Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Feb. 13, 2025 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:30:14

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1100

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for the 13th of February 2025. It's almost Valentine's Day.
	It's Valentine's Eve.
	It is.
	I hope you've got all your gifts.
	I hope you're feeling particularly romantic.
	I know I am.
	Yeah.
	Hopefully no one's panicking here.
	But today I'm joined by Beau.
	And Harry?
	I just know that there's somebody with a girlfriend or a wife who's watching this right now and, shit, it's Valentine's Day tomorrow!
	Oh god, I forgot again!
	The reason I brought it up is for that very public service of...
	People inevitably forget, don't they?
	The supermarkets will not be out of chocolate just yet.
	That's true.
	You can still make a very quick trip there.
	Once the podcast's done.
	Down to Texaco and get a...
	Milk tray and some crappy flowers real quick.
	It works.
	It works.
	Whatever works.
	But today we're going to be talking about the chaos in the Congo.
	Trump and his impact on geopolitics, I suppose, in a general sense.
	A very nice general segment.
	And Bo is going to be very nice and white-pilling today in talking about the prospect of an asteroid colliding with the Earth.
	Do monger profit Bo over here.
	No, no.
	I'd put money on it.
	It doesn't hit us.
	Sorry to disappoint you.
	Damn!
	I know I'm on Team Asteroid as well, but better luck next time.
	Team Asteroid?
	I'm joking.
	Cheering it on.
	I mean, it depends where it hits.
	But on a completely unrelated note, Africa.
	No, I'm joking.
	But also not really.
	It could hit Africa, by the way.
	That's true.
	It could also hit South America, India, but I don't want to spoil too much.
	You may or may not have heard about the conflict between the Congo and Rwanda.
	I wouldn't be surprised if you hadn't.
	And you might be saying, Josh, what are you bringing this up for?
	There's always conflict in Africa.
	Is this news?
	And I would say yes, it is, because there are multiple different reasons it is important for people in the Western world.
	Not only is it interesting, but also the fact that these represent very mineral-rich areas.
	Certain sides of the conflict seem to be backed more by Western line powers than others, in that the Chinese, obviously, and BRICS more generally, are trying to align themselves.
	Obviously, the Chinese are very keen to get influence in Africa because of all of the minerals.
	and there's also the fact that lots of Western money is pouring into these countries, and so I wanted to look at all of this and how it intersects with the sort of conflict more generally, and I'm just going to presume that nobody knows anything, because until I did the digging, I didn't either.
	And so here is a size comparison of Rwanda in orange versus, I think that's the Democratic People's Republic of the Congo, isn't it?
	The longer named one, because there's also another Congo here.
	Just called Congo.
	Which has a shorter name, yes.
	So to be clear, it's the big one versus that tiny little country there.
	And you might think, well, that's going to be quick.
	Well, not actually.
	Rwanda's got a lot of experience murdering people.
	That is true, and that's an excellent segue.
	So a lot of this kicked off following the Rwandan genocide of 1994, and pretty much there's been a breakdown of relations between Rwanda and the Congo ever since.
	And so after the Tutsi rebels, obviously led by Paul Kagame, their current leader of Rwanda, they put a stop to the genocide.
	About a million ethnic Hutus, who were the perpetrators of the genocide, fled to the Congo, basically fearing reprisals for what they had done, which makes perfect sense.
	So the fleeing Hutus and many of the ethnic Hutus that were already in the Congo formed the democratic forces of the liberation of Rwanda, The clue is sort of in the name.
	They wanted to overthrow the Tutsi Rwandan government, don't they?
	And then, since that, the Rwandan army has invaded twice, accusing the Congo's government of supporting their Hutu enemies, which, to be fair, is a pretty good case for that.
	And there's also their own pro-Rwandan rebel group in the Congo, known as M23. Rwanda denies that it's backing them, but it's pretty obvious because they're supplying them and all but instructing them on how to conduct their war in collaboration with their formal military.
	And they're supported as well, which further supports this notion, with 4,000 Rwandan troops, which sort of suggests that yes, they are supporting them.
	It's also reported as well, although I've not been able to confirm this, that Uganda is also backing these rebels.
	But who are...
	M23. So here's an example of some of them there.
	They were created in 2012 and they're led obviously by ethnic Tutsis and they claim that they need to take up arms to protect themselves and given the recent genocide I can sort of understand where they're coming from.
	They take their name from a peace agreement that was signed on the 23rd of March 2009. And they had previously seized the Congolese city of Goma, which, spoiler alert, they've done again recently and we're going to talk about that.
	But they were forced to retreat and suffered a series of defeats.
	And then there was a sort of peace agreement where they agreed to be integrated into the Rwandan army in return for a promise that Tutsis would be protected.
	But then in 2021, the group took up arms again because they said that the promises had been broken.
	And what we're seeing here is a continuation of that.
	So, the leader of the group is this guy.
	That's not very zoomed in.
	If you could zoom in a little bit.
	See this cheerful chappy there?
	There he is.
	This is the leader of the rebel group.
	His name is Sultani Makagengi.
	Oh, Makagenga, sorry.
	Get it right.
	And he's a Congolese Tutsi that previously fought in the Rwandan army.
	So, the links with the army are pretty clear.
	On a completely unrelated note, we also have a merch store.
	Seamless transition.
	You're welcome.
	I couldn't think of any good way to segue that.
	We have some Islander 2 merch that is going to be disappearing off the store when we launch Islander 3, so if you like the look of the Islander t-shirts or the mugs, you need to pick those up before we take them off the store and move on to the next line.
	So it's the sort of final call for that.
	Have we got any Kagame merch?
	Not yet.
	The art of the deal.
	Millions and millions of pounds for your country in return for absolutely nothing.
	Every single time.
	Works over and over again.
	He's a canny operator, I'll give him that.
	He really is.
	So, this is the map that's being used to justify it.
	This is a sort of pre...
	Pre-colonial.
	Yeah, I suppose.
	Whereby, you can see, it's encompassing a much larger territory.
	I think it's the stuff in Lu in particular that they're interested in.
	That certainly pushes into Congo territory.
	It does indeed, yeah.
	You can see that they're saying, well, we controlled this territory before and, you know, we have a claim to it, which, to be fair, I can sort of see.
	But the important thing is that the Eastern Congo has deposits of minerals estimated to be valued at around 24 trillion US dollars, which is a lot of money.
	Needless to say.
	And things like gold and tin and Colton, which I wasn't familiar with, but is used in many electronics, like phones and cameras, is abundant there.
	And so it's going to be a very important region if you want to make a lot of money, which I imagine they probably do.
	And I've seen public figures.
	This is a Rwandan news anchor talking about these maps as a justification for it.
	And I'm going to read...
	ever so quickly what she says they eliminated our people who was born in rwanda same language same culture that they are congolese which is fine based on the post-colonial borders and they are after they are being told what they are not congolese being i'm reading this directly by the way being killed forced to leave to go where what are they are they rwandans of course no they are refugees here too they don't have rights in their homeland
	they are forced to flee around the world and western countries which are looting their land tend to give them refuge yeah that narrative seems to be going on that the west is exploiting the conflict for minerals but also that's sort of what is going on here from both domestic sides as well so i don't know what they're on about Really?
	I don't think the West has anything to do with it.
	I don't really understand that first paragraph you were reading there.
	It's not the most well-written, is it?
	No.
	Can you translate?
	I think she supports what's going on.
	Oh, okay, alright, okay.
	I think that's the gist of it.
	The important thing that's gone on recently is this, that M23, that rebel group, the pro-Rwandan group, has captured the city of Goma, which is just off of the border between the Congo and Rwanda.
	And it's a city of a million people.
	And it's also important, if I show you actually where it is.
	So here you can see, there's the border of Rwanda.
	There's the lake we saw.
	And the city is just there over the border.
	But this is important because it's a trading and transport hub for metals and minerals.
	And they process things like the gold tin and colton we were talking about earlier.
	And apparently, according to the UN, if they're to be believed, last December around 120 tonnes of colton was being sent by M23 to Rwanda every four weeks.
	So it seems like they've sort of capitalised on these mining operations already by taking control.
	And they've also noted a rise in Rwanda mineral exports, which suggests that they're already utilising these resources.
	They've also, the rebels in it, the M23 rebels, have threatened to march on the capital Kinshasa, the capital of the Congo.
	But that's unlikely because it's 1,600 miles away.
	So I don't see that.
	Happening anytime soon.
	It's a very long march, isn't it?
	But yes, as you can see, they've still got quite a way to go because the capital's all the way around here somewhere.
	Down on the eastern border there.
	There you go.
	So I don't see them getting to here.
	Sorry, western border.
	From all the way over here.
	And one of the countries with the least amount of infrastructure in the world.
	So just hike through the entire country, basically.
	I don't think it's going to happen.
	What's more likely...
	Zoom in so we can see the incredible road network that I'm sure the Democratic Republic has.
	There it is.
	There's a few roads, I'm sure, paved the entire way.
	Should I do the random street view test?
	Oh wait, there's nothing there.
	Oh.
	Wait, can you not...
	That's the only point that comes up.
	Oh, okay, it's a hotel.
	And it's a hotel.
	Never mind.
	We're losing focus.
