The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1260

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Sept. 25, 2025 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1260

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	Good afternoon and welcome to the podcast Lotus Eaters episode 1260.
	I'm your host Harry joined today by Firaz and Josh.
	Hello.
	because we really just cannot get rid of this man.
	And today we're going to be...
	Like bedbugs.
	Except only more irritating.
	And we're going to be discussing the Dallas ICE shooting where he got three consecutive Missed Your Target Awards.
	Firaz is going to be telling us how Trump is using Ukraine as a battering ram against Europe.
	And I'm going to talk about the troubles that are happening in Argentina now that Millay's economic policies are coming up against the cold, hard reality of electoral democratic politics.
	I'm looking forward to hearing about that because I've not heard anything about it.
	I've been doing a lot of reading on it over the past two days and it is quite worrying.
	But I'll be interested to hear your take on it given that you were an early supporter of Malay as well as a source type.
	I like that.
	He did make sure to get a little Falklands jab in there when he was at the UN.
	I know.
	Because of course he did.
	Anyone who brings up the Falklands is my enemy.
	Sore losers.
	Friendship with Millay ended.
	Anyway, with that, we'll discuss all that as we get to it.
	Let's go straight to the news.
	So as many of you might have heard, there was a shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas.
	And I think so far it had killed two of the people that he shot as well as himself, so a third, I think.
	It's not exactly clear how many people have died yet, because there's also someone in critical condition.
	It only happened yesterday.
	And so I'm going to go off of a lot of what the official sources have said, as well as tying this into what we know already from previous cases and patterns and things like that, as well as the fact that I've done a little bit of research based on some of the local news reports about where it exactly took place, how it took place, and the character of the person who did it.
	So this is what Cash Patel says, the FBI director, who wasn't asking for gift cards.
	He said, this morning, just before 7 a.m. local time, an individual fired multiple rounds at a Dallas, Texas ICE facility, killing one, wounding several others, before taking his own life.
	FBI, DHS, ATF are on the ground with Dallas PD and state authorities.
	While the investigation is ongoing, an initial review of the evidence shows an ideological motive behind the attack.
	See photo below, which says anti-ice carved on it.
	I mean, it's a bit lazy.
	It is, yeah.
	It could have come up with something a bit creative with a blue pen.
	I was going to say, it looks like a biro.
	Yeah, ballpoint pen.
	Since when did it become all the rage for every single one of these types of shootings to have some kind of carved bullets left on the scene, giving you an idea of what these people believed in?
	Because I know it happened with Tyler Robinson.
	It happened with the shooting in Minnesota at the Catholic school.
	It's happened with, wasn't there also bullet carvings in the bullets of the guy who tried to kill Trump last year?
	Maybe, I can't necessarily remember.
	Yeah, Samson is confirming yes.
	Since when did they all get the memo that said you have to tell people exactly what you believe on the bullets?
	Just have a manifesto.
	Just release a YouTube channel or something.
	It seems like a very strange thing.
	And it also, I would imagine, gives a lot of people conspiracy ammunition, ironically, so that they can say that, oh, well, you know, this is starting to look more like a Fed thing than a shooter thing.
	Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily discount the notion that young people are susceptible to trends.
	I mean, that's a pretty powerful force.
	And particularly if you're stupid enough to do these sorts of things, I think you're probably more likely to be susceptible to copying other people.
	But if you're going to blow your own brains out once you've done this, you want to have a bit more of a powerful message or slogan than anti-ice.
	That's what's bothering me.
	It's not even F-ICE.
	It's not sort of something substantial.
	Save the migrants or, you know, save Julio against fascism.
	It sounds like the kind of spray I'd keep in my car, you know, anti-ice, you know, spray on the windshield.
	It's not the best slogan.
	But it carries on to say, these despicable politically motivated attacks against law enforcement are not a one-off.
	We are only miles from Prairieland, Texas, where just two months ago an individual ambushed a separate ICE facility targeting their officers.
	So obviously this is part of a wider thing, right?
	It has to end and the FBI and our partners will investigate.
	Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	And it says, thankfully no law enforcement personnel were injured.
	Please pray for the injured and deceased.
	And then there was some more information released here from Homeland Security.
	And it says, this morning a deranged gunman attacked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Dallas from a nearby rooftop.
	The shooter fired indiscriminately at the ICE building as well as at a van in the Sally port where the victims were shot.
	And I'll be able to pull up.
	I've done some digging on Google Street View to figure out what actually happened.
	Could I pause there for a second?
	Of course.
	If he fired indiscriminately, injured three people, and killed two of them.
	There is a bit of a contradiction there.
	Indiscriminate shooters are famous for missing.
	You know, you see that all the time in black mass shootings where 20 bullets are fired, one person's injured or hit.
	And so, I don't know, killing two out of three suggests precision.
	Also, if it was anti-ice, the idea of firing indiscriminately and the two of the people that you managed to shoot who died are detainees.
	Supposedly the people that you're trying to save or fight on behalf of.
	You would imagine that you would want to fire a bit more in a targeted way.
	I think it was their way of saying that he wasn't a very good shot.
	That's my interpretation.
	And we'll have some more evidence for this soon enough when I get to it.
	It says, three detainees were shot.
	Two are deceased and the other is in a critical condition.
	The gun was found with a self-inflicted gun wound.
	In other words, through the head.
	I've seen the pictures.
	Don't look them up.
	They're horrible.
	We can confirm the shell casings were found with anti-ice messages on them.
	This was an attack on ICE law enforcement.
	He just wasn't a very good shot, apparently.
	So there are some additional details that have been gathered from his brother, who confirmed that at the time he was unemployed.
	And he also confirmed that he was a bad shot, which I think is two important things to the case.
	One, that clearly he just didn't hit the targets he wanted.
	And I think the being unemployed might be a big motivator in why he did this and then took his own life.
	As in he'd given up, seemingly.
	And it was a sort of act of maybe depression or something.
	I don't know, because his brother also says that he didn't even realize that this guy was political, which is an interesting claim.
	And we will look at some contradictory evidence to that.
	Maybe he's trying to protect himself in saying, well, we didn't even have any idea.
	He never talked about politics.
	And so he's got no culpability.
	If that is true, my immediate assumption would be the guy knows that there is a popular anti-ice trend and so decides to try and give himself a bit of a more meaningful death by jumping on the bandwagon.
	That is if it's true that he wasn't a political guy.
	Yeah, because he also mentioned that he was looking to move back with his parents soon.
	And it's one of those things where if someone is actually depressed, maybe they're keeping it to themselves till the very end, because that's unfortunately something that people do.
	However, that's just one interpretation.
	And we don't have enough information yet to necessarily come to a conclusion.
	But let's have a look at the actual facility itself.
	So I was able to find the facility here.
	This is the front of it.
	So it doesn't look necessarily, you know, as secure as you might hope if you were working there.
	This, I think, is the Sally port.
	This is the sort of entrance in and out.
	And if we go to an aerial view here, you can see we were viewing it from this part here where I've got my mouse along there from the front.
	And then there's this little road area here into this car park, which I believe is the only entrance.
	And I presume the Sally port is either this here or one of these two doors.
	I'm not quite sure how it works.
	I wasn't able to find that out.
	But my guess would be that the vehicle came in with two detainees either through here or was parked here or here to get to the other part.
	And that was when he shot.
	And the place where he shot from is this building here.
	And so he had an overview of the rear of the building.
	And I would presume that it was somewhere around here that he shot them because that's where most of the footage I've seen of the police attention was.
	And if it were here, one would presume he would be a little bit more accurate because that's an easy shot.
	Very close distance.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Especially if he had a sniper rifle.
	Yeah.
	Almost be too close.
	But this is the building, street view of it.
	So it looks relatively easy if you hop the fence, climb the lad, you know, the stairs, sorry, and hop on the roof there.
	That's not something too difficult to do.
	There might be another way up, but you can see from the street view here, right behind you is the ICE facility here.
	So you've got an incredibly clear view of the entire car park.
	Yeah, and this brings up something that I wanted to talk about briefly, is that it's very striking if I go back to...
	Oh, sorry.
	Go to the aerial view here.
	This is basically in, what, downtown Dallas here.
	It seems like if there are attacks on these facilities, a very poor place to have it because there are so many firing points, basically.
	And of course, these facilities were built without this in mind necessarily.
	However, I would think that it would be a good time to start moving these facilities away from dense urban areas with rooftop views if this is happening.
	Dense urban areas that are statistically the most likely to have liberal-leaning people.
	Exactly.
	And so I would hope that one of the things that the Trump administration is going to do moving forward is try and move these out of these urban areas to somewhere a bit more remote with a bit more security around.
	Because of course, you know, ideally you would want to treat it a little bit like a military base, wouldn't you?
	With these sorts of things going on and have maybe even armed guards at the front.
	That would signify that they're losing control and surrendering the cities.
	You think?
	From an insurgency perspective, the first thing you do is to sort of move them out, then cut their logistics, then target them.
	So it would be quite terrible.
	They should instead double down and make sure that the area is properly secured and that everybody who does this is appropriately punished, including his entire network.
	I'm not against that.
	If you think about these things from an insurgency perspective, the response is to impose control on the cities whether they like it or not.
