The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1403
Aired: 2026-04-23
Duration: 01:31:20


=== St George's Day Division (15:01) ===

[00:00:00]  Good afternoon, and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters, episode 1403 on this most wonderful St. George's Day.
[00:00:06]  Happy St. George's Day to all of my fellow Englishmen out there.
[00:00:11]  Thank you for joining us today.
[00:00:12]  I'm joined by Carl, the mixed race fellow, and Firaz, the third whitest in the office, I'd say.
[00:00:23]  As the only Englishman on this panel, that's why I'm hosting.
[00:00:29]  And today we're going to be talking about the Groundhog Day.
[00:00:31]  Course of St. George's Day and what it turns into every year.
[00:00:35]  No, no, we're not going to be focusing on that because I think that's become a bit of a distraction.
[00:00:40]  Everyone's like, oh, he's Turkish.
[00:00:41]  No, no, no, don't worry about that.
[00:00:42]  They're actually doing more subversive things behind the scenes.
[00:00:45]  Well, there you go.
[00:00:46]  Find out more.
[00:00:47]  We're going to be talking about the gridlock at the Strait of Hormuz, and I'm going to be talking about how your favorite influencer is actually an AI run by an Indian.
[00:00:55]  Before we go any further into all of that, though, for this most special of occasions, we have a special discount just for today.
[00:01:03]  Happy St. George's Day, everybody.
[00:01:05]  There will be 15% off of selected items on the merchandise website, including mugs like this, although there is a new version of it that's available where it's black and white instead of just all black.
[00:01:17]  You can go.
[00:01:17]  The mug is also available.
[00:01:19]  Yes, I believe the Amelia mug is also available on this discount as well.
[00:01:23]  And that will be 15% off applied at the checkout.
[00:01:27]  It does not have a discount code, it will just be automatically applied for you.
[00:01:30]  And that is this day only.
[00:01:33]  So get it while you still can.
[00:01:35]  With that, let's get into the news.
[00:01:37]  Right.
[00:01:38]  So they're trying to steal St. George's Day.
[00:01:41]  This is actually not very surprising, and we've been predicting it for a while now because we've memed St. George's Day into becoming a thing.
[00:01:49]  St. George's Day, being a kind of national event, is a product of the online right.
[00:01:55]  It's a product of the people who are doing the flagging campaign.
[00:01:57]  It's a product of the patriots who realize their country is being stolen from them.
[00:02:01]  Before, I mean, all through my life, like when I was younger, nobody did anything for St. George's Day.
[00:02:06]  It was just never a thing that anyone ever thought about.
[00:02:08]  And so this whole thing has been.
[00:02:13]  Not artificially but organically brought up by people thinking, Well, hang on a second, everyone else has their days.
[00:02:19]  I mean, like you know, St. David's Day, St. Patrick's Day, St. Andrew's Day, these are all things that the Celts pay a lot of attention to.
[00:02:25]  But what do the English pay attention to?
[00:02:27]  And the answer is just nothing really.
[00:02:28]  Uh, and so this has become a desire for a point of anchor, I think, in English culture.
[00:02:34]  I think a lot of people are like, Hang on a second, no, we are a people, we have a place, and this is our thing.
[00:02:39]  And of course, that means they have to try and subvert it, that means they have to try and steal it from us, and we're not having it.
[00:02:46]  Uh, so.
[00:02:48]  The best way to celebrate St. George's Day is honestly represented by the Japanese ambassador.
[00:02:54]  Because, I mean, the man just can't miss everything he does, he just does it respectfully and kindly.
[00:03:01]  I mean, this is the video he put out.
[00:03:03]  Happy St. George's Day!
[00:03:15]  I mean, if Keir Starmer had just done that as a video, that would have been fine.
[00:03:19]  No one would have had anything to complain about.
[00:03:21]  Everyone was like, well, you know, I hate Keir Starmer, but fair enough.
[00:03:24]  Carry on.
[00:03:25]  No, that's not what Starmer did.
[00:03:26]  Starmer put out a statement, and this is attached to a speech he gave a couple of days ago, going on his woke crusade, as usual.
[00:03:37]  And of course, you can see him standing behind the St. George's flag, in front of the St. George's flag there, and the statement St. George's flag stands for unity over hatred and decency over division.
[00:03:47]  Those are the values I will always.
[00:03:48]  Right.
[00:03:48]  So the St. George's flag stands for exactly the woke progressive mantra.
[00:03:55]  Who could have known?
[00:03:56]  It's every other flag also stands for exactly that mantra.
[00:04:00]  Incredible.
[00:04:01]  I mean, the whole story of slaying the dragon is the killing of evil.
[00:04:05]  It's man rising up against evil and destroying it.
[00:04:08]  That'd be ridiculous.
[00:04:09]  It's inherently divisive between good and evil.
[00:04:13]  It's about unity over hatred of dragons.
[00:04:16]  Decency of inviting the dragon in over the division of killing the dragon.
[00:04:20]  I mean, I thought it just meant the English.
[00:04:22]  Personally, well, no, there is a moral lesson, of course, but let's not forget that for centuries, if a country looked out off of their shores and saw a Union Jack, for instance, flying, or the England flag flying and heading towards them, they weren't feeling the joy and glow of unity approaching.
[00:04:44]  That's true, but they knew that they were the dragon and they were going to get the rough end of it, right?
[00:04:48]  But Ferris is right, it was adopted by, I think it was Edward I. In the 13th or 14th century.
[00:04:55]  I can't remember which one.
[00:04:56]  But it was adopted because it was a story that had a moral lecture in it, right?
[00:05:01]  And this actually does matter.
[00:05:03]  And so Keir Starmer here is just trying to completely subvert the moral lecture.
[00:05:08]  You have a duty to destroy evil.
[00:05:10]  And Keir Starmer's like, no, you have a duty to hold hands with evil and maybe give it a cuddle.
[00:05:14]  Maybe bring it into your house and let it fester.
[00:05:16]  And so this is the obvious subversion that he's trying.
[00:05:20]  And I'd be the St. George Society versus the Lizard Inclusion Society.
[00:05:25]  Yes.
[00:05:26]  I mean, that's exactly what this is.
[00:05:27]  Again, it's so transparent, right?
[00:05:31]  It doesn't matter what the symbol that you put on the front of what Keir Starmer's going to say is.
[00:05:36]  He's always going to be like, I'm for inclusion.
[00:05:37]  I'm for diversity.
[00:05:38]  I'm for decency over division, unity over hatred.
[00:05:41]  He's always going to say that thing.
[00:05:42]  So the symbol itself doesn't matter anymore.
[00:05:45]  There's always one core ideology, one core message.
[00:05:47]  And so no matter what Keir Starmer claims that he's supporting this day, you know it's a lie.
[00:05:52]  You know he's hollowed out whatever it is, he's wearing it as a skin suit, and they all will do exactly the same thing.
[00:05:58]  I mean, this is.
[00:06:00]  This is exactly what he says in this article, which is in the mirror.
[00:06:05]  He stands for, of course, sorry, the flag belongs to the vast majority who want unity over hate, decency over division, the quiet British patriotism, people contributing, pulling together, and looking out for one another.
[00:06:16]  What makes us stronger?
[00:06:18]  A mindless minority brought violence and disorder into our streets.
[00:06:20]  What are we talking about here?
[00:06:24]  He's wrapping it back around to Southport.
[00:06:26]  He is doing exactly that.
[00:06:28]  He is doing exactly that, right?
[00:06:31]  He literally says.
[00:06:32]  I know what the flag of St. George stands for.
[00:06:34]  It stands for decency of division, blah, blah, blah.
[00:06:36]  And not those who stir up hate.
[00:06:39]  Those are the values I will always fight for.
[00:06:40]  So, the underlying message of his point here is stop complaining when a foreigner kills your kids.
[00:06:49]  That's divisive.
[00:06:50]  You are being divisive when a foreigner kills you, when a dragon eats your kids.
[00:06:55]  And it's like, yeah, I guess I am being divisive.
[00:06:57]  Yeah, I own it.
[00:06:58]  I'm pro division then.
[00:07:00]  This is the anti dragon party here.
[00:07:01]  Yes, yeah, I'm very much, yeah, exactly.
[00:07:03]  Very much anti dragons.
[00:07:04]  And if there are dragons, then we should be slaying them, actually, is my moral position.
[00:07:09]  And he literally says that it comes from Southport.
[00:07:14]  As you said, this is what happens.
[00:07:16]  He calls everyone who is complaining about murderers plastic patriots, which is brilliant.
[00:07:24]  That's a unifying message.
[00:07:25]  Yeah, yeah, there's nothing more unifying than calling the people who disagree with you fakes.
[00:07:32]  He says it's really important that we do that because there's no getting around the fact that there are voices both here and abroad who would seek to divide us, who would set us apart from one another, who want to pretend that in this country what we really do is distinguish between people.
[00:07:44]  We don't.
[00:07:44]  What?
[00:07:44]  What?
[00:07:46]  I mean, you're in favour of the devolved parliaments, right?
[00:07:49]  Like here, because I mean, this sounds like, oh, well, why do the Welsh and Scots need their own devolved parliaments if we're not distinguishing between people?
[00:07:55]  Is that not what that is?
[00:07:57]  And of course, he then carries on that what they really do is distinguish between people, find their points of difference, and have a toxic culture of hatred between individuals, groups, and different communities.
[00:08:08]  He then referred to attacks on synagogues and mosques as acts of violence designed to send a message to the Muslim and Jewish communities of this country to say they're not safe.
[00:08:16]  We reject their division completely.
[00:08:19]  We will fly our flag proudly.
[00:08:20]  It's our flag.
[00:08:21]  It belongs to us.
[00:08:21]  It will fly for the values we believe in.
[00:08:24]  And it's like, all right, so when Muslims are Jewish.
[00:08:25]  Wait, so was it the Southport lads attacking the synagogues and mosques?
[00:08:29]  Yes, in Southport they were attacking mosques, but of course there were Muslims attacking synagogues.
[00:08:33]  Implying that there is division.
[00:08:37]  Implying that there's no division.
[00:08:39]  Oh, I missed it.
[00:08:41]  Remember, the division comes from externally.
[00:08:43]  Yes.
[00:08:43]  And not from within the communities the English, the Muslims, and the Jews, who he wants to all smush together and make them kiss.
[00:08:50]  Right, and so it's like, right, okay, but actually, Kier, there are some real differences here.
[00:08:56]  Um, and when they attack each other's holy places, what are we supposed to do?
[00:09:00]  Pretend there's no division, pretend this is all just external.
[00:09:03]  If it wasn't for the Southport rioters, then none of this would be happening.
[00:09:07]  Come on.
[00:09:08]  Anyway, so this is the general jihad against St. George's Day that's being carried on by the establishment.
[00:09:16]  And you'll see all of them boasting this, basically saying, No, the St. George's flag stands for inclusivity.
[00:09:22]  It's like, No, actually, a flag is a demonstrably exclusive thing.
[00:09:27]  It stands for either a people or a concept exclusively of other things.
[00:09:31]  And you skin suiting it into the multi culty, homogenous blender ideology of everything for everyone all the time.
[00:09:39]  Isn't actually going to be persuasive.
[00:09:41]  Especially when you don't really try.
[00:09:43]  Look at these crappy graphics that the Home Office have put up.
[00:09:46]  What's this big black beam at the bottom?
[00:09:50]  You didn't properly align this, did you?
[00:09:53]  You're crap.
[00:09:55]  You didn't even try.
[00:09:57]  I mean, like, yeah, nice crop damage is the first comment.
[00:09:59]  So, yeah, like, not even trying, right?
[00:10:02]  And then, okay, so it's pretty hollow when it's coming from Kissed Armour because it's just a crusade, right?
[00:10:08]  I love that it excludes the dragon.
[00:10:10]  Yeah, that's a great point.
[00:10:13]  I didn't even notice that.
[00:10:14]  The whole thing, he's in the pose of stabbing the dragon.
[00:10:17]  There should be some kind of spear or sword going towards the dragon.
[00:10:21]  There's no lance, there's no dragon.
[00:10:22]  What was St. George even doing?
[00:10:23]  Don't know.
[00:10:24]  It doesn't matter.
[00:10:24]  Just riding horses for a hobby?
[00:10:26]  He was being inclusive and tolerant and multicultural.
[00:10:28]  What was your problem bigger?
[00:10:30]  What did you think it was?
[00:10:31]  But anyway, yeah, so this is bad enough from the Home Office and from Keir Starmer.
[00:10:35]  It's their sort of ideological crusade.
[00:10:37]  But it becomes even more laughable when the Greens are like, oh, yes.
[00:10:42]  Happy St. George's Day for you.
[00:10:44]  I'll have to admit, the actual graphic that they've chosen is a lot better than the Home Office one.
[00:10:49]  Yes.
[00:10:49]  Yeah.
[00:10:50]  But that must have been weird.
[00:10:51]  Can you imagine the conversation that led up to that?
[00:10:53]  It's like, right, so we need to celebrate St. George's Day.
[00:10:54]  What?
[00:10:54]  The English nationalist holiday?
[00:10:58]  Yes, everyone else is doing it.
[00:11:00]  I mean, it didn't go well.
[00:11:04]  I saw there was a comment from Connor on here somewhere on my one that was, you do realise you're the dragon, right?
[00:11:12]  So it's just like, right, gang.
[00:11:14]  That's a bit weird.
[00:11:15]  Not many Christians in the Green Party.
[00:11:18]  But then you've got Sadiq Khan.
[00:11:20]  And this whole attempt to co opt St. George's Day into multiculturalism is a kind of attempt to put the English people on a reservation.
[00:11:30]  It's an attempt to make us, to sublimate us into the cultural blend of, oh no, everyone gets their own little bit because really England is for everyone, doesn't belong to the English.
[00:11:42]  And therefore, yeah, the English are a culture.
[00:11:44]  They get a little stall at the edge of a little fate.
[00:11:48]  And once a day, oh, look, you go and eat scones and jam and things like this.
[00:11:51]  And I'm not even joking, right?
[00:11:53]  This is what he did.
[00:11:55]  This is, they had a St. George's Day festival in London.
[00:12:01]  So there we go.
[00:12:02]  The St. George's Day festival.
[00:12:03]  I mean, literally, it's just kitsch.
[00:12:05]  It's just a caricature of what English culture is.
[00:12:08]  And they had little, like, fates and things like that.
[00:12:13]  You are all loved?
[00:12:14]  Yeah.
[00:12:14]  Like this.
[00:12:15]  You are all loved by God, but you also have to, I mean.
[00:12:19]  Yeah, that's a different conversation, right?
[00:12:21]  So it's.
[00:12:21]  Here's all of our American food that we're selling at the St. George's Day parade.
[00:12:25]  Well, yeah.
[00:12:27]  But also, they got it on the wrong day.
[00:12:31]  So, for some reason, Sadiq Khan posted it on the 19th.
[00:12:38]  So, it's like, right.
[00:12:40]  And you can see his message here today on St. George's Day.
[00:12:42]  I mean, I've always said London's diversity is our greatest strength.
[00:12:46]  What the hell are you talking about?
[00:12:47]  What's that got to do with St. George?
[00:12:48]  Well, today on St. George's Day, I'm joined by interfaith leaders from across London.
[00:12:52]  Again, the English on their plantation.
[00:12:54]  No, you get to sit next to all the foreign colonizers who are just as valid in your own country as you are.
[00:12:59]  We come together to celebrate.
[00:13:00]  All that unites us and affirms St. George's Day flag as a symbol that belongs to us all.
[00:13:06]  That sounds exactly like the kind of Christmas message that Hezbollah leaders would put out in Lebanon.
[00:13:13]  I'm not joking because they make a big show of all of this unity, which obviously after a bunch of civil wars kind of fades away.
[00:13:21]  But that's the same style of messaging that comes out in Lebanon and Syria when the Muslims try to congratulate the Christians on some Christian holy day.
[00:13:32]  But the question is then, well, why would St. George, why would his day be a day for people who aren't English, but also people who are not Christian, like Muslims, for example, Jews?
[00:13:46]  Do they recognize George as a Christian saint?
[00:13:49]  Weirdly enough, in Lebanon, they recognize George as some kind of saint.
[00:13:53]  Maybe in Lebanon they do.
[00:13:54]  Do Jewish leaders do this?
[00:13:57]  What are we talking about?
[00:13:58]  No, it's a particular thing, it's parochial, it belongs to the English in England.
[00:14:02]  As a Christian or say, like, post Christian, Christian heritage country, you can't just say, oh, this is for everyone now.
[00:14:10]  And again, we've got the skin suit effect.
[00:14:12]  No, it doesn't matter what it is.
[00:14:14]  The message will always be the same.
[00:14:15]  It is the message that everything is for everyone all the time, except for, you know, iftar and Eid and all these.
[00:14:22]  No, they're for the Muslims.
[00:14:23]  You don't get to have those things.
[00:14:24]  You don't get to go for a pint at a bacon butty on iftar or whatever it is, right?
[00:14:28]  You know, that's for them.
[00:14:30]  And so, like, you've got, like, these sorts of caricatures.
[00:14:34]  It's like, oh, look, it's got a little, Cake and tea cakes and scones and a cup of tea and some strawberries.
[00:14:40]  That's your culture to us.
[00:14:42]  That's what you are.
[00:14:44]  You're just on this little reservation.
[00:14:46]  And Sadiq Khan said, Our annual St. George's Day Festival is a fantastic opportunity to celebrate the best of English culture in the heart of our capital with great music and performances, blah, blah, blah.
[00:14:56]  Our free family friendly afternoon brings Londoners and visitors of all backgrounds together to enjoy what it means to be English.

