Mike and James discuss the controversial Tucker Carlson-Vladimir Putin interview, as well as the latest in the Ukraine crisis, and the recent events in Ukraine. Mike and James also talk about the recent interview with Tucker Carlson and Vladimir Putin.
00:00:15.080Of course, he's done the exact same things that we all despise Justin Trudeau over, like debanking people and taking political prisoners.
00:00:25.000But that doesn't necessarily mean that he doesn't have a point about if the U.S. wants to put long-range missile silos on the Ukrainian border next to Russia, of course, there's going to be issue taken with that.
00:00:41.700And it's completely reasonable to have issue taken with that.
00:00:44.100One thing Putin did mention, he showed some concern that it doesn't matter who was, like, if Biden was in the seat or who was just being negotiated with because he was saying that the framework, these institutions around whatever leaders elected, the institutions are corrupt and the institutions have their own ideas about what should be done.
00:01:14.100Hello, welcome to the Critical Compass.
00:01:31.080This is our weekly chat for the week of February 12th.
00:01:39.080And we're going to cover a couple topics of interest during the week here.
00:01:44.100From last week, I think James wants to lead us off with the infamous and kind of a game-changer interview that occurred last week between one Mr. Tucker Carlson and another Mr. Vladimir Putin, if you want to.
00:02:13.340Let me know what you thought about it.
00:02:15.400Yeah, I guess the interview itself was half the excitement.
00:02:20.440The other part of the excitement came from the, well, the Western media losing their shit over Tucker Carlson, even getting a interview with him.
00:02:31.600Um, and I guess with everything happening with the war, you'd want to understand, like, somebody's perspective, especially, like, you'd want to understand what's going on in Putin's head.
00:02:46.240But you'd want to listen to what he has to say, listen to the words and actually, uh, filter that through.
00:02:53.680Well, does this align with our ideas of, of how things are going?
00:02:57.900Like, we can still listen to something.
00:02:59.900We don't have to agree with every single little thing that somebody says in one of these interviews, but the way that somebody answers questions and the way that they approach it and their tone and they're just, you could tell a lot based on that.
00:03:16.660And to sum up the interview, it was an, the first half was an hour long history lesson about Russia, like all the way from the 1500s.
00:03:28.420He went through some of the 1800s, into the 1900s, into the 1900s, and then into more of the kind of like current foreign policy and the dynamics of NATO and the kind of the, the, the wrapping up the dissolution of, uh, the Soviet Union.
00:03:48.860And so I think Tucker Carlson was a little bit frustrated at first because he thought Putin was just wasting time.
00:03:59.720Just like he thought that was just a power move just to deflect from actually answering questions.
00:04:05.340But it does seem like Putin believes what he's, what he's saying when it comes to, like, he was framing the history to try to give context to the situation.
00:04:18.500Because if you just look at the context within a short time span of a year or two years, it maybe doesn't give you the full picture, especially in an area that you have a mixed group of people.
00:04:34.020Like it's not like Ukraine is homogenized of only Ukrainians.
00:05:08.800Um, and he sat down with, with Putin and that was all about what happened in the 2014, 2015, uh, like the political change in Ukraine at that time.
00:05:29.400Talks about like Obama's involvement in the, uh, Obama and Biden's involvement in, in the, uh, or non-involvement as it may be in the coup.
00:05:52.160So given that documentary and some of the interviews, um, both from Putin and, uh, the other
00:05:59.400other people that they interviewed in that documentary, what Putin was touching on in this interview with Tucker Carlson wasn't too different from, from that context.
00:06:14.180So I, I think he was touching base on the fact that the, well, there's been corruption in, in that area, there's been corruption in the leadership and there's been, uh, harm against citizens, especially in the Donbass region.
00:06:32.660Um, so I, I guess, what are your, if just as a, just as a bystander, what can you sum up from the West, like Western media's, like, what have they painted the situation as?
00:06:54.560If you can just give us a nice little summary.
00:06:56.260Yeah, well, it feels like they, um, they, they, they want the idea of a, of an independent journal is going to Russia to, to interview Putin as being like some sort of treasonous act as if this is a, uh, you know, a government, um, uh, representative, you know, you know, switching teams as it were or something like that.
