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May 13, 2025 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters
01:31:01
The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1163
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Time Text
Hello, good afternoon and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters.
It's number 1163, incredibly.
How quickly the time flies.
And it is Tuesday the 13th of May in the year of our Lord 2025.
I am joined by Luca Johnson and Ferezmo Dad.
How are you guys?
Hello, hello.
Really good.
Good, good.
So today is just a lightweight one.
We're just talking about rivers of blood, organised sex trafficking and Israel.
I guess, well, let's just kick off, Sarah.
The first segment is, we're going to talk about Enoch Powell or Starmer.
We are, we are.
And that sort of thing.
Yeah, okay.
So, yeah, good afternoon.
The first thing to mention is the fact that it was a remarkable sight yesterday, watching Keir Starmer perfect the dark art of necromancy, as he brought Enoch Powell's spectre from beyond the grave.
Once again.
And now, obviously, as you've seen, you know, today, how fast things move, you can't go an entire, you can't go a road without seeing the stormtroopers now patrolling the streets to obviously kick out all of these immigrants.
Who knew?
He's our guy.
Kia Starmer, turns out.
We're getting our country back, finally.
Yeah.
Thanks to Kia Starmer.
But of course I'm joking, but we'll go more into his actual speech in a moment.
I just wanted to say before we begin, though, that it's a tremendous honour to say that as of the start of next week, Monday 19th, I'm going to be joining Lotus Eaters as a full-time writer, presenter.
I mean, I've had an amazing time so far just making guest contributions, doing epochs.
I'm so excited for the opportunity ahead, and I know that the role as a presenter is obviously so important to keeping you guys engaged and wanting to listen more, so I'm just going to do the best job that I can do, and I hope you enjoy my contribution.
Welcome aboard.
Thank you.
Welcome aboard.
Thank you.
Right, so, moving on.
So, here is Keir Starmer's speech from...
Five years ago.
And we should just watch it because it's the perfect...
We welcome migrants.
We don't scapegoat them.
Low wages, poor housing, poor public services are not the fault of migrants and people who've come here.
They're political failure.
Political failure.
So we have to make the case for the benefits of migration.
Yeah, sorry it sounds like he's in a wind tunnel.
Don't know what's going on there.
But as you can see from this speech, it's five years ago, and also this was just as a Boris wave was about to commence, so little did we know that it was going to be a case of out of the frying pan into the fire with all of this stuff.
But obviously that 20 seconds there is, broadly speaking, the politics, the status quo that we've grown up with.
For, well, certainly the entirety of my lifetime.
It's the open borders globalist position, isn't it?
Just absolutely not in the interest of the native people of the island.
It's the idea that people are not differentiated in any way, that anyone from anywhere fits in in any location.
But somehow, magically, it only goes one way, because you don't find English Indians, but you do find Indian British.
Sort of confused as to why it goes one way but not the other.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I think that confusion is really the reason why we've come to this point now, isn't it?
Because really, the entire project is built upon layer upon layer of contradictions and fantasies.
And you and I were saying, weren't we, before we came on air, that if it had been a single fantasy of, say, net zero...
Or 300,000 immigrants a year.
They've had more chance of getting away with it.
It's the fact that they've tried to force so many fantasies simultaneously that the whole political system has just reached breaking point.
Absolute breaking point.
And so it should be no surprise with that breaking point here that now, conversely from that speech I just showed, Keir Starmer's now saying things like this.
I'm going to let it play for just a little bit.
Good morning.
Today we publish a white paper on immigration.
A strategy absolutely central to my plan for change that will finally take back control of our borders and close the book on a squalid chapter for our politics, our economy and our country.
Take back control.
Everyone knows that slogan.
And everyone knows what it meant on immigration.
Or at least, that's what people thought.
Because what followed from the previous government, starting with the people who used that slogan, was the complete opposite.
Between 2019 and 2023, even as they were going round our country, telling people with a straight face that they would get immigration down, Net migration quadrupled until in 2023 it reached nearly 1 million.
That's about the population of Birmingham, our second largest city.
That's not control.
It's chaos.
And look, they must answer for themselves.
But I don't think that you can do something like that by accident.
It was a choice.
A choice made even, as they told you, told the country, they were doing the opposite.
A one-nation experiment in open borders conducted on a country that voted for control.
I'll leave it there.
A couple of quick things.
He's absolutely right.
Yes.
So people like...
Preeti Patel and Suela Breverman and James Cleverley.
Yeah, like, absolute liars did the opposite.
But I don't trust him, though.
Like, you're sounding tough, but I absolutely don't trust him to do anything different.
No, I don't think he has any...
I think what he's trapped with is that he must use this rhetoric, but he is going...
He hasn't shown any willingness...
To do anything that enforces this rhetoric.
And let's say he brings the numbers down from 1 million to 800,000 or half a million or even a quarter of a million.
That's still pretty extreme for a country with a population of 50, 60 million.
So he's saying the right things for now and making his base extremely angry.
And creating a big grift within the left between the various ethnic alliances and the extreme left ideologues around net zero, open borders, etc.
That's going to cost him politically, especially if he doesn't follow up.
He can't bill half a million net migration as a success story.
That's just not credible.
No, you'd think.
Well, you know, obviously going back to the time when Enoch Powell was speaking about all of this stuff, he was talking about a time when immigration was at about 30,000 a year, 50,000 a year.
And even then, you know, Powell was speaking about how untenable this was in the long run, that all of the things that this would lead to.
And so I suppose, really...
It's only natural that I didn't play it here because everyone's already seen it, but one of the things that Starmer goes on to say in this speech is that we will become an island of strangers if this is allowed to continue.
Elephant in the room, of course, is that we are already there.
That is already the case.
If you go to Ilford, or Dagenham, or Swindon, then you do already feel...
Almost anywhere.
Yeah, there's very few places now that aren't touched by it.
And I actually think that that might, well, not might, but I think that really does tie into why the force and anger, you can feel it rising because all of those places that 10 years ago, 20 years ago, were reasonably unaffected, reasonably shielded from mass immigration.
The Tories, and then the Boris wave in particular, has really just shoved it all in their faces.
It's impossible to hide from it now.
There are no more carpets left to sweep this under.
Yes.
And remember, the original policy objective of Tony Blair and co.
was to rub the noses of the right in diversity.
This was a conscious policy choice.
He's blaming it on the conservatives, rightly so, because they deserve an enormous amount of blame.
But this was the consensus position.
This was the centrist position, and the extreme position was simply stating the fact that different cultures are different.
And that different countries are, in fact, unique.
And if you want to preserve them, you want to preserve their uniqueness.
Radical stuff.
Very revolutionary stuff.
Crazy stuff, yes.
One tiny fedora tipping note, I might add, is that...
There's an old usage for the word strangers.
Like in Shakespeare, you'll find they'll talk about strangers, and that just means foreigners, because obviously the modern colloquial use of the word stranger just means someone you don't know.
But I think, I'm pretty sure Enoch Powell was using it in the older usage.
By strangers, he means foreigners.
In our own mind.
So it's just a small point.
Yes.
And as a classicist, it's very unlikely that Powell did mean it by that interpretation.
I would have thought so, yeah.
Definitely.
But yeah, as Powell said here back in good old 1968, for reasons which they could not comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default on which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country.
Wow.
Obviously true.
The age of Enoch Starmer.
Yes.
Who would have thought?
Rax Marshall Starmer.
He's going to bring down the hammer.
It has a ring to it, doesn't it?
So let's get through the takes.
Shall we?
All those wonderful, wonderful takes on this.
From Jeremy Corbyn, he said that the problems in our society are not caused by migrants or refugees.
They're caused by an economic system rigged in favour of corporations and billionaires.
If the government wanted to improve people's lives, it would tax the rich and build an economy that works for us all.
Except the rich, presumably.
It's not supposed to work for them.
May I make two comments here?
Please.
Just about Mr. Corbyn's understanding of elementary economics.
Corporations and billionaires do benefit enormously from an endless flow of cheap labor.
Of course.
And one of the costs of cheap labor is reducing the need for automation.
Automation raises labor productivity and results in a more skilled workforce and therefore higher wages.
So if Mr. Corbyn was on the side of the working class, he might benefit from a quick course in economics that would help him understand these things.
As for taxing the rich, in a financial economy, you cannot do it, or you can only do it up to a point.