	It's also worth mentioning as well that there are Western mercenaries involved.
	You can see these people are not African.
	What gave it away?
	How can you tell?
	Are you racist or something?
	It's their manner of dress, obviously.
	But yes, these people, I'm not sure who they're fighting for.
	The highest bidder, I'd imagine.
	Yeah, I would imagine probably Rwanda.
	But we'll have to see.
	It's also worth mentioning as well that South Africa sent a peacekeeping force that surrendered after only taking 13 casualties.
	Here's a video of them waving a white flag, but you know what that looks like.
	So there are also apparently UN peacekeeping troops as well that have been keeping the peace, supposedly, since 1999. And they have 10,000 troops there, most of which are not able to actually carry out offensives, so they can only fire at people if they're fired upon.
	And so, as with many UN things, they're not that useful, really, other than for just keeping order.
	Not doing a great job of that, either.
	No.
	So let's actually have a look at what's been going on, because, spoiler alert, there's a horrible atrocity about to be discussed, if you don't want to hear about it.
	Here is your warning.
	This is a segment about African warfare.
	I know.
	So, in the city of Goma...
	There was a prison and there was a female wing to the prison and when the rebels turned up they sexually assaulted all of the women and then went on to burn them alive in the prisons.
	Which is awful.
	I don't know how much more barbaric you can get.
	There is a video here of people at this prison.
	Seemingly just running away.
	I think these are some of the male prisoners that have just escaped the prison during the conflict, which is exactly what a war-torn region needs, is all of their criminals released.
	But you get the gist of it now.
	So I've seen this as well.
	It's very difficult to actually piece together from videos what's going on.
	There's a video here of people seemingly just leaving of their own free will, but there are, you can see, Soldiers with weapons as well.
	Not sure if they're being forcibly removed, but it all seems fairly peaceful.
	It could just be that they're guarding the flow of people.
	It's very difficult to tell.
	But there have also been videos of the M23 rebels getting a good reception.
	Here's one here.
	If we cut it up a little bit.
	Hear them whistling and cheering.
	Sort of marching with them.
	I get the idea.
	Let me get this all straight.
	Goma is in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
	And M23 are, as far as the Congolese government are concerned, are rebels.
	They're pro-Ugandan.
	Clearly pro-Ugandan.
	Sorry, pro-Rwandan.
	They are also pro-Ugandan as well, potentially.
	Sorry, but pro-Rwandan.
	And so, as a general, broadly speaking, the people of Goma are pro-Rwandan, then.
	Well, if they're welcoming these people, the M23 guys, as liberators...
	This is unclear, because no one's actually said where this is.
	Sorry, I need to click on it again.
	The headline is that things are unclear.
	Yes, exactly.
	As with all conflicts in Africa, but it does seem like there is some organic support.
	That's the point I'm trying to make, is that there clearly are people that would rather be associated with them than the Congo.
	However, there have been some interesting activities, like looting, and I don't know what was going on here, because what they're looting is leaves and carpets.
	If I could do...
	I don't know why they're stealing palm leaves.
	A shortage, clearly.
	They're looting the leaves, they're looting the carpets.
	And some of them, I assume, are good people.
	I mean, the carpets I can understand.
	Broken into someone's car, nicking their stuff.
	It's basically overseen a breakdown of Law& Order, more so than usual.
	Of course.
	To Western standards, it wasn't orderly to begin with.
	And there are lots of other examples of this.
	Here are some Western-looking houses being looted.
	You can see here these may be sort of compounds, house humanitarian workers, UN workers.
	I would be surprised if this was owned by the native population.
	Warlord.
	That's true.
	But I'd also be surprised that they would be looting norms through.
	Yeah.
	I think it's just a western compound, to be honest.
	And they're looting and setting it on fire.
	But mostly peaceful, though.
	Yeah.
	And here's some more looting, if you hadn't had enough.
	It just seems to be the default response.
	If law and order breaks down, then everyone just starts stealing stuff.
	And you can see some other ones as well.
	It's very similar when we had the 2011 riots in England as well, to be fair.
	People just like to steal if they get the opportunity.
	This is also the capital of the Congo, which, remember, 1,600 miles away.
	And they're still looting in their own capital when there's actually no...
	Whatsoever.
	This is obviously...
	Perfectly reasonable reaction, then.
	The Rwandans are coming.
	They're a thousand miles away.
	Quick, start looting!
	Do we know, like, these people, for example, other than perhaps just complete opportunists, are they sort of pro-Rwandan people?
	I don't know.
	It's impossible to tell.
	I think you have to sort of be able to...
	Live in that area and tell who is what ethnicity.
	And I can't tell that from CCTV footage.
	I'm not that good, unfortunately.
	Letting the side down, Josh.
	What did we hire you for?
	I'm trying.
	I thought you were a scientist, man.
	Haven't got my hands on enough callipers, I'm afraid.
	But anyway, they also set fire to the US Embassy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as well, because of course they did.
	Even though the US is not really directly involved.
	Here it is.
	Has the US even made a statement on this?
	The bitter irony is, they've condemned Rwanda.
	And the Congo responds by burning their embassy.
	A bit strange.
	I don't really know the justification for this, but it is something that did happen.
	And what has the response been to all of this going on?
	Because, you know, this isn't necessarily something new.
	However, it's still very important because it is going to inform the political climate in the West because, well, I don't want to spoil what I'm going to get onto, as well as the fact that control of these mineral deposits is very, very important.
	How many Congolese are we getting?
	Don't presage what I'm going to say.
	How many?
	Rip the band-aid off.
	Rip the plaster off.
	Do it.
	It's only been discussed.
	Nothing's actually been said.
	But, obviously, the leaders of the Congo have urged young people to enlist in the army, which is somewhat expected.
	Here's an article from the Washington Post from 2019 talking about how women are actually fighting as well.
	I actually see some women on the front lines.
	I'm sure that USAID money for all those programs are...
	Going to good use there.
	Is it the Congo or the Democratic Republic of Congo that's one of the sexual assault capitals of the entire world?
	Yeah, I thought so.
	We'll be getting onto that, don't worry.
	Great minds, Harry.
	So yes, their neighbours, the neighbouring countries around them, have encouraged them to talk with the rebels and the government to try and come to some sort of peaceable solution.
	I think they're concerned about it bleeding out and causing more disruption.
	And there's also been a summit of...
	The East African bloc demanding an immediate ceasefire and encourage dialogue with the rebels as well, sort of going along with the surrounding nations.
	The UN, the US, France and the UK have condemned the actions and not placed sanctions on Rwanda.
	And I think that the reason for this is actually they're sort of supportive of Rwanda because they're more Western aligned than the Congo is.
	And if Rwanda gets access to these minerals, then it means Rwanda is going to be selling them to us.
	I think Kagami is a very convincing man.
	So it's sort of one of those things where they're publicly saying, oh, we don't support it, but, you know, it's like, don't worry, Paul.
	We are top guys.
	I think that's what's going on.
	And then...
	Paul Kagami needs me!
	And the South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has accused the Rwandan Defence Force militia of inciting the conflict in the first place.
	Remember, the South Africans suffered 13 casualties before cowardly giving up.
	And this has led to basically Paul Kagame coming out and saying, if you respond with your military, I'll respond with mine.
	And it's also worth mentioning as well, we were talking about this yesterday in the office, but...
	It's very likely that Paul Kagame once had a Twitter burner account which he went under the name Richard Goldstone and one of the things he did was call the African Union useless and call South Africa's president a black this is his words by the way a black retard.
	Why he said this I know they have their political disagreements but why that was the go-to One, I do not know.
	I don't know if you've seen, there's a meme image that comes up of the composites of an English man's face and a German man's face, and it's basically the same thing, and it's the English man telling the German, I hate your kind, stay away from me.
	It reminds me of that.
	But yes, Rwanda and South Africa do not get on, and...
	Let's get on to the do-gooders, which are not actually do-gooders.
	They're terrible people that will bring a ruin to our civilisation.
	But here is Carla Denya, who I think represents Bristol, the Green Party.
	She wants to bring civilians.
	We must be opening up safe routes so that the Sudanese refugees, she's also talking about the Democratic Republic of the Congo there, are able to settle in the UK. And she was appealing to the Foreign Secretary about this.
	There are people trying to say, well, we've seen what they're doing over there.
	What we need is more of that over here.
	Bring them to the West Country.
	Put them in Bristol.
	To be fair, they would fit in in Bristol these days.
	Put them in Bath.
	Put them in the most lovely places in southern England.
	Why not?
	Why not?
	Somewhere that they've never heard of before where they can fit in overnight.
	So, may I remind everyone what Harry alluded to earlier, that...
	The Democratic Republic of the Congo is often referred to pretty openly as the rape capital of the world, which is not the kind of place that you want to be getting citizenry from, is it?
	I wouldn't want to offend liberal sensibilities, but that is not because of geographic location or some top-down culture that's been imposed on them.
	That's because of the people who live there.
	That's how they behave.
	It won't change when they come over here.
	And here is...
	CNN admitting this as well, just in case, you know, you think I'm being uncharitable.
	If even the left-wing media is just like, well, actually, you know, it is kind of true.