00:07:19.580But it's, it's, it's pretty silly to see that, you know, the, the media that used to pride itself on, on, you know, getting the inside scoop and, you know, being in the, at the scene of the crime and all that, uh, takes such offense to people now actually going out and, and doing that.
00:07:36.240It's, it seems to be what the reaction of a, uh, uh, uh, compromised corporate press would have if they, uh, were worried about the narratives that they spun about somebody's intentions being unraveled in front of them by actually hearing it from the horse's mouth.
00:07:55.420Well, wasn't there talk just a few months ago that Putin was in ill health, that he could barely form sentences, that his cognate, like his cognition has declined, um, and that he was not even like going outside.
00:08:14.900I, I think there was a few reports it's hard to follow all of these random little headlines.
00:08:19.420Yeah, I, I had heard some, some, I think maybe actually Rogan talked about how he looked, his face looked kind of, uh, swollen as if he was undergoing like, uh, like chemo or something, you know, like how, how sometimes people have that bloated sort of look.
00:08:42.380He, um, when you, when you said that he went on that, you know, hour long kind of history lesson about the region.
00:08:49.420Uh, that, rather than, rather than being a time wasting thing, I think that, uh, might have been a more targeted, direct kind of, hey, uh, look how, look how lucid I am and look how much I can speak on a subject coherently compared to your idiot president that can, he doesn't know where he is half the time, doesn't know what planet he's on, doesn't know if he's shaking hands with a ghost or not.
00:09:12.980Well, on the same day that Putin gave an hour long history, like complex history lesson on the, like on, of the area of, of Europe and Russia at that time, you had Biden miss, like he misquoted, he said that like Mexico bordered Gaza that same day.
00:09:35.340So just the, well, his son died in Gaza, so yeah, the juxtaposition between those two things were just, um, what the one thought I had from the interview and you could go through it with a fine-tuned comb and maybe you disagree with certain things that you'd hear.
00:09:57.960Um, Putin seems to have a very clear vision, uh, for what he wants for Russia.
00:10:04.520He also seems to be very like laser focused as a leader.
00:10:12.200And he also is projecting a image of both he's competent and passionate and like a worthy leader that way, a strong leader.
00:10:25.120And then I look at Trudeau, just spewing, just like incoherent, like incoherent ramblings.
00:10:40.540And then that's from somebody who's not in their seventies.
00:10:44.860And then you go to Biden, which is incoherent ramblings from a different, like for a different reason.
00:10:52.440Look at these two, these two leaders and it feels like the West, the West feels like it's in a decline in a certain way.
00:11:03.320Like we, we don't have good leadership right now.
00:11:06.640Um, one thing Putin did mention, he was, well, when he was talking about the negotiation standpoint of it,
00:11:17.180he even mentioned the fact that, well, Russia was open to more negotiations.
00:11:24.540Russia didn't close off negotiations, but he showed some concern that it doesn't matter who was like,
00:11:33.660if Biden was in the seat or who was just being negotiated with, because he was saying that the framework,
00:11:41.640these institutions around whatever leaders elected, the institutions are corrupt and the institutions have their own ideas about what should be done.
00:11:52.360And, and I don't know, he's kind of speaking some truth to the situation.
00:11:57.760Cause you see how it will, some people would call this the deep state.
00:12:07.140You'd be hard pressed not to find too many countries without, uh, either non-government institutions or charities or, um, government institutions.
00:12:16.600And the money that flows between them and the positions and the key people that get promoted from one position to another.
00:12:24.380Um, you'd be hard pressed to find any countries right now that don't have corruption within these institutions, uh, especially when it comes to the kind of persuasion power that these institutions have over policies or over what, what gets decided.
00:12:46.600And I think that's people's biggest criticism right now is both Canada and the U S have been sending a lot of money to Ukraine in this proxy war, which like, if you look at this from Russia's perspective, this is just, they're going to keep on fighting as long as it gets fueled.
00:13:04.420Like the sending money and fighting a proxy roars, not really, it's not really sending a message of peace.
