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Jan. 21, 2026 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters
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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1337
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Greenland Crisis & Trump Tariffs 00:14:10
Hello everyone, welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters.
Today is podcast number 1337 and I'm pleased today to be joined by Brother Harry and Brother Josh.
Hello there.
I'm Brother Stelios your host and today we're gonna be talking about the ongoing Greenland crisis, the proclaimed collapse of globalism, it dies a thousand deaths and AI predictive crime.
We also have further announcements.
Number one, we have Islander 5.
It's selling out quick.
Like hotcakes.
It actually is.
This isn't just sales talk.
It actually is.
You have to buy it.
It's only $14.99.
And they're saying that this contains articles that are among the greatest articles that have been written for Islander.
So definitely check them out.
Yeah.
So $40.99 and also we are having, this isn't working.
Again?
We are having a roundtable at 3 p.m. for Greenland, the Greenland crisis.
So it's going to be me, Harry, Carl, and Dan.
I believe that is the lineup right now.
Yes.
So we are going to discuss Greenland and Trump and the EU from multiple angles.
So do check it out.
Join us for that roundtable.
Right, so I think we should start talking about the...
Before we start, before we start.
Samson, how can we please solve this?
What happened was it was changing the tags down on our screens here.
There you go.
Right.
We are going to talk about the ongoing Greenland crisis.
And this is a crisis that we have spoke about before.
Josh and I did a segment about a year ago.
And we were very prophetic.
Yeah, we did have the people in the comments telling us that us two know nothing, but no, we know a lot of things.
And we were absolutely right.
I know some things.
Yeah, true.
I don't.
We were absolutely right.
And we are going to talk about Greenland and the crisis that is happening and is unfolding right now.
But before we say more about this, we have Islander number five.
Check it out.
Only £15.
Check it out.
It's selling out quick.
It has great articles here by Carl, Luca, Morgoth, academic agent.
Check it out.
Right.
Let's go to Greenland.
For some time now, we didn't hear Trump talking about Greenland to the extent that he talked about last January.
But now he has revisited his rhetoric about acquiring Greenland and sometimes invading.
And there has been consistent meme posting about Greenland becoming US territory.
Here we see Donald Trump having this, the United States flag in Greenland and says Greenland US territory till 2026.
And there is a meme war, but also diplomatic tension right now unfolding.
And we have also Greenlanders mocking American culture by imitating fentanyl users.
This is just, you know, people mock each other.
They're at the point where they are doing banter.
I think it's a bit unfair to say it's just American culture.
Yep.
Good soundtrack, though.
Don't want to get copyrighted.
At least they picked some good American music there.
But it's at the moment now where everyone is just trashing each other.
Americans are saying you have a high suicide rate.
The Greenlanders are trolling them for being fentanyl users.
There's a bit of European style banter going on.
This is normally reserved for Europe because it doesn't travel that well.
But it's good to see.
They're slowly integrating, it seems.
They're preparing for their takeover.
Well, let's see if this is going to happen, because personally, I don't know.
I'm not certain that it will happen.
I agree with you on that, I think.
Right, so we are going to talk to you about some of the statements that have been made, some of them from Trump, and then we're going to discuss the larger context and what is good about this and what is bad about this, at least from our point of view.
Right, so here Trump sent a message to the Norwegian PM, which personally I find a bit unhinged.
He says, Dear Jonas, considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped eight wars plus, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the US, United States of America.
Denmark can't protect that land from Russia or China, or why do they have a right of ownership anyway?
There are no written documents.
It's only a boat that landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had both landing landing there also.
I've done more for NATO than any other person since its founding.
And how NATO should do something.
And now NATO should do something for the US.
The world is not secure unless we have complete and total control of Greenland.
Thank you, Donald J. Trump.
So my understanding of this, at first, obviously, I was a little bit like, well, that's not the best way of going about it.
And then I realized I realized that this approach might work a little bit better in the United States, but it doesn't particularly travel well outside of it.
It's sort of applying an approach here that's sort of very culturally entrenched in America of saying, listen, I've done all this stuff.
You need to give me what I deserve.
Whereas in Europe, we don't really talk in these terms and people just see it as what amounts to a threat because he's saying he no longer thinks of peace and that he's very narcissistic because he's patting himself on the back for lots of stuff and also comparing landing the boats to Greenland as if that's equivalent to the Vikings going there or at least, you know, in the Middle Ages.
Is this part of the art of the deal?
Is this a chapter that nobody's told me about the acting like a narcissistic senile blowhard?
Is that part?
Maybe it's the madman theory because it is a bit mad to say now that I didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize, I can now think about what is good and proper for my country.
And so were you postponing it to see if you would get the Nobel Prize?
And similarly, I've seen Keith Woods speak about this as well, that Americans have been telling people like Keith Woods when they've been discussing this, well, you need to have America owning Greenland because if you don't have America owning Greenland, China's going to come and swoop in and use anti-colonial narratives to try and undermine Danish rule of Greenland and China's going to use that to destabilize it and take control of it anyway.
Whereas America is actually also using anti-colonial decolonizing language there anyway, such as the whole, what's the right of ownership they have for it anyway.
They just landed a few boats there.
We landed boats there too.
But I was listening to a stream last night that was discussing some of the history of Denmark with Greenland.
Obviously, it's actually been part of the Danish kingdom since the 1300s.
They arrived there before there anyway.
But also something that I didn't know was that the Inuit native, whatever you want to call them, population of Greenland is more like American blacks than they are other native tribes in America.
Because I learned that they're actually ethnically 25% Danish.
They're a mixed population.
So even if you want to go with the anti-colonial narratives, well, actually, it's already been they've already been mixing for at least 700 years anyway.
I can't remember whether it is Iceland or Greenland.
You might know, Harry.
But wasn't it that they came after European settlers as well?
That's Greenland.
Oh, is it really?
Okay.
Yeah, we thought it might have been.
We showed up first, or at least the Danes showed up first.
Right, we have to move on here.
Trump is threatening with tariffs anyone who will say no to him and anyone who will say that they disagree with his position on Greenland, which I think isn't good for the global economy, including the US economy, for several reasons.
Fox News says here, Daddy is about to land and he has needs.
Well, I don't know.
Let us play this.
He's no.
I bet Al's already started drinking because Daddy's about to land and daddy has needs.
I'm going.
Yeah, so yeah, you heard Jesse Waters from Fox News: Daddy is about to land and he has needs.
Right?
And Trump also reposted someone who says basically something weird.
This Bobby D says, so at what point are we going to realize the enemy is within?
China and Russia are the boogeymen when the real threat is the UN, NATO, and this religion.
I put religion in quotes because it's not a religion, it's a death cult.
Yeah, I went there.
Are they talking about Islam?
So, no, they're going about NATO.
And the point is, if Trump wants Greenland as a matter of national security against Russia and China and their operations in the region, why does he repose someone who says, well, no, it's a boogeyman to talk about Russia and China, forgetting the fact that Trump is perhaps one of the biggest voices against China for years now.
And suddenly they're not enemies.
Suddenly they are just, nope, it's only UN and NATO who are enemies.
Personally, I find this nonsense.
I think the best thing here for the Americans and Denmark and Greenland is a similar agreement to what the United States has with, say, Germany or Britain, whereby they have the ability to have bases.
And, you know, you can set up these in Greenland and you're not going to disturb too many people because there's lots of space to have a military base, right?
And they don't actually need to formally own it.
Denmark can continue to have it as its territory.
They can have the military bases for the security if that's truly what they're interested in.
No problem, right?
Because it's already a precedent set with other European countries.
I don't think they're going to object to, okay, we can help your defense.
It seems like there's something other than that, because that would be the obvious approach.
There is already military presence there by the US.
And that is the issue.
Because right now, lots of people on X and especially in the US, they are formulating a misleading question.
The question is, what does Trump gain from purchasing Greenland?
That's a misleading question.
The question they should be asking is, what does Trump gain by pursuing Greenland that he doesn't already have and at what cost?
Because is it national security?
Sorry, that's misleading.
The US is already there.
They have a 1951 treatise.
They have the Pitufek base there.
