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Feb. 21, 2025 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:29:33

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1106

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters episode 1106.
	I'm your host Harry joined today by Carl.
	Hello.
	And we're going to be talking about ARK 2025 and all the fun it was.
	Some of the, kind of a roundup of what it looks like the ultimate cost of Ukraine versus Russia is going to be now that we're leading up to the final steps.
	Peace talks are on the table, they've started.
	See what...
	What the ultimate conclusion of it is, what can we look back on and say was achieved?
	Not much.
	Not much good.
	And also how you'd like it if a load of migrants were dropped into your neighbourhood.
	Yeah, it's pretty awful, and we're just following down a path that's already well-treaded, so we'll talk about it.
	Yes, and before we go any further, I don't think there's anything to say, actually, so let's just get straight into it.
	So, I went to ARC 2025 in London this week, and I thought I would tell you about my experience, because it was actually really, really positive.
	It was really good.
	And everyone there was really, really friendly.
	Very pleased to see me.
	Not just because they had bulges in their pockets.
	No, I'm joking.
	You had to make it so incredibly vulgar straight out the gate, didn't you, Carl?
	Whenever you say, oh, I'm very pleased to see you, it's like, oh, no.
	Listen, just because the right over-index is engaged.
	Does it mean they all want to shag you?
	Yeah, the left have got massive campaigns to make people homosexual, and yet all the gays are on the right.
	Because we all stay in shape.
	Anyway, yeah, so no, it was really, really good, and it was really nice to meet loads of really cool people, and make loads of really great connections with people who are really decent.
	And so we're going to just get into some of the detail of it, because I think there's a kind of misapprehension about ARK, because the top frontline layer...
	It doesn't really represent those people that you meet on the shop floor, as it were.
	Obviously, I wasn't at the conference.
	I was at the after party, which is why I may have seemed a little bit out of sorts yesterday.
	I was fine.
	I was fine.
	But I saw...
	Wren's coverage of it, and he was saying that some of the speeches were very disappointing because he was there and said that some of it felt like returning back to 2017 when the concerns and discussions that people were having were not the same things that we're worried about today.
	But again, I saw Wren at the after party, I saw a lot of the people who'd been attending at the after party, and that was not reflected in the...
	Yeah, no, we'll get to it.
	But before we begin, this is the last day, I think it is, of the Islander 2 merch, so if you wanted anything, grab it now, because it'll be gone, and it'll be gone forever.
	And, of course, after this, we've got Lads Hour, where we're going to be discussing the English question.
	We're going to be watching some segments from this Politics Joe podcast, because I'm sure everyone has become well aware that on Twitter, just the very question of English identity has been...
	At the heart of a huge amount of debate.
	And this is a really, really funny podcast.
	But the thing is, it's also really revealing as well.
	Because Ava and Ollie there are English.
	Self-consciously so.
	It'll be interesting.
	The whole discussion just reminds me of when leftists were trying to convince us that 2 plus 2 doesn't equal 4. This is a fixed, settled question.
	And yet you guys are over-complicating it.
	And you come across like morons.
	It's got a lot of parallels to the trans debate as well.
	Which is interesting.
	But we'll get into it on Lads Out.
	It's also really funny because they're creatures of a bygone era.
	It's really amusing.
	Anyway, so let's begin.
	So the art conference began with Jordan Peterson, of course, because it's his baby.
	And his speech was fine.
	But the thing is, he's sort of calculating it on the go, to be very precise.
	And while I actually enjoyed the content of the speech, I just thought it would have been better if he just had a pre-scripted thing that he'd written out in advance.
	And I appreciate that part of it is the performance of him sort of like calculating on the fly, but it did make it slightly difficult to follow, whereas if he'd had just a teleprompter with a pre-written thing that he'd been like, no, this is what I'm trying to say, that would make life a lot easier, just as a small sort of tonal thing.
	But he's...
	The theme of the conference and the theme of his speech is basically, he starts, what's the defining characteristic of this civilizational moment?
	Because the point is that they're trying to recapture the story of the West that we can be proud of and that we can stand on in the face of the sort of postmodern deconstructionism.
	And he's trying to create a kind of propositional ideology of Western civilization.
	I think I might actually do a separate thing on this at some point because...
	This is a minefield that he's stepping into.
	He's identified the right problem, which is an ideology has been trying to destroy Western civilization, and I'm not sure that the correct response is, well, we have a counter-ideology for Western civilization instead.
	So is this thumbnail where it says, what's wrong with hedonism, does that sum up the content of the speech itself, or is that just one of the things that he's addressing as part of this?
	That's one of the themes that he's addressing, because, of course, we do live in a much more hedonistic age than...
	We ever have done before, actually.
	And he goes on a bit of a tangent in sort of the middle of the speech, going, you know, there's a problem with hedonism because there's a lack of responsibility in various other things.
	things.
	And that's all in good, but that's not the sort of main thrust of what the speech is actually about.
	But like I said, I'll probably have to talk about that in more detail because it's an absolute minefield he's stepping into.
	And I only know because I've done so much work on ideology.
	Anyway, so this is their YouTube channel.
	You can see the speeches on there in your own time.
	And it's quite interesting, the sort of the breadth of people.
	So as you can see there.
	Yeah, I saw the thumbnail reminded me and I'd seen the clip come out that the Singer guy, Oliver Anthony.
	Yeah, Oliver Anthony was there.
	Gave a speech, and he is not who I was expecting to see there.
	No.
	So you've got the normal subjects that these conferences would have.
	So, well, the woke's gone too far this time.
	And actually, maybe we can use fossil fuels, actually.
	Maybe that's okay to do.
	Kemi Badenock gave a speech.
	I actually haven't seen her speech.
	I didn't get there until after.
	I got there about midday on the first day, so I've been catching up on that.
	I haven't had time to watch it.
	Well, the quote given for it there, the problem isn't liberalism, the problem is weakness.
	Yeah.
	Okay, alright.
	That's not correct.
	I like that the overall tone of this just seems to be 2016 Sargon.
	Yeah, a lot of it.
	One day they will catch up to you, ten years from now.
	Well, Peterson and Douglas Murray gave a really good talk, actually.
	Really good speech.
	But the general tone is very much sort of 2016 Sargon.
	It's like that we just need to recommit to classical liberalism.
	And that would be nice, except that doesn't solve the problems.
	So it's too narrow an issue.
	Too narrow a solution to a broad issue.
	And honestly, I spoke to loads of people about Baden-Ock's speech, and they were like, nah, it was rubbish.
	Didn't like it.
	And I haven't watched it yet, so I'm going to watch it after this, probably.
	But there's, you know, like, normal sort of things that we all consider to be real things.
	Like, the most compelling argument against tech in schools is on there.
	There's why socialism...
	From Big Suze from Peep Show as well.
	Is it?
	Yeah, that's Big Suze from Peep Show.
	I had no idea.
	Okay.
	I know.
	I didn't recognise her at all.
	I mean, she looks the same to me.
	I just...
	She was not the kind of person I would expect to see at this kind of event, but, you know.
	But that's fine.
	Right, that's totally fine.
	No, not that it's a problem.
	Yeah, yeah, and I agree with it.
	You know, I agree, yeah, no, we really should be, like, worried.
	You know what, I got a bunch of, they were giving out, um...
	Just blank notebooks and pens so you can make notes.
	And I was like, oh, are they free?
	Are they great?
	So I took four, right, for my kids.
	So you're the problem.
	You're hedonistic nature, Carl.
	It was selfless.
	It wasn't for me.
	I was thinking for my kids, right?
	And I literally handed one out to my son this morning.
	And he was like, oh, thanks, Dad.
	And I'm like...
	It's a blank notebook, but I didn't say that.
	But he was thrilled with it.
	He was absolutely thrilled with it.
	And so he sat there just, you know...
	This is how deprived you leave your kids.
	No video games except for two hours on the weekend.
	You'll take your blank notebook and you'll enjoy it.
	Yeah, but do you know what he started doing?
	He started making up Banner Lord formations.
	Oh, right, okay.
	So he's there going, look, Dad.
	I gave him it, like, really early on.
	I went and got dressed.
	And I came downstairs.
	And he's like, look, Dad, right?
	See, I've got the infantry and a shield wall at the front.
	I've got the archers spread out behind me and the cavalry.
	We're going to go around the side and get their cavalry before they can get me.
	I'm like, that's brilliant, son.
	I didn't realise I was raising Hannibal.
	Again, I've got a photo.
	You certainly will be useful in the conflicts to come.
	Yeah, exactly.
	He's ready.
	He's going to be prepared.
	But anyway, the Whole Foods CEO explains the history of capitalism, why socialism never works, blah, blah, blah.
	Fairly stock, normal, conservative things.
	Oliver Antony being there was interesting.
	Ian, he does represent a kind of American class, a working class, right?
	And there was...
	Quite a nice sense from the people in this, the top layer, that they do have obligations to those people at the bottom, right?
	And they weren't trying to be elitist, actually, which was quite refreshing to see, and different to the WEF in tone, at least in that way.
	You know, having...
	You know, we're going to have a white working-class man who's going to come and...
	It wasn't barefaced and embarrassing technocrats.
	No, it wasn't.
	It was a lot more thoughtful than that, actually.
	And it was, you know, just fairly centre-right conservative, which was nice.
	You know, it was fine.
	And Oliver Antony played Richmond, north of Richmond, obviously.
	And it was a really good performance, actually.
	I've got to give him credit.
	He is a good performer.
	And then, you know, the AI apocalypse is bad, but we're in a moral crisis, so don't worry about that.
	And, you know, some emotional poem called Sunflowers in Babylon.
	It was okay.
	It was a bit heavy.
	It was a bit, you know, because they had, like, you know, violins playing with it and stuff like that, and it was, it's fine.
	What?
	It's just funny to me.
	It was fine.
	I wasn't crying.
	With all of the problems in the world right now, the sorts of things that we're constantly talking about.
	Some guy's like, I've written this poem for you.
	I'm sure it was great.
	Everyone loved it.