=== Who Owns English Culture (15:56) ===

[00:15:02]  Again, you are a sideshow.
[00:15:04]  You are in the circus now.
[00:15:06]  As far as they're concerned, you are a part of their plantation.
[00:15:10]  And one of the things that really got to me on this was visitors will also have the chance to meet the pearly kings and queens.
[00:15:16]  Do you know what a pearly king and queen is?
[00:15:18]  No.
[00:15:18]  Right.
[00:15:19]  So, this is a Cockney cultural sort of habit.
[00:15:25]  I don't even know what the origin is of it because I'm not a Londoner, right?
[00:15:28]  But back throughout the 20th century, you had the pearly kings and queens who are a particular sort of Cockney affectation in this culture.
[00:15:35]  And the BBC in 2016 did a documentary called The Last Whites of the East End.
[00:15:40]  Yes.
[00:15:40]  They have the last of these old, sort of, you know, culturally prestigious people.
[00:15:44]  But they're just the last people in the East End who haven't moved out.
[00:15:48]  Yep.
[00:15:48]  And so it's these very old people who are like, well, yeah, back in my day, we had the Pearly Kings and Queens before we were diversified out of existence.
[00:15:54]  And so now they don't even exist there.
[00:15:56]  So now the Pearly Kings and Queens are literally the Native Americans on the reservation as everyone sits around and goes, oh, go on, do your little smoke dance or something like that.
[00:16:07]  Right.
[00:16:07]  That's what's happening here.
[00:16:08]  Yeah.
[00:16:08]  Well, that's the interesting thing.
[00:16:10]  You say that this is being shown as kind of like a pastiche of English culture.
[00:16:13]  Your culture is tea and little China pottery and such, and you drink your tea and you have a little slice of vanilla Victoria sponge or something.
[00:16:22]  But the thing is, we were actually happy to see the Japanese ambassador basically engage in that same kind of like, here's a nice little pastiche of your culture.
[00:16:33]  But I think the difference is, to try and tie that contradiction together, is that with him, it feels like he's being just nice about it.
[00:16:42]  He's being appreciative, he's not being condescending.
[00:16:44]  He's being appreciative, whereas this feels more just like you say, a handout to the reservation.
[00:16:49]  He's not saying diversity is your strength, he's saying, I respect your traditions.
[00:16:55]  Whereas here, he's taking your traditions, Sadiq Khan, and sort of putting them in some kind of little pantomime show intended to demonstrate that he, as a Pakistani, is English.
[00:17:07]  And then, like, marching out the pearly kings and queens.
[00:17:09]  It's like, look, here's the last of the Native Americans being paraded around.
[00:17:14]  Oh, aren't they interesting with the feathers on their heads?
[00:17:16]  That's basically what he's doing with that.
[00:17:19]  And I just found it, especially within living memory, these people have been ethnically cleansed from this area of London.
[00:17:25]  It's genuinely vile to see.
[00:17:27]  It's a weird symptom of the fact that, I mean, it's the same thing with Keir Starmer and Sadiq Khan both putting out these platitudes.
[00:17:35]  The role of leader, whether it be the local leader, the town mayor, the regional leader, the national leader, is their role domestically now is essentially like a racial mediator between different groups.
[00:17:49]  And you can say that, well, the role was always mediating in some way, maybe between classes and such.
[00:17:54]  But it's so much more complicated and so much more difficult when you've got people from all over the world.
[00:18:00]  Who all despise each other in one city.
[00:18:03]  And then you've still got the people who built that city there to begin with going, like, well, hold up, where's my city gone?
[00:18:08]  Yeah.
[00:18:09]  And so, like, and to reduce it to like this one day reservation is essentially, and to give them like these perfunctory honours.
[00:18:18]  So, oh, yeah, on this day, we, I mean, it's very much like when the Canadians and Australians have that sort of like Native American ceremony and the Aboriginal ceremony where they, we honour the original inhabitants of this land.
[00:18:30]  Well, that's what this is turning into.
[00:18:32]  And especially in London, which is, I mean, in 2020, it was two thirds non English.
[00:18:39]  It's going to be a lot lower than that now.
[00:18:41]  You can see they're being given these perfunctory honours as the ties of foreigners have washed over the country that they used to own, and the English have been subsumed into one minor aspect of diversity in the sort of pantheon of the diversity calendar.
[00:18:55]  Land recognition celebration, of course.
[00:18:57]  Yes.
[00:18:57]  That's the word I was looking for land recognition celebration.
[00:19:00]  Yeah, but this time it's for culture instead of land because obviously the land belongs to the most recent arrival now.
[00:19:06]  Yeah.
[00:19:07]  And that's the point.
[00:19:09]  The English claim to England, especially in London, has been completely overturned.
[00:19:14]  Through demographic displacement.
[00:19:16]  And so it's, it's, it's a, I think it's a totally gross thing.
[00:19:19]  And then to say, yeah, now your symbol isn't even your symbol as well.
[00:19:23]  It's a symbol of the conquest of diversity and multiculturalism over you.
[00:19:27]  It's the most vile thing I can possibly imagine.
[00:19:30]  I genuinely, on a spiritual level, I can feel a kind of grating in my head.
[00:19:34]  Is that a red dragon there behind the fountain?
[00:19:39]  It is so.
[00:19:40]  Yeah.
[00:19:41]  I mean, isn't the point that the dragon, as the flying serpent, serpent being a father of lies, yeah.
[00:19:48]  And temptation and the dragon being a symbol of greed.
[00:19:51]  Isn't the whole point of St. George's Day is killing that son of a bitch?
[00:19:54]  Well, I mean, maybe that's what's happening on the stage.
[00:19:57]  Okay.
[00:19:57]  So, yeah, I guess they're having a little stage play of it.
[00:20:00]  It would be quite fitting if they turned it from a celebration of the saint to a celebration of the dragon that he killed.
[00:20:04]  I mean, I'm genuinely surprised they haven't.
[00:20:07]  Anyway, so then you get the sort of like.
[00:20:09]  I'm trying not to be mean because I'm sure Ross Kemp isn't a bad guy, but the kind of small brain celebrities who themselves are like in their 60s now and have watched the diversification of their own town and the city happen.
[00:20:23]  I mean, Ross Kemp is London, East End is hard, man.
[00:20:25]  It's like, okay, but what's happened to the East End, Ross?
[00:20:28]  Your people have been driven out by diversity, and you're like, oh, well, we've got to reclaim the England's flag on St. George Day so the racists don't win.
[00:20:35]  It's especially funny when there's footage of Ross Kemp going to the sorts of countries a lot of these people are coming from.
[00:20:40]  And literally, in one of them is like, but isn't it bad to assault women?
[00:20:45]  And the guy he's speaking to is like, yeah, you could get caught for it.
[00:20:48]  And he's like, no, no, no.
[00:20:49]  Isn't it morally bad to do it?
[00:20:52]  Yeah, sometimes you get an STD.
[00:20:53]  Yeah.
[00:20:53]  And it's like, Ross, you know what these people are like.
[00:20:57]  I can't help but feel that there was probably like an email sent to him from some home office rep just saying, hey, Ross, you're a hard man EastEnders type.
[00:21:08]  Would you like to do something for the cause of unity in this country and just write a little article that can go out to the gammon?
[00:21:14]  So, Ross Kemp is basically playing the Hicklib.
[00:21:17]  Yeah.
[00:21:18]  He's playing the Hicklib.
[00:21:19]  He is essentially, he's done well for himself.
[00:21:22]  He's a part of the institutions.
[00:21:23]  He gets BBC or whatever, you know, TV, documentaries.
[00:21:26]  So, he's been taken out of the context and now he's being weaponized against whatever remains of the organic culture.
[00:21:33]  And it's just really disgusting.
[00:21:34]  And I'm sorry, I just don't respect this at all.
[00:21:38]  And it's just gross.
[00:21:39]  You know, it's like we want to be a nation united in pride, not prejudice.
[00:21:43]  And it's like, well, as Luca pointed out before, the.
[00:21:47]  The podcast.
[00:21:49]  Prejudice is an English value.
[00:21:51]  We've always had our prejudices and we've always been proud of them.
[00:21:55]  And they've always served us very well.
[00:21:58]  So I don't know if I agree with this.
[00:22:00]  This woke nonsense.
[00:22:01]  But then Ross Kemp, though, EastEnders hard man, is standing side by side with notorious communists like Billy Bragg, who come on and go, I'm English and I'm a communist, so I hate England.
[00:22:14]  So you shouldn't be proud of all of this.
[00:22:16]  It doesn't have to be about jingoism.
[00:22:18]  It's like, no, it kind of does, actually.
[00:22:20]  You know, it kind of does.
[00:22:20]  It's yours whether you like it or not.
[00:22:22]  Isn't the flag, by definition, historically a military banner?
[00:22:27]  Yeah.
[00:22:28]  Is it inherently jingoistic?
[00:22:30]  Yeah, that's what a flag is.
[00:22:32]  Right?
[00:22:32]  That's what it's there for.
[00:22:34]  It's there to determine who owns this piece of territory, us or you.
[00:22:37]  Exactly.
[00:22:37]  And, you know, our flag is for us, whether you like it or not.
[00:22:41]  It's hard to get much more jingoistic.
[00:22:43]  In fact, I don't even know what would be more jingoistic than that.
[00:22:46]  Anyway, so this is the point.
[00:22:48]  The whole point is they're just trying to subvert, they're trying to detach, they're trying to steal.
[00:22:54]  These things from us.
[00:22:55]  I came across this amazing article by the BBC.
[00:22:59]  What does patriotism mean to people in the West, as in the South West of England, as in where we are?