There is already military presence by the US in Greenland.
And there is already an invitation by the Greenlanders to the Americans, to the US, to do business with respect to mining the rare earth minerals.
So all of this isn't just for national security and access to rare earth minerals.
All of this is just for an extra, for a better deal.
I was going to say, are there not already security arrangements in place through NATO and through all the diplomatic agreements that they have with Denmark that would allow them to place bases and extra military presence on Greenland if they asked or negotiated for it anyway?
Similarly, the question of whether it's just for the security of trade routes going through the Arctic Ocean as well.
Everybody likes the point.
Well, if you look at the globe from the top, you can see why Greenland's so important.
But the thing is, like, if you're worried that Russia is going to disrupt those, well, there are eight countries that inhabit that region of the Arctic Ocean, which all border it, right?
Of the eight of them, seven of them are already in NATO.
Like, one of them is Denmark through Greenland.
There are security arrangements through NATO there.
One of them is Canada.
One of them is the US through its presence in Alaska.
It's got Norway.
It's got Finland.
Like, why is it absolutely paramount that outside of the already existing security arrangements that are there, that they have to own it, just fully own it?
And it's also at what cost?
Because personally, I don't think that there is so much an issue with coming to an agreement and the US purchasing Greenland.
Because it has happened before.
They did it with Alaska.
They did with the Virgin Islands.
They have purchased land before.
I think it has happened five, six times in the history.
But I think that what is important here to say is that the way Trump is going about it is very bad for the entire Western world.
It's needlessly disruptive for the Western camp.
And it's also very bad for the US economy.
If you are a member of the audience from the US and you say, I don't care about Europe, no, you may not care about Europe, but you should care about the US economy.
And one of the issue is that the more chaotic the environment becomes and the more people understand that Trump is using tariff talk as a means of negotiation, well, the more investors are going to be scared away from the US economy.
Negative Effects on Western Alliances 00:15:44
Because stability and predictability are the sort of bedrock of encouraging investment.
Exactly.
So you may not care about Europe, but care for your own economy.
And it's not just that.
It's also invading an ally.
Invading an ally means your word doesn't count.
It means you're losing credibility.
That's what he's doing.
Do you know what I think is going on here?
Like what underlies a lot of the way Trump has approached this?
I think that it's coming up to the midterms.
Maybe they're a little bit worried about how they're going to do.
Maybe they think that they could underperform a little bit.
I don't think they're going to do too badly.
But at the same time, I think that the base isn't especially galvanized.
And if you throw out some red meat, just like, yeah, America's taking over new territory under us, we're going to make America more powerful than ever.
That's good red meat for people who are patriotic to go out and say, actually, you know, I like the guys who make America more powerful.
I'm going to vote for them.
Yeah, it has plausibility.
I think that to an extent you're correct.
I also think that the way he's going about it is having, is unpopular even amidst Republicans.
And it's actually going to make the Republicans' life much more difficult in the midterms.
Here, Scott Besant says, I'm telling everyone, sit down, take a breath, don't retaliate.
And that trust the plan, trust Trump.
I can see from a European perspective how people wouldn't trust Trump.
Right.
He says here that Trump is talking about the stock market, but there have been some tensions in the stock market.
They are saying that right now there's a dip.
Of course, there are people who are saying don't get into it, buy the dip, and things are going to get better.
Personally, I believe yeah, things will get better relatively soon-ish.
These are indications of volatility that shouldn't exist.
It doesn't need to happen.
And they're saying Nasdaq and SP 500 have erased all of their 2026 gains, and 1.3 trillion has been wiped out from the US stock market to date till now.
And this comes as US-EU trade tensions rise.
Japan's bond market continues to weaken, and pension funds begin cutting exposure to U.S. treasuries.
And now there is a...
I believe also I saw some talk of European nations saying that they might seek to sell off all of their American assets, which would, of course, flood the U.S. market with dollars.
which could cause huge problems for the dollar currency, the value of it.
We have here the US 30-year yield rising a lot, and this isn't particularly good for the house market.
We also, yeah, we have the same inflation-adjusted home prices graph here.
Again, doesn't look too good.
And then there is also a sort of problem for the crypto market.
They're saying that it fell significantly.
again we'll see there's the market goes up and down but i think that crypto is is very volatile And even though that's a little bit of a significant drop, I don't think it's to the degree where it's a catastrophe or anything.
Well, yeah, but the point is that there are two points here.
Number one is that the narrative that it's only the Japanese bond blowout that is causing this is very much simplistic.
And they are trying to downgrade the influence that the EU market has for the US market and it's its largest trading partner.
I do agree.
And I think that obviously with the things like stock markets, there's a multi-layered number of factors.
But I do think that the European retaliation would have a significant influence on people's willingness to invest.
And it's at the end of the day, it's the same thing with tariffs.
That people understand that Trump is using tariffs as a negotiation tactic.
The more chaotic the world becomes, and the Greenland talk does contribute to more global destabilization, the more investors get scared away because they think that it isn't a good time to invest.
The market is incredibly volatile.
So it tends to scare off some investors away.
Now, you may tell me some of them don't because they bought the dip and it's going to go well.
But the general tendency is one that is a downwards one.
Especially when the use of the tariffs is just like completely random as to whatever he feels like that day, like earlier on, just threatening potentially 200% tariff on French wine.
Yeah, just I support that, makes it cheaper for me, which helps me to add to my collection.
That's the thing, though, isn't it?
Is that those kinds of tariffs will ultimately not end up helping average Americans because it's not the sellers who are going to be paying those tariffs.
It's people who are importing it over in America.
And Basic Economics 101 says that when they pay those tariffs, they pass the costs onto the American, onto the consumer.
And of course, it's not like there's a lack of market for French red wine in Europe or the world.
All of a sudden, it's a little bit cheaper for the rest of us.
Carry on, please.
And it says here the EU is the largest single trade partner.
It's 18.3% of all US trade.
So, yeah, more chaos, more volatility, less investment, and more tariffs.
So it seems to be unpopular among everyone, basically.
Even Republicans don't like it, according to several polls.
Some die-hard Trump fans may be with him on this, but generally speaking, they seem to be opposing taking Greenland by force.
And just there's the other bit that taking Greenland by force is also invading an ally.
But also, just think about this.
Just think of Canada, for instance.
If the U.S. invaded Canada from a Republican perspective, there are many reasons to not want this.
Why would you want to add Democrat voting states?
Think of all the Indians you'll be absorbing.
Yeah.
Well, that's one of the things when I see people salivating over the idea of a Pax Americana stretching across the entire Western Hemisphere, if you're already worried about demographics within America, that's just another way to suddenly find yourself swamped, swamped within a larger territory, which now all of a sudden whites are an absolute minority.
You'll never get a job at a corner shop ever again.
And it seems here also Trump's approval rating is declining, which won't be good for the midterms.
And also this poll here suggests that the GOP has a depression problem and people feel demotivated to go and vote for the midterms.
To be fair, though, I think that this sort of happens in every midterm election.
It's not a problem.
It's a little bit of a wave where the incumbent party tends to have a little bit of being out of favor each time.
That's just the way it seems to go as it cycles through each midterm.
Right.
So I want to share with you a few thoughts about Greenland.
First of all, invading an ally discredits your word and by implication alienates and sabotages your existing allies and inhibits future partnerships.
It's sort of the equivalent of betrayal.
There is already U.S. military presence in Greenland and also the potential to do business with the Greenlanders to mine their earth, rare earth minerals.
It seems like this is unpopular.
Many polls suggest that even as high as 70% of Republicans are against him and 86% of Americans are against him.
Also, I want to say one thing is that it seems to me that he is very mindful of his image.
And he started the year really well with Maduro and the extraction.
But then there was an episode in Iran where he told the protesters, keep protesting, help is on the way.
And then Qatar denied him the right to use a U.S. airbase in Qatar in order to operate in Iran.
And that was a blow to his image, at least in some circles.
I think that one of the reasons why he wants to revisit this rhetoric now, and I'm talking about the style of rhetoric, not the negotiation to potentially purchase Greenland.