	It's also worth mentioning, here is The Guardian talking to a soldier 11 years ago, and this soldier had sexually assaulted 53 different women, and that's just one soldier.
	Worth mentioning.
	It's also worth mentioning as well...
	A 2010 study of 18 sub-Saharan countries concluded that over half the population believes in witchcraft, magic and voodoo.
	Which leads to this.
	So there's an interview of rebel soldiers in the Congo and they were asked why do they do this?
	And their answer was that it gives them magic powers to make them better at fighting.
	That is their real justification.
	All of the soldiers they spoke to admitted to several sexual assaults, and they all cited this justification.
	And the person interviewing them, I'm not going to play it because it's quite long, but it will be in the reading list on the website if you wanted to actually watch the whole thing.
	He asked them, well, is this like a patriotic duty?
	Because some of the women sort of willingly just accept that this is what...
	What is normal in their country, and so they see it as a sort of twisted act of, well, I'm supporting the troops, but in a very horrible and disgusting way.
	And it's also worth mentioning as well, it's Empire of Dust, isn't it, the documentary that this is from, where the workers in the Congo are trying to build roads, and the Chinese overseer, I suppose, is just frustrated that...
	They're completely incapable of it.
	There are some fantastic clips from this that we've shown on the podcast before, but you should really track the whole thing down.
	And again, this behaviour does not change the second they come into Europe.
	It does not change by giving them access to big swanky hotels and benefits and Western civilisation and culture.
	It does not change when you try to teach them not to rape people.
	This is how these people are.
	And what's worse is we are putting money into these countries for free.
	The UK taxpayers spent £9.5 million supporting accountability and inclusion in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
	Apparently.
	I don't know why that is necessary.
	Just a massive waste of money.
	Accountability for what?
	All the rapes they commit?
	Because they don't care.
	That's not happening, yeah.
	Inclusion of what?
	More rapists.
	The US as well.
	Over a billion, just about, in US aid grants to the Congo.
	And here, Rwanda receives more US dollars in aid per capita than all its neighbours, and 40% of Rwanda's budget is made up of foreign aid.
	And yes, I wonder which side they're going to align themselves with.
	I wonder why this is going on.
	It's obvious that they're basically buying Rwanda's loyalty because they have all the minerals.
	That's what's going on.
	It is worth mentioning as well that Paul Kagame actually said that Trump did a good thing in getting rid of USAID even though it damages them.
	He says, I agree with this.
	Even though we're hurt, we're going to learn some lessons about how to do these things ourselves.
	That's a remarkably moderate way to address it.
	I was not expecting that kind of reaction, fair play.
	Yeah, so fair enough on his part.
	You know, not that he would turn down free money, understandably.
	And it's also worth mentioning as well, of course, that Donald Trump...
	has been very critical of South Africa and so Paul Kagame has a common enemy with Trump there in the ANC and it seems like there's a coordinated effort between Trump and the sort of pro-Western African countries to turn on the South Africans which will be very interesting because if basically the entire continent is against them And the world's most powerful country, then that's going to be very, very important.
	And it could determine the fate of Africa.
	Because at the minute, there's a sort of second scramble for Africa going on, where they're scrambling for just resources, basically.
	It's all about resources for electronics.
	Rare earth minerals.
	That's exactly it.
	And yeah, this is something that gets overlooked, but is actually very important in the grand scheme of things.
	Not only because we could get the refugees, we're paying a lot of money into the countries, but also...
	It could severely impede our technological development if we don't have resources being exported to us from these countries.
	All right, we've got a rumble rent.
	Dropping in Oz as I'm on a lunch break at work, says Johnny Logo.
	Here's a tip for the Lotus Gang.
	Have a good day, lads.
	I'll catch you up on the vid later.
	Well, that's very kind, and I hope your work day goes all right.
	And thank you.
	Wonderful.
	Well, I wanted to take a look at some of the more recent developments that have been going on with Trump's foreign policy, because that is one of the most important things that's going on.
	Obviously, they've got the domestic policy, but the foreign policy, especially USAID, is stuff that's affecting the rest of the world, including Europe.
	So it's always interesting to look at.
	First, something that directors even...
	More, something that impacts us directly, is whether you've bought our merch or not, which you should do.
	This Islander merch is only available for a very limited time now, before the release of Islander 3, so you should pick it up while you still can, or else Josh will not eat tonight.
	It's true.
	I'm wasting away.
	He's basically destitute without this, so...
	Look at this.
	It's not even a ring of fat anymore.
	There's not even a healthy paunch there now.
	It's just...
	waste.
	Anyway...
	That's right.
	So, on the subject of USAID, something interesting came out that I saw earlier today that I wanted to highlight everyone...
	Which was that there is a small nation, if you want to know why USAID, it's good that it's been paused for the 90 days and hopefully most of it will be cut entirely, if not all of it, if we're perfectly honest, because it was literally just a way for the American deep state to fund leftism across the world.
	There is a tiny nation in Africa, between South Africa and Mozambique, called Eswatini, that last year received 50% And this person,
	and Cringe Panda has included an excerpt to show what kind of culture Eswatini has from a substack post of somebody who went to go and conduct foreign aid there for a few years.
	And she explained her experiences while she was there, and she said it was an HIV vector, so there was HIV money available.
	At one point, a local HIV-related NGO purchased a billboard over the largest public transit hub in Eswatini, which said, "Are you thinking of raping a child today?
	Think twice of the consequences." I mean, I agree with the sentiment.
	Here's a picture.
	What?
	Yep.
	How is this real?
	$50 million.
	$50 million to this country.
	It's also worth mentioning as well that Eswatini, as its name suggests, is very small and is entirely surrounded by South Africa.
	It's a little tiny dot on the map that you have to look quite hard to even see.
	So $50 million for such a small, basically a micronation, is a lot of money.
	Which has such a problem with...
	Child sexual assault that you have to put up billboards for it.
	Is this what US taxpayer money was supposed to be going to?
	When the founders enshrined the Constitution and the other founding documents and the Declaration of Independence, is this what they thought their nation would be putting money towards less than 300 years later?
	I'm gonna try and sort of...
	Reconcile the rage of some of the American taxpayers in the audience and point out that it's a lot better than drag shows in Ecuador and gender studies in Albania.
	At least it's preventing something that I think everyone wants to prevent.
	That's true, but at the same time I think a culture where you have to go this far is beyond repairing.
	And you can throw as much money at the wall as you want.
	It's not going to do anything.
	The thing is, that seems to suggest that the consequences they're worried about is HIV, not the psychological devastation of the child or anything.
	Not just the moral awfulness of it in the first place.
	Yeah, a lot is awful and wrong with this picture, but that's just one of the things that I wanted to let everybody know your taxpayer money for the next little bit of time is not going towards.
	Another thing it's not going towards right now is...
	Apparently Rory Stewart's wife, she runs a company that has, let me see if I can find the name of it, the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, that was getting money from USAID, and now that the payments have been cut, she's lost out on a million dollars.
	Oh no, how terrible.
	I know.
	She's going to have to make money like everyone else.
	So there's another thing we can blame USAID for, which is Rory Stewart in general.
	Terrible crime.
	I know.
	This is one of the greatest crimes America has ever committed against its allies, as far as I'm concerned.
	Funding Rory Stewart.
	And therefore, by proxy, the rest is politics.
	So there's a whole network of evil going on there, but thankfully it's been cut off from some of its funds for now.
	But if we return to Africa, Josh mentioned in the last segment that Trump has been going against South Africa.
	I mentioned it yesterday.
	But to go into a little bit more detail of it from this foreign policy article talking about what's going on there right now.
	So he's cut aid to South Africa last week, and this was on the orders of an executive order.
	That he signed due to unjust racial discrimination that's been going on against the Boers.
	And particularly the white farmers in South Africa over the country's land reform law.
	He also cited South Africa's International Court of Justice genocide case against Israel, which is very funny, coming from South Africa.
	An anti-South Africa stance was predicted to be a key feature of the second Trump administration's foreign policy, given Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, their friendly relations with Russia and China, but few would have foreseen the executive order.
	South African media queried whether Trump was even...
	That doesn't matter.
	This foreign policy article is quite funny because it has quite a number of attempted gotchas in there, as you would expect from Nozmot Gabadamosi, who wrote it.
	So, yeah.
	Don't you understand?
	He's not even English.
	These Afrikaners, they're not even English.
	Okay.
	Don't care.
	Don't care.
	South Africa is discriminating against them, attempting to take property from them, abusing them, attempting to genocide them in its own little way.
	You've got mainstream politicians over there calling for a genocide of the Boers, saying, kill the farmer, kill the boar.
	I think that takes precedence over whether they speak English or not, which, by the way, they do.
	What is the criticism here, that he's not being ethnocentric enough?
	Apparently.
	He's not just letting the South African government Do unspeakable things.
	The fact that he's mentioning, he's noticed and he's now mentioning it, that's beyond the pale.
	Well, we were talking about this in the office earlier on, which is that there's a hierarchy of evil that we have been taught in the modern liberal order, which starts off with, at the top, the very, very top, obviously, is the Nazis and Hitler.
	But just only slightly below that is Rhodesia and South Africa.
	South Africa for having the apartheid, which obviously was not a good thing and had very, very many problems.
	Which led directly to what's going on today.
