The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1347

Feb. 4, 2026 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:26:13

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1347

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
Andy and Mandy in the News 00:02:12
	Hello and welcome to podcast of the Lotus Eaters episode 1347 on the Wednesday 4th of February year of our Lord 2026 where we are joined by Bo and special guest Josh.
	Hello, I'm not that special.
	Well no, I think you're quite special.
	Special needs guest.
	No no genuinely special.
	And today we're going to be talking about Andy and Mandy.
	Only they're in the news.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	We're going to be talking about how new information reveals that Epstein was in fact Russian.
	So we can all breathe a sigh of relief.
	We don't have to go near anything uncomfortable because you can criticise the Russians, so that's good.
	And attempts to destroy X. Right.
	So yes, that's what we've got for you.
	All right then, so we need to talk about Prince Andrew or the artist formerly known as Prince Andrew.
	Artist.
	So has he been stripped?
	Is he still a prince?
	No, no, stripped of HRH.
	He's just merely Andrew Mountbatten Windsor now.
	So he's a Mr. now.
	Yeah, Mr. Mountbatten Windsor.
	Oh, that's downgrade, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	Still got a posh double-barreled name.
	So it's not all lost for him.
	If he wants to be a prince again, he's going to have to do the Megan Markle thing where he goes and finds a princess and marries them to become a prince.
	Make sure she's the right age this time.
	Yes, that would help.
	Should really be Mr. Saxe Coburg and Gotha.
	That's more my view on it.
	But the thing is, we've got to cover it because it's in the news.
	Kind of got it.
	I mean, it's all over the news.
	If anyone watched Breakfast with Bo, the Bo show, you'll know that for the last two, I could believe even three days, been talking about it.
	And we talked a little bit about it on the podcast.
	But because it's in the news so much, we haven't done a whole segment on just Mandy.
	So I'm actually going over stuff I've already said a couple of times.
	But let's tell the story again because it's such a sort of a big one.
	On again, the breakfast show, it was every single front page this morning, every single one without fail.
	It was for Andy and Mandy.
	So we've got to cover it, really.
	It's what we do.
	I mean, it's our jobs, right?
	So.
	All right.
	Well, should we just dive straight in?
Blair, Osborne, and Political Controversies 00:15:19
	I've got a lot of glare on my screen, so I can't necessarily see it all.
	Samson, have you even got up my links there?
	Can you get my links up?
	I don't think they're my links.
	So I'll just start by saying, oh, there we go.
	Oh, well, let's have a look at this little clip of the Right Honourable David Lammy.
	Intellectual Powerhouse.
	Is a man of considerable expertise.
	He's the right man for this moment to be our ambassador.
	He's been a business secretary, a Northern Ireland Secretary.
	Of course, he's worked in the European Commission.
	And he brings all of that to bear working as our ambassador in the United States.
	And of course, he's looking forward to presenting his credentials to Donald Trump.
	Well, that aged badly, didn't it?
	Always the head of the game as David Lamy.
	Yeah.
	He's so sharp.
	Yes.
	He basically lives in the future.
	He's so smart.
	His political acumen is a rapier-like.
	Yes.
	I said rapier.
	Okay, so yeah, so it's what should I start at Beginning, should I try and tell the story as though, oh, this is just a quick just show you that it's every single front page.
	Um, Mandy, more Mandy.
	People might not remember that he was incredibly important.
	Yeah, for 30 years, yeah, sorry.
	Oh, yeah.
	Well, the reason his biography about his life is called The Third Man is because he was seen as the third man in Labour, wasn't he?
	After Blair Brown, and then him, yeah.
	Yeah, and some of the leaks from these emails seem to suggest that he was actually even more important than you'd think, even if he were the third man, because he was an insider to lots of the goings-on, like trying to get Gordon Brown to resign and, you know, being privy to information about selling off certain assets.
	I mean, in the early days, he didn't even have a ministerial role.
	He was minister without portfolio for the longest time.
	Yeah.
	Which basically meant he got to do whatever he wanted.
	Which meant it was.
	Okay, so start at the beginning.
	Blair gets in in 1997.
	And many people have said that Mandy, sorry, the right honourable the Lord Mandelson, first Baron Mandelson, was one of the architects.
	He's not anymore.
	I think he's stepped out.
	Oh, yeah, so not anymore.
	Quite right.
	Technically.
	No, no, technically, he still is.
	Anyway, we won't bother going into that, but okay.
	He was friends with Blair from way back when.
	And people have said that he was one of the main architects of that 1997 landslide victory, like a famous, famous victory in 1997 where Blair got a massive majority.
	And like riding this crest of a wave of popularity.
	Mr. Blair, Mr. Blair, 1997.
	You remember it then?
	You're probably slightly too young.
	How old were you in 1997?
	Two years old.
	Oh, there you go.
	I mean, I was only a paperboy.
	I think I was 15 or 16.
	and i was like a paper boy i remember delivering very well read though weren't you i remember I've been keeping up with the news.
	I remember delivering papers on the day of Blair's win, or the day after, rather, Blair's win.
	So anyway, lots of people said that Mandy was one of the chief architects of all of that.
	So he's been in the new Labour project since literally since day one.
	He was in government straight away.
	His best mate Blair gives him a job straight away.
	By 1998, Blair had already had to fire him one time for a disgrace.
	He was too close to some dodgy businessman and it was all a bit...
	So Blair just got rid of him.
	It wasn't anything criminal.
	Anyway, Blair brings him back within 18 months, two years or so.
	By 2001, Blair has to fire him again for another distraction.
	A completely different disgrace.
	Nothing to do with Epstein.
	But anyway, over this whole time, he's still been, they often say like a grandee, don't they?
	Or a big beast of the party.
	You're just one of the most important players.
	A couple of times on the Breakfast Show, I've described him as a Labour version of Michael Gove.
	Just like one of the most important players in the Labour Party.
	I mean, all this, I don't think Gove has anywhere near.
	I mean, he's probably a miscomparable.
	I know it's directionally right, but it's a miscomparison because Gove is nowhere near as powerful as Mandelson was.
	Yeah, good point.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Michael Gove was nowhere near as powerful or for anywhere near as long either.
	So Mandelson, even all, and then he was in government in the Brown years, again.
	And that was another scandal later.
	It keeps being scandal brought back, scandal brought back.
	Every time you give Mandy a job, it works out bad for you.
	Yeah.
	There should have been lessons learnt here already.
	You know, if you've got to fire someone twice, then sort of suggests maybe you shouldn't judge them as being a clean slate.
	Sort of damaged goods politically.
	If you want and you need super clean, whiter-than-white individuals, then Mandy's already tainted.
	Anyway, by 2009, he's in the Brown government because Brown loses to Cameron in 2010, right?
	So by 2009, and a little bit before, of course, he's the business secretary.
	And there's the credit crunch that started in what, 07, I think it was.
	It went all the way through 08 and 09 still, still dealing with it, still doing bailouts in like 09, you know.
	So he's working very, very closely with the Chancellor, the late Alistair Darling, as was.
	And at that time, it's now emerged, if you believe what's in the JOD DOJ dump.
	He's getting the inside scoop.
	He's right at the heart of power, the inner sanctum of power.
	And he's just going straight on emails to Jeff Epstein telling him the inside skinny on everything.
	Price sensitive information.
	Yeah, market-sensitive information, yeah.
	Well, that's a little bit illegal.
	That's insider trading, is it not?
	And by a little bit illegal, I mean a lot.
	Yeah.
	Wasn't there also an example where when Gordon Brown was selling off the gold, he sent him an email as well.
	Yeah, there's a load of things, and I bet more will be coming out as well.
	But so far, what we know is that, for example, when the Treasury was going to do a bailout of the Eurozone to the tune of 500 billion euros, Mandy knows this ahead of time before it's formally announced, and he tells old Jeff over in New York about it.
	A 500 billion liquidity injection.
	I think that moves markets.
	Yeah, it's difficult to argue that's not market-sensitive information.
	Yeah, that's the difficult argument to make.
	It's not slipping your best mate the fact that so-and-so company is going to have a good set of results.
	I mean, that is basically about as material as you can possibly get.
	It's pretty bad, yeah.
	If there is a full-blown investigation or the police are involved, so if there's like a real full-blown investigation into everything and it's shown that either Epstein himself or he passed it on to whoever and then they made trades or whatever of the back of that information, then I feel like there's no way to avoid prosecution for Mandy at that point.
	I would think.
	I'm no prosecutor.
	But okay, another thing is when Gordon Brown had lost the election, he didn't actually resign straight away because it was sort of up in the air.
	Who are the Lib Dems going to make a coalition with?
	I remember actually making a really bad prediction at that time.
	I wasn't on the internet or anything, but I remember telling people, people knew I already had a master's degree in politics.
	So like, bo, what's going to happen?
	And I was like, whatever happens, the Tories and the Lib Dems won't make a coalition.
	That just doesn't work.
	They can't be in bed together.
	It doesn't work.
	They did.
	They did.
	Nick Clegg and David Cameron in bed together.
	Weird.
	So people thought maybe Nick Clegg would go with Gordon Brown at that point.