I'm talking about the way he goes about it, could be potentially to offset negative consequences of what happened in Iran and Qatar.
And as I say here, at least I think the issue is not with purchasing Greenland.
The issue is with his style of negotiation.
And I know some people who care only about owning the Libs may like this.
But the point is that this has negative effects for the entire Western camp because it alienates existing allies and it pushes them to deepen the ties with the sides that Trump, first and foremost, has said are problematic, such as China and then Russia.
To be fair, he doesn't talk about Russia as being the problem.
And one thing to say here, because it's an issue of conservatives around the world, is that this is sabotaging conservatives who in many cases have supported Trump, even against Kamala Harris, but also on a day-to-day basis.
This is causing a really bad time for them.
We'll cover it more in my segment, but if this carries on for European right-wing populist parties, and even, for instance, reform in Britain, where Nigel Farage has made no secret of the fact that he's a big Trump supporter and a MAGA fan,
this could turn to electoral poison for them because the liberal, the entrenched liberal elite of Europe get to present themselves as the defenders of Europe against a belligerent enemy across the Atlantic Ocean.
Whereas all of these people can then be smeared and tarred by association.
And this is what it led to in Canada.
It led to Mark Carney getting elected.
Why?
Because Pierre Polyever and his Conservative Party were heading the polls.
Let me show you this here.
And then when Trump started here, where Trudeau resigned, when Trump started talking about the invasion of Canada, and lots of people will say trolling, trolling, trolling.
Well, too much trolling makes one a buffoon.
When he started doing this, the Liberals, the image of the Liberals in Canada got boosted, and the Conservative Party got de-boosted.
And he had Mark Carney.
So this here could have been avoided if he cared about China not exerting influence in the hemisphere, in his hemisphere.
All he had to do was not to talk about invading Canada to own the Libs.
Go back to that graph again.
Just like, look at the absolute magnitude of that recovery.
The Liberals were dead.
They were almost reaching the lows of the third biggest party.
They were about to dip to become a third runner here.
But instead, they made a shocking recovery after the Conservatives had been leading for a year.
A massive lead for a year up until that point.
That is how badly this affected Canada.
That was sort of, it sort of doubled the percentage.
Near enough, yeah.
Yeah.
And this was also, this also had an effect in Australia.
We have here Drew Pavlo saying also that sort of the same thing happened in Australia, that the Conservatives in Australia were doing well and they got massively sabotaged by this.
Because this kind of rhetoric boosted the image of all the leftists, of the leftist governments around.
And also here we have Jonathan Pallison who talked about Denmark.
The largest Danish left-wing party looked to be losing the upcoming elections, but now had a large bomb due to Trump's Greenland posturing.
He had the same effect on the Canadian election and the election in Australia.
And it's just detrimental effect.
He could have way more allies than he now has.
And all of it isn't without talking about purchasing Greenland, is without talking about invading Greenland.
I mean, already in already within the EU, I believe Maloney, who is considered one of his strongest allies next to somebody like, I've forgotten his name all of a sudden in Hungary.
Victor Orban.
Orban.
Thank you for the reminder, gentlemen.
Maloney is one of the only people who hasn't been supportive of the rest of the EU member states in saying that, no, this is belligerence.
This isn't rhetoric that we like to hear.
This isn't how we should handle Greenland.
Come the next election, that could be used against her.
Maloney was willing to sell us out to a foreign power.
That could be the line.
And foreigners.
Yeah, and foreigners in general, outside of all of the other failures with Maloney.
It gives the argument to people who would be pro-US in Europe.
It gives the arguments to leftists to say that these people who are pro-US in Europe are Kremlin stooges.
This is what happened.
That is why Trump is losing the European right.
And by doing this, he is pushing not just Canada, but also the EU to deepen its ties with China.
And all of that just to own the lips.
Right.
Here we have Stephen Crowder talking again about this false piece of information that somehow Europe doesn't pay for NATO and Europe doesn't pay for its own defense.
Yes, there is US contribution, but this rhetoric that somehow the US is paying for the EU's defense 100% is completely mistaken.
And he got community noted here, and it says here, citing NATO, the NATO document, the NATO data, the 2014 NATO commitment that every member country should spend at least 2% of the GDP for their defense and military by 2024 was met by every single member in 2025.
They have here this graph if you want to check out.
It's in the first pages.
It shows about the number of allies meeting 2%.
So yeah, it's a very, let's say, low-resolution rhetoric.
And say here, Joe Williams says, since the Cold War, successive US governments have gaslit Americans into thinking Europeans get free health care, free education, and decent parental leave while Americans don't because the US pays for Europe's self-defense.
It's a myth that also helps them justify 750 plus US bases worldwide.
Needless Cracks In The West 00:06:17
Europe spends $550 billion a year on defense, more than China and Russia combined.
So even without the US, Europe is the most heavily defended continent on earth.
And they're saying that US bases in Europe cost approximately 3.5% of the US annual defense budget and delivered outside strategic power.
And it's just, this just isn't charity.
And I have here NATO data that you can check out.
We have the link.
You can just check it out.
So here, NATO spending as percentage of GDP.
Let's go here.
Finland 2.4%.
Norway 2.2%.
Denmark 2.4%, let's say.
Estonia 3.43.
Latvia 3.15.
Poland 4.12%.
Germany 2.1%.
France 2.6%.
The United Kingdom 2.33%.
And let us, I want to give you a number of how much that is, because you may say, oh, 2% in the UK, it isn't much.
No, it is $55 billion per year.
75.
Yeah, 75.
Here, Germany, 67.
Poland, 31.
France, 61.
Spain, 24.
Let's just give you some examples.
The US here spends 916 billion, but not all of it is for NATO.
It's to maintain military presence.
And there have been studies that say that for NATO, the US is paying roughly the same as Germany, 16%.
So yeah, the US contribution to NATO is important.
Europeans aren't saying that they don't want it or that they feel ungrateful or something.
It's just, it's not true to say that NATO is only for the defense of Europeans and that Europeans are not paying for their own self-defense.
So this talk about Canada, again, I'll say the issue isn't with saying that he's interested in purchasing Canada, with purchasing Greenland.
It's the way he's going about it is creating needless cracks in the Western world.
It brought in Mark Carney and the Liberals.
It gave them the second life, basically.
It brought them back to life.
And Mark Carney is very enthusiastic about deepening his ties with China.
And also with his talk, he alienates and makes the life of the pro-US people in Europe much more difficult.
And yes, the EU right now will also deepen its ties with China.
So this isn't particularly good strategy.
This just isn't.
If the strategy was isolating China and surrounding it by teaming up with Russia, teaming up with India and surrounding it also with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and talks about Iran and something, this doesn't seem to have the effect he wants.
And the point is, all of it is just with a rhetoric that works well on X to own the libs, but doesn't work well with serious diplomacy.
And here I have this video, if you want, by Henry Bolton, who is explaining some of the stuff about the myth that the Europeans aren't paying for their defense.
Excellent.
Well, we've got some rumble rants come through if you wanted to read them.
I'll scroll down for you.
Where's the mouse?
There it is.
Yeah, so Luke Saint 91, good day.
All feel like America getting Greenland would be a lot easier if it was anyone but Trump.
And I feel that the reason why neither side is giving up deal if Trump wins Europe can say no to Trump.
Exile 29.
Many European populations dislike their government's underspending on defense.
Trump could have just supported the rise of Populist Party and let them solve defense spending rather than all this.
Absolutely.
I completely agree with you.
And all of it is just because it's the rhetoric, the own the libs rhetoric.
It's completely needless.
It creates needless cracks in the Western camp.
Luke Saint, again, that's a random name.
Bloody hell.
Whoa, a load just looks like Luke Saint 91 for $5.
Thank you.
Like the Nobel Peace Prize.
This feels like the only time they can kind of stop Trump as he continues to try and break the current managerial rule we're living under.
Again, I think, again, Luke Saint 91 for another $5.
Thank you.
I think people who like this sick of the manager of decline, the fact that a lot of former great European countries are giving away their holdings, so they're shrinking, shrinking all countries like China expand.
Well, Trump is helping them.
A drunk changeling with the Nobel Prize piece off the table.