Because in a financial economy, you can always move your wealth offshore.
Is resulting, because Starmer is trying to tax the rich, contrary to what Corbett is saying, that is resulting in a reduction in the tax base, not in higher tax revenues for the government.
So these guys insist on not understanding elementary economics.
They deny that wages also obey the laws of supply and demand, as does housing and the price of other basic goods.
Their insistence on denying economic reality is just insane, and it's driven purely by dogma.
Oh, entirely.
And it's more and more obvious as well.
I mean, this might have persuaded people who don't really know much in 2005 or 2015 even, but it's just so out of date.
It's like 1970s out of date, what he's saying here.
I do quite like Bob Rule's response there on the bottom.
Probably can't read it out because it's expletive.
But it's just like, yeah, the billionaires didn't rape a quarter of a million white children over the past 30 years.
No.
So what on earth are you talking about?
But that really is an economy that works for us all.
I don't want the economy to work for everyone.
I don't want the economy to work.
I don't want Britain to work for a Somali who just got off the boat.
I don't want Britain to work for someone living in a Pakistani ghetto.
No, Britain should work for British people, first and foremost.
Given the benefits and tax system, it does work for recently arrived migrants better than it works for anyone else.
Because if you want a 16, 17-year-old to start gaining work experience, they're going to...
Do Deliveroo jobs or McDonald's or something along these lines, which sort of set them up on a career path or give them some real life experience that then helps them get a real job.
And by closing that employment avenue, you're making sure that the economic system doesn't work for these people.
So the extent of economic illiteracy required to support open borders is absolutely...
It's so insane that it must be dogmatic and deliberate.
The idea that we need more immigrants to support the infrastructure for a society that has been flooded by millions and millions of immigrants.
There's the old saying that the bureaucracy is expanding to supply the demands of the bureaucracy.
The same with this.
Immigration must increase to facilitate increased immigration.
Nonsense, isn't it?
It's just nonsense.
Yeah, it is.
But going back to what you were saying, Beau, about the fact that this is so old hat, this feels like something out of the 70s.
This is another example.
MP for Perth here says, By the 2030s, Scotland will be in population decline, with a smaller working-age cohort unable to support an increasingly elderly society.
Starmer has just announced an immigration policy that is counter to Scottish interests, and he just does not care.
Look, On the one hand, I'm all for vanquishing Scotland, finally, and subjugating them, but not like this.
Oh, the Daily Record will have you on the front page for saying such a thing.
Hope not hate will have got your number for daring to criticise Scotland on any level.
I could never, I wouldn't dare plagiarise your finest moments.
It's just pure 1984 double think, double speak, that it's against Scotland's interest.
Scotland's interest is more people being there who are not Scottish.
Look, even then, sorry, I have to hammer home the economic point.
On average, most migrants from Middle East, Africa, are a net fiscal cost, not a net fiscal benefit.
So they will not help pay for pensions, part one.
Part two...
Part of the problem is the existence of pensions because the role of the family has been outsourced to the state.
Your children should be taking care of you in your old age, not random strangers that have no connection to you.
Now, through misfortune or providence, you might find yourself alone in your old age, in which case a Christian society would have an obligation towards you.
Yes.
But this can't be the default mode of a society because that outcome becomes inevitable.
So again, there is a level of economic illiteracy animating these arguments.
Surprising.
I think what you said earlier is absolutely right.
It's slightly more than merely being illiterate.
It's deliberate, isn't it?
Yes.
It's like a deliberate ignorance.
It's dogma.
It's dogma.
Like I accidentally haven't read.
Enough economics.
Yes.
They want to destroy our country.
I think as well the reason why this particular term of island of strangers, which is the one line from Stammer's speech that all of the left seems to have latched onto, that, you know, islands of strangers is rivers of blood 2.0, you know, but slightly duller.
But the fact is...
That ultimately, I think one of the reasons why they feel so threatened by that expression of an island of strangers is because on an emotional level, it actually does meet the demand of saying, no, the emotional needs of the British people come before the economic concerns of new arrivals.
I think because implied within it is a reality that British people, Lebanese people, Syrian people, Egyptians, Turks, Somalis, are genuinely different peoples who view each other as strangers.
So, consciously or otherwise, Keir Starmer finally recognized the existence of England as a nation and of Britain as a family of nations.
And that's what's making them particularly angry.
Because you're not allowed to say this.
Nigerians are permitted to be a nation.
But not Europeans.
And Starmer accidentally violated that taboo to score a rhetorical point, probably unaware of the importance of the point he was subtly making.
The true globalist position is that there are no strangers.
Yes, yes.
We're all born friends and we're all sort of...
Hopefully at least, this might be something you're moving on to, but it moves the conversation a bit.
It moves the conversation, doesn't it?
The Overton window has shifted, clicked one more bit to the right.
Well, also, it's definitely the fact that he's correctly framed it as a deliberate policy.
You know, this is when a lot of the MPs, when they're criticising immigration, like the reform types, they always use the term uncontrolled mass immigration.
Not at all.
It was entirely controlled.
It was controlled mass immigration.
It was done concertedly, with purpose.
So it's not uncontrolled at all.
And it was initiated by nice Mr. Tony Blair.
Yes, lovely man.
It wasn't...
Nobody can claim innocence in this.
And Keir Starmer's claim that it was just the Conservatives' fault.
Okay, man, come on.
Yeah.
I mean, don't get me wrong.
We remember.
Sorry.
Yes, exactly.
I'm obviously happy to see Boris Johnson's political career buried alive.
And all the other traitors, too.
I don't want zero seats for the Tories, zero seats for Labour, of course.
But, ultimately, it just brings out, Stammer's speech brought out, this, like, Espana Begum.
It's like, I'm proud to represent an East London constituency where diversity is a strength, where communities include migrants from all over the world.
We must end, not embolden, the hostile environment.
Now, this is because, ultimately, it goes back to what you're saying, Beau.
Look, I don't doubt she believes it.
Because she's a coloniser.
However, fundamentally, they've lost the momentum.
All of their arguments, you can see them, like in the boxing match, sweating, their arms are limp, and they're just there against the railings, just getting beat on from all sides now by the sheer force of feeling in the UK.
By the consequences of their own actions.
Right, by the consequences of their own actions.
As the Ayn Rand quote famously says, I've absolutely butchered this, haven't I?
I shouldn't have made that.
You can avoid the reality, but you can't avoid the consequences of avoiding reality, ultimately.
And I used to live in East London.
I didn't notice a strength when there was a Sharia patrol walking around the house that I was living in, or when I had somebody ring my doorbell on a Friday that I'd taken off sick and ask me if I was going to mosque.
I really didn't feel particularly enriched by that kind of diversity.
No.
Remember, places like East London, the East London Mosque, which I used to live next to, most of what's preached there will get you sent to jail in the UAE.
Mad, isn't it?
Remarkable.
It should be emphasized that nothing about this says success.
It's not a straight...
No, absolutely.
Yeah, I mean, I'm familiar with East London as well.
The Big Moss is in Whitechapel, isn't it?
Yes.
And the whole of East London.
It's not very diverse.
No.
It's not a diversity of different peoples.
No, it's homogenous, rather, pretty badly.
I mean, that Begum, she's just a fifth columnist, so she's going to say things like that.
Yes.
She's going to have to stick to the line.
That it is diverse and it's a strength.
Nearly everyone can see now, unless you're a committed fifth columnist, you can see it's just not true.
It's just a liar.
Well, we're not her client group, are we?
It's that simple.
And remember, Bigam and everybody associated with her were cheering Pakistan on in the latest India-Pakistan scuffle.
And you saw it break down.
You saw Sunak...
Sticking up for India and trying to defend India.
And you saw people like Ms. Begum saying, no, no, no, Pakistan isn't the right, India is a rogue state.
So there is this pretense that past identities are erased.
I don't understand that.
I don't get it.
And I don't understand why it's one way.
For example, I don't understand why nobody in Africa celebrated Sunak becoming prime minister, even though his family had been in Africa for a generation or two.
But there was nobody saying, this is the first African Prime Minister.
He was very obviously the first Indian Prime Minister.
Okay, why did staying in Africa not make him African, but staying in Britain made him British?
I mean, I say this as an immigrant myself, but I just can't tolerate being lied to all the time.
I hate it when people lie to me about anything.
