?
	Which is an ice planet that's believed to have liquid water underneath its surface.
	Lots of scientists have argued that there are all of the building blocks of life there, and there could be life underneath the surface, and that's what it's being sent out to investigate.
	And it's got to travel 1.8 billion miles to reach Jupiter, and it will reach it around April of 2030. But this is now in progress.
	I think this is exciting.
	This is very exciting.
	And I mean, I'm kind of sad that I'm not a bit younger, because I think that the more time goes by, the more space is going to be explored.
	I think we haven't entered into the great space exploration.
	Well, it's one of those things, isn't it, where, you know, we're too...
	Too young to explore the world, but too old to explore space.
	So we're sort of in the between period.
	Again, you'll see this over Christmas when my segment goes out on it, but I said mirrored exactly, echoed rather, exactly what you said there, that I'm sort of really, really, in the most profound sense, gutted that I don't get to see the exploration of the solar system, let alone the galaxy.
	I really, really want to do it.
	If it was possible to cryogenically freeze myself, just so that I could come back in a few hundred or even a few thousand years and see human outposts on, well, all the big moons or out to Pluto or whatever, or onto other suns and other solar systems.
	I won't get to see any of that.
	It's so disappointing.
	But we will probably live to see the colonization of Mars.
	I think I'm willing to bet that in one or two thousand years from now, if humanity doesn't destroy itself, I think people are going to be very soft with technology and they're going to look back at us and say, okay, these guys were ultra chads.
	With that beard bow, you're going to scare them all.
	You're going to be like, wow, that guy's like a medieval knight or something.
	A woman on the train the other day said, I didn't know, walked past me and said, oh, you look like someone out of that Viking show.
	I didn't know what Viking shows you were talking about.
	And I said, well, thanks.
	I'll take that.
	You look like a Viking?
	It could be worse.
	Yeah, we're living in the infancy of the exploration of our solar system still.
	Absolutely.
	I'm looking forward to the next thing after Clipper.
	I talked about Europa Clipper in a segment earlier in the year.
	And yeah, it's not a lander.
	It's not going to land on Europa.
	But hopefully in the next generation, I did an open appeal to Elon to send up a lander to Europa so it can sort of melt its way through that icy crust down into the actual subsurface ocean of Europa.
	And hopefully it will be teeming with life.
	And we'll see aliens for the first time in the oceans of Europa.
	So I'm waiting for that.
	Hopefully I'll live long enough to see that.
	That sounds like a weird paraphrasing of Toto's Africa there.
	See, the aliens under the ice of Europa.
	Yeah, yeah.
	But anyway, Elon Musk is saying that in about 20 years' time, one million people will be living on Mars, and he's making it his mission.
	He says that there's going to be uncrewed starships to Mars for the first time in just two years' time.
	And if those go well, the first human crews will be following that in four years.
	So that's all of our living lifetimes.
	People are going to start colonising Mars, assuming everything goes well.
	I think that's a little bit optimistic.
	Lots of people have said that.
	It's very ambitious, but also, considering what SpaceX has achieved so far, it's been very impressive.
	I'm actually quite surprised at how well they've done so far.
	I do need to build some sort of base on the Moon, some sort of space station orbiting the Moon, a bigger, better docking and refuelling apparatus in low Earth orbit.
	But then once all of that is done, and be able to launch starships all the time...
	We can finally launch an invasion of the bug planet.
	We can do a John Carter and actually go there.
	Anyway, I think four years might be a little bit optimistic, but we're supposed to put boots back NASA and SpaceX in collaboration with.
	We're going to put boots back on the moon as early as next year.
	That's the idea.
	It's exciting stuff, isn't it?
	It's nice to feel like humanity's got a good bit of positive momentum because, you know, we've been fussing and fighting, not doing much innovating recently, have we?
	And it'll be nice to see something where you're just like, okay, I'm glad I've lived to see something of note happen in my life.