00:13:25.120I mean, that's like, that's the, the Western countries that are funding this are obviously talking to both sides of the mouth all the time.
00:13:32.320You know, the, this, this war needs to end here, take some more tanks.
00:13:36.860You know, it's, it's the, I think the notion of, uh, you know, like you, all you have to do is go back, you know, a year, year and a half and, uh, look at how the headlines are being written about how, oh, this is an easy, this is a walk-off victory for Ukraine.
00:13:51.540This is going to be over before it starts.
00:13:53.140The Russians are, you know, bleeding resources and, and, uh, and troops.
00:13:57.040And obviously that's just not the case.
00:13:59.900And Russia has obviously shown its willingness to just, as it has throughout history, as throughout its entire history, just throw bodies at a problem until the problem ends.
00:14:11.100There, there, there is no, um, for like sort of what you said earlier, there's, there's a, um, a clear vision and a, obviously a, um, I can't think of the term that I'm, I'm trying to use, but like a, uh, a sort of a pride behind, um, the mission.
00:14:31.980And it's, it's, it won't be, it's not going to be able to be derailed by just pretty words, you know?
00:14:39.620I guess the Russian identity, the national identity has been pretty strong.
00:14:54.260They are quite focused on just creating strong individuals ready to fight.
00:15:01.180Um, you did say like just throwing bodies into the meat grinder.
00:15:06.520Uh, I think you can look at Ukraine right now and the fact that there, there there's conscription going on and they've expanded the age range for conscription, meaning that they're running out of bodies that way.
00:15:22.460They're running out of willing people to fight, especially if they're drawing upon people who are either previously injured or have some physical ailments that would prevent them from being fully body of able-bodied, uh, on the battlefield.
00:15:39.720So it feels like right now through the money and resources that's being just funneled into Ukraine, lives are being lost endlessly where potentially peace could have been negotiated earlier on.
00:15:55.640If, if, if, if this adversarial relationship wasn't, wasn't established.
00:16:02.200And I, I, I think Putin, he was mentioning kind of the, the NATO dynamic to it.
00:16:09.240And when the Soviet Union collapsed, part of that, part of those discussions was that NATO would never, like there, there'd be no established NATO bases directly beside Russia.
00:16:27.640Um, and the whole fact that NATO exists is because of the Soviet threat.
00:16:35.180So for NATO to exist and Russia's not in NATO, for them to continue to exist and then expand and get closer to Russia, what is that?
00:16:50.680Well, of course, I mean, that's the, you know, the, the inverse is not mentioned enough about just how much of a thorough, unending, brutal strike would occur if, uh, the Russians ever had the notion of putting, uh, um, you know, military outposts, outposts on the Mexican border.
00:17:33.200But, you know, it's, uh, um, I mean, it's just silly when you think about it, like, just for, for more than five seconds.
00:17:40.020Of course, you know, you can, as you said, but at the very, very beginning, when you began, um, telling me about this.
00:17:47.800Um, it's, it's, it was an, a reframing of an Aristotelian quote of, it, it, it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it.
00:17:59.500And, of course, we can hold the ideas in our mind simultaneously that, yes, of course, Putin is a dictator.
00:18:06.360Of course, he's a megal, megalomaniac.
00:18:09.820Of course, he's, you know, done the exact same things that we, uh, all despise Justin Trudeau over, like, debanking people and, uh, and taking political prisoners.
00:18:19.320But, that doesn't necessarily mean that he doesn't have a point about, uh, if the U.S. wants to put, uh, long-range missile silos on the Ukrainian border next to, uh, Russia, of course, there's going to be issue taken with that.
00:18:35.940And it's completely reasonable to have issue taken with that.
00:18:40.340The, to be able to look at it from his perspective is, I think, is key for getting closer to peace.
00:18:47.340Um, well, even, like, well, what's the process of, are we always going to treat Russia as an enemy or is there any way for us to start collaborating?
00:18:58.080Like, what's the process of getting closer to actually being able to, like, opening up trade?
00:19:05.680And the stronger, kind of, the net benefit, if there's a net benefit on both sides, you, you think we'd get closer to, you, just this, not needing to treat each other like a potential problem?