Yeah, exactly.
And as you were saying about Espana Begum as well, and all the Pakistan stuff, or no doubt the Palestine stuff as well, it's like they ultimately demand daily your emotional consideration for their foreign ethnic struggles.
But when you talk about the Pite of England and the Englishmen or the Welsh or whoever it may be, who are indigenous to here, they couldn't give a toss.
They couldn't give a toss.
They will not give you a second.
worth of consideration.
And so, well, it's just going to have to be a very civil divorce proceeding then, isn't it?
Because it's not going to work.
But this was one that I found.
Jonathan this, again, just trotting out the old arguments where he says, Britain is a product of immigration and always has been.
Now, I'm not going to linger on it, but I did actually just want to bring up, I wrote this piece last year in The Critic called The Enigma of Englishness.
I don't really want to go into it in any great detail, but I was just going to say that for those who might not be aware, this argument about the fact that Britain is...
has always been a nation of immigrants, is actually an older argument than you might suspect.
It's not actually a post-1945 argument.
One of the things that I go and say in it is the fact that Rudyard Kipling was giving a speech back in 1920 for St. George's Day, and he traces the teleology of this argument all the way back to the 1600s with English writers such as Daniel Defoe.
Who wrote a poem called A Trueborn Englishman, basically ridiculing the idea that the English are actually a people in response to William of Orange becoming king.
Because all the English were like, we don't want a foreigner as king.
And Defoe was like, well, aren't all your ancestors just Vikings anyway?
And so this thing is far older than the mere, you know.
Is that a picture of Kipling or Alf Garnet?
It's Kipling.
Okay.
Fellow birthday.
Buddy of mine.
She had the same birthday.
Always Thorne.
But yeah, so obviously Morgoth came out and had the correct take.
As always.
As always, he says, I'm dropping immigration to just 3,500, sorry, 350,000 net.
Do you love me now, Reek?
Yeah.
That really is how it feels.
A abusive relationship.
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm going to repeatedly punch you in the face a little bit softer now.
I'll only cut off your pinky this time.
Yeah, poor Theon.
But ultimately, it's that thing that the momentum is at our backs now.
And I feel like...
Because now it's come to a position where you've got people like Generic in the Tory party, you've got Starmer making this speech in Labour.
Yeah, okay, like the Green Party and the SNP will continue to be irrelevant.
Right, and just be their authentic selves because they are, of course, true believers.
But at least these guys have made the political calculation that actually just advocating for immigration now is untenable.
Genuinely just politically untenable.
You can't do it anymore and be popular.
It will lead to the annihilation of your party, which obviously we welcome.
It's nice to see that shift.
I'll take the small wins if that's all we can get at the minute.
Hopefully it will force people like Farage to go even further right.
I don't think it will.
I think, if anything, the first sounds he's making is to move slightly to the left, but we'll see anyway.
Any shift like this, I mean, it's clearly, it's obviously sort of politically motivated.
You know, if he hadn't done so disastrously in the local elections, would he have made this speech?
I really love that early on in the speech, he denies that there's any political aspect to this.
This was simply a technical thing.
Come on!
Yeah, it's not because you just got annihilated in the local elections.
You've got reform breathing down your neck.
But identity and politics are inseparable.
Identity is what defines who you are, and when you think of a common good, you think first, well, what is common?
Who are we as an identity?
And then you decide what's good for us.
So this whole artificial separation, this attempt to depoliticize it and to deny that it's just about electoral calculus, amazing dishonesty.
I'm constantly impressed by Keir Starmer's ability to lie.
Endlessly, to himself, to his audience, to everybody.
As he did to Trump when he went to visit and said, we do have free speech in the UK.
Yes, yes, yes.
Great to look on the face.
No honour, no shame.
Yep.
So, the reason I wanted to bring up just one more of Zahra Sultana's tweets about this was because she says that So, I'd just like to talk a little bit about...
Lives that have been put at risk over the immigration question.
Because I have your very poignant series of tweets here, Beau, where you just talked about Fusilier, Lee Rigby, lest we forget.
Of course, as you go down, it's Chris Donald, David Amos, MP.
And so Zara can sit there all she wants and talk about the danger that this rhetoric brings to people's lives.
You do that, Zara, and I'll focus on the actual violence that's being caused by policies that you support, all right?
We're so beyond done with just these people.
They have no momentum and the emotional blackmail is coming to an end because it's actually backfiring.
Now, for every attempt at emotional blackmail that they engage in, they're only going to make people angrier.
And the Overton window is going to move in a way that these people cannot control.
And I hope Starmer succeeds.
I really hope he succeeds because the consequences of him failing again are going to be life-changing and not in a good way.
This is a terrible scenario.
It needs to be managed well to exit from it.
I don't think he's the man to do it, but...
Honestly, for his sake and for Britain's sake, I really hope he succeeds because competence should be applauded and because if he delivers, that would be a good thing.
But if the result is 350,000, that's not success.
But really what he's trying to do, isn't he, is he's just trying to save the system itself.
He's trying to save globalism.
He's trying to save managerialism.
It's all containment still.
Containment strategy.
Entirely.
It's just about reducing the numbers to a low enough number that the state can begin to manage it, but it's not actually in rebellion against any of the pre-suppositions that led to it happening in the first place.
He will use this rhetoric to try to push reform on others to take a harder position, then try to cast them as extremists.
To see if he can replay the same game that they've been playing indefinitely.
This is the attempt.
And he will fail and he will try to hide the fact that he's failing.
I think he's absolutely right to call it just emotional blackmail.
Yes.
It's just give up your country, racist.
Yes.
It's like that doesn't really play much anymore.
No, no, no.
There's still a few sort of centrist ads that might go along with that, but...
I wish them well.
But the reason I got this one was not just because I love a bit of salt mining, but just because, actually, when you read something like this, where this Lauren Thomas says, I don't even know what to say about the immigration white paper.
I feel sick.
I feel defeated.
I cannot recommend the UK as a place to live any longer, when even Labour will pull the rug out from under you like this.
Their morale's shattered, because their guy has...
Totally betrayed them on this.
That's it now.
You're not getting the open tap of immigrants anymore.
Sorry, Lauren, you're just going to have to deal with 500,000 a year now.
Hope that'll do for you.
But fundamentally, I think that this speech from Starmer is actually very useful.
Because I feel like it's actually, one, it's divided the left.
You know, you've got the Corbyn types, you've got the John MacDonald point.
This is a point where they will not, they refuse to...
They can't concede.
They can't concede.
No.
They can't concede on it.
And so it's going to fracture them tremendously.
And also, as I've, you know, I'll just repeat one more time, the wind is in our sails.
The wind is in our sails on this.
It's not going away.
It's a single issue.
It either gets addressed or they get destroyed.
Yeah.
And it's that simple.
I absolutely feel like the paradigm has shifted to the point where there is no left or right.
It's just globalists or non-globalists.
Globalists or nationalists.
Nativists.
Realists.
Whatever you want to call it.
Nativists or nationalists.
Just realists.
And nations are real.
Right.
Yeah.
You know?
Denying that they are a nation is just okay.
It's like denying that they're elephants.
Good luck.
When you get trampled, don't blame me.
Are you an open-boarder person or not?
It's just simply that.
Well, fortunately, we're not anymore, thanks to our glorious Prime Minister, Kia Powell.
So, thank you.
Can I get the mail?
You can.
Do you want to read your rumble rents?
Oh, sure.
It says...
For five dollars, it's got...
Oh, it's gold.
Start from the bottom, do I, then?
Yeah.
Okay.
So, for $1, it says, I've been learning French.
I'm sorry.
I know now that God has to be an Englishman because only the devil would speak French.
For $2, Dragon Lady Chris.
So happy Luke has officially joined in the lads.
Historians unite.
Yeah.
Okay, cool.
Well, I'll...
Probably sit on a few more epochs now, won't I?
That'll be fun.
That'll be nice, yeah.
For $2, Sigilstone17 says, his immigration paper, white!
Yeah, white paper, racist white paper.
Do I go through all of them?
Yeah, yeah.
So, for $5, goofball supremacist, morning lads, been backpacking through the Mediterranean for the past three weeks with my girlfriend.
Africans in Nice.
Arabs followed us to Airbnb in Sicily.
Indians tried to pickpocket my lady in Malta.
Sad.
