In this episode, I'm joined by Tim Davies, a retired RAF Tornado Pilot, to discuss the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. We talk about the impact of the conflict, the Russian disinformation campaign, and the role of journalists in covering it.
00:00:00.120I would actually be interested to know if Tim was kind of like flying over where you're doing something on the ground at some point over life.
00:00:24.320Yeah, and Paul was, you know, one of the guys on the ground, you know, dealing with American conflict theater.
00:00:31.500So I thought it'd be cool to invite both of them on to sort of like offer a little bit of insight from their perspectives, you know, working with the various native militaries, you know, and theaters, a campaign that they were in.
00:00:44.120And I've spent the last week or two just like consuming loads and loads of content and sharing some of the stuff on my Twitter feed.
00:00:53.380And it's interesting because there's a lot of people starting to go back and forth now and form like very strong opinions in established camps.
00:01:04.060What are your, like, what's your thought, guys?
00:01:25.300I mean, because, you know, I can get all technical about our government and the problems that Boris Johnson had, for example, and how this does alleviate a lot of those, let's be honest.
00:01:32.860I mean, he did quite well out of COVID, to be fair, with what he did.
00:01:36.160We're one of the countries with, I think, the more minimum lockdown constraints.
00:01:40.580I think we're talking to a Canadian here who we're looking at the whole of what was probably one of the most liberal sort of Western democracies become the most tyrannical, I think, alongside maybe New Zealand and Australia and things like this.
00:01:52.940But when you start trying to find out what the facts are and you're going through social media channels or even mainstream news channels, I don't know how you can ever choose, unless you go through something like Bellingcat, which tries to identify locations and things like that.
00:02:04.940How do you even know where the disinformation is coming from or what kind of angle some of these guys are coming from?
00:02:09.580I can't even work it out myself, you know, I struggle with it.
00:02:13.320What do you see right now as far as the sources of the disinformation?
00:02:17.620Because, I mean, you open with that as like the big point.
00:02:19.680So what are you seeing, you know, based on your experience?
00:02:22.400Well, I think you could take disinformation from like literally every side.
00:02:26.000And it's not even overt disinformation.
00:02:28.360It's not even like the mascarovka we see or whatever it might be or the hybrid warfare that Russia has been implementing for so many years and that we're so familiar with.
00:02:36.120And it's even when you get maybe, say, the president of Ukraine maybe standing up and saying whatever he's saying and putting an emphasis on it.
00:02:44.000And, of course, that appears on the front page of a newspaper.
00:02:54.460Are we seeing anything that is fair or justified?
00:02:56.280And I just want to say, by the way, that there's no way I'm saying this invasion was in any way is any way acceptable to anyone.
00:03:03.840I mean, it's the most ridiculous thing ever.
00:03:04.920But there's probably reasons why it happened and we can get into that later.
00:03:08.600So I try and I'm really I'm really struggling between trying to find out what what is right by using mainstream news sources and that going back into something like, you know, Twitter or anything like that or any online source really and trying to work out where they've got better angles on it.
00:03:24.580So, you know, how you kind of know the journalists that you trust.
00:03:27.340And then those journalists become we sort of covered, didn't we?
00:03:30.440Those journalists become kind of all in on one side, but they're not saying they're all in.
00:03:33.460They're trying to make out the balance, but they're kind of going all in and all in again.
00:03:36.620And you think, well, now, who do I now kind of turn to?
00:03:39.580And I must admit, to be fair, I'm a little bit lost about the whole thing.
00:03:42.540And I've been covering it like like you, you know, so.
00:03:44.640So I look at it like you have to look at motivations because there's the time of unbiased sources is gone.
00:03:53.520And so I have to look at it from a standpoint of, all right, what is the motivation of each different party?
00:04:00.300And then when a news source comes out, where are they getting that information from and how are they cherry picking that information to fit that narrative?
00:04:10.220And then from there, that's a starting point, at least, of figuring out what's kind of true, what's not.
00:04:16.960And then trying to find raw sources as well.
00:04:19.900So, like, now for me, I have a benefit of knowing different people in different areas of government.
00:04:24.900I'm not, I'm kind of out of it now, right?
00:04:27.780I'm just an infantry guy in the National Guard now.
00:04:30.280But I've been on special operations tiers and I've been on several deployments.
00:04:34.860And I know people in government positions right now.
00:04:40.220I can't disclose a lot of that stuff and anything they might disclose to me, they're limited in what they can even say on certain things.
00:04:47.040But I'll get different information from those sources, video clips that people put on different, like, was it something 360?