[00:23:03]  It's like, oh, right, okay, well, let's have a look through it, shall we?
[00:23:06]  They begin with 80 year old Alex Adlam, who is the flagman.
[00:23:12]  He collects flags.
[00:23:15]  Everyone's flags.
[00:23:16]  He's literally got flags from all around the world.
[00:23:18]  I fly a flag for every day of each month.
[00:23:20]  I just pick them at random.
[00:23:22]  So, what's this got to do with patriotism?
[00:23:25]  Like, this is a guy, he just happens to love flags.
[00:23:29]  He just thinks flags are great.
[00:23:30]  And so he puts them up at random.
[00:23:31]  Okay, let's move on to the next one.
[00:23:33]  I mean, that is a great example there of just like an old school English eccentric.
[00:23:39]  Absolutely.
[00:23:40]  Oh, who's Adam?
[00:23:41]  Oh, he just really loves flags.
[00:23:43]  So, what does he do with them?
[00:23:44]  Yeah, he just Randomly flies them every single day just because you know we have those in every single town across the country where there are still Englishmen and puts a random one up every day just for the fun of it because he likes them.
[00:23:58]  It's like, okay, but that's nothing to do with patriotism, like, this is just a guy's thing he does for fun.
[00:24:03]  I mean, that's fine, totally normal.
[00:24:05]  As you say, English eccentric, totally normal.
[00:24:07]  So, moving on, let's see if we get any other ideas about patriotism.
[00:24:11]  Here's Dr. James Freeman, a senior lecturer in political history at the University of Bristol.
[00:24:15]  Oh, brilliant.
[00:24:16]  That's going to be a neutral take, isn't it?
[00:24:18]  A lecturer from the University of Bristol, who's pointed out, well, there is evidence to suggest that people in certain groups have become more assertively English in their identity.
[00:24:26]  Was it the national flagging campaign, where the English flag was going up everywhere, James?
[00:24:30]  Was that the thing that pointed it out to you?
[00:24:32]  I think that why people are concerned is about there's another history of the use of our flags in our country and around the world, which has been about marking territory.
[00:24:39]  What do you mean, another use?
[00:24:41]  That's all a flag is for.
[00:24:42]  That's what the flagging campaign was for the English to make present the idea that, no, no, we're still here.
[00:24:48]  We still live in England.
[00:24:49]  This is still our country.
[00:24:50]  But he does say, well, I mean, I would always say that the St. George's flag is not a far right symbol.
[00:24:56]  It's like, I don't know, though.
[00:24:57]  I think a lot of people think that it is.
[00:24:59]  And I think that's what this attempt to steal it is about.
[00:25:02]  Because I think you do actually think the St. George's flag is a far right symbol.
[00:25:06]  Because in reality, from your perspective, it's a national flag, which is a far right symbol.
[00:25:12]  All national flags are far right symbols in the view of the work left.
[00:25:16]  Yes.
[00:25:16]  That's what a national flag is.
[00:25:18]  That's what the far right is.
[00:25:19]  Anyway, let's carry on moving on.
[00:25:20]  Because surely we've got some good takes here.
[00:25:23]  Here's 49 year old Cherry Lee from Hong Kong.
[00:25:27]  West Country patriotism, anyone?
[00:25:30]  For her, it's not about flags, it's about landscape, history, and architecture.
[00:25:34]  Our community is a melting pot of culture, which is important to me for its inclusiveness and respect for people from different cultural backgrounds.
[00:25:41]  I never feel as an outsider.
[00:25:42]  I'm glad I'm able to keep my own identity as a Hong Konger.
[00:25:45]  How's that integration going, boys?
[00:25:47]  What's this got to do with patriotism in England?
[00:25:50]  What's this got to do with the West Country of England?
[00:25:53]  Let's move on.
[00:25:55]  Here we've got Carol Burns.
[00:25:57]  That doesn't sound like an English surname.
[00:25:59]  She's an artist who moved to the town 15 years ago, and she said, for her, patriotism is rooted in creativity and community.
[00:26:04]  I've been here long enough to feel like an honorary Swindonian.
[00:26:07]  Well, I'm sorry, I don't accept you as an honorary Swindonian because, like, you're a Scottish woman who moved here.
[00:26:14]  And, like, how do you feel about the St. George's flag, Scottish woman?
[00:26:19]  Not great, obviously.
[00:26:21]  Why are you asking her?
[00:26:23]  Like, why are you asking a Hong Kong woman?
[00:26:25]  Why are you talking to a guy who's just like, I just love putting up every single goddamn flag you can imagine?
[00:26:30]  Like, you know, I don't want to pass judgment on her art because she's like deliberately, you know, abstract or whatever.
[00:26:35]  I don't care about that, right?
[00:26:36]  But the point is, what is the premise of this article, BBC?
[00:26:40]  Like, how do the people in the West Country feel about this?
[00:26:43]  Why didn't you ask one of them?
[00:26:44]  Just as a quick note, to do these kinds of vox pop pieces, you have to go and find a bunch of people and interview them.
[00:26:52]  Yes.
[00:26:52]  And you have to consider how many people express the wrong views and were therefore excluded, filtered through.
[00:26:58]  Before they could find these three and spin the narrative according to them.
[00:27:03]  Yes.
[00:27:04]  And at the same time, as they're trying to talk about, oh, it's all about inclusivity and people being whoever they are, whatever they want, the BBC, who just last week released an article investigating, you know, like people pretending to be gay so that they could infiltrate the country.
[00:27:20]  The top story right next to this headline is High Street Minimart selling cocaine, cannabis, and prescription drugs, BBC Secret Filming reveals.
[00:27:28]  I wonder who's running the Minimarts.
[00:27:32]  People flying St. George's crosses, no doubt.
[00:27:35]  But people celebrating unity and inclusivity, I am sure.
[00:27:39]  It's just kind of ridiculous.
[00:27:41]  You know how cocaine.
[00:27:42]  It brings people together.
[00:27:45]  But the whole point of this is just completely ridiculous, right?
[00:27:49]  Like, it's a complete.
[00:27:51]  They're trying to do a bait and switch, but it's so badly done.
[00:27:54]  Yes.
[00:27:54]  You're just like, right, so you want some Hong Kong or a Scottish woman and a guy who just likes flags.
[00:27:58]  That's the beginning of a joke.
[00:28:00]  It really does sound like it.
[00:28:03]  And then, you know, fill it in in the comments, folks.
[00:28:06]  But anyway, so this is something they're really concerned about because there does seem to be an organic revival of St. George's Day celebrations.
[00:28:13]  As you can see from this website that monitors things, monitors people booking.
[00:28:22]  Things for holidays.
[00:28:24]  Well, there's been a 46% rise, as apparently is the pub's leading the revival.
[00:28:28]  Now, if you're going to experience any kind of organic upswing in English culture, it begins in the pub.
[00:28:34]  Yes.
[00:28:34]  It always has and it always will.
[00:28:36]  And as you can see, it's on the up.
[00:28:39]  And of course, in this, they're like, well, yeah, this is inclusive, isn't it?
[00:28:42]  It's like, no, you know what?
[00:28:43]  I think if you go to like the average pub in the average working class area of England that's actually like, yeah, we want to celebrate St. George, they're not feeling all that inclusive about things these days.
[00:28:53]  So, There's this undercurrent, and this was shown in the flagging campaign, which is kind of the precursor of all this.
[00:29:00]  They can feel that there's English nationalism on the rise.
[00:29:04]  They can feel it, and what they're trying to do is divert that energy into a progressive and inclusive St. George's holiday, where you're a little Native American on the reservation and you get your one day where Sadiq Khan comes and claps at you with his stupid hooked nose.
[00:29:17]  No.
[00:29:17]  To scold you into including the dragon.
[00:29:20]  Yeah.
[00:29:20]  And is that going to work?
[00:29:21]  Well, they don't think so, actually.
[00:29:24]  Here's an article in the New Statesman where they're just like, look.
[00:29:27]  We're not going to contain this new English nationalism.
[00:29:29]  This is quite militant English nationalism.
[00:29:32]  It's had enough.
[00:29:33]  It's definitely something that's not going to be just contained in the sort of kitsch, pastiche, one day year reservation nationalism.
[00:29:44]  Just they say, it's impossible not to see English nationalism as a major force in Britain's political ructions, a nationalism that has burst the bottle of officialised folklore.
[00:29:54]  The campaign for St George's Bank Holiday proclaims this post national banality.
[00:29:59]  St George's Day is a cultural celebration where everyone in England can recognise the one thing we have in common we all live in the same country.
[00:30:04]  Yeah, not when we win.
[00:30:06]  But while there is an England for whom that is enough, there is another, one that sees English nationhood not as something to be celebrated, but proclaimed, defined, and enforced.
[00:30:18]  And I think they're right, right?
[00:30:20]  I think this is genuinely what this is the case.
[00:30:23]  And you get left wing writers on their sub stacks being like, look, the far right is really taking hold of England's politics at this point because this has been the identity that's been denied for a long time.
[00:30:34]  And he's worried about Farage.
[00:30:36]  It's like, dude, Farage is the least worrying of any of these figures for you, right?
[00:30:41]  But the point of this, he talks about Tommy Robinson's rally from last year, the United Kingdom rally.
[00:30:48]  And he says, If Labour and Conservatives can't muster the political courage to resist Farage and his extremist positions from influencing theirs, the politics on display at Robinson's rally will define Britain's future.