	Well, I think that that should be done regardless.
	ICE shootings aside.
	I think that they've been running wild either way.
	But there has been a huge police response.
	Here's a little video of all of the police that turned up, despite the fact that the culprit shot himself and was no longer a threat.
	But I suppose it's a good sign that it's being taken seriously, I suppose.
	There is something that can be taken from it.
	And there have been lots of theories about what actually happened, what went wrong, because obviously if you're anti-ICE and you don't shoot any of the people working for ICE and instead shoots the people they're detaining, that sort of indicates that you might have made a mistake.
	And the prevailing one at the minute is that he tries to do a terror attack on ICE, misses the agents and hits the illegals instead, realizes, and self-deletes.
	As that is a safer YouTube term.
	I imagine he was already planning on self-deleting.
	It's entirely possible, yeah.
	Although it would make it kind of funny if it was just he was so bad at it.
	Well, he was.
	No, I know.
	I can tell.
	And in fact, I've got to say, Sigil Stone, I appreciate the Rumble rant saying that, no, actually, if you think about it, he was a based patriot and was an amazing shot.
	I can't read the rest of that, though, because while it's funny, we don't want to encourage anybody.
	No.
	So, apparently, his name was Joshua Jan, and his date of birth was the 30th.
	I always get confused.
	30th of April.
	That's it.
	It's the wrong way around.
	1996.
	Yes, the Americans do it that way.
	I disprove.
	I also like writing out the date in full.
	I feel like it feels proper.
	Wait, what happened on the 9th of November?
	They always go on about the 9th of November.
	Very unremarkable state.
	Ah, I get it.
	But anyway, some people have been doing background checks on the guy.
	And here's a screenshot of some sort of profile.
	And what he has here is a communist-styled picture.
	Looks like a AK-style assault rifle.
	The full works.
	It's got the right date of birth, as well as Fairview, Texas, so he was local.
	Seems like the right one.
	With these sorts of things, you're not entirely certain.
	But this is what is circulating.
	That's what people are saying.
	As well as the fact that he had a previous conviction for dealing cannabis, apparently.
	So that sort of ties up quite nicely, I think.
	And then we have this.
	This is a picture of the guy.
	Interesting phenomenon that a lot of these left-wing shooters have problems with their chins.
	Just throwing this out, there is a little tidbit of my sort of scientist thinking cap.
	It suggests an imbalance in utero-testosterone exposure.
	Oh, is this where they have the long chin?
	Because, what's his name?
	I only know the rude name that I probably shouldn't say, the one that shot Trump's ear.
	I know who you're on about.
	Crooks, wasn't it?
	Thomas Crooks.
	Yes, that is his.
	He had a weird chin.
	That other guy who shot Charlie Kirk, he has a weird chin.
	It's just a little thing I've noticed.
	The transgender shooter at the Catholic kids' school as well had a similar long chin physiognomy.
	So let's go on to who people are trying to blame for this other than obviously him himself, who is entirely to blame for his own actions.
	The left has been trying to blame the right again.
	JD Vance said the obsessive attacks on law enforcement, particularly ICE must stop.
	I'm praying for everyone hurt in this attack and for their families.
	Perfectly normal as far as I'm concerned.
	And then this fella says the vice president is not a reliable source of information.
	This is now the fifth or sixth time he's posted a political take contradicted by facts from his own law enforcement agencies.
	And as we've seen from the actual facts released by the law enforcement agencies, that's not true.
	Because they're trying to position them as a right-winger again, aren't they?
	That's what's going on.
	At least this guy's statement matches up with his Twitter bio, though.
	There is a certain...
	Well, he...
	Oh, sorry.
	He explains himself very well.
	Well, the funny thing is, I think he gets that from J.D. Vance.
	Okay.
	I'm enjoying this.
	I also saw J.D. Vance post one of the memes of him with the bold head.
	Yeah, I saw that as well.
	That was excellent.
	Although I did think maybe you shouldn't be doing that as vice president, but it was funny and it made me laugh.
	I mean, Donald Trump built up a huge amount of his brand by shit posting on Twitter.
	That's true.
	That is sort of what it's good for, isn't it?
	But he's pointing out that he had anti-ICE messaging carved on the bullets.
	What did I get wrong?
	Can't read that word.
	And then this is interesting.
	Lots of people have been going after Gavin Newsom because he said the night before it happened, this happened, I think, about 6.45, 6.50 in the morning, the following day of him saying this.
	That's happening in the United States of America.
	Masked men jumping out of unmarked cars.
	People disappearing.
	No due process.
	No oversight.
	Zero accountability happening in the United States of America today.
	People ask, well, is authoritarianism here being hyperbolic?
	Bo, we're being hyperbolic.
	If you're a black and brown community, it's here in this country.
	You get the idea of what he was saying, right?
	Obviously, this is a form of stochastic terrorism.
	I'm remit to say these sorts of things because I think, you know, often the burden of proof is very difficult to actually prove itself.
	But in this instance, you know, he's saying these people are snatching innocent people up.
	We need to stop them.
	And then people are going to take it very literally, whereas he's doing it for political point scoring.
	I mean, this is what's creating the environment for this violence.
	This is what's granting this violence political legitimacy.
	Yes.
	It's being cast as a sort of just response to an unjust act.
	Whereas the idea of deporting someone who is there illegally has no injustice in it.
	Plus, there is no due process.
	The only question is, are you an American citizen?
	Do you have a valid visa?
	If the answer to that is no, get out.
	There's no further process to engage him because the rights of a citizen are fundamentally different from the rights of a non-citizen.
	Otherwise, you don't have a country.
	Exactly.
	I'd argue that should be the case for sort of three generations of migration, you know, that it shouldn't be, you get a passport here, now you're a full participant in the political process.
	It should be even stricter than that.
	So these guys are trying to create a false grievance, but they always do this.
	The whole history of the left is based on the manufacturing of false grievances or on the trumping up of manageable, genuine grievances.
	Well, the real motivation here is that they want to import new voters, don't they?
	Yes.
	And he relies on them to stay in office.
	And he knows that a proper crackdown on illegal voting would change the politics of California fundamentally.
	And he knows the only way he gets to win a possible presidential run is if this cohort is fully backing him.
	So he's working for foreign clients to begin with.
	And when you look at the complete lack of security in California and the policy that sort of allows the cartels to run amok on a border state, you have to ask yourself, are these people getting paid by the cartels?
	So his whole presentation of this, very clever rhetorically, disgusting in terms of fact and truth.
	And morality.
	And morality.
	Yeah, and just to put a bow on it, we've discussed it a lot, laying it out in the following of Charlie Kirk's murder, which is the rhetorical game goes: You've been taught from a young age to believe that the Nazis are the worst thing that's ever happened.
	Any sort of authoritarian or right-wing government is literally Hitler all over again.
	In all of the movies, you see that murdering people who are called Nazis is a morally good thing.
	Therefore, if anything that is authoritarian, i.e., Hitler, i.e., Nazi, they are right-wing equals Nazi equals it's okay to kill them.
	Exactly.
	That's where we go.
	And the question is: what did you do when the Nazis came to power, Daddy?
	And the answer is, I killed them.
	And that's how they convince themselves that they're good people.
	They sort of try to manufacture that story in their heads and sort of push it forward to justify their violence.
	And Newsom gets even worse because this was only three days ago before this attack on the ICE facility.
	He says, to ICE unmask, what are you afraid of?
	And of course, what they're afraid of is people shooting them.
	Yes.
	I think a perfectly legitimate thing to be afraid of.
	Especially when they're doing a public service in what they do.
	One very effective insurgency tactic is to target law enforcement when they are not protected, when they are not in uniform and on the job and in the company of other armed men.
	So when they're unarmed, when is that?
	Well, at home.
	So if you dox them, you then make it easier for this kind of thing to happen.
	And Newsom knows this.
	These are not stupid people that we're dealing with.
	They all know this because they all support Antifa, who will go around in masks for years.
	Exactly.
	He never said to Antifa unmask.
	So.
	Of course, he didn't.
	Yeah.
	And they also, yeah, he passed a law that made California the first state in the nation to prohibit federal law enforcement officers, including ICE, from hiding their identities.
	So he knows what he's doing.
	Playing a dangerous game.
	I think people are right to rake him over the coals for it.
	And another person that is not particularly popular at the minute is Jimmy Kimmel.
	And shall I torture you all with a little bit?
	I'm not going to play all of it because I respect your sanity, but just a little bit.
	I just want to say thank God for President Trump and the heroes at ICE for protecting us from these bloodthirsty fruit stand vendors spreading their dangerous pineapple chunks and mangoes with a squirt of lime all over the city.
	Of course, this was before the actual event happened, but he's contributed to this perception that these are innocent people that are not to be feared when the reality is very, very different.
	If you look at the crime statistics, these are dangerous people.
	These are cartel members.
	These are murderers.
	These are sex offenders.
	These are not good.
	You know, some of them, I presume, are good people to quote Donald Trump.
	But brilliant.
	Yeah, it's just incredibly dishonest rhetoric that he's engaging in there.
	Even if it is that this guy has somehow managed to get across the border using a coyote and hasn't become involved in some kind of human or drug trafficking problem, which would be remarkable given the way that these people operate.