Really dreadful.
Really sorry that's happened.
For a dollar, that's a random name.
It says, congrats on Luca for joining the team.
You should try having a different moustache.
You do realise it's taken me a decade just to get this one right.
I've bent my entire will towards it.
For one dollar, the...
Hapsification says, these people want a population of half a billion on this island, but will do everything to avoid increasing it through birth rates of the indigenous on this island.
Yes, wrong demographic, I'm afraid.
For $5, Ramshackalot says, absolutely top-tier trio of hosts.
So, thank you very much.
And for $2, Kindly's Fictaguous.
It says, what was that bill that puts migrants in a different category where they're not counted in the numbers?
That could be what Starmer will use.
I'm sure they will have all kinds of administrative shenanigans, and I'm sure that the ONS will help them in some ways.
These guys control the institutions, and they will spin the narrative to suit them.
That's what Whitehall does.
That's what it does, yes.
That's what it does.
That's what it does best.
Okay, moving on to a little bit of light relief.
Organised sex trafficking.
Light.
If anyone remembers P. Diddy, real name Sean Combs.
I remember when he used to be just Puff Daddy.
Back in the 90s he was Puffy.
At one point he wanted to be called Brother Love.
I'm angry at you because usually I guard my ignorance of these things.
Fiercely and I try to not know anything about rap, hip-hop, most of the culture scene, so-called culture scene.
And now you're forcing me to know more about it.
No, no, it's a firm policy.
Good on you.
I agree.
Usually I do as well.
It's very rarely I'll do a slop, although this is gourmet slop.
I very rarely do a sort of a slop segment myself, but I feel a little bit of light relief between you two guys.
Because if I had to make a call, he's probably going to go to prison for a very, very long time.
We'll get into it in a moment, but his defence is shaky AF.
It doesn't look good for him.
So, Sean has been held on remand since September last year.
They didn't give him bail, because even if they put millions of dollars on it, he could just afford that, right?
And he probably is a flight risk as well.
I remember Harry did a segment months and months ago where it looked like...
P. Diddy was trying to run or he made some attempt to, you know, was only a half-eyed thing and they're always going to get him.
But he's being put on trial in southern Manhattan, which is, you know, usually quite a strong place.
Like, it's where they'll try some of their worst criminals.
Right.
Because usually, unless you're lucky enough to get a jury that's the full-blown OJ jury, unless he's lucky enough to get that.
We will see some justice, I would have thought.
So, what are the actual charges?
It is sex trafficking, transportation for prostitution, and racketeering with conspiracy.
That's technically the charges.
They're quite serious charges.
Yes.
He could be looking at years and decades.
Right.
I mean, R. Kelly got 20-odd years they gave him, and his charges were less than that.
I mean, his were child sex offences as well, but...
Anyway, Sean Combs' indictment is worse than R. Kelly's.
So if he is found guilty, it's only the first day.
Yesterday was the first day of his trial.
So we'll keep you updated at some point, if and when the verdict comes in.
We'll let you know.
Maybe me or Harry will do a segment on it.
I'm just mildly interested.
Like I say, I don't usually engage in this sort of thing.
But when it's someone so famous, because P. Diddy was a massive A-lister in the 90s, right?
Yes, yes.
Bad Boy Records.
Right.
He's a bad boy for life, if you didn't know.
But it seems like he really is quite a bad person.
He's sort of kind of cut and dry.
Whether he's guilty of these specific crimes, it's for the jury to decide, isn't it?
But there's no real doubt.
I mean, part of his defence is saying, yeah, I did most of these things.
So his defence seems to be boiling down to, because yesterday there was the opening statements from both sides.
It seems like his defence is resting on a couple of things.
One was, I'm just a swinger, bro.
I didn't realise I'm not doing anything criminal.
This is just how I live.
Yeah, it's like a bit degenerate or whatever, but...
Yeah, I engage in loads and loads of weird sex stuff, but it's nothing criminal.
This is just how I live.
This is just my lifestyle.
I didn't coerce anyone.
They never told me they felt coerced, so...
That's a shaky...
Because ignorance of the law is no defence, is it?
No, of course not.
Although, actually, in Britain recently, a few people have got away with claiming that.
But anyway, in Manhattan, they're not going to let you get away with that.
And the other thing, the other sort of pillar of his defence is saying everyone else is doing it.
Like, I'm not the only super rich, famous dude that has crazy party names.
We're all degenerate criminals.
Yeah.
What are you going to do?
Arrest us all?
Well, isn't the whole premise of the genre to boast about your degeneracy and criminality?
Yes.
So I don't think anybody's surprised that someone who makes a living by boasting about being a criminal degenerate is in fact.
A criminal degenerate.
I mean, respect for authenticity, but if these things are true, please burn in hell.
It's authentically a wrong one.
That's just...
So yesterday, some of the stuff that came out, they're starting to first witness, took the stand.
I mean, one of the...
Because this trial, it's not going back through everything he ever did wrong, going back to 1991 or whatever.
It's a couple of sort of specific cases where the government, the prosecution, feel like they've got a really strong case.
And from everything I've read and watched, they do seem to have a really strong case of mountains of evidence, really.
So it does sort of rest on things like, well, so his ex-girlfriend, how many pimps call their prostitutes girlfriends?
But anyway, his girlfriend, Cassie, Cassandra.
She's sort of claiming all sorts of things.
And not being believed.
Well, no, largely.
Oh, right.
I just wanted to know, are we in Believe All Women season or are we out of Believe All Women season?
It's good that you clarified that.
Well, we should see.
It does come down to sort of a matter of coercion.
Like false fraud and coercion is sort of the legalese.
You know, she will claim I was...
Forced and coerced.
And there was violence.
I mean, there's definitely violence.
There's a clip out there that's been out there for ages of him knocking her about in some hotel somewhere.
So it's definitely violent.
So it comes down to her and other witnesses and defendants saying, or litigants, saying, you know, I was forced and coerced and it's a criminal enterprise that he's engaged in.
And him saying, no, I didn't coerce anyone.
They did everything of their own free will, or I paid them up front, and things like that.
So it will come down to that, but there's mountains of evidence.
I have two points here.
First, every time the Christian right in the United States said that this kind of art is absolutely degenerate and will make society worse, they were accused of And
that the level of participation from celebrities...
Was quite high.
So as with the Epstein files, I'm not that interested in him.
I'm interested in who else.
Because the real story here is very much the who else.
I mean, these are people who get invited.
I don't know if he was invited, but these are people who get invited to do concerts for politicians and to participate in political rallies and to try to sell the narrative of usually the Democratic Party.
To the vast group who consumes this culture.
And you have to ask yourself, well, were they ever invited to these parties?
Did they partake in the abuse?
What did they know?
And when did they know it?
And we have the same thing with Weinstein, where everybody knew that Weinstein was a rapist and that people were being pushed to get raped.
And then I think it was Quentin Tarantino who came out and said, yeah, we all knew.
Who else knew?
This is what strikes me as particularly interesting.
You guys were clearly all in on this.
And this was really your culture.
And this was what you were promoting to make the mainstream culture of not just the United States, but also the West.
So can we have that conversation, please?
Rather than whatever sorted particulars of this guy.
Can't help but think there may be some overlap between the Epstein and Diddy lists as well.
A few names might just happen to be on two lists.
And Weinstein was a friend of Hillary Clinton's, and he was being thanked by all kinds of senior people in the Democratic Party.
So the overlap between the Hollywood degenerates and the political degenerates seems to be...
Incestuous.
Yes.
What about the Podesta list?
That's a different conversation.
So, the Podesta list, the Epstein list, the Weinstein list, the Diddy list.
And the Diddy list is perhaps not quite as eminent as the Epstein list, but it's still massive and it's still like giant artists.
I mean, everyone from, and I'm not saying any of these people are guilty of any particular crime, but it was everyone, right?
It was everyone from Beyonce and Jay-Z, LeBron, J-Lo on down.
It was a thing in the 90s, or at least the early 2000s, that Diddy had these parties, that he had a party yacht.
Right.
And that you were among the select chosen if you got invited to the Diddy yacht, right?
I mean, and this is going back 20 years plus.
And there were a few people, like I think Cat Williams famously came out and said, no, Diddy's a total wrong-un.
And other people, like I think Fiddy Cent also is on record as being against, I think quite clearly being against.