	He got a standing ovation.
	I just didn't enjoy it that much.
	I'm not a poetry guy, really.
	I think that's the problem.
	But anyway, so the whole thing was really nice.
	And you had, like, the top layer of people who are just, you know, it's fairly mainstream conservatism, right?
	And that's fine.
	It's totally fine.
	But it was the people on the sort of, on the ground where, you know, actually the attendees of the conference.
	A lot more base than I was expecting, right?
	A lot of people, like, one of the main things that wasn't touched was immigration, right?
	You know, it's the theme of the thing.
	What a surprise.
	Well, it is a surprise, really, because it is, I think it's because it was so...
	America-focused, right?
	And you speak to lots of Americans, and they speak about these sorts of things, but all of the British people that I met there, and I met a lot, the first thing that they were concerned about is immigration.
	Well, that's the thing.
	I think, obviously, I wasn't there for this kind of thing.
	The people I met on the ground at the after-party, it was...
	Just Englishmen for the most part, so of course it was the thing that they're concerned about.
	Other than maybe one or two, I think Constantine has touched on it a few times.
	Obviously Farage should touch on such things.
	Douglas Murray touched on it.
	And Douglas Murray in particular.
	Most of these speakers are either people who don't really talk about immigration as a subject, or perhaps, like Kemi, would want to avoid it for right now.
	They've been open advocates of it.
	Neil Ferguson.
	I've never met the man, but from what I've been told behind the scenes, it's not really something that he's concerned about.
	Yeah, he's got his own...
	And that's fine, you know, you don't have to talk about everything all the time or anything like that.
	But Douglas Murray was quite firm on it.
	He had a really nice turn of phrase on it.
	I can't remember who...
	He was quoting from someone else, I can't remember who that was.
	He said, look, we act as if our culture is vanilla and that vanilla isn't a flavour.
	But actually, vanilla's a very complex flavour, and we should have been...
	You know, it's difficult to construct, and we should have thought about that.
	It's not that other flavours are added to...
	Vanilla ice cream.
	And vanilla is the best flavour.
	I agree.
	And nobody can change my mind on that.
	Because it's ours.
	But the point is, it was a really good speech.
	It was a good way of approaching the subject of a national culture, ethnicity, and identity, right?
	And so Douglass's was strong on the subject we care about, but most of them weren't talking about it, and that's fine.
	But everyone on the floor was absolutely talking about it, and it was a real concern.
	And the question of English identity was very much on the front of mind of the English people at the conference.
	Obviously, it didn't come up on the stage, because again, lots of Americans and whatnot.
	But it was something that a lot of people were definitely talking about.
	And so that's interesting and good.
	There was also a strong undercurrent of Christianity there.
	Now, it wasn't something necessarily overt, as you can see from the top layer.
	There's nothing expressly Christian that's been...
	From all of these atheists...
	Yeah, but...
	But there were lots of Christians there.
	Well, I mean, Ayaan Hirsi, at least.
	Well, no, no, no, of course.
	And she's right.
	We've gone too far.
	That's absolutely true.
	But there's a distinct undercurrent of Christianity, and I think that is in part driven by Jordan Peterson himself, because he's very concerned about the Christian heritage of the West and sort of the biblical origins of Western morality and things like this, which is all completely viable, valid, and needed to be spoken about.
	And so...
	Anyway, let's carry on because there's a lot of responses to this.
	So you have...
	I've never heard of Dismog before, but apparently they were like, oh, we saw the list of attendees and there were oil executives and Trump allies there.
	It's like, yeah.
	So the people who make sure that we can have the lights on...
	Were these the current president?
	Were these the weirdos who tried to shut down the party?
	No, that's someone else.
	We'll get to those in a moment.
	Okay, alright.
	And yeah, so basically the Guardian cited these guys because apparently they saw the list and said, okay, I don't care and that's fine.
	And no one cared.
	So this sort of fear-mongering by the cooties theory of politics.
	Didn't work at all, which is nice.
	And then you have, you know, people are like, well, why are conservative Christians flocking to Ark?
	Is that because Ark is not anti-Christian?
	It's one of those spaces that is not necessarily pro-Christian.
	It's not overtly pro-Christian, but it's not in any way anti-Christian, and it at least accepts the historic contribution that Christianity has made to Western culture.
	And so, why wouldn't Christians go to it?
	There's absolutely no reason not.
	And so I met a lot of people who are very Christian.
	They're Christian activists.
	Calvin was there.
	And it was totally fine, totally wholesome, totally normal.
	And it's good that this was a normal thing.
	It's like, yeah, no, it's completely fine to have a Christian undercurrent.
	But anyway, obviously, The Guardian.
	Oh, US culture war show comes to London and strikes a chord with European populists.
	Yeah, why wouldn't it?
	Okay.
	They're winning.
	They've got this massive amount of success, and they're getting a lot done, and they're doing a great job by all accounts.
	Yeah, I'd like it if someone would do a good job over here.
	That's really striking chord with me as a European populist, assuming I can even call myself European.
	I'm an Englishman, obviously, so I don't really like that term.
	But anyway, the point being, yes, yes, yes.
	And so Nigel Farage's little talk of Jordan Pison was pretty good as well.
	He was just nothing very controversial, actually, which is probably why you haven't seen any headlines of anything he said.
	But he basically just came out and reaffirmed all of the things we already know Nigel Farage says.
	But it's fine.
	It's fine.
	It wasn't bad.
	It was good.
	It was a re-solidification of a position, which is okay.
	But yeah, so the Guardian is, of course, worried.
	This is going to happen.
	The only thing I saw that caused any controversy is Kemi Bednock getting in trouble for saying things that are basically trivially true.
	Oh, Kemi Bednock slammed after Labour and Lib Dems, by the Labour and Lib Dems, after claiming immigrants bring values that undermine the West.
	So she did speak about it a little bit, I suppose.
	Well, like I said, I haven't watched her speech yet, actually.
	This is the only thing I've seen that anyone that caused any particular...
	Controversy.
	But I mean, it's just trivially true.
	Yeah, we brought in a bunch of Islamists.
	Oh, this seems to be undermining the West Valley and the Labour Party.
	Like, no, that's my constituency.
	This is nothing but a reaffirmation of the multiculturalism and integration discussion that's been going on, which is that, well, multiculturalism doesn't work, so you need to integrate them into your own values, because otherwise the values they bring won't be able to fit with what we already do here.
	So it's that same old discussion, really.
	Yeah.
	And it's the same old reaction as well from Labour and Lib Dems going, no, you need to accept their culture.
	In fact, integrate into their culture.
	It's better than ours because they're not evil racists.
	Yeah, and so there is at least a kind of appreciable parochialism around ARC and the speakers on the top level.
	And this does filter down to a much more based sort of attendance, attendees.
	So it was fine.
	It was good.
	And I really had a good time there.
	It was really nice to have been so well met by everyone.
	Everyone was very kind to me.
	And then, of course, we went to the after party.
	Yeah.
	This was the only bit that I showed up for.
	You know what, so lots of...
	Oh, this was great.
	Yeah, all of the major sort of right-wing newspapers, and even The Spectator were there, had their own stalls and stuff like that.
	So, you know, Jimmy News, Unheard, and a few others, had their own stalls, and they were doing interviews and stuff like that, right?
	And so you have, like, write-ups that weirdly Unheard have been...
	Surprisingly kind to me of late, I feel.
	Which is nice.
	They did that article talking about how you were basically the catalyst for the online right as it is right now the other day, didn't they?
	Basically like the godfather of the right in Britain or something.
	Oh, that's nice.
	That's very flattering.
	And in this one, again, I get a bit of a mention.
	So they tell us that hours before...
	So basically there's this party, Amiga or something like that it was called.
	And so I booked a hotel right next to it because I had to persuade my wife to let me go to it.
	Which she very kindly did.
	And so I booked a hotel.
	So long housed.
	So long housed.
	It's not long housed.
	No, what you do, Carl, is you say, I'm going to this, by the way.
	Deal with it.
	No way, man.
	That would be totally unfair as well, because it's half term.
	My wife has had all four kids on her own for the entire week.
	Like, I felt terrible.
	Honestly, I got home.
	You know what?
	At the party, I could tell how terrible you felt, man.
	If you're watching this, darling, it was awful.
	He had a terrible time.
	Him and Dank, they were just arguing the whole time.
	The thing is, I had to meet a bunch of people on Thursday as well, so I didn't get home until about 6 o'clock Thursday evening.
	And literally, my kids come up to me, my wife just hands me the youngest.
	She's like, right, I need some time on my own.
	Yeah, to be fair, this happens with me.
	I've only got one right now still, but when I get home after a long absence, when I'm here, for instance, and she's been playing up, I just open the door, there you go.
	I'm going outside for a smoke.
	Yeah, it's literally, I just want some fresh air.
	You know, any sensory reduction, and I completely understand.
	So it was very kind of her to do that.
	It's not being Longhouse, it's me being like, oh my god, you know, my poor wife.
	Being such a gentleman.
	I am, yeah, but trying to be a good husband.
	Good man.
	But anyway, yeah, so some group called Fossil Free London.
	I'd never even heard of them, right?
	But the location of the venue got leaked, so they messaged the venue and like, ooh!
	There are some evil right-wingers at your venue.
	They might have a picture of the actual...
	They shared the screenshot.
	Yeah, I think they were putting it up on Twitter and said, We got it cancelled!
	Like 11 likes.
	And then everybody from the party just posted themselves pictured at the cancelled pub.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So they managed to find another venue, which is good.
	So, they say, you know, the organizer said, it's amazing what you can do with money after, before name-checking billionaire Peter Thiel as a donor.
	So, we were being bankrolled by Peter Thiel, apparently.
	I didn't know this.
	Peter Thiel spoke...
	Oh, no, we're not beating the allegations.
	Hey, dude, Peter, like, just, you know, call me.
	I'm totally fine to be bankrolled by you.
	Because he spoke at ARK, actually, and he was really good via Zoom.
	And it was a really good chair, you know, like, he makes good points about what's happening.