	But Rhodesia, basically, for just being a functioning country in Africa, which is, you're not allowed, that's racist.
	I think that the living standards in pre-desegregation, both Rhodesia and South Africa, were higher in the white minority rule.
	And in Rhodesia, it was far less...
	Explicit as well, in that they just had meritocratic standards, which it just so happened that many of the native population weren't able to meet.
	But there was still representation within the government.
	Yeah, and it was going along that way as well.
	Yeah, but the South African government statement, the foreign ministry...
	It's ironic that the executive order makes provision for refugee status in the US for a group in South Africa that remains amongst the most economically privileged while vulnerable people in the US from other parts of the world are being deported and denied asylum despite real hardship.
	So, basically, let us kill them.
	Just let us kill them.
	Let us kill them and then take our trash, our refuse from the rest of the world and give them all that they want.
	Imagine my shock that such a statement would come from the South African government.
	And the president, Cyril Ramaphosa, earlier said that his country would not be bullied.
	Despite this, though, the article carries on through gritted teeth to say the African National Congress Party has been unusually measured in its subsequent responses.
	Pretoria said it will send a delegation to Washington that is expected to include senior cabinet ministers and business leaders to explain its new law, worried that any further actions could rattle investors and tank South Africa's economy.
	It's booming economy, because they have no leg to stand on here.
	Also, the ANC are in a pretty difficult political situation as well.
	Yeah, they're no longer the majority party there, as far as I'm aware.
	At least they have the most seats, but they're not a full majority.
	Yeah, normally they get above 50% of the vote, but as of the most recent election, they didn't, because Jacob Zuma's MK party helped split that vote, as well as just an overall fall in popularity, because all of their infrastructure is failing.
	As we saw on my segment yesterday.
	And the article again.
	More than three decades after the end of apartheid, about 70% of South Africa's farmland is still owned by white South Africans, who make up only 7% of the population.
	Their black counterparts are 80% of the population, and own just 4%, making South Africa the world's most unequal nation, both in land use and income distribution.
	So the fact that...
	Their capita, actually, they're being understood.
	I know, right?
	But the idea that these Afrikaners, the Burr, who own the land, have owned the land for years, set up the land, settled the land, the fact that they still own it, in and of itself, no matter what they're doing with it, whether they're being productive, feeding the country, whatever, that doesn't matter.
	It's the fact that they own it in the first place.
	I wonder what the, you know, their 7% of the population, what is their percentage contribution to the GDP? Because it's funny that that's omitted, isn't it?
	I imagine they're disproportionately economically productive and actually, even if they did requisition the land, what it would do would be massively damage the South African economy.
	Well, I did see something that was very interesting, which was probably the worst case of GDP brain that I've ever seen, which was an argument that, well, yes, they do all the farming and they make all of the food, but the agricultural sector only brings in 2.5% of the overall GDP anyway.
	So, therefore, you basically don't need it.
	Don't want to grow your own food.
	Isn't that what happened in Zimbabwe and Rhodesia?
	Yes.
	The white farmers were displaced from their land one way or another and then the agricultural output fell off a cliff.
	People started going hungry because the people who took over weren't horticulturalists, let's say.
	I think it was 1980, as soon as Mugabe took over, that year he introduced all of these land requisitions, and about 20 years later, because it took a while for damage to be done, I think a million people had died of famine.
	Who could have seen that one coming, eh?
	Anyone with common sense, yeah.
	That may be true, but we're talking about Zimbabwe.
	That's true.
	So they do also point out in this that Washington supposedly needs Pretoria as an ally because of the fact that they have a lot of platinum and other rare earth materials and metals there, and they also want to maintain it as an ally if they want to have any major influence in Africa or reverse China's hold on global minerals used in the AI tech race.
	So there is some give and take that's going here.
	Either way, it's good that Donald Trump is...
	The one politician I can think of in my lifetime that's actually doing something to stick up for the white minority in South Africa, who have just been a hated and abused minority ever since the end of apartheid, really.
	I'm glad he is, because I didn't expect it of him, but I suppose with Elon Musk being so close to him, it's something that is obviously going to be close to him being South African.
	Yeah, and then there's all the other stuff going on with Donald Trump's foreign policy at the moment as well, where he's trying to use it as a transactional negotiating tool with a lot of foreign countries to try and negotiate better trade deals or better deals for cultural change and shifts in those countries themselves.
	But that's led to very entertaining articles from Foreign Affairs, this one written by David V... Joe, who is a former CIA analyst and operations officer.
	I'm sure this is going to be unbiased.
	Well, that's the interesting thing.
	I like looking into foreign affairs every so often because you get people like this.
	You get people like William Burns writing articles for it.
	So while they like to veil everything, it's an interesting way to see...
	What's going on in the minds of the elite establishment right now?
	What they're talking about?
	And basically this is an entire article special pleading for the rights of the American intelligence agencies to not just be absolutely slashed to the bone.
	Saying that, well, it needs to be experts speaking to other experts, industry and intelligence professionals speaking to intelligence professionals.
	Otherwise you might end up with a diminished reputation on the global scale.
	You don't want to send in a bunch of people who have no experience in intelligence to cut the whole thing, because they have no idea what they're doing.
	Basically saying, "Well, these people you're sending in aren't already compromised.
	We need them pre-compromised so they just do what we want.
	We're the CIA, goddammit.
	We've got a blank check to do whatever we want across the entire world.
	You can't stop us from doing that.
	And that's basically what he says.
	Quite plainly, in one of the final paragraphs of this article, saying, putting the United States first from an intelligence perspective means harnessing intelligence diplomacy to safeguard American interests and citizens while protecting the liberal world order.
	Which has advantaged the United States more than most other countries.
	Now, I would say that most American citizens themselves would question whether maintaining the liberal world order in Iraq or Afghanistan or even today in Ukraine has actually benefited them financially, culturally, even family-wise because many of them will have potentially lost family members in Iraq and Afghanistan.
	So, that's very interesting.
	What it's basically saying there is, again, business as usual.
	That's what we want.
	And there will be liberals and leftists saying, destroying the intelligence agencies, nobody voted for that.
	That's exactly what many in the MAGA movement were actively hoping would happen.
	In fact, many MAGA voters said explicitly that it was one of the main things they were looking forward to.
	Yeah, especially is it that Tulsi Gabbard is now National Director of Intelligence?
	That's right, yeah.
	Yes, so that'll be an interesting one to see how she progresses with that.
	She was, of course, on a domestic terrorist watch list at one point from the intelligence agencies, and now she's directing them.
	Yeah, and the other interesting thing that all of these agencies like to do is to try to...
	Say that they're non-partisan.
	They're non-political organisation.
	And if you come in and cut it, then that's political.
	But what we're doing globally to destabilise governments across the world is non-political, according to their own standards.
	There's no such thing.
	Sorry.
	It's one of the things I was hoping for.
	Trump came out ages ago, like a year or so ago, with a ten-point plan about dismantling, or at least damaging, the power.
	Of the intelligence services in various ways, from fires, a corpse, all sorts of things.
	Yeah, and it's sort of long overdue.
	People are making the argument that no one voted for this.
	Well, no one voted for them to become a type of shadow government in the first place.
	And this goes all the way back to Eisenhower.
	There's that famous clip, isn't there, of Eisenhower leaving office at the very end of his tenure as president, saying, beware of a shadow government, a military-industrial complex, his words.
	Some people like to say the very concept of a military-industrial complex is tinfoil hat conspiracy theory.
	Well, it wasn't even in the 50s.
	What was the name of the original CIA director when it was back in the OSS as well during the Second World War?
	Well, the main one is Alan Dulles, but there were a few before him, like army generals, but he's sort of the famous, well, the most famous one, but there were actually a couple before him, but you're probably talking about Alan Dulles.
	Yeah.
	I'm just saying, you don't want some random, unaccountable person like that who's actually in charge of the government and actually in charge of what happens on the international stage in a supposed democracy when the whole point of the liberal world order is for the sake of global democracy, which is the rule of unaccounted oligarchs, as far as I can tell, these days.
	But here's another insightful paragraph to see either how...
	They want to present themselves and how barefaced the lying is, or how delusional these people are if it's the other way and they actually believe their own rubbish that they spout.
	Intelligence work necessitates good judgment and measured temperament and the integrity to go where the weight of the evidence leads.
	That means occasionally bringing unwelcome news to powerful political figures.
	I mean, I can...
	Agree with all of that so far.
	But here's his suggestions.
	To that aim, Trump should install experienced professionals in key national security and intelligence positions.
	The administration should not probe candidates for their views on the January 6th attack on the US Capitol or otherwise subject them to ideological litmus tests.
	Why not?
	Why not?
	Because it's bad for them.
	It's bad for them.
	Surround yourself with enemies, Mr. Trump.
	Please, just surround yourself with incredibly powerful enemies.
	Keep your noticing to a minimum.
	Yeah.
	And on the subject of things that Trump is starting to do, that he promised that he would do, that people think he wasn't voted in for, which he explicitly was voted in for, and upsets the intelligence establishment, is that he's on the road to making peace talks with Vladimir Putin.
	Now, this hasn't just upset the American intelligence establishment, it's also upset the European establishment as well, which I will cover in a moment.
