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April 24, 2025 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:30:37

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1150

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	Good afternoon and welcome to the podcast of Lotus Eater's episode 1150.
	I'm your host Harry, joined today by Carl and Bo.
	And we're going to be talking about India and Pakistan potentially going to war.
	We're going to be talking about the current Ukrainian situation.
	I believe Donald Trump blaming it all on Zelensky.
	That should be interesting.
	And I'm going to talk about the Foreign Crime League tables that Labour is going to be gifting to us, really.
	So that should be a nice one.
	Base Labour strikes again.
	Imagine how much content we're going to get out of those.
	Oh, it'll be great.
	It'll be great.
	But there are questions to answer for why they're doing this.
	And I think it always, as it always does, points back to Tony Blair's digital ID.
	But... Outside of that, we do have Common Sense Crusade this afternoon, so if you've got a subscription to the website, which you absolutely should, then you should tune in to that and support Calvin.
	Anything else, gentlemen?
	No, I think that's about it.
	Alright, and with that, let's get into the news.
	So, it looks like there's a conflict, once again brewing, between two peoples we have to talk about constantly, because this will have ramifications in England.
	And basically, this is a succinct and accurate summary of it.
	Two types of people who are basically identical, other than an opinion that draws a border between them, are now angry with one another and, I mean, that really is just exactly what's happening.
	So, this begins with...
	Well, it would begin if I could change the thing.
	This begins with a...
	That doesn't work.
	Okay. A terror attack in Kashmir, in the Indian-controlled section of it.
	Because for anyone who doesn't know, Kashmir has been since the India-Pakistan partition.
	It's been a long, contested region of the area.
	Both India and Pakistan claim the whole of it, but they have instead divided it down the middle.
	And this has led to lots of...
	Islamic terror attacks in the Indian side because apparently one of these groups of people just can't just leave well alone.
	26 people have been killed and many other injured, with the vast majority of them being tourists in this region of Kashmir.
	And so Indian security forces have gone to find the...
	They may have been caught.
	I couldn't find that they have actually been caught, so I think they're still on the run.
	And this took place in the Falagam area, which is an absolutely gorgeous area.
	Why is this not working, Sam?
	Is your box working, Bo?
	Yeah, do you want to use that one?
	Maybe. It seems to be working.
	Anyway, so this...
	This is from the Falagam area.
	And as you can see, it is gorgeous.
	Absolutely gorgeous, this area.
	Just Google Falagam and you realise, okay, this is an area worth fighting over.
	Why do they want to come here?
	Yeah, right?
	That's the question.
	If you live in a place...
	I don't imagine we've actually got that many immigrants from this area.
	Yeah, I suppose so.
	But if you had a place like this around, why would you move to England?
	Like, I'd move there.
	You know what I mean?
	But, hey, what do I know?
	It looks like Switzerland.
	Right? Switzerland, but with nicer weather, probably.
	Perhaps even nicer than Switzerland, yeah.
	You don't even think of this part of Asia as having landscapes like this.
	In my mind, it's all just a gigantic desert.
	Yeah, right.
	And then you see this, and you're like, oh, okay, I've got the...
	Complete wrong image of this.
	I mean, a lot of it is a gigantic desert, but just not this bit.
	But yeah, it's absolutely incredible landscapes.
	And so you can see why they want it.
	But anyway, Modi didn't take this lying down and has said, quote, India will identify, track and punish every terrorist, their handlers and their backers.
	We will pursue them to the ends of the earth.
	India's spirit will never be broken by terrorism.
	So that's something.
	Anyway, so Financial Times here have got...
	Good write-up on why this is happening.
	Because there is a new militant group.
	There have been lots of militant groups in the past that want an entirely Pakistani Kashmir area.
	Probably from the other side as well, but I can only actually find Islamic terrorism.
	There is terrorism occasionally from the other side.
	Yeah, I assumed that there was.
	They blow up trains quite often.
	Yeah, well, these ones have been blown up people.
	Trains full of people.
	There's also the secret wildcard of Sikh separatist.
	Yes, but they don't appear to be a current player in this particular issue.
	So a new militant group has claimed responsibility for this murder.
	So 26 people were killed, 17 people were shot, again, mostly tourists.
	This is a new group called the Resistance Force that has claimed responsibility.
	They're active in Kashmir over the past four years and have claimed credit for ambushing Indian troops.
	They've recorded their attacks on body cameras and uploaded social media in the past with the objective of attacking Indian occupation forces.
	So, wonderful.
	It's worth noting that we're going to see a huge amount of unrest caused by this if a war between India and Pakistan breaks out.
	Probably, I would suggest, in Leicester before anywhere else.
	Like in 2022, where they had riots against each other over a cricket game.
	Well, that's what the mainstream media said.
	It may have been a spark for it, but obviously it's more than that.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Let's not forget the displaced peoples who will maybe be going to the East, do you reckon?
	It's hard to say.
	Hard to say.
	But anyway, so, yeah, this has been going on for a long time, and this is a good ride by the Financial Times if you're interested.
	Basically... Modi has changed the dynamic of this, because he's a lot more imperious.
	In 2019 he was re-elected and then he stripped the region of its autonomous status and downgraded it from a state to a federally controlled territory, bringing it directly under
	And because of the gorgeous nature of Kashmir...
	This has been drawing in lots and lots of domestic tourists.
	So, like, 23 million people a year go to this place for tourism, right?
	And, again, you can see why.
	It's absolutely beautiful.
	Why wouldn't you go on holiday there?
	Well, I mean, apart from the...
	Apart from the terrorists.
	Continual threat of tourism.
	Terrorism, not tourism.
	This isn't Spain.
	Anyway. So, yeah.
	India has responded...
	Severely. And what's interesting about this is that India is treating Pakistani terrorists as agents of the Pakistani state.
	And so India is responding to this, not in the way that a Western government would respond.
	They're like, right, we're going to find those particular terrorists, and that's it.
	Naughty naughty.
	No, they're saying, you're the problem, Pakistan.
	And it's like, right, okay, so really...
	This is being used as a castle's belly, it seems.
	I think that actually Modi is looking at more imperial ambitions here, and we'll get to whether he can do it or not.
	The fact he said handlers and backers is like...
	I remember George Bush after 11, he said, we're going off the terrace and anyone who harbours them.
	It's like, oh, so everything's on the table then?
	Yes. And I don't doubt that there are absolutely connections between groups getting supplies, arms, money, information from...
	I mean, remember who was harbouring bin Laden?
	So, just saying.
	For anyone wondering, J.D. Vance keeps going, oh, Britain could be the world's first Islamist nuclear-armed state.
	No, that is Pakistan.
	Pakistan has nuclear weapons and is an insane Islamist state.
	It's genuinely bonkers.
	I mean, they regularly lynch people for alleged burnings of Korans.
	They've horrifically treated...
	I mean, every year there are thousands of Hindu and Christian refugees from Pakistan to India because they get treated so terribly by the Islamist population of Pakistan.
	It's just...
	Honestly, it's a gross...
	Gross situation.
	But anyway, so yeah, India was like, right, Pakistani diplomat, get here now.
	We are downgrading our ties between Islamabad and New Delhi, which have never been particularly good anyway, and we're kicking you out of the country.
	You've got a week to just get out.
	Any defense advisors in India from Pakistan or anything like that, diplomats have just been told, get the hell out.
	And... The most important thing that India has done is suspend the Indus Water Treaty.
	Now, the Indus Water Treaty was signed in 1960 between Pakistan and India, to fairly divide the tributary rivers that lead into the Indus Valley.
	Begin in Tibet, go through India and Pakistan, or through Kashmir, and then through Pakistan.
	So this is a real security concern for Pakistan.
	And it was fairly divided.
	The three tributaries on the west were annexed to Pakistan, the three on the east were annexed to India.
	Can't ask fairer than that.
	And this treaty has weathered wars between India and Pakistan before.
	And so the fact that Modi has just come out and gone, no, that treaty's over now, shows that he clearly thinks that something can be accomplished here.
	And this is a real issue for the Pakistanis.
	I mean, this is genuine, like, you know, national threat, because this is their agricultural base is going to be heavily affected by this.
	Because if India literally just annexes it and redirects the water, because India needs the water in various regions as well, because of the rising populations of India and Pakistan, they're very...
	running into water shortages.
	And so India actually needs this.
	And so this has become a, just a really, really, really sharp point in the relations between India and Pakistan.
	And so India then, of course, closed the border, so you're not coming in.
	And they, and this is the bit that caught everyone's attention.
	We're like, right, basically the Pakistanis have to get out of India, which is like, right.
	I mean, this is a pretty strong response to a single terrorist attack.
	No government in the West would even consider this.
	I mean, has Modi thought, well, don't look back in anger?
	Like, have we considered that actually, you know, we need to forgive?
	No. They're actually approaching this in a rather pagan way, in fact, and saying, no, we're going to find those people and we're going to string them up and we're going to make sure that everyone involves them.
	It's a rational way.
	Yes, it's completely rational, that's true.
	But anyway, so the Indians and the Pakistanis, or the Indians, were extending a kind of visa to India called the SAARC visa exemption scheme.
	And this is part of a sort of regional...
	It's called the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation visa exemption scheme.
	So Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka are all on this visa exemption scheme.
	So basically, if you're from one of these countries, you get this visa and you can travel easily to these countries.
	Kind of like the EU's Schengen area.
	And so India has just said, right.
	That's been revoked for the Pakistanis.
	If you're on this thing, get out.
	And so the question is, well, how many that is?
	Well, I don't know, is the answer, because weirdly, these countries don't tend to keep amazing records.
	I've seen people saying that this is somewhere around 30,000, but the only thing I could really find is just the Wikipedia page, saying, well, look, there are 900,000 Pakistanis in India, according to the 2011 census.
	I have no idea.
	But it's going to be at least tens of thousands.
	It could be hundreds of thousands of people who have just been ordered to leave.
