The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1276

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Oct. 17, 2025 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1276

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	Good afternoon and welcome to the podcast of Lotus Eaters episode 1276.
	Is it 76 or 77, Sam?
	76.
	76.
	Excellent.
	Raised my mic up a little bit.
	All right.
	Thank you very much.
	I'm your host, Harry, joined today by Bo and Firas.
	Today we're going to be talking about the shaky Gaza peace, which looks already to be crumbling.
	Who would have expected that?
	No peace in the Middle East.
	I never ever could have predicted something like that.
	We're going to look into Birmingham being a no-go zone.
	Something that we've already internalized, but it's always good to see more examples of why.
	And Bo's going to be telling us about why your Chinese girlfriend is spying on you.
	Dan, watch out.
	But before we carry on, I would just like to say a big thank you to the author Neil Asher, who is a science fiction and fantasy author who has sent in signed copies of one of his entire series here.
	We really appreciate that.
	Thank you very much.
	We're all fans of science fiction sci-fi, so I'm sure they'll get a good look in when we can eventually get around to it.
	You can imagine what the reading lists of every author, of every presenter on the show looks like.
	But we will get around to it and we really appreciate your support.
	So thank you very much for that.
	Is there anything else that you gentlemen would like to say before we get into the news?
	Maybe we can invite him in one.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Perhaps, yeah.
	And Stelios's.
	Oh, I was going to mention that at the beginning of the segment.
	Brilliant.
	So with that, let's get into it.
	So let's talk about the shaky and potentially already crumbling peace that has been enacted in Israel and Gaza over the past few weeks and what's been going on with that.
	First, though, I'd like to say, one, a big thank you to everybody who tuned in to the webinar to speak to Bo and Stelios last night on Stelios' ancient Greek virtue ethics course.
	From what I've been told, it was a great success, and everybody who joined in was very polite and cordial, asking very interesting and relevant questions.
	Anything you'd like to say to everybody?
	Yeah, no, it was really good.
	It was totally worth it.
	If you're interested in that, if you're interested in ethics, particularly ancient virtue ethics, which people should try to be these days.
	We are in a very anti-ethical, anti-virtuous time, so it's good to reacquaint ourselves with the classics.
	Because as well as just being able to adapt your own personal behavior and enrich your own life, it's also enriching your understanding of culture and our history, the ancient European history that traces all the way back to the ancient Greeks.
	There's a lot still to be learnt from Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the like.
	Don't believe the coal popper propaganda that Plato's bad.
	No, I certainly will not.
	No, no, that's talking about ours about that beforehand.
	Honestly, Karl Popper's critiques and ad hominem examinations of Plato, they just seem to be just bad faith attacks on what serves as some of the foundations of Western philosophy.
	When someone tries to attack the bedrock of your civilization, he's an enemy.
	Certainly.
	Not that everything Plato ever said was brilliant.
	In some ways, he's mad.
	But there's loads there that is fascinating and interesting and of value.
	And of eternal value.
	Yeah, big time.
	So if you're interested in that sort of thing, consider buying Stelios's eight or nine part lecture course.
	He's put a lot of hard work.
	Guys, a PhD is a real-life Athenian philosopher, so you could be worse.
	Of course, it's very worth it.
	You can find it on courses.lotuseaters.com and you can select from three price options.
	If you'd like to just pay all in one lump sum, you can pay £325 or you can split it across three payments for £108.34.
	So please consider doing that.
	It will be very much worth your time.
	With all of that said, let's get more deeply into the news.
	So at the end of last month in September, Trump presented a 20-point Gaza peace plan in full, which was set to be deliberated and agreed upon by the representatives of Gaza and Israel and Netanyahu.
	They said at this point that Israel and Hamas had signed off on the first phase of his 20-point Gaza peace plan.
	And in this BBC article, they include the peace plan in full.
	It says that he unveiled the plan at the White House on the 29th of September alongside Netanyahu.
	And on the 3rd of October, Hamas said it had agreed to return all 48 remaining hostages that were being held in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and Gaza detainees.
	Because part of this was that obviously there were Palestinian prisoners who'd been given life sentences because of their involvement in Hamas and other events like the 7th of October.
	Part of this whole deal was to return those over to the Palestinian authorities.
	And there was also the idea of handing over the governance of Gaza to Palestinian technocrats.
	Although part of the, one of the most important and I think consequential, if they actually get to do it, developments in this proposal is that there will be a technocratic apolitical Palestinian committee who are also overseen by a supervisory international transitional body called the Board of Peace,
	which will be headed and chaired by Donald Trump, but also have other advisors like Tony Blair, because Tony Blair may end up being what he was always born to be, which is some kind of Middle Eastern colonial administrator if he were born in more civilized times.
	But obviously, this is at the same time comprehensive and vague in many of its points, because there comes from the very first point, you can see that they state that Gaza will be de-radicalized, terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors.
	And already in that kind of language, we can see where some of the disagreements and issues might pop up because you ask the question, what does terror-free mean?
	Who gets to decide what terror-free constitutes?
	At what point do you measure that something has become terror-free or terror-free enough to meet the very first point of this proposal?
	And because of that vagueness and the fact that you are trying to bring peace to a very unstable region of the world in the first place, we can already see a lot of the cracks starting to emerge in the past week or so.
	And speaking of this week, as a result of these agreements going ahead on the 13th of October, I think that was Tuesday.
	Was that Monday or Tuesday?
	I think that was Monday just past.
	Trump has declared an enduring peace and prosperity in the region, which may yet prove to be somewhat premature.
	Well, one of the things I said, I did a little video with Nate, Mr. Hape Reviews, that's on a little channel, The State of Politics.
	Again, the State of Politics.
	Politics.
	I said there when this came out, like, so two, three days ago, whatever it was, that it could only ever really be, realistically, sort of a hiatus.
	Neither party can be trusted to do what they say.
	They just can't.
	It'll come to a crunch moment.
	I would have thought.
	It'll come to a crunch moment.
	We're only finding those crunch moments, but carry on.
	Where Hamas has got to do something that they've said they'll do, signed a bit of paper saying they'll do, and then they just don't.
	Or the other way around, the Israeli government say we'll stop doing something or other if these conditions are met.
	You get to the day when they've got to do that, and they just don't.
	I mean, how many times do we have to play this out?
	How many times?
	When Hamas agreed to this, they made it clear that they won't, in fact, disarm.
	Well, that was one of the things that they were doing.
	They would only disarm to a Palestinian authority that they approve of, essentially.
	Meaning, not the existing Palestinian authority, who they view as a bunch of traitors.
	So this whole thing, the acceptance of it was very mealy-mouthed on Hamas's side.
	And on the Israeli side, Netanyahu had really to be beaten into accepting it and threatened with complete international abandonment and with the fact that everybody was now recognizing a Palestinian state to pressure him to accept some kind of deal.
	When in reality, neither side wants a two-state solution.
	Like the two-state solution is a sort of outside invention.
	The pipe dream.
	Yeah.
	The Israelis want not just mandate Palestine.
	They want more territory than that.
	And the Palestinians, particularly, well, Hamas at least, they want a universal Islamic caliphate that includes Palestinian territories.
	So this is very fragile.
	The idea that it's an enduring peace that's probably going to age badly.
	Well, I mean, one of the things with Donald Trump is that he likes to project strength.
	Yes.
	And he likes for all of his statements to be completely definitive, even if in the long run they prove to have been only temporary.
	And I think this is one of those cases because already when he was doing his tour of the Middle East earlier on this week, when he was giving his speech in the Knesset and when he was giving his speeches in Egypt as well, where it was, what is it, Sharam?
	Sharma Sheikh.
	Thank you very much for the aid in pronunciation there, which was also being attended by people like, I believe Tony Blair might have been there.
	Starmer was there.
	Starmer was there.
	Milan was there.
	The Qataris were there.
	The Egyptians, obviously.
	The Saudis and the Emiratis were not that enthusiastic.
	So they didn't send their highest representatives.
	But they sent high enough people because nobody wants to upset Trump.
	And if you look for the video of Trump humiliating Starmer, it's actually quite funny.
	Many such cases.
	Many such cases.
	Constantly.
	But already he's starting to put word out saying that, well, you know, we've solved this problem.
	We've solved this enduring crisis, this generation-long problem.
	Perhaps it's time to bring peace over to Iran as well.
	When he stated that it'd be great if we could make a peace deal with Iran as well.
	Wouldn't that be nice?
	I think they want to.
	At which point, every analysis that I've seen of this thus far, as well as the reactions from the Iranian regime, has been no.
	Pretty straightforwardly, no.
	You helped to bomb us back in June.
	The Israelis began bombing two days before the Americans and Iranians were set to sit down and negotiate.
	And so, if you allow your proxy, Israel, to bomb Iran right ahead of negotiations, what's the point of negotiations?
	There's a real problem there.
	Well, the message that they seem to have internalized from that, and I think it's a pretty rational message, is that, well, we can't trust you.
	No.
	On the negotiating table, it might just be distracting us to buy some time for a proxy to attack us in one way or another.
	And so they don't seem to have some kind of mutual ground that they can all meet on here.
	But the thing is, sorry, this makes the deal more important for Trump.
	Firstly, he put an enormous amount of diplomatic capital behind it because assembling all of these world leaders to go to Egypt, he said that he gave them 20 minutes' notice that they should show up in Egypt.