	But this all comes from the fact that he spoke...
	On February 12th, on the phone to Vladimir Putin, without coordinating the details beforehand with Ukraine, and announced that negotiations to end the war would start immediately.
	And he's also thinking he might meet with Putin in person in Saudi Arabia as well.
	I mean, if they can get peace talks off the ground, and if they can actually establish some kind of peace, I see this as only a good thing.
	We've wasted enough resources trying to claw back territory for the sake of Ukraine.
	Ukraine's lost enough sons and daughters in the conflict, and frankly so has Russia as well.
	This conflict has been an unmitigated disaster.
	I've heard recently someone said, so unreputable, I can't remember who it was, but saying maybe as many as a million casualties in that theatre of war.
	Yeah.
	I've heard that.
	A generation.
	A generation.
	And it has displaced people.
	And also, one of the conditions that might be for Ukraine as well, is I believe that Ukraine has access to rare minerals and things as well.
	It's also got some of the richest farmland as well.
	It was called the Bread Basket.
	Yeah, so for the sake of maybe negotiating a peace deal where they're able to save face, they can try to make up for some of the shortfalls that they could encounter with South Africa.
	I don't know what kind of rare materials that they have in Ukraine, but there could be some kind of wiggle room to try and negotiate that.
	Now, despite this, again, if we want to take a look at what's going on with the conflict on the ground to see...
	What an unmitigated disaster this has been for Ukraine, because people like to point out, well, Ukraine's lost a lot less people overall than Russia has.
	Russia's lost more troops, but we found out in World War II, and any ground war with Russia, really, that Russia's scariest factor is their ability to just send wave after wave after wave of people.
	They're basically like, it's an unstoppable horde that will constantly...
	Be...
	Going to you, like advancing on you.
	That's what the Germans found out.
	They could take out as many people as they wanted, capture as many people, capture as much war material as they wanted.
	There would always be more on the way.
	It's a very big nation, yeah.
	Yeah, big shock, right?
	So here's a map of what's been going on and the territory in red here.
	We can see this is the territory that's been taken by the Russians and under Russian military control.
	These little squiggles bits here are under limited Russian military control.
	They've been trying to push towards Kharkiv for ages, but they've not been able to make a proper advance on it.
	Obviously, they never really got to Ukraine.
	In terms of what Ukraine's been able to take in retaliation, is this.
	That little bit in the Kursk region of Russia.
	That's about it.
	What the hell did you just do to me?
	There we go.
	I think it just refreshed.
	Yeah, it did just refresh.
	Either way, this is a bit more of a zoomed in thing.
	But as you can see, Russian territorial gains.
	A lot better.
	Ukraine has not gained anything from this.
	And the idea that Zelensky's like, well, what we can do is we can do a land swap.
	Okay, you've got this much land.
	They've got this much land.
	Do you have a leg to stand on?
	No, you don't.
	The past few months have been trying to capture as much territory as possible to get the best position to negotiate.
	I think that's what's been going on.
	No, I agree that that's what they've been trying to do.
	There's just...
	They've just not really got anything to be able to negotiate at the table with, other than just being able to say, let's make peace, especially now that they've got Donald Trump in the corner saying he wants to negotiate peace.
	Again, I think this is a good thing.
	Remarkably few battlefield successes from the Ukrainian side, considering they've been given, what, hundreds of billions of dollars, both in money and just materiel, and the amount of men they've lost.
	It's got to show for it on the battlefield.
	Very little.
	The main success that I can tell is that a number of times they have been able to push back Russian forces, but the successes have been almost entirely defensive.
	I think that, I mean, they've succeeded in not having their entire country taken over by the Russians.
	That's a success, I suppose.
	They've succeeded in pushing the Russians to the point where they want to negotiate again by the fact that Russia has bogged down a lot more than they were expecting to.
	I think they were expecting to steamroll this, because what was this supposed to be?
	Two-week special military operation at first, or police operation, as they were calling it.
	So it's been terrible for both sides, which is why it should stop.
	And it certainly should stop before it's escalated to the point where European troops and NATO troops are on the ground as well, because that would proceed into a hot war with Russia, which nobody wants.
	There's been a number of threats over that over the past three years, and it's never happened.
	I don't think it is going to happen.
	But still, if there's a 1% chance that it happens, if the conflict extends on as long as possible, you don't want that.
	It probably should have stopped, when was it, like a couple of years ago, when Boris personally went out there and said, no, don't strike a deal with Zelensky.
	We'll support you to the bitter end.
	Yeah, for as long as it takes.
	Or until there are different bureaucrats in the State Department and Pentagon, at least.
	But no, as long as it takes.
	Until there's a new president.
	Boris Johnson saw his Churchill moment.
	He saw his Churchill moment, but then he got ousted.
	Then he got ousted for having parties.
	Do you remember when Zelensky visited Congress and they were lording him?
	People like Schumer and Pelosi calling him the Churchill of our age.
	It's just nonsense, isn't it?
	It was all nonsense.
	It's not great, but as you can imagine, Europe, as I mentioned, feeling a little bit left out, feeling like they're sat in the cook chair on this.
	They all signed this agreement.
	The Weimar Plus statement.
	Interesting choice.
	Weimar Plus.
	All right.
	Okay.
	Interesting.
	Saying, we're ready to enhance our support for Ukraine.
	So we just keep pushing it even further.
	We commit to its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia's war of aggression.
	We share the goal to keep supporting Ukraine until a just, comprehensive and lasting peace is reached.
	This is basically just them saying publicly, please get us to the table as well.
	We don't want to be shown to be as pathetic and ineffective as we have been.
	Please get us to the table so we can try and save face with this as well.
	We're looking forward to discussing the way ahead together with our American allies.
	But one of the most ridiculous things, and yet at the same time most predictable things that I've seen regarding this, is what happens when the peace talks have been concluded.
	If they go forwards, there's going to be a discussion on the territory that's kept by the Russians, which territory is given back to the UK. I think the Ukrainians have been pretty keen for British troops, because we've been a key supporter of them, and they see us as, you know, a reliable ally.
	So it might well be that maybe us, the French and the Germans, sending troops, maybe some of their neighbours as well.
	And it might be a joint European effort.
	I don't know how it's going to go, to be honest.
	You could see that, potentially, but again, EU member states, NATO members as well, there's the worry that if any conflict breaks out between them and any Russian troops due to any complications or something, there is some worries there.
	So foreign policy, again, have a genius solution.
	The Global South.
	The global south, not Europe, should play peacekeeper in Ukraine.
	Send the Rwandans in.
	Well, they're a bit busy.
	Send the Congolese in.
	They're a bit busy as well.
	Exactly.
	It'd be a perfect diversion if we're supporting the Rwandans, right?
	But really, what this seems to be is just a, again, special pleading.
	Let the diversity into Ukraine.
	Please let the diversity into Ukraine.
	It's one of the most...
	Homogenous nations in Europe still, just like the rest of Eastern Europe.
	Please, diversify it.
	Which always seems to be the ultimate goal of a lot of foreign policy.
	Under the liberal world order is to make sure that homogenous European nations get their nice injection of diversity.
	So, hopefully this doesn't come to pass, but they're suggesting here that...
	African, Asian, Latin American nations should provide troops rather than the EU themselves, and a wide number of peace initiatives and proposals coming from countries such as Indonesia, Mexico, and the African delegation that visited Kiev and Moscow suggest there's a real willingness by these non-aligned states to play a significant role.
	I can see the justification for it because they're...
	They have less skin in the game, don't they?
	Yeah, that's true, but I can't help but see that this would be in a similar way to how France treated the Rhineland in the interwar period after the First World War, an excuse to get diversity into a European nation.
	So that's always the first concern at the top of my mind these days when it comes to these kinds of conflicts.
	But either way, I hope that...
	Donald Trump's foreign policy can actually manage to achieve peace in Ukraine and in Russia because, generally speaking, this is a very, very daring, brave statement.
	I think masses of people dying in war is a bad thing.
	I agree.
	Absolutely.
	There's been enough blood spilt.
	Especially for a lost cause.
	It's just crazy, though.
	That's the first I've heard of that, that make the Global South the peacekeepers in Ukraine.
	It's like, let's have a demilitarized zone on the Mexican border.
	And have it staffed by Lithuanians.
	Yeah, why not?
	Or something.
	Send the Estonians in.
	The Finnish Peace Corps is going to sort out Mexico.
	Yeah.
	There's problems in Guatemala sending a special Hungarian crack squad of commandos.
	Tell you what would be funny.
	Why not?
	Sending Albanians onto the US border.
	Known people smugglers.
	No, don't actually.
	They'd just roll straight into the cartel, wouldn't they?
	A great way to get rid of the cartel is just import a different...
	Replaced them with Albania!
	Their people smuggling operations will become more efficient if you put Albanians in charge.
	That's true, yeah.
	The Mexicans are even worse now!
	How did this happen?
	We've got a bunch of chats here.
	Oh, yes we do.
	Five dollars from...
	Amandine512 says, You gentlemen look very dapper, especially Bo.
	Lotus Eaters is in my top four favourite podcasts.
	The fact that you had to extend it to four means that I think we're fourth.
	But thank you anyway, and thank you for the compliment.