00:19:28.900Um, because now you have, Putin was even mentioning how the U.S. dollar, um, with the, with the U.S. dollar being a reserve currency, um, that other countries settle, the settle exchanges in the U.S. dollar, the U.S. dollar has a certain amount of power to it and it can be weaponized.
00:19:51.960And the U.S. does, through sanctions, weaponize the U.S. dollar, um, right now the U.S. dollar is not backed by gold, it's backed by debt and the, almost the global military presence, which is able to enforce the confidence in the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency.
00:20:15.060So, Putin talked about the fact that now Russia's been settling more through the BRICS, um, system of countries, uh, that would include, I believe, India, China, um, I think Saudi Arabia, and they're, they've increased a whole lot of trade through these other countries because Russia's full of resources.
00:20:38.940They have oil, they have food, and they want to trade it, and if there's sanctions against Russia, they're not just going to just keep that, they're going to find a way to trade it, and there's other countries willing to trade for it.
00:20:53.620So, if anything, this war is hurting the West more than it's hurting Russia.
00:20:59.740Yeah, 100%, and that reminded me of something that I, I, I don't know if we ever talked about before off the podcast, but, uh, do you remember when, uh, do you remember right when the Ukrainian-Russian war, this latest one, started, um, and the, all the, uh, the talk in Europe and Canada, uh, regarding, uh, emissions targets, uh, started.
00:21:27.020The, the, the, the, the latest talking point became, uh, decreasing fertilizer usage by 20%.
00:21:35.240Do you want to, do you want to, I know that you know this, but do you want to take a guess as to what, uh, roughly what percentage of the global fertilizer supply Russia contributes?
00:21:50.540So, uh, that, that number may vary depending on exactly what you're talking about, but, but the, the rough math checks out.
00:21:56.360And it was, it was just so obvious that, like, okay, so you're going to announce sanctions on Russia because of their, you know, aggression towards Ukraine.
00:22:03.600And then you're going to turn it into a, uh, a climate clout marketing slogan, of course, which became a big problem amongst farmers.
00:22:13.420It started the first round of farmers' protests back in, whenever that was, 20, late 2021, early 22, or early 22, I believe.
00:22:21.760Um, and, uh, yeah, I mean, it's just, it's, it's a, it's a further example of how weak the West looks in comparison because we, we use every opportunity we can here to, uh, distract from real, actual, like, humanity level events.
00:22:47.540And, uh, I don't exactly know the, the words for what I'm trying to say, but when you, when you have a ethically questionable, strong leader in Russia, literally through, through means of war, taking what he believes to be his.
00:23:06.420And then you have leaders in the West, either not knowing who they're talking to, or in Canada's case, uh, always looking like you're, you know, putting on a performance to, to no one, you know, in a drama classroom somewhere.
00:23:22.200It's a, it's a, it's an example of what, I believe Gad Saad has talked about this, about, um, and also Camille Paglia has talked about this, about the, the barbarians gathering around the gates.
00:23:35.840Um, when you have a, um, when you have a decadent culture that has reached such, such, such heights of, um, um, civilizational comfort, uh, that most people don't ever have to worry about things like food insecurity or, uh, race riots or land wars or things like that.
00:23:55.240Um, um, you get a little soft and there are always going to be people who are not in that position in other parts of the world who want to rally and take that and make their own lives a little bit easier.
00:24:07.780And you see it in, uh, many ways nowadays, but, uh, you know, the, the way that the Russians are behaving now, the way that certain Middle Eastern countries are behaving right now, uh, is just a, I think a symptom of that.
00:24:21.420And I think the West is going to find very shortly that, uh, we've, uh, let our hands get a little bit too soft and we may not be prepared for what's coming.
00:24:31.300It's, it's hard to know to what degree these countries are acting out of more of a conquest mindset and how much of it's, well, trying to assert a certain amount of their sovereignty because in the international community, you have through all these corporations that are multinational,
00:24:50.480um, it erodes away at the individual sovereignty.
00:24:55.480And I think countries can be bullied into deals and positions that they otherwise would not.