	He's a smart guy, and he switched on.
	Peter Thiel's, like, interventions and things were some of the most relevant things.
	And a lot of people around were like, oh, I don't really get what he was saying.
	It's like, that's because he's ahead of the curve than you.
	You know, it's only us and Peter Thiel who get it.
	But anyway, yeah, so they say in here, quote, Inside, incongruent classical music blared.
	It was a very strange atmosphere when we first got in there.
	It was.
	It was very eyes wide shut for about 20 minutes.
	Yeah, until everyone got drunk.
	And then the bangers started downstairs.
	Music.
	But incongruent classical music blared in a room of garish decor with a life-size zebra as the star of the show.
	What?
	Was that?
	Yeah, did you not see it?
	It's this picture right here.
	That was on the upstairs.
	Oh, I didn't go to the upstairs.
	I was too late.
	Oh, wait, no.
	Or was it downstairs?
	No, this was upstairs.
	I don't know.
	You were sat upstairs, like, the whole night.
	Although I don't recall seeing it.
	It was very strange when I walked in there.
	I turned to...
	Josh was there and Louis Brackpool was with me.
	I turned to him and said, right, when do they hand the masks out?
	When does the office start?
	Because it had that atmosphere.
	This is just going to show how perceptive I am.
	In fact, we'll carry on.
	I didn't even notice that.
	The attendees in the room were somewhat perplexed, with one telling me it was completely demonic.
	A little bit.
	Downstairs...
	See, I was downstairs, not upstairs.
	That's why I didn't see it.
	I saw you upstairs the whole time.
	I don't know.
	I was just on the level that you walked in.
	Much merriment was good.
	Reform UK's chairman, Zia Yusuf, rubbed shoulders with right-wing YouTubers like Carl Benjamin, who held court at a table of rotating guests.
	That part is true, although I didn't see you interact with Zaya Yusuf at all.
	I didn't know he was there.
	I spotted him sat by himself downstairs scrolling his phone right next to the dance floor.
	And it was one of those, like, I was heading to the bar and I was like, is that Zaya Yusuf?
	Anyway.
	I didn't see him.
	And the thing is, like, I don't know what, like, for me...
	You know, you saw it.
	I constantly get people coming up to talk to me, right?
	And it's fine.
	It's really nice.
	But it means that I don't get to scan for people.
	Because if I'd seen him, I would have gone over and introduced myself and talked to him, right?
	But I just didn't know he was there.
	So he wasn't rubbing shoulders with me.
	I didn't know he was there.
	It was very nice on that subject to put lots of faces to meet a lot of people who before then had just been faces on my Twitter or on YouTube or something.
	For everybody who came up to say hello, introduce themselves to me.
	Introduce all of their friends, like, all of their friends all at once as well.
	You were all lovely.
	I don't remember any of your names.
	Yeah, this is a perennial problem, is names.
	Faces are easy, names are terrible.
	But anyway, the point is, it was all really nice, and any writer we got made us sound good.
	And it was all really, really well put together.
	The whole thing was very professional.
	There were absolutely no problems, no hiccups.
	I saw no trouble, no personality conflicts.
	Everyone seemed to get on really, really well.
	And I met James Lindsay.
	Unblock me, coward!
	Do it!
	Well, he'd already unblocked me.
	Oh, yeah.
	But he was actually really...
	Well, he's not unblocked...
	He's not blocked me in the first place.
	Right, right.
	I've just not interacted with him for a...
	Wait, was he at the party?
	Not at the party.
	He was an arc.
	Yeah, because I saw Ed Dutton interview him at the party.
	I then saw Ed Dutton try and breakdance.
	I didn't see that.
	I wish I'd seen that.
	Or at least he was threatening to.
	So I had a chat with James Lindsay about his woke right term, and he was like, yeah, I think I need to be...
	It was a bit harder than I intended it to be, and he kind of backed down from a lot of that, which was quite nice.
	He was a lot nicer in person than he is on Twitter, but I think there's a lot of people who are like that, frankly.
	Twitter's easy to do.
	Probably me as well.
	Probably, yeah.
	I'll see if I can meet Constantine next time.
	His speech was pretty good, actually, I've got to say.
	I'm sure it was.
	Yeah, well, it was pretty good.
	But yeah, no, everyone there was really nice, everything went really well, and lots of good connections were had, and it was a really great networking event, and I would definitely recommend people go to it next year, assuming they have one next year.
	I don't know how often they do these things.
	I think it's been annual since it started, so...
	Right, okay.
	Well, I definitely recommend people go to it, especially if you're involved in this world.
	It was worth it.
	There you go.
	I just enjoyed the partying.
	Well, the party was good.
	And also getting an opportunity to meet a lot of people is always a lovely thing, especially because you're all so wonderful.
	You watching the podcast right now, thinking to yourself, would Harry be my friend in real life?
	As long as you're buying the merch, yes.
	Yes, I would.
	If you came up to me wearing an Islander-branded Lotus Eaters t-shirt.
	Any of the variety that we have right here, this beautiful metal one, the Islander Forestry Co., a Calvin Robinson t-shirt.
	I'll look at you and go, that's a man I can trust.
	If you're not...
	We might have a problem.
	The funniest thing is, right, Harry's exactly the same on the podcast as he's off the podcast.
	So, like, he's a very friendly chap, but he probably would be your friend even if you weren't.
	You should definitely go buy her merch.
	That was a great sales pitch.
	Don't let them know.
	Don't let them know.
	They need to buy the shirts, okay?
	Especially because this is the last day I think I've been told.
	We'll see.
	How that sticks to next week, but I've been told that this is the last day that we're selling them, so you only have one opportunity left to be my friend.
	Anyway...
	Great sales.
	I should be using that.
	I should be using that.
	No, no, no.
	Okay.
	On to more serious news.
	So, we covered a little bit of this yesterday in Nate's segment when he was talking about the prospects of Britain putting troops on the ground in Ukraine to guarantee any kind of peace deal that's made by the US and Ukraine.
	Well, sorry, the US and Russia, because Ukraine is not really at the table right now, which kind of shows the pant, doesn't it?
	This has not been a Ukraine-Russia conflict.
	This has been another...
	Almost century-long series of conflicts between the US and Russia, with Ukraine acting as somewhat of a proxy.
	But it looks like we're reaching the end of that now, certainly the end of the US involvement in it, and they're going to want to make sure that Europe sticks to whatever deals are made.
	So I think it's worth going over and looking at what's going on...
	What has the ultimate cost and results, what's been achieved in this conflict, and I also wanted to just look as well at a little bit of the historical precedent and parallels that this has as well, because it seems to be an attempt to re-establish...
	Not even necessarily re-establish, but establish the world order going forwards.
	Where will the US be?
	Where will Russia be?
	Where will Europe be?
	Because Europe is currently scrambling under the threat of no longer being able to rely on America as much.
	And, you know, we have been relying on America for a long time, mainly due to America establishing itself as global hegemon following the Second World War.
	But because we've been so reliant on them, we're weak.
	Yeah.
	So what happens next?
	What happens next?
	So obviously the peace talks are ongoing right now.
	China is very positive towards them saying that Trump's doing a great job at the moment.
	Really?
	Well, I think they're wanting to...
	Just get this over with.
	Everybody wants to get this over with.
	I think everybody can see that the Ukraine side of the conflict has been a disaster from the start.
	They were immediately swamped, had a load of territory taken over.
	They did some counter-offences and they got some of the territory back.
	They have managed to push, and on maps, it's literally like, here's what Russia has.
	And in some of the counter-offences and offences that Ukraine has done, here's what Ukraine managed to take from them, and Ukraine has gone, you know, we'll swap territory in these peace deals, but you've got this and they've got that, so what leg do you have to stand on?
	And Trump has even explicitly said as much.
	He says, well, they've got the cards.
	It's true.
	They've got the cards.
	It can be very upsetting to some people to hear this kind of thing.
	Some would argue that it's Russian propaganda.
	But even among mainstream news sources that we've been seeing, Ukraine recently launched two major counter-offensives that went nowhere.
	And you can go to The Guardian, you can go to the BBC to read that, and you can go to the BBC coverage where you can see all of the maps of territory that's been captured by both sides, and you can see that Trump is not saying anything that is untrue.
	So one of the main problems with this is it's important to separate out the sort of morale-raising propaganda in favour of Ukraine from the Machiavellian political realist power politics layer.
	And on the morale-raising layer, yeah, okay, yes, I mean, I don't like Russia.
	I don't want them to win loads of territory.
	I don't want them to do all of these things.
	But then in reality...
	Russia controls far more of Ukraine than it did before, and it has leverage using this.
	Unless we are going to suggest total war with Russia or something.
	The active NATO involvement boots on the ground, escalating to a full hot war.
	Exactly.
	Unless that's the only option from this point onwards, then we have to concede that Russia has defeated Ukraine, which seemed kind of inevitable when you look at the scale of the two countries anyway.
	And even with Western backing, Ukraine has...
	Got to this point where it wants to negotiate.
	It's like, okay, fine, this is the fact.
	Whether you like it or not, and whether you support it or not, unfortunately Russia does have the upper hand in the negotiations, so that's just true.
	Ukraine wants to be at the table, but again, given that they've been acting as a proxy for the US for most of this conflict.
	So it is the US saying, no, we want to arrange this.
	And on regards to the rhetoric, Obviously, it's a different approach being taken by the US and Europe, Europe being in the direct line of fire.
	If Russia, for whatever reason, did want to amount more offences in the future against any European countries, they want to have a strong footing, they want to present themselves as being a force to be reckoned with, so they're still keeping up the fierce wartime rhetoric.
	Whereas Trump and America, who are very, very far away from the conflict in practical terms, and want to wind this whole thing down.
	Have gone into the concession rhetoric right now.
	Not without sacrificing their strength, of course, but just being a bit more honest about it by saying things like this.
	Just as a quick side as well, this is a tale as old as time.
	Yes.
	Where you have two great nations, and when I say great I mean vast, fighting over...
	Powerful, yes.
	Powerful.