	And again, that's interesting, isn't it?
	That's just something you can do then, right?
	You can just say, right, so nationals of this country have committed a terror attack on our soil.
	You now all just have to leave.
	And everyone's just like, well, I guess that's the way that India's going to deal with it.
	Oh, so could we do that?
	So collective punishment is okay?
	Yeah. Oh, alright then.
	I mean, and the thing is, the Pakistanis themselves wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
	So, of course, they just deported, like, there were, like, three Afghan terror attacks in Pakistan by Afghan refugees.
	And they deported, what was it, two million?
	Something like that.
	It was in the millions.
	Everyone of Afghani origin in Pakistan is being deported back to Afghanistan.
	There were whiners going on about human rights and such, but Pakistan decided that human rights aren't real, bro.
	I tell you what is real.
	This gun.
	Get out.
	Yeah, that's basically India's position too.
	Because these countries are a lot more concerned about their sense of...
	Collective self, right?
	The dignity of India, the dignity of Pakistan, is also something that is being considered when a terrorist attack happens on their soil, and that is a collective concern.
	And so if your group does something to our group, we will punish your group, is how they think.
	Whether you think that's justice or not is interesting, and I'm sure we can have a nice long conversation about it, but I bet there are going to be far fewer Pakistani terror attacks on Indian soil afterwards.
	Anyway, so...
	Actually caring about the future safety of your people.
	Yeah. And the international standing as well, because of course all of these countries like to look at us being complete wet wipes and pushovers with everything that we do in response to these kinds of attacks, and they go, great, you can take more of our criminals.
	Yeah, that's exactly right.
	Yeah, whereas India has decided, we don't want your criminals actually, get out.
	Yeah, and we're not just going to let you shoot...
	People who are Indian citizens, which is not going to allow that.
	And there will be collective punishment for you if you do this.
	I was like, okay, well.
	Anyway, so India has directly linked this, of course, to Pakistan itself.
	And so...
	This was reported yesterday.
	This happened three days ago.
	So, this was reported yesterday.
	Now, I don't know how exactly accurate this is, but it is the telegraph that's saying it, so I'm just going to go with what they're saying.
	Because, I mean, like, with all things, when, like, there's a major international incident, there's a fog of war...
	You get different conflicting reports.
	But they say that India has cut off part of Pakistan's water supply after shutting down the border.
	And so I don't know what that means, what that actually describes.
	So, I don't know.
	But New Delhi has accused Islamabad of supporting cross-border terrorism, blaming its neighbour for the militant attack that left 26 people dead.
	So, you can see how this has escalated.
	I mean, the Manchester Arena bomber, where was he from again?
	North Africa, wasn't it?
	Yeah. So it was like Morocco or Libya or something like that, right?
	I think it was Libya, actually.
	But yeah, like, so when he blew up 22 people in Manchester Arena, we didn't go, right, Libya, you're in trouble for some reason, right?
	He was born here, though, actually.
	I think he's...
	Another case of the Welsh choir boy.
	The terrorists who committed this...
	Three people have been named.
	Two of them, they definitely know are Pakistani.
	They were probably born in Kashmir.
	So, you know, just saying.
	But the point is, and it's, you know, okay, the Manchester Union bomb, let's assume he was born here.
	There are still lots of others who are not born here, who have committed terror attacks.
	We don't then go to their states and say, right, you're in trouble for this.
	No, I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing.
	In fact...
	Maybe we ought to be taking a leaf out of their book.
	Maybe that would actually be something that Pakistan would be like, right, okay, we need to start cracking down on the terrorism that our citizens do to Indians.
	If there is actual political ramifications for this, maybe that is the way to approach this.
	Maybe they will be like, look, guys, you just have to knock this off.
	Again, for a lot of these countries, it seems to be, in the political calculus, easier for them to let all of their criminals...
	Come to Western countries to sponge off of benefits rather than put them in their own prisons.
	Certainly a lot cheaper, and they'll end up getting remittance as well off the back of it.
	Absolutely. And so, honestly, I find myself supporting India in this.
	It's just like, yeah.
	Why should you have to deal with this?
	Why should you?
	And if the Pakistani government is not going to do something about the repeated terrorism that its own citizens conduct, well then you're going to have to do something about the Pakistani government, aren't you?
	I can see the logic.
	Anyway. So, Carl, firmly falling on the India number one.
	I am afraid I am on this.
	Like, sorry, you don't just get to kill 26 people and then go, well, you know, oopsie, sorry, nothing to do with us.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I guess that's just something that happens because you live near us.
	It's like, no.
	No, something needs to be done, you know, and it's not like this is the first time, you know, this is a long-running pattern of behaviour.
	So anyway, I mean, like, this water war is something that's been talked about for many years now, many years, but here's just one article from 2022, pointing out that on Valentine's Day in 2019, there was a suicide bombing in Indian Minister Kashmir by a Pakistani militant.
	This was known as the Pulwama attack.
	Following the incident, India tried to suspend the River Treaty, but for some reason failed.
	They don't tell us why, actually.
	I didn't look into it because I haven't got time.
	But Paxton
	Pakistan accused India of deteriorating its agricultural economy by violating the Indus Water Treaty.
	And so you can see that this has been a very sensitive thing for Pakistan for a very long time.
	So you would think that Pakistan would be like, we need to stop people from doing this, right?
	We need to just, you know, maybe a program of education, say that violence is wrong.
	Violence in the service of Islam is wrong.
	Violence in the service of national, like, Kashmiri liberation is wrong.
	And if you do that, then the Indians may actually steamroll over our army, which we'll get to in a minute, because the Indians are going to absolutely smash the Pakistanis if it comes to a war, and they'll cut off our war.
	So, knock that off.
	I don't care what you've read in your book.
	I don't care what, like, ridiculous claim you've got into your head.
	Like, oh, God.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	You just can't do this.
	Because otherwise, things go south.
	One small flying ointment.
	Oh, go on.
	Well, it's directly condoned in the Hadiths, isn't it?
	And the Quran.
	It's also that...
	A bit of a tough sell, Carl.
	Also, Pakistan is literally an Islamic republic and is insanely...
	It's insanely Islamic.
	Pakistan is way more...
	And like you say, this has been contested territory since the partition.
	It has.
	They're not going to let go that easy.
	No, they're not.
	And, I mean, Pakistan is way more Islamic than most Arab countries.
	Like, really hardcore Islamic.
	Like, whenever you see the women in the full abayas or whatever, they're usually Pakistani women.
	It's like, a lot of Arabic countries have just banned that address.
	Because they know that terrorists use it to slip by guards and stuff like this.
	This stuff is considered far too hard-line for most Arab countries.
	I can't imagine if it does come out to all-out war.
	I mean, obviously Pakistan's got nuked, as you say.
	We'll get to that in a minute.
	So they've got that, but India's huge, and India's got a lot of people.
	Yeah. Well, in this, again, this was only three years ago.
	They say, well, look...
	We don't think this will escalate into a full-scale armed conflict by 2025, but the dispute is unlikely to be resolved soon, and of course there's deep mistrust between both countries.
	And domestically both countries are facing a freshwater shortage because of their growing population and an increase in energy consumption.
	Because of climate change, freshwater scarcity has intensified year by year, and we're expecting it to get worse.
	So yeah, it looks like this is probably going to be a war between India and Pakistan.
	India have been moving very belligerently, and Pakistan have done something, they've suspended trade with India, but okay.
	You know, great.
	Is that going to stop anything?
	Probably not.
	And the thing is, the Pakistani responses have been very defensive.
	To accuse India of warmongering.
	Oh, you're saber-rattling.
	You know, I think they might be, actually, because I think Modi is a nationalist and has decided that he can use his nation to conquer territory, which is what this looks like.
	The thing that I've seen going around, weirdly, is a 1993 CIA document that was declassified recently.
	What happens if there's a sort of modern war between India and Pakistan?
	The answer is Pakistan gets stomped.
	Absolutely stomped.
	India's 1.5 billion, 1.6 billion people.
	Pakistan's 220 million.
	Don't get me wrong, that's not a small number, but there's a huge scale.
	If India went on a total war footing?
	It doesn't even have to be total war.
	No, it wouldn't even have to be.
	It doesn't even have to be total war.
	In fact, I got ChatGPT to draw up a summary of the relevant militaries just from Wikipedia sources.
	But you can see the active personnel of the Indian army is 1.45 million, whereas Pakistan is 654,000.
	The defence budget is seven times higher.
	So how much more money does India spend on defence?
	Well, loads.
	73 billion to 10 billion in Pakistan.
	How many nuclear weapons do they get?
	Well, 160 wires to 170 warheads.
	This, I think, is the most, like, people are like, oh no, there could be a nuclear exchange.
	It's like, maybe.
	But the last time Pakistan conducted any kind of nuclear test was in 1998.
	So more than a generation ago.
	And also, that was an underground nuclear test where they rolled a nuclear warhead into a bunker.
	You know, pressed the fuse and then ran for it, or whatever it is they did.
	The point is, that's not it on an intercontinental ballistic missile, accurately landing on its target.
	And if, you know, North Korea's ridiculous attempts to fire missiles anywhere is anything to go by, these countries don't exactly have a firm grasp on the delivery mechanism yet.
	Thinking of a Pakistani with an actual plunger, like in a cartoon.
	Wily Coyote technology, yeah.
	Well, they literally think jinns are involved.
	I'm not even joking about this.
	I'm not sure, but I don't think Pakistan's got any sort of missile program.
	India certainly has.
	India sends stuff to the moon.
	So they have got a missile program, a good one.
	And they seem to be just outnumbered with all the rest of the military material as well.
	India's just a much bigger, richer country.
	Well, India's a lot more tied to the West and has taken advantage of the technological capacity that kind of access gives you.
	As you can see, the Indians have got way more combat aircraft, probably much better quality as well.
	Way more tanks, again, probably better quality.
	Way better Navy.
	They've actually got an aircraft carrier, 10 destroyers, 15 submarines.