00:25:01.580And I think you can draw a parallel between the way that going from a rural lifestyle where maybe somebody has a farm or they produce something off the land.
00:25:15.280And each homestead or each household is able to produce, produce a little bit for themselves.
00:25:23.200They're self-sufficient within a certain way, but now you push everybody into cities and you've gained efficiencies in some places, but the base level skills and base level of independence of the average person has decreased because now you're reliant on these systems.
00:25:40.620And these are systems are very difficult to understand, like the world network of communication and logistics that gets your fruit from South America to North America.
00:25:53.160So you can just have an avocado with your, with your toast.
00:26:01.620These systems are extraordinarily complex, um, require many, many hands.
00:26:07.420And, but we saw four years ago, what happens when even the slightest cog in that machine is disrupted, you get, well, going on four years now of struggle and price, uh, uh, fluctuation and like just crazy, you know, do you remember?
00:26:25.040I don't know if you would remember this in, uh, in maybe at the end of 2021, you know, Q3 and four of 2021, how limited selection of clothes were like certain clothing was just like, you couldn't find like shelves were empty of like just the weirdest things, you know, people, you know, people remember the toilet paper and stuff like that.
00:26:47.760And like the consumer goods that you're like, um, that, you know, you know, you what were doing?
00:26:55.000You know, you know, you want to buy a vehicle if you wanted to, there was, you know, four or five, six month long waits to get a vehicle just because of tiny, tiny microchip, you know?
00:27:03.640Um, uh, you'll get bottlenecks in the process that aren't usually there.
00:27:08.540Yeah. I think another part of it is you see the complexities of these systems. And given that we almost saw some mini collapses during the pandemic of having to shut things down, right now, just take Canada as an example, we have a carbon tax, which is affecting every stage of the process.
00:27:34.260Any stage of logistics, if there's a fuel element, a heating element, that's going to affect the prices that way. Anything that makes the job harder for farmers is going to affect food prices. Any additional red tape regulations, it's going to slow down building the building process.
00:27:55.880There's even cases where to build some homes, there have been builders waiting on the final stamp of approval on some permits for a while, and they're losing money just because they can't finish the job and build something else.
00:28:12.780They're kind of tied in and they can't start making money on this. Therefore, prices increase that way. So you look at what Canada is doing to itself and other countries, and it's not hard to see that it's a self-inflicted harm through, like one could say, these have the best intentions.
00:28:33.460You don't need to attribute malice. It feels like malice, but you don't have to. They could still be done, like these things could be done with good intentions, just by somebody who is completely incompetent.
00:28:50.940So maybe when you funnel things through ideological thinking, you get very, very dumb decisions. Climate would be one filter, one ideological filter that would cause people to hamstring their own country just to solve a problem.
00:29:09.500But it does feel like a lot of these problems. The motives, it's hard to see these act motives, but the net effect is harm, and there's denial of harm, and there's no accountability of which policies create which harm.
00:29:25.720Yeah. Yeah, well, there's the old saying, never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
00:29:36.560Yeah, it could be both, but in Canada's case, I feel like there's got to be one person who's looked at very, very basic statistics of the total global emissions that Canada is responsible for, and just crunched some very basic numbers and found it doesn't matter what we do.
00:29:57.880If we could stop producing carbon entirely for a year and have zero impact on any global emission statistic.
00:30:09.580Because, like, probably in the length of this podcast so far, China's already built, like, three coal mines.
00:30:16.780Like, there's, China is building coal mines now, actively.
00:30:21.560Like, there's, there's no, like, there's no hope.
00:30:24.440You think by taking your bike to the grocery store you're going to do anything?
00:30:28.020Like, so, there's, there's the malice and the stupidity, but I also think it's also a lot of hubris by some of these leaders that have zero perspective of how Canada is actually viewed on the global stage, and how little the rest of the world actually cares about the posturing that Western politicians do about any of this stuff.
00:30:48.020Did you see the, did you see the, did you see the one today from, is it Stephen Gabot, saying that we should build less roads?
00:31:34.000You do have, I guess there's less people in these rural areas, but the majority of the population are in these massive cities, partially because the cities grow exponentially faster than the rural communities do.