	If he is just a guy, I just want to run a stand on a street corner selling ice cream.
	Great, do it in Mexico.
	You're not allowed to break into somebody's country so that you can do that.
	Also, you do get American tourists in Mexico.
	There are tourist traps where, and this is known pretty widely: that Americans do like ice cream.
	You'll make a pretty penny.
	Stay in Mexico.
	Not just that.
	A cash business, by definition, is wonderful if you're in the drug trade.
	So you want some people operating cash businesses.
	And that allows you to then hide the proceeds of crime.
	So the idea that, oh, there is nothing wrong with it, it's the same as in this country with the barbershops and the sweet shops.
	Oh, why do you hate barbers?
	Well, because they're obviously laundering money.
	And so cash businesses in general, they have this problem.
	They don't have it in a safe, ordered, homogenous society, but they obviously have it in a society that's being infiltrated by foreign criminal enterprises.
	So this pretense that, oh, he's just selling fruit.
	Like, you don't know what you're talking about.
	You're just trying to minimize an issue that you possibly do understand.
	And if you don't understand it, your intervention is destructive.
	And if you do, you're just malicious.
	So here's another one: Ilhan Omar.
	This is from a little while ago, but not too long ago, really.
	Oh, no, it's not.
	It's in response.
	Yeah, two days ago.
	This is violent beyond cruel abolish ICE.
	ICE agents held a five-year-old autistic girl outside a Massachusetts home to pressure her father to surrender to authorities last week.
	Even if that was true, I think that's a perfectly good negotiation tactic.
	It sounds like he's holed up with a weapon.
	If they're trying to coax him out of the house and encouraging him to surrender to authorities.
	And actually, they retracted the story and it wasn't true.
	Which just shows that she didn't actually do any digging.
	Video shows ICE for five-year-old what agents attempted to arrest her.
	Correction, an earlier version of this article, mischaracterized the activities of ICE agents in the video.
	So what's going on here as well is that the Democrats are sharing misinformation.
	It's funny that, isn't it?
	It almost goes both ways.
	They're accusing ICE of kidnapping and blackmail child.
	And it turns out to be completely fake.
	Everybody sees the original story.
	Nobody sees the correction.
	It's a very old game that they play.
	It's been done for such a long time, hasn't it?
	Exactly.
	And here's lots of examples here of people on Reddit calling for violence.
	This isn't shut down, unlike people who just post right-wing things, get downvoted or banned on this platform.
	Very selectively curated to reinforce as strong a left-wing bias as possible.
	All of these comments are calling for basically violence.
	But despite this being against the platform's rules, they're not removed.
	And there are lots of people saying it's a random act of violence as well.
	This is the new line that seems to be trotted out.
	There are lots of examples here of, you know, and they're saying, oh, these MAGA influencers are quiet and they're trying to blame the right for these sorts of things.
	It's a load of rubbish, isn't it?
	not true.
	Or they're trying to say that...
	Krasenstein.
	A white male again.
	I thought you were a white male, Krasenstein.
	Apparently not.
	Why would you be so quick to jump to characteristics like that?
	Disgusting.
	And finally, lots of people have been pointing out the pattern here.
	It's only been two weeks.
	There's been an attempted bombing of Fox News truck, shooting at Sky Meadow Country Club, vandalism of Charlie's memorials, shots fired at ABC over Kimmel's cancellation, debate assault at Tennessee State Uni.
	And they point out that it's nearly every other day.
	Sobiak's also been pointing out that there is a clear pattern of left-wing violence here, of lots and lots of examples in just the past week or so.
	This is all within the last month.
	Yeah.
	The last 30 days, all of this has happened.
	So the thing is, Trump needs to be doing something about this.
	He definitely does.
	There needs to be a very forceful response from the state because it doesn't take that many people to overthrow a weak government.
	Well, designating antifar as terrorists is at least a small start, but also it's somewhat symbolic because they don't actually all it does is allow the state to go after people funding them.
	Yes.
	But they don't actually really need that much external funding because the way their organization operates is that it's a bunch of people that are already sympathetic to this sort of ideology in the first place, and they just use the rubric of Antifar to meet up and operate as a group.
	Semi-autonomous cells.
	It is, yeah.
	Semi-autonomous cells.
	Sort of anarchistic in nature almost.
	They organize, like they have Facebook groups.
	And I mean, the FBI channels have Discord servers.
	Yeah, and the activities can be made harder for them.
	Even if they're on Telegram, the FBI loves infiltrating right-wing Telegram channels.
	Like, why is it so hard for them to do this?
	Why have we not already seen the El Salvador-style videos of them cracking down on these people?
	And they already have Palantir with the ability to watch all of these communications networks.
	And they're already giving these contracts to Palantir.
	So there is a question as to why isn't there a more concerted law enforcement effort to properly shut them down.
	If you try to organize a Nazi chat group on X, I'll bet you that you're gone in minutes.
	Not that I've ever tried, but if you were to try, this is all just hypothetical, isn't it?
	It is hypothetical.
	It's also true.
	If you try to do that on Reddit, on Discord, or any of these sort of different platforms, you get shut down immediately.
	And the AI and the algorithms are sort of trained to do that.
	It can be done in the other direction.
	It must be done in the other direction.
	All we got instead is selling TikTok to people who will make sure that it's more pro-Israel.
	So there has to be action by the state.
	Proper action.
	Otherwise, you're complicit in this, guys.
	Yeah, they need to be mass arresting people.
	Exactly.
	Because there are so many people willing to be violent in the US.
	And so many ticking time bombs that need to be diffused immediately.
	And we know they're violent.
	They are constantly being violent.
	And they say they want to be more violent.
	And even the ones that aren't engaging in the violence tacitly support it.
	Not even tacitly, overtly.
	They post videos of themselves cheering at you.
	Yeah, that's true as well.
	Yeah.
	So Matt Walsh had a very good perspective on it, but I'm over time, so I didn't want to go over that.
	And the final thing I wanted to mention is I recently got monetized on YouTube.
	If you could watch some of my videos, that'd be very helpful.
	But to sort of conclude, there obviously needs to be some very definitive action here, as we've discussed.
	Trump needs to do far, far more than he's done already to crack down on these sorts of violent behaviors.
	And it is for the safety and the good of American citizens.
	There is no moral cause for a president to use the presidential powers than that.
	Yes.
	All right, may I have a mouse and I will go through the Rumble Rants and Super Chat.
	See, that ran on a little bit.
	No, that's fine.
	That's fine.
	I mean, I can't judge.
	My segments always run over.
	Busted Brian on Rumble.
	The ammo text starts with Luigi Mangion.
	Given his memetic status, some believe the bullets are copycatism.
	The story says indiscriminate because he shot into an unmarked van with no visibility.
	Thank you for clearing that up for me.
	Both those pieces of information.
	Zeno King, I recommend anyone who wants to learn more about what's happening in the US, read Fry the Brain by John West.
	It discusses the doctrine and history of guerrilla sniping and how to counter it.
	Thank you for the suggestion.
	Logan Pine, California resident here.
	I really hate Gavin, so does my liberal mother.
	You'll be hard to find anyone who likes him in California.
	Whether or not they like him or not, people will still be likely to vote for him if he is the Democratic candidate, given the population makeup of California.
	That's the sad fact of the matter.
	Bald Eagle, the biggest issue with the Antifa funding is that US allies, quote-unquote, are funding them, like Germany and the Canadian governments do through various NGOs and aid organizations.
	Sigil Stone, don't worry, guys, the left-wing violence will be brought to here once Bondi gets through the Epstein files on her desk.
	So sometime around the end of this administration in 2028.
	Sometime around the eventual heat death of the universe, yeah.
	Yeah, one of these days.
	On YouTube, Chronicles asks, so is Josh now back as a permanent Lotus Eater?
	No, I'm just appearing a little bit more.
	But I always said I would.
	Everyone's so confused.
	I said, I'll be back for appearances, don't worry.
	And now everyone's like, why are you back?
	You said you would leave.
	And I was just like, in every place where I said I'm leaving, I was like, I'm leaving as a full-time member of staff, but I'll be back to do appearances.
	And everyone was just like, oh, never mind.
	He's basically on the old schedule that he was on, but now instead of preparing his segments in the office, he does them at his flat in his underwear.
	That's actually true.
	I know.
	Me so trashed.
	Says Sallyport is like an airlock for the vehicles.
	They can drive in and unload the arrested individual in a secured way.
	Right.
	Based ape, new favourite insult unlocked.
	Watch it.
	Long chin.
	That's not a bad one.
	Xerfus sends in $20.
	Thank you.
	I've had trans Antifa threaten to have the street run in the blood of Republicans and Democrats for asking, does Rico apply to Antifa?
	People are violent freaks.
	Yep.
	Violent freaks.
	Jim sending in $10, saying he wasn't firing indiscriminately, but blind.
	He fired into the van, assuming ICE was inside, but instead detainees were.
	So like a normal communist, he erased the people he claimed to be saving.
	It is one of the great facts of, well, rules of the universe, isn't it?
	Sigil Stones also said, Josh said, I'll be back and drove a car through my front door.
	His Terminator maxing is getting out of hand.