	But don't you remember nothing ever happens though?
	That's a truism, isn't it?
	That's just always the case.
	Well, in the new year I'll be evaluating that, I think.
	So, another thing as well is we've found a new form of, a new phase, I suppose, of matter.
	A light-matter hybrid.
	And supposedly, I'm just going to read this because this physics is well above my understanding.
	I'm sure there are people in the audience that understand this better.
	It says, In a scientific breakthrough that could reshape our understanding of how light interacts with matter, researchers for the AttoScience and Ultrafast Optics Group at the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona have discovered a new phase of matter aptly named...
	Light-matter hybrid.
	The findings published in Nature Communications not only reveals a previously unseen state of material, but also opens the doors to potential applications in photovoltaics, high-powered electronics and beyond.
	Lots of innovations in electronics are good, considering most things we use have some electrical elements to them.
	And of course, photovoltaics is the process of converting sunlight into electricity using semiconductors.
	And so this could mean that we could make much more efficient solar panels which would be good because of course one good thing about solar panels at least is that you can have them on top of your roof and make money selling energy back to the grid and you're also independent of the energy companies which are At the minute are ripping me off, so not that I'm spiteful or anything, but they're ripping everyone off in Britain pretty much at the minute.
	Most expensive electricity in the world.
	It'd be good if you could have just a few kilometers, square kilometers in the Sahara Desert or the Mojave Desert or something, and that's enough power for the whole world.
	Yeah, well, it's not like the sand's doing much, is it?
	Got a surplus of sand.
	So another thing as well is semiconductors traditionally were made of silicon and we are coming to the end of the limits of silicon semiconductor use because now we started getting into computational speeds where it is a bit of a bottleneck as far as I understand it.
	This is again A little bit outside of my area of expertise, but they've made one from graphene and supposedly it's a single sheet of carbon atoms held together by very strong bonds.
	And so this is also potentially very good.
	Might be able to make very tiny quantum computers.
	Who knows?
	But this seems very, very positive.
	This is one of those things that doesn't sound particularly sexy, so to speak, but it's going to have absolutely massive implications for our electronics.
	And then another thing which is very big as well.
	Graphene is a remarkable thing.
	I remember reading up all about it a few years ago.
	Once we can mass produce it.
	Then it will change the game in all sorts of fields.
	It's sort of a wonder material, a futuristic wonder material.
	We can do it, but, you know, mass producing cheaply enough, kilometres of the stuff for industry, if and when we master that, it will be a game changer, I think.
	That take, I'm sure, will age well.
	Pretty sure.
	Well, yeah, I mean, it's already in use in a very useful way, so I think you're safe.
	And then the final thing I wanted to end on is lithium, obviously, has been a very sought-after material.
	There have been lots of lithium mines in Central Africa, and the Chinese have been Scrambling for Africa against European influences to try and get their hands on lithium because it's used in lithium-ion batteries and it turns out that there's now been a cheaper alternative in thermal batteries which could replace these and I'm not entirely sure of the pros and cons of it.
	Maybe it's still not quite time yet but it's at least cheaper and more scalable as an alternative to the lithium-ion batteries.
	And these heat batteries can also store excess electricity as heat in materials like bricks or graphite, which can of course reach temperatures of over 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and then that heat can be stored and then released when needed, which is great for things, and they list this in the article, for manufacturing steel, cement and chemicals.
	So if the production of these things becomes cheaper, that means the cost of building stuff in particular becomes cheaper.
	And so it might make houses more affordable if steel and cement become cheaper.
	Here's hoping.
	Talking about building, at first glance I thought that was an aerial view of some Chinese building project.
	They do look like that, don't they?
	And then I see the pallets underneath, it's like, oh no, I'm looking at something else instead.