00:04:55.040Like, there's different sites that where they allow you to put uncensored clips of what's going on in the battlefield, different things like that.
00:05:01.760And so you just kind of have to vet through it a bit from that.
00:05:05.280But knowing, though, like, if I'm watching something that's pro-NATO, pro-Ukraine, it's going to be spun to fit a narrative.
00:05:54.940But they need people to stick around and want to stick it out and fight.
00:05:58.420And so they have to ignite these people to do that rather than get complacent and give up against a much larger military force.
00:06:07.380And that's how they're going to do it.
00:06:08.780You know, they're going to have those hero stories to, you know, get them motivated to get out there and keep fighting.
00:06:16.540And that's why, you know, it's a big reason for that.
00:06:18.320Then Russia has their own campaign that they're running so that they can, so Putin can still have the support from his people, at least enough to not get, you know, murdered somehow or, you know, have revolts in the streets in Russia.
00:06:34.420They have to, he has to exhibit control over people.
00:06:37.100And he does it through his own disinformation thing and by force, too.
00:06:43.520Yeah, let's dive into that a little bit.
00:06:45.000But I mean, like, I've watched now in my lifetime on screens unfold the Falkland War, which is pretty much more of like a one-way source of information because you'd sit there and you'd turn on the TV and it would just, you know, give you info.
00:06:59.100We live in an environment today where you can actually interact with people creating content and providing the information with social media.
00:07:04.900And we've had, what are the words that we have since then?
00:07:08.260Iraq one and two, Afghanistan how many times, and all the various conflicts sort of in between there.
00:07:14.740And, you know, it's only recently that I've unplugged.
00:07:17.520Like, I've been very honest about this.
00:07:18.880Like, I've, you know, I've just believed everything they told me, you know, for the vast majority of my life.
00:07:23.460It's only been recently that I've been like, well, hold on a second.
00:07:26.380And one of the things that's really stood out to me over the last couple weeks is how quick the mainstream media and the large, you know, conglomerate media sources, politicians, anybody in any kind of position of power has been so quick to turn the attention away from beer bug over to Russian man bad.
00:07:47.480And it's gotten to the point where they're, like, cancelling some of the strangest things.
00:07:52.940Like, I've seen them cancel Russian cats from competing in, like, breeding competitions.
00:07:57.940I've seen them cancel some of the most bizarre stuff.
00:08:02.040What else have we seen in the last couple weeks?
00:08:15.180A lot of the big tech companies have also restricted access to their services in Russia.
00:08:20.940So, for example, if you're a 14-year-old kid that lives in Moscow and you have an Xbox, you can't play with it anymore, right?
00:08:28.340Because Microsoft has cancelled, you know, access to, I guess, online gaming, you know, for example.
00:08:33.060So it's like these, like, small incremental cancellations, you know, some might say, well, it's designed to annoy the public maybe to have them uprise against the government sort of thing.
00:08:43.480That's the hope, but that could back there, too.
00:08:45.840Yeah, like, I think there's an argument to that as well.
00:08:47.700But, I mean, like, the cancellation of some of the most bizarre things, I don't think I've ever seen this before.
00:08:55.740I mean, I look at this and I equate this and people will have a go at me here for this because, of course, the two, one involves a significant amount of death and the other doesn't.
00:09:03.240But the reason that the Russian forces would target housing establishments and everything else, say, in Syria, that kind of stuff, and we're seeing the same thing as they're working their way through Ukraine, they're targeting blocks of flats, is to demoralize the population.
00:09:16.620It is to make sure the population hasn't got a home, the population is seeking peace, they haven't got a car anymore, they haven't got a means of income anymore, all these kind of things.
00:09:25.840And we're just doing it in a kind of different way, don't get me wrong, it's not, you know, it's not as brutal as what's happening there, and that needs to stop immediately.
00:09:33.420But when we're restricting all these services to ordinary Russians, we're expecting these Russian people, and Russian people, they're like us, by the way, you know, we are good people, we're just managed and everything by people with sometimes nefarious intent, or they just got their own agenda.
00:09:47.400And these people, they're expecting, we're expecting to go and take that fight to the streets and to protest and everything in Russia, which I believe is illegal to protest in Russia.
00:09:55.140I think 1,600 people have been sort of taken into custody for protesting.
00:10:00.160So by restricting these services, I believe we're trying to get people to go out on the streets and to campaign against what Putin's doing in Ukraine.
00:10:07.040I think it's despicable, Rich, to target what I would say an innocent populace, really, with all these restrictions.