	And all of the Europeans came.
	And then the Arabs came and participated, da-da-da-da, whatever.
	So he put a huge amount of political capital in it.
	But there's another dimension, which is now with Hezbollah in Lebanon really on the back foot, shall we say, and Syria no longer a threat, there's a lot of shared interests between the United States and Iran.
	There genuinely are containing Turkey, containing Pakistan, trying to separate Iran from China, etc., etc., which Trump does need to do if he wants to isolate China.
	The problem, the oil in the ointment, is the Israel question because the Iranians are fanatically obsessed with this.
	And so are the Americans.
	Well, I mean, Trump, in this same speech, said that the price for this, by the looks of it, would be that Iran would, of course, need to stop funding proxies and quote, finally recognize Israel's right to existence, which is going to be the real tough selling point for them, especially after the events earlier on this year.
	Trump Trump does get a lot done, to be fair.
	Oh, of course.
	So I'm going to throw a tiny bit of shade at Trump, but before I do, just say he gets a lot more done than most presidents.
	Yes.
	Genuinely, my opinion.
	Biden was just eager to roll over for everything that Israel wanted.
	Trump at least has some of America's interests in mind with all that.
	Oh, absolutely.
	Yeah, he gets a lot more done than most.
	He's genuinely, in my opinion, seems to want to make peace wherever he can.
	My only thing is that he does seem to talk about it all like it's a New York property deal.
	You know, like we're talking to the Iranians, it looks like they want a deal.
	We can maybe get a deal done.
	It's like it's more than that, right?
	It's thousands of years of sort of ethno-religious conflict.
	It's not just getting two guys around a table, hammer something out, get your lawyers to agree, done deal, everything sorted, end of story.
	It's not like that.
	I mean, everyone knows that.
	I'm not, you know, that's not a great insight, but that's just how Trump often seems to talk about it.
	I don't know.
	It's not really realistic.
	It's not realistic.
	And with that, already in this article and others that I've got here, there are other reports that within Gaza, a few days after the, you know, the peace has finally been declared.
	We've got the ceasefire.
	We're getting the negotiations.
	Israeli hostages have been released back to their families in Israel, or the bodies have been reinterned back over to Israel.
	And Hamas and Gaza have had some of the Palestinians released back to them.
	Well, they're already reporting here that internal violence is starting to erupt in Gaza again.
	There have been videos shared online.
	I have not seen them myself.
	Supposedly, they are quite gruesome where Hamas militants are conducting summary executions of men who it's accused of being criminals and collaborators with Israel in the middle of a public square.
	With the crowds cheering and being highly supportive and showing, for the most part, that, yeah, Hamas is the only game in town.
	And even within that, in this report here from Fox News that I watched earlier, the analyst that they get here admits, well, says openly that there are inter-factions within Hamas, some of whom are collaborating with the IDF and Israel.
	Within Gaza.
	Within Gaza, and they're the ones who seem to be being targeted by these more militant types as well.
	So, again, if you are collaborating with the people that you're trying to strike a deal with, and at the same time, there are militants within there who don't want you to do that and will just publicly kill you to cheer in crowds.
	That again raises the question of whether these kinds of peace deals will be able to hold in the long term.
	And it says further in Israel, the largest group representing the hostages called on their government to immediately suspend all ceasefire implementations as it accused Hamas of violating the terms of the deal by handing back only four of the 28 remaining bodies of deceased hostages.
	In response, Israel has decided not to open the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, which is one of the crossing points for aid delivery.
	I am aware that they are taking in many more, a lot more aid than they were previously, but still keeping the Rafah crossing closed.
	They're keeping that as a negotiating tool, I would imagine.
	And further, they've started to say, Hamas are saying that, well, we want to return more of the bodies, but we can't because they're all buried under rubble.
	We need for more aid to come in so that we can have the technology to unearth this rubble and get these bodies back.
	Israel is saying, no, according to our internal reports, you do have access to at least 10 more bodies that you can get right now and return to us.
	So, already the lines are starting to be drawn again.
	The disagreements are popping back up.
	We'll see what happens.
	I mean, we've been playing that the United States have been playing this game since the 70s, really.
	You get the leader of some sort of leader of the Arab side, the Palestinian side, some sort of leader of the leader of Israel.
	And whether it's on the White House lawn or at Camp David, whatever it is, you get them to shake hands, you get them to agree to something, you get them to sign a bit of paper, da-da-da-da-da, and on the ground, they immediately start killing it.
	The militants just still do what they're going to do because neither side genuinely respects the written word and respects any kind of legal commitment.
	And because for the Palestinians, this is never going to be acceptable.
	And for the Israelis, what is acceptable to the Palestinians is a threat to their survival.
	Well, it's an impasse.
	It's a classic impasse.
	How do you ever really resolve that?
	And it doesn't look like it's going to be resolved.
	And I think the best that can be hoped for is that Trump's force of character means that the deal is partially implemented.
	And everybody accepts that this kind of partial implementation is the best that they can get.
	So the Palestinians stop getting regularly bombed and there is some aid, but there is no reconstruction and all of that fancy stuff about a Gaza Riviera and building economic zones in Gaza and solving this issue permanently.
	That sort of gets kicked into the long crust.
	Yeah, many of those 20 points were dedicated entirely to the economic recovery and trying to present some kind of international humanitarian human rights vision of Gaza and Palestine where the Palestinians can begin to live productive economic lives again.
	But that is so far down the line from where we are right now.
	And so much of Gaza is just rubble.
	You'd need an international force going into Gaza and shooting what's left of Hamas or putting them in jail or subjugating them somehow, which is difficult to see because for the Israelis, having an international army on their borders that is actually possibly hostile to them or from countries that are hostile to them is never going to be acceptable.
	So the only way this can be policed is international forces with a very real aggressive mandate that applies to both sides.
	And for Israel, absolutely not.
	We have nuclear weapons.
	We will never allow this.
	And for the Palestinians, if you stop us fighting, Israel will attack you, which is what they did to the Jordanians and what they did to the Lebanese.
	So they attacked Jordan and Lebanon when the state in both of these countries tried to say, look, you can't just be running a mock doing your own insurgency thing while we're in control.
	So it doesn't really function the way Trump imagines it.
	This is just managerialism on steroids.
	Plus, the UN will never be able to do that.
	The full-blown UN forces with the blue hats on all that sort of thing.
	Because there's far too many countries in the UN that would veto such a thing.
	So that's not going to, it's just not going to happen.
	And perhaps Tony Blair can bring them all back to the table.
	Yeah, will Tony Blair ever get to be the viceroy of the Gaza Strip?
	Maybe Tony Blair is the secret to peace in the Middle East after destabilizing it so much in the first place.
	But what you're discussing there of the idea of, well, international forces would need to come in and basically administer the whole thing by force.
	Well, because of all of the tensions that have cropped straight back up, we're basically getting that, or at least threats to that effect from Trump on his truth social post saying, if Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them.
	There's not really any other way to read that statement.
	Can you look at the image underneath that?
	Yeah, there it is.
	That's Dr. Strangelove, isn't it?
	Yep.
	That's pretty clear-cut.
	And then he did clarify slightly later on afterwards when he was being questioned in the White House.
	They asked him, you know, what do you, like, what does that look like practically?
	Will you send in US forces?
	And he said, didn't say who would go in.
	Someone will go in.
	It's not going to be us.
	Let's just hear him say it himself.
	If they kept telling Kivan Gaza, we would have no choice but to go in and kill them.
	So do you mean US forces would go in and take out the money?
	No, I didn't say who would go in, but somebody will go in.
	It's not going to be us.
	We won't have to.
	There are people very close, very nearby, that will go in.
	They'll do the trick very easily.
	But under our auspices.
	You've also posted about your car.
	I wonder what that means.
	What, the Egyptian army?
	The Jordanian army?
	The Israelis would never accept the Egyptians.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	What does that mean?
	And so it would be some kind of, like the Indonesians have said we're willing to send 20,000 people.
	Really?
	The Indonesians go in.
	Okay.
	They're willing to send 20,000 people.
	A curveball.
	Yeah.
	Out of nowhere, Indonesia.
	Isn't Ian Miles Chong Indonesian or is he Malaysian?
	No idea what.
	Ian Miles Chong leading the force for Trump.
	Could you imagine?
	He becomes Viceroy of Israel.
	Killed Marshal Chong.
	With his marshals back on.
	I'd pay to see that one.
	I'd say that.
	That would be get what I voted for.
	I think he's Malaysian, but that would be hilarious.
	Either way.
	That would be hilarious.
	It's just not happening.
	I mean, I don't see it.
	Who possibly would the Israelis accept to do that?
	So maybe the Emiratis and the Saudis, but even then, the level of Israeli mistrust of everybody around them is insane.
	And it's not coming out of the blue, you know?
	It's not irrational mistrust or anything like that.
	Sure.
	And for the Palestinians, if you're going to end up with some kind of non-Muslim force governing them and trying to tell them you've got to like Israel now, and we're going to change your education system, and we're going to be managing your health system, and we're going to be sort of running you as a colonial province.
	They're not going to accept that either.
	They're not going to accept that either.
	The idea that you can just sort of bribe them into accepting it, okay, how?
	Explain to me the mechanics of doing that to two million people who have just been bombed to smithereens.