	Fighting over a contested country...
	That is much smaller between them, right?
	I mean, literally, you can go back as far as you like, like the Spartans and the Athenians fighting over Mantinea and Argos, or like the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sasanians fighting over Iraq, or what is Iraq?
	Mesopotamia.
	You know, like...
	The US and Russia fighting over Afghanistan back in the 70s and 80s.
	Or the Romans and the Carthaginians fighting over Sicily.
	It's such an obvious and well-known piece of warfare that unfortunately it's just true that this still happens to this day because the world really hasn't changed all that much.
	It's just how these things work and Ukraine is that area of land that the two great powers are fighting over.
	Again, it's not an endorsement, it's just the way things are.
	Yeah, and ultimately, it does seem that because of all of this, Ukraine, as you might have expected, is going to be asked to foot a...
	Pretty hefty bill off the back of this, because White House officials told Ukraine to stop bad-mouthing Trump and sign a deal handing over $500 billion worth of natural resources, which are half of the country's mineral wealth to the U.S. to repay it for wartime aid.
	U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Walsh has told reporters that Trump was obviously very frustrated with Zelensky for not accepting the deal.
	Now, this has a dual role.
	I think, obviously, you want...
	America has said...
	Under the last administration, we gave you basically a blank check for as much as you want.
	So we want to recoup some of that, but at the same time, with Trump starting to put on sanctions in South Africa, which has been a great place for natural resources as well, they're looking for an extra somewhere to get those natural resources from now that South Africa won't be available.
	So Ukraine, no matter what the deal is, I would imagine that there's going to be...
	Two major requirements of them.
	One, Zelensky will not last as leader.
	Two, we need to continue our relationship with you in a way that's going to be beneficial to American needs first.
	Yes.
	So, weirdly, Zelensky seems to actually be acting in Ukraine's best interest here, right?
	Now, I'm not a fan of Zelensky, but it would have been easier for him to just agree.
	They probably would have just bought him out.
	They'd probably be like, oh yeah, we'll make sure you're taken care of, and you'll get loads of money, we'll get Ukraine's resources.
	Not even necessarily, from what I can tell, saying that we need to extend the conflict ad infinitum.
	He's saying we want a place at the table so that we have a bit of a better negotiating ground here.
	I don't blame him for wanting that.
	It's a perfectly respectable thing, actually.
	I imagine this has probably improved his profile in his own country.
	Well, I think Donald Trump obviously put out the statement the other day saying that Zelensky's a dictator, tricked the US into...
	He's being thrown under the bus.
	Completely.
	Completely thrown under the bus.
	If you want to call Zelensky a dictator, well, in that case...
	Winston Churchill was a dictator for not holding elections during the Second World War as well.
	This is just how war politics goes.
	You can't just have random governmental changes in the middle of a massive conflict that your country's embroiled in, unless you want to go with maybe the World War I. Solution.
	Like Russia.
	Yeah, where that did happen a few times.
	And you either have one of two things.
	Your country immediately collapses, or your country goes into DEFCON 4, we're going to fight this till the bloody end.
	And you end up with a Treaty of Versailles situation.
	Yeah, and like I said, I'm not a fan of Zelensky, and I did not support us being so involved in the Ukraine war.
	I think they should have had a negotiated settlement a lot sooner.
	But I don't actually begrudge him that much.
	I mean, he banned two opposition parties or three opposition parties who were openly pro-Russia.
	I can understand why he would do that, because you're literally being invaded by Russia.
	And the media, yeah, he did...
	Again, during the Second World War...
	He did the same thing.
	And I'm not saying that this was a moral thing to do, but without even doing anything as far as saying that we should be supporting Germany, Oswald Mosley was just immediately thrown in prison.
	For instance, because he was potentially seen as a threat to the war effort.
	Yeah, and so I'm not saying it's right, obviously.
	What I'm saying is, on a power politics level, this is what happens when there's a major war that your country is involved in.
	It's just the nature of the beast, like a little armpit.
	So I do think calling Zelensky a dictator has been a bit strong.
	And when the war, you know, now the war's winding down and a peace deal can be made, yeah, elections should definitely be held.
	Obviously.
	Yeah, obviously.
	But again, there's the question of whether Europe, or at least our European leaders, because I think...
	Whether they think the war is over.
	Whether they think the war is over, because they are still really scrambling for this, because...
	It's not just the prospect of the war being over, it's the war being over and America very very explicitly and publicly on a global scale taking a step back from its role in Europe it had had as a peacekeeper and guarantor of particular European safeties.
	Not that I necessarily think that American regimes have had an excellent cultural...
	Impact on Europe, which I'll get into over the past 80 years, but that they will not anymore have the same military influence.
	So now they're talking about things like conscription as the Ukraine war enters third year.
	There is some disagreement on this, but people, especially like the Latvians, of course, it's going to be the Baltic countries, are saying we need to reintroduce conscription.
	There have been some within...
	Britain saying conscription might be on the table, but that's a bit of a different story.
	Of course, Keir Starmer, as covered yesterday, has said he would be happy to have boots on the ground in Ukraine to guarantee the peace deals.
	Now, of course...
	Ukraine, if there is a transitionary period going into peace, will need some kind of third-party mediator for that.
	And I would prefer Europeans over, as was suggested by, I think, Foreign Policy magazine, just send the third world to Ukraine so that they can guarantee the peace.
	Because that's what Ukraine needs after all of this, right?
	A hefty dose of diversity.
	Sorry, send the third world?
	As in conscript or recruit?
	Conscript the global south.
	I assume recruit the Global South.
	Yeah, recruit the Global South to manage the peace transitionary period for Ukraine.
	So again, if you...
	Some of the Congolese militants patrolling Ukraine to defend...
	Yeah, that's what you need, right?
	What?
	Again, there's the question of, like, how well does this all...
	What's the receipt for Ukraine for all of this?
	Well, millions dead, economy in shambles...
	Potentially a massive footing bill for the US for all of the loans that you got from them.
	And then to top it, all our foreign policies like nice diversity as well.
	A nice injection of diversity.
	So really, I feel bad for the Ukrainians, man.
	They've not come out the other side of this good at all.
	And again, it is not the fault of the Ukrainians on the ground.
	And even the Ukrainians who signed up and supported the war, of course that's what you're going to do.
	This was a fight for sovereignty.
	But it's really not worked out well.
	And the rest of Europe as well, through giving so much support to them, all of this money, all of this very, very heated wartime rhetoric, and now off the other end of it, America's like, bye!
	And you do have to hand it to the Ukrainians.
	They fought a heroic fight.
	I wouldn't want to have to deal with that.
	That's a terrible position to be in.
	So, you know, the average Ukrainian is a very brave person.
	But, of course, any NATO-aligned country having boots on the ground, even in a transitionary period, threatens conflict happening, depending on just how things work out on the ground.
	The Economist decided to post this one.
	How Europe must respond as Trump and Putin smash the post-world order.
	Post-war order.
	Yeah, the post-war order.
	Yeah, saying, Mr. Trump appears to be ready to walk away from Ukraine, which he falsely blames for the war, calling its president a dictator.
	He'd warned him that he'd better move fast or he's not going to have a country left.
	America may try to impose an unstable ceasefire on Ukraine with only weak security guarantees that limits its right to rearm.
	Let us spell out the reality that Europe faces.
	And this is where I think it's...
	True, what they're saying here, despite all of the hysterical rhetoric that they engage with this kind of thing, trying to make it look as though Trump and Putin are best friends.
	And I see this as an extension, basically, of the 2016 Russian interference kind of rhetoric.
	They still can't get it out of their heads that Trump is not just...
	Putin's stooge on the world stages.
	They just cannot get it out of their heads.
	But still, if this is what they want to go with, at least they put bits in here like this that are true.
	It is, Europe is an indebted, aging continent that is barely growing and cannot defend itself or project hard power.
	Number two soft power in the world.
	That's what we've got.
	Global rules on trade, borders, defense, and technology are being ripped up.
	If Russia invades one of the Baltic states, or...
	And this is where they go into the hysterics again, but, you know, I can understand there is always the concern.
	Or uses disinformation to sabotage and destabilize Eastern Europe.
	What precisely will Europe do?
	And this is both a fault of...
	Europe relying so much on the US guarantees for so long, and Europe just generally grinding itself into the ground.
	And I do think in the long term, if it's managed properly and governed properly, that America pulling away from Europe can give the leaders room to actually begin to fix some of these problems, but with the technocratic globalists that we have in charge of a lot of European countries right now...
	I don't think that that would be possible.
	With Macron still in charge of France, people of his calibre, no, I don't think it's going to be possible for Europe to drag itself out of the mire, even if I do think, again, having America out of the picture at least is a catalyst for them trying to do something good.
	The question is, does anyone want to fight for the rules-based international order?
	No.
	No, what is, I mean, to use our own examples, what is Britain offering these people?
	Do you want to fight for a country that wants to erase your history, erase your culture?
	I've seen the recent thing on Twitter going around where it's an English heritage poster, where it's a pair of diverse people saying, we need to preserve our heritage.
	It's their heritage now, so we're just giving it away.
	Yeah, do you want to fight for that?
	No.
	So, one of the good things that might come out of this, and this was an interesting take that I saw from it, which was just the headline here.
	Embrace of Putin is a Molotov-Ribbentrop crisis for Europe.
	Just constantly fighting Nazis in their imagination.
	As though Europe will be split between two spheres of influence.
	American on the West.
	Russian on the East, which is, that's not some kind of new crisis for Europe.
	That was the Cold War.
	That's just returning to the Cold War.
	But during the Cold War, what did we get?
	We got these new ideologies of diversity start to get sprinkled into the countries, and we see things change into the international liberal world.
	I would say that comes after the Cold War.
	It accelerates after the Cold War, certainly.
	It is true that during the Cold War, the ideologies that we come to know as just woke diversity, DI, they were created, but they were a long way away from power and a long way away from influence.
	And it's not until the 90s where they actually start finding a proper foothold.
	I mean, Crenshaw coined intersectionality in 1992, so it is after...