	So yes, I wanted to focus on some more technological and scientific innovations, because these sorts of things bubble on in the background, they don't get the same circulation as bad political news, but there are lots of ways in which things are actually getting better, and I think that Focusing on this sort of thing is important because it gives you a view of the world not necessarily going entirely to hell.
	And I think there's always got to be something worth fighting for, and I think that things can indeed trend in a positive direction.
	We've got a long ways to go before that happens politically, but at least technologically and scientifically, in some areas things seem to be going alright.
	No, it's good.
	It's interesting.
	I've long argued behind the scenes over at Lotus Eaters that we should do more science-y things.
	Interesting white pills.
	I agree, yeah.
	Well, obviously I agree.
	I did it.
	But we've got a bunch of comments here.
	Beau is my favourite.
	He has epic beard energy.
	That's from AllMyTom.
	And Ryleion says, well wishes, Stelios.
	You alright?
	I'm not particularly well, but it's okay.
	Well, you've kept on like a trooper.
	I just can't stop thinking about the icy crust of Europa.
	You're making it sound like a nice pie.
	Nice juicy crust.
	Europa Clipper is going to kick some ice.
	So Bo, look how Jeffrey Sachs explained the failed coup in South Korea at Tucker.
	If you want to understand propaganda, MSN lunacy about North Korean troops in the Ukrainian war, it is connected.
	I only saw a little clip of that earlier today, but I do mean to watch that whole thing.
	So thank you, yeah, I will watch that whole thing.
	And Dragon Lady Chris says, Agreed, I watched my grandmother deteriorate over 10 years of Alzheimer's.
	Absolutely horrible.
	Breakthroughs in this research is something to celebrate.
	It is indeed and actually Alzheimer's Research is one of the few charities beyond paying taxes that I've ever donated to because it's one of those things where I'm just like actually yeah this is really good for humanity and helping this along is actually a good thing and I hope that it's one of those things that at least is receiving due attention and May well see a cure within our lifetimes potentially,
	or at least significant strides towards preventing it and treating it better.
	We could have a, you know, late night DJ voice show talking about space.
	That would be fine.
	I'll do that.
	I can talk about space till the cows come home.
	Happy to.
	Gonna be out in the field with a telescope.
	Do a sky at night.
	A Lotus Eater's sky at night.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I'd love to do that.
	If we ever make decent enough profits, we'd get a Lotus Eater's telescope.
	A relatively small one, but...
	We'd never see you again.
	You'd only come out at night for the stars.
	Never beating the vampire accusations now.
	Anyway, here are the video comments.
	And now a little bit more wholesome, Christmassy content.
	These items here are things that my family has made at the Corning Museum of Glass as kind of a follow-up to my previous videos on the Museum of Glass.
	I mean, this is mostly helped by the artists that work there full-time.
	So, yeah, you can see some of the projects we've done.
	Hey guys, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
	You too.
	They're very impressive as well, to be fair.
	I thought they were professionally made and you got them as souvenirs, but to know that your family worked on them, well you've got a family of glass blowers there clearly.
	So I've tried my hand at it and it went horribly.
	Every time I got in any way involved in the process, it made it worse.
	Clarkson went full commie there, didn't he?
	The sky The Clarkson dynasty will reign for a thousand years.
	Jeremy's great leap forward.
	Gonna have Sputnik fields.
	There'll be a hammer in every home and a fuel-guzzling sports car.
	I have come here today to settle the Santa argument.
	I did some citizen journalism and I traveled to the North Pole to get some true photo evidence.
	Here you are.
	And while I was there, Santa, my good friend Nick, told me to tell you something.
	Dear Lotus Eaters and those who watch the Lotus Eaters, may you have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
	Well, thank you, Sophie, and thank you, Santa Claus, as well.
	You too.
	The cat's like, keep it down.
	I'm trying to sleep over here.
	No, yeah, you too.
	Merry Christmas.
	Happy New Year.
	Oh, who's it going to be?
	Based tier list.
	Today we have Rory who...
	Does anyone understand Rory?