	That's why they call me the Ferminator.
	So let's talk a little bit about what's happening with Ukraine.
	And the Telegraph has a piece here claiming that the Ukrainians are turning the table on Russia because they checked one major breakthrough that the Russian forces recently did as they were surrounding two of the big cities that sort of formed the linchpin of Ukraine's defense.
	So if you were to sort of look at a map here, this is the Pokrovsk area.
	This is one of the linchpins of Ukraine's defense.
	The Russians advanced here and it seems the Ukrainians are trying to surround them and cut them off.
	Which is kind of important, kind of not that important.
	That's been done since even World War I, hasn't it?
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	Whereas in reality, if you look here in the Kharkiv region, the Russians are doing a pretty important advance towards Kupyansk, and they are working their way towards the city of Liman, after which they'll target Izium.
	And the objective would be to collapse the Ukrainian front line.
	So instead of being told about the details of the big picture, we're being told that, oh, the Ukrainians have pushed back one offensive here, and that means that they are actually winning now, and the tables are being turned.
	Fake news, essentially.
	Or at best, very, very inspiring.
	Spin.
	Fake news.
	Big spin.
	Yes.
	Let's exaggerate this one little positive bit of news that we have.
	Exactly.
	To paint the whole thing as positive.
	Exactly.
	And now Trump is saying that after getting to fully know and understand the Ukraine-Russia military and economic situation, the economic trouble it's causing Russia, also not true, Ukraine, with the support of the EU, can fight and win all of Ukraine back in its original form.
	So we had Trump earlier saying that Crimea is a non-starter, let's freeze the conflict where it is and accept that the Russians have taken four Ukrainian provinces, leave it a little bit in dispute.
	Now he's saying, no, no, no, the Ukrainians can throw back Russia fully.
	What happened to the Trump who was telling Zelensky off earlier this year that everybody was celebrating over Zelensky where he can stick it and let them know that America doesn't get involved in these things?
	What happened?
	What's happening with the mineral deal?
	Did that just fall through?
	I thought there was going to be some kind of Zelensky signed it at the end of the day, and he's in the process of selling Ukraine to BlackRock and to other big investment banks who are going to be really the only beneficiaries of a Ukrainian victory.
	But this is now happening and we are now looking at the USA.
	So we're all excited for ESG and DEI in Ukraine.
	Yes.
	At the end of this conference, some victory for Ukraine, right?
	You had Koleba, the former foreign minister of Ukraine, saying that they're going to have to bring in people from Bangladesh, India, Vietnam to help restore Ukraine to greatness.
	This is what Ukraine always was.
	They're going to do rebuild.
	Rebuild toilet infrastructure.
	I don't know about that personally.
	I don't see the expertise coming from those parts.
	You don't know that Bangladesh has a long history of Russian orthodoxy and this is always what it has been and that's it's always been the builder of Ukraine?
	Really?
	Their grasp of history is so so wide.
	I know I'm sorry.
	It's quite remarkable that on a long enough time scale, some shorter, some longer, when since the 20th century you win a war, potentially in this case you win a war with America on your side, all of a sudden you have to open up your borders to all sorts of third world populations.
	You win a war, you lose your country.
	Yeah, why does that have to be part of the deal?
	Yeah, that's a very good question.
	That's a really good question.
	Anyway, he goes on to call Russia a paper tiger and says that they're running out of gasoline.
	Also, just not true.
	Got massive reserves.
	I don't understand the logic behind it, but here we are.
	Ukraine, on a long timeline, they will be able to get back their country in its original form and maybe go further.
	That's an explicit threat, then, isn't it?
	If you're going to continue supporting them going further, that means an invasion of Russia.
	Yes.
	At which point, like, if the thing is, the Russians can't lose this because if they thought they were losing, they'd go nuclear.
	And so it's just not going to happen that the Russians are going to lose this conflict.
	It's just that it is going to be that the cost to the West and to Ukraine will be made higher.
	And it seems here that what Trump is really doing is trying to put Europe in an even bigger bind when it comes to Ukraine and keep the war going while making the Europeans pay for the equipment.
	The only thing that seems to have changed is that the American aid will fall and it will turn into weapons sales from the American military-industrial complex that will be funded by European taxpayers, British taxpayers, amongst other wealth transfer from Europe to America.
	With the insistence that the Europeans buy a lot more American energy.
	So here's Trump going off in the United Nations.
	And look where we are right now in just a short period of time.
	The only question now is how many more lives will be needlessly lost on both sides.
	China and India are the primary funders of the ongoing war by continuing to purchase Russian oil.
	But inexcusably, even NATO countries have not cut off much Russian energy and Russian energy products.
	Which, as you know, I found out about two weeks ago and I wasn't happy.
	Think of it.
	They're funding the war against themselves.
	Who the hell ever heard of that one?
	So the thing is that the Americans are still buying uranium from Russia.
	They haven't stopped doing that.
	And that European economies are in the process of collapsing.
	And people who are cheering this are just sort of, you know, cheering Trump blindly for whatever he does.
	But the US is saying that it can replace all Russian oil and gas in Europe.
	Big problem with that.
	Russian gas and oil is pipelined, meaning that it comes in at a fraction of the cost.
	And coal.
	Coal, obviously, not being pipelined.
	But closer distance, lower shipping costs, much cheaper.
	Shame about that Nord Stream explosion.
	We never did that.
	We never really did get to the bottom of that, did we?
	Who really did that?
	You can sort of see who might benefit from it, though, can't we?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Obviously, Russia blowing up their own pipeline, which gave us more incentive to engage in peace talks with them.
	So, anyway, the Americas are saying they can replace all of the Russian oil and gas, which is not true.
	And what has been happening is that for the last two or three years, there has been talk of how German industry in particular is collapsing.
	This is from 2023, where everybody in the know has understood that the German manufacturing sector must have cheap Russian energy, especially gas, if it is going to function.
	And it doesn't help that the Germans, in their green stupidity, decided to shut down nuclear.
	It really doesn't help.
	But instead, they're trying to do solar and wind, which can't be used for industry because they're completely unreliable and which are insanely expensive.
	Because many of the industries in Germany, they excel in things like chemical industries, where if you interrupt the process, then you ruin the process.
	Pretty much have to start again in some cases.
	Obviously, I'm no expert.
	I'm a psychologist, not a chemist.
	But still, I know enough that it's not ideal.
	So for the chemicals industry, it's a disaster.
	For the auto industry, it's a disaster.
	Usually, energy is 10-15% of your costs in manufacturing.
	And so when it goes up by 30% or 40%, given how slim the profit margin is to begin with, it's a disaster.
	So manufacturing is extremely sensitive to energy prices.
	And you see this story being repeated in 2004.
	Europe is deindustrializing.
	This is economic suicide.
	This is Ford's, right?
	This isn't some left-wing pro-Russian thing.
	This isn't some right-wing alternative media.
	This is Ford's.
	This is about as mainstream as it gets.
	You see this being constantly repeated.
	I think this is the international banker.
	Again, escalating deindustrialization problem, January 2025.
	And just 100 years ago, Germany was like the industrial heartland of all of Europe.
	Pretty much.
	Yeah.
	And it still is.
	Yeah.
	And it still is.
	And now we have headlines about Rust Belt on the Rhine.
	Whereas what the Americans are saying is that, look, we can operate Nord Stream.
	What the Russians are saying is that, look, we can start exporting energy to you.
	We can save you economically.
	You don't have to do this.
	But obviously, there is a price, and the price is Ukraine.
	And if you think of the context of this escalation, you know, you can see it on my Real Politics show.
	The reason for this is because NATO expanded to the Black Sea and expanded to the Baltic Sea, meaning that it surrounded Russia's ports.
	And that's why when Ukraine first kicked off, the first thing the Russians did was save Crimea.
	Why?
	Because Sevastopol is where the Russian Navy is based.
	I mean, it's why there was the Crimean War against Britain in the 19th century.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	So this has consistently been a theme of NATO expanding and saying Russia is reacting unreasonably.
	And now what's happening is that the Americans are saying to the Europeans: if you want to stay in this war, you have to buy all of your energy from us, which the Americans can't provide in full, contrary to what they're saying.
	They don't have enough spare capacity.
	And you have to buy all of your weapons from us.
	And then what's left for Europeans?
	Weaver for foreigners, but then what else?
	So the Americans are basically using Ukraine to batter Europe.
	In part because European leaders are so delusional that they insist on fighting Russia.
	If they had told Zelensky, look, you know, this war is lost.
	Nobody wins a land war against Russia on its own borders, things would be much better for Europe economically.
	And it could turn to the actual threat, which is the collapsing and changing demographics of Europe.
	But they don't want to think about that.
	Instead, they want to collapse the demographics of Ukraine and replace it with Bangladeshis and Indians and Nigerians and what have you.
	And this isn't in the interest of United States citizens either, because I can imagine that if they're exporting a decent proportion of their domestically produced energy, then that's going to push the energy price in America up as well.
	And it's already gone up.
	If basically Russian gas successfully gets closed off to the West, all it means is that everybody in the West is paying even more for energy.
	That's all it means.
	And we already have enough problems with price rises with energy anyway.
	Exactly.
	Which has been just destroying domestic economies.