00:10:12.900I mean, we know that Russian cats are dicks, we should never have Russian cats in these kind of competitions anyway, but everything else.
00:10:18.380I was a supporter of Nikita Mazepin, I felt that was a young man trying to do his best after a really bad start in life, okay, son of a billionaire.
00:10:25.140But, you know, he was fighting back from that charge of grabbing his girlfriend, whatever, and everyone was launching out in, you know, the virtuous.
00:10:32.480I've never done anything wrong in the life.
00:10:34.440We're launching on this young dude trying to make the best out of a career in F1.
00:10:37.780I was supporting that dude because he's Russian.
00:10:40.740I mean, can you listen to what we're saying?
00:10:42.560Because he's Russian, we're going to stop him driving in Formula One.
00:11:00.260There's Germans that are destroying Russian restaurants and, like, stores, you know, small, like, boutique mom and pop shops.
00:11:08.300There was a few, you know, millionaires with yachts that had them seized, apparently, in Mediterranean ports.
00:11:15.960Like, what do they have to do with Putin or a war in Ukraine?
00:11:20.660And it's like they're building this systematic campaign.
00:11:23.980And it's just like, you know, it sounds and feels a lot like the whole, like, anybody that didn't want to take a jab, then they would call you an anti-vaxxer.
00:11:31.540And then they would sort of segregate you and separate you out.
00:11:34.160You know, like, you're one of the bad guys because, you know, and, like, you know, today on Twitter, I saw Boycott McDonald's was trending.
00:11:42.080And I'm like, okay, well, what's this about?
00:11:44.240And apparently all of the NPCs are trying to convince other NPCs to not buy McDonald's because McDonald's hasn't boycotted or canceled, you know, their services in Russia.
00:11:58.920I mean, so it's always been there's always been some element of that because we're tribal, you know, as a species, human beings are tribal.
00:12:07.080And so there's always been an element of segregation through culture, racial and stuff like that when there's these wars.
00:12:16.080But we're also now in a cancel culture where we want to feel good about ourselves for essentially doing nothing.
00:12:31.740He said Russian vodka was taken off the shelves here in Ontario.
00:12:35.460The LCBO is a liquor control board of Ontario.
00:12:37.960So Doug Ford, which is our premier, you know, decided, well, we're going to teach the Russians a lesson and take their vodka off the shelves.
00:12:44.440Yeah, that'll show them, you know, like it's just virtue signaling because we're not really doing anything because sanctions classically have not actually done anything to motivate Putin or the Russians to do anything different.
00:14:54.640They're being hit by, you know, all sorts of manpower, manportable air defense systems that were being provided by, you know, external states like ourselves.
00:15:04.440And these guys are just taking hits and where they never should have been huge losses.
00:15:08.580They should never be that far forward.
00:15:10.160They should have taken these eastern provinces.
00:15:11.620Paul, I mean, I'm interested in your taking this, buddy, because I literally am uneducated on this.
00:16:46.700And this has been a problem with Russia for a lot.
00:16:50.480And back to the USSR days is they run a propaganda campaign and then they believe their own propaganda.
00:16:57.340It's like a guy who gets on the Internet, puts on a personality, and then he believes his own craziness that he's saying on the Internet.
00:17:03.460And this is just what ends up happening.
00:17:05.440So, like, I think he believed the BS that he was putting out to a degree because people were, you know, he's in a vacuum where people are telling him, oh, yeah, absolutely, because they don't want to go against him because that's going to be consequences for them.
00:19:11.080They got two government things, which is gas and oil, but they run it through the government.
00:19:16.300Now, whenever you run something, government versus private sector, it's more inefficient, not profit motivated.
00:19:21.880So you have a bunch of people who walk away with money and then everybody else stays poor.
00:19:26.480Military budget, like they have a $60 billion budget, or we have a, like the United States, we just signed in last year, $777 billion budget.
00:19:38.260So that's big differences here in money and resources.
00:19:42.860So his motivation is mainly resources.
00:19:47.460And then he sees, I mean, here's the way they see it, is that NATO and NATO countries fix the trade so that they can't get ahead.
00:19:57.720It's kind of how they look at it in a way.
00:19:59.880And that's, and so he sees NATO countries, he sees us, the perception as we're evil because of how we set trade up.
00:20:55.040Yeah, they don't have strategic borders.
00:20:56.600So like they have open space now with all these countries around them where if they take some of these countries, then they can have more natural borders, right?
00:21:05.840Mountains, rivers, things like that, you know, that would provide for them better security.