Trump has decided to pursue the Nobel War Prize.
When did they bring that in?
Again, Luke Saint 91.
Sorry, meant to say unlike China that's trying to expand.
We got you, don't worry.
Yeah, let's again, Luke Saint 91.
The biggest thing that FD Conservatives over in Australia just before the election might stop talking about all their policies and allowed Labor to attack them.
They didn't bother to fight.
That's a random name says, although everything you guys said about Canada is correct, our Tories are just like your Tories, a bunch of traitors.
The only good party is the PPC, he says, which will never get elected because democracy is G-H-E-Y.
Kassadwan says Trump could have made any number of agreements here.
Potential Torn Rules 00:15:17
Instead, he blusters and looks like an idiot.
Americans are coping as per.
Sure, you can invade Greenland, but doing that is a defeat in itself.
I wouldn't tar all Americans with the same brush there.
I think there's signs that a lot of Americans understand the strategic failures that are going on here.
Most of them are opposers.
Yeah.
Ochekdor for five pounds says, how is the pro-US any different from the current pro-import population?
Well, the problem is, as we'll discuss, is the dichotomy presented is false.
Because what we are witnessing right now, if you wouldn't mind getting my segment up, Samson, please, is the collapse of the new world order and the establishment of a new new world order.
What was once new is now old.
The post-world order, as presented by NATO, and all of the security agreements that were established during the Cold War and maintained afterwards, are disintegrating before our very eyes.
Or at the very least, that is what we are being shown and that is what we are being told.
So currently, right now, as we speak, as we are recording and streaming, the World Economic Forum Davos conference is going on right now.
And that is, of course, the meeting of hundreds of world leaders and many business leaders as well to discuss what's going on, the plans for the future, how they're going to navigate all of the trials and hurdles that pop up throughout the year, their plans for the future.
And this year, and I will say as well, right now, Donald Trump, as far as I know, in the lead-up to this, has not given his speech yet.
I believe he is going to be giving his speech either during this broadcast or immediately after we have finished broadcasting because his plane was a little bit late.
So this information might need changing by the time you watch this on YouTube, but it's still relevant for right now.
There's still a lot of relevant information here.
So the spirit of dialogue is the current theme for it as we speak.
But really, when you look at what is being said, it's really talking about perhaps the failures of globalism, globalism as having been led by America in the world order and how that has collapsed over the past year or so.
They were speaking in similar kinds of terms this time last year.
Ursula von der Leyen spoke this time last year about the worries of the collapse of global cooperation and the return of a kind of competitive and hierarchical world order.
And the wool has been pulled from everybody's eyes by Trump and by the fact the Americans have seemed to kind of embrace their role as world hegemon.
They have embraced their role as the head of an empire rather than just saying that they are the leaders of a international rules-based order.
They've kind of pulled away from that and said, yeah, we're just in charge because we have the biggest stick.
The whole rules-based order thing was what we wanted and needed it to be at any particular time so that we could get what benefited us the most.
As such, there's been a recalculation and they are discussing this on the world stage and saying that this has been torn down.
This has been torn down.
We need a new establishment, new security arrangements, new understandings of how we all relate to one another on the world stage so that we can ensure our own freedom and security for the future.
And that's a lot of the stuff that's been spoken about on this.
But carrying on the theme from the last segment, in that Trump's belligerence regarding Greenland and his Geopolitical moves recently are deeply affecting the populist right in Europe and negatively affecting them as well.
Is that there is a real threat here for anybody who is dissident to the current Eurocrat elite, right?
And what that is, is that America is now establishing itself as kind of a global bully.
They're being explicit about it with the way that Donald Trump is saying that we'll throw tariffs here, we'll throw tariffs there so that we can get what we want.
If we don't like how you're negotiating with us, we might just invade your territory.
We might invade your sovereign territory.
And so, what this allows is for Europe who, as we know, are open borders liberals.
They are happy for Europe to be invaded by foreign third world nations.
They're happy to establish censorious laws to prevent people from doing anything about it or saying anything about it.
It allows them to present themselves as the defenders of Europe.
It gives them that rhetorical wiggle room to say, you populist right wing who are supportive of MAGA, why were you letting America push us around?
Why were you letting America tell us what we can and can't do?
We are the ones who are defending the interests and sovereignty of our own nations, and it gives them that wiggle room to potentially just have more cases belly for censoring you even more, for potentially tearing these parties apart.
You might even, if you have been too supportive of MAGA in the way that I'm discussing, be able to be designated as a foreign threat if MAGA carries on down this path right now.
They might use it as a stick to tear the European right wing apart.
And the more Trump deepens his ties with Putin's Russia, the more the populist right, the pro-US right in Europe is going to be seen as Kremlin stooge.
Yeah, they can be seen as Kremlin stooge or the equivalent of a Kremlin stooge if America is just like if they're just saying, we'll take what we're doing.
Look, guys, yeah, you are basically just obeying someone who wants to divide Europe and conquer it and just wants to destabilize the region in order to be able to have more negotiational power when he is negotiating against individual nations.
And of course, in Europe, there's been this massive push as well, talking about, oh, Ukraine will never cede territory to Russia.
And it sort of primed people to think about in terms of, okay, Europe will not cede territory to its enemies.
And then you've got the United States coming around trying to take Greenland off of a European country.
So at the minute, the sort of psychology of both the populace and leaders is we're not ceding any territory to people outside of Europe.
And then it's kind of the worst time Trump could have done it with the Ukraine stuff going on.
I'm in favor of a strong Europe.
I'm in favor of a strong Europe and I want Britain to be involved with that.
Not necessarily as part of the EU or anything, but I don't think that America is doing any of us any favours right now.
But a strong Europe should not be led by these people because these people do not have Europe's best interests in mind, as I will demonstrate as we go along.
But it lets somebody like Emmanuel Macron get up on stage wearing cool aviators.
What's going on here?
Really hungover or something.
I would only hope so, but I think what's happened is he had eye surgery.
Some are suggesting that perhaps Bridget was a little bit too harsh to him the night before and he's had some black eyes.
Candice will become relevant again.
What happened?
Yeah.
This is how he looks after he's put out the 17th hit on Candace Owens this week.
He's feeling very powerful.
He's had so many meetings with Eastern European hitmen that he's sort of taken on some of their dress sense.
Yeah, their aesthetic.
But it lets Emmanuel Macron present himself as the great French patriot wanting to stop this mean, big American bullies from coming in and taking their stuff.
We have a place where the rule of law and predictability is still the rule of the game.
And my guess is that it is largely underpriced by the market.
Having a place like Europe, which sometimes is too slow, for sure, and needs to be reformed, for sure.
But which is predictable, loyal.
And when you know that the rule of the game is just the rule of law, it's a good place.
And I think this is a good place for today and for tomorrow.
So, yeah, Macron, who has been one of the people who's been banging the drum on European security for a long time, you can go back to immediately following the start of the Ukraine conflict, and he's got interviews with outlets like The Economist, where he's talking about the need to increase European defense spending to secure European borders against foreign threats.
Now he gets to double down on that.
He gets to double down on saying that we are in charge.
Look how cool I am in my aviators.
We are going to wear the mask of virtue.
We may be a little bit slow sometimes.
We may be a bit need a bit of reform, but we are loyal.
We are kind.
We are good-hearted, unlike those Russians to our East and those Americans to our West.
I mean, say what you will about Macron, but he's sort of playing the right notes here.
He is, and he's been in the same speech, he's calling out shifting to a world without rules.
Again, this is what I mean with this: people are having to reorient themselves.
Now that the facade of the rules-based international liberal order has kind of been torn down, they're having to reorient themselves, and that's what we're seeing here.
We're shifting to a world without rules.
Imperial ambitions are resurfacing.
President Macron referencing fundamentally unacceptable tariffs used as lefranch against sovereignty.
This is all stuff that is going to play very, very well to a European populace that begins to feel threatened.
Yeah, they feel threatened domestically as well, but that's part of the point: they get to distract from that.
Paris and the rest of France gets to distract from all of the terrible riots that tend to go on, all of the foreign crime that gets committed, because it unites them against a foreign enemy.