	Exactly.
	Think if you're in England or anywhere in the West right now, how many shops, just by people who are local to your town, have shut down recently purely because energy prices have skyrocketed, meaning they can't afford that.
	It's also going to have unparalleled permanent economic destructive potential as well, because the people who can absorb the cost of the increasing energy are already well established.
	So what it's going to fundamentally do is transfer more wealth to the existing elite from ordinary people.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	So what's happening as a result of all of this is that even in North Rhine-Westphalia, the AFD is gaining ground quickly.
	The SPD, which was traditionally the main power there, has sort of had their vote chair collapse.
	And slowly we're heading towards a situation where the attempts to continuously isolate the AFD and keep them out of government in any way are becoming less and less realistic.
	Unless the CDU, which is the traditional conservatives, ally with the Greens, who are a bunch of lunatic communists.
	I think that would be a difficult move.
	I think they wouldn't put it past them, though.
	I think they would.
	They would do it.
	These people, ever since 45, Germany especially, has been just told that you must do anything to stop the quote-unquote far-right.
	Yes, that's right.
	Liberals.
	The AFD is a liberal party.
	A reminder, it's led by a lesbian whose partner is Sri Lankan.
	This is not the far right, guys.
	Like, for me, this is very lefty.
	And I think for anybody sane, this is quite progressive.
	So the idea that the AFD is far right, just, you know, like, if I was to rule Germany one day, that would not be tolerated.
	But anyway, so the result of all of this is that the people who are rising are the AFD.
	And according to Deutsche Vehe, these are Putin's best friends.
	Are they?
	I think they're interested in peace.
	They've been more interested in peace, which theoretically Miloney was at some point reconciling with Russia.
	So we have to remember these people lie all the time.
	Zelensky was elected as the candidate who would figure out a peace with the Russians.
	We have to remember that these people lie all the time.
	And really relying on a lesbian to save you is not very sage, shall we say.
	But what's being done by the Americans is that they are sort of pushing into power people who would one day properly turn nationalistic.
	And if Europe is ever going to be independent from the United States, well, it has to have a good relationship with Russia because Europe is surrounded by two giants, the United States on one side, the Russians on the other, and the Muslim world, which just wants to destroy it.
	So the only people to partner with are the Americans who are mainly interested in the financial interests of BlackRock and the military-industrial complex, and the Russians who might give you a slightly better deal, some cheap energy, and buy manufactured products from you.
	It is important to note as well, though, that both of those giants that were surrounded by have a vested interest in keeping Europe weak.
	Yes.
	Because a strong Europe could pose a big problem to people.
	Well, both of them are at the minute, aren't they, really?
	But the thing to remember is this.
	The Russians will never have an interest in the Islamization of Europe because they have Muslims in Central Asia and in Turkey who are a very real threat to them.
	Well, they've got a larger Muslim population in Russia than anywhere else in Europe.
	Exactly.
	And they have the historic memory of having to fight wars to liberate Bulgaria and Romania and the Balkans from the Muslim yoke, which is something that the United States never actually helped with.
	The only time it intervened in that conflict was to help the Muslims in Bosnia and in Kosovo.
	So that kind of historic memory matters a little bit.
	Was that the part where Wesley Clark said that the Europe of the future will not consist of ethno-states and it has to be a big multicultural melting pot?
	Yeah, that was a fun part.
	That was wonderful, wasn't it?
	I mean, I'm very glad that we went through that experiment.
	It's been excellent for the Mediterranean, for Europe, etc.
	But just in case you have any delusions about the ability of the Ukrainians to win the war, you just want to look at their regular recruitment style, which just involves snatching people from the streets and forcing them into vans.
	They just go around grabbing civilians who want nothing to do with the war, beating them, and forcing them to go into unmarked vans so that they can go to the front line.
	And this keeps on happening.
	There are one and a half million men running away from mobilization.
	And every time they think that peace is more likely, that sort of encourages them not to go into the meat grinder and die on the front line.
	And you see, I'm sorry, I know this is a horrific video, but you have to see it.
	They grabbed the car of this guy while he's traveling with his daughters to try to pull him out and send him to the front line.
	This is the extent of the desperation of Ukraine for manpower.
	And anybody who says that it's in their interest to sort of look at that poor girl crossing herself and praying.
	Anybody who says it's the interest of Ukraine to continue with this war to import Bomalians.
	I'm sorry, what?
	And this is their own police.
	And this is their own police.
	This is their own police.
	So this is just evil.
	And it should be said.
	And we should just stop pretending that the Ukrainians are going to win this war and stop pretending that if they win, it will be a good outcome for Europe or for Ukraine or for Russia.
	The Russians are our Christian brothers.
	We can reconcile with them.
	Europe has always figured out ways to live with Russia in some form of peace.
	It can be done again.
	Shall we look at a couple of the comments?
	Yes, it looks like we've got some rather contentious ones with people who would disagree with us.
	So let's go to read through them.
	Yeah, go ahead.
	So on Rumble, I'll go down to the ones first that were from the other segment.
	So that's a random name jokingly said, how did you know that Josh is in his underwear when he's preparing his segments?
	Well, that's because it's a safe bet.
	Sigil Stone.
	Trump's probably turned around on Ukraine because he signed the minerals deal, found out that those minerals are in the territory Russia took and realized he'd looked like a dumbass not getting any money back.
	Well, this was something that I pointed out around the time when everybody was discussing the initial drafts of the minerals deal and you saw maps showing that all of the actually valuable minerals were in the territory that Russia took.
	And I asked, well, how will this work given that everything valuable, is he going to have to come up with a separate deal with Russia?
	At the time, I was told to not ask any questions and just be happy that progress was being made.
	So as ever, hindsight has proven me reasonable in asking these questions at the very least.
	Busted Bryan says it isn't logical, Firaz, it's emotional.
	Putin's refusal to negotiate on Trump's timeline in terms has insulted his ego.
	So now he has reversed his position, not because it's true, but because he's angry.
	Armitage says it's calling Europe's bluff.
	This is in regards to Trump statement at the UN.
	You want the war to end, do it, stop funding Russia if you can afford to.
	Yeah.
	Maybe.
	But as you pointed out as well, America as well is buying, what was it, Pluto?
	Uranium from Russia.
	So it seems that there's a conflict there in terms of who has to give in to who.
	Matt G. Hammond, is this Trump's way of getting the US out of NATO?
	NATO.
	I don't know, man.
	I'm sick and tired of sort of figuring out 5D chess moves that Trump is supposedly making.
	I don't know.
	NATO is the US anyway.
	Exactly.
	Habsification, the US and Russia called the EU and Europe in general's bluff.
	This is the beginning of the end of the silly post-World War II European experiment in its systems.
	Change is coming.
	The managerialists hate it.
	Yeah.
	If you are right that it's the end of the post-World War II multicultural Europe, I'm all for it.
	Yeah, I hope you're right.
	Sigil Stone, of course we need to keep Europe soft.
	A strong Europe sets itself on fire and Russia and the US inevitably get drawn into it.
	I disagree.
	I think from a US and Russian perspective, a strong Europe united with a lot of nationalist governments who would be willing to work with one another would pose probably the greatest threat to their own international power that they could ever experience, far more than anything that China could do.
	Hence why America and Russia helped set fire to Europe in the past, I won't say that.
	Yeah, the US government has consistently worked against European interests for as long as it's existed.
	The US government always behaves in its own self-interest, regardless of what the rest of the world wants.
	And this was all put in place.
	A lot of it was kind of got the ball rolling in the post-World War I order.
	Yes.
	Like people say World War II, all of this started really at the end of World War I. And you can just go back to statements that were made by members of Wilson's administration and in the time period between the wars, and you can see that there was an old world, new world split emerging where the US was starting to see an industrialized Soviet Russia as more of an ally in the new world.
	Even just go and see what some of FDR's administration were saying about how they would be able to guide the world together following the end of the Second World War and think, how well did that go?
	Did the US end up sending and Russia end up setting the world on fire?
	I would argue at least partially.
	That's a random name.
	I love how Trump's comments about this war were so retarded that everyone in the chat is coming up with any explanation to make it make sense.
	Well, congratulations.
	You've cottoned on to the secret of Donald Trump's success over the past 10 years, which has been say any random shit and people will make up an excuse for why it makes sense.
	On YouTube, I'm a weird pineapple and chili pizza people person.
	Good for you.
	Thank you.
	Sounds like a nice pizza, though, and you're making me hungry.
	Oh, come on.
	Pineapple on pizza is a crime.
	I tend not to go for it, but I could eat it.
	Not that fussy, all right.
	Mark, I'm going to get us off the pineapple on pizza.
	Sorry, too contentious.
	Back to the Ukraine war.
	My stomach is turning.
	Stripe added ideal and other country-specific banking options, but they need to be turned on at settings, payments, payment methods, mean OCC.
	Okay, thank you.
	Thanks for that.
	So the choice for Ukraine is to become Russia or Barat.
	That's not a great choice for them, sadly.
	Russia, man, Russia, any day of the week.
	Are you serious?
	Speaking as an American, I'm very proud that we continue to be a very reliable source of really interesting content.
	We are like the most powerful country in the world, so it only makes sense.