	If you look at aerial images of Gaza, the extent of destruction is just insane.
	Israelis have been doing this thing well where they send armored personnel carriers load them with like a ton of explosives put them on a remote control and just detonate them in the middle of residential areas to just tear everything down as a cheaper alternative to just bombing them from the air well i mean and current after you do this you're not gonna have a lot of de-radicalized terror-free people um
	In the same way that if you go around raping and murdering Israelis out of the blue, you're not going to have a lot of de-radicalized Israelis.
	I mean, that's absolutely true.
	And you can see even now, in the Independent article talking about how it had only been 24 hours, they said Palestinian health officials reported seven people inspecting their homes in East Gaza were killed by Israeli drones, which is a violation of the ceasefire.
	And the Israeli military denied it, telling the Independent that the individuals had passed through a yellow line to which they had withdrawn.
	The Israeli journalists that the Independent is citing here, though, suggest the military has invisible lines that Palestinians unknowingly cross.
	So again, this is just confusion.
	This is just confusion.
	I mean, there's nothing stable for any of them to actually rely on.
	And every single one of them will see the other one as approaching it entirely in bad faith.
	You've breached the ceasefire.
	No, you've breached the terms of the ceasefire.
	Nobody can trust each other.
	And in Lebanon, Hezbollah signed a ceasefire.
	They didn't adhere to their side of it.
	They're not attacking Israel anymore.
	But Israel is bombing Lebanon, I want to say, weekly, sometimes daily.
	And they're bombing the equipment that is used for reconstruction, saying that it's being used to rebuild Hezbollah positions.
	We can't verify it either way.
	But I looked at some of the stuff.
	Like, not all of it is Hezbollah.
	They're just bombing stuff to make sure that people don't go back to South Lebanon so that there's more pressure on Hezbollah through the civilians.
	The way that this war is fought is inherently aimed at ethnic cleansing from both sides.
	And I don't see any compromises there.
	Yeah.
	Well, that's the situation as it stands right now.
	Obviously, things will continue to develop.
	But right now, that's where we're at.
	We'll see if Trump actually does follow through on these threats.
	If there continues to be fighting and killing in the streets, I'll be interested because I think we're all of us are on the same page here in that we don't want there to continue to be massacres and wars going on in these territories.
	Nobody wants there to just be thousands and thousands of people killed every single day.
	So that's where we're at.
	Let's go through the super chats and rumble rants.
	Sergeant Slaughter on Rumble says Indonesia is something like 85 to 90% Muslim.
	The vast majority of them are Sunni.
	Correct.
	Busted Brian says, I'm no bigger lover of Trump, but I wonder where you get off with such harsh criticism when the difference between Trump and all governments is he's trying, unlike your burgeoning UK caliphate.
	One, we're not a caliphate.
	I don't think that's a reasonable thing to say.
	Two.
	Yeah, two, I think we are actually being quite fair to Trump here in that we are saying that he's trying.
	Yeah, we know he's trying.
	We're saying the situation is too difficult even for Trump.
	Yeah, Irish.
	He's trying, to be honest.
	And we're saying that he's being bombastic about the expectations.
	That's not that controversial.
	Thank you.
	One tall order.
	There's only two options here to solve everything.
	Either one side or the other is completely eradicated or someone reanimates Hadrian and gives him 10 million legionnaires to subjugate the whole area.
	I like that last option.
	Sigilstone 17.
	Can Firaz answer something for me?
	Muslims can't eat pork, so why would they name the organization Ham Ass?
	Answer that one.
	On YouTube, neo-unrealist Hamas is in a civil war against the Darmush clan, a rival Salafist group whose jihad is not nationalist but international who think Hamas is soft.
	That's a partial truth, and it's not just the Darmush clan, and they've been rounding up other people like influencers and sort of social media characters who have since apparently been disappeared and taken to hospitals that are being used as detention centres.
	That's Hamas.
	So, yeah.
	But that is partially true.
	I'm not saying you're wrong.
	I'm saying there's more to it.
	Luke J, majority of Palestinians are not going to forget what happened to them.
	You get rid of Hamas, another group will just pop up.
	If Trump led a weaker country, everyone would laugh at him.
	Jesus is King, beep, boop, blanc.
	I'm Harry, bot, beep, boop.
	Thanks for your money, I suppose.
	Nekama Gluck says, Hamas, the expert tunnel diggers of the planet, don't know how to dig.
	You got him.
	You got him there.
	Dig for victory.
	Pelaghi is probably.
	Only the Alzut can stop Hamas and Duran.
	Oh, you stop.
	I know what it is now, right?
	I don't want to, but I do.
	Hawk23, 10 months in, and I'm already worried for the Western world without him.
	Someone's just sent in two pounds, so thank you very much.
	Luke J, Bo, now you have 1% Native American DNA.
	When are you getting a casino?
	Good question.
	Also, not drunk this time.
	I enjoy the show, lads.
	Good stuff from the Aussies.
	So, Bo.
	Well, it was only on Ancestry.com that said I had a tiny bit of Native American Indian blood.
	living dna didn't say such a thing and um i'm hoping tom rosell's five the jive says anything under one percent or around one percent could be negligible it might just be noise in the thing and it might not be uh yeah i don't know What did you say, Harry?
	I think what Bo is saying, to translate, is Hey-a-ho-a, hey-a-ho-a No, I'm proud of my people.
	Who is it that you said you recognise as your one supreme sovereign?
	Oh, the last leader of the Iroquois.
	The Iroquois Confederacy.
	Yeah, English monarchy BTFO'd.
	I identify as Mohawk now.
	Bohawk.
	Oh, yeah.
	Par says, greetings to our Saxon friends from the other side of the Irish Sea.
	Keep up the good works, lads.
	Thank you very much.
	And one more rumble rant from Busted Brian saying, my apologies to you guys.
	Woke up on the wrong side of the bed today and took it out on you guys.
	I retract my guys calling you a caliphate.
	Sorry.
	I appreciate it.
	That's absolutely fine.
	We all get in a bit of a mood sometimes, don't we?
	Thanks for the apology.
	I love it when people come across as a dick and they go, sorry, I was being a dick.
	That is, honestly.
	Disrespectful.
	Yeah, it's a great character trait to be able to do that.
	Yes, it is.
	Yes, it is.
	Thank you for that, Brian.
	Another reminder, please check out Stelis' course on ancient Greek virtue ethics.
	You know we need them.
	You know you personally need them.
	I know I personally need them.
	We all know that we need them.
	So please check it out.
	It's definitely worth your time.
	I want to talk to you about how Enoch Powell was right about Birmingham, but from the lens of what's been happening with football, we had a bunch of MPs, the Islamo communists, saying that an Israeli team, Maccabi Tel Aviv, shouldn't be allowed to play in Birmingham against Aston Villa.
	And they started a petition for that.
	It was Jeremy Corbyn, Ayub Khan, Iqbal Mahmoud, I think his name was, whatever.
	And they all joined in saying, no, no, no, no, this absolutely shouldn't happen.
	Basically, the Jasballa Brigade.
	And lo and behold, it worked.
	It was announced that they wouldn't be allowed to participate in.
	It was announced that the fans wouldn't be allowed to attend, even though the match would go ahead.
	The decision was made by something called the Safety Advisory Group.
	And the West Midlands police says that it had concerns about its ability to deal with protests when the Israeli side play at Villa Park.
	Who's going to be protesting them in Birmingham?
	Brummies.
	Yes, natives, I'm sure.
	Brummies.
	Natives.
	And so the safety advisory group, which issues safety certificates, these are quite important because if you don't have the right safety certification, your insurance becomes extremely expensive.
	And that means that the cost of hosting the event becomes quite expensive.
	And that really affects everybody in the area because as a result of this, now everybody in Birmingham is going to have to pay higher insurance premiums for things like rioting.
	If you check out my Modagiopolitics substack, you'll find that I've been talking about the risk of rioting in Europe for quite some time.
	But anyway, what obviously then happened was that the Gaza MPs started celebrating that they succeeded and that the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans won't be allowed to watch the match in Aston Villa.
	And they clothed it in the language of safetyism.
	That it was really for the safety of the people of Birmingham that this was decided.
	Now, the Tel Aviv fans are likely to destroy Birmingham.
	As a matter of fact, the Tel Aviv fans are quite nasty.
	No, no, I know, I know, I know.
	But I don't think they were the ones who are going to be destroying Birmingham.
	And the language here is one, safetyism, two, the politicization of everything.
	Sports should be enjoyed by all, regardless of race, ethnicity, da-da-da-da.
	However, the political dynamics around sports spectacles cannot be ignored, and drastic action must be taken to ensure the safety of fans, players, staff, and local residents.
	So they touch on the language that is used by the British administrative state and the British left.
	If you watch my Real Politik from Monday, I explain how the Muslim Brotherhood always uses the terminology of this culture in order to sort of undermine it and attack it from within.
	Please go check it out.
	And why, as always, this is the ever-pertinent question at the forefront of my mind.
	Why does it have to be our problem?
	Why did we have to import these Middle Eastern ethnic grievances in the first place?
	Good question.
	It's a completely unnecessary problem for us to give to ourselves.
	Look, another question is, this is a UEFA map, UEFA match.
	So the European Football Federation.
	And one of the questions is, why is Israel counted as a European country?
	I was just waiting to say that.