	Theengagedfew says, You know it's bad when USAID spending is so outrageous that it pisses off people from Britain?
	Because you were funding Rory Stewart.
	Well, I'm annoyed on your behalf.
	I hate taxes, so I'm annoyed on your behalf anyway.
	It'd be like if we found out that, I don't know, if you found out that we'd expressly tried to insert James Corden into your culture as some act of political subterfuge and warfare.
	Don't tell them about that, Barry.
	You'd be annoyed too.
	I've got some bad news, people.
	Rory Stewart.
	Yeah.
	It's like Americans finding out that the Treasury, His Majesty's Treasury, is paying and forcing Piers Morgan on the United States.
	Americans would be rightly annoyed at that, wouldn't they?
	I think.
	They would be.
	They would be.
	In XCO, how is Rory Stewart even married?
	Some women have low bars.
	That's true.
	Hedgehog dilemma.
	Unfortunately, I think we need those billboards in Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford, etc.
	Yeah.
	They wouldn't make a difference, sadly.
	The engaged few.
	The famous saying is follow the money, but a better one is follow the power.
	Oftentimes, they're the exact same thing.
	Anonymous, yeah.
	And the engaged few.
	Even with half the pre-USSR collapse, Putin can still win with the time-honoured practice of drowning his enemies in the blood of Russian conscripts.
	Yeah.
	Blimey.
	Cheery podcast.
	The Ukrainians have a preset kill limit, so Putin will send wave after wave of his own men.
	Speaking of cheery things, let's find out how we're all going to die.
	Okay, so, or probably not, as the case may be.
	I thought we'll talk about it.
	It's been in the headlines a bit, but the story isn't entirely new.
	We have known since last year that there may be an asteroid coming to hit Earth in 3032. Uh-oh.
	Specifically December the 22nd, 3032. How do we know this?
	Because of Newton's physics.
	Can they find out a bit earlier so I know not to do my Christmas shopping?
	That's right in the sort of area where I'm like, do I do my Christmas shopping?
	Don't I? It could be that it's all in vain.
	It's extremely unlikely to hit the Earth at all, but if it does, it almost certainly won't be anywhere near us.
	Oh great, in which case, never mind.
	Have the scientists adjusted the doomsday clock?
	I know they like to do that when we're this close to doom and disaster.
	We're now 14 seconds closer to midnight.
	So this thing they've called 2024 YR4, that's its name.
	And so a few numbers, and any Fedora tippers out there, do forgive me if I get some of these ever so slightly wrong.
	The thing is, the actual reality is we still don't know all the details about this thing, but I'll go into that in a moment.
	It's somewhere between 40 and 90 metres across this asteroid.
	That's quite big.
	So, I mean, in the scheme of things, it's not too big.
	If it did hit us, I mean, it's travelling somewhere in the region of 13 to 17 kilometres per second, which is obviously insanely fast.
	So we don't know really exactly...
	What it's made of, we think that it's not just a pile of rubble, it's like a single big rocky object.
	It's not a comet, so it's not icy.
	I think it probably hasn't got a metal core, so it's just a big lump of rock travelling about 13 kilometres a second and between 40 and 90 metres.
	So to give it some perspective, the thing that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 odd million years ago was in the region of 10 to 15 kilometres across.
	So if this thing hit the Earth, It would be somewhere between 1 and 40 megaton, the equivalent of between a 1 and 40 megaton blast.
	So that's enough to completely annihilate a city, but it's not a mass extinction event.
	It's not going to create some sort of never-ending winter or anything like that.
	To put things into perspective, 40 metres is the width of...
	Free London buses to the Americans.
	I know that's not the most useful metric for you, but, you know, it's a sense of scale.
	I love putting things in terms of how big it is compared to football pitches.
	I know.
	They mean by that American football pitches, which are always 100 yards.
	If we really want to translate to Americans, how many burgers is it?
	Depends how tall the burger is.
	I mean across.
	In size of volume or mass?
	So, okay, actually, there were some of the last links I put up about Beringer Crater.
	Can we just go straight to those, please, Samson?
	They're towards the end, the Beringer Crater.
	So there's this thing in northern Arizona.
	There you go.
	Sometimes called Meteor Crater or Beringer Crater.
	And that was about the size of this thing.
	This was the original thing that hit there was between 30 and 50 metres across.
	So roughly...
	Roughly in the same ballpark as this 2024 YR4. And Barringer Crater, I'd love to go there.
	I'd love to visit it.
	It's in northern Arizona, not a million miles from Flagstaff.
	And I'd love to go there.
	I'd really, really love to visit that.
	I'm more fascinated by Meteor Crater than by the Grand Canyon.
	And I'm fascinated by the Grand Canyon.
	I'd love to go to the Grand Canyon.
	But this even more.
	So anyway, it gives you some sort of...
	There were some people in the other pictures to give it a bit of scale.
	So anyway, if that...
	And there, that thing didn't even hit the earth, they don't think.
	They think it blew up very, very close to the surface.
	Because back early in the 20th century, they did loads of excavations to try and find...
	They thought there'd be massive iron deposits there.
	They just weren't.
	Same with the Tunguska event, probably one of the most famous ones, people know about that.
	I've got an image or two, if you can find those, Samson.
	A Russian one, isn't it?
	Yeah, so back in the very early 20th century, over Siberia, there was a cloudburst, there was an airburst of a large meteor, or asteroid meteor, that came in and almost certainly sort of blew up very close to the surface, but didn't actually probably...
	There's no crater at the Tunguska event, for example.
	Lots of famous pictures similar to that one of all of the trees flattened, aren't there?
	Yeah.
	These images were taken quite a few years later before Russians went there with photographs.
	It was very early, what was it, 1912 or something like that.
	Anyway, so the Earth gets hit by stuff all the time, right?
	If you live in an area where there's not much light or air pollution and you look up on a clear night, It doesn't take long before you see a shooting star.
	When I've been camping on Dartmoor, I've seen several.
	In my lifetime, I've seen nearly a hundred or so, I think.
	And even in January, I showed a video on the podcast of a Canadian household having a meteor land on their front doorstep.
	It was only a very small one, and there was lots of fizzing and smoke, but their doormat was still intact.
	Incredible, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	If it's a nice clear night and you look up, if you just spend 5, 10, 15 minutes just staring at the sky, you'll see a shooting star probably.
	So in other words, small amounts of material are bombarding the Earth all the time.
	All the time.
	But our atmosphere is like a protection.
	If you're travelling at kilometres per second and you hit something as dense as air on the Earth, it will vaporise you.
	Asteroids, when they actually come into the atmosphere, will almost always burn up.
	Unless they're big enough.
	In fact, there was an event about 10, 11 years ago.
	I think I've got a video of that as well, Samson.
	Something hitting a Russian city, flying across the sky.
	It's one of the YouTube clips.
	Yeah.
	Right near the bottom, Russian meteor about 10 years ago.
	There it is.
	Yeah, play this.
	Watch this.
	We don't need the audio.
	I've seen this video.
	So there was a piece of rock travelling through our solar system for millions, perhaps billions of years.
	And then, suddenly one day, at kilometres per second, it hits the Earth.
	And this, just like the meteor crater and...
	Well, actually not in the case of Meteor Crisis, but in the case of the Tunguska event, it got very close to the ground before breaking up and burning up.
	And it did...
	Apparently there was a massive bang, like massive bang.
	It blew out loads of windows.
	A few people got injured.
	I don't think anyone died, but quite a few people got injured where they're sort of looking out their window and then the next second their window's blown in and they get all shards in their face and stuff.
	Lots of people were hurt.
	I don't think anyone was killed anyway.
	The point is, and this was like, as I say, about 10 or 11 years ago, it just goes to show that we're not immune from things coming in and hitting us.
	I mean, over the age of the Earth, we've had many mass extinction events.
	People know of the one, the dinosaur one, 65 odd million years ago, but there's been many.
	Before that, it was all giant insects, wasn't it?
	Before that, again, it was giant mushrooms, according to the archaeology.
	All sorts of megaflora.
	Yeah, so the big one, the one I'm most fascinated by, actually, was the Permian, or the Permian-Triassic mass extinction event, which happened long before the dinosaurs even.
	We're talking, what, like 400 million years ago in that region.
	Sometimes it's called the Great Dying, because with the dinosaur one...
	What was it?
	Something like 40 or 50% of all creatures and plants went extinct because of that.
	But the Permian one was even more.
	It was like 80 or 90% of all things.
	So we've had at least half a dozen mass extinction events.
	Not that this 2024 YR4 is anything of that magnitude.
	But the point is, is that we can get hit by, or are hit by things all the time.
	So, okay.
	All right.
	With all that being said, a little bit of background context.
	What is this thing?
	So, there's a video of the other video link I've got there.
	Yeah, it's from Scott Manley.
	Now, everyone knows I like my history.
	But I also like my science and space stuff, don't I? I really like Anton Petrov.
	He's got a great channel, Anton Petrov.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	He says, hello wonderful people, all the time.
	He's a really nice guy.
	Dr Becky, I like the Astrum channel, Alex McColgan, John Michael Godier.
	There's a number of channels that I watch all the time.
	I'm not watching politics and history things.
	I'm watching space and science things.