	We're all provinces in the empire at the end of the day.
	Yeah.
	And again, whenever we're critical of America on the world stage, we're not being, we're not trying to hurt the feelings of American people.
	We know that there are...
	Love you.
	We appreciate you.
	There are loads of good American people out there, like countless great American people, and I'm really looking forward to visiting the country for the first time next year.
	It should be a great opportunity.
	Dave says, I love Trump's bluster, but this is one instance where it can be fatal.
	His instinct is to oversell his position, no matter how weak a hand he's holding.
	This can be fun, but in a military situation, yeah, it can be dangerous.
	Trump has done exactly what I expected.
	He would seek peace.
	If that fails, blame someone, which is most likely Russia, and then double down on Ukraine.
	Given his penchant for geopolitics and history, I'd love to hear Faraz chat about the Donbass War with our good friends, Charlie and Furious.
	Good work, lads.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Yeah.
	And finally, St. Petersburg under NATO control by the end of 2026.
	That would be interesting.
	I would be very surprised.
	I think there would be a lot of death and fire and bloodshed involved in such a thing.
	Quite.
	But anyway, let's move on to cheerier subjects, which is what happens when politics gets in the way of economic recovery.
	So over the past few years, Javier Millay has become quite a notorious and popular figure among the right.
	He's very mimetic.
	He went around with his chainsaw.
	There were quite a few segments on this podcast itself, particularly with Josh, celebrating the kind of progress and change that he was looking to make in Argentina, even before he was elected near the end of 2023.
	Because Argentina, it only takes five minutes of looking into Argentina's history over the past hundred years to understand this place has been one disaster after another, more time spent under military dictatorship than under any kind of elected government.
	The most IMF bailouts of any country, which has taken up, according to some graphs that I have seen, one-third of all IMF bailouts since the IMF was established.
	And it's just a very difficult kind of problem to solve.
	At one point, it was actually projected to be a superpower.
	Yes.
	In like the 1980s, I think it was, right off the top of my head.
	Because they've got the ability to have a very good economy, actually.
	And it is purely through economic mismanagement that this has happened.
	Yes, and Millay seems to offer a counter to that and a possible solution.
	A longtime economist, a free market, libertarian anarcho-capitalist, by his own statements.
	He came out of nowhere from us in the West, although I'm aware that in Argentina, he was already well established as a firebrand economist.
	He went on lots of talk shows, had lots of talking points.
	We saw lots of clips of him calling out what he was referring to in the subtitles.
	I don't know if this is an accurate description, as shit leftards and saying how they destroy everything so they need to be destroyed.
	And initially, after he was elected, he had some really great results.
	We saw that he was shutting down a lot of unnecessary government waste.
	There are a number of videos that you can always check out about how the economy was starting to turn around.
	It went from, for instance, having a huge deficit to suddenly by the end of 2024, as a result of economic policies that he had put in that really cut spending, fired like thousands of government employees.
	They'd gone from a massive deficit to actually having a fiscal surplus for the first time in 123 years.
	Argentina had monthly inflation that was overwhelming the country's finances.
	You can see there that December of 2023, monthly inflation was 25.5%.
	And on a yearly basis, that was reaching almost 300%.
	Now it had been brought by November of 2024 down to 2.4%.
	So a lot of success, a lot of success.
	But then earlier on this year, they have to go for another new deal with the IMF, which was helped in its brokerage by Donald Trump and the US and the Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Besson.
	And it said that it was another $20 billion IMF loan.
	Millay addressed the nation saying, Today we're breaking the cycle of disillusionment and disenchantment and beginning to move forward for the first time.
	And this article goes on to say that since its first package in 1958, Argentina had been the recipient of more IMF programs than any other country, a record 23 deals amounting to $177 billion in loans.
	But due to the conditions of the loans themselves, policies, inflationary pressures, and a lot of other problems, they did little to boost the economy.
	So it's often been a band-aid that has not actually done anything to help them.
	And again, despite this, there was a lot of new opportunity in Argentina, the inflation and everything going down.
	But of course, with essentially a policy of austerity, this caused a lot of division within the country.
	A lot of problems were starting to hit the people who had been his base for the 2023 election.
	And that would be the lower, middle, and working classes who were most often hit by problems like inflation.
	Well, when you're trying to right the ship of an economy, it can lead to peaks and valleys for a lot of people.
	Things can go great and then they can go down.
	And Argentina has been particularly susceptible to boom and bust cycles in the past.
	So a lot of people starting to feel a bit more of a hit than they were expecting off of austerity policies.
	And this ended up losing them a very important regional election on the 7th of September.
	So earlier on this month in the Buenos Aires province, which was seen as a bit of a bellwether for the 26th of October midterm elections that are coming up.
	And what happened was this immediately caused problems for the country.
	So it says here in this article, his party suffered a stinging defeat at the hands of the center-left Peronis movement in elections to the legislature of Buenos Aires province that were seen as a litmus test of Millay's popularity.
	He goes into midterms under a corruption cloud as well.
	So this is another problem to add to it.
	Following allegations that his sister and right-hand woman, Karina Millay, received a cut on state medicine contracts for the disabled.
	In a sign of the anger among many Argentines over his policies, Millay and his sister were pelted with stones on the campaign trail outside Buenos Aires in late August, with skirmishes breaking out among supporters and opponents.
	So what this has meant is that falling popularity, people finding a lot to be annoyed about, especially with corruption, is Millay's party did not have a majority in Argentinian government.
	As such, there were coalitions having to be formed so that he could get legislation through their government.
	Well, now that it's looking like the people are turning on him, those coalition parties are starting to ally themselves again with the left-wing parties, meaning that it's going to be very, very difficult for him to get any of the further economic reforms put through that he needs to if he still wants to continue writing the ship of the Argentinian economy.
	So, as a result, sadly, taking the economic policies that he knows would work and have been shown to have actual financial benefits to the country in the long term in doing things like producing a financial surplus and reducing inflation have hit the wall of politics, which is that in a democratic society, you need to maintain popularity to be able to do what you want.
	Therefore, everything turns into short-term thinking.
	The way I like to characterize the economics of these sorts of situations, where I've spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about how we can wean down the state, because I think most Western governments and even Latin American ones are massively oversized.
	And it's sort of like you're dealing with an obese person, you know, trying to get them to run a marathon, right?
	Ideally, you want them to be their body to be as efficient as possible, but the process from getting them to be obese to being fighting fit is going to be very, very painful.
	It's not going to be very nice for that individual.
	And they're going to dislike you for it.
	It makes democracy particularly bad if you really want to fix a country.
	Democracy works at a time of prosperity when there's a broad national consensus.
	When half the country wants Gibbs and, you know, the economy is breaking down, you can't fix it in a democratic manner.
	And you also can't really blame people when they're hard up financially for thinking in short-term ways because they're thinking of their survival rather than long-term investments.
	And so the people on the ground are thinking in very different terms to the government, which is not always good.
	Yes.
	Yeah, so as a result of having run headfirst into politics, he's having to make political decisions rather than economic decisions, which means that he is having to boost social spending now.
	And he said in a televised speech that the worst is over as he unveiled a draft 2026 budget eight days after his party was trounced in the provincial Buenos Aires Brenos Aires elections.
	He carried on saying the effort all Argentines are making is worth it.
	We understand that many have not yet felt it in their material reality.
	He carried on to say that Rome wasn't built in a day, but he did say that his dedication to spending cuts and balancing the budget was non-negotiable.
	Despite that, again, so what he said was in these new budgets that he would increase pension spending by 5%, healthcare by 17%, education by 8%, and disability pensions by 5% above inflation.
	So he is making a bit of a turnaround on some of those economic policies of austerity and frugal spending that were going to continue to help Argentina.
	As well as that, other problems have meant that he has now gone into negotiations, very advanced negotiations, supposedly, over another loan from the US, because already that $20 billion loan from the IMF has already, I think, had about 14 billion cut into it because they have huge debt repayments that they need to make every single year.
	So in this article, it says that there was an interview with Millet where he said that we understood that this year was going to be very complicated.
	We'd already started developing strategies to cover payments for Argentina next year, which are 4 billion US dollars in January and 4.5 billion dollars in July.
	So we've been working those negotiations to take time, but until it's confirmed, we're not making any announcements.
	We're working hard.
	We're very advanced and it's a matter of time too.
	So he's trying to remain optimistic.
	But that's almost $9 billion need to be paid by the middle of next year when they already have a very, very low level of US dollar reserves left in their central bank.
	If I had a time machine, I really would go back and find the works of John Maynard Keynes and just burn them all because look at the destruction that it's done to the Western world.
	You know, this deficit spending.
	Borrow now, payback later, but I'll be dead later.
	It's a disaster.
	It's such short-term thinking.
	It's that this country has permanently been in a debt trap.
	As in what happens with these interest-carrying loans to states that are made at these ridiculous rates.
	If you're the guy issuing the loan, especially the United States, you have an interest in them going bankrupt because instead of receiving currency, you receive real assets.
	And so the idea here is to be able to control the natural resources of Argentina more effectively and to strengthen the United States' grip on Latin America.
	using debt as an instrument, using usury as an instrument.
	So it's always been bad for countries to borrow big amounts, especially bad when you borrow them from a superpower.