That's how this works.
People speaking even more plainly, the Belgian Prime Minister, Bart de Wover, I don't know if that's how you pronounce his name, saying this.
But now, so many red lines are being crossed that you have the choice between your self-respect.
Being a happy vassal is one thing, being a miserable slave is something else.
If you back down now, you're going to lose your dignity.
And that's probably the most precious thing you can have in a democracy.
It's your dignity.
So, I mean, just outright admitting there from an international leader that we were a vassal.
We were a vassal, but at least we got something out of it.
At least we got some kind of stability out of it.
At least we had some kind of level of fair play.
There were reasonable trade agreements.
We could predict what was going to happen.
That was the whole point of this new world order that was established following the Second World War.
Now that's been torn down.
We don't want to be the unhappy slaves, so we're going to have to get back together and re-establish ourselves.
Which again would be a good thing if only it weren't that the Eurocrats in charge don't actually care about European people and their well-being.
Even America, America's diplomats, the Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnik went up and just outright said that the Trump administration and I are here to make a very clear point.
Globalization has failed the West and the United States of America.
It's a failed policy and it's left America behind.
America is done exporting jobs and offshore its future.
We will no longer give in to globalization.
These are all very strong statements regarding how this globalist world order has completely failed.
And I'm not a fan of the globalist world order either.
It's just that this is interesting how this is all just being flat out said.
Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, came out and said American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, stable financial system, collective security, but this bargain no longer works.
Let me be direct, we're in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.
Recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as a weapon, tariffs as a leverage.
And he goes on to talk about how the globalization and integration of these international economies has led to America being able to put the boot on their neck through use of tariffs, through use of economic leverage.
So perhaps this will split things up.
Perhaps, as you're suggesting, it will continue to push people into the arms of a China that may potentially be a future international threat, but at the moment is presenting itself as simply a benign trading partner.
Well, there's multiple things going on here.
The first of which I think is actually a good thing in that it's probably good for Europe to be more independent.
And I very much welcome that.
And even though it's not necessarily intentional by the Trump administration, the fact that it's giving Europe basically a kick up the backside to do this is great.
And I think it's necessary for Europe to succeed, to be more self-sufficient.
And at the minute, I think all China really needs to do is not rub anyone the wrong way and continue trading with them to capitalize on the US's losses here.
We have Trump now speaking on the World Economic Forum who says that Europe should follow the US in putting a halt to mass migration and stop transferring its capabilities to the third world countries.
And he says that many cities in the West are now unrecognizable and not in a good way.
Yeah, but he this is all just playing to.
He was, he did, he is, he did sabotage, perhaps unintentionally, but he did the, the people in in Europe who are talking about this, precisely with his talk of invading Greenland.
And also, I don't think that when he's talking about mass migration, I think there is more mass migration to the US than there is, than there is in in Europe, and we do talk about Europe and about the problems with mass migration in Europe, but it's not that he has, that the US doesn't face them and that he has stopped facing them.
Demographics Shifts Threaten Europe's Identity 00:02:11
Now, once again, And the demographics in America are much less stable than they are in Europe and that's even with mass migration into Europe.
Europe is still most countries within Europe are still well majority European countries.
If you go to somewhere like California in America, you're basically in Mexico.
If you go to southern Texas, you're basically in Mexico.
That's how these demographics changes work.
If you look at American birth rates of the white versus non-white birth rates, some of those southern states, and even some of the ones going a little bit north up the western seaboard, the white birth rates are terrible.
They make up a vast, like a tiny minority of the overall births going on here.
European birth rates aren't great either, but we are still in a better position to remain European than America is to remain a European-descended nation.
And what Trump is just appealing to there is rote populist talking points.
Ultimately, he can say all of that, but his actions outside of that speak louder than his words.
And what he is doing through all of this is further entrenching an elite class that don't agree with him on those points, that actually present a threat to Europe remaining European going forwards.
And what I'm talking about here is like Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, going up and saying that, you know, there's an age of populism and deep institutional mistrust.
We've lost all of the trust in elites and we need to regain that trust.
This is the opening.
This is the opportunity for all of these traitorous elites to regain that trust by, again, facing out towards a new foreign enemy.
Europe's Industrial Gap 00:03:48
On both sides, Russia to the east, America to the West.
You have Finland's president saying that, again, and I think this is a good thing that people are talking like this, that Europe can unequivocally defend itself without the Americans.
I think that's an absolutely correct statement as well, in that, you know, they talk about the threat of Russia, but compared to the entirety of Europe, that's not equivalent, right?
It's absurd to even suggest that.
Even looking on just purely industrial capability and things like that, all of Europe plus their trading partners is not comparable.
Germany has been speaking about what a mistake it was to get rid of some of its nuclear plants.
And it certainly was.
And it absolutely was.
In which case, how long would it take Germany to put that infrastructure back in place?
I think.
Quite a time, unfortunately.
I think the current Chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Mertz, did say that he is planning on revisiting nuclear plants in Germany.
That's common sense thing.
Yeah, they should be.
It took him about 10 years to understand common sense.
Deindustrialization and disarmament was a huge mistake, but it was all predicated.
It was all done under this now old new world order.
And now we're moving into a completely different paradigm.
There's a trend at a sort of domestic level that I've noticed that places that do particularly well, cities and towns that tend to have opportunities for all of the different strata of society and are economically prosperous for it, tend to have about 15 or so percent of their economy be industry, which is very rare in the West these days, other than perhaps the United States, which has been better at preserving it.
But in Europe in particular, because we've de-industrialized, we've lost this key part of our economy, which, you know, for the working classes, believe it or not, they sort of need those jobs because not only are they opportunities for people to, you know, go beyond themselves, but also they're very valuable to have in your country for defense.
Certainly, certainly, absolutely.
And but here's where it comes to reminding everybody that the people who are all saying this aren't our friends in Europe.
They're not friends of the European people or European values or demographics or preserving any of those things.
Because one of the announcements that was made by Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the EU, was that the EU is on the cusp of making the mother of all deals with India.
And again, this is one of those things, well, we might not be able to trade quite as securely with America as we could.
India is a huge market, an enormous market.
So let's go over to them.
But the thing is, with deals with India come little strings attached that Modi likes to put in there, which is, well, India has a huge, huge excess population.
So we would like it if we could have some kind of exchange of labor as well.
So with trades with India comes also massive influx of Indian immigration.
It's one of their main exports, to be honest.
Yes.
Is Indian people themselves.
So if we're further entrenching this, that's not great for anybody.
That's not great for any of us.
And again, this is what we covered a little bit in your segment as well, but I just want to remind everybody that this kind of belligerent rhetoric was one of the main movers of the Liberals getting re-elected, despite the fact that the Conservatives in Canada, who would have been better allies to Trump as a northern neighbor, that's what led to them losing.
Maga Problem Revealed 00:06:42
And there's testimonies in this article from people who are saying that, you know, I was a lifelong Conservative voter in Canada, but America saying that they were going to annex us, positioning ourselves as an enemy of Canada, and themselves as an enemy of Canada, and Polivier positioning himself as a friend of MAGA, therefore also enemy of Canada, meant that I voted liberal for the very first time in my life.
There's like half a dozen.
And all of this was just to own the lebs on Twitter.
Yeah, it says Polivier's campaign during which he focused on small government and libertarian issues combined with dissatisfaction at the scandal hit Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's handling of the economy to see the Conservatives move 24 points ahead of the Liberals in January, according to a poll tracker.
But within a matter of weeks, everything changed.
Trudeau announces resignation while Trump swept back to power in the US, threatening to use economic pressure to annex Canada as a 51st state before imposing sweeping 25% tariffs on goods from America's northern neighbor, sparking outrage across the country, pushing them all into the arms of the Liberals.
And this is one of the threats of European right-wing populist parties as well, like the AFD.
There are a number of articles all talking about how the AFD for a while now has had major support from MAGA.
JD Vance went and spoke about how great the AFD was and all of the threats that Germany faces from mass migration.
There is a definite connection that the two parties have.
And this one's going back a few months.
You've got multiple articles.
German far-right courts Donald Trump and MAGA in Hunt for Powerful Friends.