=== The Ceasefire Trap (17:15) ===

[00:30:58]  But the problem they have is we've already won.
[00:31:01]  The fact that they're trying to steal the St. George's flag for decades, they just ignored it.
[00:31:05]  They never posted the St. George's flag.
[00:31:07]  They never were like, Happy St. George's Day.
[00:31:09]  St. George's Day means being inclusive.
[00:31:10]  No, the reason that they're doing this is because we've already made this conversation happen.
[00:31:14]  This was the online right and the organic feeling of the English people.
[00:31:17]  They are afraid of us.
[00:31:19]  And so I just thought I'd go out and post some truth on Twitter.
[00:31:22]  George was born in Bognor Regis.
[00:31:26]  His dad from Staffordshire, mum from Yorkshire.
[00:31:28]  He was a racist.
[00:31:29]  Died in Sheffield.
[00:31:30]  He never left England.
[00:31:31]  Probably killed a ton of dragons.
[00:31:32]  He was a Christian saint.
[00:31:33]  I think he also enjoyed smoking and drinking in his local boozer.
[00:31:38]  Just FYI.
[00:31:40]  And of course, the one party that did post something very good about this was Rupert Lowe and Restore Britain, where he explains what it is driving this newfound sort of energy underneath English nationalism.
[00:31:53]  And he extends it with, We will restore Britain, we will restore England, and a picture of himself flying the English flag.
[00:31:59]  You know who's on your side, folks.
[00:32:01]  It's none of them.
[00:32:02]  It's these.
[00:32:03]  Anyway.
[00:32:04]  Nice.
[00:32:04]  Some rumble rants.
[00:32:05]  Pound put, we've seen it.
[00:32:07]  We're not going to read it, though.
[00:32:08]  Why did you dare blaspheme?
[00:32:10]  Do you want to read the other one?
[00:32:13]  Yeah, I'll do it, yeah.
[00:32:14]  Hayden says As I'm listening, I'm walking through sunny Cornish, seaside town.
[00:32:17]  I see some St. George's flags.
[00:32:19]  I love Cornwall.
[00:32:19]  Yeah, Cornwall's gorgeous.
[00:32:20]  I need to go back to Cornwall sometime.
[00:32:22]  Oh, yeah, I'll get there every next time.
[00:32:23]  I miss when my missus went uni at Falmouth because, like, going to visit her, it was like a little holiday every single time.
[00:32:30]  It's gorgeous.
[00:32:30]  The ambassador to Japan is showing more respect for English culture than the mayor of London or the prime minister.
[00:32:35]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:32:36]  He's not trying to sort of diminish English culture.
[00:32:40]  What he's doing is saying, I like this thing.
[00:32:42]  And he does this with everything.
[00:32:43]  He's such a good ambassador.
[00:32:45]  He's like, I like this thing about your culture.
[00:32:46]  I like this thing about your culture.
[00:32:48]  It's like, wow, that's all you have to do.
[00:32:49]  It's such a low bar.
[00:32:51]  But, you know, anyway, he does a great job.
[00:32:52]  I think the Japanese are like, at this point, they are the ultimate masters of soft power.
[00:32:57]  Yeah.
[00:32:57]  Because everybody in the West kind of loves Japan just because.
[00:33:02]  They make TV shows that people want to like.
[00:33:04]  They make video games that people like.
[00:33:06]  And they come across really polite and respectful.
[00:33:09]  And they tidy up after themselves.
[00:33:10]  Yeah, and they're clean.
[00:33:11]  That's literally all you need to do.
[00:33:13]  And all of a sudden, half of the West is like, I love Japan.
[00:33:16]  We need to protect it at all costs.
[00:33:17]  And they queue as well.
[00:33:19]  Yeah.
[00:33:19]  They're one of the few Eastern cultures that queues.
[00:33:21]  That's incredible.
[00:33:23]  Anyway.
[00:33:25]  All right, so before we talk about the Strait of Hormuz and where we are with the ceasefire or why the ceasefire might break down sometime soon, I just wanted to mention that because it is St. George's Day, there is a special sale on the website of the Lotus Eaters for pretty much all of the England related merch, and you can get some pretty cool stuff there.
[00:33:49]  So please go and get it.
[00:33:51]  You don't have to apply any special code, it's just automatically applied at checkout.
[00:33:55]  Please go for it.
[00:33:58]  Now, where are we now?
[00:34:00]  Two days ago, President Trump unilaterally extended the ceasefire that he had with Iran.
[00:34:08]  How do you unilaterally extend a ceasefire?
[00:34:11]  You just don't fire any missiles?
[00:34:14]  They're going to attack you.
[00:34:15]  What if they.
[00:34:17]  They have to agree.
[00:34:19]  But they haven't attacked.
[00:34:20]  Okay, well.
[00:34:21]  They've implicitly accepted.
[00:34:22]  I guess, yeah.
[00:34:23]  So, you know, bombs aren't flying right now.
[00:34:26]  Okay, well, that's good.
[00:34:27]  Which is.
[00:34:28]  Nice, except if you're a ship, in which case you're getting attacked.
[00:34:31]  But that's a different story, and we'll get to it.
[00:34:32]  That's outside of the ceasefire.
[00:34:36]  For both sides, apparently.
[00:34:39]  Apparently for both sides.
[00:34:41]  And, you know, he said that this was the request of the Pakistanis, but we remember from last time that it was the Americans who had written the draft request for an extended ceasefire that the Pakistanis used.
[00:34:55]  And so he's using that again.
[00:34:57]  It's good that there's a ceasefire.
[00:34:59]  Don't get me wrong, I'm happy.
[00:35:01]  That things aren't getting blown up.
[00:35:03]  Before that, the Iranians had said that they were opening Hormuz, but then the Americans said that they were keeping the blockade on Iran.
[00:35:12]  You weren't blockading.
[00:35:15]  And that meant that now Hormuz is sort of double blockaded.
[00:35:22]  There is an Iranian blockade and there is an American blockade on the Iranian blockade.
[00:35:27]  And so.
[00:35:28]  This was after Trump was like, you better open that strait.
[00:35:30]  You better not blockade the strait.
[00:35:32]  And then suddenly he was like, I'm going to blockade the strait.
[00:35:34]  It's like.
[00:35:34]  What's the matter, Carl?
[00:35:35]  Not trusting the plan?
[00:35:37]  Well, I tell you what, it's pretty clever 4D chess because I have no idea what he's going to do next.
[00:35:43]  I don't think even Trump does.
[00:35:44]  That's what makes it all the more ingenious.
[00:35:46]  That's why I'm always one step ahead.
[00:35:49]  In fairness, he is keeping them guessing.
[00:35:52]  Yeah, I bet he is.
[00:35:53]  In fairness, he is keeping them guessing.
[00:35:55]  And there are signs that the Iranians are arguing among themselves over whether or not to offer some kind of concession or not.
[00:36:03]  Iranians are like, are we actually dealing with a madman?
[00:36:06]  Well,.
[00:36:07]  But that's also happening as well.
[00:36:08]  Yeah.
[00:36:09]  And the strongest case against offering anything is, but he will break the agreement anyway and go back to bombing us when he feels like it.
[00:36:18]  And so the American thinking is that with a blockade, they can bring Iran to its knees.
[00:36:27]  And there is some reasoning behind that.
[00:36:31]  The Iranians import, I think, 50% of their food.
[00:36:35]  Right.
[00:36:35]  And the Iranian currency has been collapsing.
[00:36:41]  If you look at it from 2012, 2013, the Iranian rial was worth around 50,000 versus the dollar.
[00:36:50]  Now it's hitting 1.6 million.
[00:36:53]  Oh, right.
[00:36:54]  Okay.
[00:36:54]  And there is evidence that since Trump got elected, it's gotten really worse for the Iranians because of the economic pressure.
[00:37:03]  But, you know, when you see that recent pressure, you also have to look at the past pressure that they've been under and realize that this is something that they've gotten used to in the same way that the Turkish lira was always collapsing before 2002, 2001, I think it was.
[00:37:23]  So this is sort of.
[00:37:25]  I mean, it's bad, but it's not substantively worse than in 2025, right?
[00:37:29]  It's getting worse.
[00:37:31]  You can see the uptick also started halfway through Trump won.
[00:37:35]  Yeah.
[00:37:36]  Around the time he would have collapsed the nuclear agreement with Obama.
[00:37:40]  So when the nuclear agreement collapsed, it got a lot worse.
[00:37:43]  It had been getting worse since before that.
[00:37:47]  The Iranians do face protests over living standards and things like that.
[00:37:51]  So there is a certain logic to it.
[00:37:54]  But the Iranian counter logic is that, well, okay, but we can sort of.
[00:38:00]  Make the world suffer more pain and keep on seizing ships if the United States keeps on seizing Iranian ships, which they've begun doing.
[00:38:09]  And I think that there was another one that was announced half an hour before we started.
[00:38:14]  We didn't include it.
[00:38:15]  I think it's around five Iranian ships that they've seized right now.
[00:38:18]  And the idea is to stop the Iranians from exporting any oil in the hope that Iran will fall apart and will have to make an agreement, in the hope that the Iranians don't have enough storage capacity for their oil.
[00:38:32]  And if they start shutting down their oil wells, then they may not be able to reopen them.
[00:38:38]  So that puts a time pressure on them.
[00:38:40]  But the Iranians have been through this before because under Obama, their oil exports collapsed.
[00:38:47]  They built more storage.
[00:38:49]  We don't know how much storage there is, really.
[00:38:51]  The estimates that we're seeing.
[00:38:53]  Are quite debated.
[00:38:55]  So Trump has basically put Iran under siege.
[00:38:58]  Essentially.
[00:38:59]  Right.
[00:38:59]  And so the question is, whose resources run out quicker?
[00:39:04]  Who breaks first rather than whose resources run out quicker?
[00:39:08]  Well, yeah, okay.
[00:39:08]  Who feels the pressure?
[00:39:09]  Exactly.
[00:39:10]  Because if you're Iran and you're thinking about these countries, keep in mind that when Iraq was under siege from 1990 to 2003, half a million Iraqi children died of malnutrition and lack of vaccines and so on and so forth.
[00:39:26]  The sacrifice Madeleine Albright was willing to make.
[00:39:28]  But so were the Iraqis.
[00:39:29]  Correct.
[00:39:30]  So, when you want to understand these people, yes, Madeleine Albright says that this was a worthy price to pay, but so did the Iraqi leadership.
[00:39:40]  And there is this tolerance for pain on the part of these Middle Eastern dictatorships.
[00:39:47]  We saw Assad under severe sanctions, collapse electricity provision, destroyed healthcare, destroyed agriculture, etc.
[00:39:55]  He stayed in power until he was overthrown.
[00:39:57]  Well, there's essentially no mechanisms for accountability against the government.
[00:40:01]  In these countries.
[00:40:02]  Exactly.
[00:40:03]  Because I mean, what you can do is go out on the streets, they'll just shoot you.
[00:40:09]  Exactly.
[00:40:09]  Now, why are the Americans not attacking Iran yet?
[00:40:12]  I mean, there's been a massive military buildup that actually exceeds the buildup that happened before the war started in terms of sheer number of cargo flights going in.
[00:40:26]  And we are seeing the Americans also send more ships into the region, including.
[00:40:32]  A third aircraft carrier.
[00:40:34]  This has been the point, though, isn't it?
[00:40:35]  It's like, look, you're going to have to do a ground invasion of the land around the Strait of Hormuz if you want to open it.
[00:40:41]  Which is, if you think about it, 900 miles of coastland.
[00:40:45]  Yeah.
[00:40:45]  And then behind that, mountains behind that are natural fortified positions, and you can't take 900 miles of coastland without hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
[00:40:58]  Yeah.
[00:40:58]  It's going to be a massive invasion.
[00:41:00]  It will have to be a massive invasion if you want to reopen Hormuz.
[00:41:04]  And so, one problem that the Americans are facing is that, according to CSIS, which is one of the most respected think tanks in DC and very specialized in military affairs, the US has consumed maybe a third of all of its Tomahawks, which are precision cruise missiles, a quarter of their long range JASSNs,
[00:41:30]  these are standoff cruise missiles fired from aircraft.
[00:41:37]  Almost all of their new artillery launched ballistic missiles and a pretty big chunk of all of their interceptor stockpiles.
[00:41:47]  So, this is going to be because they're going to have sent a lot of equipment to Ukraine, right?
[00:41:51]  Well, these were the ones that were fired in the Iran war, according to CSIS, just the Iran war.
[00:41:56]  What I mean is, what the pre war inventory is probably not very high because a lot was used in Ukraine, especially the Patriots.
[00:42:04]  But they didn't give them FADs, they didn't give them JSSMs, they didn't give them Tomahawks.
[00:42:10]  Putin thought the tomahawks could be used for a nuclear strike, and he said, if you do that, we're going to go crazy.
[00:42:16]  And so the Americans backed down.
[00:42:18]  So this war has been expensive for the states, and now we're waiting to see whether or not the Iranians send the delegation to negotiate.
[00:42:30]  And the Iranians are saying, we won't participate in the talks so long as there's a blockade.
[00:42:35]  You remove the blockade, then we'll participate in the talks.
[00:42:40]  And it's a total gridlock.
[00:42:42]  Because if Trump does remove the blockade, the Iranians, as of today, have started collecting fees for allowing ships to go through Hormuz.
[00:42:52]  And that's a real problem.
[00:42:54]  Because if there is an agreement, what it confirms is that Iran is the hegemon in the Gulf, that the United States can't protect the Gulf states, and that if the Iranians want to tax the Gulf states for the right to trade and export their oil, they can.
[00:43:10]  And if Trump unblocks the strait, he's essentially revealing that he's backing down and agreeing to the state of affairs.
[00:43:16]  Exactly.
[00:43:17]  Whereas at the same time, he's engaged in a pretty heavy military buildup.
[00:43:20]  The Israelis are doing everything that they can to collapse the ceasefire in Lebanon.
[00:43:25]  Their media is saying that the war is going to resume.
[00:43:29]  And in the past, they were right about the war starting.
[00:43:33]  So, you know, they're getting briefed that the Americans are getting ready for another round because this situation is completely untenable.
[00:43:41]  Because if you make an agreement today over the nuclear issue, well, that doesn't solve the missile program, that doesn't solve the regional program.
[00:43:51]  And it really confirms that Iran is the regional hegemon.
[00:43:54]  And it will be a defeat.
[00:43:56]  So Trump has this choice either kick the can down the road and keep the world economy collapsing, which is exactly what's happening, because spot prices for oil are reaching 150 sometimes, 200 in some cases, because there's a very real oil shortage.
[00:44:18]  And it takes years to develop new oil sources and solve this problem.
[00:44:23]  And it's very difficult to replace 20% of total oil exported.
[00:44:29]  Which is coming out of Hormuz.
[00:44:31]  So Iran has this vice over Hormuz, and they don't look like they want to back down anytime soon.
[00:44:38]  And they're threatening more escalation, including cutting off internet sea cables.
[00:44:44]  So the Houthi are located here in Yemen, meaning that they can cut off these internet cables, and the Iranians obviously can cut off all of the cables in the Gulf.
[00:44:54]  They're in a prime position to do so if they wanted to.
[00:44:56]  Who would be affected by that?
[00:44:58]  Everyone, including the Iranians themselves.
[00:45:01]  Everyone in the region or expanding outwards?
[00:45:04]  Some of it would span outwards.
[00:45:06]  So it depends on which countries have how many duplicate connections.
[00:45:11]  Right, right.
[00:45:11]  So if you look at this map globally, the UK, for example, has massive duplication.
[00:45:18]  Japan has huge amounts of duplication.
[00:45:20]  What is, are we still going to be able to broadcast?
[00:45:22]  Yes.
[00:45:22]  Okay, fine.
[00:45:23]  Yes, yes.
[00:45:24]  But a lot of people in the Gulf won't be able to see it anymore, which would be tragic.
[00:45:29]  I'm sure our Gulf audience is huge, isn't it?
[00:45:32]  I actually don't know.
[00:45:33]  Maybe they're avid fans of Realpolitik.
[00:45:38]  One would hope, one would hope.
[00:45:40]  And the Iranians are winning the meme war.
[00:45:54]  We are having very great negotiations with Iran.
[00:46:00]  If Iran doesn't come to negotiate, we're going to bomb them.
[00:46:05]  2,000 years later.
[00:46:08]  So, where are the Iranians?
[00:46:11]  This is from Iran.
[00:46:22]  All right.
[00:46:22]  Then I will extend the ceasefire at Pakistan's request.
[00:46:27]  I mean, that's their consulate in Hyderabad, in India.
[00:46:37]  And pretty much every Iranian consulate and embassy is putting out the same message, which is kind of stupid of them because it is going to end up in the war resuming.
[00:46:49]  Yeah.
[00:46:49]  Yeah, they are dealing with Donald Trump, who is a man who is.
[00:46:53]  Very well known for taking things quite personally.
[00:46:55]  There was that theory that went around for a long time that he only chose to run for president because Obama snuffed him that time.
[00:47:01]  Yes.
[00:47:03]  Literally, the White House correspondence, you know, where he was dunking on him from the stage.
[00:47:07]  Yes.
[00:47:08]  So maybe this form of diplomacy isn't the best if you're both trying to come to a negotiated peace deal.
[00:47:14]  But if you're trying to win over upduits on social media, then.
[00:47:19]  What's happening is 1,000 likes, 2 million views.
[00:47:23]  That's right.
[00:47:23]  What's happening is that if you remember the North Korean negotiations, if you remember the Trump came negotiations in his first term, what Trump did was by calling him Little Rocket Man and making fun of him, he forced some poor lackey in North Korea to report to the Supreme Leader that Trump is making fun of you personally.
[00:47:48]  Now, God rest that guy's soul, he probably died, but Trump was playing the man.
[00:47:54]  And in playing the man, he forced the North Koreans to negotiate.
[00:47:58]  His playbook is now being used against him, which is quite dangerous for a country like Iran, given how much it relies on food imports, and given that they are risking their population starving.