What Sean Combs, how Sean Combs was living his life.
There's a funny clip of Mike Tyson sort of curling his lip, turning his nose up at a PDD advance.
So people knew about it, right?
People knew about it.
It was like Bill Cosby.
It took a comedian to say something on stage.
And everyone's like, wait, what?
Bill Cosby is a predator?
Well, we never knew.
People knew.
People knew.
Like the Weinstein thing, it takes someone to actually break ranks.
And then suddenly, oh, it's a real thing.
And they all start moralizing and saying that there's a rape culture and saying that all men are naturally rapists.
And then you look at their allies and you kind of go, hold on a second.
Is this an accusation or a confession?
Yeah.
Or is your view just informed by the fact that you hang around a lot of people who happen to think this way?
Or act this way, I should say.
Act this way, rather, yes.
So there's all sorts of...
It's a legal mess in all sorts of ways.
Like, he's trying to counter-sue some of his accusers for, you know, defaming him or whatever.
And there's all sorts of stuff.
Like, what's something I read?
There's actually a whole podcast, BBC podcast, Diddy on Trial, with, like, 20 plus episodes already.
It's only day one of the trial.
But, like, there's something come out where he dangled one of his, that Cassie's friends.
He dangled her off a 17th story balcony, allegedly.
Allegedly.
And people were scared of him.
Properly, properly scared of him.
Why is the BBC World Service doing a 23 series podcast?
Your tax money at work, ladies.
That's what being a powerful world service means.
Yeah, yeah.
No, embarrassing.
No, quite right.
And yeah, it's just in the news cycle at the moment.
Yeah, there's some prosecutors saying they've got lists of dozens or even hundreds of people.
Yeah, and Sean's defence is largely, I didn't know I was doing anything wrong, like mens rea, you know, that thing.
Like, you're allowed to have crazy parties with consensual people.
What's wrong with that?
And it's a super weak defence.
That's weak.
You're sort of admitting it.
I mean, he has formally pled not guilty.
Formally, his defensive line is, I've never engaged in sex crime of any type ever.
But also, I did have these sort of crazy, crazy parties all the time.
There was something on the previous link that said, I'm sure some of it is true, but it's being exaggerated.
And I just...
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, that's the thing.
It's exaggeration.
I didn't...
Yes, this, like, dodgy stuff went down, but it wasn't that bad.
We are completely degenerates.
We brag about being degenerate gangsters, but really, you shouldn't take it too seriously.
It wasn't that bad.
Yeah.
Okay.
I mean...
And everyone else is doing it.
And everyone else is doing it.
It's a bold strategy, Cotton.
Let's see if it works out.
Yeah, right.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But so, like, also, just to get back to the sort of, just the facts, the facts, gentlemen.
I mean, trafficking, sex trafficking, and what was it?
Transportation for prostitution.
So it gets into racketeering with conspiracy.
Ooh, ooh, that's heavy.
But, like, transportation for prostitution and sex trafficking.
So it's not just...
I'll buy or patronize a prostitute or an escort or whatever it is.
No, I'm actually going out there and getting people myself, like Epstein.
It becomes his own procurement, his own madam, or he's got madams working for him, procurers of people.
It's like, oh, that's dark as hell.
That's another level of evil, isn't it, really?
I mean, if true, it's all allegations still at this point.
Yeah.
Which brings us back to...
Who were his clients?
It's always the same question.
Who were his clients?
Who else knew?
What kind of community have you guys built?
And therefore, what does that say about all of the other moral lectures that you keep haranguing us with?
I'm not that interested in the details.
I hope he's innocent.
I hope this wasn't true.
I hope these guys aren't really like this.
But if they are, these aren't the details that I want.
I don't want to know the sordid details.
What I want to know is who else was involved and what else were they telling us and why were they moralizing at us and hectoring us and lecturing us.
I hope this isn't true.
I hope these people aren't that evil.
But if they are, it's not the sordid details of their encounters that I'm interested in.
It's a list of clients and a list of people who were involved and a list of people who knew and kept quiet.
And justice.
And it just seems like that list, again, if it's proven, seems like that list is massive.
There's just the odd person, like 50 Cent or Cat Williams, who wasn't interested or actively disgusted by it.
It's like the odd one.
Nearly everyone else was like, oh, I've been invited to a PDD or whatever it was.
Yes, I'm in.
I'm in the group.
I'm in the club.
So, yeah, it seems like most went along with it.
Because, of course, another thing, if you didn't, You could quite often have your career ruined.
Yes.
That's what a lot of these defendants are saying, that some people say, well, if he abused you back in 2016 or hung you off a balcony, why did you sort of stay with him?
It's like, well, because he was my benefactor.
Yeah.
He was my boss.
And if I didn't, if I tried to blow the whistle or all that sort of thing, then my life would have been over or even feared for their actual life.
So this is an industry where blackmail is rewarded, not honour.
And we should just emphasize the concept of honor and the importance of it.
I've done things in my life that I'm not proud of.
I hope I'm genuinely remorseful.
But we do need a culture where honor, remorse, penance are really and truly emphasized as opposed to a culture where degeneracy is celebrated.
Because again, we've run this experiment.
We've tried to live life this way.
We've ended up with Weinstein, Epstein, P. Diddy, and God knows who else.
And they were all friends with the Clintons and with the great and the good.
Okay.
How about we try something older and tested and true?
Yeah.
No, absolutely.
I couldn't agree more.
So we'll see how the trial goes.
It'll probably last quite a while.
But we shall see what happens to Sean Combs.
Okay.
So, let's read a few...
Where are my rumble rants here?
Where do they start?
Okay, that's a random name.
It says, apologies.
I assumed your power level was greater, Luca.
It takes me roughly 10 days to get a moustache of that size.
Ragging.
Ragging there.
Okay.
Slickystone17 says, does Luca prefer being likened to one of the Andys from Hot Fuzz?
Was it Andys from Hot Fuzz?
Yes.
Or the boss from the IT crowd?
That jumps out a window.
I actually prefer being likened to Captain Darling from Blackadder.
Last time I was on here, Carl was like, oh yeah, you like Monty, aren't you?
You like Montgomery?
And everyone's like, no, he's like Captain Darling.
Which is hilarious because I actually played Darling one time in a Blackadder production.
I would like a Melchip moustache.
Right.
Still not quite there, but I think maybe in November I might shave my beard off but leave the moustache for Movember.
Right.
I'm not promising anything.
We shall see.
Okay.
Lord of Nothing says, when I get my store open, I'm going to be upgrading my Lotus Eater subscription.
Luca and Ferraz are excellent additions to the team.
Yes, absolutely.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That's a random name.
It says, with all the baby oil he has stored in his house.
Yeah, what was that about?
Do you remember that?
There was something that he'd stockpiled gallons of baby oil.
Anyway, I don't know.
I wonder how they can keep him behind bars without him slipping right through them.
Yeah.
And Logan17pine says, The year 2045, I can at least one of you guys standing next to a PM as a government minister.
Oh, well, yeah.
We shall see.
We shall see.
Alright, so one more just quickly came in.
Josie Angel says, I second that, Mr. Modad.
We need innocence back.
Yeah, it's sickening to hear certain words or even ideas being talked about by such thoughtful men as Lotus Eaters put forth.
Yeah.
What a time we live in.
Thank you.
Alright.
And moving on to our next subject, is the Israel-US relationship breaking down, and does Trump see Israel as having become a strategic liability?
So in the early days of Trump, we saw...
Expectations of Trump giving a full-on blank check to Israel.
And indeed, if you looked at the appointments to senior positions that he made, these were all pro-Israel hawks.
In his first administration.
And in his second one.
And in his second one.
People like Hegseth, people like Rubio, Waltz.
These guys are truly committed to Israel and to doing whatever Israel wanted.
But it seems that something is shifting.
It seems that things are changing.
We've gone from having a carte blanche, which as recently as May 6th was still the consensus opinion, to Trump making separate deals with Hamas behind Israel's back with the Israelis not being informed that Hamas and the United States were in separate talks together.
The result of that was Hamas releasing the last living Israeli-American hostage that they had from Gaza, which apparently came as a complete surprise to the Israelis.
So they really didn't expect that.
The State Department people, Rubio's guys, Doing stuff essentially behind the back of Neti in Jerusalem.
Not Rubio, Witkoff.