00:21:12.980Without economic advantage, they want to use a military advantage to leverage their economic, you know, to try to leverage trade basically, right?
00:21:23.000Can we just go back to the border thing?
00:21:25.720Because I put this up on the screen here.
00:22:18.660And there's, I think it's called Article 5 Pact or something like that, where if a NATO country is attacked, then it's essentially, like, you're basically going to declare war on the entirety of NATO at that point.
00:22:36.260I mean, I can't see a country like Russia invading a NATO country because they're going to get, I mean, you're going to lose that and badly.
00:22:45.600You know, whether you have nukes or not, it doesn't matter.
00:22:47.420I mean, you're basically going to be on the losing end.
00:22:51.440So, I mean, like, these borders, like, do you think there's any risk of Russia pushing further westerly?
00:23:33.700And so, back to the invasion part, I think that in that bubble, they thought that they were going to kind of go in and easily start to take those cities and then place a, you know, overthrow the government, place a puppet government.
00:23:48.940I mean, I thought that was going to go easy for them.
00:23:51.820Well, the thing is, NATO tactics and training that we've been giving them and equipment, the little bit of equipment they have from us, is, at least from a tactical perspective, we're better than they are.
00:24:42.340I think that people give him a little bit too much credit on how smart they think he is militarily.
00:24:49.300Again, he's, I think, my opinion is that he believes his own propaganda.
00:24:53.300Like, so when they have a video showing, like, jacked Russian dude recruiting video, jumping out of a plane, like, and, like, makes him look, like, super tough.
00:25:35.560Right, you know, and it's, and the thing is, though, these guys that are, it's just, like, the guys in our Pentagon or guys, they're not, they don't know what, you know, shoot, move, and communicate looks like.
00:25:48.060So, like, if you have a bunch of people doing a bunch of acrobats, the batik stuff, and putting on a show, it's, like, they don't know the difference.
00:25:54.800Like, do you think that a guy who's got moved himself into a position in government knows the difference between, you know, these guys doing a bunch of, you know, doing a show versus what is actually tactically good?
00:26:09.280And so this is what ends up happening is, is they end up buying into their own propaganda because they're not, they don't vet like we do.
00:26:18.800Like, so in the United States, how it should work, although there is a bit of politicking, is there's a level of, you know, challenging, you know, saying, hey, that's not the way it is.
00:26:30.740Like, asking a general, and the general says, no, that's not the way it is.
00:26:34.960Because the general talked to other commanders who have talked to other commanders, you know, and they're all giving them this feedback saying, hey, here's what we need.
00:26:53.020We, we, and we, when we run these war games, like we have stupid things happen constantly, like we're idiots, you know, and we're like, God, how are we so stupid, right?
00:27:02.000And like, we're really hard on ourselves and how dumb we are in the, when we run things that like JRTC and different, like, you know, NTC training center and how dumb some of these missions turn out.
00:27:13.300We're like, God, what's wrong with us?
00:27:15.100But that's good though, because we're, it's like going into jujitsu practice and getting the crap kicked out of you and go, man, I can't believe that happened to me.
00:27:22.120Let me, let me figure out what to do better.
00:27:24.620They, there's a lack of that over there because of their propaganda stuff.
00:27:29.060I mean, I'm not saying they'd never train or whatever, but if you're, if you're training in all these things that don't matter for combat, then you're not, you're not putting your resources and training into things that do matter for combat, which is shoot, move and communicate.
00:27:42.840And so we're just better than they are because of that.
00:27:45.500It's just simply like difference between learning how to do acrobatics and, you know, fighting for Hollywood or something, and then going and rolling around on the ground or boxing in a real jujitsu class or boxing class and getting beat up, you know?
00:28:01.580Tim, I want to, I want to throw this back up again.
00:28:04.260I mean, do you have any concerns with, you know, Putin coming, knocking on your door in the UK or like pushing into any of these other European countries over here, touching NATO?
00:28:33.620You have to remember as well that when, back in the early 90s, I think it was, when the USSR, the Soviet Union, in fact, sort of disintegrated and they had breakaway.
00:28:42.180So I think there was a lot of nuclear weapons left within, I believe it was Kazakhstan, Belarusia, and I believe it was also Ukraine.
00:28:49.040Ukraine apparently had one of the largest stockpiles too, yeah.
00:28:51.980And so part of the non-proliferation, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, I believe, back in 94 was to make sure those weapons went back to Russia.
00:28:58.780And Russia, when that treaty was signed, part of it was making sure that those countries were recognized by Russia and represented on the UN Security Council, which they are, of course.