	So anyway, there's a good couple of days where everyone's just waiting to see what Gordon Brown can pull out of the fire if he can sort of save himself.
	Anyway, eventually he just had to resign.
	We're just waiting for Gordon Brown to resign for like a good couple of days.
	Mandy hears of that and five hours, again, five hours before it's announced, doesn't sound like much, but it actually is.
	Highly sensitive political information, right?
	Again, he's straight on the emails to old Jeff.
	Big Jeff E over at the pond.
	The way that Epstein talks about Mandelson is that he's one of the people who's sort of most loyal to him.
	And he pretty much says so explicitly.
	And he constantly mentions him.
	And so he was obviously integral to at least some things.
	Yeah, well, how close their friendship was is absolutely insane.
	Thousands of emails between each other, sending each other congratulatory messages all the time, birthday cards, and on and on and on and on.
	All throughout his before, during and after Jeffrey Epstein's paedophile convictions.
	Loads and loads of different things.
	Oh, Jeffrey Epstein sent him and or his husband money, loads of money.
	At least three payments of $25,000 plus Ronaldo, Mandy's husband, getting four grand a month.
	They've sort of got the receipts of that from the Epstein side of that ledger.
	No evidence.
	They said it was a loan, didn't they?
	So they didn't have to pay any tax on it, but actually there's no evidence for any repayment, so it doesn't seem to be a loan at all.
	yeah and it's just sounds like spy shit to me well Well, it is starting to get difficult not to describe it as some sort of espionage working on behalf of a foreign agent.
	Yes.
	So to say that Epstein, to say that Mandelson is a mole working on behalf of a foreign body against the interests of the crown, against the interests of his own government that he's in, against the interests of the Prime Minister and the cabinet and on and on and on.
	His first, it feels like, doesn't it?
	It looks like his first priority was to Epstein, not Gordon Brown.
	Well, there's two ways of looking at this, isn't there?
	There's one in which you can look at it and think, well, he's trying to cozy up to Epstein because Epstein is rich and powerful and he wants to be rich and powerful himself.
	Or there are shared loyalties between both of them to organisations that are not the British government.
	Yeah.
	Do they have something in common then?
	Yeah.
	I haven't checked.
	Someone needs to look into that.
	What is it that they both have in common?
	It's that they like to share a yachting trip with George Osborne.
	Yeah, Osborne's in this.
	George Osborne.
	Anyone remember that time that George Osborne, Peter Mandelson, and Geoffrey Epstein were yachting on Nathaniel Rothschild's yacht?
	Anyone remember that one?
	Anyone remember that one?
	Why?
	Don't know.
	Don't know.
	Okay, so the scandal.
	So, and there's more.
	There's loads of more other things.
	And it's just terribly, terribly scandalous, isn't it?
	So it's all broken now.
	I mean, big part of it now is not just the complete disgrace of Mandelson himself and whether the police will and the CPS will go ahead with a prosecution on either financial crime or just general misconduct in power, the misconduct of in high office sort of thing.
	Not just that, because it also now spills out into the prime minister himself, because he picked Mandy only like last year, was it either at the very end of 2024 or at the...
	What's that?
	What are you doing?
	I don't know.
	I was just looking if there's any other connection with Osborne that fits as well.
	That's interesting.
	I didn't even know that, to be honest.
	Did you not?
	Really?
	My radar is obviously off a bit.
	Yep.
	Okay.
	Sorry to talk about Starmer.
	The Prime Minister.
	The Prime Minister appointed him, whether it was either at the end of 2024 or in 2025.
	So in other words, not very long ago, appointing him as US ambassador to the US, which is the highest possible diplomat you can be at the Foreign Office.
	You're supposed to have a whole lifetime in the Foreign Office, basically.
	It's supposed to be like the final cherry on top of a senior diplomat's career.
	That's what it's supposed to be.
	But no, he just parachuted in Peter Mandelson for that role.
	Even though at the time, again, only like a year or a bit ago, he was told that that's not a good idea.
	Don't do that.
	And in fact, in PMQs that have just happened, just a few minutes ago, he was asked, did the intelligence services warn you not to do that?
	And Kirstam said yes.
	Right?
	Yeah, that wasn't a good look, to be fair.
	So really, really, so, in other words, a really, really odd decision, or is it all that odd?
	But a really, really odd decision on the face of it for Sir Keir Starmer to pick Mandelson for that role.
	Play devil's advocate here.
	I think having someone heavily connected to a paedophilic international network might be useful if you want to get one over on foreign diplomats.
	You know, there's some justification.
	I'm being facetious, of course.
	On the other hand, the PR isn't great.
	No, of course not.
	Yes.
	Obviously, he shouldn't have been appointed.
	And so now Keir Starmer's doing the whole damage limitation thing.
	It's a disgrace.
	It's a disgrace on him on quit Keir Starmer for doing it.
	And Kimmy Bagnock trying to hammer it home.
	What a terrible decision is.
	How it reflects on Keir Starmer's judge of character.
	Well, the PMQs that we've just had just before coming on, I mean, it's starting to look like it could be, you know, bad for Starma in a career-limiting way quite soon.
	I mean, maybe it's basically on the Labour backbenchers.
	It's basically on other Labour MPs to coup Keir Starmer out of his position, isn't it?
	I would be quite surprised.
	I think he's trying to hang on like a limpet onto a whole other thing.
	This is a bloody good excuse if you wanted to get rid of him anyway.
	I know, but I think it's going to have to take an accumulation and then it's going to be one small thing.
	You know how with the Tories it was the party gate thing after all they did?
	It was that took them out.
	Like, it's usually not just any one thing.
	I mean, this is big enough, though.
	I'm pessimistic enough about how important this is to the morality of those people that they're probably going to look to something else.
	Well, the other thing is the Morgan McSweeney angle.
	Oh, yes.
	People are saying, well, so Morgan McSweeney was supposed to be one of Mandy's proteges in the party.
	And he's now like one of the closest aides to Keir Starmer.
	And so a lot of people have said that if Keir Starmer was forced to get rid of McSweeney, then that really badly, badly, badly undermines Starmer's position himself.
	And so it's mixed up with McSweeney as well.
	It's all mixed up with him.
	He's going to lose one of his key allies, isn't it?
	Right.
	Yeah, massively undermine his position.
	And maybe the various powers ranged against Keir Starmer from Badernock Down will sort of hone in on McSweeney.
	Or like the papers, the press, the print media, whatever, Fleet Street.
	But if you had to get rid of Mandy, it's a bit tricky keeping McSweeney now.
Russo Connections Unveiled 00:17:14
	But he's the guy running the Labour government, so...
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	They might be able to get away with saying, well, you know, just because he was his, you know, pupil doesn't mean that he was, you know, implicated in the same thing.
	Yes.
	Like, he's not actually done anything wrong.
	Just because Starf Moore was his pupil doesn't mean that he's connected to any Sith nonsense.
	Not necessarily.
	Not agreeing with it.
	Not necessarily that.
	It's not that Morgan McSweeney went to Little St. James and was getting messages off of 14-year-old girls.
	Not that.
	It's that Morgan McSweeney was the one in Starmer's ear.
	Pick Mandelson for the US ambassador.
	Pick him, pick him, pick him.
	That.
	That's the problem.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	I do agree with that.
	Okay.
	So yeah, even Zia Yusuf jumping in there, just saying Mandelson is going to jail.
	And there's some of the receipts of the thing, various things.
	I would like to see it.
	I mean, to be clear, if you or I did that, 100% jail.
	Yeah, oh, yeah.
	The only reason there's any doubt is because it's Peter Mandelson.
	Yeah.
	So they just want to know what exactly was the vetting process?
	Who exactly did you talk to?
	What exactly did they say?
	And when?
	What did the Prime Minister know and when?
	That whole angle they're going for at the moment.
	But yeah, I mean, certainly Mandy's career is in tatters and he may end up in a jail cell.
	The only reason I hesitate slightly is because if you're an old-time watcher of British politics, you've seen him go through this three times before.
	Yeah.
	And every time he comes back.
	I do think that he should go to jail, but it wouldn't shock me entirely if six months from now he's a Supreme Court justice or an archbishop.
	Does have a tendency to fail upwards, doesn't he?
	Yes.
	The Secretary General of the UN or something.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	Well, I mean, that pretty much takes up my time, so hopefully I've covered that in enough detail.
	All right.
	What am I going to talk about?
	Got some chats here anyway.
	Oh, yes, we have.
	Yeah, I'll be able to do those first.
	Do you want me to read them?
	Sure, be my guest.
	Be my guest.
	Why not?
	Tom Ratt says, Bo, my point on the BBC this morning was that John Pond was a non-diplom for Gordon Brown, posted at you on X about it from, and then he lists his tag there.
	Okay, I get it.
	The BBC is Bo's Breakfast Club, by the way.
	Very good acronym there.
	Oh, and also quickly to Andrew Jenkins.
	I know what I gave was the definition of insider trading.
	I'm just saying that's at the lower end of it, whereas a 500 billion bailout is pretty much the top end.
	That was the point I was making.
	Crash Prone says, Where can I sign up to a conservative think tank?
	Yeah, good luck.
	I don't know.
	You need to find one and then you need to find a job listing and then sign up to it.