	The Pakistanis have 9 frigates and 8 submarines.
	Come on, there's no competition here, right?
	When it comes to ballistic missiles, the Indians have got much more advanced ballistic missiles.
	Like you say, they're probably actually much better.
	I don't know how good the Pakistani ones are, but...
	Good luck.
	But the point being, the Pakistanis don't have any satellite capability at all.
	They are reliant on the Chinese, whereas the Indians, as you say, have been putting satellites up into space.
	They've been sending things to the moon.
	They've actually been doing something on this regard.
	If Pakistan's relying on Chinese cooperation as well, I mean, India is in bricks as well, so presumably much stronger ties with China.
	Well, who knows?
	And they'll definitely have Western backing, basically.
	And when it comes to the cyber and electronic warfare, of course, India has the edge on this.
	And India has a lot more...
	Domestic production for the defence industry than Pakistan does.
	There's no chance.
	I just don't see how Pakistan could, you know, do anything in this.
	And so, yeah, I mean, it looks like Modi is well aware of this, and it's just, everyone's really worried.
	I mean, this is an analyst reported by Arab News, where it's like, no, the Pakistani foreign affairs and defence analysts are like, ew, this is Indian warmongering.
	It's like, yeah, because you know you're going to get screwed.
	It absolutely is Indian warmongering, but you're probably going to get stomped, and you know it, because it's not like the 1950s anymore, 1960s, whatever it is.
	So, anyway, they say...
	Placing blame on Pakistan in a knee-jerk reaction without investigation or evidence, and even engaging in warmongering is truly unfortunate.
	But they don't talk to us at all, and I think that would actually help us find the real perpetrators who must be punished.
	It's like, yeah, so this is being used as a cancer's belly.
	India is basically like, we're not talking to you, we're going to go to war with you, and we're going to take something from you, and you're just going to essentially suck it up.
	So, like I said, I think actually this is quite a high likelihood of war.
	I'm not an expert on the region, though, on the history of the region.
	I've only got a sort of dilettante's understanding of it.
	So if you think I'm wrong, do correct me in the comments.
	But from what I know of it and what I can see, the way the Indians are reacting, I mean, you know, the way the Pakistanis are reacting, it looks pretty likely.
	It is one of those things.
	My whole life there's been really high tensions between India and Pakistan.
	At least half a dozen times.
	Something very, very similar to this has happened, where Pakistan's done some outrage on India, and people are like, oh, it's going to be a war, it's going to be a war, and it never does.
	I'm not saying that will happen again, this may be different, but my whole life has been this.
	But the thing is, it's the violation of the Water Treaty that seems to be the real issue, because if India is annexing their water, as the Telegraph reported, this is going to be an existential threat.
	For Pakistan, right?
	Millions of people will die of starvation because the agriculture is fed by the Indus River's tributaries.
	So, I mean, and the fact that India's like, right, everyone out, right?
	You know, we're holding the Pakistani government responsible for this.
	We're breaking this treaty, we're taking these things, and we're not negotiating with you at all.
	I mean, I don't see what choice there's going to be on the Pakistani side, right?
	So this is a lot more serious than in previous eras.
	Anyway, Hewitt says, this conflict flares up every few years, but it always gets diffused by the monsoon seasons.
	Maybe, maybe, and I'm like, you know, who knows?
	It could be that just India bullies Pakistan into just seeding Kashmir or something.
	I don't know.
	But this looks pretty damn serious to me, and fingers crossed it all just blows over, right?
	Imagine if something finally happens.
	Yeah, I know.
	Subcontinent. Yeah.
	Well, to be honest with you, they've had wars before.
	You know, so it's not that it can't happen.
	That's a random name says, who'd have thought the country with the highest rate of incest in the world wouldn't have functioning nuclear missiles?
	Well, no, no, hang on a second.
	I don't know that they don't have functioning nuclear missiles.
	Apparently they've got 170 warheads.
	That they can detonate underground, but can they get them to...
	And they do anything with them.
	And the fact that, again, they haven't had a missile test since the 30th of May, 1998.
	So, right.
	I wouldn't be confident.
	It's technically difficult to have functioning nukes, let alone a missile program to deliver them accurately.
	I'm surprised Pakistan's got a submarine program.
	Because that's also very difficult.
	Honestly, it's no small feat.
	It would be kind of funny if war broke out and Pakistan accidentally ended up detonating itself.
	Uh, well, yeah.
	Which isn't entirely out of realm of possibility.
	Funny from the Indian perspective.
	But, I mean, I think it's worth remembering that none of the nukes that have ever actually been used in war were delivered via missiles.
	Like, they were dropped by planes, you know?
	So, like...
	Here's something that's never been done before.
	Right, Pakistan?
	It's your time to shine.
	I don't know, bro.
	I don't know.
	I just can't help but feel that this isn't going to go brilliantly, right?
	The Habsification says, I went to Tunisia on a holiday this year and it was considered weird to wear a full top-to-bottom covering for women like in the cup.
	Weirdly, it felt like France, especially the capital.
	Well, yeah, that's because Tunisia, I think, actually, there are a slate of Arab countries that have just banned it outright.
	They're just like, no, you can't do this.
	So the fact that we allow it, often from the Pakistani community in Britain, is very weird.
	We foster the most radical forms of Islam.
	And here it says, if Harry thinks Asia is one big desert, he should go buy an atlas.
	Go be an atlas.
	I should go be an atlas, yeah.
	I was thinking more like eastern Turkey, the Arabian Peninsula, up to around, you know, western.
	Well, a lot of Asia is.
	Yeah, from what I've seen, it looks like most of that area seems to be a massive desert, but you just don't expect to see something like Kashmir in that territory.
	Well, Kashmir's on the sort of southern side of the Himalayas.
	Everything north of the Himalayas is a desert.
	So all the clouds get stopped and then the water comes down.
	Anyway. Okay.
	My turn.
	You wait there, Bo.
	Yeah, I was just pondering how you could possibly think that everything from Turkey to India is a desert.
	Looks like one.
	Anyway. Anywho.
	So I thought we could just do a bit of an update on the Ukraine situation.
	A bit of a moment in time for anyone who's not paying attention because there's been a few different...
	A few different things have gone on with the situation, although nothing sort of decisive, particularly.
	So, well, where to begin?
	Last night, there was yet more attacks on Kiev itself by the Russians.
	Missile strikes, a few people killed.
	But, you know, right in the heart of Kiev.
	And so Trump, the Trump administration, has been trying to broker peace ever since he got in, really, almost ever since he got in.
	So it's like a couple of months now, and it hasn't really got anywhere.
	But it seems mainly that the Ukrainian side are the issue.
	Well, Putin has said he's ready to make peace, make a deal.
	Launch more missiles, launch more missiles.
	You know, we're keeping the Donbass and the Crimea, but we're ready to talk to the peace table.
	Stop launching missiles, then!
	Well, there's...
	I mean, it's a hard negotiation tactic.
	If it works, it works.
	Well, there is very much a tactic, isn't it, to force people to the peace table, to the negotiation table.
	It doesn't usually work, but sometimes it does.
	I suppose if you're...
	And force them to the table on your terms.
	Right. If you're literally bombing their capital, then maybe that would bring Zelensky to the table.
	It's like if you beat someone down and you know that if you don't completely knock them out, they're going to keep fighting you.
	So you have to beat them in the head when they're on the ground.
	I mean, it's brutal.
	Don't get into a fight with Bo.
	Jesus. Bo flashing back to his essence days there.
	Jesus Christ, Bo.
	Many a fun Friday and Saturday.
	One way to finish a fight is a curb stomp.
	That is one way to finish a fight.
	Oh, that is true.
	There's a bit Edward Norton of you, Beau.
	With the shaved head as well.
	Trying to be a bit more honourable, Beau.
	Anyway, come on.
	I've never done a curb stomp on anyone.
	Or kicked them in the head while they're down.
	He says nervously.
	Not once.
	It hasn't been documented.
	There's no photos of it.
	So, it didn't happen.
	Alright, so let's see what happened.
	So, Trump's...
	Position now, or Rubio, State Department, White House position is, at this minute, if you guys don't sort of start sorting something out, then America's just going to pass.
	It's going to sort of back out from trying to help or mediate the situation.
	So they're going to cut off money and supplies?
	Yeah, I guess so.
	Or just the mediation.
	You know, they'll go to somewhere kind of neutral, whether it's somewhere in the Emirates or Paris or wherever it is, try and get people round a table and start to have talks about talks.
	It's just going to stop doing any of that.
	I feel like it's, I don't know whether it's the art of the deal or anything like that, but just it puts me in mind of when you're haggling with someone in a market, part of the strategy is to walk away.
	Or make like you're going to walk away.
	And then they say, no, come back, come back, we'll do a deal, we'll do a deal.
	I don't know, it's part of that.
	Maybe. I've not been terribly impressed with Trump's strategy here so far, to be honest.
	I think Trump has kind of bungled a bunch of things diplomatically, actually, recently.
	And this is not going brilliantly.
	Like, I don't know, just my opinion.
	No, it's certainly stalling, if nothing else.
	The least you can say is it's stalled.
	Well, I don't know if it seems like...
	Well, the thing is, about Ukraine, I've heard Zelensky say, and I'm sure he's not lying, that it's actually in their constitution that the president can't concede big portions of their land.
	Like, legally, he's not allowed to.
	So if the negotiating strategies are that we can make a peace, but you've got to give up on Donbass and the Crimea,
	So what kind of a stupid constitution is that?
	It's like putting it in your constitution.
	Well, it says here in the constitution we're not allowed to lose wars.
	Right, yeah.
	So we'll have to just keep going forever.
	Brilliant, because unless Russia decides to go for complete, like we did in World War II, unconditional surrender, completely steamroll Ukraine over the course of years, Then, yeah, if you're at the negotiating table, you're going to have to have a give and take.
	Well, right, yeah.
	I mean, it's just the reality.