It seems that this was being channeled through Witkoff and through other back channels.
So Rubio is still quite committed to Israel and everything to do with Israel.
But incidentally, Witkoff, who is himself Jewish, is following a very different line and is sort of being...
A Kissinger-esque character.
Where is he?
Is he State Department?
He's an independent operator in that he is the presidential envoy.
So he sits almost above the establishment of Hexeth, not that Hexeth is an establishment figure, or Rubio, but he's sitting above the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, and acting...
Purely with one reporting line to the president.
So we're seeing this change.
And it's not the first time in the last week we saw that Trump decided to declare a separate ceasefire with the Houthi.
So the Americans bombed Yemen for 51 days to try to stop the Ansarullah Houthi movement from blockading international shipping that was going through the Red Sea.
American strategic priority in a sense, because as the naval superpower, part of the role of the United States, part of its claim to being the superpower is that it polices the oceans.
That's why you see the freedom of navigation patrols between Taiwan and China.
That's why you see the activity in the South China Sea.
But then we saw that the Americans failed to stop the Houthi.
Which really bodes badly for any campaign against China over Taiwan.
And we saw the Americans deciding to make a separate agreement with the Houthi where the Houthi were essentially allowed to continue attacking Israel if they so chose.
So it was a fully bilateral agreement between the Americans and the Yemenis with the Israelis apparently also not knowing about it until it happened.
Now, my argument is that there is a bigger reason for that, that there is essentially a deeper geopolitical change that is afoot.
It seems that Trump is trying to make sure that there isn't a united Eurasia set against the United States.
I've made this point in the past, but the...
The result of the policies pursued from Clinton or Bush 1 even through to Biden was that Russia, Iran, and China were pushed into an alliance.
This alliance can naturally dominate pretty much all of Central Asia and the Eurasian landmass.
And you're seeing Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Muslim countries in Southeast Asia playing footsie with China.
And drawing closer and closer with China, especially in a country like Saudi Arabia, where Trump is visiting today, whose main customer for its oil is China.
Now, this is a nightmare scenario.
If you think of World War I and World War II, ignoring all morality, the strategic logic was not to allow the German manufacturing machine to pair with the Russian natural resource behemoth.
This is why it was important.
For the Germans not to be allowed to defeat the Russians.
So when the Russians started losing in 1917, or when they lost in 1917, the Americans stepped in.
In the Second World War, the Americans supported the Soviet Union to prevent precisely that outcome.
Now this outcome is happening at a larger scale as an indirect consequence of very stupid foreign policy, very idealistic, very reckless foreign policy.
And if you remember your Huntington, he constantly warned of the Sino-Islamic alliance and the ability of that alliance to become a global dominant geopolitical force.
So Israel has become an instigator of that alliance because of the reaction of the Muslim world to what is happening in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Israel.
And Trump is trying to put a stop to that.
So this is the first time that we're seeing an American president pursuing a policy where the Israeli interest is ignored and where the Israeli view is ignored.
Obama tried to do it with the first nuclear agreement.
And the Congress completely sabotaged that agreement by imposing new sanctions that wouldn't be removed as that agreement was enforced.
And now Trump is acting in a similar way again, except he's coming at it as, formerly, Israel's BFF.
So we're seeing this big shift in policy.
So explain it to me.
So I always thought that on sort of the grandest strategic level that the White House would see Israel as a fly in the ointment to a united Arab world and that that was in their interest because a united Arab world or a united Islamic Sino world even was a threat and that Israel helped keep it fractured.
Yes.
And it's still the case.
Right.
And this is still the case.
But within limits.
In the sense that there must be a change in this relationship that allows the United States to pursue its objectives with the rest of the Muslim world without these being jeopardized by Israel, while also not giving up on Israel.
Israel's being so bellicose and belligerent and aggressive that it actually forces them together, if anything.
It's not fracturing them, it's forcing them together.
Yes.
And so Trump wants to keep...
Turkey on side.
He wants to make a deal with Iran, a separate deal with Iran, because then you can use Turkey and Iran against each other in the same way that Iraq and Iran were used against each other and play a balancing game.
And in a way, that's good for Israel.
That creates options for Israel to benefit from that balance.
As I said, he wants a nuclear deal with Iran.
To give Iran a separate choice rather than being forced to sell all of its oil to China at a discount and to buy only from China and to get investments only from China.
He's doing the same with Ukraine.
He wants to just get rid of this Zelensky fellow because having Russia on side is much more important than where the Russian-Ukrainian border sits in the future.
And he wants to get a trillion dollars from Saudi Arabia.
Yeah, go on.
So just a quick thing to clarify, when you talk about a nuclear deal with Iran, nuclear power, not highly enriched weapons-grade stuff.
Because it is Israel's policy that they just will not allow that to happen under any circumstances.
That's their stated policy, but their ability to enforce it is very weak.
Their ability to actually...
Prevent the Iranians from having a nuclear program.
On a purchasing power parity basis, the Iranian economy is four times the size of the Israeli economy.
Massive as the Israeli economy is, important as the Israeli economy is.
At least by regional standards.
Surely it's in Trump or the America's interest that Iran doesn't get weapons grade.
It doesn't get nuclear weapons still.
Yes.
But then...
It's also not realistic to be able to fully dismantle the Iranian nuclear program.
Because a lot of it is under mountains and stuff.
Because a lot of it is also in people's heads.
In that if you go and try and bomb it, you're not going to be able to destroy it completely because it's under mountains.
And given what is in people's heads already, that knowledge will then be used to accelerate the program within a month or so of the bombing ending.
So, Trump is basically, in the same way that he saw that he can't bomb the Houthi into stopping attacks on shipping, he had to make a deal with them.
He is going to see, ahead of time, that if you can't stop the Houthis from attacking, there is no way you can stop the Iranians from raining missiles on the Gulf, on energy infrastructure, on ships, because you couldn't do it against Yemen.
So, realism is being imposed.
Realism is back on the menu.
How much do you think that this shift from the American state in foreign policy towards Israel is linked up with Trump's personal relationship with Netanyahu?
I think the personal relationship between them is bad and had been bad from the first Trump presidency where...
Trump, after the fact, said that in the end he concluded that Netanyahu was the obstacle to peace, not Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority.
The reality is neither of them is fully responsible because peace between the two is impossible for religious and ideological and ethnic reasons.
But it's interesting that Trump had that perception.
Then, after the 2020 election, Netanyahu was very quick to congratulate Joe Biden for his win, which really rubbed Trump the wrong way.
And he felt that it was a betrayal by Netanyahu.
And so, on January 15, I believe, Trump posts this interesting clip from Jeffrey Sachs.
...
...
Oh, the war in Syria.
Yes, Russia intervened in Syria.
Well, do you know that Obama tasks the CIA to overthrow the Syrian government, starting four years before Russia intervened?
What kind of nonsense is that?
And how?
So that's partly true.
He did task the CIA with doing so.
But then he said that we only armed the Syrian opposition enough to keep the war going, not to actually win.
How many times did the New York Times report on Operation Timber Sycamore, which was the presidential order to the CIA to overthrow Bashar al-Assad?
Three times in 10 years.
This is not democracy.
This is a game.
And it's a game of narrative.
This is the interesting point.
Why did the US invade Iraq?
Let's see who he blames.
Well, first of all, it was completely phony pretenses.
It wasn't, oh, we were so wrong.
They didn't have weapons of mass destruction.
They actually did focus groups in the fall of 2002 to find out what would sell that war to the American people.
Abe Shulky, if you want to know the name of the PR genius.
They did focus groups on the war.
They wanted the war all the time.
They had to figure out how to sell the war to the American people.
How to scare the shit out of the American people.
It was a phony war.
Where did that war come from?
You know what?
It's quite surprising.
That war came from Netanyahu, actually.
That's the interesting part.
So Trump took the position that Netanyahu is to blame for the Americans going into Iraq.
And you had the whole, in reality, you did have The whole pro-Israel lobby in the United States championing that war.
And then Trump comes out and pretty much says what used to be a conspiracy theory, but not directly using Jeffrey Sachs, who's a Jewish professor, by the way, as the mouthpiece for it.
Then he sort of gives the Israelis whatever they want to do whatever they wanted in Gaza.
But the Israelis failed.
They couldn't, in fact.
They can't, in fact, achieve the objective that they're seeking in Gaza.