00:29:07.580So when Putin now has gone into Ukraine, he has actually gone into what is a sovereign state.
00:29:41.400What we're finding, I saw a Pantsir S1 that was a superb piece of a surface-to-air missile system that I was a specialist in in the Air Force.
00:29:50.020And it was stuck in the mud and it was captured.
00:29:51.800I remember thinking I would do anything to have a look around that thing.
00:29:54.660It was an absolute, to grab hold of that and to take that off the battlefield and to take it apart.
00:29:59.360And there's been some superb things that have been captured.
00:30:01.680I've seen throwing petrol bombs at some stuff and me saying, no, don't burn it.
00:30:10.220Let's tow these things so we can re-engineer this stuff.
00:30:12.180Because I'm very interested in this stuff.
00:30:14.440Now, the reason that these things get captured is because they don't have the ability to move off-road at the moment because the levels of maintenance that were required have just not happened.
00:30:47.180And there's two reasons they don't have that.
00:30:48.360Because, one, they didn't expect this to actually go in towards Kiev.
00:30:50.720They thought it was going to stay in eastern regions where they could easily resupply.
00:30:53.500And the second thing, they probably didn't realize how badly engineered these vehicles or maintained the vehicles were because they're senior commanders.
00:31:00.020Because of a lack of truth to power, which is exactly what Paul's speaking about in a Western military, there is the ability to speak truth to power.
00:31:05.880You can literally say to a general, general is actually a bit worse down than you think it is.
00:31:10.060And the general will turn around and go and have a smoke with you or something or just have a chat and go, well, I'm interested.
00:31:20.800When a foreign defense company is piling money in to supply tires to this brigade, there's every chance that the senior commander in Russia is sort of backhanding that a little bit out to the boys and everything, or to himself and a bit of senior commanders.
00:31:32.540And the money isn't actually being spent on tires.
00:31:34.060As opposed to having a two-year interval where you may replace all the tires and vehicles, he's probably like, well, let's do a four-year.
00:31:41.440We haven't used these vehicles for the last decade.
00:31:43.140And now, when we do need to use them, and he has promised Putin and the commander that everything is, you know, everything is great, it's not just the tires.
00:31:53.160It's everything else within the vehicle that's being degraded as well.
00:31:55.420So, I mean, like, as far as you guys are concerned, you're suggesting that Russian military equipment is poorly maintained, organized, supply lines are nowhere near as good as NATO supply lines.
00:32:06.480Oh, let's talk about logistics for a minute.
00:32:21.960A big concern in the training exercise, to the annoyance of a lot of the infantry guys on the ground who just want to run around and shoot at each other, is logistics and logistical support and getting people challenged on how they're going to support things logistically.
00:32:36.200And then there's also the money aspect.
00:32:37.840Look, they have, you know, let's look at, again, $60 trillion budget versus $777 trillion budget, right, for military.
00:32:47.100So, when we go in with our, not only our tactics and equipment, but money, let's look at Iraq or something or Afghanistan, we're setting up logistical support behind those Ford guys that are going in.
00:33:04.480Even our stuff, which may be better maintained, arguably, still breaks down, still turns into a, you know, into a pile of trash if you don't maintain it.
00:33:14.280I mean, literally, between runs and going out in the field, you're going into a maintenance section and you're fixing something in a vehicle.
00:33:23.280And to not have that, that's how you have these vehicles just, whoops, my tank broke down and now a farmer is going to run off with it, right?
00:33:30.500And so, they're running out of fuel, food, they can't maintain things.
00:33:34.600I think they thought that they would just take the infrastructure in Ukraine easily and then they would use that infrastructure, which is why they didn't.
00:33:45.280And so, because they want that, they want to own Ukraine either through a puppet government or if they have to, own it themselves to capitalize on the resources there to reestablish boundaries.
00:33:55.740Do you guys think that a puppet government would work in the Ukraine?
00:33:58.660Because in 2014, when Russia went for Crimea, they had a big uprising.
00:34:03.660They threw out the Russian puppet government.
00:34:05.880Like, it doesn't seem like they're going to fall for that again.
00:34:10.000I'm going to say this, like, and this is what I experienced, although Poland's not Ukraine and, you know, and everything.
00:34:16.520I had the opportunity to go to Ukraine to do training missions when I got back from Afghanistan on my last trip.
00:34:28.620But I've been to Poland for a little bit and trained those guys, worked with those guys.
00:34:32.820I have this, you know, I mean, I know I'm American, right, or whatever, but, like, they're more American, okay, than our own people in the United States are in the sense of the belief in, like, wanting freedom and opportunity and economic opportunity and democracy and a representative government.