	Ukraine has clearly lost this war.
	The brutal reality is that on the battlefield, they've lost, the Ukrainians.
	I mean, they may not have lost the hearts and minds of some of the leaders in the European Union, but on the battlefield, it's done.
	They're not getting the Crimea back.
	They're not getting big chunks of the Donbass back.
	It's not happening.
	And the thing is, I hate to say it, but a lot of the argument for it as well is kind of strange because they're mostly Russian people in these areas, which is why they've been ethnic separatists, which is why the Ukrainians have been shelling them for years prior to all of this happening.
	And that's why the Crimeans so readily went over to the Russians.
	Crimea was like 90% Russian.
	So why do you have that?
	Why do you think...
	It's all about administrative borders that Lenin drew back in 1930 or something, right?
	So it's just like, look, this is just not sensible.
	It's literally like people complaining, well, the British and the French divided up the Middle East by just drawing lines on a map.
	Yeah, that is the problem, rather than drawing around ethnic borders, which would have been more sensible.
	And this is the same kind of issue that's happening in Eastern Europe, isn't it?
	Or at least after World War II.
	Yeah, I mean, do you remember a few years ago, towards the beginning of the conflict, Putin had a vote or a plebiscite, whatever you want to call it, in that region, and it came back something kind of crazy, like 95% or 99% or whatever.
	We want to be with Russia.
	Now, I'm sure those numbers were massaged, but nonetheless...
	But nonetheless, it reflects a reality of the people on the east of Ukraine consider themselves more Russian than Ukraine.
	100%. And we know that they do.
	And the thing is, do we think that there's no anti-Russian discrimination in Ukraine just outside of times of war?
	I very much doubt it.
	There's a long history there.
	Exactly. Long, long, long history.
	And a big ethnic inferiority complex on the part of the Ukrainians.
	Because I looked into this as well again.
	You can legitimately consider the Ukrainians a sort of separate ethnic group to the Russians.
	They're very closely tied, but their language is different enough that it's not necessarily mutually intelligible.
	So if you listen, for us, for example, if you see a French sentence, you'll probably be able to pick out one or two words that you can identify because they've got a similarity with English words.
	But Ukrainian is basically the same with Russian.
	There's been a long enough period of distinction so they can genuinely claim to be a separate ethnic group.
	And they clearly identify as a separate ethnic group.
	So why would the Russians be like, oh, yeah, we want to be with those guys?
	No, you can see why the Russians would want to be with Russia.
	Well, it's an extremely long and storied narrative.
	I mean, quite literally go back to the 8th century.
	Quite literally when he was being interviewed by Carlson, yeah.
	And me and Apostolic Majesty did a long-form bit of content talking about that interview and going back to the 8th century and things.
	But if you want to just start in the 20th century, I mean, or even post-war, in Solzhenitsyn's work, the Gulag Archipelago, quite often, from time to time, he'll talk about the Ukrainians.
	And their animosity towards Russians or Soviets, as it was then.
	So, yeah, they're sort of a bit like, in a very, very broad sense, the relationship between the English and the French, or the English and the Scots, or the English and the Irish.
	I don't know.
	They're neighbours, but...
	Yeah, it's worse.
	It's way worse.
	It's just they've been at each other's throats since time immemorial.
	But the thing is that there's a kind of ethnic domination.
	...between the Russians and the Ukrainians that doesn't exist between the French and the English, or the Germans and the French, right?
	Because they're roughly powers of equal parity, right?
	So Germany could reasonably win a war against France, France could reasonably win a war against Germany, and they could view each other basically as equals.
	But the Russians have always had this dominion over Ukraine that the Ukrainians...
	Like, you know, in a way, kind of like the way some Indians feel about Britain, right?
	It's like, oh, that's the superior imperial power, and therefore we need to get one over on you.
	A lot of them probably have that kind of mentality.
	And so I can't imagine, like, being a Russian citizen in Ukraine, you'd be like, oh yeah, I'm going to get a fair shot here, right?
	Come on.
	It's as if it's not horrifically corrupt anyway, but it's like, it just doesn't make any sense to try and press these people into the same state, you know?
	I mean, there's just so much baggage.
	Yeah. Now, going back to the Lenin era or the Stalinists, the Holodomor.
	Yeah. Just that one thing.
	And, yeah, I just want to be clear, I'm not saying the Ukrainians don't have just cause to hate the Russians.
	Right, yeah, sure.
	Absolutely they do.
	Oh, yeah, right, yeah.
	Absolutely they do.
	Potentially more reason to not have Ukrainians...
	Governing a load of Russians who otherwise are just innocent civilians who might be the victim of repercussions dating back a hundred years or more.
	Yeah, or a thousand years.
	That they personally had nothing to do with.
	I agree, exactly.
	And so it just doesn't make any sense.
	These should be ethnically distinguished states.
	And so the fact that Ukrainians are like, no, we're not letting go of all these Russian populated areas.
	But why do you want them, you know?
	It's interesting when you look at World War II, the Eastern Front, the Ost Front in World War II, the back and forths, completely across Ukraine, what is modern Ukraine.
	It was like big battles between the Soviets and the Nazis for Kiev.
	Both when the Nazis were going east and when the Soviets were coming west.
	Giant battles all around what is modern-day Ukraine.
	The largest battles ever in history.
	A lot of people have never even heard of them.
	But there was literally 6 million Russians and 3 million Germans stretching across 100 miles of plain fighting battles.
	It's like, God, what are we doing here, bro?
	There's so many.
	There's so many.
	And that's just in the 20th century.
	And even then, talking about the animosities between the Russians and the Ukrainians, even then, a lot of Ukrainians said, oh great, we're being liberated.
	And loads of them signed up.
	I mean, there was that controversy a few years ago when the war first broke out.
	What was it?
	The Canadian Parliament was celebrating the Ukrainian who'd fought against the Russians and then everybody went, SS?
	Yeah, he joined the Nazis.
	But again...
	For them, they weren't fighting for the purity of the German race or anything.
	They were fighting because, hey, these guys have been genociding us for the past 20 years.
	So if these guys want to come in and liberate us, then we'll do it.
	I've seen historians being like, well, actually the Germans probably would have done better because they didn't go in there with the intention of liberating Ukraine.
	And so they took loads of prisoners of war and stuff like that.
	And there's stories of thousands of Ukrainians following one German officer after being captured.
	Even 800,000...
	Even 800,000 Russians, ethnic Russians, joined their side as well.
	But there was some difficulties with all of that.
	We're getting off topic, sorry.
	One last thing I should say.
	When you look at the details of the Eastern Front, just for example, during World War II, you'd have the Nazis and the Soviets, but then there were just massive partisan groups of Ukrainian nationalists who...
	Try to fight against both sides.
	So anyway, back to the 2020s.
	The Americans are starting to say, or Trump's angle is now, maybe we'll just leave you to it then.
	If we've pulled all the levers we can, within reason, maybe we'll just walk away and leave you to it.
	Because we gave the Ukrainians under Biden, gave them all the help we possibly could, silly amounts of money, silly amounts of military material, and it didn't work.
	On the battlefield, it didn't work.
	I remember the spring or summer offensive, I think two years ago now, and for me, I was thinking as sort of a military history amateur historian, they need to get some big wins.
	This summer out of this, if they're not just going to completely lose.
	And they didn't.
	It didn't really go anywhere.
	It fizzled out.
	And at that point, I think two summers ago now, at that point, I was like, well, okay, you've got to come to the negotiating table at some point now, Ukraine.
	But they're holding out.
	They still don't want to.
	So anyway, it's in the news a bit that there was more stuff overnight.
	Trump's frustration.
	Yeah. And the thing is, Zelensky's in a bit of a tough position here as well, because, OK, say he's the guy who loses the war and loses like a fifth of Ukraine's territory or whatever it is.
	Well, that's hardly going to play well with the remaining Ukrainians, is it?
	So, yeah, absolutely.
	So we all know that Zelensky has suspended elections.
	Some are saying that's fair enough, they're in a state of war.
	Others are saying that's not...
	Cool. You're acting now as some form of a dictator.
	Regardless of that, I don't think I've got the link, but I saw some soundings coming out of Ukraine that maybe he'll hold an election this coming summer.
	Maybe they'll get a new leader who gets elected on a ticket of going to the peace table.
	I don't know.
	We'll see.
	But suspending elections is, I mean...
	A lot of people did it during World War II, but it has to be a real, real, real sort of almost, if not an actual total war situation.
	For example, Lincoln didn't suspend elections during the American Civil War.
	Did he not?
	No. Interesting.
	No, he got re-elected in the middle at once, towards the end of it.
	How did he get the votes from the southern states?
	Well, he didn't.
	Well, there we go.
	So did he, you know, is it really an election?
	Like, sorry, you know.
	Well, if he secede, you're not allowed to.
	You're not allowed in the electoral college anymore.
	Even with World War II, because at the end of the war, when all of a sudden you're administering like Nuremberg or something, you kind of get the awkward situation of Churchill's just been voted out, so the guy who'd been administering the war on the English side for the past five years isn't...
	Isn't in power anymore.
	FDR dies.
	And you've got Truman in his stead.
	And then the only guy who'd really been all the way through the war was Stalin.
	Because Hitler was already dead as well.
	So you get a load of random people and Stalin.
	And Satan himself.
	Cleaning it up.
	Stalin's got to deal with Churchill and FDR.
	I mean, some people have...
	And had FDR wrapped around his little finger.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And now he's got, what, Truman and, what was it, Attlee, I suppose.
	Would it be?
	Yeah, it would have been Attlee.
	Stalin must have thought, these chumps.
	It must have come across kind of pathetic to him.
	Yeah. So...
	Also, complicating the matters further, I don't...
	Are America still trying to organise as part of this some kind of rare mineral steel?
	Well, that's all part of it.
	Because the difficulties with that is when you see the maps of where all of the minerals, the most rare and precious ones that are most useful are distributed, all the ones that you'd actually want are in the territories of Russian control now.