	His ways are inscrutable.
	I don't think we can place him.
	He must go into the void.
	Unclassed.
	He's truly outside of classification.
	Classification other.
	Miscellaneous folder.
	Unknowable.
	Transcendental, some might say.
	Just remembered I was making this into a gun channel.
	Above is a Colt Model 1847 Walker Revolt.
	Originally made in cap and ball, each cylinder held 60 grains of black powder, making it the most potent sidearm ever issued by the U.S. military.
	They commanded respect, but were a bit heavy.
	They were also the preferred sidearm of Santa Claus.
	You think I got this job because I'm fat and jolly?
	I've watched this film, by the way.
	Yeah, I really enjoyed...
	Don't blow your hand off as well, alright, if you're not careful.
	I liked that drunken phone call that St Nicholas made, and then he wasn't allowed to work for a couple of years.
	St Nicholas was really bad for doing that, wasn't he?
	Yes.
	Yeah, St Nicholas leaving abusive voicemails on his wife's, on Mrs Claus' answer phone a few years back.
	Mrs Claus didn't deserve that.
	He was down a rabbit hole and it was hard for him.
	Yeah.
	Ryan Hennigan says, it was actually your parents that punched Arius at the Council of Nicaea.
	Sorry, what was that?
	I zoned out for a split second then.
	It was actually your parents that punched Arius at the Council of Nicaea.
	Okay.
	In response to the Santa deniers, because of course we all know that Santa Claus exists.
	Wasn't St Basil after the Nicenean Council?
	Who cares about him?
	He's just an ingredient in Italian food.
	That's his legacy.
	He doesn't bring me presents, he brings me nice Italian cuisine, which is almost good enough.
	Baron Von Warhawk says, my cat died yesterday after 17 years of being a wonderful pet.
	Can I get an F in the chat for his memory?
	Rip Misha the cat.
	Well, I'm very sorry to hear that.
	And I had a cat from the age of about six years old.
	And only a couple of years ago she died.
	And it was incredibly sad because...
	That's a part of the family after a while.
	Sad.
	But thankfully I went back home and visited shortly before.
	But she'd got so old that she could barely move, so it's a bit of a mercy really.
	So, would you like to read some comments, Stelios?
	Yes.
	I can read them for you if your voice is a bit dodgy.
	I'll try.
	Justin B. There was a lawyer near where I lived about 15 years ago that advertised that he was an expert in Sharia.
	And there was a town about a decade ago that tried to convert to Sharia as the dominant law within its bounds.
	This has been a long time coming.
	Yep, it has.
	And that's why I said, I talked about the article in 2009. I think the first court was in 1982 in England.
	That's what I found.
	Oh really?
	Yeah.
	Blimey.
	Santa giving Bo shampoo.
	My dad is a delivery driver in the north of England and for over a decade now he has seen shops run by Muslims with one entrance for men and another for women.
	Nothing has been done because the police don't see British laws as applying to Muslims.
	Sophie Liv, what someone also pointed out to me is that technology has also changed things significantly.
	Back in the day, you just immigrated.
	You would be cut off from your family and friends.
	You were forced to integrate with those around you or be socially isolated.
	Now they can just Skype with their mom and old friends, so there's no need to form friendships in a new area, which is also a problem.
	David Ward...
	Sadly, relativism is the current Western zeitgeist.
	This is why disgusting things like Mohammedanism gets a grip.
	We have to read the next one.
	Go on then, go on then.
	It's really funny.
	Alex Ogle.
	Is Lotus Eaters being turned into a Sharia court?
	Who's this beardy imam in the purple shirt?
	Josh, get control over your co-hosts and bring them up to your seritorial standards.
	Well, thank you.
	Imam?
	I fancy myself a caliph, if anything.
	What's that?
	Sorry, I don't speak Arabic.