	Because the superpower will tie political concessions and concessions to its own oligarchs to you receiving softer terms on debts.
	And the longer you remain in debt, the more pliant you become, the more your society is destroyed.
	So the reason, I mean, why is Argentina so bad?
	Because it doesn't see the IMF as an enemy.
	It should see the people lending it money as enemies.
	Because they have a bigger interest in bankrupting it and then surrounding it and then trying to extract whatever exports it has and transferring them to themselves.
	Well, it's the 21st century's equivalent of imperialism, isn't it?
	It is debt imperialism.
	That's what it is.
	But imperialism was more noble and more dignified because it didn't come with these debts.
	It was more honest as well.
	And more honest.
	It was very clear what was happening to you when you were an imperial province of an empire.
	Well, we actually had a vested interest in improving the country we colonized.
	That's why.
	Because it built up your military.
	Yeah.
	Being told that you're being saved economically is a complete lie.
	Being told, look, man, you lost a war and here are the concessions that you have to make, okay, you see the problem immediately and you can deal with it, as opposed to what happens when you have this kind of debt imperialism, which is that it hides behind the shadows and manipulates you into thinking that it has your own economic best interest at heart.
	Well, certainly.
	I mean, Scott Besant on Monday put out this short thread saying that the US is considered, considers Argentina one of their most important allies in Latin America, because obviously a lot of the regimes in South America are not friendly towards the US.
	Malay is very friendly towards the US, sees Donald Trump as somebody that he wants to style himself after.
	Therefore, they want to keep them, they want to keep Malay in charge.
	So they're saying that one way that they might help, they give options saying these are not limited to, but these are some of the options, swap lines, direct currency purchases, purchases of US dollar denominated government debt from the Treasury's Exchange Stabilization Fund, which I think is where this $20 billion loan may be coming from.
	Another thing which is being stated is that the US, in doing so, will purchase foreign loans, foreign government bonds from the Argentinian government to the tune of about $20 billion.
	But again, like you say, the whole point of a bond is it is dead.
	The Argentinian government will at some point have to face down repaying that again.
	So this, like always happens with debt-based government schemes, will be kicking the can down the line.
	And somebody will have to pick it up again.
	If Malay's lucky, it will be him having to renegotiate terms when those debt repayments come in.
	If not, it might have to be some other socialist-style Argentinian government who are not going to be as friendly towards the Trump regime.
	His main rivals, the Piranists, were the people that created this crisis in the first place.
	So they're not going to fix it, are they?
	No.
	They certainly won't.
	But what's some of the other reasons why all of this has happened?
	Well, this is quite a decent Financial Times article.
	They say the result, that being the provincial election, one of the reasons that this caused so much trouble in the first place was that it hit markets already nervous about the corruption scandal, which is emerging around Malay's sister.
	And it signified the breakdown of his alliances with the centrist opposition and a series of erratic monetary policy moves, including interest rate increases that boosted the peso but sapped economic activity.
	One other thing that they've been trying to do, one of the reasons that they've got such low reserves of US dollars, is they've been trying to balance their own exchange rate to keep the peso unnaturally high, which has supposedly been making it more expensive for foreign investment and businesses to come into the country in the way that they were hoping they would come in to try and help the country's economy.
	The peso plunged almost 10% in a fortnight, hitting the bottom of an exchange rate band adopted in April with the IMF loan.
	That was part of the agreement that their peso could only reach certain levels.
	Fears mounted among local investors that the government would have to obtain the band and abandon the band and devalue the peso, compounding demand for dollars and accelerating the run on the currency.
	The central bank spent $1.1 billion in three days last week to try and keep the peso propped up.
	The dollar sales in turn unerved bondholders who fretted that the government was burning through scarce hard currency reserves that it may eventually need to repay the debts, sending bond prices plummeting.
	The central bank's foreign currency reserves stand at just $5 billion, according to local financial broker GMA Capital.
	The government has missed IMF targets on rebuilding reserves as it delayed buying dollars to avoid dragging down the peso.
	So there are a lot of problems that are all piling up on top of one another.
	And this provincial election has kind of toppled all of the dominoes at once.
	They've all hit a boiling point at once where this could be a huge problem.
	And if investors who came into the country following Javier Malay's election, seeing that it might be in a place where, you know, it's business friendly now, think, well, he's not going to last at the next election.
	He's not going to, all of his policies are going to get overturned at the midterms if people put them through and if they'll override his vetoes on their increased spending, increased tax, they're all going to pull out.
	And all foreign investment is going to pull out of the country and it's going to collapse again.
	And then what happens?
	Well, if we look at Argentinian history, presumably the military coups again, which just is something that happens every like 15 years or so in Argentina.
	Yeah, I think this whole democracy nonsense has to stop at some point.
	Yeah, if this is.
	Especially when it comes to proportional representation, especially toxic is proportional representation.
	It's just destructive.
	Yeah, but again, negotiations are ongoing.
	Donald Trump has put his full weight of a full endorsement behind Javier Malay at the UN.
	So he did that.
	They're negotiating, so we'll see what ends up being the end result of those international loan negotiations.
	But what is the one thing that an Argentinian president who's currently facing unpopularity, what is there one thing that he can do to try and get some kind of popular support behind him?
	Well, he can lay claim to the Falklands again.
	Stop it.
	You lost.
	Every single time you have lost on this.
	So sort your own finances out however you can and leave the Falklands alone.
	All right.
	This is your last warning.
	We don't want to have to do it again.
	We've only got better and stronger since last time, and you've only got weaker.
	So.
	Like, your economy is already about to collapse.
	The question that you have to ask yourself is: does someone like Kier Starmer have the political will to defend the Falklands?
	Don't want to let him know about anything like that.
	So we just maintain a strong front for ASIC.
	At this rate, a bunch of lads in a few dinghies can just drive over there and fight off the people with water pistols because that's all the Argentines can afford.
	Yeah.
	Anyway, so that's that.
	We'll go through the super chats and then get on to the video comments.
	So Bald Eagle, the problem with the demand for pesos is that drug cartels want pesos, and the single reason why demand is so high, it's so bad the US had to put a cap on US dollars being used to get pesos.
	No surprise.
	Mexican pesos.
	I don't know whether they're the same.
	I imagine the Argentinian would be different than the Mexican, right?
	I think it's the Argentinian Peso as well.
	They might have the same name, obviously.
	It might be currencies, yeah.
	That's a random name.
	I have modernity fatigue, democracy fatigue, and international banking exhaustion.
	It's also tiresome.
	Tell me about it.
	Habsification: Argentinians are addicted to Peronism and going through withdrawal synths and sadly the only real solution is systems and societal collapse is required for Malay's system to work.
	Again, I think I don't necessarily think collapse would be required, just people being able to bear the brunt of short-term pain for long-term gains to actually get out of the end of it.
	But democracy is not built for that.
	Democracy is the exact opposite of that.
	It is the short-term thinking man's government.
	Exactly.
	That's Sigilstone.
	US should just buy out Argentina completely at this point.
	They're never going to solve this on their own.
	Malay would probably be actually quite amenable to that solution.
	Most people don't want to think for themselves.
	That's why our democracy, trademarked, is awful because the candidate that best appeals to people's basic instincts and desires usually wins.
	Yeah, it's lowest common denominator government.
	Bald Eagle, so all we're hearing is that the losers and leeches in society are wanting free gibbs again, and the media are trying to restore the very thing that destroyed their country in the first place.
	Welcome to the world, unfortunately.
	Yeah.
	Yep.
	We've got a few more come in since I started talking here.
	Bald Eagle, yes, Josh, they are different, but pesos are easier to exchange with other pesos than US dollars.
	I thought that would probably be the case, but thank you for clearing it up.
	And Sigil Stone, again, the peso is for the south of the American border, what the Euro is for you.
	Thanks for clearing that up a bit.
	What a cheap currency exchange.
	Scott Saigai, Kia, would probably just give them the Falklands and pay them for it.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	By the way, if I ever come to power, I am going to take the, what's it called?
	Those islands that we gave to Mauritius.
	I'm going to take them back by force.
	What are they going to do?
	Yeah, sorry, we paid you for them.
	So actually, you owe us money as well after we take them.
	Yeah, you are right.
	What are you going to do?
	What naval force does the Mauritius do?
	We can just take our aircraft carriers and drive them slowly past their country and the wave will just engulf the whole thing.
	That's old school diplomacy there.
	Just sail the gunboat over and let them make their own decision.
	Exactly.
	Tom Rat, gentlemen, the solution to this, nail all of the West's problems, is Heinleinianism.
	I need to actually read his books.
	I'm not.
	There's two comments from Mark.
	Fractional reserve banking allows the banks to use 90% of your capital to create loans.
	You take the risk, the banks take interest.
	100k loans, 75k interest.
	Yeah, that's like banking is a huge destructive force in society, and I'm surprised we're not talking about it more.
	If I had my way, we wouldn't even have banks.
	I'd just have a chest buried somewhere like a squirrel.
	That's the Devonshire in you talking, right?
	It's the pirate.
	He'd have a map with a big X on it.
	You'd never be able to decipher it because I'd have lots of misleading rock piles.
	Oh, okay.
	My Kelton.