	So the question is going to be, is America, if they actually want these useful minerals, are they going to have to arrange their own separate deal at the same time with Russia, where they have some kind of permission to go into those territories?
	That seems unlikely, doesn't it?
	Yeah, because otherwise you're only getting the rubbish stuff.
	Yeah. Yeah, there's a few different types of materials which America covets.
	And yeah, some of them are largely...
	Is there going to be stuff like lithium?
	Yeah, yeah, things like lithium, yeah.
	So I think lithium particularly is actually all over Ukraine, but still what you're saying is also true about other materials, but it's actually quite a complicated situation.
	Of course.
	Shock and surprise, that's really complicated, like everything is.
	From the State Department's point of view, though...
	It seems like they're running short of patience, at least with the Ukrainians.
	They're basically saying, you've got to come to terms with the fact you've lost...
	This was a major campaign promise from Trump.
	I'll end it on day one.
	Okay, we're 100 days later, or whatever it is.
	And, you know, Putin's shelling the capital.
	Is this over?
	Well, you remember when Zelensky came to the White House and they had that press conference and it was pretty much Vance.
	Didn't say please.
	Yeah, that one.
	I mean, you can tell that...
	Didn't say please and thank you.
	Yeah. What's the magic word, Vladimir?
	Say the magic word.
	So, yeah.
	It's just still going on.
	Yeah. And unfortunate, well, maybe not unfortunate, but just the reality is...
	That the ball is in Ukraine's court to end this thing now.
	Putin has said he's prepared to.
	I'm prepared to accept your concession.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay, great, thank you.
	I'm prepared to accept your surrender.
	Right, yeah.
	So, yeah, overnight, you actually see...
	We can watch it maybe because it's not explicit.
	It's a long range, but...
	Well, it's buffering, but...
	You see missiles falling on sort of the middle of Kiev.
	I don't know why people started calling it Kiev.
	Because that's the Ukrainian pronunciation.
	But we've always called it Kiev.
	But we don't say Paris, do we?
	It's the same thing where all of a sudden I've seen people spelling Turkey as T-U-R-K-I-Y-E.
	But it's to be culturally sympathetic to the Ukrainians.
	Oh, there you go.
	Oof. That was a big one.
	It's not great.
	The thing is, I think you're basically right.
	At this point, holding out is just...
	Costing lives unnecessarily.
	You're just spending the lifeblood of a generation pointlessly now.
	What do you do?
	Do you fight down to the last man?
	Oh, the constitution says so, yes.
	Yeah, apparently.
	We're not allowed to lose, it says here, actually.
	So it is sort of an unfortunate situation, of course.
	So Zelensky himself was on some sort of trip to South Africa and he's drawn that to a close quickly so he's flying back to Ukraine.
	This is all like today or this morning or in the wee hours for us.
	He's trying to sort of shore up...
	So what's he trying to get from South Africa?
	Just diplomatic political support, really.
	Because he's...
	His political support is dwindling, isn't it?
	But what good is South Africa's political support?
	They don't have any money to give you.
	I looked up South Africa's army the other day for some reason.
	38,000 men.
	Maybe Operation Human Shield is in play.
	Not even slightly.
	Strap South Africans to your tanks.
	Their army is way, way smaller.
	It's too small.
	I just think diplomatically, politically, the walls are closing in on Zelensky.
	Yeah. If the United States essentially, publicly, pulled back its support for him, then his options are shrinking all over the place.
	It would be strange after Donald Trump has been quite belligerent towards South Africa recently as well, for him to then immediately try and go to them, when South Africa was where they were getting a lot of their rare minerals from before.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And just the noises coming out of...
	The White House are just basically putting more and more pressure, more and more blame for it not ending yet on the Ukrainians.
	So yeah, Trump accuses Zelensky of jeopardising imminent peace deal.
	He's the guardian of all places.
	Yeah, that Zelensky just refuses to accept that he's lost Crimea.
	It's gone, bro.
	It was gone in 2014.
	Ten years later, it's gone.
	Well, it was gone within one week.
	Yeah, they took it really quick.
	Yeah, immediately.
	It was the first thing they did.
	You know, the little green men.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So that's it.
	It's done.
	And it was a very surgical operation on the part of the Russians.
	Yeah. I mean, I get it.
	I get it's a bitter pill to swallow for the Ukrainians.
	I get it.
	But you've kind of...
	You've got to?
	What are you going to do?
	Yeah, the military reality is the military reality.
	What are you going to do?
	Keep assassinating Russian generals in the middle of Moscow?
	Are you going to keep doing that?
	Is that what you're going to do?
	And I'm sure that won't provoke any other backlashes.
	Yeah. There's nothing more they can do, I think.
	Yeah, Trump and Putin are essentially on the same page now.
	It's a fait accompli.
	Yeah, and I don't want to be sympathetic to the Russians at all, but why do you want a bunch of lands occupied by Russians?
	What good is that to you?
	I mean, this is why you've had problems with the Donbass.
	They're a bunch of separatists.
	They don't want to be ruled by you.
	You've been at war with this province.
	It's not going to go away.
	I just don't see the sense in it.
	I'd imagine it's a combination of national prestige and resources.
	Pride. I think it's more pride.
	Pride comes before the fall.
	Yeah, so Trump accusing things of being boastful.
	Really? Look, we can make a piece here.
	It's not the piece you want.
	It is a bit of a humiliating piece from your point of view, Zelensky, but what choice have you got?
	We're not going to go to war with Russia, the United States.
	We're not going to go to war with Russia for you over this.
	I suspect Russia actually has missiles that can deliver a payload.
	Of course, yeah.
	It's not Pakistan, is what I'm saying.
	They know that their missiles can get to where they're going to go.
	And what are your options?
	Yeah, you're running out of options.
	You're running out of time.
	So, yeah, Putin said, you know, I'll accept your surrender any time, dude.
	We're all just waiting for you.
	But the thing is, Putin's not going to have political instability by absorbing these provinces.
	Because they're all going to be Russians.
	And the people in them have been asking for a union with Russia for a long time, right?
	So it's just like, he's just going to get peaceful provinces, or Zelensky will be at war with them in the future because of the ethnic conflict that would be intrinsic to them.
	So what are we doing here?
	This just doesn't make any sense to me.
	So it's just a bit of an update, a bit of a moment in time here on the 24th of April 2025.
	We'll see how it goes.
	I mean, I still think, I hope, I think most people do, that there'll be some sort of peace brokered over the next few weeks or months, or at least sort of ceasefires, at least sort of the large...
	It'd be nice to run into the killing.
	The large-scale killing to sort of stop, dropping missiles in the middle of Kiev, and assassinations on both sides, and all that sort of thing.
	You know, let's just hopefully just end it as soon as possible.
	But the ball's in the Ukrainians' court, it seems, at this point.
	Yeah, war is bad, okay?
	Bald Eagle says the method that Trump has used would have worked with normal leaders.
	Zelensky is purely motivated by money, ending the war cuts off his money, which is why Ukraine backs out of every deal in the last second.
	I don't know, I think Zelensky's got more than enough money.
	He's got something like $750 million in offshore markets.
	Which is odd, isn't it?
	There's a particular billionaire who's been backing.
	How's he personally got that much money?
	Because he was backed by some oligarch.
	I always forget the name of the journalist, but that journalist had been doing a lot of reporting on Ukraine, saying about how all of the money that was going in, all of a sudden, all of the highest-ranking people in Ukraine were buying new yachts with money that they shouldn't have.
	And, yeah, was it the Panama Papers?
	Or one of those, like, reveals where, yeah, Zelensky just has hundreds of millions of dollars.
	He'll just go to California.
	Seymour Hersh was the journalist I was thinking of.
	He'll just go to California the second the war ends.
	Or Dubai or wherever, you know.
	And then get caught up in the wildfires like we predicted.
	JM Denton says, Zelensky is already unpopular in Ukraine, so having the war end and an election is not in his interest.
	Quite possibly.
	Come on, Carl.
	Are the world leaders want this war to continue and are feeding and pushing it with only Trump wanting peace?
	Well, that's true.
	Yeah, that's absolutely true.
	Matt says, I think Trump did not consider Europe would undermine negotiations for peace when he said the war would be over on day one.
	Yeah, that's probably true.
	I think he expected Europe to follow his lead.
	But the thing is, this is where my critique of Trump's diplomatic mistakes comes in.
	What was he doing?
	You know, he should have began with a nicey, softly, softly, nicey, nicey approach to get those things that he wanted and then go hardline on them, you know, and just kind of pull the rug under their feet, you know, but he didn't.
	He started with the stick, and he should have begun with the carrot.
	The Habsification says, Alcohol is legal in Tunisia, and I saw men and women openly drinking alcohol and going into bars and nightclubs and women wearing normal Western clothes and women wearing nightclubs, clothes like France.
	Yeah, like I said, a lot of Arab countries are just not like...
	Yep. T-Tone says, Trump is belligerent to South Africa because they are taking white farmers' land and shouting, kill the whites.
	Zelensky teams up with that.
	Nice. That's a great point.
	I didn't even click in my head.
	I was thinking that, just as I've seen reports that the EFF are wanting some kind of march to dissolve Irania as well.
	Although, to be fair, apparently the Iranians have responded with, try that and we'll just shoot you.
	That's why I was looking up the South African military.
	Yeah. So, the Irania is only like something like 3,000 or 4,000 people, so they can't fight them off.
	It's only a 4chan green text, but I keep seeing it go around recently, during the Rhodesian War, when the Rhodesian army would capture the communists and such, and they would ask them what they were doing with their guns, because every single one of them had the sights turned up to the highest or something,
	and they just thought it would shoot harder.
	So, one small town of Iranians versus...
	No, no, no, no.
	The Rhodesians had, like, you know, proper military.
	Iranians stood on a wall with rifles versus the South African army.
	I don't think they're in as bad a position.