	Well, during the Cold War, I can see the necessity of having it so that the countries that you have on your side are still humiliating Homogenous and able to function properly.
	It was just the way things were.
	And after that, all of a sudden, you don't need them to be as stable.
	So things ramp up.
	On a purely Machiavellian perspective, then it makes sense.
	Keep them stable when we need them for any potential hot war that may erupt.
	Once the threat of that is gone, well...
	Well, it's the end of history, then.
	It's the end of history.
	Everybody's just an interchangeable economic unit.
	We want them to indulge in hedonism.
	We want them to be disparate and separated from one another, no communities, because it just means that they spend more.
	Well, communities are part of history.
	Yeah, exactly.
	But they point out that this is the Telegraph being a bit worried about America's influence on...
	England in particular, following the end of this conflict, saying that MAGA America has a greater natural affinity for Putin's right-wing cultural Weltanschauung, because of course they've got his Nazis all over again, Putlers...
	Hang on, right, so that is actually a philosophical term, right?
	True.
	It's long before the Nazis, Weltanschauung is just the German for worldview, basically.
	They always have to...
	Put it in German, don't they?
	Because it gets people's minds racing.
	But it's also in the philosophical literature, that's the word they use.
	It's like, can't we just use worldview?
	What's wrong with worldview?
	I don't know why we have to use the German word for it.
	I'm sure some German philosopher coined it.
	It's called the association.
	I mean, we're calling it the Molotov-Ribbentrop crisis.
	It's Nazis and Soviets all again.
	No, it's not.
	It's something completely different.
	It's Americans and Russians.
	You know, as in American...
	The thing is, right, I was at a sort of little conference a while ago, and I was saying, look, I think Putin is actually representative of Russia, right?
	I think the average Russian...
	He's very popular with Russians that I've met.
	I bet the average Russian sees a lot of themselves in Putin, right?
	And I bet they see him as operating in the Russian interest in a traditionally Russian manner.
	And so it's not...
	Putin doesn't seem like a...
	Rabid ideologue to me.
	He just seems like a Russian nationalist, or a traditionalist, like a czar almost, right?
	Whereas Trump's an American traditionalist.
	He's just an American, being American, and wanting to project American power on the world stage.
	This is not...
	The Nazis and the Soviets were highly ideological.
	They had giant sev a priori instructions that they were trying to bring into being.
	They were like, no, I have to mould the world into communism or Nazism to make a better and new world.
	These guys aren't thinking anything like this.
	These guys are thinking, Machiavellian, oh, how can America be strong?
	How can Russia be strong?
	So this harking about, they're always fighting the last war.
	Yeah, this is just nonsense.
	There's a nonsense association.
	Yeah, but the...
	I agree with you there.
	To carry on from some of the bits of this article that I've highlighted here, so they say, some of us are forced to conclude that Britain and Europe are now the real enemies for this new Washington, and furthermore, that the US is anything but isolationist under Donald Trump.
	He will not let us carry on being different.
	He will force-feed us his MAGA ideology.
	His oil-fracking energy secretary in London this week described our renewables as sinister.
	Will we face sanctions for trying to do something?
	Oh no, he won't let us carry on being DEI Like, ideologues.
	And it's ironic that he's saying that we're different and he'll force on MAGA ideology when lots of the progressive ideology that we've got is an import from America in the first place.
	Civil rights ideology is not English or European at all.
	100%.
	Please God, let it be true that they're not going to let you carry on with the climate nonsense.
	Just please.
	So, it's incredible to me that this guy is, again, this type is like the real conservative now, because he wants to conserve ten years ago's ideology.
	No, no, we can't have this new American...
	I need American woke ideology, not American-based ideology.
	Yeah, it's ridiculous, the...
	Kind of panicking that's going on here.
	I do not wish to dissect every post by Trump on Truth Social or dwell on the speech by J.D. Vance.
	I think Britain should repeal all its hate legislation and stop using police resources on thought crimes.
	It should stop dividing us into categories and return to colorblind liberalism.
	Colorblind liberalism is American.
	Yeah.
	So, I mean, it's better than what we've got right now.
	It's a better America, but it's still American.
	So if you're worried about all of this stuff to do with, oh, America's sphere of influence, we don't want to be under their thumb, you still are, whether you realize it or not.
	And we can return things to...
	And also, it's ironic, because that is...
	If there's an ideology behind MAGA and Trumpism in general, that's it.
	Yeah.
	So he's saying, oh, I'm worried about the influence taking us back to the exact thing that I want it to be.
	But I believe already.
	Yeah.
	So there's very strange pitched hysterics that go on.
	There's a lot of ideological confusion in our conservative class.
	Yeah.
	And of course, again...
	This kind of sphere of American influence is better than what it used to be that led to one of the worst examples of European wokeness, that being just Germany.
	Germany in general.
	Have you seen this that came out recently?
	I have.
	In the interest of time, can we summarize?
	Oh yeah, basically, Germany is a big victim of the...
	End of history, post-war, post-history ideology, and took their incredible love of bureaucratization and authoritarianism and decided, well, we're going to do...
	If we think, and this is an incredibly broad term now, that Nazism is basically everything...
	Then we're going to criminalize all of it.
	So there was this great one saying, is posting an insult a crime?
	Yes.
	Is it a crime to repost an insult or a lie?
	Yes.
	Is it a crime to insult somebody in public?
	Yes.
	And these are German prosecutors.
	Oh yeah, this is the German attitude towards law and order.
	Yeah, saying such things.
	You know, Schultz saying that freedom of speech is not actually freedom of speech because it can't back the extreme right, who are the AFD. And we've got the elections for Germany coming up on Sunday.
	I thought you were going to bring up a Nazi party or something.
	No, no.
	Yeah, yeah, maybe, I mean, those guys sound pretty serious.
	No, it's AFD. No, it's always the AFD because they say, hey, let's...
	Let Germany be a country and not an economic zone for everybody.
	Maybe we've got problems with immigration.
	They go, that's just exactly what Hitler thought.
	But we've got the elections coming up on Sunday.
	I had a little bit more to go over, but we'll keep a track of the German elections and see what happens.
	But I think...
	That's a little bit of a summation of where we stand at the moment during these peace talks and where the New World Order will be going forwards.
	If American influence is going to maintain in the West, I would still rather it be Trump's influence than whatever Kamala Harris might have been pushing on us.
	The AFD are just, they're liberal, so just knock it off.
	Anyway, Bald Eagle says, 5 billion only for Ukraine, eh?
	No, it was 500 billion.
	They want 500 billion out of Ukraine.
	Yeah, they want 500 out of them, and it's for the natural resources, and it's multi-layered as to why they want those natural resources as well.
	Yeah, so it's worse.
	Ryan says, my Islander 2 copy came last week without me having to contact you.
	Man, I'm really sorry it took so long.
	We don't know why our distributors have done this to us.
	We've changed distributor for Islander 3. This is not going to happen again.
	You're going to get email updates about where the thing is, and you'll have a thing you can contact if there's a problem.
	This is not happening twice.
	And O'Hok says, and I'm just going to say, I'm reading this verbatim, this is not what I personally believe, okay?
	And he sent us $20, so I've got to read it.
	Yeah, you've got to do it, man.
	Israel had helped orchestrate the assassination of JFK because he was preventing them from having nuclear weapons and trying to register AIPAC under Farah Ryan, Dawson and Corey Hughes, no much more.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	I have heard that theory, but I've not looked anywhere near enough into it.
	I know that there is some evidence behind it, but there's also a lot of evidence behind the kind of theories that Bo has as well.
	JFK, for me, I'm a Zoomer.
	He does not have the same emotional resonance that he did with the Boomers for me.
	Yeah, I'm Gen X, I don't care about you.
	So I'm just like, JFK, his head might as well have just spontaneously combusted for all I can.
	I'm sure the CIA, or whoever it was, did kill him.
	I'm sure it was a conspiracy, you know.
	That's the sort of thing they did back then.
	Hopefully they don't do it too much now.
	I'm sure they still do, obviously, but what are you going to do?
	Anyway, so one of the foundational questions of morality is, how would you like it if this happened to you?
	And this is the golden rule.
	The hypothetical conditional.
	If this was being done to me, would I like it?
	And if the answer is no, then maybe I shouldn't do it to someone else.
	And that's just a basic, simple rule of morality.
	And I think it's worth having a bit of a recap as to, What has already happened when it comes to, say, dumping hundreds of illegal immigrants in tiny villages, and whether that would be something you would appreciate.
	And if that's not the case, why are we doing it to the people of our own countries?
	And especially as this is a well-trodden path, we know what the result will be.
	So, anyway, before we get into it, this is the final day to get Islander too much.
	Go and get it, or else you'll never be able to get it again.
	And we will...
	Be vastly appreciative because, of course, we're still demonetized on this channel.
	Thanks, YouTube.
	And help us keep the lights on and make sure we've got jobs tomorrow.
	Anyway, so back in 2015, there was a huge influx of quote-unquote refugees from Syria, quote-unquote.
	Now, be surprised to learn, most of the refugees weren't from Syria.
	Most of them weren't from war zones.
	Most of them, like 90-plus percent, were young men.
	As in fighting age young men who, if you're in a war, I mean, this is the thing about Ukraine.
	Ukraine were like, no, we're conscripting all of the young men to fight a war.
	Oh, I believe there's a real war going on then.
	What were the Ukrainian refugees?
	Women and children.
	Oh, real refugees.
	Got you.
	Got you.
	These were not refugees.
	The asylum seekers.
	So in small places like Sumter in Germany, and this was probably the worst of it.
	As I said, a village of 102 people.
	And the German government was like, yeah, have 750 young men from foreign parts.
	Good luck.
	You're on your own, right?
	And, I mean, the mayor, it has a mayor, who literally every single person in the village knows personally, was just like, I thought this was a joke.
	His wife, the mayor, said, assured him it must be a hoax.
	It certainly can't be true.
	She thought it was a joke, but it was not.