	It's the same question.
	Yeah, I was waiting to say that.
	I feel like Europe ends at the Bosphorus.
	Yeah.
	I mean, even in Istanbul, it's called the European side and the Asian side.
	That's what they call it.
	Pretty much.
	So, yeah, like Israeli teams shouldn't really be in UEFA, just geographically, right?
	But they are.
	And we saw Zara Sultana after her tiff with your party celebrating this and saying that more Israelis should be banned for more things.
	The Muslim vote, an organization mobilizing Muslims for the interests of Muslims, blah, blah.
	And then you see the Islamo communists commenting.
	This one is actually funny.
	I say, let the Tel Aviv fans in.
	Once the game is finished, lock the doors for two years, close the food stalls, cut the electricity, and flatten their homes.
	Well, this is going to be like Hillsborough on steroids, this person is asking for.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And I'll ignore some of these guys, but I'll want to talk for a second about how cucked the police is.
	Because the statement from the police was: we have actively engaged with a wide range of local partners and community representatives.
	Presumably, the white Brits didn't have their community representative present.
	No, we never realized we needed community representatives until a few years ago.
	You thought it was Parliament.
	You were naive and stupid, and you thought that your representatives sit in Parliament.
	And what is being expressed here is that this is a colony in Birmingham that doesn't, in fact, obey British law, where the rules of the British state do not apply.
	And therefore, everything must be negotiated with local community leaders, which is incidentally exactly how Lebanon is policed.
	Like, that's how Lebanon is policed.
	You go and you ask the different sectarian leaders, what do you think?
	And then the army acts or doesn't act.
	And everybody knows globally that Lebanon is an ideal situation governmentally that needs to be replicated across the world.
	It's pretty much that.
	While a safety certificate is issued by Birmingham City Council, I wonder who dominates the Birmingham City Council.
	West Midlands Police supports the decision to prohibit away supporters from attending.
	Okay.
	It makes the trouble on the terraces from the 1980s with a bit of fisticuffs.
	Yeah.
	Like, you know, maybe a knuckle duster or a thrown brick once in a while.
	It makes that look like child's play.
	That's just how the working lads got their energy out.
	So Kier Starmer says that this is completely the wrong decision.
	We will not tolerate anti-Semitism on our streets.
	The role of the police is to ensure all football plans can enjoy the game without fear of violence or intimidation.
	If only he was in a position of power and was able to do something about it.
	I mean, this guy sounds sensible.
	You know, the British state should be sovereign and should decide what events are permitted and what not rather than mobbish community leaders from the third world.
	He sounds very sensible.
	Maybe we should give the guy some power and make him, I don't know, prime freaking minister.
	Well, you know, that if it was, say, Englishman protesting a bunch of Pakistanis in Birmingham playing football or something, then he would mobilize the military.
	Yes.
	Immediately to get them off the streets.
	It's very, very brave of him that he won't tolerate anti-Semitism on our streets.
	It's very, very brave of him.
	I'm very impressed.
	But apparently.
	He did steal endless boats and legal migration of Muslim people.
	Okay.
	Yes.
	That all adds up.
	There's a big government crisis happening now with talks across the board over how to actually allow the Tel Aviv fans to attend, which sort of brings up the question: are they really nice people, the Tel Aviv fans?
	You're telling me they actually did something to warrant a backlash.
	They weren't just perfectly peaceful.
	So some of these guys march with the right.
	And since 2014, I want to draw your attention to two points.
	One is that in 2014, when there was a war in Gaza that killed, I think, 2,000 people, something like that, the Huffington Post was describing it as a genocide, which it wasn't a genocide.
	And they're describing this one as a genocide.
	I think it was an attempt at ethnic cleansing.
	I don't think it was a genocide.
	That's a different conversation.
	But what the supporters of this club were chanting was the schools in Gaza are closed because all the children are dead.
	Which, even by Middle Eastern standards, where we all wear our hatreds on our sleeves and sort of express them quite openly, that's a bit extreme.
	Like that's there's no school in Gaza, there are no more kids left.
	That's just evil.
	And these are the fans of the Bakabi Tel Aviv.
	There is no school tomorrow.
	There are no children left in Gaza.
	They chant nicer things like F the Arabs and so on and so forth.
	Let the IDF finish the job, blah, blah, blah.
	You expect some extreme nationalism, but celebrating that the kids are dead, that's just vile.
	That's just not cricket, champ.
	That's just stock cricket, is it?
	And I think it's sort of worth emphasizing that if you are marinated in European Christian culture and especially in liberal culture, you have no idea what the Middle East is actually like.
	You don't get it.
	You don't understand it.
	Pretending that everybody's just going to get along the minute that they touch British soil is so freaking stupid.
	It's insanely stupid.
	And these guys have form in Amsterdam.
	Apparently, this is an actually pretty unbiased Guardian investigation.
	If you remember in Amsterdam, I think it was around 7 November 2024.
	Yeah, I was going to say this was last year, and I saw a number of, I don't think we reported on it.
	Maybe we did, but I wasn't involved in it.
	So a number of conflicting reports of what went on.
	Jewish people and Israelis were alleging that it was just a mass outbreak of anti-Semitism for no reason.
	Other people were reporting that the Jewish fans had been actually trying to goad the opposing fans.
	So, really, as best as I could tell, as best as I could tell, what started was before the match, one of the Israeli fans bashed a taxi.
	And then, according to The Guardian, that taxi, who was obviously Muslim, assembled a bunch of question.
	Assembled a bunch of his co-religionists to try to attack a casino where the Tel Aviv fans were having a party.
	And the police managed to break that off.
	Then the Tel Aviv fans went around tearing down Palestinian flags in Amsterdam.
	Why are there Palestinian flags in Amsterdam?
	Good question.
	Yes.
	So it just became a series of escalations.
	And then it became a series of escalations, and the groups from both sides got beaten by the other, depending on who had the numbers where.
	And it pretty much rolled through the center of Amsterdam, like a rolling riot as the fans moved in, until the police managed to finally contain it.
	The Israelis describe it as the pogrom of Amsterdam.
	That's just dishonest.
	And the Muslim side say that they did nothing wrong and the Tel Aviv fans had it coming.
	That's also a bit dishonest.
	I think if the Tel Aviv fans had behaved a little bit better, they would have still been attacked, to be fair, because they're Israeli.
	And because that's this sort of tendency.
	So we just have to be truthful about that.
	They're horrible, the Tel Aviv fans.
	They say absolutely atrocious things, even by Middle Eastern standards.
	But yes, there is a very real risk in a city like Birmingham that this would escalate into violence.
	And here are some videos of the rioting.
	I won't bore you with them.
	But just to explain why the police's hands are tied and why they're panicking, this is the Aston Park region where the Villa Park, where the Aston Villa Park football ground is located.
	And it's a 70% Muslim area.
	Which obviously has implications.
	Like the idea that you could seed neighborhoods and let them become 70% foreign is absurd.
	And if you look at, I mean, right, that's just am I allowed to say particular words regarding ethnic displacement on YouTube or will we get in trouble?
	Like, because like Samson said no.
	Yeah, I think everybody understands what's being said.
	But if you look at the area around it, it's 80% Asian, British, 80% British doing a lot of heavy lifting.
	The whole surrounding area is pretty much 82%, 80%.
	It's a big enclave.
	It's a big enclave.
	And the football field is located somewhere here in the middle.
	And you can easily see that getting people in and out is going to be quite risky because there is going to be a Tinderbox.
	That's a Tinderbox.
	That's a Tinderbox.
	So the safety concerns are legitimate.
	But I don't think it was about safety.
	And I think had certain decisions not been made and had this base gentleman been listened to, not this one, obviously, this morning.
	I was going to say, wait, what?
	Based Louis Goodall?
	Yeah.
	I mean, before I go get to the base gentleman, I just want to remind you that a week ago, Robert Jenrick was saying that Birmingham isn't properly integrated, or that at least there were parts of Birmingham that weren't properly integrated.
	And all of the midwits said that he was absolutely wrong.
	And you have Lewis Goodall here saying that, no, it's a fantastic people, a success story, blah, blah, blah.
	But the obsession of the online right with it has been as transparent as it gets by which he's trying to say you're racist.
	Fine.
	I don't care.
	So all he's saying is don't notice.
	Don't notice.
	And if you do notice, it's a good thing.
	You're allowed.
	Because these people at the same time were saying, oh, it's such a beautifully multicultural city, which is a euphemism.
	That's just veiled language, which means it's not English.
	And you're allowed to say this if you're in favour of it, but if you're not in favour of it, then what are you talking about?
	You're crazy conspiracy theorists.
	A fantastic city.
	Well, okay, you're allowed your opinion.
	A success story, objectively not true.
	Objectively not true.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	And you mentioned Powell at the beginning, yeah, because he was from, he was, I think, Paul and grew up in Birmingham, and certainly his constituency was just outside Birmingham.
	Yep.
	And so, yeah, he called like.
	I'll get to him, but I want to insult the BBC a little bit first.
	Okay, go for it.
	When Jenrick said that there's a problem with integration, the BBC said that the 2021 census found 91.3% of Handsworth's population, the area in Birmingham they were talking about, were black, Asian, and ethnic minorities.
	I don't understand how that's not English.
	Not English, exactly.
	It's significantly higher than Birmingham as a whole, which is 51% not English.