The MAGA war on European democracy.
And then you start to see the shift.
The global populist right has a MAGA problem.
Until you get to this recent article, and you quoted the one from WhatsApp from the unheard article in the last segment.
Here's another one by Maurice Frank.
The AFD is losing patience with MAGA.
They're having to suddenly heel turn to switch around to flip their rhetoric because the comments about Greenland in recent days suggest the duo have been following the latest polls.
72% of Germans consider the US attack on Venezuela and Majiro's arrest unjustified.
Only 12% feel Trump is doing a good job as president and an all-time low of 15% consider the US to be a trustworthy partner.
The AFD enjoys the support of a rough quarter of voters and now it doesn't want to alienate the German mainstream by getting too close to a deeply unpopular president.
So this puts everybody in a massive bind.
The AFD doesn't want to alienate their voters, but also they do have strong ties to MAGA and presumably also wouldn't want to alienate those ties to MAGA at the same time if they're still going to be the government for the next three years in America.
So this is just putting everybody in a difficult position and this is reforging the world order as it has existed for years at this point.
And it is very interesting to see where this all may fall as the year progresses, particularly when we get to the midterms and see how that affects MAGA as well.
All right, I'll go through the super chat.
It's got quite a few again.
Fleet, all details, examples I've heard so far, excuses, noise.
US wants full authority to operate in Greenland to keep them from keeping infested by the CCP.
Look WTF happening in Canada.
Well, partially what's happening in Canada is, again, the fault of US rhetoric, pushing Mark Carney into the position that he's in and then pushing him to try and strengthen deals with China.
This year's Davos theme is dialogue, as in stop having dialogue, you effing plebs, and obey our dialogue.
That's what it always is.
But now you're giving them reason to present themselves as the good guys.
Luke's Saint 91.
It's going to be interested with them trying to say that they're protecting you from without when everyone's pissed off with a problem that they let in and they're continuing to let you faster.
Yeah, absolutely true.
And again, this presents a problem, potentially.
It's dangerous if you're in Europe, and in Britain, if you have been somebody who has been overtly supportive, say, of MAGA, potentially, if you're one of those people making jokes of, oh, you got Majuro, now let's get, come over here and get Starmer.
Like, if America presents itself as an enemy to all of these states and these governments, what stops those governments from saying, like, well, I mean, you're actively calling for a foreign coup of us right now.
So we'll just sweep you up.
That's not necessarily exactly what's going to happen.
Who knows the chances, but it is a potential.
Luke, I think European right-wing parties could be fine.
I see them moving and constantly attacking the immigration problem, especially if you've got more crimes keep happening.
They just have to keep going.
That is entirely possible.
That is possible as well.
But it does create problems for some of them like the AFD, who've cozied up.
It gives them a de-boost.
And it boosts the image of the people we have right now in the EU who are actually doing a very good job, very bad job.
Yeah.
Base tape, stop defiling our language or I'll blacken your other eye, you Down syndrome sounding frog.
Cigarette.
If you have something to say to us, you write it down and have a Brit speak it out.
Revolting accent.
I don't mind Frenchy speaking English, actually.
I think it's quite pleasant.
They have to swallow their pride to do it as well.
It's very rare to hear a French person speak English, so you've got to make the most of it.
It's like, ah, we know you can speak it.
Yeah, they keep it very quiet, don't they?
And Luke, again, yeah, maybe if we hadn't let China in, we probably wouldn't have been in this problem because they seem to be doing all this economic warfare for ages.
It's about time we use that weapon.
Yeah, well, part of the problem is as well that America de-industrialized massively and then shipped it all off to China as well.
In a shocking, shocking episode of no foresight whatsoever.
Should we help our main geopolitical rival build up their manufacturing block?
Yes.
I need mouse.
Give me mouse.
Squeak, squeak.
That is the internal monologue of a cat right there.
Predictive Policing Maps 00:05:24
Okay, I'm going to double check this works first.
Yes, it does.
Oh, lucky day.
Look at that.
So this might sound like the stuff of science fiction, but it is not.
Apparently, police in Britain are trialling the use of AI to predict future crime.
And The Telegraph wrote about this.
I was actually reading a newspaper on the train, like I'm in the 19th century, and I saw this story and I couldn't believe it.
And I had to do some digging.
And what I found was actually very, very sinister.
And not even in a hyperbolic way, in a sort of, wow, they're actually saying this out loud sort of way.
So police chiefs are currently evaluating around 100 different projects trialling the use of AI.
And the government in Britain is looking to invest around £4 million in creating an interactive AI-driven map of England and Wales by 2030 to stop criminals before they commit their crimes.
They're basically creating this map.
I presume it operates like a heat map, where it will analyze data to show where crime is likely to happen so that the police can get there before it happens to prevent it happening in the first place.
And the examples given are use official data to identify areas likely to see criminal activity.
So that seems to support my understanding of what this means.
And also to spot early warning signs of anti-social behaviour, which I think is interesting that they mention antisocial behaviour of all things, because actually a lot of the time anti-social behavior is pretty predictable.
Normally it happens in, say, city centers and areas with high alcohol consumption, or if there's a riot going on, there's antisocial behaviour, a football game.
And these are predictable things that you can guess in advance without AI in the first place.
Which makes me have a little suspicion, which we'll be revisiting in a minute.
So in an interview with The Telegraph, Sir Andy Marsh, the head of the College of Policing, explains some of this, because The Telegraph seemed to be the only ones on the money on this.
And they said, one of the key uses of the three uses they're thinking of using AI in policing, predictive analytics is one of them.
And he's proposing to use technology to identify the thousand most dangerous predatory men who pose the highest risk to women and girls in England and Wales.
Which, were it limited to monitoring basically what amounts to sex offenders by the sounds of it, I would be a little bit less concerned.
But of course, this is the socially acceptable face of a technology that no doubt once it's implemented will expand beyond this application.
You'll know it will, right?
But similarly, I have pattern recognition abilities that allow me to pick out potential sex predators from a crowd.
So where's my paycheck?
I know.
Why aren't they employing us?
We could do it.
They haven't been approved.
You can give me a quarter of that £4 million.
For a million pounds, I will tell you all of my secrets.
I can show you all of my secret racist hate crime facts about all the patterns of criminals.
And you'll save lots of money.
I again, I always point this out, but I will bring to the Metropolitan Police's attention the Drill Gang map.
The interactive Drill Gang map that they post online.
I know.
They just post it online.
It's that easy.
So he says, the head of the College of Policing says, we know the data in the case histories tell us that.
Unfortunately, it's far from uncommon for these individuals to move from one female victim to another.
And we understand all of the difficulties bringing successful cases to bear in court.
So he's basically saying they can monitor people who they can't necessarily pin down and prosecute, which is why they're out in the first place.
That's his explanation.
So what we want to do is use these predictive tools to take the battle to those individuals that they are the ones who are frightened because the police are coming after them and we're going to lock them up.
And then they claim that it's going to make officers more efficient with them spending less time form filling and doing bureaucratic work and more time bringing criminals to justice.
Although I can't see how AI predicting crime in the future does that other than the crime doesn't take place and therefore they don't have to fill out the forms talking about it and reporting it internally.
And then in this article, there was also something that I found probably the most concerning of all.
These moves are being headed up by Shabana Mahmoud, the Labour Home Secretary.
And then she here says, when I was Justice Secretary, my ultimate vision for that part of the criminal justice system was to achieve by means of AI and technology what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his Panopticon.
That is, that the eyes of the state can be on you at all times.
She literally said this out loud publicly, that the eyes of the state will be on you at all times.
Who thinks that this is just going to be limited to those thousand most dangerous men and not the entire population at large?
Technology's Unending Scope 00:06:24
When you have the technology, when you're implementing it, and there's the political incentive to do it, who's to say that this isn't going to expand well beyond the original means?
And I'm not a betting man, but I place pretty much everything I own on the fact that it's not going to be limited in scope.
And I'm sure you both agree with me here.
They're going to expand this once it's done at its initial trials beyond these thousand criminals to perhaps more criminals, then maybe to political dissidents, and then maybe to the whole population at large.