00:31:46.560Um, so that, that's where you're getting into this ongoing problem of immigration, where Canada's, they have higher immigration than anywhere else.
00:31:58.400Because while we have a housing shortage, while we have a cost of living shortage, the majority of immigrants who start a life in Canada in the most recent years have still been dependent on government assistance.
00:32:20.060So, if, if there's so many coming in and they're competing for a limited number of either jobs or homes or resources and they're not able to individually thrive, then that means we've exceeded the level of immigration that is beneficial to those individuals because now they're struggling.
00:32:39.360Of course, they want to come to Canada, they're told they have this amazing opportunity, so they're sold this idea, but I don't know if the reality lines up.
00:32:48.960And then if they're dependent on help from government, like subsidies for any number of these programs, well, that's not government funded, that's taxpayer funded.
00:33:00.520So, they are, they're not generating that, those taxes to pay for those, it's Canadians who have lived here for how many years who are putting in these long hours who are still just struggling to make ends meet by themselves.
00:33:16.880I think it was, it's probably, there's probably a broader one, but I saw one specifically about Syrian refugees because I don't know how long ago that was, six or seven years ago, maybe when there was a really big influx.
00:33:29.860Of Syrian immigrants, and I think the statistic was in the last, in the, you know, five or seven years, however much it was since, um, it was, uh, the majority of Syrian immigrants arrived in Canada, uh, only, it's like only 10% or something are earning over the poverty line.
00:33:47.160And the poverty line, I believe now is like 27K.
00:33:49.500So, that's 90% of your, uh, new Canadians, uh, not paying any taxes, just like, this sounds harsher than I mean it, but literally being a burden, being like a tax burden on Canadians, like you say, um, on other Canadian workers who, the ones who are earning above, uh, poverty line income.
00:34:13.840Uh, and it's, yeah, like there's how many, you know, you, it feels like you see a new article, uh, weekly now about people who, from different parts of the world, like I remember seeing one about, uh, uh, Indian immigrants who are leaving because there's like, there's nothing, like nothing of what they were promised is true.
00:34:30.920This is not, this is not, this is not, you, you cannot come here and immediately have a higher quality of life.
00:34:35.900And, uh, that, while that is something that, you know, I believe Canada has prided itself, prided itself on for, uh, uh, for decades now, it's not something that is able to be actually fulfilled anymore.
00:34:51.200And it's very obvious that, um, this, this shifts party allegiance, you know, kind of by, by the generation.
00:35:01.800So when I say this, this is not something that like liberals do per se, but this is something that liberals are doing now.
00:35:09.480Uh, they are importing a voter base is what it feels like.
00:35:14.060Uh, and they did it in the sixties and the fifties before that.
00:35:17.740Um, it has switched parties over the years, uh, the, at certain points in history, conservatives have done it in the U S a lot of people, I don't know why people don't talk about this more.
00:35:26.140And I'm not sure exactly where I heard this, but, um, in, I believe it was, uh, eight of the, of the prior 10 federal, uh, U S elections in California or in the U S California had voted Republican in eight of the past 10, uh,
00:35:47.740federal, um, federal elections prior to Ronald Reagan.
00:35:53.420Now, Ronald Reagan, uh, apparently, I don't know the exact details.
00:35:57.440I have to look into it more, but he was supposedly a proponent of allowing Mexican migration into, into California, California being, becoming a somewhat of a sanctuary state for Mexicans.
00:36:09.200That flipped that almost in and of itself has flipped California to being almost exclusively Democrat.
00:36:16.040And when I say that they were voted Republican, eight of 10 prior elections that even included areas like LA.
00:37:02.420Like it makes sense that within whatever the five years it is to become a citizen, that politically speaking is not a whole long, that's not a long time.
00:37:13.380Um, so an influx of people at the point that they're voting and if they're still struggling those five years later, they're not going to vote for a party that would decrease their benefits.
00:37:24.220And if they're sold an idea that only those on the left will provide for you and give you what you need, then that makes sense why there's.
00:37:39.100Even if they may not necessarily, I've talked about this on the podcast before.