	Okay, Santa Giving Beau Shampoo says, Once this war is over, I'll be looking forward to seeing Boris Johnson on trial at the Hague for crimes against peace, as established by the Atlantic Charter in 1941. Wouldn't that be nice, wouldn't it?
	If people did pay for their crimes, would be nice, wouldn't it?
	Some sort of justice.
	Yeah, I've forgotten what that's like.
	Paul Neubauer says, The only reasonable end to Russia's genocidal conquest of Ukraine is to give Ukraine the means to win.
	Any other option is insanely expensive and prolongs and expands the war.
	Sorry, and expands the war.
	Not for as long as it takes for victory, only victory, because the alternative is deadly awful.
	Could have been written by a spokesman at the State Department.
	I don't really buy that.
	Dr David Ferugia says for your segment, Starmer is trying to punish the Russians for failing to properly implement communism in the 20th century.
	Putin's not commie enough for Starmer.
	I mean, Russia's still relatively communistic.
	Loads of their industries are state-owned, more so than any, you know, Western country, really.
	Kevin Fox says, yes, Starmlin's dedication to keeping the Ukraine war going has nothing to do with his buddy-buddy attitude to Blackrock, who are buying up vast swathes of Ukraine and rolling in cash from brokering arms deals.
	That's a good point, yeah.
	Okay.
	Cole's masterfully minimal use of null oil says, a system is what it does.
	The point is to spill innocent blood because they are demonic.
	Yeah, sure.
	Bradley Higgins says, I'm loving Josh's white pill segments this month.
	Can we make it regular?
	It just makes the future seem more promising and worth fighting for.
	Well, even if the future is bleak, it's still worth fighting for.
	But thank you very much.
	Eloise says, fan of the white pill science and tech and animal monkey stuff.
	Agree, more of this please, particularly in the cold months.
	It's alright.
	I'm going to have nothing but white pilling for...
	Well, maybe not that.
	That's a bit of a strong promise.
	It came out wrong.
	New Year's resolution.
	I'm going to do at least once a month a positive segment.
	That's a standard I can keep by.
	Let's see if I can max you.
	Alright, let's have a white pill off, shall we?
	White pill maxing.
	Furious Dan says, something good happened, implying something ever happens.
	Something did happen in these instances, I'm afraid.
	This was a segment of happenings.
	Although, generally speaking, my default, like 95% of the time, nothing ever happens.
	But 5% of the time, something is happening.
	That is my...
	I've got it down to a mathematical formula.
	I think the world of men is always in flux.
	There's always stuff happening.
	That's truly the real reality.
	Well, I think when people say nothing ever happened, what their meaning is there's no meaningful geopolitical change.
	I also talked about this with Harry in one of his, the other pre-records that will come out over Christmas.
	Harry's talking about the nothing ever happens meme.
	Anyway.
	So, Justin B says, they're only now trialling exposure therapy for food allergies.
	I did one a decade ago to cure my peanut allergy.
	And then on a similar note, someone online says, good news, they can stop banning peanut butter from classrooms and segregating the peanut-free kids.
	I feel like shaming people for peanut allergies, because you're actively depriving me of, you know, a food.
	Your means of sustenance.
	Your weakness is meaning I can't do what I want, and that annoys me.
	I think Conor got a peanut butter.
	That was a peanut thing Yeah I think, yeah, but he can't be around a peanut in a radius of three metres.
	Really?
	It's that bad?
	I didn't know it was that bad.
	He can't even be in the proximity of a peanut.
	Next debate we have, we'll just throw him a peanut.
	It's a shame because ready salted KPs are lovely.
	I like peanuts, yeah.
	I love it, yeah.
	You need to be careful how you say that.
	Sorry, dry roasted is delicious.
	Anyway, we are out of time.
	I hope you enjoyed this and we'll be back again tomorrow.
	I'll be back again tomorrow too.
	And thank you for watching.
	I think Common Sense Crusade is after this.
	Half an hour after.

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