=== Russia's Long Game (03:36) ===

[00:48:13]  But like the Iraqis and the Syrians, this isn't going to change the leadership's mind.
[00:48:19]  And their hope is that either the midterms or the 2028 elections will result in a breakthrough.
[00:48:27]  That confirms them as the regional hegemon.
[00:48:30]  Yeah, because as far as they're concerned, they don't have to wait two years for theoretically a Democrat victory, which means they win.
[00:48:37]  Yes.
[00:48:38]  And ultimately, I'm sure, in the same way that I'm sure this is similar logic to how Iraq was rationalizing it as well, they're seeing however many lost right now would be made up for by the fact that they are winning Iran's long term sovereignty and independence rather than being potentially permanently folded into just being an arm of the US.
[00:48:59]  Administered presumably regionally by Israel, which could go on.
[00:49:04]  Like Egypt.
[00:49:05]  Yeah, like Egypt and like countries have been toppled over the past few years as well.
[00:49:11]  So they're thinking long term, even if it does kill a lot of people.
[00:49:15]  I mean, the problem is short term, can the country maintain itself?
[00:49:20]  Which through repression and through help from Russia and China, they could.
[00:49:26]  And this whole blockade thing, does it account for the possibility of the Chinese.
[00:49:31]  Kind of relying on Russia's backup, though, and Russia just kind of let them fall.
[00:49:35]  The Russians sold them.
[00:49:36]  The Russians literally traded Assad away.
[00:49:38]  But to be fair, they had been warning Assad for two or three years that he was being too much of a dick.
[00:49:45]  But also, there's a reason you kind of let Syria go as well.
[00:49:48]  As in, Syria is a much more precarious and smaller state than Iran, and it doesn't really have any sufficient natural resources to make it worth an investment in.
[00:49:57]  Exactly.
[00:49:58]  So it was kind of a holdover from the sort of Cold War chessboard, right?
[00:50:03]  Yes.
[00:50:03]  Whereas Iran.
[00:50:05]  Is actually a real key strategic place that is actually defensible and actually has something in there worth defending.
[00:50:11]  More importantly, if the Iranians win this, then Iran and Russia together run OPEC, meaning that they manage the global oil market together, which would be a huge improvement in Russia's situation because the Iranians can enforce any cuts on the Gulf states by threatening to bomb them.
[00:50:34]  So the Russians have a stake in Iran surviving that is considerably bigger here, and they have a stake in the conflict continuing.
[00:50:42]  Requiring Iran to survive because they're selling their oil at twice what they had budgeted for now.
[00:50:49]  And so we're in this gridlock and in this stalemate, and the only way through it is to either fight or give up.
[00:51:00]  And these are the choices facing Trump.
[00:51:01]  And if you're Iran, you're looking at these numbers of interceptors consumed and you're thinking, hold on a second, another few months of war and everything we send starts to land.
[00:51:14]  And that means that their leverage increases considerably, assuming they have enough missiles, which I can't imagine they haven't built more than a few thousand.
[00:51:27]  And assuming that they have some kind of Chinese lifeline, Russian lifeline thrown at them to keep the regime functioning, which I can't imagine China or Russia dropping them in a conflict like this that is depleting the states.
[00:51:39]  I mean, if you're China and Russia, even if you don't actually get physically involved, it's good to watch a geopolitical rival weaken itself by pouring.
[00:51:48]  Treasure into a black hole.

=== Lutnick's Supreme Court Win (06:28) ===

[00:51:50]  Exactly.
[00:51:51]  It's like, brilliant.
[00:51:52]  This is great for us.
[00:51:53]  Exactly.
[00:51:54]  I mean, the Russians have already made this mistake with Ukraine.
[00:51:56]  So the Chinese must be thinking, if we do nothing, do we win?
[00:51:59]  Yes.
[00:52:00]  It's like, yes, actually, that's how that's going to work.
[00:52:02]  Pretty much.
[00:52:04]  Pretty much.
[00:52:05]  So it doesn't look very promising.
[00:52:11]  And meanwhile, Trump is remembering that he has a domestic agenda.
[00:52:15]  Oh, yeah.
[00:52:16]  So in Virginia.
[00:52:19]  A rigged election took place in Virginia.
[00:52:21]  Because essentially, they took Virginia from being almost half Democrat, half Republican, to being nine Democrats for one Republican.
[00:52:29]  Because they gerrymandered it, voted on it, and now he's complaining that elections are still getting rigged.
[00:52:35]  Why didn't you fix that rather than going to war with Iran?
[00:52:38]  Because Israel wasn't making you do that, were they?
[00:52:41]  And here he's.
[00:52:43]  Oh my God.
[00:52:44]  Ranting.
[00:52:44]  I think it's from some radio host, basically.
[00:52:48]  From what's his name?
[00:52:48]  Michael Savage, whatever he is.
[00:52:51]  I remember.
[00:52:51]  Basically, Trump copy pasted his opening segment, railing against the Supreme Court because they're going to allow birthright citizenship.
[00:53:03]  Right, I mean, don't get me wrong, good, get rid of birthright citizenship.
[00:53:06]  But the Supreme Court looked like they're going to allow it.
[00:53:09]  Aren't you the president?
[00:53:10]  Don't you have Congress in the House?
[00:53:13]  Well, why can't you legislate?
[00:53:16]  Because it would be a constitutional amendment, according to what the court is saying, which would be a much more complex problem.
[00:53:23]  But Savage is calling for Trump to go Stonewall Jackson and ignore the Supreme Court.
[00:53:30]  And so Trump posted How many divisions can they muster?
[00:53:32]  Exactly.
[00:53:33]  But to do that, you need massive political capital.
[00:53:38]  And if you're spending your political capital in the Persian Gulf.
[00:53:41]  The kind of political capital he had in like 2021, 2022.
[00:53:45]  Well, 24, sorry.
[00:53:47]  24, 25, exactly.
[00:53:49]  And he's also complaining about the Supreme Court and how they're all a bunch of lunatics and are too weak.
[00:53:59]  Well, if you're going to ignore the Supreme Court, you need a massive amount of political capital.
[00:54:04]  But also, like, your choices for the Supreme Court haven't exactly been the most reliable.
[00:54:10]  No.
[00:54:10]  Right?
[00:54:10]  Like, a bunch of them.
[00:54:11]  Better than what Heidegger or Hillary would have appointed, yes.
[00:54:16]  Why didn't you put in quite hardliners, you know, rather than kind of soft right?
[00:54:22]  And so he's failing on his domestic agenda, and they completely stripped him of the tariff right, of the right to impose tariffs.
[00:54:30]  Yeah, the Supreme Court overturned the tariffs that he had imposed, and now they're busily paying them back, including to Howard Lutnick's son.
[00:54:39]  How can the court be in charge of who the president tariffs?
[00:54:43]  I don't know.
[00:54:44]  So, did you just say the American government is paying money back to Howard Lutnick's son?
[00:54:50]  So, Howard Lutnick's sons have an investment firm.
[00:54:53]  They bought the rights.
[00:54:55]  To any reimbursed tariffs before the Supreme Court ruling came.
[00:55:02]  And they bought them, they bought the rights to 25 cents on the dollar.
[00:55:08]  A policy designed by Howard Lutnick.
[00:55:12]  It's because it sounds fucking worthless.
[00:55:13]  Why would you want that?
[00:55:15]  That's so lucky for them.
[00:55:16]  And now they're getting a dollar for the dollar.
[00:55:19]  It's like taking insurance on the World Trade Center, isn't it?
[00:55:21]  Like three months before it goes down.
[00:55:22]  What are the odds?
[00:55:23]  And Howard Lutnick himself, who just happened to be taking his kids to school on September the 11th.
[00:55:29]  You know, like, which he never did before, but had to.
[00:55:32]  I mean, good luck to him, you know.
[00:55:33]  His wife told him, I'm told.
[00:55:35]  Yeah.
[00:55:36]  Howard Lutnick and his family.
[00:55:38]  Remarkable.
[00:55:38]  And the way he was next door neighbors with Epstein, but only visited him once, and then decided this guy's a creeper.
[00:55:45]  There's so much good fortune around the Lutnick family name.
[00:55:49]  That's remarkable.
[00:55:54]  So, yeah, he bought all this reimbursed tariff money for 25 cents on the dollar.
[00:56:00]  And now he's going to.
[00:56:01]  Make billions.
[00:56:03]  Make billions on the back of it.
[00:56:04]  His sons are, not him.
[00:56:05]  Well, sure, sure.
[00:56:06]  His sons are.
[00:56:07]  I'm sure he's not going to see a penny of it.
[00:56:09]  I mean, I'm sure he had absolutely nothing to do with it.
[00:56:12]  I'm sure, as the architect of the tariffs, he had no idea that this could be challenged in this way.
[00:56:17]  That I'm absolutely certain of.
[00:56:19]  The man is as innocent as it gets, of course.
[00:56:21]  So he's going to become incredibly rich on the back of a Supreme Court decision that went against him as the guy in charge of the tariffs.
[00:56:29]  This is all starting to sound a little third world to me.
[00:56:33]  I think it's just some people just get lucky.
[00:56:35]  The stars align.
[00:56:36]  And suddenly your kids are making billions on the decision you were trying to make that was reversed that you didn't know was going to get reversed.
[00:56:43]  Like, just sometimes just suck it up.
[00:56:46]  Just suck it up.
[00:56:49]  It's just an system of work, Harry.
[00:56:53]  So that's the Iran war for you.
[00:56:55]  Howard Lutnick is happy.
[00:56:57]  That's the important thing.
[00:56:58]  Thank God.
[00:56:59]  I wasn't going to sleep at night unless I knew.
[00:57:01]  Thank God.
[00:57:02]  We've got some rumble rants if you want to read them.
[00:57:04]  I'll read them.
[00:57:04]  I'll read them.
[00:57:05]  Go on.
[00:57:05]  Trump needs to unilaterally rename it to the gay of Hormuz so the fundamentalists will avoid it in the same way they avoid regular bathing and having sex with someone who isn't a goat andor cousin.
[00:57:14]  President Trump, please use the title.
[00:57:18]  It's about time.
[00:57:19]  Also, everybody's known him as Trump for ages.
[00:57:22]  Yeah.
[00:57:22]  So it's just normal for everyone.
[00:57:24]  Trump seems to forget that China owns most of the US debt, and if the global economy keeps collapsing, then imagine what's going to happen when China calls on all that US debt.
[00:57:32]  Well, I've imagined the US will default.
[00:57:33]  Well, no, they're just print money.
[00:57:35]  Yeah, no, they're not.
[00:57:36]  And we're going to end up in a wave of inflation unlike any other, and we're going to end up with much higher interest rates, and the asset bubbles will burst, which is a good thing.
[00:57:44]  Well, that doing it this way hands power over to the populist left, which is going to be a very bad thing.
[00:57:50]  Well, I mean, the whole point of the US debt system being able to essentially make it so that the US exports its inflation.
[00:57:58]  And then gets them to buy treasury bonds so they can get the dollars back to put them back into the system, rinse and repeat.
[00:58:04]  The whole point of that is to one, make it so that the US can print infinity dollars without consequence, and two, that all the rest of the governments holding that debt essentially have to call the bluff of collapsing the global economy if they want to call in the debt that they owe.