	No, no, no.
	The South African army, they do have a few hundred tanks.
	Do they know how to use them?
	They've got artillery.
	Yeah, they do.
	I'm sure they're not as incompetent as we might want to think.
	That doesn't spell great for Irania, but apparently whenever they say stuff like that, they keep backing down.
	Well, I mean, that's because it would be an international scandal.
	Well, you'd think the farmers would be.
	Well, yeah, you would.
	Well, apparently Trump's helping to make it one.
	Anyway, so Labour have decided to be more right-wing than the Tories and reform, again.
	Although Reform, to be fair, earlier on today, we're having a conference where Farage was throwing out the red meat to everybody.
	Farage was like, this is what I saw on the podcast, the Lotus Eaters, and these are good ideas.
	Yeah, thanks.
	You should be charging consultancy fees for Farage, to be honest, shouldn't you?
	But they have decided that they're going to officially, as part of the government, other outside organizations have been trying to do this sort of thing for a while, including the Center for Migration Control, which we'll look at in a minute.
	But officially, as part of the government, they are going to start...
	At some point this year, publishing the nationalities of foreign criminals.
	In this country.
	Which, again, as they've seen, there's lots of other organizations that try and do this using Home Office and ONS data that they've got through Freedom of Information Request Acts.
	But this, in a way, I would say, kind of legitimizes concerns.
	And is from a very, very legitimate source, in most people's eyes, that being the government.
	You hear that, oh, some random NGO, this Centre for Migration Control, oh, they're probably right-wing, oh, they're probably biased.
	People dismiss that.
	You hear it come straight from...
	No one would ever accuse the UK government of being right-wing, would they?
	No, no, they certainly wouldn't.
	But then it comes from the government, a lot of normies ears are going to perk up and they're going to go, oh, okay, alright, so there is a problem then.
	Sadly, that's just how a lot of people work.
	I'm not saying that's good.
	I'm not saying that that's how it should be, but that is how it does work.
	So what they're saying is that Yvette Cooper, our Home Secretary, has ordered officials to publish the data, including crimes that have been committed by the end of the year.
	So they'll break the information down into how many crimes are being committed by these nationalities and what kind of crimes that they're committing as well.
	So we'll get the league tables.
	We'll get the foreign criminal league tables as published by the government.
	But there is a catch to this.
	It's not all foreign criminals in the country.
	It's those who have been...
	Set to be deported.
	So that limits it quite significantly.
	Right. Very significantly.
	And of course we also have to note that nationality will not mean the person's heritage and background, it will mean their passport.
	Although in most cases it probably will track quite well because most countries in the world don't have a ridiculous visa stamping program that we have.
	So like, you know, a person with a Somali passport is probably like 99.9% chance to be a Somalian, right?
	A person with an Eritrean passport is probably an Eritrean.
	That's all true, but with the visa stamping, that does mean that a lot might get swept under the carpet of British as well.
	We have sweepstakes on what we think the results are going to be.
	Who's going to top the table?
	We probably can, yeah.
	We already know what the results are going to be.
	Albanians. Albanians.
	Afghanis. To a ridiculous degree, it will be Albanians.
	But I'll get on to those figures in a moment.
	So, what it looks like...
	Is that at the end of last year, there were 19,000 foreign offenders awaiting deportation.
	So we will be getting the figures for those 19,000 and change however much have been added to that list since the end of last year.
	A Home Office source has said the government wanted the public to be better informed about foreign criminals, including where they come from.
	So the Home Office is now saying we want the public to notice.
	You are now allowed to notice.
	You have got your noticing licence from the Home Office themselves.
	Yvette Cooper's personally rubber-stamped it.
	But this would never have happened under the Conservatives.
	It wouldn't.
	It would not have.
	It certainly wouldn't.
	The Tories do still want to take credit for this, though.
	Oh, shut up, Tories.
	14 years.
	The Tories said, ah, well, it shows that Labour has buckled after being pressured to disclose the figures.
	You could have done this at any point!
	You had 14 years to do this.
	You didn't.
	So, there's no point trying to take credit now, Tories.
	We know that you would never have done this until Labour gave you permission to do so.
	Yeah, we need Labour's permission to be racist.
	And even then, when you took over from Labour, you still decided to, you know...
	Boris wavers.
	Yeah, Boris wavers, and you decided to liberalise a lot of Blunkett and Blair's tougher laws anyway.
	And brought in their own laws?
	What was the major one they brought in?
	The online harms bill and stuff like that?
	Oh yeah, they...
	Rubber stamped it.
	I mean, the Equality Act, they could have repealed that immediately.
	They brought in ones of their own just further in the Blair Act project.
	I was like, yeah, you are just as guilty.
	Sorry. No, no, it's absolutely fine.
	So it's saying that the people that we've got who are being subject to automatic deportation are foreign nationals who have been sentenced to 12 months or more in prison.
	So those are the kinds of figures that we're getting.
	Home office figures are expected to show that the main three nationalities for foreign criminals living in the communities are Albanians, Romanians, and Poles.
	So Poles, I was not expecting to be included in that, but again, broken down by crime, I would imagine with Poles it's going to be more some kind of benefit fraud.
	That's going to be the main one for Polish people.
	Not all crime is made equal.
	Yeah, so Poles are not going to be anywhere near on the same level of severity as the Albanians.
	Well, honestly, the Albanians probably aren't doing that much actual violent crime either.
	I mean, drug trade can be pretty violent.
	Drug trade pickpocketing, human trafficking across the channel.
	Property crimes, right?
	Money laundering.
	These three groups are going to be mostly property crimes, right?
	Like, where it's, you know, stealing money, selling drugs, stuff like that.
	The violent crimes are going to be coming from the more third-world, non-EU country.
	Exactly. I mean, don't get me wrong, I am obviously bothered about the, you know, the Albanians running drugs, and the Romanians stealing copper out of the wires and whatever, and the Poles stealing benefits.
	But it's not like an...
	I don't feel personally threatened by that, so that's lower down on my list of priorities, actually.
	Those ones who are, you know, raping and murdering children.
	Actually, okay, it happens less.
	Sure, I'm sure it does.
	I'm a bit more concerned about it, though.
	But we also have to take into account that these are the criminals that the government and the police have decided to charge and pursue in the first place.
	The white ones.
	Yeah, the white ones, yeah.
	So there's going to be a lot of problems.
	They're still refusing the national inquiry over the grooming gangs, for instance, but they have decided to brag about this and say the Tories would never do this because the Tories would never do this.
	The Home Office said, not only are we deporting foreign criminals at a rate never seen when Chris Philip and Robert Jenner...
	We're in charge.
	We will also be publishing far more information about the cohort of offenders than the Tories ever did.
	We want to ensure the public is kept better informed about the number of foreign criminals awaiting deportation, where they are from, and the crimes that they have committed.
	The Tories, again, though...
	Hang on, hang on.
	Before we go on, that's great.
	Okay, that's wonderful.
	The dialectic in Britain has turned into who can deport the most foreign criminals.
	That's a great start.
	You know, Labour are like, yeah, we're actually, we're most right-wing on that.
	The Tories are a bunch of wimpy leftists.
	I agree, they probably are.
	There is an Iranian rug merchant who has repeatedly stated, Welsh as well, who has repeatedly stated that the Tories are afraid of what the Guardian says about them, Labour are afraid about what the Daily Mail says about them.
	And I think this is proof of that.
	Some people say that the right, the disempowered right of the country has never moved the Overton window.
	I disagree.
	We absolutely have.
	Look at what they're just saying here.
	We're deporting criminals at a rate never before seen.
	You'd think that'd be something Nigel Farage would say.
	It's definitely clearly a political gambit, a ploy to try and undercut Tories and reform.
	At the same time.
	And also I do think that there is the digital ID aspect to take into account here as well.
	Because what they're probably going to do...
	Is say, here's all of this extra information, look at how these people who are coming into the country are making your life worse through the crimes that they commit.
	If we implement facial recognition, biotechnology, and digital ID all at the same time, we're better able to track these people, better able to arrest and deport them, so there's your...
	Excuse for having digital IDs and other technocratic stuff introduced into the country.
	That seems pretty much one of the plays for me.
	And so it achieves multiple things at the same time.
	So really, it's actually a very clever move on their part.
	Again, the Tories are claiming that this was us.
	Look, we were saying that we should do this all the way back to a year ago.
	You were still in power in March of last year?
	Why didn't you?
	And it's all well and good.
	I know people like Jenrick.
	He is obviously the best of them at the moment.
	But even Robert Jenrick, after he's no longer head of the Home Office, saying, we should publish migrant crime data.
	Why didn't you?
	You had the opportunity.
	So it's all meaningless words.
	Anything that Jenrick does is always underscored by the fact that the Conservative Party itself chose not to make him the leader.
	Right? So Jenrick's like, hey guys, I'm super right-wing and based and I would get these things done.
	It's like, okay, I didn't when I was in power, but whatever.
	I will do in the future.
	Okay, but your own party selected against you for an African immigrant.
	Right? So who wants more Nigerians coming into the country?
	So, you know, bro.
	You are probably in the wrong party is basically the answer, the conclusion you should draw from this.
	Well, there does keep being small rumblings of a Tory reform team-up.
	Why would Nigel want that?
	I'm the guy at the head in the polls.
	I don't need you.
	Why would I need you?
	All I need to do is actually throw out some red meat like I did this morning, in fact, and I'll probably go up in the polls and you'll go down.
	In that picture, he looks a bit like...
	JD Vance.
	He does, doesn't he?
	Missing a chromosome or two, but...
	Jesus Christ!
	He looks a bit like a Vance edit.
	Yeah, JD Vance without the beard.
	Great beard, Jemrick.
	But, again, one of the questions is, given that they only care about what the Daily Mail has to say about this, what does the Guardian have to say about this?
	Which is that it's obviously terrible, obviously racist, it's pandering to Farage.
	No, it's not actually pandering to Farage, it's outflanking him.