	But I also really like this guy, Scott Manley.
	And all these people I've just mentioned, they're real experts in the field.
	They're not just fans of science.
	They're sort of actual professors and things.
	So anyway, could we watch this?
	I said, could you play it from one minute, about one minute 18 in?
	Because just about a minute worth of him talking gives us...
	Yeah, roughly there.
	From our point of view, it was sort of coming out of the Sun and flying past the Earth into deep space, headed out towards Mars.
	And the initial observations put it on an orbit which goes into a perigee of about 0.855 AU and goes all the way out to about 4.22 AU with an inclination of maybe 3 to 4 degrees.
	And it just happens that it passes very close to the Earth's orbit.
	Importantly...
	When it was first discovered, the orbital period was about 4.04 years.
	And since then, that orbital period has got a lot closer to being four years, which means it comes back exactly to where the Earth is four years from now.
	So yeah, observations of this continued.
	And as we get more observations, the orbit gets better and better.
	And that means the uncertainty gets smaller and smaller.
	And eventually...
	Can you stop playing that?
	I'll pause it there.
	The point is, it flies by us every four years or so.
	And we know that the next time in 2028, it won't hit us.
	It'll come close, but it certainly won't hit us then.
	At first, they thought it might have hit us then, but it's not going to.
	But in the next time round, in 2032, there's a possibility, and it's still quite a small possibility.
	The reason why it's in the news cycle is that they thought it was like a 1% possibility.
	More recent, because they just keep taking more and more measurements, it looks like it might be as much as 2%, or a bit over 2% likelihood.
	Now, that is a bit worrying, isn't it?
	But it's still quite unlikely to hit us, really.
	And what Scott Manley there was saying is that probably at some point in the next four years or so, we'll get a clear enough idea of exactly if it will or won't hit us.
	I suspect it won't.
	If I had to put £100 on whether it would or it wouldn't, I'd put on that it wouldn't.
	98% odds of being right.
	Right, yeah, yeah.
	I'll take that.
	And even if it does hit us, they already know, because of Newton's clockwork universe, we already know where it's likely to hit on the Earth if it does.
	And I've got, if you put those tweets up, Samson, next one, that's NASA just saying it might hit.
	So there, that's where it's likely to hit us, if it does at all.
	So there's places like Bogota, all sorts of Central Africa and Sano in Yemen, maybe.
	Parts of India, it could hit.
	Go to the next tweet, actually.
	I think they mention...
	Yeah, so there's that corridor.
	Lagos, Mumbai.
	I mean, if it hit in downtown Mumbai, that would be bad.
	And it was 40 megatons.
	I don't know if it's 25,000 tonnes or a million tonnes.
	Not sure whether it's 40 or 90 metres across.
	But say it's the bigger end of that.
	Say it is a million tonnes and it is travelling 17km per second and it hits square on Mumbai, that's going to be pretty bad, isn't it?
	Or it could just hit somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.
	Yeah.
	That would be the best case scenario if it does hit the Earth, it goes in the ocean.
	If it hits the Earth and no one gets hurt, because even if it hit the ocean, it wouldn't cause some sort of devastating tsunami.
	Pardon me.
	So if it is going to hit the Earth, I would actually like it to hit somewhere where no one gets hurt, in the middle of the Sahara or...
	Or something.
	Or the ocean.
	I'd like to see it.
	I want to see the footage of that.
	You just want to see an awesome crater out there.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Give me a decent crater with zero casualties.
	I'm on board for that.
	I want that.
	But yeah, of course, if it did, if it was hit a city, that would obviously be terrible.
	But I still don't think it will.
	Honestly, it's unlikely to hit the Earth.
	It's good.
	I think it's cool that we're living in an age where we've got any sort of warning.
	It is reassuring, isn't it?
	That we can know well in advance.
	Because it seems quite unlikely that something's just going to, you know, shoot across from outside of our solar system and just directly target Earth, is it?
	That doesn't seem to be the case.
	Normally it's something that's rotating and so observable.
	There's a few different things.
	So we've swept our orbit around the Sun pretty good.
	Now, around it a few billion times, right?
	So there's that.
	But then there's the asteroid belt, the main one between Mars and Jupiter.
	And then there's the Oort cloud way out beyond Neptune.
	And we could get any number of those could, for whatever reason, come in towards the inner solar system and become a threat to us.
	But then there are also objects that are in sort of interstellar space.
	And as we go round the Milky Way, sort of come through our...
	Our orbit around the galaxy, like there was that Muamua object.
	So sometimes, quite often in fact, we're not aware of a big object until it's too late, until it's sort of been and gone, even, sometimes.
	It's a bit worrying.
	I've gone from being hopeful to worried to hopeful to being worried again and again throughout this.
	A bit slingshotting you on this one.
	It's funny, it's both.
	NASA will say things like, we've got this particular project going on and we've mapped every large object that's likely to hit the Earth and we're all good.
	Except for that thing.
	Oh my goodness.
	Apart from this thing now we've just found.
	Or then there'll be another article and they'll say, oh, an asteroid which was...
	Pretty bad, maybe not a mass extinction event level 1, but still pretty big, decent.
	It passed within a few million kilometres of Earth, in other words, very close.
	And we didn't spot it until it was already past us.
	So it's sort of, I think, anyway, at least we're living in the age where some sort of warning is available.
	So we'll see.
	As we get closer and closer to 32 December 2032, we'll know.
	But so there are some things people might say, well, can't we do something about it?
	If we did realise in a few years' time that there's a 99% possibility it's going to hit the Earth, what can be done?
	Well, there's a number of things that can be done.
	A lot of people think, oh, we'll just shoot it with nukes, but that's really quite a difficult thing, or it's not technically the right thing to do, or whatever.
	But what you can do, there's this thing, the DART mission, NASA's got this...
	A thing called the DART mission, and it's sort of testing all this stuff out.
	So there's actually a clip, a YouTube short, from the DART. Yeah, so there's these two asteroids out there, one big one, and it's got its own little moonlit, another small asteroid circling a bigger asteroid.
	And NASA flew the actual spacecraft into it in a head-on collision, and to make measurements to see what it did.
	And the thing they flew into it was about the mass of a fridge.
	It's a bit bigger than a fridge, but I think the mass is about the size of a fridge.
	And it flew into this asteroid at about six kilometres a second, and they measured everything.
	And if you have a head-on collision with it, it's basically you're slowing it down.
	The idea of pushing an asteroid laterally, left or right, to push it out of the way, that's not really a thing.
	It's better to either accelerate it or decelerate it, so that it...
	So the geometry, so that its orbit misses what you want it to miss.
	So in other words, anyway, this DART mission, they basically shot an asteroid with a spacecraft and measured it.
	And it worked much better than they thought.
	They thought it would change this asteroid's trajectory effectively by a few seconds, or a minute or two, and it changed it by much, much more than they thought it would.
	And it's the same...
	There you go.
	This is real footage.
	All the people that don't think space is real out there laughing at us.
	How can we think that space is real?
	But yeah, so there was a smaller asteroid circling the bigger one and it flew straight into it.
	Is this directed by Stanley Kubrick?
	I mean, it looks like the intro to Eraserhead to me.
	I wasn't saying that in the moon landing sense.
	I was just saying it seemed like a film technique that he would use, zooming in like that.
	So there's this idea that we could possibly, there's the possibility...
	That we could fly certain things into head-on collisions with 2024 YR4 and effectively slow it down a bit.
	You don't need to slow these things down by a tiny fraction for it to miss entirely.
	I also imagine that if you're slowing down the speed at which it's approaching...
	It spends more time in the atmosphere and it's more likely to burn up as well, even if it is directly hitting.
	Yeah, maybe.
	Maybe.
	It's just to make sure...
	Because the window it would have to hit to actually collide with Earth is tiny.
	It's really tiny.
	So you'd only have to change its speed or trajectory, effectively, a tiny amount to make sure it missed.
	But it wouldn't be obliterated.
	So the next four years...
	Four years after that, it may come close to us.
	And then the next four years after that, it might come close to us.
	So anyway, it seems like we'll be living with this 2024 YR-4 for the foreseeable future, unless the space agencies of the world come up with some sort of plan to deal with the threat permanently, which I've not heard anything about yet.
	So anyway, it's been in a new cycle a bit about this thing that might hit us in 2032. I wouldn't worry about it, to be perfectly honest, because even if it does, we don't live in Sana'a or Bogota or Mumbai.
	But if you do, keep your eye on the news, because in eight years' time, you might want to go visit your relatives in the country on that day, on December the 22nd.
	But we'll see.
	We will know within a few years.
	The probability of it hitting Earth will either go up like it's quite likely or just fall off a cliff and it's a 0% chance.
	We'll see.
	I'm fascinated by all this sort of stuff.
	The few channels I mentioned earlier, if anyone else is, go check them out.
	Antrim Petrov, Dr Becky, Astrum.
	Astrum's a great channel.
	Okay, that's it.
	Okay, let's go to the video comments.
	You've probably heard about the two nurses from Sydney who threatened an Israeli man.
	Claiming they've killed many Israelis at their hospital in Bankstown.
	While this might shock some people, especially those not from Sydney, many locals aren't really surprised.
	Bankstown has a reputation as a no-go zone.