00:34:53.720Like, all of those things, they value that so much.
00:34:57.120We got dum-dums here in the United States that don't know how good they have it to live in a free country.
00:35:03.620You know, when they go on and show up to some protests, they don't realize how good they have it that they're allowed to do that.
00:35:09.760You know, I say allowed, but that they're not getting, you know, rolled up and disappearing in a gulag somewhere or killed in the streets necessarily, right?
00:35:18.800And so we don't appreciate, at least here in the United States, how free we actually are, even with problems that we do have in our own government.
00:35:27.960And they do appreciate that in places like Poland and, from what I understand, Ukraine.
00:36:40.300Because why, we're not going to, we're not going to just throw our resources into that country to save them necessarily if we can keep a proxy war going.
00:36:50.500And that's the sad thing about it because we make, this is what makes me angry a bit about our politicians here, is that, you know, we make promises and that we do not keep our promises.
00:37:01.020And so with our current regime, they do it all the time though, you know, and, and the current leadership right now, that is unfortunately what the way it is.
00:37:12.180And it's not Afghanistan, unfortunately.
00:37:46.840Well, Vladimir Putin is carrying through on something that he's been warning us about, at least for the last 15 years, which is that he will not tolerate U.S. forces or their missiles on his borders.
00:38:00.660Much as we would not tolerate Russian troops and missiles in Cuba.
00:38:05.680And we ignored him and he finally acted.
00:38:08.380He was not going to allow Ukraine under any circumstances to join NATO.
00:38:13.160What's happened now is that the battle in eastern Ukraine is really almost over.
00:38:18.280All the Ukrainian troops there have been largely surrounded and cut off.
00:38:22.640You have a concentration down in the southeast of 30,000 to 40,000 of them.
00:38:26.540And if they don't surrender within the next 24 hours, I suspect that the Russians will ultimately annihilate them.
00:38:33.220That's why Zelensky is meeting with Putin's representatives right now.
00:58:31.900So, I mean, the thing that troubles me about that is you can't have anything that goes against the mainstream narrative.
00:58:39.100And they're using the same tool out of the toolbox that they use with the beer bug.
00:58:44.180And it's like, you know, if somebody says, hey, look, I want to wait to take the jab or I want to see what the studies look like or I'm not at risk.
00:58:51.100You know, for example, anything that's counter mainstream narrative, it's shut up and you go over there and let's get you out of the studio sort of thing.
00:59:01.080No, so now that I say on this, too, I think, though, a lot of it that that sort of disinformation gets is emotionally motivated because here in the West now we've turned into a bunch of emoting little candy asses.
00:59:20.020It's all a bunch of emotions and it's that whole, you know, virtue signaling culture.
00:59:24.920And so this guy is saying something which I don't you know, he's he's probably wrong in a lot of things he's saying there, but it doesn't matter.
00:59:33.320He's saying something that goes against the grain.
00:59:35.020And instead of saying, OK, let's look at that and that's wrong because and bring some other facts to play.
01:00:27.900You know, if you don't tell people when you can.
01:00:29.420If I brought a jet back and I've broken a bit of the jet, whatever, if I didn't tell my engineers, even if I've done it myself, they'll put your hands up and go, I messed something up.
01:00:47.520Because if you're reading something that I'm not reading, and if so, you know what, I think the worst thing we ever did was force Alex Jones to go underground.
01:00:54.300But that dude, you know, when you go back and I'm not saying Alex Jones, you know, whenever you go back and you listen to a lot of stuff that Alex Jones actually said, irrespective of a sounding hook and other things he said were there were atrocious, of course.
01:01:05.100A lot of things he said actually made a lot of sense.
01:01:06.760And I've been proven to be correct as well.
01:01:45.000I think it was like, yeah, we're not having this conversation.
01:01:48.460Well, he started with the whole emotional thing.
01:01:50.800Like, I feel like, and anytime you hear like a statement opening with like, I feel like, like that's a very feminized position to, you know, deal with discourse, right?
01:01:59.560Like, well, I feel like it hurts my feelings.
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01:04:57.440So we dealt with a Nazi question in Ukraine.
01:05:00.920Prayers for Coach Red Pill in Ukraine.
01:05:03.240I did invite Gonzalo to come and join us on this show.
01:05:07.340He didn't respond after about two days ago, so I don't know if he's okay or what's going on with him.
01:05:12.620But, you know, some of the things that he said in a few of his streams, and he's a Westerner, an expat on the ground living in the Ukraine.