	Yeah. It's outflanking him and letting the disaffected Red Wall voters know that, trust us, you can vote for us again now.
	We also hate immigrants.
	We're not going to try and replace you.
	Look at how many more deportations that we're doing.
	Look at how we acknowledge the fact that this affects your communities and how poor you are.
	We're going to put money back in your pocket, protect your jobs, because they've started to halt a lot of the British steel redundancies that we're going to go through, and now they're doing this as well.
	So actually, Labour are doing a really good job of trying to re-attract the disaffected Labour vote.
	Good sleight of hand, too.
	They're pandering to the far-right, stroke, normal people that notice that they're being raped and murdered and replaced.
	If we just get a Venn diagram of far-right and normal people, it's weird how it's basically one-to-one.
	It is funny as well, because you've got people like this.
	Fizzer Qureshi...
	Chief Executive of the Migrant Rights Network saying, oh, it's scapegoating, oh, it's trying to manufacture a link between nationalities and criminality that plays into our infamously racist police system because the Stephen Lawrence inquiry did absolutely nothing.
	Unfair treatment of the riots last year meant nothing.
	The Yorkshire police saying that we don't want white candidates means nothing.
	But Labour listened to a woman like that and say, Who cares?
	Or at least Keir Starmer and the Blairites listen to that and say, we've pissed you off, good.
	Good, because that plays into what we're trying to do with the country.
	But I hate the sleight of hand of it.
	It's like, look, guys, we're getting rid of 19,000 illegal aliens, and we bring in a million legal ones.
	Enjoy, have a great day.
	Oh yeah, only a third of those are even workers.
	Two-thirds of them are either students or dependents.
	Enjoy! Paying for that.
	It's like, oh, God, I hate these people.
	I mean, that is always the sleight of hand.
	Not saying that the ultimate result of this is going to be good for the country because Labour is still trying to screw everybody over.
	They're just doing a much better job all of a sudden.
	Obviously, they failed completely when they first came in last year, but all of a sudden, they're doing a much better job of placating people while they get all of their dark stuff done in the background.
	I'm mad how the traitorous fifth columnist class...
	Just at war with reality.
	And reality won't quit.
	No. It refuses to quit.
	At some point, if you're administering a bureaucratic, technocratic state, at some point, Labour seem to have recognised, OK, we need to bring ourselves a little bit more in line with reality, just if we want things to work efficiently.
	They've been at war with reality since 1789, so I don't think they're going to stop any time soon.
	It's baked in.
	Yeah, it is.
	Their entire worldview, yeah.
	Yeah, their entire lives.
	I saw James O'Brien saying something like that.
	I just don't see what possible benefit...
	Oh, you mean this?
	Oh, you've already...
	Oh! Let's hear it straight from the horse's mouth, shall we?
	I was wondering what James O'Brien had to say about this, actually.
	Well, let's hear what he had to say about this.
	Do you think it's going to be intelligent, insightful...
	I mean, I can see by his face.
	...eye-opening?
	In the interest of the public.
	Here we go, folks.
	I don't know what else this is designed to do but to feed hatred.
	And you can tell from my voice, I really want to be wrong.
	Why is the Labour government determined to publish far more information about the nationalities of criminals than ever before?
	Oh, sorry, can we pause a second?
	This is just insufferable.
	If you know something about the demographics of the criminals, you'll become prejudiced.
	So I need you ignorant, says James O'Brien, or else hatred grows in Britain.
	James, that doesn't stop things from happening.
	You know, the things are happening already.
	Well, it means that I want you less safe.
	Yeah. Stupid, ignorant, and...
	If you're ignorant, you're less safe.
	If you don't know who's committing the crime, you're more likely to make bad decisions that will put yourself in danger.
	James O'Brien thinks that that is A-OK.
	He thinks that's a preferable situation, that you're in danger than you're informed and make better decisions for yourself.
	That's pretty evil.
	Why does he want this country, particularly women, to be less safe?
	Why, James?
	Why do you want that?
	Why are you advocating for that?
	Well... Lots of questions.
	He's a feminist.
	He's been to therapy, don't you know?
	So he's accepted himself.
	He's accepted himself and all of the consequences.
	Oh yeah, you've actually done...
	Yeah, I've done the reading.
	Read his book.
	I understand his mind now.
	And it is a circus of chaos in that.
	But what else may he have to say?
	You can, and I honestly don't think you will.
	Because I can't see that you could.
	Explain to me why this isn't as unpleasant as it appears.
	And what are we supposed to do with the information?
	So if we discover that Poles commit more crimes than, I don't know, Spaniards, are we supposed to treat Poles and Spaniards differently?
	Yeah. What am I supposed to do with this information?
	It's not ethnicity, it's nationality.
	So, I mean, are they going to publish the fact that the massive, massive, massive majority of crimes committed in this country are committed by non-foreigners?
	Just in terms of simple statistics, that's not an opinion it's counting.
	Are we going to start having conversations?
	Per capita James, per capita, hashtag per capita James.
	James cannot understand per capita, confirmed.
	And if you want an idea of the per capita for particular nationalities, well, thankfully, as I've mentioned, the Centre for Migration Control have already been collecting a lot of this information through Freedom of Information requests and putting them into handy-dandy, easy-to-read tables,
	revealing information like this.
	So this next one is arrests.
	It's not convictions.
	It's not prison population, but it's arrests.
	Can you believe this?
	One in five.
	Albanians who are in the UK right now get arrested.
	Well, that just shows how racist our police are, Harry.
	That's... That's amazing.
	Can you believe that?
	One in ten Afghans.
	Yeah, one in ten Afghans.
	Quite a lot more are doing crimes, they're just not arrested.
	Yeah, yeah, the rest of them are getting away.
	The other four out of five are getting away with it.
	Which just goes to show, like, this population, I don't think...
	That's crazy.
	It would be very uncharitable of me to say that literally one in five Albanians in Albania is a criminal.
	Yeah, I don't think that's the case either.
	So, what it seems to suggest is that...
	Criminal Albanians are specifically coming over to this country to form gangs and commit crimes mostly involving...
	Drugs and human trafficking.
	Drugs and human trafficking, yeah.
	Yeah, and the thing is, we already know these things.
	These are already things that we've covered on the podcast.
	And barbershop pretending to be Kurdish.
	That too.
	But that's also part of the human trafficking.
	It's only a side deal.
	Yeah, I mean, that's part of the human trafficking, that's part of the drug trafficking, that's part of the money laundering as well.
	So, even given that this is different nationalities and the nationality will be based on who's been rubber-stamped as a Brit, even with them all getting collected under that information, it's still...
	That's ridiculous.
	Still, what, 20 times more?
	Yeah. What's that classic thing, what's it called, I've heard a better term for it, where you just pretend, you feign ignorance, you just pretend you don't understand, per capita, you pretend you don't understand why noticing matters, why pattern recognition matters.
	Performative ignorance?
	Something like that, yeah.
	Do we think that James O'Brien is pretending?
	He must be.
	I would hope so.
	He must be.
	I would hope so.
	More charitable than I am, I tell you.
	He must be, because that's a classic leftist or any sort of traitor class thing to do, is say, I don't get it, I don't understand.
	But outside of the arrests, again, Centre for Migration Control have this excellent article here, because they posted about this and said...
	The league tables are actually going to be obfuscating a lot of information, mainly because it's only counting those 19,000 and change that are set for deportation at the moment, and they're going to break it down in this.
	So this is from the Freedom of Information requests, and it's very, very interesting here.
	This is information between...
	Bloody hell, what's going on here?
	Between 2021 and 2023.
	Can we get it off of dark mode, please, Samson, so that we can actually see...
	See the figures a little bit.
	Thank you.
	Thank you very much.
	So this is total conviction rate, and even then, even then, under total conviction rate, Albanians per 10,000.
	4,000 convicted per 10,000?
	Yeah, between 2021 and 2023.
	In two years!
	And this is home office and ONS data.
	Jesus Christ!
	That's ridiculous.
	And then you do get more like the North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, other parts of the Third World as well.
	Any of those...
	Moldova, Congo, 1500, almost 1600.
	And again, the kinds of crimes they're committing are going to be substantively different.
	Somalia is 1 in 10. The UK is 1 in 136.
	Yeah. So that's just general convictions, and then if you break it down into the types of crimes, then you can get the real picture of what kind of crimes are being committed here.
	So this is the famous graph now.
	Sexual offences per 10,000.
	That's Afghanistan well out in the lead there alongside Eritrea and Namibia, who are both all between 50 to 60 per 10,000.
	That's sexual offences.
	Absolutely ridiculous figures there.
	Violence conviction rate, Congo comes out top there, so 186 per 10,000, which is almost 12 times the UK rate.
	Somalia trying their best, though.
	Drug conviction rate, and Jesus Christ, Albania, so far out in front, it's untrue, because...
	2,500 per 10...
	I'm pretty certain the only Albanians that are in this country are...
	Drug dealers.
	Apparently something like 5% of Albania's total male population is in the UK.
	Apparently that is just the criminal element of Albania.
	Do Albania publish their own crime statistics?
	Have their crimes gone down?
	I did see some people posting reports of literal full towns in Albania where all of the men have left.
	Come and commit crimes over here.
	Come and deal cocaine over here.
	What else have we got?
	You can buy a blacked out Mercedes within six months.
	If you come here, deal drugs, traffic people.
	There you go.
	I see them parked all the way, all the time, out in front of barbershops.
	That's interesting.
	Theft convictions.
	You've got Algerians out front there.
	Romanians. Come on, Romania.
	Only Romanians third.
	Can you believe that?
	You're falling behind.
	What? I mean, national stereotypes exist for a reason, Romanians.
	Come on, you need to up your game there.
	Are we being beaten by the Arabs?
	Weapons conviction rate, Albanians again.
	Yeah, no surprise.
	And then it goes on.
	There's actually a lot of information that you can take from this.