	There have been incidents there, and it's largely run by Islamist groups who aren't too fond of Aussies.
	Women have faced harassment and attacks, and to make things worse, several people from that area joined ISIS back in the mid to late 2010s.
	I live pretty close to Bankstown, and I definitely steer clear of it.
	It's just not safe.
	Why are they in Australia in the first place?
	That's always the question.
	They've come there and they've just caused the same problems they cause wherever they go.
	I hadn't heard of any of that.
	That's all entirely new to me.
	But it doesn't seem to add up, though, because isn't Islam the religion of peace, though?
	I thought.
	No.
	Oh.
	Oh.
	No, inbred savages.
	The religion of pieces.
	Sorry.
	I'll bear that in mind for when I eventually visit Australia, which I will do one day.
	One day.
	Let's have a look at this heresy, shall we?
	This week we have the tallest tree in the world named Hyperion, a coast redwood which stands 115 meters tall.
	Hyperion isn't on a trail, and you'll be fined $5,000 if you approach it, since people damage the soil.
	Instead of sharing the tallest tree with humanity and making a trail that protects the tree, they choose to not help the tree and deny anyone seeing it.
	Spiteful mutants.
	Here's its exact location.
	That's an awesome name for a massive tree.
	Hyperion.
	That's great.
	Also, I liked that the Statue of Liberty was a gay French statue.
	Correctly labelled.
	It wouldn't have been as gay if they hadn't put on the really gay poem on the side of it.
	That made it giga-gay.
	Not heard of that kind before.
	I think this very own Luna Stratton revealed she'd written a book under the nom de plume of Laura Anderson.
	In her final chapter, she monologues with the reader about why she wrote it and the style it is in.
	The book is an intriguing collection of short stories following a common plot involving one character in several locations and times.
	An inventor has created a drug that can alter a person's genome to express hair and skin colours of choice.
	Hailed as having solved racism, he deals with some unexpected effects.
	The idea should be pursued in more detail as, despite being an interesting read, The book doesn't really explore the concept.
	Sounds interesting.
	Thanks, Alex.
	There are lots of inventive ideas that don't get explored properly in literature, though, so...
	Always need somebody to pick those up.
	We should probably go through the...
	Yeah, that's true.
	There's some for you, Bo.
	Would you like me to read them, or are you okay?
	Connor Smug Mug says, Bo, you forgot one thing.
	Nothing ever happens.
	Hashtag nothing ever happens.
	If it does, it'll hit India.
	And that'll be, according to Connor Smug Mug, be a good thing.
	A cruel, Bo.
	I don't live that far from that crater.
	It is indeed.
	Worth visiting.
	Worth visiting and a lot of other stuff in that area.
	So there you go.
	And Vinnie D95 says Bo should have a chat with Randall Carlson.
	Oh, I'd love...
	In my notes, I've got Randall Carlson.
	I didn't get to mention him, but yeah.
	I would love to have a long-form conversation with Randall Carlson.
	Randall...
	We know you're watching.
	This is a direct appeal.
	If you ever see this, please get in contact.
	I have reached out to him once, I think, and he blanked me.
	He's probably in high demand.
	I would love to chat to Randall Carlson.
	Love it.
	And Hedgehog Dilemma says the asteroid will hit Mumbai and the Hindu nationalists will somehow find a way to hold the British responsible.
	See, when it was burning in the sky, it was red like your soldier's uniform.
	Therefore, it was British-backed.
	Right.
	Comments?
	Yes.
	Andrew Narog says, honestly, even with the trillions of dollars of minerals, I say we should just let Africa sort Africa out.
	I'm not saying we should meddle.
	Attempting to meddle in third world affairs only works if we return to full imperialism.
	I do hope people realise I was just looking at what was happening.
	I'm not suggesting we intervene.
	Sophie Liv says, let's just import all of these people to our countries and let the magic soil turn them civilised in a second.
	Problem solved, nothing more to see here.
	That's how it works.
	That soil is so prolific.
	And Ewan Baker says, Trump voice.
	They're looting the leaves, they're looting the carpets, the people that live there.
	I can't do a Trump impression.
	I've got the wrong kind of voice for it, I'm afraid.
	The Unbreakable Litany says, if the Congo are struggling so much, maybe we can ask Belgium to lend them a hand.
	Dear, dear.
	Very dark joke there.
	It says, I remember Rwanda mandating a quota for women in government specifically to avoid more violence.
	I guess that didn't quite work out in the end.
	No.
	I mean, it's violence over the border, so it's fine.
	That's true, it's different violence.
	And then finally, Baron von Warhawk, I'm sure we are getting nothing but lawyers, doctors, artists and engineers from the rape capital of the world.
	I'm sure their wives and daughters of England will be fine.
	Yeah.
	I can hear that sarcasm.
	Yeah, Supreme Duck says, if I was any other country, I would stop trying to change or do stuff in those countries.
	Let them do their things.
	They will figure it out eventually.
	We are wasting resources on cultures, which clearly need some time to figure things out.
	Maybe a few thousand years.
	Again, I think...
	Obviously, international diplomacy is something that's always going to be around.
	It's always going to be necessary, especially now that we're in the age of mass communication, where people can just get on the phone or speak to each other over the computer.
	I think the problem is trying to do this kind of like namby-pamby, halfway house.
	Oh, we'll support them abstractly from afar.
	We'll send money and let the government figure it out, but we'll probably also have our own agents.
	Working to corrupt things behind the scenes at the same time.
	If you're gonna go into a place like Africa and try and fix the culture, like was suggested in that comment a moment ago, you're gonna have to just colonize it.
	Yep.
	That's what you've got to do.
	If you want to fix Eswatini, then yeah, you're going to have to colonize it and forcibly stop them from raping each other.
	If you want to fix the Congo, you're going to need to colonize it and forcibly stop them from raping and murdering each other.
	That's how it works.
	Yeah, good luck with all that.
	Yeah, but just throwing money at the problem and expecting the locals to deal with it themselves.
	No.
	No, they're just gonna keep raping each other.
	Maximum Toast, they need to be receiving support from Northrop Grumman.
	Not USAID. I'm not familiar with that name.
	Weapons manufacturer, isn't it?
	Ah, okay.
	"Baron Von Warhawk, it never ceases to amaze me that these South Africans saw what happened to Zimbabwe and said, 'Yes, we want that.
	We're so blinded by hatred and tribal insanity, they were willing to inflict famine, pestilence and economic ruin, just so we can kill white people over incidents that happened 200 years ago.
	How can you possibly reason with these people?'" It's almost like they have no conception of the future.
	But I would never go on to suggest that that's a fact or anything.
	Yeah, it's not as if the people who lived there raised their living standards, and now that they're no longer in control, they've dropped.
	And there's some sort of common thread between the two.
	I know, right?
	King Cum says, Talk to Russia now.
	Let's stick up for Ukraine by making this war last forever and kill as many people as possible.
	Some shit lib.
	Who would have humanitarian in their Twitter bio as well.
	Anti-war activist.
	Anyway, should we read some of yours, Bo?
	Okay.
	North FC Zuma says, Bo's space segments are some of my favourites by far.
	Oh, thank you.
	I did enjoy it.
	Yeah, I always find them informative.
	I enjoy actually researching them as well.
	It's actually genuinely interesting to me.
	Andrew Narog.
	So what you're saying is that America can possibly elect the meteor for 2032?
	Oh yeah, it's in the election cycle, isn't it?
	Oh yeah, yeah.
	Okay, Annie Moss says, Bo, you should definitely come visit Arizona and see Crater Rock.
	I'd love to.
	The Grand Canyon is overrated as it looks just like the pictures.
	Sedona, Arizona is amazing looking as is Canyon de...
	Chelly or Selly.
	Yeah, I'd love to do...
	I mean, I have been across the American Northwest, across the prairies and across the deserts to the West Coast once in my life.
	Drove across Utah and Nevada.
	But I'd love to spend weeks exploring the Grand Canyon, going to meteor crater.
	Yeah, I'd love to...
	Yeah, and the scaplands up in Montana, again a reference to Randall Carlson.
	New England, so all of this part of America, you know, New England is aptly named because it reminded me of England.
	Which is the American national park that John Ford used in a few of his films with the enormous mountain landscapes?
	I don't know.
	They've got loads of national parks in America.
	It wasn't Yosemite, was it?
	Yeah, there's loads of places in the west of America that I'd love to visit.
	No, it was more of a desert landscape than that.
	I think it might have been in The Searchers and a bunch of his other John Wayne collaborations.
	John Ford...
	Probably a bunch of Americans in the live chat.
	Oh, it might just be called John Ford Point.
	Well, that would make it easy.
	George Happ says, these asteroids are a little too lined up.
	I think the bugs are declaring war.
	I'm from Buenos Aires and I say kill them all.
	Oh, that's a reference to Starship Troopers, isn't it?
	Monument Valley.
	Yeah, I've just looked it up.
	Anyway, I looked at the chat.
	Thank you.
	Thank you, chat.
	We are indeed out of time.
	Thank you very much for watching.
	We'll be back again tomorrow.
	I think, is there anything going on after this, Samson?
	Common Sense Crusade!
	So, yeah, make sure to tune in in half an hour to watch that.

▲