	But Handsworth demographic is not unique.
	Smallheath, Alam Rock, and Spark Hill are among Birmingham neighborhoods where the population is more than 75% Asian and British Asian, which is why this problem happened.
	For generations, the city has prided itself on its multiculturalism.
	Do you feel proud?
	Has it?
	Do you guys feel particularly proud right now?
	I can't imagine that all of the people who chose to leave Birmingham because of the way it was changing, who were born and bred there, were particularly proud of it.
	I wouldn't say so.
	I wouldn't say so.
	It's like all of the Londoners who moved to Essex.
	Yep, pretty much.
	I think we must be mad.
	Literally mad to have done such a thing.
	Like the Romans.
	I see that the mouth of the river Tiber foaming with blood.
	Jenrik's comments, where he said that Birmingham had an integration problem, have angered many politicians, rights groups, and locals.
	Locals is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
	The Bishop of Birmingham, Michael Volland, Michael Belland, no, Michael Volland, said he felt said he felt they had the potential to generate anxiety and stir up division and feed into a harmful narrative that provides fuel for a fire of toxic nationalism.
	Okay.
	Don't pay me so glad we avoided that toxic nationalism.
	You know, now every time Jews have to move around, they have to be in sort of armored vehicles, but at least there's no toxic nationalism.
	And again, this isn't a defense of the fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv.
	The point here is simple.
	If the British state is sovereign, then whoever it gives a visa should be safe anywhere on the territory of Britain.
	And it should not be the case that different ethnic groups and community leaders can override the decisions of the British state.
	There is a sovereign.
	If, as I said on X, if the British government decides that it's going to resurrect Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot, and Stalin to boot, and parade them in Westminster, the people who prevent this should be British people acting within the system, not the threat of mob violence.
	The threat of mob violence means that you have been colonized and means that you are no longer sovereign over the entirety of your territory because you have to negotiate with community leaders every time you want to host somebody.
	It doesn't matter if this particular guest of yours is good or bad.
	It's the decision of the British government.
	It's not the decision of the mob.
	And what's happened here is that the mob has taken control of Britain's second largest city and they're bragging about it while sitting in Britain's parliament.
	That's what's happened.
	I mean, for me, you know, I agree with most of what you're saying there.
	To me, I can't help but get the feeling that part of this is all by design.
	That the sovereign government sees, because it sees these people as its own client group, it's not necessarily that they've entirely lost control, it's that they're allowing this to happen to foment confusion, to foment chaos, and also to be able to,
	as they have done with digital IDs recently, they make sure that the boats are still coming in to generate resistance to the boats, to give themselves consent, to manufacture the consent, to say, here's the technocratic solution to this problem.
	They're not trying to solve the problem.
	They're trying to let the problem get worse so that people will eventually feel that they are willing to accept any solution that the British state proposes to them.
	Absolutely.
	This was always about divide and conquer with the government acting as colonial administrators of the British people and treating them as a second class group that needs to be subjugated and put down through the introduction of foreign elements that are more dependent on it.
	That's always been obvious, I think.
	And it's become more obvious with Starmer pushing for a digital ID that is going to connect to everything that you do that will eventually be tied to your social media and to your right to express yourself.
	This is very transparent at this stage.
	So let's listen to this base gentleman, Enoch Powell, and remember, if only more people had listened.
	A considerable proportion.
	In the case of Birmingham, it will be at least two-fifths will be occupied by the immigrants and their descendants by the early years of the next century.
	It will be separate for the most part from the rest of the population because of the numbers.
	If the numbers were small, then of course, like any very small minority, they would filter into the population.
	But nobody seriously imagines that if two-fifths of Birmingham consists of a first generation of descendants born here, of people from the West Indies, from Africa and from Asia, there will not be a profound difference between that part of a population and the rest.
	You think nobody would notice?
	No, I think they'll notice, certainly.
	The question about this is whether they will notice with fear and horror unless someone announces to them that fear and horror are an appropriate response to such a fascinating.
	You think that human nature is such that unless somebody referred to this, nobody would notice that their own native cities were transformed, that the white population was moving out and a different population was an excellent series of clips from that interview and Jonathan Miller, even back then in the early 70s, is presenting all of the same shitlib midwit arguments that you hear to this very day.
	Oh, no, no, no, it's not that people notice, it's not that people don't like what's happening, it's that people like you point it out and tell them to be upset by it.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, complete dishonest bullshit.
	Yeah, Jonathan Miller scumbag.
	If you listen to Powell, I did a video again on the state of politics and they were a half hour, 40-minute odd one, all about the life and career of Powell.
	And he's so unbelievably prophetic.
	He calls it, he's talking about two-fifths.
	Well, it's actually 70% now or 90% in some regions.
	It's underestimating.
	So he's underestimating, if anything.
	And he just calls it perfectly.
	He just describes the world we live in now in places like Birmingham anyway.
	Just describes it perfectly.
	It's unbelievable that his name is just a byword shorthand for insane, unreasonable, irrational bigotry or xenophobia.
	Well, not at all.
	He saw the future almost perfectly.
	I've a remarkable thing.
	Because reality is now becoming unavoidable to certain elites, they are starting to not rehabilitate Powell, but at least acknowledge that factually, in terms of the demographics, he was right, even if they don't agree that it's a bad thing.
	So is it the rest is history podcast?
	State of politics.
	No, no, no.
	No, not your political.
	Not everything's about me.
	Sorry.
	No, not everything.
	Somebody called you Boca Haunters.
	Yeah, I like that.
	Not everything's about the big Boca Hontis.
	No.
	I think it's the Rest of Is History podcast.
	Oh, with Tom Holland.
	Yeah, the Rest is History.
	I think Dominic Sandbrook is that English?
	I think the historian.
	They did an episode examining Enoch Powell and his legacy.
	And this Dominic guy, I saw a number of clips come out of it, was openly admitting that here's what Powell said about this city and that city.
	Here are the demographics now.
	And you can't deny by the light of those facts that he was correct.
	Now, he then went on to try to spin it and say, you know, well, we did get all of these benefits from it, like the magnificent range of food that you could eat now, that kind of thing.
	But they are starting to, at least some fringe elements of the elites, which might then spread out into the broader elite circles.
	They are starting to acknowledge, no, Powell was bob on with what he was saying, even if we don't agree that it was a bad thing like he said it would be.
	So that's that's interesting.
	I'll be interested to see.
	This guy was saying that the change in London was a good thing and that it sort of made London even greater.
	So Tony Bear's communications advisor, was he?
	Yeah.
	So yeah, we're short on time, so let's go through the comments here.
	P.L. Please Vishnu.
	Okay.
	I don't know if you've done this before as I'm a new viewer, but would you do a dedicated episode about Jesus and Christianity outside of politics, just spiritual?
	Why don't you tag me on X and tell me what your questions are and I'll see if I can fit them into something.
	But yeah, okay, fine.
	I wanted to do a piece of content with a historian talking about the historicity of Christ, like the actual historical figure.
	But I haven't really found anyone to take me up.
	I can find you someone.
	Okay.
	So insurance is once again a scam control method.
	Yep, Russian garbage human.
	You're right.
	Reverend Norris, the land of Greta Thunberg sends its regards.
	Thank you.
	Has been interesting seeing all the commies and Palestine activists melt down over the ceasefire up here.
	Yeah, man.
	The sort of like it's not about Palestine.
	They don't give a damn about human rights.
	They are willing to do much worse than the Israelis are doing to the right if they ever got the power to do it.
	These people wear causes like sort of skin suits and it's all based on hatred and resentment and anger.
	And really, Peterson captured it perfectly.
	They're angry at God for having created them.
	And they're angry at their parents for having made them.
	And they're angry at society for having given them the potential to be worthwhile.
	This is who they are.
	Owen Davies, SAGS, the safety administrative groups, regulate all medium and large events.
	It also depends on what the club is willing to pay for to make it safe.
	If they paid more, likely approved.
	Yeah, so there's like, if 80% of the area is willing to attack the Israelis, then the cost becomes prohibitive.
	And that's the message that's being sent.
	Lewis Shaw, I'm struggling to explain to other people why I fly the England flag.
	Can you guys help me explain it better?
	You're proud of your heritage and your people.
	You don't need to explain shit to anyone if you want to do it.
	I wrote a piece.
	You're in England.
	You can do that.
	End of story.
	I wrote a piece called Against Human Rights, in which I argued that your belonging and your existence and your debts are to those around you.
	And that unless you love them and revere them, you will never have a society.
	So if you want, go check it out.
	It's on my other website, convertordie.net.
	If someone ever asked you to explain yourself on that, saying, no, you explain to me why I've got to explain myself.
	That's a yes.
	Yes.
	But you know the answer.
	The answer is going to be, but it's divisive.
	And then the question is, why is it divisive?
	Why do they not like this flag?
	Because they don't belong to this country.
	I don't care if people who hate me don't like that I'm proud of my heritage.
	If they say that, you just go.
	Get away from me then.
	Get away from me then.
	Forget about it.
	Nechama Gluck.
	Just moving on.
	You're going to need to start.
	I'm just moving on, guys.
	You just have to start looking into American Indian insults.
	You start embracing that 1% heritage.
	And then you've got to ask yourself, is he going to scalp us one day?
	Well, one of the bloody.