	It became a showcase of the extreme pressures bearing down on Germany as it scrambles to find shelter for what, by the end of the year, could be well over a million people seeking refuge from poverty or wars in Africa, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan elsewhere.
	So...
	Poverty and wars.
	Sorry, refuge from poverty.
	This is the kind of yellow journalism we had to deal with.
	It's disgusting.
	You're not a refugee from poverty, ever.
	Ever.
	You cannot be a refugee from poverty.
	Remember when they changed the definition so you could also be a refugee from oppression if you were gay in some country that has anti-gay laws?
	Well, come straight over.
	Don't worry about it.
	And we do that to this day.
	But it was something like 1.3 million in total that came.
	But imagine being in this village and all of a sudden a load of foreigners show up that outnumber you 7 to 1. Yeah.
	Can you call that village German anymore in any practical way?
	Exactly.
	So what was the island off the coast of Italy that had it in Lampedusa or something?
	Oh yeah.
	Yeah, whereas literally 6,000 people on the island and 20,000 Africans turned up.
	It's like, oh great.
	Thanks very much.
	This is a horrific thing.
	And as you can see, this is an older community.
	And this is 10 years ago as well, and it's interesting how the tactics have just remained the same.
	We saw it with Springfield, Ohio last year, where it's just, we've got a load of foreigners, we won't tell the local population, we'll just drop them there, and you can deal with it.
	And the reason they do this is there's fundamentally nothing these people can do.
	So if you...
	So, oh, you've got 100 people there.
	Well, how much is 100 votes worth?
	Not that much.
	These people aren't going to be affecting national elections, are they?
	It's not their problem.
	So can they physically drive out the refugees?
	No, they can't do that.
	So they can do nothing.
	In fact, what can they do?
	Can they sell up and move?
	No, because the house prices plummet.
	So they can't even sell up and move.
	So they're kind of prisoners there with seven to one foreign men who are just standing around wondering why they're even here.
	Because they've got nothing to do.
	They've never heard of something.
	Yeah, there's no infrastructure there.
	They don't have, like, you know, an arcade or something.
	There's nothing there.
	So it's like, what are they doing?
	They're just existing.
	You're just asking for trouble.
	You are just asking for trouble.
	And that's the worst example where it's like, you know, seven to one.
	But it's still...
	There are other examples where it's just ridiculous.
	This is one from 2016. A small village...
	Called Close to Hide, which has got a population of 280, and so 88 asylum seekers are put in.
	Again, these are going to be older residents in these towns anyway.
	So if you put 90 nearly young men who are just knocking around with nothing to do, they end up causing trouble.
	Just listen to the tone.
	Everything about this was just...
	I hate it.
	I remember it very clearly and it really annoys me, right?
	So, like, 88 asylum seekers moved there last December.
	They moved there, did they?
	They just moved there, did they?
	No, they got dumped there on buses by the government, alright?
	But fewer than 60 remained, so a bunch of just wandered off.
	Where did they go?
	Who knows?
	It's just a Schengenzen, bro.
	But they spend nearly six hours a day studying German in hopes that they could someday work in professional fields such as medicine and pharmaceuticals.
	And I'm sure that was a decision they came to independently.
	And I'm sure now they're all, you know, eight years later, eight, nine years later, I'm sure they're all now doctors and engineers and lawyers.
	I mean, even if they are, I mean, we saw what happened with some of the German doctors.
	Well, yeah.
	Couldn't speak English very well.
	Became a Reddit atheist.
	Oh, committed a terror.
	How many hours a day and for how long do you have to study German to be able to speak German?
	I feel like a week or six hours a day, you're going to have passable German, right?
	You'll be able to have two weeks, maybe a month.
	You know, how many years does it take, right?
	But anyway, the point being, quote, the fears have been inflamed by the rise of a far-right Islamophobic party is the FD. Again, like, oh wow, something's scary, now it's the AFD. They've been boogeymen for so long.
	It's insane how the rhetoric and the methods has just sustained itself for this long.
	Exactly the same, and it's been nearly a decade.
	Although I think that's mainly on the left.
	On the right, I think we've adapted somewhat to shrug our shoulders and say, don't care.
	If it was genuinely like, okay, there's a goose stepping down the streets or something, and they're like, yeah, we're going to...
	Put them onto camps.
	I'd be like, okay, maybe not those guys.
	But the AFD are not like that.
	They're just normal.
	They're just a normal party.
	In any other world, in any other paradigm, the AFD would just be the normal Conservative Party.
	That's just it, right?
	So, anyway, the AFD is like, I don't think Islam is compatible with the German Constitution.
	No kidding.
	And they also say, oh, the migrants are criminals.
	A series of attacks last month, including two by asylum seekers, there we go, have also unnerved Germans, though polls show that most don't see a connection between the attacks on refugees.
	I'm sure they didn't back in 2016. But, of course, there are loads of examples.
	Here's another one in Bautzen, where residents were battling with asylum seekers.
	Sorry, why were the asylum seekers battling residents?
	Why were they doing this?
	It must have been racism.
	Yeah.
	An 18-year-old Moroccan showed reports.
	Look at the way the BBC is framing this.
	None of the Germans who were probably attacked.
	Look at the poor diversity.
	Look at this young man who was only trying to flee from violence in his home country, I'm sure.
	Fleeing the war in Morocco.
	It's just a complete coincidence that when he got there, suddenly it was violent.
	Yeah, yeah.
	He's a grifter.
	He's a grifter.
	That's what he's there for.
	He's there to get German money.
	There's no war in Morocco.
	Look at the chain around his neck.
	Look at him.
	Look at his shaved eyebrows.
	Yeah, no, shut up.
	You're a grifter.
	You've come to get some free money.
	Understood.
	I don't even blame you.
	The problem, the people I blame, you know, obviously young men are going to go try and adventure somewhere to get free money.
	The problem I blame is why are we giving them?
	You know, no, they should have been kicked out.
	But anyway, yeah, so, Moroccan asylum seeker.
	And then you get the reaction from people because, of course...
	You know, if you've got a lot of bored young men who don't respect your country laying around, and obviously there's a massive spike in crimes, particularly rapes.
	So people were pissed off, right?
	People were really pissed off.
	Well, was it 2015-2016 New Year's in Cologne, where the thousands of rapes took place?
	There was a tracker of just, like, you know, people had put pins on a map of Germany every time there had been a migrant rape, and my God, it was just everywhere, right?
	And that's just one kind of crime.
	Like, you know, low-level crimes like robberies and beatings and stuff like that.
	It's murders, obviously.
	And so people are pissed off.
	Sorry, why have you brought in a bunch of young men who are just dangerous and foreign and weird and seem to be completely contemptuous of our culture?
	Why have you brought them here to victimize us?
	And it's like, well, we've got to protect their human rights, bro.
	And so people got angry, right?
	And so you get people attacking the migrant facility.
	So within a year, people just start a thousand attacks.
	In 2015 on migrant facilities, like what's happening in Ireland now, right?
	No, we're not going to have it.
	We're going to burn the things down.
	Now, obviously, I'm not suggesting anyone should do anything like this, obviously.
	And so in the Southport riots, when, you know, Keir Starmer, the few people they actually had a legitimate case legally against from the Southport riots are those ones who are trying to set fire to the hotels with people in them.
	Yeah, of course you're not allowed to do that.
	Of course you can't do that, you know.
	Saying I don't approve of this to the police should not be enough to land you in jail, however, which goes to show you just how much of a trigger finger Keir Starmer had when it came to all of this.
	And the reason that I'm pointing this out is because this is totally predictable, right?
	It's an evil thing to do to utterly swamp a tiny ancient village with a bunch of foreign young men.
	Why are you doing this?
	This is a completely cruel thing to do to those people.
	And then once that starts to generate a kickback...
	It's obvious that these people, you're going to get violence break out between these two different groups.
	So you shouldn't have done this.
	This is a very obvious and well-trodden path.
	And it's particularly tragic for Germany, in a sense, because they've been taught so much to...
	Hate their own history and think that they have been one of the great evils on the world stage.
	And obviously you can be very, very critical of the German government for the mid-century stuff and everything, and for the modern German government as well, but I do not subscribe to the AJP Taylor theory that the German character is just inherently evil and must be suppressed at all costs.
	They're inherently...
	Hang on, he doesn't say that.
	He says that...
	Militaristic and Prussian.
	Yeah, and that's not evil, and I think there is something to this, that essentially Napoleon is the bearer of liberalism, and the defeat of Napoleon essentially validates Prussianism, which I think does account for a lot of the modern German mindset.
	Well, no, I won't disagree with you there.
	It's not that they're evil.
	Obviously, it doesn't have to be evil.
	It doesn't have to be for negative consequences, you could say.
	So I do not think that the Germans, as a people, deserve this kind of thing.
	But they've been taught in many ways that they do deserve it, which is part of the tragedy.
	No, obviously not.
	Like I said, I lived in Germany for many years.
	Germans are lovely people.
	They just shouldn't be in charge of countries.
	They should be in charge of beer halls.
	And kitchens and things like this, right?
	They run a restaurant with military officials.
	Car manufacturers.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Anyway, the point being, where does this go, right?
	Where does it go when you start dumping a bunch of, well, frankly, potentially violent foreign men in tiny villages where people have got nothing for them and they can do nothing?
	Well, you end up arriving at this point.
	So three months ago, this is just...
	A woman in The Guardian, complaining that there's, oh, wait, the liberal order in Germany is dying and there's a massive clampdown, right?
	She says, I live in a small, quaint old town in northwest Germany.
	Okay, but why are you there?
	Bonita Dordell.
	Right?
	She's an immigrant.
	Why are you there?
	She says, I attend because I'm an immigrant.
	Sorry, she says, Now that's interesting, because we don't do anything to make people integrate, right?
	A million people came here last year.
	How many of them have to attend English lessons and integration lessons?
	We are way less responsible than the German government is here.
	We can complain about Prussianism all we like, but at least they've got a plan, even if it's a horrible plan.
	Either way, the result is the same.
	Sure, but at least they're managing it.