01:05:21.700And he was talking about what Zelensky did with these wooden crates of AK-74s distributing to the population.
01:05:30.800I want to get your guys' thoughts on this because apparently a good chunk of the guys that got their hands on these weapons started to use them to settle scores, you know, between themselves, you know, rivalry sort of stuff.
01:05:40.700And then there was a good chunk of them as well that figured that they were G.I. Joe with no military training and went after the Russians and apparently got slaughtered.
01:05:48.080I think his take on it was that he was under the impression that Zelensky wanted to use that as a photo opportunity to sort of be like, hey, world, look, you know, citizens are getting destroyed over here.
01:05:58.640Look at all these bodies sort of thing.
01:06:00.620What are your thoughts on that with that whole, like, crate delivery to the population?
01:06:03.500Because I don't know that that's a good idea or a bad idea.
01:06:36.580Well, I mean, there's, you could get slaughtered, you know, that could be what happens.
01:06:40.580Or, I mean, it's, it's tough because these people want to protect themselves and feel like they need to protect themselves.
01:06:47.180You know, it's, it's so you, would you rather have them running around the streets, throwing rocks and getting shot in the face or being able to shoot back?
01:06:54.380You know, they don't have the ability to leave necessarily, nor do they want to.
01:07:19.620There's plenty of people in every one of our countries here.
01:07:22.740Well, I mean, they don't really have that choice because Zelensky has stopped males from the age of 18 to 60 from leaving Russia as, or sorry, not Russia, Ukraine as refugees.
01:08:15.960Once you give a weapon to a civilian, they're now combating.
01:08:18.320OK, so you've got to be very careful when you do that because you make your entire country combatants, which means that the artillery shells hitting the streets and everything are justified under international law.
01:08:41.300You can't target indiscriminately into populated areas.
01:08:43.160But, of course, if you've got I mean, I feel sorry for these people, because if you if you listen to the propaganda or whatever coming out from, say, the Ukrainian government saying the convoy is weak, it can be attacked and everything like this.
01:08:54.020You've still got Russian troops there that are heavily armored.
01:08:56.020And if you walk up there with your mates with some AKs, you might have three three magazines of, what, 30 rounds each or something like that.
01:10:13.920Adriano says, all cities are encircled in a major cauldron, and the east has encircled the Azu Battalion of 45,000 to 100,000 men, all in nine days.
01:10:43.340This idea, that's another thing, like, back to internet people who are running around in Kiev, making statements and saying things that they don't know they're talking about.
01:10:59.000I know that there's disinformation out there, but that doesn't mean that, you know, a weirdo with a cell phone getting kicked out of hotels has any information that's useful.
01:11:10.080And a lot of, I've, I've, just like that, that young kid who got kicked off a show, don't kick him off the internet, but I know, I've already, I've seen little clips, and I just can't even watch the thing watchable for me.
01:11:22.400Because I know that there's stuff in there he's saying that's absolutely not true.
01:11:25.420You know, let's say it's completely, it's a, it's just his own misinformation that he has, right?
01:11:32.460And maybe I have misinformation, who knows, right?
01:11:34.620I'd throw that out there as a caveat, but at least I'm saying that, you know, it's, there's a perceived authority because you're there, but you don't, you're not really doing, you're not, he's not fighting, he's not in the government, he's not talking to any of these people.
01:11:48.520Like, he doesn't really know what's going on.
01:12:05.260But, but yeah, that being said, I, what was our, I don't know if I lost your track, what are we talking about?
01:12:10.320Are we talking about the, the, the arming the populace still?
01:12:13.300Or, yeah, so it's, I mean, this is my thought, and this is why we have an armed populace in the United States, is again, it's much harder to take a populace of people if they have the ability to defend themselves.
01:12:28.940There's a big difference, though, because Americans that own guns, like, they'll go to the range, they'll train with them pretty extensively.
01:12:35.180I mean, if you drop a wooden crate of, like, AKs into a city center and a bunch of people that have never touched a rifle before pick it up.
01:12:41.720Yeah, but I wouldn't say that that would be the case in Ukraine, though, because they, they, Ukraine, they have the rights to have weapons.
01:12:47.900They're not, they're, they're not a, they're not like Australia, you know what I mean?
01:12:51.480So people in Ukraine know how to shoot and do, do stuff, like, especially the, the males in that population, they grew up around that.
01:13:18.740I mean, Afghanistan, they know what weapons are.
01:13:21.440Every male is touched an AK-47 and shot it probably before because they're in a warring nation.