	Sigilstone says Bo being an Indian explains why he was sharpening a stone earlier while staring at Harry's head, thinking he muttered something about a glorious felt.
	You know, you can just go to Turkey if you want hair transplants.
	Oh, I'm going to scalp you so I can graft it onto my own head.
	I don't blame you.
	I don't blame you.
	But I will put up a fight.
	The chama gluck, okay.
	Has Birmingham been ethnically cleansed?
	Yeah.
	Also, is the truth a crime in Britain and on YouTube?
	It seems it is.
	Absolutely.
	Yeah.
	One toll order says American football, maybe some fisticuffs, a drunk American version of North FC geezer pouring a beer on someone.
	European football, total death war now.
	Yeah, pretty much.
	That sums it up quite nicely.
	And Habsification also said the Maccabee Tel Aviv are known in the football world to have a very strong hooligan element.
	Even of the Israeli football clubs.
	Exactly.
	Hate that club.
	Right.
	Question to the football fans in the audience.
	This is about as far as my football knowledge goes.
	Are Maccabee Tel Aviv the equivalent of like Liverpool fans?
	Because Liverpool fans, from my experience.
	Liverpool fans chanting, the schools are closed because all the kids are dead.
	I can.
	Okay.
	I really can.
	Okay.
	So, like, because in my experience, the Liverpool fans among football fans in England are uniquely awful.
	And they also seem to find your tweets.
	If you're ever proud of being English, you can be guaranteed that there will be a dogpile of scouse fans in your replies telling you that you should go and do bad things to yourself.
	So are they the equivalent?
	Liverpool football.
	Millwall were quite bad.
	West Ham were quite bad back in the day.
	Oh, well, being from the northwest, my experience goes up to like Liverpool.
	Not fair enough.
	All right, so let's talk a little bit about the China spying scandal that's going on in Britain right now.
	Because we haven't talked about it here on Lotus Etas, I don't believe, yet.
	So I think it's high time.
	First of all, just quickly to mention that Stellios has got an ancient Greek virtue ethics course that you can buy.
	And he has a PhD in philosophy, a real-life living Athenian philosopher.
	So if you want that, do consider heading over to the lotusetas.com website.
	And buying that, there's also webinars every week.
	I was on the one yesterday, for example.
	So it's good stuff if you're interested in ancient ethics.
	Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, that sort of thing.
	Okay, so again, the China thing.
	What's going on?
	What is really going on?
	I did a video here on the state of politics.
	Check that out, the state of politics.
	Every segment now.
	Okay, no, yeah, I'll get in trouble for doing it too much, but there is already a little bit of, well, 24 minutes of me and Nate talking about that.
	But that's a few days old now because there's been a few more developments.
	So what actually happened?
	What are we talking about?
	First of all, let's just say what happened before we get into sort of the repercussions and more details.
	So what happened was there's these two guys called Chris, Chris Cash and Chris Berry.
	And one of them, Chris Cash, I believe it was, was working with a thing called the China Research Group.
	He was a parliamentary researcher.
	So he's actually, you know, very close to MPs.
	And this is back, this is a few years ago now.
	All this happened in like between 2021 and 2023.
	So, and this is an important thing, under the Tories.
	Okay, so he was working with various MPs like Tom Tugenhat, you remember him?
	Yes.
	Alicia Kearns and Neil O'Brien.
	And they were working to sort of look at security issues, particularly around China, as the name suggests, the China Research Group.
	So they were looking into what China is doing.
	It's espionage and it's sort of Cold War type stuff that China's doing against Britain.
	So they were looking into that.
	And this Chris had access to their information and what they were talking about and various other things.
	Interestingly, another point to note is we don't know exactly what detail, but he passed that on to a friend of his, Chris Berry, who they met when they were working out in China as younger men, as sort of like teaching type assistants.
	That's what they were doing as younger men.
	So they knew each other.
	And that other Chris is still a teacher to this day, I believe.
	But they knew each other and had been to China, worked and lived in China for a while.
	So this Christopher Cash had access to sensitive stuff.
	Exactly what that sensitive stuff is, we still don't know exactly.
	China probably does now.
	Well, so the allegation is, because both the Chris's deny any wrongdoing, the allegation is, is that he passed that information to the other Chris, who then passed it straight to China, straight to a guy called Kai Kui, probably butchering that pronunciation.
	That's this Kui, Kai Kui, that guy in the middle.
	And he's super, super high up in China.
	I'm describing as that Winnie the Pooh fellas.
	He's right-hand man.
	Wow.
	And this Berry guy, who, what was he, works as a teacher in China?
	He used to was a much younger man.
	Used to.
	How does he have direct access to this guy to give him this information in the first place?
	Well, it went through an intermediary, the other Chris.
	But how he, yeah, how has he got access directly to sort of the top of the Chinese Politburo or the Chinese highest committee?
	Yeah, I don't know.
	I don't know.
	No one knows.
	That's bizarre.
	That's the nature of spy games, though, isn't it?
	Normally, we don't know all this.
	there's some Chinese girlfriend involved in all of this who tends to turn out to be a man somewhere down the line anyway, so like, was it him?
	In makeup and address.
	Just in powers style?
	Pardon me.
	He is.
	Most people agree.
	He's one of the most important men in the Chinese government.
	In fact, he's the deputy director of the Central National Security Commission in China.
	So he's one of the highest, highest people.
	So if this Chris Cash did, if, which is still only alleged, nothing's been proven in court.
	If it is the case that he had access to sensitive information, which really did put our British security at risk or in peril in any way, and he passed it to a chap like that, then that is really bad.
	I mean, if that's true, these two Chris's are absolute traitors.
	That's really bad.
	It's not just like a bit off.
	Yeah, what was that?
	Like a bit like, oh, that's a bit out of order.
	That's a bit scummy, but whatever.
	No, no, it's really bad.
	What was this cash guy doing, giving that information to some guy he just used to work with in the first place?
	If he did it, they both deny any wrongdoing.
	If he did it.
	Yeah, I know, right, yeah.
	Yeah, I know.
	Well, yeah.
	Surely you're working for the government with state secrets.
	Surely you can keep them a secret.
	Well, you're supposed to.
	So the government, when they found this out, they wanted, well, they tried to get them charged.
	The CPS, like anything else, the Crown Prosecution Service would be in charge of doing that.
	They wanted to charge them under the Official Secrets Act of 1911.
	In fact, there's been an update to it in 2024.
	That's also a point to note.
	But yeah, charging them under the Official Secrets Act and sort of espionage laws and things for properly spying, for being a spy for China against us.
	So, okay, that's basically the first thing.
	That's like what actually was alleged to have happened.
	Now, okay, so building on that, the people like Tom Twiggenhat and the other people, the other Tory MPs at the time that were involved, and lots of other people in and around the sphere and around the orbit of everything that happened, a lot of all those people really are saying, this is a total slam dunk.
	these two Chris's did it like there's not really if it got to court it would kind of be a slam dunk They're totally guilty.
	And so it's a travesty that the court case fell apart.
	Well, that's the next thing to mention.
	So recently, in the last few weeks, the court case that was going ahead against them, they were charged a few months ago.
	They were going to go to court.
	And of course, everything comes out in court, doesn't it?
	Reporters can go there and listen to everything that's been said.
	And now the case collapsed.
	The CPS came out and said, we're not going to charge these guys.
	That's basically the end of the story.
	Any explanation given or this is where the real shit storm begins.
	Like, wait a minute, why are they?
	Sorry, what?
	What's going on there?
	Everyone that is in the know says it's a slam dunk.
	Because I've got so many.
	He's got so many questions about all of this.
	Have these guys been on the Chinese payroll since they were in China years ago?
	If so, how were they not caught before they were put onto this China research thing in their capacity?
	Is it them?
	Were there other people involved?
	There's so many questions that we need answering because somehow China got hold of this information.
	If they are guilty of what they've been accused of, yeah, they would have been approached by the Chinese intelligence services at some point as younger men when they were in China and flipped.
	If that is what happened.
	All just paid off.
	Yeah, or just given money, maybe.
	Yeah, perhaps they're not full-blown assets of the Chinese intelligence services, like double agents or anything.
	They're just given money.
	I don't know.
	Who knows?
	We might not ever know now because the CPS is sort of, at this point, anyway, just refusing.
	They say we're not going to prosecute them.
	And now, okay, so these are the two gentlemen in question here.
	Are they just not guilty of anything?
	This is all just crazy anti-China nonsense.
	And these are just poor innocent fellas?
	Or are they actually quite bad traitors?
	Who knows?
	Okay, so the CPS, when they said we're going to, the case has collapsed, we're not going to.
	Reporters and all sorts of other people, even the Tories, people like the people involved, like Tom Twiggenhat, are like, wait, why?
	Like, explain yourself.
	What's the problem?
	So there's a number of things the CPS have said to sort of explain why they've come to that decision.
	One of them is that they say the bar that needs to be reached before we will bring a prosecution.
	Because just like a DA in the United States or the CPS, if they are not that confident that they'll get a win in court, they just don't go forward with it, right?
	That's pretty normal.
	Because it's just embarrassing to lose.
	So you only really take it to court if you're like quite convinced or got a decent idea that you're going to win.
	So anyway, they've got all sorts of criterion to make that decision.
	And they say, we're not going to take it to court because the bar that needs to be reached is we haven't reached that.