	Ours is completely unmanaged.
	So it's just like, you know, we're crazy.
	But the point is, anyway, she carries on and says, well look, There we go.
	This is where we get to.
	We get to the point where, no, even Germany, even woke liberal Germany is like, look, no, we just have to stop this, right?
	It comes against the massive backdrop of the gains of the AFD in state elections and it's hard not to see the border clamp down as part of a strategy by Olaf Scholz's SPD to stop the AFD from taking over.
	Because this is just inevitable what happens.
	It's completely predictable.
	Like, sorry, if you're going to swamp the country with a bunch of foreign migrants, you're going to get a nativist party that comes up and says, we will fix this because this is not how we have to live.
	And so, oh no, think of the migrants.
	Think of the liberal order.
	I learn alongside refugees, mainly from Syria and Ukraine, as well as other regular migrants like me, from non-EU countries.
	Failure to pass the language test or complete the integration course can result in difficulties in extending temporary residence permits, obtaining permanent residency or German citizenship, and in some cases can have financial consequences such as fines or a reduction in social benefits.
	Why don't we do any of this?
	Like, Germany has had it bad for ages, and we don't do anything like this.
	It's like, okay, again, well-trodden path.
	There is something that can be done, right?
	And so she starts...
	I think the most recent example of how we treat foreign criminals in this country that I've seen was the headline of a foreign drug dealer who we promised...
	We wouldn't deport him to his country of origin because he promised that I'm only going to smoke weed from now on.
	There we go.
	Oh, well, alright then.
	You know, that fixes everything.
	All the drugs you dealt, forgiven.
	As long as you only smoke weed.
	See, that's the thing.
	We don't ask anything of these people.
	I know, it's ridiculous.
	I want Peter Hitchens' input on that.
	When we refuse to deport people who have raped people in this country.
	Well, my son doesn't like the nuggets over there.
	Well, no, it's just that, you know, well, if we send them back and he's known as a rapist, he might get lynched or arrested or something.
	And we wouldn't want to punish rapists.
	That's not what we do in Britain.
	Anyway, she says, Being German means being woke, as far as she's concerned.
	I mean, West German.
	Not East Germany.
	Oh no, the East Germans are definitely not woke.
	Yet the rise of racism and anti-immigrant rhetoric puts these very ideals in jeopardy.
	Who signed up to them?
	I didn't sign up to these ideals.
	These are not my ideals.
	These are your ideals.
	Screw your ideals, right?
	Our headmistress recently told our class, racism is everywhere and Germans are racist too.
	Thanks for indoctrinating the...
	If someone hears you've been here for nine years and you still haven't learned the language, you have no chance.
	No, no, no, hang on.
	If you've been there for nine years...
	How have you managed in Germany without knowing the language for nine years?
	Exactly, but it's like, if you've been there for nine years and you still can't speak German, then yeah, you're right, you have no chance.
	You probably don't deserve a chance.
	Come on, you're taking a piss.
	If I was there for like nine days and hadn't picked up a single word of German, I'd probably be like, I should probably put in a bit more effort.
	And it's not that hard.
	Whenever you go to a foreign country, you try and speak the language.
	It's always happy that you're trying.
	Not the French.
	Yeah, I was going to say apart from the French, but in almost any other foreign country, people are happy that you at least made the attempt.
	And as an Englishman, you would expect a language like German.
	Dutch, those kinds of languages.
	There's some crossover.
	A little bit, but it's not easy.
	I live in an English colony, so my German's terrible.
	But, you know, I have an excuse.
	Well, at least it's probably more easy for an Englishman to learn those kinds of languages than if you tried to learn Arabic.
	Oh yeah, probably.
	And then she says, policing all land borders will come with racial profiling and potential human rights violations.
	How does this sit with German values and culture, which includes a strong commitment to human rights, justice, and solidarity?
	Can German governments truly not find more effective ways to harness the country's collective knowledge and expertise to address the root causes of irregular migration?
	What are you asking for?
	Imperialism?
	Are we meant to go over and take over their countries and tell them how to live and make their governments...
	That's the only other alternative.
	Oh, we're going to address the root causes.
	Right, so we've got to take them over and force them to live as we want them to live.
	Right.
	That's it.
	How's Afghanistan doing?
	Just out of interest.
	Anyway, so the point being, this is a very well-documented and predictable pattern, right?
	A bunch of young men come to your country illegally, lie to the people in charge, and the people in charge with their stupid, bleeding-heart liberal beliefs go, yeah, yeah, come and live in these tiny villages, and they cause a lot of trouble.
	Create massive amounts of ethnic tensions, and eventually the state has to start clamping down on the borders and deporting people, or else a far-right party is going to get in charge.
	We're all well aware this is a very, very well-trodden thing.
	So, of course, England being ten years behind everything else, we're going to do exactly that.
	Exactly to the dot, that goddamn thing.
	And it is insufferable, right?
	It is insufferable, it's all so totally predictable, and yet here we are, right?
	So this is Braintree in Essex, which is just a small English village which has a population of 707 people.
	And the Home Office is like, yeah, you know what?
	Boom!
	800 migrants.
	That's what you need.
	Don't worry about it.
	Everything's going to work out just fine.
	We don't have any infrastructure or any amenities there or anything like that because it's a tiny little English village.
	But I'm sure all of this is going to go just brilliantly, right?
	So they have an RAF defense base there.
	Decommissioned, I assume.
	And the residents are like, okay, but now our houses have just plummeted in value.
	So you've just destroyed the...
	And this probably was quite a nice place and probably had quite expensive houses.
	And so now they can't even sell their houses and move.
	So now they feel trapped there.
	And they feel trapped in their own homes because, of course, these young men are just wandering the streets like lost souls or something.
	They've nothing to do.
	Nowhere to go.
	And people are like, I don't want to go outside.
	I don't want to go out there and just like...
	Be surrounded by a bunch of weird foreign young men.
	Why would I want to be?
	Who we know have totally conflicting values to our own.
	And a lot of these people are, of course, older.
	Melody and Alan Tempoli, both 77, have lived next to the base for three decades, but say their spacious house has been rendered worthless because of these inhabitants.
	We're effectively trapped here and no one is listening to us.
	That's right, there is only 700 of you.
	You're not voting your way out of that.
	You know, your vote is not enough for that to matter.
	So essentially it would require someone like Rupert Lowe or Nigel Farage, Richard Tice at Reform to come out and say, wait a minute.
	I'm championing this cause.
	This could be any English village, and it might be every English village, and I'm not having it.
	They need to turn this into a national issue.
	Otherwise, the poor residents of Braintree have got nothing.
	They can't afford to leave, they can't afford to grab their houses, and their vote is not enough for it to matter.
	So that's why this is such a cruel thing to be done to these poor people, who, again, have done nothing wrong and have done nothing to deserve any of this.
	I hate this so much.
	I wouldn't take my dog out on my own to the lanes nearby because you're likely to meet groups of bored single young men hanging around.
	And these people feel, and this is the thing, I'm not the least bit racist.
	I'd have the same reservations if they were young Englishmen.
	But there's also another factor, and that's the cultural attitude towards women which prevails with some of them that cannot be ignored.
	Yes, they are not the same.
	We are different to them, and that is why...
	Okay, yeah, and I agree.
	I'd be annoyed if there were large groups of young English boys and lads around.
	What are you doing?
	Go...
	I don't know.
	What do they even do?
	Go get conscripted to fight for Ukraine.
	What are you doing here?
	But they are right.
	That would be a concern of themselves.
	But it's even worse when it's a bunch of foreign men that you can't even communicate with who definitely have suspect attitudes.
	And so this is scary to them.
	So her three teenage great-granddaughters, who are there with her, have meant that the family have had to install CCTV cameras, keep out signs along their private lanes, which were never necessary before.
	Good luck with the signs.
	It's difficult to see this place ever closing, and it's so frustrating, because we warned of all the problems that it would bring when the idea was floated two years ago.
	Those problems are not hard to spot wandering around Wethersfield and talking to its inhabitants.
	So they're getting exactly the same treatment It's exactly the same issue.
	We're going to get exactly the same response.
	And it's like, goddammit, man.
	It could easily have just been avoided if they would just admit that this is the case.
	Alright.
	Very frustrating.
	Do you want to do the comments?
	Yeah.
	I'll go through the rumble rants.
	So BaldEagle1787 says, this kind of thing has played out across small farm towns in the US, the locals got displaced from work, and suddenly there was a massive influx of drugs and crime.
	Yeah, funny how that works.
	Ryan Hannigan says, when the base right-wing parties take power in the West, we should carve out a propositional nation we oversee where we can send all of the world's refugees and asylum seekers.
	Call it Liberia too.
	Well, it's not a bad idea, to be honest.
	Yeah, there's plenty of territory just waiting to be seized.
	Xenotheum.
	Greenland.
	Yeah, Greenland.
	There you go.
	Carl, if you guys need any support with shipping, I'd be happy to help.
	I work specifically in supply chain, freight, and logistics.
	I'll be happy to lend my expertise.
	It's fine.
	We've got a much more professional company, apparently, working on things.
	Everything should be fine.
	I'm absolutely convinced it will be fine.
	And again, just sorry that this company slipped.
	We didn't know what...
	they didn't do it the first time so it was just like it wasn't evident this was going to happen in the second one you know but but i'm absolutely certain we've got it sorted thank you though yes and with that let's move on to the video comments early the next morning haha
	haha can you imagine being in Texas and having everything iced over?
	I thought that sort of thing didn't happen there.
	Well, I assume so.
	I mean, Texas is pretty damn south, man.
	Yeah.
	How is that happening in Texas?
	I saw a map the other day that was put, well, a little video that was pointing out on the map, so if you look at it, that pretty much all of Europe is north of the USA. Yeah.
	So I was just thinking, like, how do you even get cold weather down there?
	Especially in Texas.
	Yeah, I saw a video the other day.
	The country makes no sense to me, but I will visit.
	Yeah, no, no, it is lovely, and all the people are really, really nice.