	It's like any other thing, really.
	Although they're notorious for being a nuisance to work for.
	Sigil Stone says, Man, the Democrats went wild and weird with this hoax Trump said they made.
	Yeah.
	I mean, Trump did release it in the end, but you did spend like a year telling us it was a hoax.
	I know.
	There's nothing to it, which I think in my mind is unforgivable.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Like, so you get to hook that.
	Yeah.
	You're still talking about this guy?
	Yes, Donald.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Turns out we were bloody well right to do so.
	The thing is, what we've seen so far, and maybe it's been released selectively, and probably likely it has, doesn't necessarily make the Trump administration look bad.
	I've not seen much there that says, oh, yeah, you know, Trump was integral to Epstein's operation or anything.
	So it's falling really badly on Democrat fixers like Reed Hoffman and so on.
	I don't understand why they were dragging their feet.
	Maybe there's more to it.
	I mean, there's loads of things there are allegations, but there's loads of things that are super embarrassing to Trump.
	Mar-Largo parties where Epstein turns up with a whole bunch of girls.
	Loads of stuff.
	Sort of the allegation.
	Yeah.
	I mean.
	Cranky Texan says, there is a power structure that sits above nations.
	Politics are the shadows that cast on the cave wall to control the masses.
	I think that's a pretty accurate description, to be honest.
	And Hayden says, Bow's Breakfast Club is the only reliable BBC.
	Three definitions for that term now.
	Oh, God, yeah.
	I didn't want to.
	Move on.
	So, obviously, when this Epstein stuff came out, I was looking at it and thinking, oh, that's a bit uncomfortable because it touches on certain subject areas that you're just not supposed to talk about.
	Not if you want to not get debanked or de-platformed or removed from your job.
	Yeah, all of those things.
	Like Marlon Brando or someone that...
	Well, exactly.
	Or that Braveheart guy, that kind of stuff.
	So you're not really supposed to talk about this stuff.
	So I was a bit worried at first.
	How the hell are we going to cover this without treading on the things that you're not supposed to talk about?
	So you can imagine my relief when I discovered that it's actually a Russian plot.
	The whole Epstein affair.
	Yes, it's a Russian plot.
	It's Russian from the beginning.
	It's from Moscow Centre.
	It all comes from Moscow.
	It comes straight from Putin.
	His real name is actually Epsteinovich.
	I didn't know that.
	They often change their name, don't they?
	To hide the Russian connection.
	Is he Cheka?
	Is it NKVD?
	Something like that.
	He's got a line from Berrier himself.
	Yeah, he's G-R-U through and through.
	And the reason we know this is because journalists of peerless reputation have told us.
	I mean, here's Andrew Maher.
	I mean, he's a hundred times a journalist I'll ever be.
	He worked for the BBC, not Brose Breakfast Club or the other one.
	Anyway, he worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation.
	And he's basically explaining it to us here.
	What's really going on?
	Let me begin tonight with something that I think is even more important, even more extraordinary.
	Growing suspicions of a Russian connection.
	Epstein had apparently limitless supplies of money.
	Where did it come from?
	Good question.
	He procured many young Russian girls.
	Why was that so easy for him?
	The files released show more than a thousand documents which referred to Vladimir Putin and 9,000 referring to Moscow.
	The FBI says that he was Putin's wealth manager.
	Epstein filed all of his messages.
	He filmed and taped powerful Western leaders in deeply compromising situations.
	Why?
	Doesn't it make you wonder at least about the possibility of a KGB operation big enough to ensnare former presidents and prime ministers and the leaders of some of the world's most powerful companies?
	I mean, that there you have it.
	That's embarrassing.
	KGB.
	Really?
	KGB is the KGB.
	I can tell you're a little bit skeptical.
	It was Smursh that killed him in his cell, was it?
	It was the anti-so it was the anti-Russian assassins.
	Well, getting rid of their own.
	Yeah, right.
	Look, mainstream media journalists would not lie to you.
	Andrew Ma said it, so it must be true.
	Well, I can tell you're still sceptical, so I'm just going to pile drive you with evidence.
	So here is a Daily Mail story saying the same thing.
	Epstein's sex empire was a KGB honey trap.
	And they really bring the goods.
	Look, there he is in a Russian hat.
	Oh, boom.
	Wow.
	Slam dunk.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Checkmate.
	Checkmate.
	Those are presumably Russian girls.
	Could well be actually.
	We've got the one with the other hat.
	Oh, look, there's a picture of Putin.
	So it's embedded in the article.
	So there you go.
	I mean, that's evidence enough for it.
	Oh, there's some Russians.
	Look at those hats.
	Is that Ghelene Maxwell in the middle?
	Is it?
	Pose it with Russian.
	It looks like her double chin, yeah.
	She does have a double chin.
	There we are.
	Oh, well.
	There we are.
	What more evidence do you need?
	Well, I don't think you need much.
	Clearly, it was a Russian plot.
	The evening standard also said Jeffrey Epstein's sinister links with Putin revealed with Russian girls in the world's largest honey trap for KGB.
	So again, yeah, I mean, what more do you need?
	Telegraph.
	Isn't it the FSB now?
	Isn't KGB like?
	Oh yeah.
	It's a bit old-timey, isn't it?
	KGB.
	Again, that's why I was joking.
	It's the checker.
	It's part of the NKVD, is what it is.
	I mean, come on.
	Yeah.
	Sorry, go on, Dan.
	No, no.
	No, look, there's literally evidence that the Telegraph.
	The mainstream media are not going to lie to us.
	We can't seriously suggest that the mainstream media is lying to us about everything all of the time.
	They wouldn't do that.
	So that's a fair point.
	That's an unassailable point.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	I told you my ground would be solid on all of this stuff.
	Look, these are the Telegraph.
	They're a broadsheet.
	There you go.
	Yeah, they never, ever lie.
	So it's interesting how Epstein was connected to all of these key politicians.
	He was able to see things before they happened, both politically and economically.
	And how he was able to steer things in Russia's favour, of course.
	All that money being sent to Russia by the United States.
	Oh, wait, no, that doesn't happen.
	I think you're on the right theme there, more or less.
	And I think the reason why you've got thrown off, Bo, is because they use this coded language throughout these emails.
	So, for example, they might talk about a hot dog, but in a really weird context where it's like, why are you talking about a hot dog like that?
	That doesn't make any sense.
	It turns out it's actually code for a boy.
	Right.
	And Pizza is code for a girl.
	And I work for Israel is code for I work for Russia.
	Got it.
	And I work for the Roth Charles is actually I work for Putin.
	Right.
	Right.
	And then there's this other term, which I hadn't heard before, but Goyen, that is apparently a non-Russian.
	This sounds a bit Russian, doesn't it?
	Yeah.
	Starting to make sense now.
	All the pieces.
	Yes.
	It's code.
	This is spy-level stuff, you see, because you can't just put this stuff in an email because what if it gets intercepted and published on the internet?
	If you use a code, it's impenetrable to anyone who doesn't have the code.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	That's basically how it works.
	It goes back to the 1970s, apparently, this KGB connection.
	FSB connection.
	And the thing is, that got me thinking.
	That got me thinking because, I mean, obviously, the mainstream media wouldn't lie to us, so this must be true.
	But then on the other hand, I then started thinking to myself, well, do we have any examples of people who have been shown to be working with the Russians and what happened to them?
	And it turns out there are a few examples.
	So in the United States, there is Aldrich Ames.
	He was exposed as being a Soviet agent.
	Who was Kim Philby?
	I haven't even got him on my list.
	Oh, yeah, that's a British guy, isn't it?
	Yeah, yeah.
	So Aldrich Ames, he got life in prison without parole.
	Robert Hassan, he was exposed as working with the Russians.
	He got life imprisonment without parole.
	Permanent solitary confinement.
	I mean, this is as hard as you can get.
	I mean, this is zero tolerance.
	Straight away.
	Jail forever.
	Solitary confinement, which is basically the most that the state can do to you.
	I mean, even execution is kinder than that.
	Earl Edward Pitts, well, he got off lightly.
	He only got 27 years imprisonment without parole.
	So there's that.
	In the United Kingdom, George Blake.
	Oh, yeah.
	42 years in prison.
	He didn't serve that, though, did he?
	Well, that was what he was sentenced to.
	I don't know if he served that much.
	Wasn't Blake the keeper of the Queen's pictures?
	I don't know.
	I'm mixing him up with one of the others.
	Anyway, carry on.
	Sorry.
	There's probably a few blanks.
	The one you mentioned, which is Kim Philby, he was a senior MI6 figure.
	So he was working in the top layers of government.
	And when it was exposed that he was working with the Russians, he had defect to Moscow, apparently.
	He lived the rest of his life in Moscow.
	I'm going to do an epoch on the Cambridge Five.
	Right.
	Focusing on Kim Philby.
	Eventually he fled to Moscow.
	Yes.
	Interesting, isn't it, as well, that if you were looking for spies in that period of time, you only needed to go to leftist circles in Cambridge.
	Yes.
	There they are.
	There's like 90%, you know, maybe even 100% of all of the spies for Russia in Britain.
	Well, it's one place.