=== AI and the Populist Left (14:55) ===

[00:58:19]  So the whole thing is a confidence issue.
[00:58:22]  But if Trump is collapsing the global economy anyway, then you have no choice.
[00:58:27]  Yeah, then it doesn't matter.
[00:58:28]  Might as well call the bluff.
[00:58:30]  Exactly.
[00:58:31]  Yeah.
[00:58:32]  Anyway, so onto a sunnier subject, which is that of political information campaigns.
[00:58:42]  Now, for a long time, if you wanted to buy influence with a political influence campaign, then what you needed to do was you needed to go out and you needed to find a real person.
[00:58:52]  Have $7,000?
[00:58:53]  Have $7,000 in your back pocket, and you name your price, and they take your money and they go on social media or on the news or in print, depending on what period of time we're talking about here.
[00:59:04]  And they go out and they say the line that you've given to them.
[00:59:06]  It was very simple, but you can just buy newspapers.
[00:59:10]  Or you can just buy newspapers.
[00:59:11]  There are any number of ways, but now there are entirely new ways of creating fake influencers where the fake influencer doesn't even need to be a real fake person.
[00:59:22]  Now they can just be a fake person with the advent of advanced artificial intelligence generated fake influencers.
[00:59:31]  This is why we did the live event, by the way.
[00:59:33]  So people wouldn't know we were using holograms.
[00:59:35]  That's right.
[00:59:37]  It's very impressive.
[00:59:37]  Thankfully, nobody went to shake my hand.
[00:59:40]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:59:41]  It's come straight through.
[00:59:43]  And you can see the New York Times has done a report on all of this, but there's a lot more information that we can go through as well that backs all of this up.
[00:59:51]  So, just that you wouldn't know, would you?
[00:59:53]  No.
[00:59:54]  With some of these, when you've got phone artifacting in the video, and then you've got like interference from streaming it as well, a lot of this instills images when you actually see the videos in motion.
[01:00:07]  You can tell because there's the weird smoothing and the weird lack of blemishes or lighting on the face.
[01:00:13]  But if you just look at the images, you would look at this and go like, This kind of looks like a real guy.
[01:00:18]  That guy down there in the bottom with the glasses.
[01:00:20]  Yeah.
[01:00:20]  That looks like a real guy.
[01:00:22]  It helps when you keep the backgrounds as simple as possible.
[01:00:26]  It means that the system that you're using doesn't have to waste resources on it, so it'll make the person look better.
[01:00:32]  This guy, he himself looks all right, but you can see from the background that's a very fake looking background.
[01:00:38]  Either way, this is becoming, in the run up to the midterms, a very prominent thing where all of a sudden there's just loads of fake people.
[01:00:49]  On social media, posting the same things.
[01:00:51]  Like you can see from this crossroads.
[01:00:53]  It's all the same quote.
[01:00:54]  The left say Republicans aren't united.
[01:00:55]  That's funny because I bet I can.
[01:00:57]  The left say Republicans aren't united.
[01:00:58]  The left say over and over and over again.
[01:01:02]  It's very dangerous to our democracy.
[01:01:03]  It is, which suggests that it's probably all being run by the same person.
[01:01:09]  That same person probably being Ranjit coming from Mumbai, presumably.
[01:01:15]  And he's probably making a killing off of it.
[01:01:17]  Because there is some confusion with all of this, which is the question of.
[01:01:22]  Is this a political operation of somebody, of like some arm of the Republican Party trying to gin up a load of momentum for the midterm so that people vote for the Republicans when they've become, you know, they've taken quite a hit?
[01:01:35]  Or is it just a massive scam?
[01:01:36]  Or is this just a good old fashioned money scam where somebody is making a killing off of this?
[01:01:44]  There is a lot more evidence for the latter, although I wouldn't be surprised if a bit of the former is involved as well.
[01:01:50]  So, what it just says in this article here, should I keep the.
[01:01:53]  No, no, I'll scroll down.
[01:01:54]  I'll get one of the other images.
[01:01:56]  And you can see another one.
[01:01:58]  Here's this very, very friendly MAGA lady, which that hat isn't even an actual MAGA hat, which is great.
[01:02:06]  But people are watching it.
[01:02:07]  In the months leading up to the midterms of elections, hundreds of accounts have emerged on social media featuring these AI generated pro Trump influencers posting at a rapid pace about the radical left and America First.
[01:02:18]  President Trump himself has reposted content from at least one of these accounts, which might just be his ultimate boomer moment.
[01:02:27]  A platinum boomer.
[01:02:28]  Sorry, in his defense, it looks incredible.
[01:02:31]  Not in motion.
[01:02:32]  Sure, I'm not in motion.
[01:02:34]  Boomers have got bad eyesight.
[01:02:35]  You can see it here.
[01:02:36]  Here's the one.
[01:02:36]  This is on his Truth Social account.
[01:02:39]  It's still out there from Perez Fernandao.
[01:02:42]  And I'll just play a little bit of it.
[01:02:44]  And you can see in motion, it's a lot less convincing, right?
[01:02:46]  California's corrupt governor is being pushed to resign after investigators uncovered a scheme.
[01:02:52]  Yeah, he posted this.
[01:02:55]  And I found the account.
[01:02:56]  And you can see her face.
[01:02:58]  Has morphed since the January post that he did.
[01:03:02]  And you can scroll through.
[01:03:03]  I mean, if you want to say that AI is channeling demons, like the fact that her face has ended up morphed like this, it's kind of giving me a little bit of evidence for that.
[01:03:14]  But you can scroll down and you can see just like endless content.
[01:03:18]  Some of it gets, you know, 23,000 views.
[01:03:19]  Horrific looking, though.
[01:03:21]  Yeah.
[01:03:22]  How did AI generate this person?
[01:03:24]  Account has over 51,000 followers.
[01:03:26]  And you can scroll down and you can see, oh, bugger off TikTok.
[01:03:32]  You can see how her face just like slowly morphs as they keep.
[01:03:36]  You know, the way that AI, when you put the image into AI and say replicate this image, it slowly morphs.
[01:03:42]  Typically in the past, strangely to a fat brown woman.
[01:03:45]  But still, this one seems to have got a safeguard against that.
[01:03:48]  But it's kind of weird and really creepy.
[01:03:51]  And my big question is who is generating all of this content?
[01:03:56]  Is this a genuine.
[01:03:58]  Much prettier in the early ones.
[01:03:59]  Yeah.
[01:04:00]  Is this a genuine MAGA info?
[01:04:03]  Who maybe doesn't think that they have a face for this kind of thing?
[01:04:06]  Or is this maybe somebody who is just posting all of this because they want to generate content really quickly so that they can make some TikTok money off of it and they see that the MAGA audience is very profitable?
[01:04:19]  Look at the one on the bottom right there, right?
[01:04:20]  That's actually a really pretty girl.
[01:04:22]  It looks like the Hollywood actresses getting the face sculpting and stuff like that.
[01:04:28]  The AI is just like the repeating, repeating, emphasizing the same traits over and over.
[01:04:32]  It's just overemphasizing them into this hideous.
[01:04:34]  The AI has given her fat removal, bucket surgery.
[01:04:37]  It's quite remarkable how AI is imitating life, and you can go all the way down to the bottom there.
[01:04:46]  According to the New York Times article, in these first two videos, she speaks in a very pronounced Hispanic accent and then immediately drops it in every single video following that.
[01:04:57]  So, according to the New York Times, they've spoken to some experts and such and found at least 304 accounts sharing this kind of content.
[01:05:07]  Some of which have disappeared.
[01:05:08]  Researchers with the Governance and Responsible AI Lab at Purdue University, known as Grail, found another dozen accounts across TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook.
[01:05:17]  They say that the emergence of the AI generated political avatars suggests a sweeping effort to hook conservative voters, demographic primed by the president, to enjoy this kind of online political content.
[01:05:32]  They say neither the Times nor the researchers it consulted found any similar left leaning networks.
[01:05:37]  Not that that doesn't mean that they exist, but I would imagine, for obvious reasons, the New York Times would want to focus on Republican leaning ones.
[01:05:44]  But there is another case to be made.
[01:05:45]  But we know the left handed ones.
[01:05:47]  It's Hassan Piker and Destiny.
[01:05:48]  This is true.
[01:05:49]  Literal NPCs.
[01:05:49]  This is true.
[01:05:51]  And I love that further on in the article, they use our favourite word.
[01:05:55]  They say, although the quality of some of the accounts edged towards slop, I love that the New York Times has just adopted that now.
[01:06:02]  And engagement may be inflated by bot activity.
[01:06:04]  Researchers said that the comments on the posts suggested that many users believe that the avatars.
[01:06:10]  Were real people.
[01:06:11]  And I can believe that.
[01:06:13]  I can believe that a lot of people would be fooled by it.
[01:06:16]  Maybe not younger people, but I would imagine a lot of the middle aged to older men out there and women are probably looking at this.
[01:06:24]  And like you say, their eyes aren't great.
[01:06:26]  They're not as internet literate and especially AI literate as a lot of people.
[01:06:32]  They're used to just seeing something online and going, Well, it looks real to me, so why would anybody lie to me?
[01:06:39]  And they're getting fooled by it, which again suggests to me that a lot of this is people scamming.
[01:06:44]  This is just an old school version of Indian telemarketer scams.
[01:06:50]  Nigerian princes.
[01:06:52]  You just need to use your bank account.
[01:06:55]  This is one of the more bizarre ones, and there's a larger story attached to it.
[01:06:59]  This one.
[01:07:00]  Who racked up millions of followers with patriotic content of her posing in a bikini whilst ice fishing?
[01:07:07]  Again, this looks kind of real until you think, like, what a bizarre position to find yourself in.
[01:07:14]  But again, I'm not American, so I don't know how common this kind of thing is.
[01:07:18]  She has been revealed to be an Indian man who put himself through med school on the proceeds of his trickery.
[01:07:26]  And there is a Who among us would do any different?
[01:07:28]  Exactly.
[01:07:29]  There's a larger article from the New York Post about this.
[01:07:32]  Now, they've called him Sam.
[01:07:34]  Not his actual name.
[01:07:36]  Here's some more of the content that he was posting on social media.
[01:07:40]  Obviously.
[01:07:42]  Not a real person.
[01:07:43]  Probably made loads of money.
[01:07:44]  Yeah, he did make a lot of money, and there's more information here that I'll go through.
[01:07:48]  This lag is on the wrong direction.
[01:07:50]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:07:50]  Yeah, that's true.
[01:07:51]  But who was looking at that?
[01:07:52]  Yeah, good point.
[01:07:54]  Sam, 22 year old orthopedic surgeon in training, told Wired that he got the idea to sell AI generated images of a young woman in a bikini while scrounging for money in school and trying to save up enough to emigrate to the US after graduation.
[01:08:08]  So, This man is coming to your shores, folks.
[01:08:10]  I like that.
[01:08:11]  I need to grift as hard as I can to escape India.
[01:08:16]  I mean, which of us wouldn't?
[01:08:17]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:08:18]  You're among us.
[01:08:18]  He turned to Google's Gemini AI for advice and decided to create a hot girl crafted specifically for the MAGA conservative niche after the software told him that the conservative audience often has higher disposable income and is more loyal to older men.
[01:08:33]  I love how strategic this is.
[01:08:34]  I could very easily grift the they them pronouns group by saying, you know, trans women and women and stuff like that, but they haven't got any goddamn money.
[01:08:42]  Yeah.
[01:08:43]  Well, there's another reason here as well that they named.
[01:08:45]  And that's how.
[01:08:45]  But just carrying on.
[01:08:46]  So this was supposedly Emily Hart.
[01:08:49]  Ah, yeah.
[01:08:49]  According to her profile, she was a registered nurse with Jennifer Lawrence Lux who offered red meat posts to lonely conservative men online.
[01:08:58]  One post showed her firing a rifle with the caption If you wanted a reason to unfollow, Christ is king, abortion is murder, and all illegals must be deported.
[01:09:08]  Prime.
[01:09:08]  Prime.
[01:09:09]  I mean, I want to follow that.
[01:09:10]  Of red meat.
[01:09:11]  Yeah.
[01:09:12]  Of red meat.
[01:09:12]  Yeah, of course.
[01:09:14]  Sam told the magazine every day I'd write something pro Christian, pro Second Amendment, pro life, anti abortion, anti woke, and anti immigration.
[01:09:22]  The account blew up, and within a month, he had 10,000 followers.
[01:09:25]  Every reel he posted got millions of views and earned him more followers.
[01:09:29]  And then he cashed in on the AI model's appeal, selling maga themed t shirts and creating an account, right?
[01:09:38]  On the OnlyFans competitor.
[01:09:41]  Fanview, where paid subscribers could access lewd AI generated content, exactly what you want from your pro Christian conservative MAGA babe.
[01:09:52]  This man is a genius.
[01:09:54]  I will say nothing against Sam here.
[01:09:58]  He's welcome to come over.
[01:09:59]  Elon, give this man a job at X right now.
[01:10:03]  He's probably a millionaire.
[01:10:05]  He probably is.
[01:10:06]  It's probably worth more than all of us combined.
[01:10:08]  It says here Fanview, the OnlyFans thing, differentiated itself by allowing AI generated content.
[01:10:15]  So that's why he was able to post all that.
[01:10:17]  The move made him a mint.
[01:10:19]  He was raking in thousands of dollars a month.
[01:10:22]  He used Grok AI to generate nude photos of this supposedly Christian, Christ is king, conservative girl and uploaded them to FanView, where fans sent him money for exclusive content and messages.
[01:10:37]  It's genius.
[01:10:38]  I don't know what everyone's complaining about.
[01:10:40]  He says, I was basically doing nothing and was just flooded with money.
[01:10:45]  Yep.
[01:10:47]  Okay, so at this point, I'd like to revisit the conversation about the labor theory of value.
[01:10:53]  I really, really want to reintroduce that into the conversation because, as he says, I was doing nothing, I was making loads of money.
[01:11:01]  Where's the labor?
[01:11:02]  How does it connect to the value?
[01:11:03]  That's what I want to know.
[01:11:04]  Communists, leave a comment.
[01:11:06]  I mean, he mentions the left leaning.
[01:11:08]  He says, despite MAGA fans making him rich, he still locks down on them, calling them super dumb.
[01:11:15]  And frankly, apologies, but from his perspective, Position, I would probably think lowly of them as well, given that he managed to scam them so thoroughly.
[01:11:22]  And again, this probably is lonely guys who don't know any better and like older horn dogs.
[01:11:29]  Yeah.
[01:11:30]  This is going to be like older horn dogs, which I'm sure.
[01:11:33]  60 year old dudes.
[01:11:34]  Among MAGA, there is probably going to be a lot of older horn dogs out there.
[01:11:39]  But he also said that he attempted to make a liberal counterpart for Hart on Instagram.
[01:11:43]  But, quote, Democrats know it's AI slop, so they don't engage as much.
[01:11:48]  I don't know why that might be.
[01:11:49]  Some say that Democrats are more intelligent.
[01:11:52]  It might just be because they skew younger.
[01:11:54]  And so they might.
[01:11:55]  Skew more female, too?
[01:11:56]  Yeah, skew more female.
[01:11:57]  So they might just be a bit more internet and AI literate.
[01:12:01]  His mistake was doing a female one, right?
[01:12:03]  He should have done a male one that was a super buff dude who was like, actually, I'm super woke.
[01:12:09]  And cashed in on the cat woman.
[01:12:10]  They should have done a Luigi Mangione type guy.
[01:12:14]  Yes.
[01:12:14]  Yeah, that could have done it.
[01:12:16]  Cashed in on the wine aunts and the cat mums who are like, yeah, I'm super woke and I support women's rights.
[01:12:21]  But there is also a weird connection with the conservative right in America and AI.
[01:12:28]  And it's not just because, of course, Peter Thiel has a lot of connections to AI and Larry Ellison and the connection to the current administration.
[01:12:42]  Through JD Vance.
[01:12:44]  And Elon Musk as well.
[01:12:44]  And Elon Musk as well.
[01:12:46]  Obviously, all of these people have a lot of connection to AI and a lot of vested interest in AI.
[01:12:51]  But it's also just weird stuff like Glenn Beck at the beginning of last month in March asking, Would the founding fathers approve of Trump's war in Iran?
[01:13:00]  No.
[01:13:01]  I won't pretend to speak for them, but in January, I sat down with George AI and asked for its views on foreign entanglements and military action.
[01:13:10]  Here's what it said.
[01:13:10]  Should we find out what it said?
[01:13:12]  Yeah, yeah, but I know he's going to.
[01:13:14]  The AI, if it's accurate, will say no.