	Weirdly, right, southern blacks are a lot normaler than you'd...
	than the northern ones, right?
	No, no, I mean it.
	It's a weird thing to say, right?
	You don't get none of them uppity ones like up north.
	Well, no, they just seem a lot more normal.
	You see lots of videos from New York and California and stuff where there seem to be a lot of people with emotional problems.
	But I went to Texas and a few other places, and there are lots of black people around, but they're just totally normal and just like, hey man, how's it going?
	I'm absolutely sure, yeah.
	And it's just like, okay, but where's the racial tension that I've been told that the racist South has?
	They just, like, lift up their sleeves, show you their Confederate tax.
	I guess!
	I don't know!
	You know, it's just like, I was expecting, like, tension, but it's nothing like that.
	Well, this was something that I saw remarked on, even, like, while desegregation and such was going on, which was that, uh...
	You know, the North never really understood the relations that the South had with its black citizens, because they only had a very small black population in the North, and the South was saturated with them.
	So they just got used to them being around, and eventually did just treat them like people.
	Obviously there was a lot of discriminatory laws, but they understood who these people were and knew how to behave around them as well.
	Whereas I think most...
	Especially outside of America.
	Most people's idea of what the black-white relations are in the South come from Hollywood and television, which are liberal and very, very biased against the white southerners in particular.
	I didn't...
	Honestly, everyone...
	And I was looking, specifically, like, what are the...
	What are the people's interactions like?
	And everyone was just completely normal and lovely.
	Everyone was lovely.
	I got an Uber with this one black lady and she was just really, really friendly, really chatty.
	And I was just like, how is there grass all over the place here?
	Like, how often does it rain?
	She's like, it never rains here.
	I'm like, well, how the hell is it?
	And she's like, you know what?
	I don't know.
	I've always wondered that myself.
	But anyway.
	See, I've not been to America.
	My parents have been there a few times over the past few years.
	And last year, right when the big storm was about to come through, they were in Florida.
	And my mum and my dad told me that they were staying at some motel somewhere.
	And the fire alarm went off at three in the morning.
	So they're like, oh, bloody hell, what's going on here?
	They went to the reception, it was a false alarm, and what had happened was some...
	Homeless, drugged out black guy has set off the fire alarm because the man at the counter, who was also black, was refusing to give him a room because he was insane and drugged out and it was three in the morning and the place was full anyway.
	Nobody else had come out because they were probably just like, oh, it's another drug addict.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, your parents didn't know.
	Fire alarm.
	But apparently they were just like, what on earth is going on here?
	And the normal black guy at the counter just gave them a look like this is not the first time.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	A weekly occurrence of this guy.
	Anyway...
	On the topic of the Trump wishlist, there is one thing I'd like to see happen.
	In New York, there once stood a building called Pennsylvania Station, the absolute zenith of public infrastructure.
	And I needn't convince you of its beauty.
	Just look at the damn thing.
	Unfortunately, the big fad of the 60s was diversity.
	The business.
	So the Pennsylvania sold the air rights and bulldozed it to make room for the eyesore of Madison Square Garden.
	However, it all ended up in the hands of the state, and that lease is now due to expire.
	Thing is, the underground parts can remain, meaning it could be rebuilt exactly as it was.
	And Trump, being a New Yorker, has made offhanded comments about wanting to restore the station of the past.
	To me, that would be the shining crown jewel on a restored America.
	Well, one can dream. - I tell you what, this is not something we should be like, I absolutely believe that alongside cultural and demographic problems, the first real duty of any right-wing government should be to re-beautify.
	Architecture.
	Architecture, yeah.
	Because there is something so fulfilling and vital about being surrounded by architecture that's monumental, glorious, and beautiful.
	It makes you feel alive.
	It makes you feel happy.
	It makes you love the place that you're in.
	Yeah.
	You know, I can actually love being where I am, which you can't at the moment.
	In response to the cringe in the last segment yesterday, my robot will share an equally cringe joke.
	Why did the scare crew receive an award?
	He was outstanding in his field.
	Freaking me out, man.
	I prefer if it was just a box with a little, like, speaker on it.
	With a little smiley face on it.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I wonder what that clip was taken from?
	That looked quite cool.
	It looked like an anime.
	We don't know who struck first, us or them.
	But we know that it was us that scorched the sky.
	Operation Darkstorm initiated.
	Somebody in the comments said that it was actually a clip taken from Animatrix, and I've never actually watched that.
	Right.
	I haven't seen it.
	Intrigued though I was with the idea of a book on the mythology of the British Isles, I was not prepared for its style, and will have to listen to the audiobook again.
	Geoffrey Ash picks key myths, from the survivors of the Homeric Siege of Troy journeying across the Mediterranean before landing among the giants of Cornwall, with whom they interbred founding the race of the English, to Arthurian Tales, before branching into Wales and Pictish Scotland.
	Each chapter gives a short retelling of each myth, sets it in historic and geographic context, and then explains its relevance to the Pantheon, just as Britain does not have a single constitution.
	Hmm.
	I'll check that out.
	Yeah.
	While not a redwood, California has another native tree, the bristlecone pine, which can grow very old.
	The world's oldest tree is here, called Methuselah, and it's about 4,800 years old.
	That's older than the pyramids.
	Unlike Hyperion, though, I have no images of the actual tree.
	It seems this secret is well kept.
	If you want to see the world's oldest trees, go to Inyo National Park.
	These trees are really stunning looking.
	I hope to see them someday, too.
	See, all I'm thinking is, man, imagine being a kid.
	British trees are not the greatest to climb, right?
	No, that would be great.
	Yeah, that would be fantastic.
	Well, speaking of boots on the ground, back in the 90s, my unit was tasked with supplying medical support for the newly opened U.S. Embassy in the newly formed nation of Ukraine.
	And this medical support was not, shall we say, ordinary field medics.
	These were guys that could do field surgery, if you take my meaning.
	But shh!
	The American troops on the ground there now are like the ones in Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia.
	They were advisors.
	All right, then.
	Shall we go through the written comments while we've got a few minutes?
	I'll go for a few.
	Jimbo says that Guardian article makes me want to get to ARC next year.
	They made it sound fun.
	Yeah, it was good.
	Brandon Warhawk says, Why are conservative Christians flocking on board the Ark?
	Because the main points of the left seem to be satanic with its open borders for non-Christian peoples and promotion of abortions.
	Yeah, there's definitely something to be said for that, actually.
	Um...
	Lord Nerevar says, Yeah, I agree with that, especially the senselessly until one side runs out, and that's why you want to get it done, because Russia has lots and lots and lots of young men who it will send to you, whereas Ukraine has a much more limited number.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	It's crazy.
	Michael says, What has the Ukraine war accomplished?
	Practically annihilated an entire generation of Ukrainians.
	Russia practically owns Ukraine.
	Billions of dollars, pounds of euro spent.
	At least Europe now understands.
	Trump's warning was spot on.
	Euros need to boost your defense.
	Oh look, they should have.
	Yeah, when they were laughing at him, back in like 2017 or 2018 or whatever, I was like, look, you need to be worried about Russia.
	And they just laughed in his face.
	It's like, what are you doing?
	What are you doing?
	He's serious.
	Frey Bentos, for every Haitian, says, to be an enemy of America is dangerous, to be a friend is fatal, says Henry Kissinger.
	And there's definitely something to that.
	Derek says, hot take, most Ukrainians are not capable of defining themselves as anything other than we are not Russian and maybe we have things.
	Well, to be honest with you, most identities are relational and oppositional anyway.
	As in, I am not that thing.
	And therefore I'm different.
	Because people are not normally forced to think about their identity all that hard.
	Ukraine has been contested land for a very long time as well.
	And during the Holodomor and the de-Kulakization, one of the other things that Russia was doing at the time of the Bolsheviks was trying to Russianize and de-Ukrainianize a lot of the territory as well.
	So if they've got conflicted identities, then I can't find myself blaming them very much.
	Yeah.
	Omar says, That's a great point.
	A mott and baby where they can protect Yeah, and also, like, subverting the culture.
	Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right.
	The natural implication with immigration is you are going to become like them, and therefore you are giving up.
	What you had come from.
	But you are exactly right.
	They don't do that.
	Jimbo says the woke Germans have literally started having raves in response to one of their own being stabbed by a new arrival.
	If the AFD don't win, they're done.
	I didn't see that.
	Sorry, repeat that for me.
	Apparently woke Germans had a rave or raves in response to a woke German being killed by a migrant.
	I don't know about that.
	No, I didn't see that.
	I saw some reports of...
	Was it in Germany, the recent car attack where they ran over a load of woke progressives who were celebrating migrants, and they said in response that, well, Germans are basically racist anyway, so it doesn't matter.
	And that was from the woke Germans themselves.
	I feel bad.
	The Germans in particular seem very, very susceptible to top-down ideologies being put on them because they're very, very attentive to things and they have a deep, deep respect for bureaucratic authority.
	So feeding them an ideology that makes them absolutely despise themselves and think that everything that happens to them now is justified is one of the most evil things done to them.
	I guess we'll end with Damonia Woodsman saying, I have witnessed migrants roaming around and loitering on our country roads in Cornwall.
	Cornwall!
	Luckily I was with my wife on these occasions.
	Now I'm concerned for local women if they go walking running in these lanes by themselves.
	Is nowhere safe?
	No, nowhere safe.
	And the government's going to make sure that nowhere in this country is safe.
	End of story.
	That's what's going on.
	And Lorena said that they need to take their fair share of migrants as well, the rural countryside.
	They are literally going to dump a bunch of foreign fighting age men on your doorstep.
	Good luck.
	All right, so thanks very, very much for watching.
	We've got Lads Hour in about 30 minutes where we're going to be asking, do Politics Joe know what being English is?
	Probably not.
	Probably not.
	It's more interesting.
	Oh, okay.
	All right.
	Well, I thought we'd do this.
	It's quite funny, but it's also interesting.
	So if you're a member on the website, please make sure to tune in for that.
	It should be good fun.
	Everybody else, thank you very much for watching.
	We'll be back again next week.

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