01:13:26.800And that's the tool that they use for war.
01:13:29.380So these are not, like, completely ignorant people who don't know how to use it.
01:13:33.480But they're not trained in military tactics and they get themselves killed.
01:13:36.380Well, people trained in military tactics get themselves killed, too.
01:13:39.840So it's just like saying, it's like saying this.
01:13:42.660If I have my, my, my girlfriend or my friend's daughter or something like, you know, don't fight back.
01:13:49.920If the, you know, the guy tries to kidnap you and do bad things to you and don't carry a weapon because, you know, you might get yourself hurt.
01:13:59.360Well, no, I want that person to have as much leverage as possible.
01:14:03.440The ability to fight increases their chances of survival in winning, even if they're against a stronger opponent.
01:14:10.380And so I want to give the, I would want to give these people the most ability as, as that I could give them to fight.
01:14:17.500And in absence of us, say us, meaning U.S. or Canada or, you know, Britain or any NATO country sending in troops, in absence of that, what are they supposed to do?
01:14:52.780There's some people in chat right now, you know, to that point where, you know, the more you're talking about Nazism is a key component of the Ukrainian identity.
01:14:59.760They have even a stadium named after a collaborator who butchered not only Ukrainians, but Polish too.
01:15:05.120I don't, I don't know that much about that part of the country's history.
01:15:08.320Is that anything that, you know, that you guys know about?
01:15:10.400Well, when it says Nazism, do you mean they're anti-Semitic or something or anti-Zionist?
01:15:24.720Well, well, fascism is, you know, is, you know, corporations linking up with the government and being controlled by the government and having an unholy alliance between those two to control people.
01:16:01.580And then this is where it gets a bit tribal and a bit silly.
01:16:03.740Yeah, this is one of the, like, you know, typical sort of thoughts that guys have at times like this when they've been told that masculinity is toxic and, you know, like all this for their entire lives.
01:16:11.720And all of a sudden, you know, by the way, all these Ukrainian men forced in the military, men suddenly have value when society goes to shit.
01:16:18.200Why Ukrainian women are not forced in the military because because it's because it's the standard, you know, societal, you know, convention, guys, when you unplug, you understand that women and children are always protected.
01:16:27.620Women, children and dogs are always loved unconditionally.
01:16:30.280Men are only loved under the condition they provide something of value.
01:16:33.140In this case, in Ukraine, the value that they're looking for these men to provide is to protect the country from the invaders.
01:16:40.260I don't, like, literally, I don't know what value a 60-year-old guy would have in the military.
01:16:45.080Like, I'm, like, I'm in my late 40s and I don't know how useful I would be.
01:16:49.020You know, like, I wouldn't be able to carry a 80-pound rucksack, you know, for, like, a long march.
01:17:26.360There's plenty of women that are valuable in all the military, all the militaries.
01:17:31.080It's, when we have some of these discussions, I'm referring to, my issue now, this is sort of getting off into a different thing, but you don't have this issue, interestingly, as much like, say, in the Polish military or some of these other ones, is that it's a lowering of standards to, you know, make women, you know, as successful as men, right?
01:17:54.160Blank slate equalism, blank slate equalism, excuse me, that gets implied and it lowers the standards for the quality of the soldier who's in an infantry position or special operations fighting position.
01:18:10.060And it's the social dynamics, you know, and then this protect all women kind of, you know, anti-Me Too stuff that goes on, that's a little overboard, right?
01:18:23.180And you miss, you lose the social dynamics that you need in a squad or fire team level amongst men who are doing the fighting.
01:18:31.500It's not that women aren't valuable in the military, though.
01:18:36.580But forcing anybody, though, to fight or be, that doesn't want to be there, it's not really the most valuable thing, I think.
01:18:43.560There's something else I wanted to also kind of throw up as a talking point, too, because a lot of people these days are, like, behaving like human conflict is something new and that it's bad and that it should never happen and we should put an end to it.
01:18:55.560But I came across, you know, the slide over here.
01:18:58.720This is global deaths and conflicts since the year 1400.
01:19:02.980So this is about 600 years worth of data.
01:19:05.940And it's not just been like this for, like, the last 600 years.
01:19:08.780It's been like this throughout human history.
01:19:11.380If you can't really see it that well, the bumpy line here is the total number of deaths in hundreds of thousands of people.
01:19:18.140And each little dot that you see are wars during that period of time in history.
01:19:23.140Obviously, the largest ones being First World War, Second World War, and the Thirty-Year War.
01:19:27.980But there's a bunch of minor conflicts, you know, throughout history.