	Kim Philby, a man, his name is Kim, was head of the Russian desk in MI6.
	Counter-espionage desk.
	Make your job your hobby.
	I mean, that works.
	But the point is, if he hadn't have gone to Moscow, if he hadn't defected, he almost certainly would have been doing life.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Maybe solitary.
	Yeah, he would have been.
	Yeah, it would have been.
	Donald McLean.
	Yep.
	Another one, he had to defect to Moscow as well.
	So he presumably would have got life in jail.
	In Canada, Jeffrey D. Sill, he got 20 years in prison for basically handing over a little bit of naval intelligence.
	Australia, Ian Fleming.
	I don't think it's R Ian Fleming.
	Respond.
	No, not finished.
	Not him.
	Another one, but he got complete sort of complete career destruction surveillance of the whole lot.
	So basically, what this is telling me is every example of working with the Russians, punishment is maximum.
	Rehabilitation is non-existent.
	It just doesn't happen.
	And the narrative is all with this sort of moral betrayal stuff.
	There is no second chances for anybody who works with the Russians, which is interesting.
	Because, you know, under UK law, generally, we let foreign nations determine what the law is in their own area.
	And if they don't enforce it, then it's not an issue, right?
	So if you go to a foreign country and you beat somebody up, but they don't, or you steal something and they don't consider it a crime.
	Britain doesn't consider it a crime.
	It's just, okay, fine, you know, that foreign jurisdiction does it.
	The exceptions are, there's a narrow set of exceptions, basically around murder, child abuse and treason.
	I wonder if they added forced marriage to it recently because that was happening in Pakistan.
	I don't know why forced marriage in Pakistan is suddenly an issue for Britain.
	Why are their cousins so unwilling?
	Yes.
	But the point is, there's a sort of narrow set of things for which Britain is actually willing to go extrajudicial with.
	So the list of crimes that we know about from Epstein include sex trafficking of minors, child sexual exploitation, blackmail through compromise, extortion tied to intelligence operations, espionage on behalf of foreign intelligence, unauthorized intelligence gathering, leaking sensitive government and classified documents, misconduct in public office, treason via aiding foreign powers,
	financial fraud and illicit networks, money laundering for sanctioned entities, arms trafficking, compromising security, and narco-trafficking for funding adversarial activities.
	And paedophilia.
	Yeah, that was at the top of my list.
	All right, okay.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So, I mean, that is a list which I would say is, I mean, it's the full house.
	That's the royal flush of treason.
	Two years in prison in the UK, isn't it?
	Well, and the point is we'll be out in nine months.
	You know, we don't know if the individuals listed in the Epstein emails are apart to all, any, or none of that.
	right but they but they are implicated you know they they are at there's three categories for the people in those emails Either they're complicit, they're compromised, or they're negligently exposed to this kind of stuff.
	And yet, it's odd.
	We've got this Russian intelligence operation with the royal flush of treasonous operations, and yet there's no mesh arrests.
	No one's been arrested Maxwell.
	Apart from Ghislaine Maxwell.
	Yes, good point.
	Was she being handled out of Moscow centre as well, do you think?
	Quite possibly.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	It would fit, wouldn't it?
	She's also apparently having a rather lavish time in prison, which is very frustrating.
	Like, she gets to have meetings with people and basically live her life as she was before, just as long as she's in the prison complex.
Unexpected Silence On Russia 00:14:56
	I mean, why are we giving Russia such soft treatment?
	That's the question I'm trying to ask.
	There's obviously something about Russia that it gets treated with kid gloves.
	And I want to get to the bottom of what's going on here because there's no mass arrest.
	There's no treason investigations.
	There's no asset seizures.
	There's no sort of intelligence reckoning.
	But I don't understand why all of these, all of this is completely inconsistent with every historical precedent that we have.
	And I kind of want to get to the bottom of this.
	It's odd.
	And I mean, to give you a much more modern example, and Bo, you can talk to this because you interviewed her lately, but Lauren Chen.
	So Lauren Chen was accused of taking money third hand, so not directly from the Russians, but like two different people in the way accused of taking money from them in order to adjust a narrative, right?
	And I mean, what treatment did she get?
	It wasn't even that.
	Oh, was it it?
	No.
	There was an well, she wasn't actually ever charged with anything.
	There was an indictment of other people in which she was mentioned.
	She was never charged with anything.
	Oh, so it's fourth-handed.
	She was never even charged with absolutely anything at all.
	That's the only thing she was even accused of in their indictment.
	Yeah.
	She was mentioned, and it was the most absurd thing.
	It was like sharing the Tucker video, like when Tucker went to Russia and met Putin.
	She was like sharing that.
	She was mentioned in someone else's indictment.
	They didn't even ever accuse her of taking Russian money or anything.
	So she's not even accused of espionage or trafficking or blackmail.
	She's not even accused of any crime.
	She was not charged with anything.
	Right.
	And what did they do to her?
	Well, completely ruined her life.
	Took all her money away.
	Could she access her bank accounts today?
	No.
	So she's just completely shut out of everything on the basis of a fourth-hand accusation and no crime.
	Yeah, basically, yeah.
	Right.
	So, so that throws up a difficult question for me.
	Why do we always treat Russian involvement with such a high degree of severity?
	If you've actually done something, it's prison without parole in solitary confinement for life.
	If you're even associated with somebody who's associated with somebody who's associated with Russian money, that's enough to get your bank account shut down and get completely destroyed by this.
	But this time, nothing's happening.
	And I want to know why suddenly Russia is being treated very, very differently to how it should be.
	Maybe the Russian operation has compromised other aspects of our civilization.
	Perhaps maybe our governments.
	Perhaps maybe all of a sudden our governments are now favourable to Russia because of this operation.
	I mean, the only thing I could think of, and I dismissed it after a while, but I mean, Russia did have it really bad during the war.
	They lost whatever it was, like 25 million people.
	World War II.
	Yeah, World War II.
	So maybe we kind of look back at what happened 70 years ago and we think, oh, never again should Russia be treated badly.
	And therefore they get a moral pass.
	But at some point, with that list of crimes that I read out, at some point you've got to think, well, hang on a minute.
	You've got to start judging this stuff on its merits from today.
	Yeah.
	It all is all very odd, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	The Russian connection doesn't seem to sort of add up or really make any sense at all, does it?
	I admit it's a conundrum because if this was, you know, what we told it was, what I would expect to see the formal designation of the Epstein network and everybody on those emails as a hostile foreign intelligence operation.
	I don't understand why that isn't happening.
	I would expect there to be a sort of counterintelligence lead led by, you know, FBI, CIA, MI6, MI5, but, you know, outside the criminal courts, but we're not seeing that.
	We'd expect to see the joint Five Eyes task force put on this.
	Again, we're not seeing that.
	It's interesting as well that Trump was dragging his heels releasing this stuff.
	Well, yes, you think...
	Why are you trying to protect Russia?
	Maybe what the Democrats were saying that he's paid by Putin.
	Well, it's the only thing that makes sense at this point.
	Wait, wait, Rachel Madow was right all along.
	I mean, that's a shock, isn't it?
	That's a shock.
	Trump always was Putin's poodle.
	Well, he is.
	All along.
	Rachel Maddow, complete vindication.
	I mean, it must be the case at this point.
	I would expect to be seeing Cobra-level meetings, emergency organised, special counsel with national security remit, declassifications of orders from intelligence operations, hostile state attribution given to Russia, because you can't do this stuff without being a hostile state.
	I would expect that to get slapped on them straight away.
	Diplomatic expulsions.
	Why are Russian diplomats not getting expelled for this?
	Congressional parliamentary inquiries, all that kind of stuff, new counter-intelligence legislation, and also a lot of asset tracking and tracing and seizures across jurisdictions for everybody involved in this.
	But none of that is happening.
	I wonder why Andrew Maher isn't sending a stiffly worded letter to his MP to have Russian diplomats expelled from their embassy in London.
	Well, it doesn't make any sense to me.
	I can't figure it.
	I'm at a loss to explain all of this stuff because those categories of people that I talked about, you know, the active collaborators, I would be expecting them to be getting espionage charges slapped on them about now.
	Pre-trial detention, given the seriousness of what's going on, full asset seizure, lifetime public office bans and permanent reputation destruction.
	And none of that's happening.
	And for the compromised individuals, I would be expecting immediate loss of security clearance.
	Why are hundreds, if not thousands, of people not losing their security clearance today?
	I don't get that.
	They're all being handled, maybe even if it's secondhand through Moscow.
	Well, if fourth hand is good enough to destroy Lauren Chen, I don't get why fourth hand, I mean, even firsthand is not enough to get your security clearance revoked and a forced resignation from any sensitive role.
	Ongoing surveillance and all that kind of stuff.
	And even for the people who are negligently exposed, which I suppose is the closest example to what you could point to with Lauren Chen, even though it doesn't meet that threshold, I would expect sort of former counterintelligence designation, a removal from any sort of leadership position, any sort of oversight position, mandatory distancing from power.
	Like, no, you cannot be associated with a government contract doing this stuff.
	And if you're working for the government, you would have to terminate their career on security grounds.
	None of that's happening.
	So what strange hold does Russia have over the UK and United States?