So if you look at a map of where the fighting is, you will see that the Israelis are trying to capture all of Gaza.
They can go anywhere they want to in Gaza, but they can't hold it.
And they're still fighting in these tiny towns, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia.
On the very border with Israel, where they've been fighting since 27 October 2023, when the ground intervention in Gaza began.
So it seems to me that what Trump is doing is experimental policy.
He will try something, but if you fail, you will suffer the consequences.
So he gave the Israelis a carte blanche to do whatever they wanted in Gaza.
That's true.
While also using the threat of blaming Israel for all of the mess in the Middle East, which is a threat that the Israelis should have taken more seriously.
That was the Jeffrey Sachs clip, essentially.
And now that they failed, he's sort of doing deals behind their backs independently of them.
Um...
This is, I think, game-changing.
This is, I think, something that is game-changing because you're seeing a...
A truly independent policy.
You're seeing something closer to what Nixon...
Their belief is that being for Israel first means that that does not mean you're putting America second, because they think it goes together.
An American president, however, has to approach it in a different way, in my opinion.
He's got always to think first of what is best for America.
Usually, what is best for America is also best for Israel and vice versa.
On occasions, an American president must make a decision that does not in effect give the Israelis a blank check.
And one example of that is a decision that I made.
I decided early on in our administration that we were going to seek good relations with Egypt and others of Israel's neighbors.
Many of my Israeli friends didn't like that because they wanted a special relationship with Israel and Israel only.
But I have always said Israel's interests are better served to have the United States a friend of Israel's neighbors and potential enemies than to leave a vacuum which the Soviet Union would fill.
I still believe that, and I think that should be American policy today.
So it's the same thinking, except that rather than the Soviet Union, he's thinking about China.
I was just going to say that's all very interesting and spot on for the time in the Cold War.
He's still, he's talking in the late 70s, early 80s there, isn't he?
Yes.
And he was president in the 68 to 72, 73. There's much more of a Cold War milieu at that stage.
Even more so today.
But it still, as you say, replaced the Soviet Union with China.
Yep.
And it still all fits together and makes sense, though, doesn't it, still?
Yep.
Now, one of the things that Trump is trying to do is to fully tie Saudi Arabia to the United States again.
If you looked at the last 20 years, the United States has been a poor security guarantor for the Saudis.
It wasn't able to safeguard their interests in Iraq or in Syria or in Yemen or in Egypt.
The Americans over the last 20 years really messed up in the Middle East.
And again, Trump is blaming Netanyahu for that.
So keep that in mind.
But Trump is trying to get $1.3 trillion out of Saudi Arabia, and he is there in Saudi Arabia today with that objective.
I'm about to go and check what exactly they agreed to, but it seems they did agree to a trillion-dollar investment on the part of the Saudis, which, by the way, the Saudis may not have.
It's going to be interesting to see how that plays out.
What, like Saudi Arabian oil interests will build and invest things in the continental United States to the tune of 1.3 trillion?
It's about the details there.
It's about the details there.
So they're saying they're going to agree to a trillion dollar deal.
What does that mean?
Does that mean buying assets?
Part of it is going to be tens, if not hundreds of billions in buying weapons.
Part of it is going to be maybe contracts for American companies in Saudi Arabia.
So we'll see how that plays out exactly.
But there is a trillion dollar deal.
And part of that deal is to give the Saudis some kind of say in, to give the Saudis, sorry, a civilian nuclear program.
Power.
Power program.
Including perhaps some enrichment element to feed the power program.
Because for the Iran deal to work and have Saudi support, the Saudis want some kind of parity, equality with the Iranians.
So that's part of the game that's being played.
There's an important thing just to mention there that some people may not know.
Yep.
Is that the Saudis and the Iranians...
Hate each other, pretty much.
I mean, they both consider the other as a heretic.
Not so much anymore.
Wahhabists hate Shiites, don't they?
And vice versa.
Absolutely.
But now with the rise of Turkey and Turkey capturing Syria and the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood taking over the Arab world, especially the non-monarchic parts of the Arab world, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel have an alignment of interests.
Against Turkey.
Against the reformed Ottoman Empire.
Precisely.
Precisely.
Against the reformed Ottoman Empire.
So there's room there for some kind of under-the-table agreements.
Trump is trying to exploit that.
But the Iranian official line is, we will destroy Israel.
And the Israeli reasoning is, we will destroy Iran before it can destroy us.
So Trump is trying to navigate this, including by giving the Saudis a civilian nuclear program and limiting the Iranian nuclear program to purely civilian uses, and selling F-35 jets to the Turks to upgrade their air force and possibly to the Saudis.
The Israelis are going crazy over this.
Israel stands in the way of all those things.
And Israel stands in the way of all of those things.
And so the Israelis are saying that they can block...
Trump in the American Senate.
So blatant, isn't it?
That's so blatant.
They're actually saying it on Israel Hayom, an Israeli newspaper.
And the quote that I want to read you is, the president won't be able to get approval to push forward a civilian nuclear program for Saudi Arabia without the Israeli component, the Israeli official told Israel Hayom.
he doesn't have a senate majority for any agreement that doesn't include israel or that moves forward without its consent the source confirmed that the americans had made inquiries with israel regarding its position but chose to advance the initiative for a civilian nuclear program after determining that israel could not meet saudi demands regarding the palestinians
So now we're seeing a true conflict between AIPAC, The security and foreign policy establishment that is blindly supportive of Israel.
And the American president.
And I think this conflict is going to be a game changer.
And it will determine whether or not an elected president can, in fact, as the Constitution says, decide foreign policy.
So this is the test that we're coming towards.
In all my years watching the Middle East, this is new to me.
This is very new territory.
We haven't seen this before.
It's bloody serious.
And this has Netanyahu reacting badly, to put it mildly.
Likud confronts Trump's unpredictability as Netanyahu promotes doing without USAID.
For the record, the Israelis get Around $4 billion a year from the United States in military assistance.
They've stopped receiving economic aid under President Obama.
They now receive only military aid.
But without that military aid, they can't fly the F-35 jet and they don't have enough bombs and missiles for their wars and they don't have enough artillery shells and, and, and.
And certainly not enough to lock down Palestine, presumably.
And not enough to lock down Palestine, not enough to control Gaza and the West Bank.
But the Israeli ambitions for Gaza are still quite expansive.
They want to fully occupy Gaza and expel the Palestinians, a policy that Trump was on board with a couple of months ago.
Yeah, I remember that.
And he was promoting it.
The Gaza Strip and the beach results.
Yep, exactly.
So we're seeing experimental policymaking.
We're seeing realism in action.
You try to do something.
You assess the results.
If they fail, you stop banging your head against the same wall.
And I've never seen this before.
And I expect this to continue.
And I expect it to be reflected in Ukraine with the rug pulled from under Zelensky in quite a severe way.
Because again, the biggest threat to the West, not just the United States, is a united Eurasia under Chinese leadership.
And the current policies in the Middle East and in Ukraine are pushing precisely that outcome.
This is going to be interesting.
Actually a little bit of flexibility, fluidity in foreign policy almost day-to-day or week-to-week at least coming out of the White House.
Absolutely.
Just to explain that headline there, Likud, that's Netanyahu's party.
That's the ruling party in Israel, yes.
So he's sort of...
Do you think that's just bluster?
He's saying, well, if you're going to cut us off, fine, we don't need you anyway.
It must be bluster, surely.
I really think it's bluster, and it really leaves us with two big options here.
First, the Israelis trying to turn to Russia or China, which I don't see how that happens.
You could see certain under-the-table technology cooperation that benefits the Chinese in exchange for the Chinese helping the Israelis in other ways.
You could see that.
It would be a surprise.
I mean, remember, the Israelis did try to sell the most advanced American technologies they had to the Chinese until the Americans slapped them on the wrist and told them, don't you dare think about this stuff.
So if they go down that route, that's it.
They're burning their bridges.
And I don't think that they're that crazy.
The other possibility is to try to corner your allies with you.
You escalate very severely to force your allies to back you.
This is what Hamas tried to do in the 7 October operation.
The 7 October operation was meant to trigger a full-on war involving Hezbollah, the Syrians, the Iraqis, and the Iranians, and the Yemenis going at it full tilt, as opposed to what they actually did, which was pinpricks intended not to escalate, and that's why they failed.