	One example is that under the legislation that they'd be charged for is that China is a threat to our national security or is a national enemy, an enemy of the state.
	And now the British government, both past and present, has never designated China as an enemy of the state or a full-blown threat to national security.
	Even though they are, and everyone knows they are.
	Of course they are.
	So that means they're just allowed our state secrets.
	Send them over WhatsApp, why don't you?
	See what Dominic Cummings was saying.
	Yeah, Dominic Cummings was very strong on this.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	About the fact that China has pretty much access or had at some point access to everything that was being said, passed around between the cabinet or within the cabinet office.
	But basically, the Chinese had hacked the security system that Britain uses to pass some of the most classified information.
	There is an argument about which level of classification has been hacked.
	But apparently, the extent to which the Chinese are spying on Britain is quite extensive.
	Massive.
	On a massive scale.
	It's a state policy.
	I mean, every Chinese enterprise that's, I think, above nine people must have some kind of Communist Party cell within it.
	So what I'm hearing is at Lotus Ceters, we've got at least one Chinese mole.
	No, no.
	If it's a Chinese company.
	Oh, okay.
	Oh, Chinese Communist Party cell.
	I was going to say, it's death.
	In order to spy, Dan.
	Why did we?
	I mean, obviously.
	Sorry.
	It would have to be.
	Sorry, Fresh, go on.
	You're making a serious point.
	Sorry.
	Samson, stop making that face.
	If we were ever being spied on by the Japanese, I know who I would suspect.
	The point is that China has pretty much fused its private sector and the state completely.
	Meaning that it's part of the mandate of a big Chinese company to spy on behalf of the Chinese government.
	Meaning that business transactions with China inherently carry a security risk.
	Meaning that when these people say we don't want to upset the Chinese because we might lose some investments, these people are being absolute lunatics.
	The objective of the Chinese is to sort of asset strip Britain and take whatever technology that Britain has and transfer it to China.
	Like that's the business model of China.
	There is a complete overlap between the private sector and the state.
	And you're not allowed to be in the private sector and successful if you're not loyal to the Chinese state, including doing favors when asked.
	Like make a court case collapse that shows that we're definitely spying on you, for example.
	For example.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So quick thing to say about this designation of whether they're a threat to national security or an enemy of the state, that sort of thing, which needs to be shown, would need to be shown in court for a successful prosecution.
	Our government, under Ri Xi and up to today and before even, would be very, very careful when asked to not say that about China.
	Instead, they'll say something like, they're a strategic challenge.
	So it's all sort of legalese, it's all lawyering politician stuff saying just the right word.
	We'll just call them a strategic challenge.
	We won't call them an enemy of the state or a direct threat to national security.
	Okay, so that's actually going.
	However, on top of that, past and present leaders of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ and loads of other people in the know, senior politicians and things, all say, yeah, no, no, but the Chinese are definitely committing espionage against us on a giant scale, on a giant scale.
	So the whole Chinese embassy is meant to sit above some pretty sensitive communications cable.
	There's that as well.
	And Starmer approved it.
	And Starmer approved it.
	It's been put on ice recently again, but still.
	Because the Americans hit up a fuss.
	With the idea being that they want to spy on Britain more thoroughly.
	And these guys under Starmer are completely happy to sell the country to the Chinese.
	It looks if it makes sense.
	That it gets another point of GDP that lets them argue for their re-election a little more effectively.
	So these guys, I mean, the extent to which the political class in Britain is completely hostile to accepting that there are threats foreign and domestic is mind-boggling.
	We are in a cold war with China.
	Yes.
	The whole West.
	Yes.
	It was absolutely...
	And if you look at Chinese military preparedness, which is going to be my topic for Monday's RealPolitik, or one of the topics for Monday's RealPolitik, they are getting ready for a pretty massive war.
	And they are building everything that they need to build.
	And they are planning to cut off themselves from the West if the need arises.
	So these guys are simply comatos at the wheel.
	They're not asleep at the wheel.
	They're comatos at the wheel.
	They have no idea what they're doing.
	And this applies to the Tories as much as it applies to Labour.
	These people are willing to sell anything and everything to China or India if it means that they get some money afterwards when they leave politics or if it means that there's another point of GDP growth that they can argue is good for them.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, no, absolutely.
	Because, yeah, I mean, the point is, is that we, exports and imports, do something on the order of 90 billion pounds worth of trade with China every year.
	So to them, that's not like a game-breaking amount of money, but to us, that's a big deal.
	90 billion a year.
	So the fact that we're in a cold war with them and they're doing espionage, industrial and sort of political espionage against us on a giant scale, but also a really, really pivotal trading partner.
	It's funny, even during like World War II and stuff, you have enemies still trading steel and buying each other's debt and stuff.
	It's funny the way the world works like that.
	You can be an absolute enemy and also a key partner at the same time.
	Because international capital is inherently disloyal and treasonous.
	Yeah.
	The current MI5, the head of MI5, he said that China was carrying out, quote, large-scale espionage.
	And they are the biggest state-based threat to the country's economic security.
	When it comes to China, the UK needs to defend itself resolutely against threats.
	It's the current head of MI5 saying that.
	So they shouldn't find their ways.
	There's nothing we can do, Chief.
	Yeah, here's the thing about the CPS.
	The CPS argued to Parliament, I believe, that they'd gotten to 95% of the level of proof needed to carry the case through through the witnesses that they had.
	And so the question for parliamentarians was, why didn't you get other witnesses from outside government to get you past that 5%?
	And there was some kind of mealy-mouth response.
	Which, when you remember that this is the same Hermer running the CPS, or responsible for it as Attorney General, this is the guy who supported the sale of the Chagos Islands or the sale, paying Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands.
	So the level of infiltration, I mean, what this suggests is that there is something to be investigated here about the level of infiltration.
	Absolutely.
	I'll just get back to that because I want to sort of finish on that note.
	One other quick couple of things to say, just about sort of ramming home the point that China is a threat.
	I mean, one thing Carl said in the office when he just asked me what I'm doing today on the podcast and what my take is really.
	And I told him like what Starmer's doing.
	And he just sort of said, okay, well, why is that though?
	And it's like, yeah, I mean, great question.
	Why?
	Why did Stalma give away the Chagos Islands?
	Why has he, it seems, collapsed the case against Chinese spies?
	Why, though?
	Well, you can only really infer, if that is the case, all of this is alleged still.
	If that is the case, yeah, why?
	You can only really infer that he's in their pocket.
	He's their puppet in some way.
	But just one last thing here.
	Communists together?
	The ex-guy called Sir Richard Dearlove, Dickie Dearlove, was the head of MI6.
	He was C at MI6, control, MI6, the head of MI6, from 1999 to like 2004 odd.
	So he's literally been the head of MI6, so he should know.
	Let's listen to like a minute or two of this information.
	There's more now on that story that refuses to go away, the China spy case.
	After the release of those witness statements last night, they included warnings to prosecutors about the threat posed by Beijing.
	So let's discuss what that threat is.
	Joining me now is the former MI6 chief, Sir Richard Dearlove.
	So Richard, it's good to see you.
	Good morning, yeah.
	Should governments, whether Labour or Tory, be nervous of China's intentions?
	Of course they should.
	I mean, it seems to me that this is a statement of common sense, a statement of the obvious.
	We have a lot of evidence of hostile Chinese activity towards the UK and towards other countries.
	And it's not a complicated issue.
	There must be frustration in the security services that proceedings were not brought against these two men, both of whom deny the charges, especially when you hear in these now released statements from Matthew Collins that China also presents the biggest state-based threat to the UK's economic security.
	When you hear that, what do you think about the Director of Public Prosecutions' decision not to proceed?
	I honestly can't understand it.
	But now that I've seen the witness statements which were released last night, it doesn't explain anything.
	It doesn't explain how this case was dropped.
	There seems to me to be enough in the witness statements, despite the modification that was added.
	And I wonder why that was added.
	And anyway, you know, in a court case like this, isn't it the jury that ultimately decides on the basis of the evidence?
	And the evidence, depending on what other witnesses could have been called in the case, would have been, I think, very, very strong indeed.
	Okay.
	So if anyone really knows the level of threat that China poses to the UK, it's someone that used to be the head of MI6.
	You'd assume so.
	Right.
	And he's, as we just heard, it's just like, yeah, common sense, of course.
	Yes, obviously.
	Yes.
	Yes, yes.
	Now, I did mention, and this is sort of the latest development over the last couple of days, or day or so, you did mention these witness statements.
	So the government tried to get out ahead of it because where people have said the CPS was sort of told, asked for evidence from the government in order to convict these guys.
	And the government, one way or another, whether it was the Treasury or the Home Office or whatever, parliamentary committees, the government just said no.
	So the CPS said, well, we won't prosecute them then because we won't win.
	And so then the next question is, wait, who said no?
	Who was it?
	Was it Starmer?
	Was it one of the men immediately around him?
	Who was it who said no to that?
	I think you're missing...
	Sorry, here's how I would think about it.
	Here's how I would think about it.
	They asked the question deliberately to get a vague response so that ultimate responsibility for the decision would be diffuse and diluted.
	You play this kind of administrative game.
	Obviously, if they wanted, they could have summoned this guy to testify that China is a threat and say, I'm, you know, here's the ex-head of MI6, and he's saying the bloody obvious, that it's an enormous threat.
	So there was a solution there.