	Your money is used to make your children dead slaves.
	Exactly.
	Many of these types of control systems neck to fractional reserve banking.
	Exactly.
	That's exactly right.
	It's so refreshing to all of our audience know everything.
	It's wonderful.
	Democracy doesn't mix well with fiat money, to be fair, so I won't say this is inevitably doomed to the bottom of the IQ curve.
	Argentina hopefully doesn't have to go cold turkey.
	I would say fiat money in general doesn't work.
	I hate fiat money.
	Yeah, it's ridiculous.
	The only people it works for is whoever is providing the fiat money, which is undercutting everybody else's.
	So the US Federal Reserve.
	But even they're screwing over Americans.
	It's wealth extraction, plain and simple.
	Yeah, Principled Uncertainty says, I'm getting tired of other people's problems.
	Let's sort out here first, then work outwards.
	Yeah, we're on an international stage, though.
	So sadly, everybody's problems is everybody else's because we're forced into that way.
	We're all provinces of one empire.
	Oh, would you look at that?
	Funny segue.
	Wow.
	Governor's Island looks so insignificant from up here.
	Hey, immigrants!
	Beat it!
	Country's full!
	Okay, folks, you heard the lady.
	Back into the hole.
	We'll try Canada.
	Awww, girly!
	Oh, Simpsons used to be so good.
	Mmm.
	Yeah.
	Did you see Rupert Lowe's deportations video?
	I think I did.
	I caught glance.
	The drastic part.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I did see it.
	Exactly.
	Absolutely brilliant.
	Absolutely brilliant.
	Fantastic.
	Good that he's got a sense of humour.
	It's nice to actually see that in politics.
	Rupert Lowe, obviously J.D. Vance recently, actually have a sense of humor.
	And they're not.
	That's necessary.
	And when Rupert came in to see, came into our office, he was cracking jokes.
	He was a nice guy.
	Glad to hear it.
	I've not yet met him.
	Oh, yeah, you haven't, have you?
	No.
	Yeah.
	Oh, fair.
	He's not missing out much.
	I'm sorry.
	Brilliant.
	That's a low blow.
	Brilliant.
	That's fantastic.
	Was that the only video comment that we've got?
	I think so.
	All right.
	Let's go through the website comments.
	Yeah.
	Josh Firm setting fire to a warehouse in Swindon.
	I wouldn't do that because they're economically productive.
	Been somewhere set on fire last night.
	There was a big fire.
	It was huge.
	It was in Penn Hill, so don't worry.
	Oh, okay.
	I'm sure you didn't set fire to anything.
	No, it was just an area of dense social housing.
	I would never do that.
	That's a joke, by the way.
	Just to be entirely clear.
	He says a guy shut up in ice facility.
	He must be one of those crazy right-wingers, just like the guy who shot Charlie Kirk.
	Everyone knows the right hate them.
	Kevin Fox says, and to think only a few days ago, the leftist Libtards were screaming in anguish because an ice agent grabbed some politician by the waist and threw her across the ground because she was blocking an ice vehicle.
	Still far more egregious than one of their own killing migrants instead of the ice agents he was after.
	That's a very good point.
	Yep.
	Martin R. I don't know.
	I think his face looks perfectly normal, reminds me of a young John Belushi, maybe.
	I mean, he's one of the less egregious ones, but it's my obligation to mock these people, I think.
	Some of these recent shooters are a lot less dysgenic than some of the others.
	That's just encouraging them.
	You are right that they've got the long chin thing, though.
	I know, it's a sort of bit of low-hanging fruit as an observation and political analysis, but I can't help but point it out.
	Somebody needs to keep an eye on WWE superstar Edge.
	Keep an eye on him.
	That's like a McDonald's-style joke there.
	Yeah.
	Anyway, read a few from the Ukraine segment.
	We've got plenty of time.
	We can.
	Okay, I'll do a couple of them have been highlighted here.
	Okay.
	Martin R says, I don't know.
	Oh, no.
	I just read that one, didn't I?
	Stupid.
	Safe Liv says, more correctly, ICE officers are afraid of getting doxxed and see their wives, children, and parents getting killed.
	And that's completely valid fear.
	Absolutely.
	And Derek Power, the master of Chippies.
	That's quite a title.
	Fruit stands are the U.S.'s equivalent of Turkish barber shops.
	That's probably a sense.
	Yeah.
	Exactly what I say.
	Also, you've got no quality control at a fruit stand, do you?
	No.
	As much as I'm a sort of sucker for transnational corporations, at least if you go to a supermarket or a store, as you might call it in America, you know what you're going to get.
	Yep.
	Kevin Fox says, oh, the irony, NATO can only help Ukraine with more weapons and tax and tanks by turning back on Russian gas supplies that power the factories that make the stuff.
	Yes.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	Probably.
	It's almost like the whole thing is just a way of making money from taxpayers, isn't it?
	It's all one big cycle.
	Pretty much.
	Jimbo G, interesting timing as Ursula von der Leyen announces an EU Ministry of Truth.
	She did.
	She did.
	They're losing control and are getting desperate.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Nicholas Ware, I can't believe we left the empire for this shit.
	Arizona Desert Rat says, as far as I can tell, we haven't been doing much drilling in the US, so I doubt we have much oil and gas to spare for Europe.
	Yeah, they're trying to get the prices up that are paid by the Europeans.
	That way there will be more drilling in the United States because they're not going to be as obsessed about the environment as they are in Europe.
	Whereas Trump is telling Starmer about the only country that he likes in Europe, which seems to be Britain, drill baby drill, which means go for the shale energy that exists here and go for the North Sea energy.
	And that's good advice.
	And that's very good advice.
	We've also got Antarctica as well, which has a lot of oil reserves up there, the part that we've claimed.
	We could be going up there and we could be cussing down oil prices to unprecedented lows if we're actually serious about it.
	And there's some offshore off the Falklands.
	That's true.
	That's why one of the main reasons they want it in the first place.
	I really don't understand why Donald Trump likes Keir Starmer so much, though.
	I don't think he does, man.
	The number of times that he insults him to his face while telling him that he likes him is quite funny.
	True, true.
	I really like you.
	Everybody around you is an idiot.
	I really like you.
	All your policies are stupid.
	I really like you.
	What are you doing with your life?
	Have you considered suicide?
	Like, he doesn't.
	Did he say that?
	No, but it's the subtext.
	The subtext.
	No, he doesn't.
	That would be great.
	That would be a real dominant move if he actually said that to his face.
	Brings in like a samurai sword, just places it there.
	I heard you ban ninja sword, so I've given you one last one to take yourself out.
	A loaded revolver, go behind the guard chest.
	Someone online, I think our Ukrainian policy should be leave them to their own devices.
	Europe can do whatever they want, but we don't have to care.
	Correct.
	Correct.
	If only.
	And Lord Inquisitor Hector Rex, first we had Bose, Britain, and now we have Firassas, Germany.
	What country would Josh and Harry like to reform in their image?
	Zimbabwe.
	Sorry, Rhodesia.
	I'll take Scotland and enforce English manners on them and English ways.
	But also, you know, half of me is Scottish, so they can't depose me because I've got blood claims.
	There you go.
	You could probably trace your clan back.
	Oh, yeah, I've already done it.
	But I'd make them great.
	I'm not going to just entirely torment them, but I'd do a little bit of tormenting because they're so resentful to the English.
	Well, by taking their heroine away.
	I'm going to take your heroin away and I'm going to teach you to be healthy.
	See, this vegetable, you're going to start eating them.
	Brutal.
	They're going to fry it first, but okay.
	Yeah.
	My grandparents were terrible for that, by the way.
	It's not like a stereotype.
	It is true.
	It's just a true stereotype then.
	All right.
	Henry Ashman, given the default position in Argentina when things are bad at home is to kick off about the Falklands, I would reinforce the naval forces within the South Atlantic.
	Although, knowing Kirstama, he'll likely give the islands to Argentina for free enough to pay off their national debt to sweeten the deal.
	Many comments like this, and sadly, yeah, probably that's the most likely option.
	Ashman, again, this is just yet another example of nations having a tantrum when things get worse before they get better.
	I can think of quite a few other cases, including the Liz Trust premiership, where people cannot accept challenging times to reset the system before things can get better.
	Yeah, again, it's short-termism.
	Kevin Fox, pretty sure it'd be a bad idea for Harry to put his employment deals on his ESTA form when he fills it out.
	All it will take is a Demoprat to check his form, and he'll be allowed in and fast-tracked to Gitmo.
	Listen, if Callum can get into America, it's getting back into England is honestly what I'm most worried about.
	I did that recently, and I was genuinely worried.
	Just like, are they going to stop me at the border?
	And everything was fine.
	There you go.
	There you go.
	I think we'll be all right.
	Derek Power, British invade Argentina and renames it Greater Falklands.
	That's a great idea.
	Yeah, yeah.
	They're at their weakest.
	Under a different government, perhaps.
	Under the firmocracy, it would happen.
	No, we've got a workshop names.
	That's a terrible name.
	Erectatorship.
	No.
	And with that, I think we've run out of time, folks.
	So thank you very, very much for joining us.
	Thanks to everybody who donated, and we'll see you again tomorrow.

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