=== Founding Fathers Approve War (07:49) ===

[01:13:15]  Oh, that's where you're wrong, but.
[01:13:17]  George, we are trying to not fight foreign wars and not be involved in the world's policemen.
[01:13:25]  But there are times that we have to demonstrate strength in order to prevent conflict.
[01:13:30]  But I don't know where the foreign entanglement begins and where it ends.
[01:13:38]  When I was president, I did not crave power, I didn't strut in my uniform, dreaming of conquest.
[01:13:45]  In fact, I begged several times.
[01:13:47]  To not be the general and not be the president.
[01:13:51]  I didn't want it, but I understood my responsibility.
[01:13:55]  And I also understood that some things.
[01:13:57]  That's supposed to be George Washington.
[01:13:59]  Yeah, AI, George Washington in a t shirt, and then it skips to, where is it?
[01:14:06]  Him.
[01:14:06]  Yeah, here it is.
[01:14:07]  Him around a table of the rest of the Founding Fathers, all of whom just happen to be the exact same person.
[01:14:12]  130 IQ handler.
[01:14:18]  This is just bizarre.
[01:14:20]  You can see it setting up.
[01:14:20]  Well, I didn't want to, but I now have a responsibility to bomb Iran.
[01:14:24]  Yeah, I mean, that's clearly what it is.
[01:14:26]  Here's Glenn Beck speaks to an AI who just confirms what he already believed.
[01:14:30]  They don't have an equal number of buttons on the shirts either.
[01:14:32]  Yeah, but they dressed it up as George Washington.
[01:14:36]  That's weird.
[01:14:37]  And he seems so sincere and earnest in his questions.
[01:14:42]  This is a religious experience to him.
[01:14:44]  It's similar to the way that they tried to make a Jesus AI as well.
[01:14:48]  Absolutely bizarre.
[01:14:50]  I really am not a big fan of AI and its many uses.
[01:14:54]  But before being St. George's Day, I know there are lots of smug Englishmen watching this right now thinking, dumb Yanks falling for it.
[01:15:02]  No, no, no.
[01:15:03]  Sadly, it's here as well.
[01:15:06]  It's in England as well.
[01:15:08]  Are you saying I can't donate to her OnlyFans?
[01:15:11]  Well, you could actually, because as Maven pointed out here, she also had a site.
[01:15:19]  It was on the same one, FanView, actually, where he points out, you know, LottiePatriot, who has incredibly insightful videos of herself posting just, I'm racist.
[01:15:32]  At Lottie from UK, here's my tits, I'm racist.
[01:15:37]  Here's me, like.
[01:15:39]  Fondling a phallic object for your pleasure.
[01:15:41]  All I'm saying is, Sam is a genius, alright?
[01:15:45]  Yeah, this might even be the same guy.
[01:15:47]  You don't know that it's not.
[01:15:49]  Yeah.
[01:15:50]  I mean, apparently, there's enough of a market and an audience for this sort of stuff that it does make people money.
[01:15:57]  Which is just horrifying, but also, you know, one of the more horrifying things about it is that, again, according to quite a lot of information that's been taken on this, studies of people up to about 77,000.
[01:16:09]  Thousand people have been tested on all of this.
[01:16:12]  Even just a conversation with a chatbot can meaningfully shift political opinions left or right.
[01:16:19]  So the uses of AI in generating consensus are there, which is why, even if a lot of these ones are going to be scammers from India and Nigeria making a lot of money off of people who are just too foolish to know any better, this could actually have a massive impact going into the future.
[01:16:36]  Didn't the ADL say that it was working with all of the AI companies to make sure that AI doesn't turn anti Semitic?
[01:16:43]  I like the Gab AI there.
[01:16:45]  I don't think they were working with them.
[01:16:46]  I don't think they were working with the Gab AI.
[01:16:49]  I remember your job is to turn the AI far right, not the other way.
[01:16:53]  Well, that was the thing I reported on last year that a study by Gab had looked into all of the other AIs out there and found the only one that wasn't programmed to be as anti white as possible was the Gab one and Grok.
[01:17:08]  And even Grok had a minor anti white bias.
[01:17:12]  So all of that's very worrying, but also hilarious.
[01:17:15]  There you go.
[01:17:17]  I'll read through some of the rumble rants.
[01:17:19]  Logan Pine, as Razor said, Congress are effing cowards and the GOP are the Lib Dems of America.
[01:17:25]  That's actually right.
[01:17:26]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:17:27]  Bald Eagle 1787.
[01:17:29]  I finally get it now.
[01:17:30]  The whole Iran thing is Trump's 4D chess move to get Iran to cut the internet cables to India, which will have user engagement on social media drop 80 to 90%.
[01:17:39]  It's to stop the grifting of the MAGA base.
[01:17:42]  Yeah, 4D chess then seed.
[01:17:44]  He's actually protecting us all.
[01:17:45]  Yeah.
[01:17:46]  Unfortunately, I know India's underwater AI map.
[01:17:50]  You're much more likely to cut off Pakistan than India.
[01:17:53]  Okay.
[01:17:54]  I'll take it.
[01:17:54]  Can we start some kind of domino?
[01:17:56]  I'll take it.
[01:17:57]  One after the other.
[01:17:58]  No, you'd need to get to a bunch of different Indian ports and cut them off.
[01:18:01]  We need to give them.
[01:18:02]  Can we not just ask them to cut all of the internet cables?
[01:18:06]  Palm put, I'm all for it's not X but Y and M dash is slop text, but these AI voices on the phones and AI video influencers are genuinely sinister.
[01:18:15]  Yeah, that is the thing, is that as much as it's fun to laugh at right now, This will only, this technology at the rate of improvement right now will only get better to the point where it's more and more indistinguishable, which makes it all the more worrying.
[01:18:28]  Because at least if you've got somebody who's like a real person who's paid, they might have morals, they might have boundaries, they might have lines that they're not willing to cross.
[01:18:36]  AI is not going to have that.
[01:18:37]  They're just going to do and say whatever you want.
[01:18:39]  And also the speed of it, right?
[01:18:41]  Because I remember in like 2022, 2023, when Mid Journey was becoming popular and it would create horrific monster pieces of like weird faces and teeth and fingers.
[01:18:51]  And it's like, wasn't very long ago.
[01:18:53]  No, exactly.
[01:18:54]  It was only a spaghetti test.
[01:18:55]  Exactly.
[01:18:55]  It was only a couple of years ago.
[01:18:57]  And, I mean, yeah, okay, the video is slightly too smooth in parts.
[01:19:01]  You can tell if you've got a trained eye and you're looking for it.
[01:19:04]  If you don't have a trained eye, if this is just a video on your feed because you're some, you know, 57 year old.
[01:19:11]  Yeah, you can get better in those areas.
[01:19:14]  It's three years' time.
[01:19:14]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:19:14]  And that's how it is now.
[01:19:14]  You're not going to know.
[01:19:16]  Yeah.
[01:19:16]  Yeah.
[01:19:17]  Ochigdor, I am insulted by that George.
[01:19:20]  He looks like a prisoner behind glass.
[01:19:22]  Yeah, it looked weird.
[01:19:23]  And also, they put him in a t shirt.
[01:19:25]  Yeah, it looks awful.
[01:19:26]  Like, they put him in a blue t shirt.
[01:19:28]  What the hell?
[01:19:29]  Yeah.
[01:19:29]  Fictagious.
[01:19:30]  How do we know that fans are not all lefties looking at hot, attractive right wing women?
[01:19:34]  Because, come on, have you seen the lefty women?
[01:19:37]  That's also a possibility, but I'd imagine that a lot of the engagement is probably coming from politically aligned people.
[01:19:42]  Again, the issue is that it's.
[01:19:45]  You would need to have some MAGA chud who's ultra buff, because a lot of the left wing women are attracted to the MAGA chud, but the left wing men, I mean, obviously they're attracted to the women, but like.
[01:19:56]  They don't have any money.
[01:19:57]  I do also think that because, especially on the left, they kind of have not a monopoly, but a prominent share of the anti AI activism purely out of artistic reasons because they're always like AI is not art.
[01:20:15]  We need to fight back against this so that people will be able to express themselves properly.
[01:20:19]  I think that has led and forced a lot of them to become more AI literate than a lot of people on the right who don't see it as much of a pressing issue.
[01:20:27]  And also, they're younger, as you said.
[01:20:28]  Yeah, and they're younger as well.
[01:20:30]  Anyway, let's get on with the video comments, which better not be AI.
[01:20:34]  This is Peter Purr.
[01:20:36]  And he loves his gardens.
[01:20:40]  You know what he loves?
[01:20:41]  He loves the birds singing.
[01:20:46]  He likes this clean air and he likes this clean water.
[01:20:50]  This is Peter Purr as the Libden leader in his environmental message.
[01:20:58]  Looks like he's having a good time.
[01:21:00]  I love Peter Purr.
[01:21:03]  Hello, Seaters.