	I'm not really getting it.
	And the more I think about it.
	Eski Ruskis.
	Well, clearly they've got something over the governments of the UK and the US.
	I mean, they must have, mustn't they?
	The Ruskis.
	Which is baffling because the Russians have never been treated this kick gloves like this before.
	And I don't understand.
	And the more I think about it, the more I think, well, look, in order for this not to, you know, completely break my brain, what would have to be true about Russia for all of this to sort of hang together the way it does?
	Well, Russia would have to be treated as a strategic ally, not a hostile power.
	Okay.
	And there would have to be deep intelligence integration between the US and Russia and the UK in order for this to make sense to me.
	And there would need to be sort of mutual compromatic exposure.
	Knowing that going after the Russians would necessarily involve exposing a vast amount of what you do in retrospect.
	I would expect that the only reason you couldn't do this is because if there was institutional incrimination risk, you know, by probing these links, you're going to expose that for decades there has been counterintelligence failures covered up for the benefit of your ally Russia.
	Yeah.
	That's interesting.
	Also, the other thing that I would expect is why are the mainstream media, why is Andrew Maher even allowed to mention Russia, if all of this is true?
	Surely they would have to pretend it wasn't actually Russia, it was some other country.
	They would be making up some rubbish about how it's actually Belgium that is responsible for this.
	Because it would be so toxic to mention that Russia was doing this that they just couldn't get there.
	The point is very, very brave of Mr. Ma, isn't it, to come out and call a hell of a risk.
	Call a spade a spade.
	Yeah.
	You know, that sort of brutal honesty from Andrew Ma is very brave.
	And just directly attack the underlying issue.
	None of this, oh, we're going to focus on, you know, Mount Batten or something.
	Because, of course, the stakes for someone like Andrew Ma in calling this out, you know, it's a misconception that it's a fall from a balcony.
	Normally, it's either reputation destruction or debanking, because, of course, everyone knows that the Russians have a significant hand in that.
	Yes.
	Big in banking are the Russians.
	Yeah, and, you know, if Russia really was that integrated into our system, you know, a lot of people be choosing to be silent rather than say anything at all, which is interesting.
	And there would be a danger that you can't do anything about this because the enforcing the standard would be too dangerous.
	Even if there was a clear, established standard of what you do when you get foreign intelligence operation compromising you, you would still prefer, oh, we're just going to back away from this or we're going to find a scapegoat.
	We're going to pin it all on a picker royal or something and we're just going to make it all about them or something like that.
	And I suppose my broader point is this, is that I think that we should disentangle ourselves from any country that runs blackmail and compromise operations against our business leaders, our political leaders, even if it is a close ally like Russia.
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	Be careful though.
	I mean, you know, being as straightforward as that about it, you don't want to get Novichoks, do you, Dan?
	No.
	You don't want to get the Litvinenko treatment.
	You could get some rough treatment if you tackle this sensitive subject a bit too bit too close on, which led me to believe, okay, well, what is actually going to happen?
	And this is my prediction for what is going to happen into response to the Epstein files.
	So I think that the UK will probably ban email for the under-18s unless you get digital ID.
	I think that's probably the sponge.
	I think Australia will probably ban guns in response to the Epstein files.
	I suspect that the US will pass new anti-Semitism laws.
	My theory is that Canada will assist and broaden assisted dying in response to the Epstein files and that New Zealand will ban harmful speculation.
	I don't know.
	I could be wrong.
	See where this goes.
	Commentees comments.
	From Casa Widden.
	Guys, I don't want to be too conspiratorial, but I don't think Dan is actually talking about Russia.
	Of course I am.
	That's what the whole bloody segment was about.
	Pay attention.
	That's a random name.
	These emails show that Jeff ordered over 6 million hot dogs from Russia, which seems to be a little bit excessive.
	I'd wager.
	Yeah.
	Somebody's talking about Russia attacking a US ship.
	That would be terrible.
	No.
	Of course I wouldn't do that.
	That would be an act of war, wouldn't it?
	No, yeah.
	They can't do that.
	No, no, of course not.
	And I think there's one more.
	That's a random name.
	I'm convinced Russia clearly has compromats on the whole American elite, which explains why NATO has.
	And then I can't read the rest because it's off the screen.
	Okay.
	Yes.
	Thank you.
	I can even finish reading the thing if you want.
	Oh, you've got a bigger screen.
	NATO has kept getting closer and closer to completely surrounding Russia.
	There we go.
	And I'll just double-check that there isn't another one.
	The files also.
	This is Sigil Stone.
	The files also make Musk look bad.
	There's lots of glare on the screen.
	Because he was trying to get into Epstein's orbit after his conviction.
	Well, some of those emails were fake as well.
	I don't know which ones were genuine and which ones were fake, but I do know there were some fakes circulating.
	So I would just double check whether those were genuine or not.
	Because the files are so massive, obviously.
	I've not verified every single thing because there aren't enough hours in the day to do that.
	But yeah, just taking everything with a pinch of salt, I think.
	Anyway, I need this, don't I?
	How do you, Reno?
	Just to quickly say, how do you really, really know?
	Someone normal, just a normal person who's not involved in the Department of Justice or the FBI or anything, how would you really know?
	How could a normal person like you or I really confirm one way or another whether a PDF of an email is real or not?
	I mean, really, really.
	100% confirm what is or isn't real.
	I mean, you can't know anything.
	I'm not trying to play defense here.
	I'm just trying to be brutally brutal.
	I mean, if we're talking epistemology here, you can say that we're never 100% certain about anything.
	Right, however.
	Okay, you go down that slippery slope and yeah, how can you be sure you're actually alive right now and not in a simulation or whatever?
	Yeah, I suppose.
	I mean, it's all degrees of certainty.
	Like, no one's ever 100% certain about it.
	The reason I can be certain that I'm not in a simulation is because whoever programmed the simulation would make it make sense.
	Yeah, it's a bit buggy, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I want a different simulation.
	This is rubbish.
	They didn't beta test it.
	Yeah, there's some glitches in there.
	No infinite money glitch, though.
Doubts and Simulations 00:05:06
	That's annoying.
	Anyway, there is an attempt to destroy X, formerly known as Twitter, and it is because of the politics that are common on the platform, which shouldn't come as much of a surprise because since Elon Musk has bought it, it has become a sort of almost like a pirate's cove, like a Nassau of the dissident right, if you know what I mean.
	In that it's sort of become its own refuge for people who would otherwise be hunted around the globe.
	And so that can't be allowed to stand.
	And so what has happened here is that there are some tenuous reasons to go after the platform, although there are some genuine concerns behind it.
	However, I think that all of it is politically motivated first and foremost.
	And This, of course, comes with the story that people were using Grok, the AI, on the platform to generate images of people in bikinis.
	But if I can skip to an article, I made an image of myself in a bikini, and it was highly disturbing.
	I can imagine, unfortunately.
	Thankfully, someone wrote an article, a very good article.
	I'm not going to name the author.
	That's Big Josh Firm off the lotus eater.
	It is, yeah, he's a bit of a legend, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	But this unknown loser wrote an article which has some good summaries of what was actually happening at the time because they witnessed what was going on.
	And as they explain, the vast majority of usage was by women themselves asking it to undress them to advertise their what I will term unvirtuous enterprises.
	That's actually 90% of what I saw.
	It was just thoughts.
	And you keep blocking them, but the supply of thoughts is much larger than your thumb ability to block.
	The supply and demand is very much askew, isn't it?
	It was just thoughts, thought, thought, thought, thought, put me in a bikini.
	That was that for about three days.
	I don't know what you're saying.
	It sounds terrible, yeah.
	You know what the algorithm has done with your account, but I didn't have hardly any of those.
	You don't get thoughts.
	Once in a blue moon, there'll be some random thought turn up in my replies or some it's very, very rare.
	Lady of the night.
	My Twitter usage is quite boring.
	I look at like sciencey things, space things, and mostly.
	I can't be the only one getting thoughts on my time.
	Come on.
	Come on, chat.
	Don't worry me up.
	You get them.
	I'm a little blooded man and I saw them.
	All right.
	All right, fair enough.
	But it was, I would be willing to say about 90%, as you said, roughly, them.
	And then a small minority were using them on men like Trump and Maduro.
	Remember at the time, Maduro had been, I don't know how to put it, abducted maybe, captured.
	And so people were doing it to sort of humiliate them.
	They did it to Kier Starmer and Trump and some of the senior officials and put them in a bikini.
	And then a very, very small handful of people used it to harass women, which was universally condemned by everyone on the platform.
	And the posts were subsequently removed.
	So that's what actually happened.
	It went further than that.
	It was just like a trope of meme.
	Everyone was doing it.
	It happened to Carl, it happened to you, it happened to me.
	I've been put in a bikini more than once.
	I get a sense of humour.
	Like, how is it a problem?
	I've seen people putting it on a dog.
	There's a cute dog.
	And someone goes, Groc, put it in a bikini.
	I saw someone do it on a planet.
	I was posting something about Saturn.
	You have seen this stuff on your algorithm then?
	Yeah, if it's directly to me, it's not some random.
	It would be some funny guy.
	I'll put people.