Their own military men were advising them, Either do it or don't.
But don't have to do it because you will pay.
And that's what ended up happening.
So Hamas started this war with the intention of forcing its allies into it fully.
And it was disappointed and it failed because they didn't participate in the same way.
Could the Israelis do something similar?
Escalate against Egypt or Jordan in order to create such a mess that the Americans would have no choice but to step into it?
That's what really scares me.
Do you think they would?
I mean, that's pretty Machiavellian, isn't it?
It's pretty crazy.
Because of also how young a country it is as well, it just doesn't have that history to draw back on.
Its position in the world is fragile in many ways.
Look, the current cast of characters who are highly influential in the Israeli government are crazy.
And let's just sort of start with that.
Hamas are absolutely crazy criminal animals.
Let's get that out of the way before somebody accuses us of some nonsense or the other.
But the current cast of characters in Israel are nuts.
You had the culture minister saying, let's nuke Gaza.
Dude, you'll take out Ashkelon.
You can't nuke Gaza.
Right.
You have open calls for full-on ethnic cleansing.
You have Netanyahu saying that the Gazans are like Amalek, implying that the heads of their children should be smashed against the wall and that they should be all destroyed.
So there is a level of extremism in Israel that goes under their radar, which is completely not discussed.
And that extremism is enabled by Christian Zionists in the United States who believe that gathering the Jews in Israel and instigating a two-front war from the North and the East is the only way to fulfill the prophecies in the Book of Apocalypse.
But Hexeth thinks that sort of stuff?
I don't know if Hexeth personally thinks that, but there are pretty senior people, including people who are very influential in getting congressmen elected, who genuinely believe that.
And so this is why the Catholic position on the book of Apocalypse is that it's always with us.
The apocalypse is always near.
It's not up to us to bring it forward.
These guys believe that, no, no, no, let's help God kill us all.
If you're that certain that you're going to end up in heaven, maybe you really haven't considered what Jesus was saying that carefully.
Because, you know, I try, but I'm not sure that I'm going to end up in heaven when the time comes.
And if you're feeling very confident about this, that kind of scares me.
That kind of scares me a little bit.
So people like that scare me in the same way.
And you have to remember what Netanyahu thinks about the United States.
He's on record saying that...
The U.S. is easily manipulated.
And he was saying that in 2001.
And since 2001, there was a plan to destroy each of Libya, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran.
The only one standing still, to some extent, is Iran.
So Netanyahu had his way.
This should be emphasized.
And how far will he go to completely have his way is something that genuinely scares me.
Yeah, understandably so.
Because he has been around for years, I mean, my whole life, more or less, I can remember.
Even back in the 90s, he was...
So he won an election in 1996, I believe it was, with a mandate to dismantle Oslo.
Then he lost power, and now he's Israel's longest-serving prime minister.
Winning election after election.
Over that time period, both sides have radicalized more and more.
Hamas is the most popular organization among the Palestinians.
And the right that Israel leads, that Netanyahu leads, has become more and more extreme over the years.
And this is where we are.
Likud.
Likud, yes.
Right, okay, well, watch this space, I guess.
Watch this space.
It's always an ongoing...
The great game, the devil's chessboard never ends.
It never ends.
Absolutely, it never ends, no.
Okay, so we've got a few rumble rants.
Logan17pire says, is Trump pulling a Bismarck or a Caesar?
I suppose he's asking whether it's some sort of 4D chess thing or just straight up smash them to bits.
We'll see.
Yeah, we'll see.
We'll see.
Sigistone17 says, the new cohorts have a much better accent than Bo.
Well, nobody likes my accent.
He now sounds like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.
That was a bit cruel.
I liked Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.
We were just watching it the other day.
Really?
Yes.
One of my favourite actors.
It's really over the top.
My accent's not that bad.
He's really like, call blimey Mary Poppins.
I can do a good Dick Van Dyke doing...
And London accent.
Anyway.
The Iraq War was always about Israeli interests, and we've known for 20 plus years, but it was called Conspiracy Theorists.
What's coming out next is Dancing Israelis.
We probably shouldn't have read that one.
Bo, just real quick, can you yell Steppy Time?
Well, I don't know what that's a reference to, so I'm not going to in case it's...
Mary Poppins, I do believe.
Mary Poppins reference, yes.
Steppy Time, I do.
It's been a long while since I've seen Mary Poppins.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, fair enough.
Alright, so have we got video comments today, Samson?
No video comments.
No video comments.
Alright, well...
Shall we read some comments then?
Sure.
You read some of yours for...
Oh, okay.
Naomi Roberts says, The worry is that such a high level of disenfranchisement for so long will make the native population weak and pliable when the offer of enfranchisement is offered.
I see the fingerprints of the Dark Lord offering digital IDs from behind the scenes.
Yes, sorry, that is something that I did actually put in my notes and then...
Recklessly skipped over.
But yeah, they are trying to tie up the digital ID with all of this as well.
As Naomi says, you can see the fingerprints of the Dark Lord all over this.
I'm very interested in the real, the minutia of the relationship between Starmer and Blair.
Because you can make an argument that they're sort of estranged and then it seems like they're...
Working as one.
It's hard to know exactly.
Wasn't Angela Rayner about to resign until Tony Blair called her and told her not to?
I don't know.
Is that right?
I heard that that was the case, yeah.
And now it seems like...
So he's still extremely influential, extremely involved, but I'm pretty sure that Starmer doesn't like that very much, given that I know he has no interests and no honour and no integrity, but presumably he has an ego?
Well, yeah.
I would assume as much.
You wouldn't be a leader if you didn't.
Yes.
Yeah, I guess that is probably dynamic.
Blair is still extremely powerful despite Starmer.
Yes.
And Starmer doesn't like it, but what can he do?
What can he do about it?
Yeah.
Do you want to move on to...
Just do one more, maybe?
North FC Zoomer says, diversity on its fundamental level is ontologically derived from the same source as division.
Divided peoples will inevitably devolve into identity warfare.
Lemony's ears, can confirm.
Yeah, very well said.
Okay, let's read a couple through.
Did he do it?
Sophie Liv says, I just always remember how...
Elijah Wood openly talks about how his mother protected him from Hollywood sex rings when he was a child star.
He talked about this 20 years ago, so it's not even a secret.
Everybody knows.
Yeah, I vaguely remember that.
Well, there's quite a few you can say that about, right?
Corey Feldman?
I'm not familiar with that.
There's a number.
There's a number of child stars.
I mean, even there's rumours like Leo was interfered with Leonardo DiCaprio.
Yeah, I think everyone knows it sort of.
Someone online said, oh no wait, I won't read that one.
Colin P said, bad boys, what are you going to do?
What are you going to do when they come for you?
I guess we know now.
Nice, right.
Go ahead then if you want to read a couple of other ones.
Canis Familiares, it's kind of funny to see left-wing Starmer signaling to cut immigration and right-wing Trump go behind Israel's back.
Maybe democracy works opposite days just all year round.
Alpha out of the betas, the US has systematically taken out Israel's enemies in the region for 35 years.
Yes, that's pretty much exactly what I'm saying.
Yeah, absolutely.
Derek Power, Master of Chippies.
Don't forget that America has a lot of non-Catholics who believe in Sola Scriptura.
I know, brother.
I'm trying to tell them, man.
I'm trying to tell them.
Anytime Israel is mentioned in the New Testament, it gets conflated with the modern state.
Yep, in the Old Testament, you mean.
Thus, you have people who are Zionist for supposedly Christian reasons.
Yeah, it's...
It's a strange situation.
I accept that Zionism is the Jewish National Liberation Movement.
I just don't see a Christian reason to take a position on it one way or the other, frankly.
It's interesting.
There's been a tradition of that.
Someone like Arthur Balfour, for example, was about as Christian as you can get, but just a massive Zionist.
It actually just thinks that places like Mount Zion or...
Wherever, in Israel, they must be protected at all costs and all that sort of thing.
I mean, like Hegseth has got some Hebrew tattoo on his arm and stuff.
But he's a Christian.
He also has an Arabic one, yeah.
Right, yeah, he has an Arabic one.
He's a bit funny.
He is a bit funny.
Okay, we will have to draw it to an end there because we've just gone past the half hour mark.
So, okay, until tomorrow then, guys.
I hope you enjoyed this one.
Take care.
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