=== Greeted as Occupiers Not Liberators (02:53) ===

[01:21:04]  I'm here with you today at Hopton Castle in Shropshire.
[01:21:08]  Here it is right here.
[01:21:11]  It was built in the 1260s, but its biggest fight was in the English Civil War.
[01:21:15]  31 men against 500.
[01:21:18]  The 500 blew a hole right there, and the defenders still held them off.
[01:21:25]  When the castle surrendered in March 1644, 28 of the defending men were taken off and executed.
[01:21:35]  Probably why it's not worth surrendering.
[01:21:37]  Yeah.
[01:21:39]  Love historical sites though.
[01:21:59]  Bunny.
[01:22:07]  Output transcript Out wrong with it?
[01:22:10]  No, that was nice.
[01:22:10]  Love a cute buddy.
[01:22:11]  This is in response to Carl Benjamin's comment last week.
[01:22:15]  Or that there'd be a massive uprising from below.
[01:22:16]  No, it seems that actually, when the missiles are raining down, that isn't when people feel like overthrowing their government.
[01:22:20]  They rallied to the government.
[01:22:20]  Yeah, of course they did, because the country's under attack.
[01:22:22]  If your country was suppressing your freedoms and killing your people, you would not side with that government.
[01:22:26]  You would side against it and see the invaders as liberators, not the other way around.
[01:22:31]  This is what happened in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, when many people joined against his regime.
[01:22:34]  With only a few elites loyal to Saddam Hussein in 2003.
[01:22:38]  By the way, Carl, nice tie.
[01:22:42]  Thanks.
[01:22:44]  I don't think that's true.
[01:22:46]  And I don't think that's what we've seen.
[01:22:48]  And I don't think that's really what happened.
[01:22:50]  If the liberators rain down a bomb that kills your children or your next door neighbors, you're not going to see them as liberators.
[01:22:58]  This was the problem with Germany and why they fought back so hard from 1944 to 1945 is because, yeah, the Americans and the Allies could say that they were liberators, but from the average person on the ground's experience, No, you just firebombed my city.
[01:23:13]  This was the problem during the Iraq War.
[01:23:16]  I remember it very clearly.
[01:23:17]  The American assumption is we will be greeted as liberators.
[01:23:20]  No, you were greeted as weird foreign hostile occupiers.
[01:23:24]  And people generally didn't cooperate as much as you were hoping.
[01:23:27]  And it was just, it was, and another thing is the Americans just did not understand the people that they were occupying.
[01:23:34]  And so the whole thing was, I mean, what was the general's name?
[01:23:38]  No, no, no, the American general afterwards.
[01:23:42]  It was first Schwarzbach and then it was, no, Schwarzbach was the first one.
[01:23:46]  I can't remember the name of it, but there's video of this American general who you can watch him, you know, just on a stage doing interviews, just explaining.
[01:23:54]  It's like we had no idea what we were doing, we had no idea what we were engaging with.
[01:23:57]  We read Petraeus.

=== Petraeus on Cultural Misunderstanding (03:33) ===

[01:23:58]  That's it.
[01:23:59]  Petraeus, yeah.
[01:23:59]  And this went really badly for us, and the people did not want us there.
[01:24:04]  And it was like, it's just not true.
[01:24:07]  In 2003, initially, the Iraqis were happy that Saddam was overthrown.
[01:24:12]  Sure.
[01:24:13]  But within a few months, it was the Shia who were the ones who were most oppressed by Saddam.
[01:24:18]  Who were conducting most of the bombings against the United States?
[01:24:22]  So it didn't actually work out.
[01:24:24]  So it's not as cut and dried as that.
[01:24:26]  And the Iranians are not just an Islamic country, they're also a nationalist country.
[01:24:32]  Ridiculously nationalistic, much more so than Iraq.
[01:24:36]  Because, I mean, Iraq is a fake country, basically, just FYI.
[01:24:40]  Whereas Iran is not a fake country.
[01:24:42]  Do you have any more, Samson?
[01:24:47]  It appears not.
[01:24:48]  Zesty says When leftists say things like St. George the Turk or they never killed a dragon, what they're really saying is they reject any notion of commonality between themselves, their ancestors, and their countrymen.
[01:24:58]  Yeah, and the future.
[01:25:00]  That's a good point.
[01:25:01]  That's a great point.
[01:25:02]  Just to reinforce as well, Cameron, from the office, our Cameron, said the goth mug was not included in the sale until Harry and Firaz announced it.
[01:25:11]  Get 15% off your goth mug and other selected merch now.
[01:25:15]  You're welcome.
[01:25:17]  George says, Rupert Lowe with the St. George's flag is one of the most wholesome images I've seen, exactly the kind of attitude we need.
[01:25:22]  He's the patron saint of the brave, so no demoralization is allowed.
[01:25:25]  Well, yes, exactly.
[01:25:27]  But that's why I ended the segment by pointing out they know that this is going to fail.
[01:25:32]  They're not going to be able to channel nationalist energy.
[01:25:34]  I mean, he represents goodness overcoming lies.
[01:25:38]  Yes.
[01:25:39]  That's a huge part of the symbolism and the image.
[01:25:42]  So, of course, it's a wholesome image.
[01:25:44]  Yes.
[01:25:44]  But the sort of like, Sadiq Khan, Keir Starmer types, they'll never be able to harness the energy of the patriotic nativists because it's just so completely opposed to them.
[01:25:57]  So, this is a doomed project.
[01:25:58]  And the thing is, the left knows this as well.
[01:26:01]  Geordie Sorsman says, Of course, it stands for unity.
[01:26:03]  Man, horse, lance, and sword, all working in glorious, unified whole to kill a sodding, enormous dragon.
[01:26:09]  Well, I mean, there is that, yeah, but it's not the unity of everything with everything.
[01:26:14]  The unity of good against evil.
[01:26:17]  Of good against evil, yeah.
[01:26:19]  Carl's evil to endorse says, I'm sure the crusaders wearing the St. George's cross were thinking of unity while chopping off heads in the crusades.
[01:26:25]  Sorry, Keir, St. George's day is ours, not yours, and we will tell you what it means.
[01:26:32]  And that's precisely it.
[01:26:33]  And again, the point I'm reinforcing that is we are the ones who have made this a salient political issue and battleground, right?
[01:26:40]  It's mostly like the online right with the general feeling.
[01:26:45]  I mean, the online right is just an expression of the general feeling of the English people, anyway.
[01:26:48]  Right, it's like the English one, right?
[01:26:51]  Um, because we don't have any other outlets for it, frankly.
[01:26:54]  And so, the fact that we've made this happen, we're making them dance to our tune, shows that we're actually the ones steering the ship here.
[01:27:00]  So, um, don't forget your own power.
[01:27:03]  This is something the left is very uh focused on making salient.
[01:27:06]  Is well, how much power do we have?
[01:27:07]  It's like, well, they do have power, they have quite a lot of power, actually.
[01:27:11]  We're in a similar position where we have a lot of power.
[01:27:13]  It's indirect, but it does have an effect.
[01:27:16]  And this is the effect that we're seeing.
[01:27:19]  Ewan says, leftist.
[01:27:20]  Stereotypes are harmful and dangerous.
[01:27:22]  Also, leftist.
[01:27:23]  Here is your culture, as in a stereotype.
[01:27:25]  Rex says, you know, the Japanese ambassador absolutely loves his job, but you could find him pounding Guinness in pubs on the weekend.

=== Securing America or Israel (03:09) ===

[01:27:32]  I mean, what a great job to have.
[01:27:34]  You know?
[01:27:34]  Yeah.
[01:27:35]  Love to go to another country.
[01:27:35]  Like, here are the things about your culture I like.
[01:27:38]  Well, what a lovely job.
[01:27:40]  Jimbo says, seeing a lot of flags in England flags today, gentlemen.
[01:27:44]  Even my work reception has made an effort this year with the bunting of flags.
[01:27:47]  I think normal people are fed up with being demoralized about who they are.
[01:27:50]  Yeah, this is.
[01:27:50]  That's the whole point of this, right?
[01:27:52]  Yeah, that's the whole point.
[01:27:53]  And they are right to say, well, the flag is like a statement of ownership and domination.
[01:27:58]  It's like, yes, it is.
[01:27:59]  And that's why we're putting the England flag up.
[01:28:02]  Russian says, if we don't know what we're doing, our enemy cannot anticipate our future actions.
[01:28:06]  The American military.
[01:28:07]  I mean, that's true.
[01:28:08]  I imagine it's quite frustrating for the actual commanders and soldiers and whatnot in the actual ranks when they're like, okay, we expected a plan.
[01:28:16]  Paul says, not going to war with Iran would have been far more expensive.
[01:28:22]  I don't know.
[01:28:23]  I'm not persuaded by this, to be honest.
[01:28:25]  I agree, though, that he says Iran has been at war with the US and the West and the Arabs since 1979, finally putting an end to it.
[01:28:31]  It's like, yeah, but the problem that I have with it is not America overthrowing the Iranian regime, it's America being at the behest of Israel.
[01:28:39]  This is Netanyahu's war.
[01:28:41]  It's not your war.
[01:28:42]  And he's been pining for this forever.
[01:28:45]  Oh, yeah.
[01:28:46]  He's been pushing for this forever.
[01:28:47]  My entire life.
[01:28:48]  And.
[01:28:49]  Iran historically has always allied with the West against its Sunni neighbors.
[01:28:54]  And that was the policy under the Safavids, and that was the policy under the Shah.
[01:28:59]  And the only complication in that happening in exactly the same way today is Israel.
[01:29:06]  That's the only reason it can't happen under this regime and with Israel.
[01:29:10]  So it's, you know, things aren't that simple.
[01:29:15]  Omar echoing the question about the Indian cables.
[01:29:18]  Depending on which communications cables they cut, they can make themselves very popular in the West.
[01:29:22]  I can send you a map.
[01:29:25]  A lot of people are, yeah, we're cutting off India, asking for no particular reason.
[01:29:30]  Maria says from the advances in military warfighting technology, you cannot take in whole ground without an infantry soldier on the ground that will be there to hold it.
[01:29:39]  Be it Ukraine, Israel, or Iran, so bullets and grit are key.
[01:29:43]  Modern political West has deliberately ignored this simple truth.
[01:29:45]  Well, this is the point that you're making.
[01:29:47]  It's like, look, Trump has basically got to sack up and actually do the invasion or not, right?
[01:29:51]  He's put himself in a corner where he's only got this choice.
[01:29:55]  Well, the problem with putting himself in this corner is, as far as I can tell, there's very, very little domestic approval for such a thing.
[01:30:03]  There's very little international approval for such a thing.
[01:30:05]  Yeah.
[01:30:06]  But he does have to think about the domestic state of America right now in the lead up to the midterms.
[01:30:12]  Because if he does such a thing, And then it leads to a wave of unpopularity that wipes them out in the midterms.
[01:30:18]  You are handing over America to the Democrats, and then also you're basically handing over a lot of meaningful members of his administration to prosecution.
[01:30:27]  Yeah, and this, who is the priority here?
[01:30:29]  Securing the Gulf or securing America?
[01:30:32]  What's the priority here?
[01:30:33]  Securing Israel or securing America?
[01:30:35]  And the reason you can see that this is clearly not a war of Trump's choosing is because why would you have chosen it before the midterms?

=== Post Midterm Strategic Priorities (00:39) ===

[01:30:41]  You just do it after.
[01:30:42]  You do it like, oh, day after the midterms, okay, we won by a small margin, great.
[01:30:46]  Okay, now we're going to do it.
[01:30:47]  Because we want it done, right?
[01:30:49]  You wouldn't do a really unpopular war leading up to an important election.
[01:30:54]  Why would you do that?
[01:30:55]  The problem they have is that they have an election every two years.
[01:30:57]  Oh, yeah.
[01:30:58]  But the point is, if it was directly after the midterms, Trump's got two years where it just doesn't matter anymore because he can't get reelected.
[01:31:05]  So he could just get it done.
[01:31:06]  But anyway, I think we're out of time there.
[01:31:09]  Yes, we are.
[01:31:10]  Well, thank you all very much for joining us today.
[01:31:13]  I hope you have a very happy St. George's Day and we'll see you again tomorrow.
[01:31:17]  Take care and get some merch off the website while it's still on discount.