	I'm putting everything in it.
	Like icebergs.
	Exactly.
	That's what I was going to say.
	I was talking about Saturn or something.
	The moons of Jupiter, the Jovian moons or something.
	Someone goes, like, put Europa in a bikini.
	And he's terrible.
	Come on, it's like, it's not that bad, is it?
	It's really not a danger to children, because that's what they start arguing, isn't it?
	That Grok is an X, is a danger to children's safety and stuff.
	They always pivot to that.
	Like, we need Russia.
	No, so we need a digital ID because otherwise there's a danger to children or something.
	I forget how they make the argument.
	There's always that.
	It was basically just a small minority of people trolling.
	And I did see one image that did the rounds of someone asking a child to be put in a bikini.
	But that was being shared because it was being universally condemned.
	Just like this is messed up.
	Don't do this.
	But that was the only instance of it I actually saw was people saying this is bad.
	However, I think that this is largely an excuse and I agree with you, Bo.
	Like if someone did it to me, I wouldn't really care.
	But I think also women tend to view this as a bit different.
	you know that sure sanctity and and uh privacy are sort of a social currency aren't they for the the fairest sex and so well that's reasonable i suppose yes and And so I can understand why it would make them feel uncomfortable.
	And it's not the done thing to send images of women against their will in a bikini to them.
	No, that's absolutely true.
	I'm not denying that.
Ofcom's Shady Sanctions Talk 00:14:44
	Of course.
	But does that warrant trying to destroy X as an entity?
	No, it does.
	It almost sounds like it's more convenient.
	Yes, it's almost like they were looking for something, an excuse.
	Of course.
	And that's exactly what's happening is that it's all political.
	And I can actually just emphasise this in my own article.
	I'm skipping towards the end, but it doesn't really matter.
	Where is it?
	It doesn't matter.
	But anyway.
	Didn't all of these guys do this as well?
	This is what I'm after here.
	So it says, by holding X to standards that are arguably unattainable, it creates a standing justification for reputational and political attacks on a platform that is often hostile to it.
	This is particularly attractive given that X is the preferred platform for distance, most critical of the government.
	And the intervention of technology secretary Liz Kendall further reinforces the perception that these actions are motivated by political ambition rather than purely by public protection.
	And because she urged Ofcom, which is an independent body independent of the government, to not take months and months to reach a conclusion, which seems to suggest that there's political capital at stake here.
	Otherwise, she wouldn't be interested.
	And as I put it here...
	That is exactly right.
	...that regulatory enforcement thus just becomes a tool for power.
	And that's what's going on here, is that it's a way of exercising power politically under the auspices of, listen, we're being even-handed.
	It's an independent organization.
	Never mind that they do everything we want.
	But, yeah, it just happens to be conveniently attacking our enemies.
	Isn't it the old Soviet thing where they just make everything illegal and then only apply the law to their enemies?
	That's what the Chinese do.
	I mean, it's much, much older than the Soviet regime.
	It goes back to ancient times.
	You basically make everyone guilty by default.
	And then it's the states.
	It's on the state to sort of allow you to continue.
	But you're already convicted of everything, effectively.
	That's what tyranny is, right, really.
	But Liz Kendall, could you get more of a sort of busy, bossy, busy body Karen?
	Oh, she's just the worst, isn't she, Liz Kendall?
	Like, she's the arbiter of what's right and wrong, Liz Kendall.
	That's not a world I want to live in, to be honest.
	No.
	I don't want anyone to be that arbiter, to be honest.
	So it's not just Ofcom that are investigating them either, which, by the way, just worth pointing out that Ofcom, if they are found guilty, X, then the regulator has the power to find the company up to 10% of its worldwide revenue or 18 million, which, for a platform like X, which is not profitable to begin with, makes the cost of operating it very,
	very burdensome.
	I mean, of course, what they really want is for X to say, yeah, we're not going to operate in the UK anymore.
	That's what they're trying to push, because then it's their decision not to operate here, but they make the cost of operations so extortionate that really their hand is forced.
	And the EU is trying to do exactly the same thing, but how are they coming at it?
	They're coming at it through, oh, we covered it, some other bullshit.
	We're going to be talking about the French in a minute.
	So, yes.
	And also, it's worth mentioning that the Americans have said, the American government, that is, that there will be consequences if Ofcom finds this, you know, finds the conclusion of the investigation that X is actually guilty of doing something.
	And they've suggested that maybe they'll ban UK government officials from the country in this response.
	Is this the State Department?
	U.S. State Department, yes.
	And also, I'd love to see a showdown, a staring match between the State Department and Ofcom.
	I would love to see that.
	Because one is a minnow, one is a toothless, clawless minnow, and the other is one of the most powerful cabals in the world.
	I mean, the State Department literally has the CIA, which is basically the criminal department of the American government, and they kill people whenever they can.
	The State Department in some respects runs the Western Hemisphere.
	Yes.
	And Ofcom as a bunch of fat lesbians.
	Versus Ofcom.
	I'd love to see it.
	I'd love to see it.
	Yeah, if it could be live streamed, that would be wonderful.
	And perhaps in the form of a cage match, that would be nice.
	But alas.
	It's like Brock Lesnar versus Kevin Hart.
	But they've also suggested, this was in Congress, that legislation be drafted to place sanctions on the UK if we do this.
	And of course, much of this, these are very harsh measures indeed, like banning officials from the country, mainly Ofcom officials, the ones involved.
	But the sanctions talk is quite strong.
	And I don't see that necessarily happening, particularly because it's not being done by the Trump administration.
	It's being done by, I think it was a House Representative, a lady from Florida, I think.
	I can't remember exactly.
	But that's not important.
	So another thing that's happened, since they've found that you can still produce these images, even though no one sees them on the platform, I haven't seen one on the platform for a long time since they cracked down on it.
	So apparently it's still going on, and that warrants...
	It's just a fad, dude.
	It was just a thing people did for a couple of days and then they moved on.
	I think it's already sort of burnt out, even if it was available to them, the tools to make it.
	And what the UK has done, the UK government, is introduced something in addition to the Ofcom investigation.
	Now the Information Commissioner's Office has confirmed it's opened an investigation as well.
	They're just making it as difficult as possible for them to operate in Britain.
	I think ChatGPT and Gemini does exactly the same thing.
	They will put somebody in a bikini if you ask them to.
	It's just a feature of AI.
	But they're only talking about X. There's also something, this is a little bit of a tangent, but I think it's important, that the government's talking about, well, it's sexualising images of women and like, but it's a bikini, right?
	If the bikini is an inherently sexual item of clothing, how come you're allowed to wear it in public swimming pools and at the beach?
	Like, there's an inconsistency here.
	Good point.
	We have to go back to past the knees swimwear.
	I mean, I was going to go the other way and say we need to take a more continental approach, you know, how they are.
	What's the continental approach to bathing?
	They don't care about the top half, man or woman.
	Scandalous.
	Good heavens.
	Not to scare your morals, Dan.
	It is just so obviously, transparently not about Grok and bikini images.
	It's just so obviously not about that.
	No, it's easily just a false justification.
	Yeah, yes.
	I mean, just, it couldn't be more obvious, really.
	And the fact that Starmer came out and was talking about it, and you've got government ministers frothing at the mouth of Ofcom to investigate.
	Love this stuff and they love it because of the political implications, not because of the fact that they care about women being slightly embarrassed publicly.
	I remember it was probably a couple of weeks ago, maybe three weeks ago or so, when this was in the new cycle before.
	And I remember seeing both Liz Kendall and Keir Starmer, and they were doing quite good acting.
	They were doing quite a good job at acting, genuinely outraged and annoyed, talking slightly through gritted teeth and flared nostrils and very stern look.
	It was completely unacceptable.
	Just be clear.
	Very good, quite good acting, actually.
	Just be clear, but they were talking about AI-generated images that aren't real.
	They weren't getting angry about, I don't know, grooming gangs.
	No, no, no.
	Oh, right.
	No, no.
	Entirely relaxed about that.
	But a fake image of somebody got them angled.
	That's beyond the pale.
	I mean, that's for them.
	That's infuriating.
	It cannot be allowed to stand.
	Okay, but just again to check the mass industrial rape of British white girls, that's just an administrative thing.
	Basically, never talk about it.
	Right, okay.
	Yeah, just lie by omission about that endlessly.
	Right.
	So it's all you need to know, doesn't it?
	Yes.
	And while this is going on, literally the same day that they're announcing these investigations, in France, the ex-offices in Paris were raided into an investigation into Grok.
	How peculiar?
	Multiple allied countries doing the same shady stuff under different pretenses at precisely the same time.
	It's almost too good to be true, isn't it?
	Some might say that it's a you know, this strange coincidence that just happens to happen all at the same time.
	Wait, you're not suggesting it's like a coordinated thing, are you?
	No, I'm just noting that every time something comes to the top of the news schedule that people don't care about that governments do, it's just funny that they always happen in every country that attends Davos at the same time.
	It's also interesting as well that the EU has been attacking it for a very, very long time.
	But tell me it's been owned by Elon.
	Tell me the French have arrested Grok, though.
	Yeah, he can't keep on getting away with this.
	Is he in plastercuffs?