It's a total disaster and it's the end of privacy.
And what is interesting with talking about privacy is that you start defending privacy on grounds that lots of people in the culture reject.
Because for instance, everyone will start saying, yeah, yeah, I want privacy and I don't like the panopticon.
But then they will go out and say, no, it's bad individualism that is harming our society and it's individualism and liberalism and etc.
If you are, that is a major problem with it.
Because if you don't treat privacy as a value on its own, and also as instrumental to developing your own individuality, you have a real trouble saying why you oppose things like this.
I think also people who have a war on privacy have basically here a war on human nature because I don't think it's ideological or something we're taught necessarily that we want a private life.
I think it's something innate within us, a desire not to be surveilled and watched because it's an inherently unnerving thing even for non-human animals to be constantly under surveillance, right?
It puts them under stress.
I think there's just an underlying logic for technology like this, which is once it exists, the people who have control of it will just try and apply it to as much as possible.
Of course.
It's just a managerial mission creep.
Exactly that.
And what I wanted to actually look at is what is this panopticon?
Because it speaks of a desire of the technocratic, bureaucratic, globalist elite, basically, I think.
This view of using technology to surveil people.
So the Panopticon, as I'm sure Stelios is well aware of, originated with the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century.
And the concept basically allowed all prisoners within a prison to be observed by a single prison officer without the inmates knowing whether or not they were being watched.
And although it's impossible for the guard to watch all of the prisoners cells at once, the fact that the inmates cannot know whether they're being watched motivates them to act as though they are being watched at all times.
So the fact that this is mentioned and in the context of using technology to surveil people, the implication here is that citizens will have to feel like they're under surveillance by the state at all times because that will be the one way in which the government can control their behaviour.
And it's worth mentioning that these panopticons are not abstract, right?
And in fact, here is one.
And the two countries in the world that actually built Bentham's panopticons for prisons was Cuba in the 1920s and the Dutch.
So well done for being the two most dystopian countries in this one respect.
Do they work?
I presume so.
I'm curious as to whether they achieve their intended effect.
I think they probably would, otherwise they wouldn't be using it as an analogy for technological expansion and surveillance.
But it feels a little bit dystopian here.
This is the Dutch built three, one in Haarlem, one in Breda and one in Arnhem.
And weirdly enough, a sort of dystopian side direction here, a sort of tangent, if you will.
In a sort of dystopian twist, one has become an upmarket venue, this circular prison, because they were built in the late 19th century.
And you can see this has become weirdly dystopian in and of itself.
One has become an office space.
And one's become an escape room.
I don't want to work in the office that's literally a panopticon.
But I think there's an analogy here, and the reason I've included it is that this sort of encapsulates something that I think is an adaptation of the old-timey totalitarianism.
It's not just prisons and dissidents now that were sort of viewed in the past as the focus of this tyranny, but sort of everyone, isn't it?
And the fact that it's encompassing, you know, going to a bar or a restaurant in one, you've got an office space in another, and then like entertainment in an escape room in the third.
It's sort of symbolic of the application of this sort of technology today in that it's going to be in all areas of life now.
And the fact that, you know, they're just like, here's a horrible totalitarian building.
Let's convert it into something nice.
I think they're governed by voyeurists.
Only a voyeurist would want this.
And here's the one in Cuba, by the way, which was not adapted.
But you can see the sort of idea of the structure where you've got the guard tower where the one guard can be, and then all the cells facing the middle.
It does seem a bit dystopian, in my opinion.
This didn't work.
Everyone escaped.
Yeah, well, they had to build walls.
Yeah, if only we'd put walls on the outside of the cells.
And just in case you weren't concerned enough, it's worth mentioning that Shabaman and Mahmoud said this panopticon thing in a conversation with Tony Blair at the Tony Blair Institute of Global Change or for Global Change.
But he started drooling.
He did.
And it's interesting in the first place that there was this meeting going on and of course Tony Blair being the sort of Platonic ideal of a technocrat and a globalist.
Facial Recognition Fears 00:07:00
I think he's the sort of quintessential one, isn't it here?
And following this meeting, mysteriously enough, Tony Blair gave her the stamp of approval, which is interesting.
This came the day after they had that meeting and she started talking about creating this AI panopticon.
And then I looked into this a little bit more and thankfully the government just announces its evil things in statements, which is a good thing.
We've still got this element of Germanic honesty about us.
It's like, we're going to do this evil thing.
Here's exactly how we're going to do it with this evil outcome.
And here you go.
And here's the time scale we're expecting as well.
And one thing that I noticed of this is in the bullet points here was this.
And maybe I'm reading into it a little bit too much, this part here.
So it says, the tool to be fully operational by 2030 with Britain's brightest minds backing law-abiding majority over lawbreakers.
So this framing I found interesting, particularly law-abiding majority over lawbreakers, because it could signal one of two things, in my opinion.
Either they're trying to get the public angry about thinking about criminals, like, yeah, this minority is ruining it for the rest of us, rather than thinking about surveillance.
That's possible.
That is a sort of rhetorical thing.
Or more sinisterly, again, it suggests that the future scope might be to impose what is presented as the political desires of the democratic majority upon dissidents.
And it's a sort of accidental reveal of the hand here.
Because why would you frame it as that, the law-abiding majority?
That's a curious phrase to use about this sort of thing.
And again, it could just be rhetorical to try and get this through.
But I think that there's enough incentives in place to apply this to political opposition that that phrase should be concerning to me.
What do you guys think of it?
Do you think I'm right to be concerned here, or is it just reading too much information?
I think the rest of it is concerning enough by itself to worry so much about the specific wording of one sentence.
I think the rest of it speaks.
That's fair enough.
Yeah.
What do you think, Stanley?
I think, I mean, I wouldn't pay so much attention at the law-abiding majority of law breakers personally.
But I think I agree with Harry.
I think that it's correct, and it is disturbing because there is a very split, let's say, very dual approach that the left has with crime.
It's either you go full prevent or like, you know, just it's constantly an issue of how the criminal has been acculturated and if they belong to a minority group or something and it's all an issue.
They shouldn't have enough youth sensitivity.
Always society's help, always society's fault, or they go full, you know, full like this, just punitive on everything.
You're watching everything you go.
Just they're completely extreme at anything they're doing.
Well, I think there are different factions of the left.
The more radical left, I think, are also concerned about this sort of thing.
And actually, the surveillance state is something that...
They're concerned they aren't in control of it.
But they would definitely use it, especially if they're right.
I don't think they're coming at it from quite the same moral position.
They see themselves, they're more concerned about, well, we're going to be surveilled as well.
And you do see them talking about this sort of thing because it is the less radical left-wing but more technocratic globalists that are more in favour of this, I think.
And they're the faction that are pushing this, which I think is why Blair is involved and why he's giving a stamp of approval to Mahmoud, who's probably affiliated with many similar circles to Blair himself.
And we can see the implications of this already, this sort of philosophy.
So part of Mahmoud's approach is that there are going to be live facial recognition cameras planned for every town centre, which is concerning.
And all prisoners that were released early, of course, there was this scandal about Labour releasing lots of prisoners early, and there were ones that also went on to commit crimes again.
But what didn't get the same attention was that all of them were tagged.
And this obsession with tagging people and being able to monitor where they're going, the basic philosophy here is that it's a sort of secondary prison.
That's how it was actually framed as the justification for this.
But tie all of this together, and what you've got is an AI system that has access to facial recognition data from all the town centers.
All the wrongdoers are constantly surveilled.
AI is then also predicting people who have committed crime, or even eventually people who are political dissidents who have never broken a law.
And it can estimate when they're going to do something based on data.
And I'd imagine that these estimates would at least sometimes be accurate as well.
So it creates this interesting scenario whereby the philosophy of the state is now to surveil people as much as possible to prevent them from behaving in ways in which the government doesn't approve fundamentally.
And I think that it is going to go more and more that direction with this sort of technology.
And it's something to be concerned about.
And I think that not nearly enough attention has been brought upon it.
And that it's something that people should push back on.
Do you want to?
Sure.
Luke says it is like how they try and use AI with medicine and it became too racist for them.