	The reason that they asked and got a non-answer was, in my view, a game that was deliberately engineered so that you couldn't pinpoint it on a single individual.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	There's a lot of kicking the ball around.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Like, one of the things Starmer said is, this all happened under the Tory rule.
	It's all their fault, their mistake.
	The legislation, these guys, these two Chris's would be prosecuted under his old Tory legislation.
	It's all the Tories' fault.
	But you're exactly right also, that other thing of who sat down with who at some point, whether it was over lunch or whether it was over drinks at their club, and said, this is how we're going to manipulate the situation where we'll say this, you then say that, and we'll respond with this, and it will look like no one's done anything wrong.
	So the obfuscation is a deliberate policy.
	Yep, yep, yep.
	And the division of roles in order to create the obfuscation is a deliberate policy, and the confusion is intentional.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	That's my argument.
	That's what I think.
	You're probably almost certainly right.
	I would have thought.
	I absolutely would have thought.
	But then the question is, if that did happen, which may well have happened, who was doing that though?
	Let's get some names.
	Who was it?
	Well, we still don't know that at this point.
	There is one guy, one of the national security advisors called Matthew Collins.
	He was one of these key witnesses, as Dear Love was just talking about there on the clip we just watched.
	And he was involved in it at the time.
	And so some of the things he said, a quote from him in one of his reports, it says, it is important to emphasise that the UK government is committed to pursuing a positive relationship with China.
	We will cooperate where we can, compete where we need to, and challenge where we must.
	It's pretty weak, pretty weak source.
	But then he also said that China poses a threat to our people, prosperity, and security.
	He also described various ways in which the government believes it has been hacked by Chinese state actors.
	And he talks of active espionage threats posed by China in the UK, identifying specific activities that had been carried out.
	So in Starmer's government, it seems pretty clear that although they appreciate and recognize that China is absolutely a threat to us, they also want to try and keep them on side and try and keep them sweet because they're pursuing a positive relationship.
	I know Kemi Badnock has come out and said things like, the Prime Minister wants to suck up to Beijing.
	She also said that he's too weak to stand up to Beijing on a crucial matter of national security.
	She's said, events leave a strong impression that your government undermines Britain's national security because you are too weak to do anything other than appease China.
	And I think if the CPS and the government acting in this coordinated way, in my view, means that somebody higher up decided the coordination.
	Kind of must have been, yeah.
	It must have been.
	It kind of must have been.
	So either the actual civil servants who run the country or Starmer and co making that decision.
	This is assuming the two Chrissies are in fact guilty.
	Assuming they're guilty.
	They might not be.
	At all.
	Who knows?
	Alleged so.
	This all could just be Chinese, anti-Chinese propaganda.
	Yes.
	Which is what the Chinese are saying.
	That's their line.
	Obviously, it would be.
	Okay, so I mean, this is still an ongoing thing.
	I'm sure this story actually won't go away anytime soon.
	So if and when there are more sort of significant developments, I shall bring them to you again.
	Wonderful.
	Samson, do we have any video comments for today?
	If so, while you get them up, I'll go through some of these written super chats.
	Capsification is why we need to incentivize by every means necessary to re-industrialize Britain as quickly as possible.
	Hell, I don't care if we steal Chinese technology and IPs to help us out.
	They do it to us.
	Absolutely.
	Yeah, outsourcing and offshoring manufacturing and industry over to foreign countries, particularly China.
	One of the stupidest ideas.
	There is a quote from, I think, an ex-MI5 head who said, and the quote is it's on an epic scale.
	Yeah.
	That was his line.
	Literally what he said.
	Sigil Stone 17.
	I know how to get rid of Chinese spies.
	Repeat after me.
	Tiananmen Square protest.
	Free Tibet.
	Great leap forward.
	Anti-rightist struggle.
	Human rights multi-party system.
	Falun Gong.
	Liu Xiaobo.
	One Tall Order says, I think we should strategically challenge the Three Gorges Dam with a massive ordnance penetrator.
	Sigil Stone, again, relating to Firaz's segment, to explain in football terms, you'll understand Tel Aviv fans are as bad as Oakland Raiders fans.
	Does that make sense to you?
	Yeah, Oakland Raiders will riot.
	Like, sometimes even if they win.
	They riot when they win.
	They riot when they win.
	That type.
	Okay.
	And on YouTube, Miso Trashed says, could have saved a lot of money if the research was just outsourced to China in the first place.
	Good point.
	Yeah, same results ultimately.
	So do we not have any video comments, Samson?
	Yeah.
	We do.
	Oh.
	Thank you for the confusion.
	Right, we'll go through some of the website comments then.
	Kevin Fox says, Starmer has said that Britain is working with investors to rebuild Gaza.
	I guess we can expect to see Larry Fink wandering into number 10 any day now.
	Another meeting Lewis won't be able to get the minutes of.
	Not that he'll get any freedom of information requests met after his latest attempt to find info about NGOs working with the government and migrants.
	Requests refused based on his social media history is their best denial yet.
	Actually, that's a pretty big deal.
	That's a really big deal what happened with Lewis.
	The government would decide that because you're a high-profile right-winger, we don't want to apply the Freedom of Information Act in your case.
	You're hostile to us.
	Exactly.
	It's a complete piss take.
	Completely, completely.
	Freedom of information, if you're a friend.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Simple as that, isn't it, really?
	Yep.
	Cullum Sloan, Trump seems to be a firm believer in the rule of acquisition number 35.
	Peace is good for business.
	As opposed to every other established politician who follows rule number 34, war is good for business.
	Yeah, they do kind of contradict a bit, but they are both correct at the same time.
	Henry Ashman, is there value in going after Qataris who are protecting the Hamas leadership?
	I'm sure asset seizures and arrest warrants in the US and Europe for their royal family until they hand over their leaders might do the trick that or threats to reform West Africa squadron and send them over to Qatar.
	I would say let this Trump made a mistake when he didn't let the Saudis invade Qatar.
	Would you like to read some of your own segment?
	Yeah, sure.
	Birmingham makes playing Silent Hill feel like a lovely stroll through the park.
	At least in Silent Hill, you don't have to look at the people around you.
	Yeah.
	Michael Dribe's, not surprisingly, Firas hits straight to the point.
	Thank you.
	Westerners are too sheltered and cannot comprehend the blood hatred in the outside world.
	Yes.
	It's been 40 years since I studied Islam in the Middle East, and I am still shocked how few people truly understand this.
	Yeah, man.
	This preach it.
	Kevin Fox says, Birmingham is multicultural.
	They have Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Africans, Indians.
	Just because they don't have any British doesn't mean it's not multicultural.
	It's just no longer British.
	Yeah, pretty much.
	Omar Awad says, as much as I hate non-European countries participating in the Euro-themed event, have you seen European teams lately?
	The European game stopped being representative of European peoples years ago.
	Yeah, I saw the picture of the Aston Villa team and I thought.
	What?
	Yeah.
	Yep.
	But remember, it's all for the sake of meritocracy.
	Because white boys can't kick balls good.
	That just be how it is.
	Would you like to read some of yours or do you want me to read some of them?
	Yeah, sure.
	My segment, let's see what.
	Okay, Kevin Fox says, and that's not to mention the Chinese secret police stations scattered across the UK.
	Yep.
	Yeah, I wasn't aware of this.
	Bit of a thing.
	Oh, okay.
	I'll have to look into that.
	Ari Schosberg says, I feel like in between the lines, CPS isn't proceeding because whatever information traded hands is something the government doesn't want the public to see.
	Yeah, well, yeah.
	Yeah, of course, yeah.
	Quite possibly.
	If the two Chrissies went to court, I'm sure, well, I would imagine, it's going to be really embarrassing both for China and us.
	Yes.
	It'll be embarrassing for our establishment as well as the CCP.
	I imagine.
	But I mean, who knows?
	And on YMI says, for the mega embassy, if China adds LED lights to it, they would get more support from Western Twitter, even if the basement holds a prison, like their other embassies.
	That is true.
	It's interesting that, so just a quick thing to say.
	I didn't really mention it in the segment this mega embassy they want to build in the middle of London.
	And you touched on it.
	Yes.
	It's like the Project Venona thing where you literally dig under your embassy and tap it, like signals intelligence, tap into quite literally the what I suppose nowadays it would be fibre optics or something.
	You tap into that and you get to hear everything that we're talking about.
	Pretty much.
	So it's like, well, if you, if China, if you want a massive embassy, you can have it, but it's got to be in like rural Hampshire or something.
	Not right in the middle of like the city of London, the city of Westminster.
	Don't hoist that on rural Hampshire.
	Oh, yeah, poor Hampshire.
	I didn't mean that.
	Yeah.
	Forgive me.
	Yeah, China, you can have a massive mega embassy, but it's got to be on a windswept rock off the west coast of Scotland.
	Okay.
	And with that, that's all the time we've got for today.
	Thank you, everybody, for watching.
	Don't forget to check out Stellios' course on courses.lotuseaters.com.
	Give it a look in.
	I think it would be very worthwhile.
	Thank you, Firas, for joining us.
	And for our website subscribers, we're doing Lance Hauer in about half an hour.
	I think we're playing based Monopoly that Swindon Monopoly as designed by Dan.
	So should be fun.
	Should be fun.
	I don't expect to make much money from it.
	So thank you very much for watching.

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