	Have they got Grok in the Bastille?
	Yeah, they're going to throw him in jail and throw away the key.
	That's what they're going to do.
	I can't believe it.
	This guy's been getting away from justice for such a long time.
	So it says the French officers of Elon Musk's ex have been raided by the Paris Prosecutors Cyber Crime Unit as part of an investigation into suspected offences, including unlawful data extraction and complicity in the possession of child pornography, which is the least authentic concern of a French person I think I could ever hear of.
	I'm sorry, France, but you don't get to push that sort of thing when you're notorious.
	You know, you're the nation that produced QTs and a whole number of other strange, artsy, weirdly paedophilic things.
	Like, no, You can't all of a sudden say we're concerned about this.
	You don't want the French as your moral arbiters.
	Certainly not on that issue.
	No.
	And it carries on to say, prosecutor's office also said that both Musk and former ex-chief Linda Yaccarino had been summoned to appear at hearings in April, which are of course going to be witch trials, aren't they?
	French prosecutors say they are now investigating whether X has broken the law across multiple areas.
	Among potential crimes it said it would investigate when complicity in possession of organized distribution of images of children of a pornographic nature, infringement of people's image rights with sexual deepfakes, and fraudulent data extraction by organized group.
	By an organized group, should I say?
	So a lot of these things, X is not known for being deeply associated with in the first place.
	And any social media platform can be used in this way.
	And what I think is going on here is that they're holding them to this impossible standard to justify all of these measures when other platforms have these sorts of things going on in a very small minority of cases.
	But it's just that the vast scale of a social media platform is such that you can't get everything immediately.
	And it's impossible.
	It's funny because I do seem to remember, correct me if I'm wrong, but before it was owned by Elon, there was loads of sexually explicit material just randomly flying all over Twitter all the time.
	It was cleaned up a little bit.
	And when Elon got in, it was among the first things he did, made them write an algorithm or whatever it is, made them write code to clean that up massively.
	Massively.
	I believe that was among the first things.
	I remember I did a segment on Haiti just before Elon took it over.
	And I went to the search bar and searched for Haitian.
	And all I got was Haitian lone males in a state of undress.
	Like on the whole, yes.
	It's very disturbing.
	And I was like, well, I'm not going to ever use X search function again.
	But then I have used it after Elon got in, and now it actually gives you something relating to the topic rather than just porn.
	But yeah, there was a lot of porn on there.
	Yeah.
	A lot.
	Yeah, and I remember him just cleaning it up massively.
	Like, again, within the first days or a week or two, people had complained, said stuff, and Elon was like, yeah, no, you're absolutely right.
	I'll light a fire under that.
	We'll sort that out first and foremost.
	And did.
	I don't really see any of that anymore.
	No, I don't.
	Why is my own producer counter-signaling me in the comments?
	Dan.
	He's laughing.
	Dan, learn about targeted advertising.
	No.
	There really was a lot of porn on X.
	So it's worth mentioning as well that this French investigation started in January of 2025.
	So it's been a year in the making until they got to this raid.
	When they were looking into content recommended by X's algorithm, you know, probably arguing that it's biased and favoring right-wingers and the like, before widening it in July to include Grok as well and all of this other stuff.
	But the bias thing I want to touch on briefly, actually, because people are talking about it like the algorithm is biasing people.
	But what I think has actually happened is just a genuine shift in user base in that loads of right-wingers come back to the platform because they're now unbanned.
	The people they follow are unbanned.
	And therefore, people are going from other alternative platforms back to Twitter.
	As well as at the same time, loads of leftists left the platform entirely or went to Blue Sky and stopped using it.
	And so it's shifted the platform.
	And now the algorithm, even if it's as neutral as can possibly be, will show people mostly right-wingers because it's mostly right-wingers on the platform.
	And it is a shame, actually, that all the leftists left, because I enjoyed it.
Shifting Algorithm Dynamics 00:05:02
	It's empirically true, though.
	Yeah, I was just going to ask that.
	Is that really true?
	Still see loads of insane leftists and wakists on there.
	I mean, it is less, it is less than it used to be.
	It is.
	And I think that for sure.
	I'm not necessarily saying it's even majority.
	I'm saying that that's what they're saying.
	But the shift seems to just be an organic shift rather than an algorithmic one.
	I don't know necessarily for certain.
	Maybe they have changed it.
	But it seems to me to be explicable just by the changing user base from the shift in management, right?
	That seems reasonable to me.
	And then, of course, if it becomes majority right-wing, then that gets boosted more.
	Or even there's just less of a minority.
	That seems reasonable to me.
	But, of course, it's not actually about coming up with a reasonable resolution to this.
	It's about destroying the platform.
	And that's what it's all about.
	And as Pavel Durov, who is the CEO and founder of Telegram, I believe, he was talking about this, saying France is the only country in the world that is criminally persecuting all social networks that give people some degree of freedom.
	Telegram, X, TikTok.
	Don't be mistaken.
	This is not a free country.
	Which I think, yeah, there's a political incentive to go after all of those platforms.
	And the reason they're doing it is not out of any concern for your well-being because, you know, look at how you're treated by the government in all the other areas.
	Why are they all of a sudden so concerned about your digital well-being when they're happy to take food off of your table and give it to foreigners or an equivalent of that?
	Import Infinity Algerians.
	Yeah, there's no chance that it's genuine concern about the well-being of the populace.
	No, of course not.
	It's entirely political.
	It's just that they have an agenda and they want to destroy their enemies.
	That's all there is to it.
	Have infinity Senegalese in your country, but don't dare moan about it on Twitter.
	Otherwise, there's trouble.
	Okay, we got any rumble rants?
	I'll have a look.
	Okay, so Sigil Stone says, the absolute worst thing that Keir Starmer would hate, what you must never do is go...
	Oh, he pulled something up.
	I don't know what that website is to download a website that I don't know whether I should read out aloud.
	Download an AI model, an interface to run on your own computer to make bikini images of Kier.
	I'd rather not, thank you.
	Okay, I'm glad I didn't read the website out then.
	But thank you for the chat.
	I was going to say, you can do it old school, right?
	You get a magazine with a lady in a bikini.
	You buy a newspaper with Kier Starmer's face.
	Get a pair of scissors.
	Oh, old school.
	Keir Starmer's face.
	Stick both of those with PritStick on a bit of cardboard.
	Then laminate it.
	Take a digital image of that and post that JPEG on the internet.
	You haven't used AI at all.
	Grok was completely innocent.
	Exactly, Bo, actually.
	That is even legal when they bring in that new law that you're not even allowed to create these images, let alone share them.
	Right, okay.
	And that would be.
	That was Pritztick method.
	You heard it here first.
	That's random name says, this is a classic tactic in any bureaucratic female-dominated space.
	To get rid of someone, you hold them to impossible standards and punish them mercilessly for the slightest transgressions.
	Yes, many a girlfriend I've had has behaved in this way.
	The only way to deal with that, it's not just women that do that, man.
	But any way to deal with someone that does that is just to go, no, I'm not playing that game.
	I'm not doing that.
	No, I'll do what I want.
	I'll say what I want.
	Right now, your move.
	Just call it out for being passive-aggressive.
	Just like, why are you being like this?
	I just reject it.
	I just reject it.
	I deny it.
	Most people who use those tactics don't fare well being called out just openly.
	Yeah, right.
	I take it back a step.
	And whenever I encounter somebody who might do that, I make a point of showing that I've forgotten their name every time I meet them.
	Just to emphasise the point that we're not even playing that game yet, let alone the one where you get to nag me.
	And then that's random names.
	Oh, no.
	I've just read that one.
	There was another one, wasn't there?
	Sigil Stone says that the site that they recommended is a legal site that hosts AI models of all kinds to run on your own machine.
	A good place to go if you're interested in that sort of thing, like a one-stop shop.
	Okay, so it's called Hugging Face, which is an AI.
	Sorry, the mouse was in the wrong place.
	Here we go.
	Unstealthy Yeti says, Dan, you forgot that they will raise all taxes to deal with the Epstein matter.
	Yes, that's also very likely, yes.
	Okay, that's all of the Rumble chats now.
	Well, we got a video of a dog.
Kids and Tack 00:09:04
	Lovely.
	What?
	They want to diversify the countryside by sending out people that don't like dogs?
	What savages would do this?
	As Sakura says, the only problem with communism is it didn't kill enough communists.
	Oh, what a good boy.
	Yeah, it's a funny funny line, yeah.
	Lovely lad.
	I said in response to my segment yesterday.
	Yeah, they're trying to get local bodies responsible for natural beauty areas to disincentivise people bringing dogs because Muslims are scared of them.
	I just hate them.
	I've been brought up to dislike them, yeah.
	I'm very deeply suspicious of people that don't like dogs.
	If only there was a Muslim country somewhere.
	Yeah, they could flee.
	51, 52 of them, perhaps.
	Also, if the British people are forced to choose between Muslims and dogs, I know what one I would pick.
	Yes.
	I'd much rather have the dogs in my country, thank you.
	I feel like there is something wrong with your mind if you fundamentally dislike dogs.
	I know.
	I mean, animals in general, really.
	Like, I like cats.
	I like all pets.