I don't see it going far, especially when the AI keeps pointing at certain communities that have a grooming problem.
But here's the thing: because it's AI, they don't have to reveal any of the workings.
It can be a sort of mysterious box that comes out with outputs that the police act on.
But because it's the AI making the predictions, then they don't have to show it publicly.
It can be saying, listen, you need to be monitoring black people.
And the police can take that and interpret it however they want.
And it doesn't have to be broadcast.
It's all internal, right?
And so even if the AI is noticing the same patterns that right-wingers are noticing, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to shut it down and ignore it.
Sophie Liv: Simple Solutions 00:08:50
And in fact, they can have that data and choose to overlook it quite comfortably because it won't be public in the first place.
Sigil Stone says, implement the PedoFinder AI, immediately have it to shut down.
I can't say that, although it made me laugh.
I can hear Samson laughing.
I don't think we have any video comments.
Right, okay, let's go to the comments.
Let me see if we have any honorable.
No, right, okay.
Okay, so Sophie Liv, I actually think this is very simple.
Denmark just doesn't have the resources to defend Greenland.
America has pretty much been the Greenland defense since the Second World War.
Their bases, their soldiers, their equipment.
And yet, despite being the ones defending Greenland, they don't get to reap the benefits of it.
And Trump is done with American charity like that.
I really think it's that simple.
If they're going to spend resources defending it, Trump thinks they should own it.
Right, so Sophie, I think there's a simple response to it.
Greenland does have resources, and the people from Greenland have said, and the Danes are interested in doing business with people who want to mine these resources, including the Americans.
Right.
Okay.
George Hap: the acquisition of Greenland is a reminder that the US is a geopolitical enemy of Europe.
The dunderheads in charge need to realize this and start playing realpolitik instead of a toothless bureaucracy.
Stop.
The suicidal empathy of accepting the world's garbage would be a good first step.
People don't use the term dunderhead enough.
I very much appreciate it.
I'm quite upset that Midwit replaced Dimwit, because I think Dimwit's actually much better.
It sounds more aristocratic, doesn't it?
Yes.
Get over here, you dimwit.
Why are you being so dim-witted?
Terror toddler, I don't get it.
America is NATO.
Just give them the bloody island and move on.
If America pulls out of NATO, then NATO is basically dead.
I don't want NATO to exist, so that's good.
But also, as I showed you during the end of the segment, the idea that Europeans aren't paying for NATO is complete bullshit.
Right.
Roman Observer, reading some tweets from the MAGA crowd, turned neocon.
I'm under the impression they're suffering from the opposite of TDS, the infamous Biden whiplash syndrome.
Everything Trump or administration do is perfect.
USA policies were always the correct ones.
All the international crisis were caused by the Europeans and so on.
Roman Observer, I think it's another form of TDS.
It's Trump defecation syndrome.
It's derangement and defecation.
Yep, that's it.
You're correct.
Arizona Desert Rat.
It would be nice to get the rare earth minerals from somewhere besides China and Africa.
And I hate tariffs.
Also, I think Ukraine has lots of rare earth minerals.
Yes, but all basically in the middle of the last time I checked.
Yeah, it's funny why all of a sudden they're very keen to continue the war when they did the minerals deal and realized all the minerals are in the parts that Russia controls.
Lord Inquisitor Hector X, apparently the last island that Denmark sold to the US was little St. James.
I've heard that as well.
And I've seen it fact-checked.
That is true.
Jim Boji.
Trump's like we need a bigger one.
Super Epstein.
Oh, no.
Jimbo G. Epstein.
Trump winning so much has ultimately become cursed.
The endless threats of tariffs, the Greenland posturing.
I'm so over it.
And it only seems to be making European leaders circle their wagons to double down on their WEF agenda for us.
Yep, that's what it does.
It's handing them a tremendous boost in image.
And the same way it did it for Mark Carney in Canada.
Aspergers and Fries, a meme war alongside diplomatic tensions.
Wow.
You're telling me that in several decades I'm going to open my kids' history textbook into the section about chaos of the 2020s and I'll find an early AI-generated Trump Greenland meme.
This is somehow the most depressing and the funniest timeline.
One thing he posted on his Truth Social account himself.
It's just the whole own the libs thing.
It works on Twitter.
It works on X.
It works in the media, but it works until it doesn't.
And there's a time where constant trolling makes one a buffoon.
And when you have a leader, you have to take their words seriously.
There's room for bluffing, but you have to be able to take their words seriously.
And John V says, good morning, Seleus, Josh, and Harry.
Trump showing his great statesmanship as usual.
Lol in eight wars, maybe stop seven.
But India defeated Pakistan on their own.
Jerks aside, this is definitely not a good look.
I've got a good idea, actually.
India should just like catapult in small child-sized scarecrows into Pakistan, and all the Pakistanis will swarm towards them and be distracted, and then they strike.
Just an idea.
If you need a consultant, Josh, Josh has lots of plans for aggression against Pakistan.
Ignore the nuclear power part, you know.
Do you want me to read your...
I don't have a mouse, so I can't scroll.
Great.
Great, okay.
So, Michael Drebelbis.
Hi, Michael.
The biggest issue with Trump is that he's a blowhard.
His braggadoccio is off-putting and alienates friends and foes alike.
Well, that may work in business and negotiations.
Government isn't business, and hurt feelings are more meaningful in diplomatic situations than in business.
In business, they may hate you, but if you can make a profit, it doesn't matter.
The Eurocrats have a vested interest in not dealing with Trump.
I will say this: it's not also just an issue of Eurocrats and Trump.
It's also an issue of pro-US people in Europe.
It's just he doesn't have to just shade on us.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, you are making life way more hard difficult for pro-US people within Europe.
And also, yeah, this isn't business because, like, yeah, you're supposed to make money for the shareholders or whatever, but you don't get voted in by those people for the most part.
Yeah.
What happens in this situation is that you're accountable to your electorate if you're in a democratic system.
So, all of them having their feelings hurt by it as well, that forces you into action.
Diogenes nuts.
A Frenchman trying to make a capitalist appeal to investment by calling it predictable and stable is a little show.
It's like calling the average French worker unrushed.
I'm sorry, I've never met a French person with an ounce of work ethic akin to anything remotely Protestant.
Isn't your country revolting on a monthly basis because it can't balance its social benefits budget?
Well, they are a primarily Catholic country, so makes sense.
They also have a very all-encompassing welfare state, so they've got a worse situation than many other European countries.
Richard Schmear says, You see, the thing is, I don't, sorry, I don't see yet.
It doesn't actually matter how Europeans take it, the thing that matters is that it's going to work.
Nobody cares if you think it's rude or if you think Trump is a blowhard.
Yeah, yeah.
But I mean, if you say so, but like, I think if America alienates itself from all of its allies in the Western bloc, then it might have a very rude awakening that actually having allies is a good thing.
Yeah, it's not going to work.
So, it doesn't seem to be working in Canada, so it's not working.
Yeah, especially if all of those then former allies go and align themselves with your main geopolitical rival.
Anonemi, European S-Libs are 100% going to take control of patriotism.
Labour were putting up flags in their videos when people were putting up flags.
It's not hard to co-opt it.
All you need is the boomers to vote for you.
And if you say the right things, people think it's patriotic and it hearkens to World War II.
Yeah, that's the problem: you are ceding the ground of patriotism to Eurocrats who hate Europe, or at least what Europe was.
Josh Firm feeding a horse lemon says AI predicting crime before it happens was what started Marvel Comics Civil War II.
That didn't go well for anyone involved.
And Omar Award, you, the pleb, having privacy is a national security risk.
I, the enlightened MP elite, being monitored is a national security risk.
Dan and Carl Round Table 00:00:39
I must have privacy, learn the difference.
I hope they'll all live long enough to find out that digital panopticon is an infinite hall of mirrors.
So do I.
And I think that was well said.
Right.
Okay, so we come to an end.
Do join us for the round table with Dan and Carl.
It's going to be Harry and myself.
We're going to talk about Greenland and the whole context about it.
Right.
So if we don't see you there, see you tomorrow at 1 p.m.
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