	The government information will obfuscate a lot and will not be anywhere near as detailed as all of this.
	But again, the silver lining to take is that the government themselves are legitimizing.
	This kind of noticing.
	You have your pass now.
	You're allowed to notice.
	So we'll see what actually comes of that, if it is just red meat, if it's going to be part of the digital ID, or if anything will come of it.
	Yeah, being able to send them, like, here's the government statistics on national criminality, it's going to be hard for the average leftist to be like, well, I'm just going to deny that.
	They're always used as the gold standard, aren't they?
	Yeah, but they'll probably make up some excuse of Starmer's fascist Britain.
	Coping and seething, yes.
	Keir Starmer will turn into a fascist.
	As James O'Brien does.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	No, he really does, actually, doesn't he?
	He intimates the Labour government led by Keir, I was literally a communist Starmer, is a far-right government.
	It's like, no, it's not.
	Alright, we've got Rumble Rants, and I think we have some video comments as well, so let's get through those.
	This is Josh's big idea.
	That's not a bad idea.
	It is a great idea.
	For Carl, the only guns you can keep at home in the UK are bolt-action rifles, two-shot shotguns.
	The only semi-autos you can keep at home are 2.2LR rifles.
	All others must be kept in a shooting club.
	Yeah, I'm aware of that.
	I don't know the exact details, but basically I know you can only have a rifle and a shotgun or something.
	You can have a.308 rifle, though.
	That will blow most things to bits.
	It's a big old rifle.
	James can't imagine what it's like to have had breakfast.
	Separate point.
	Do we worry that another party will get in now or undo or do the opposite of all this so they aren't like Labour?
	No. I mean, the thing is, Labour is being very cautious about all of this because all of this plays very well with the general public.
	Even most Liberal Democrat voters think illegals should just be deported.
	Even illegals haven't otherwise committed another crime on top.
	You should just go.
	It's a very popular position, basically.
	And so Labour are actually very safe to move into the right-wing space and do these things.
	Alex says, can we deport criminals to third-world countries that use child labour and report them with immigrant criminals along with Washington Sun?
	Probably not.
	Bald Eagle says, the Overton window hasn't moved.
	It's just that Labour has gone so far left, they've become right.
	Also, the Muslims are starting to rise up.
	Yeah, no, I think actually the Overton window is moving for the mainstream.
	And I mean, like saying, what was the thing, you know, we're deporting more illegals than anyone else.
	That's not something that Labour and the Tories would have been arguing over ten years ago.
	They were like, oh, you are a racist then.
	I mean, I got called a racist by a Conservative councillor once on Facebook, and I just laughed at him.
	I was like, what are you talking about?
	I want these people gone, blah, blah, blah.
	He backed down on it very, very quickly, actually.
	He was like, you're a racist.
	I was like, I don't care.
	It would be good if this turns out to be the Labour stab in the back to their Muslim constituents, though, wouldn't it?
	The Overton window, the conversation.
	Has certainly moved.
	Yeah, yeah, 100%.
	Because you've got someone like Charlie Downs or published in, what was it, The Mail Online or something, talking about re-migration things.
	We've got Charlie Downs on Friday, actually.
	He's in tomorrow, yeah.
	Oh, great.
	I look forward to that, folks.
	Douglas Carlswell in The Telegraph talking about re-migration, even for legal...
	People that have got citizenship and stuff.
	So the conversation has moved.
	As of yesterday, starting to mobilise the women against it as well.
	Honestly, young girls all of a sudden being against it, that's a shift as well.
	Because they're palpably in danger.
	Well, I mean, this is the point that Posey Parker's making as well.
	So all the TERFs are like, yeah, why do we want this as well?
	So the conversation is changing.
	Alright, let's watch through some of these video comments.
	Isn't it ironic the racism that progressives claim to fight against is actually the type they perpetuate?
	I guess they don't have the mental capacity for self-reflection.
	If you want to see the fun parts of our cyberpunk dystopia made real, check out my creator's YouTube channel by searching for Nye Mechworks on YouTube.
	I think the mantra, it's not...
	Hypocrisy, its hierarchy is actually true.
	I think they're like, you know, we're against you and for our guys on the grounds which we're against you.
	I do genuinely also think it's like a paternalistic instinct or a maternalistic instinct from the leftists to be like, oh no, these people are so much more inferior than us, so we need to protect them.
	Genuinely. London gunmaker John Rigby& Co.
	is set to celebrate its 250th anniversary.
	Rigby will host celebrations aboard HMS Victory and HMS Warrior at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
	HMS Victory, that ordered in 1758, the same year that Lord Nelson was born, and also John Rigby.
	So we'll be hosting a four-day of gun-making aboard.
	Spitfire flyovers, cannons being fired, and some good old-fashioned British pomp and ceremony.
	Nice. That sounds awesome.
	Yeah, that sounds really great.
	When was the day of that?
	I missed it.
	Google it.
	I'll Google it now.
	That sounds amazing.
	My kids would love that.
	Firing cannons.
	Oh, yeah.
	My sons would be like, oh, it's amazing.
	I was once at Edinburgh Castle when they, I think it might be every single day, but anyway, I was there and they're firing blank, firing artillery pieces.
	And it's great, like the boom goes right through your body.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Cool. Shall we go to the next one?
	Yes. Just saying 2025.
	guess.
	A bit of birdsong, I guess.
	I think it was just peaceful.
	Relaxing. Yeah.
	Yeah. It is nice that spring's here, thankfully.
	So, the communication video is a little bit depressing.
	I feel bad for anybody that's stuck in the city, but I mean, I'm like a country-born and bredrum kid, so I think that it's good to ask people to look at your surroundings and at your community and to be pro-social if there's crime, but at the same time, you know, peanut the squirrel, that was a situation that was taken to a more ridiculous...
	end result because people are also trying to monitor their community.
	So I don't really know how to traverse this.
	I don't know if most people actually do.
	It's a long conversation that needs to be had where the appropriate sort of boundaries of social interest begin and end.
	But the peanut the squirrel thing was really more about the state enforcing regulations.
	Against common sense.
	So, like, no, we have to kill the squirrel and then dissect it to see if it has rabies.
	It's been living with him for five years.
	Clearly doesn't have rabies.
	You know, the guy, you know, obviously doesn't have rabies from the squirrel.
	And so it's, like, just essentially malicious compliance by the state.
	It's been like, no, we're taking the squirrel because you shouldn't have it.
	And now we need to check.
	Oh, it's dead now.
	It's like, oh, that's awful.
	It was an awful, like, bureaucratic tyranny.
	It was horrible, wasn't it?
	Yeah, squirrel didn't do anything.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Like when cops or the ATF need to knock on your front door, you own a dog, and they just kill the dog.
	Yeah, it could have been a threat.
	Yeah, but there's my dog, man, you know?
	Yeah, I hate that.
	Or with the ATF, they just shoot your wife, as we saw in the 90s.
	Ruby Ridge.
	Oh, and your children.
	Monday is polling day for the Canadian federal election.
	I live in a safe Liberal seat but was shocked to hear interviews with people about vote intention on the local CBC radio.
	No pressure to say they're party of choice, but Liberal supporters couldn't keep quiet, including one who intended on voting for Bardish Chagga because the voter is an immigrant and Bardish looks most like her.
	Anyway, Canadian media is so full of Trump Trump Trump that most Canadians aren't voting for or against a local MP or the future Prime Minister, but instead voting against the head of state of a foreign country.
	Canada does realise that on paper it's like an independent country, right?
	Because it really does just act like the northern outpost of America.
	Yeah, but the problem is it's because Trump said he was going to annex it, and he's just demolished the right wing in Canada by saying that.
	Like, Polivare went from being in the lead to being, like, second or third or whatever.
	So it's just like, that was, like...
	But even before then, Canada's just acted like it's, like, kind of America, Diet America.
	Like, basically.
	She is still asking me for another baby, and it's like, no, darling, no, no, no.
	The two younger ones we have now are just more than enough hassle, and I'm just too old for another baby.
	I'm too old and tired to raise another child.
	Four is enough.
	I've done my duty.
	How is that not?
	Skill issue.
	Skill issue.
	Are you going to write the challenge, Carl?
	Take this disrespect.
	Absolutely, I'm not going to raise this.
	I like that you're being described as the virgin.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I've only had four.
	I'm such a virgin.
	Unless you go full Elon, anything short of nine, and you've failed your race.
	If you're still in single digits.
	If I could afford to have, like, literally my own town full of women who are raising my children, maybe I'd do it.
	But I can't afford that.
	You don't have to deal with any of them, do you?
	Exactly. Maybe you'll nag each other.
	Listen, I'm the one who gets woken up an hour before my alarm goes off every goddamn morning because my two youngest, like my four-year-old, is able to open doors that my two-year-old can't open, and they're such little partners in crime, right?
	And he's really smart as well.
	Like, I went into my office to go to bed yesterday.
	I'm like, where's my phone charger?
	I don't know.
	Looking around for it for ages.
	And Marissa, oh, we better check Alexander's room.
	So I go in there, right?
	And he's there asleep with the phone charger plugged into the wall.
	The thing turned on.
	Plugged into the tablet, and the tablet's on full charge.
	And I'm like, he's four.
	I don't know how he knows how to do this.
	I haven't shown him how to do this.
	He can't write yet.
	I'm already...
	I already know that that's coming up, because my daughter, she can reach the door handles in my parents' house, so when we visit the grandparents, she can get anywhere that she wants, and she's just this close in my house to being able to reach them, so...
	But he always breaks her out of her room in the morning, and so it's just like, you know, you hear them running around...
	Yeah, yeah, no, it really is.
	He'll spring her from the prison, because, you know, she can't reach the door, so she's got to play in her room with her dolls and stuff.
	No, he'll spring her, and then they'll go and cause some trouble.
	Anyway, I think that's all we've got time for, because we've got Calvin Robinson's Common Sense Crusade in just half an hour, so anyone with a membership, please tune into that.

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