	Your wiring's gone haywire somewhere.
	Yes.
	Yeah, but before you judge me, know this.
	Yes, I was on the sex island, but only for the snorkeling.
	I didn't know anything about the kids' stuff.
	Look, 95% of what went on down there was not pedophilia.
	Oh, yeah?
	No.
	The other 5%, that sullied the whole operation.
	Yeah, it sure did, Frank.
	Well, you know, it ain't just me.
	You guys' names are on those documents.
	Yep.
	Is this recent, Sunny?
	Because I haven't seen that one.
	That must be quite recent.
	I haven't seen this one either.
	Okay.
	It looks like a recent one.
	They look a little bit older there, don't they?
	I love Sunny.
	I've re-watched the earlier seasons a few times, but the last two or three seasons I haven't seen.
	I really need to catch up.
	I'm not even going to bother, to be honest.
	I like some of the earlier ones, but the modern ones, they seem to drop the ball a little bit from what I've seen.
	Maybe not.
	You know, sometimes I've seen clips of things that have been shared and they give you a wrong impression there's actually some good stuff to it.
	But I think that they're trying to almost live up to their own standard that they set and they're not really doing it.
	Oh, okay.
	Can you make out your comments or should I read them?
	I can try.
	I can try.
	There are no more video comments.
	No, I think we run out of those.
	Michael Drebelbis, the guy with the doggies.
	He says, Bose Breakfast Club is the BBC without the nonsery.
	Kevin Fox said, David Lammy is as sharp as a tack.
	Sorry, didn't mean tack.
	Meant trunk.
	Okay.
	Harry Ashman says, I feel with Mandelson apparently allegedly committing blatant insider trading is the least of the apparent crimes working with foreign powers against the government and the people is espionage bordering on treason.
	Yeah, I think it's fool treason.
	A reasonable thing to say, yeah.
	Ewan Baker says, maybe Mandelson helped supply a starmer with rent buoyas.
	That's the other thing.
	I should have included that in my segment.
	Apparently, those young men turning up at Starmer's house, that was a Russian operation as well.
	Oh, was it?
	Yeah, was it now?
	It's three different groups of men at multiple different properties that he's owned over the years.
	It's interesting as well that they went to a property that, if you were to investigate where he lives today, wouldn't even come up.
	Not that his residence does it.
	I think these are residents from a few years ago, what, like three or four years ago?
	Implies that they've got some sort of experience of going there, doesn't it?
	Well, yeah, and also these boys are 19 now, so 19 minus three or four.
	Well, I can't do them anyway.
	And they're all Ukrainian nationals, right?
	But all being run out of Moscow Centre again.
	Interesting.
	Those damn Russkies, I mean, they really do their work, don't they?
	I mean, recruiting Ukrainians to do your work as a Russian, that's going to be tough.
	Because I mean, the first time I saw that story, I just thought, oh, well, all these young men, and they're all on this male model app.
	I thought it was just as innocent as, you know, it'd be two o'clock in the morning on a Saturday night in Starmer's flat, and he would have a bit of male modelling he needs doing.
	Maybe he needs a watch modelled or something, and he'd go on the app and they'd come round and then he forgot to pay them or something.
	And because he was so busy with, you know, being leader of the opposition or whatever.
	And that's why it happened.
	But no, it was a Russian operation the entire time.
	You could have guessed.
	Yeah, quite.
	For my Michael Drobelwood, why aren't any Chinese or Russian officials in the Epstein files?
	Make you wonder.
	Yes, there are whole classes of people who don't appear in the Epstein files once.
	Yeah, a lot of right-wingers of a certain bent just don't appear in the Epstein files.
	I found it interesting as well that there was all these tech people and then Bezos and Zuckerberg didn't show up really at all because they're notorious for being sort of, as they've been dubbed by the internet, wife men in that they spend all their time with their wives and their families and the like.
	And it almost seems like if you have a family, you're not captured by this organization.
	And as I was actually thinking about this recently, that in Eyes Wide Shut, the sort of message of the film at the end is that they go out and about having become aware that there's this weird elite sex cult.
	And at the end, they realise, okay, the only resistance we have to this is to come together as a family.
	I think Kubrick, being the very astute man that he was, sort of knew what he was saying is that the only people who are susceptible to these rings and are prone to going to these islands and parties and what have you, are people who don't have a family or don't have a proper relationship, which is a side effect of them being a massive pervert.
	Yes yes, most people want can be corrupted by is power, money and sex.
	Yeah, but the thing is, all of these people already had power and money, and I mean sex isn't that hard to come by.
	As I say, if you've got any two of those, you could probably get the third one.
	Usually it's a bit of a funny yes yeah um um, I don't know.
	It is interesting that Xi Jinping was never invited to Little St. James.
	Why?
	And why is Tucker not on there?
	Because we're supposed to hear that Tucker's a Russian agent.
	So why wasn't Tucker been in there?
	He's a very famous near family man, isn't he?
	Hasn't he got like a hundred kids?
	I wouldn't be surprised.
	He's got like six kids, hasn't he?
	He's got loads of kids.
	Yes.
	So all of these people that we're told are a bit dodgy, but are actually just decent family men.
	They're just not on the files at all.
	You're a decent family man, and you've already got enough money and fame to satisfy you.
	Yes.
	And you're not.
	It's sort of incorruptible.
	Yeah.
	I guess, maybe.
	Kevin Fox says, all these people posting online the Epstein list should be made should be made to put alongside each name, whether the name appears in the file as an affiliate customer of Epstein or just mentioned by somebody in an email.
	Yeah, we've got to comb through it and it's going to take a while to unpick some of this stuff.
	The dodgy thing is they put a load of tip line stuff in there.
	All right.
	And it really could be any old crank saying absolutely anything.
	So a lot of that will be nonsense.
	TP PT says, remember when Bojo casually mentioned that Putin bugged the number 10 private bathroom on a visit and nothing came of it.
	Oh, sorry, I meant it was another world leader is mentioned there.
	On the Epstein was a Ruski.
	How is it any better for Clinton, Bush, Mandelson, etc.?
	It's not so much that Epstein was likely to be an intelligence asset.
	It's whom he was funneling info for and to.
	Who cares if it was a Moroccan secret agent that was backing him with unlimited drugs money?
	Yes, I mean, ultimately, for the people caught up in it, it shouldn't make any difference.
	If you're channeling money to a foreign government or intelligence, I mean, that should absolutely do it.
	I think we're end my bits there for you.
	Sure.
	Michael says, X has become the free speech wild west.
	Lots of people shooting from the hip, lots of people saying what they want.
	The Eurocrats can't have the Euro peons figuring out that they're being treated like goats in certain sections of London.
Free Speech Wild West 00:02:32
	What do you call a menap with free goats?
	A pimp?
	I didn't expect that to go there, but okay.
	And Sophie Liv says, I tried putting myself in a bikini using Grok.
	It was honestly disappointing.
	That was the most unflattering bikini in the world.
	I would have been better served just to take a photo.
	You wouldn't think at least that AI would make my boobs big and glorious, but no, honestly, look like a pudgy male body with my head attached.
	See, if you said that to people, it would have just stopped.
	Fair enough, Sophie, because when I did the bikini things myself, I got the same result.
	So someone did a bikini of me, and it was much tubbier.
	My actual real physique and torso is better than what they made me look like on AI.
	I was like, oh, someone did one to me, and it was quite flattering.
	I was just like, well, thank you.
	You've underestimated how flabby I've become in my early 30s.
	And then finally, I'm not going to read that actually.
	Too spicy.
	I can't see what it was.
	Let's just read Lord Inquisitor Hector's.
	Remember a few months back when there was a dignified app that would put, I'm not going to use the word because I not because I think it's offensive, but because it is not white-coded.
	Ladies of the night in respectable clothes and women freaked out.
	I wish they'd make up their minds.
	Well, it was hilarious that when people were using the AI against all of these adult entertainers, let's say, they were getting so annoyed at people dressing them back up again.
	I saw that a couple of times.
	That was funny.
	Yeah, there's a shameless thought, and there's like, put them in a sensible blouse and a cardigan.
	Yeah, and give them a family, a husband, children.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	That was funny.
	There were some that were slightly more mean-spirited that I still found funny.
	That was just like, what would she look like without any tattoos and face piercing?
	And it's always better.
	I was just about to say, it's always better.
	It's just like, they're just markers of your own mental health issues.
	But I'll leave it there.
	Excellent.
	Well, thank you very much for joining us.
	And have we got anything else coming up today?
	No, I don't think so.
	I don't know.
	Join Bose Bow Show, the BBC.
	Yep, 8 a.m. every weekday?
	Bose Breakfast Club?
	Yeah.
	8 a.m. The Bow Show.
	Do that.

Chapters

00:00:00 Andy and Mandy in the News
00:02:12 Blair, Osborne, and Political Controversies
00:17:32 Russo Connections Unveiled
00:34:46 Unexpected Silence On Russia
00:49:43 Doubts and Simulations
00:54:49 Ofcom's Shady Sanctions Talk
01:09:33 Shifting Algorithm Dynamics
01:14:35 Kids and Tack
01:23:40 Free Speech Wild West