00:37:42.100Even if it's not necessarily in their, uh, in their own personal interests, as most of these people come from areas of the world that are not particularly liberal and don't, they don't lead particularly liberal day-to-day lives.
00:37:54.380They will vote that way if that's in their own best interest.
00:37:58.960Even if it conflicts with some of their like other religious or political or like sociological values.
00:38:05.800Um, I think there are like, you can look at, um, other demographics where there's some people who do, they immigrate and they do exceptionally well.
00:38:18.920And that's also maybe when you have an educational factor and, or enough wealth to get you started and, or you can get, uh, a little bit better of a job that way.
00:38:29.140But in the cases, let's say if, if Canada's letting in 500,000 to almost a million, because some of them are temporary foreign workers.
00:38:39.940And then you kind of blur the lines with some of the, what that turns into after does temporary, are they able to get fast track to a permanent residence?
00:38:51.000Um, so let's say 500,000 to a million.
00:38:55.020And how many of those are equipped with skills, language, and the tools to succeed?
00:39:03.420And are there enough well-paying jobs for them to succeed as well?
00:39:09.360And also are they, uh, are we making sure that they're not being taken advantage of too in other ways that are not necessarily even, uh, you know, uh, byproducts.
00:39:18.980But in, in certain cases, active discrimination in like, when you look at cases of, um, when you look at the case of, um, uh, say enrollment at universities, uh, it's well known that a lot of universities charge exponentially higher rates for, uh, foreign students, like sometimes in the four or five times as much for tuition for foreign students.
00:39:41.480So there you have somebody, there you have an institution actively blatantly, in my opinion, uh, using, they're cashing in, they're cashing in on a, on a social, uh, you know, what other people view as a, as a social, um, uh, obligation that we have as a first world country to welcome people from, you know, places that may not have as many opportunities for them.
00:40:06.480Um, well, now you have, uh, there's an example of, we're going to talk about him later on, but, uh, Mocha covered a, um, uh, a case of a, I think it was a school in Calgary.
00:40:16.500Uh, it was a college in Calgary that there's a, there's a group of, uh, Indian students that are protesting them.
00:40:22.560I don't know if there's been a resolution to it.
00:40:24.980Um, because they're, they're pretty convinced that they're being intentionally flunked, even though they're actually passing their classes because, or they should be passing their classes.
00:40:35.700Is to get them to re-enroll and, and pay for more semesters.
00:40:39.440Uh, and, and they're kind of stuck here.
00:40:41.580Like if they're already enrolled, then they have to push through it to, to, to finish it.
00:40:48.360Like, or they've basically wasted everything.
00:40:50.700They've wasted years here in search of a, of a diploma or a degree or something that there is being held hostage from them.
00:40:56.760Well, there's one other aspect to this that I was kind of thinking, um, through the DEI, this diversity, equity,
00:41:05.000and inclusion, um, lens that is, these initiatives are both in our national policies at a governmental level and also in institute institutions like our, uh, they're in the hospitals or in universities and they're in, um, our workplaces as well.
00:41:23.600Businesses have implemented DEI policies.
00:41:26.160And there's this idea that the equity component of that is it, it's equal outcomes.
00:41:52.660So this idea that a group of people based on a identifying, uh, part of an identity group, they're not doing as well as other people, but we're just talking about the influx of new, like these, this influx of immigration.
00:42:10.500How is that messing with our equity numbers?
00:42:14.400Because we would expect people who are either don't have the skills or maybe don't have the full education to excel, or they haven't had enough time to really establish some roots in a country.
00:42:26.400If Canada has a 500,000 to a million per year now of immigration, that's going to show up as proof of systemic discrimination against people who are not in these like dominant groups or Caucasian, or it's going to be used as proof that more equity initiatives are needed.
00:42:51.740Right. And maybe not in the way that, uh, DEI advocates would want.
00:42:57.160Yeah. So, well, they're already, they're already facing hypocritical, uh, realities when it comes, like Peter Boghossian talks about this all the time.
00:43:05.800If, uh, if, uh, SAT scores in the U S were truly representative of who was led into post-secondary institutions, uh, 51% of college students would be Asian.
00:43:17.520And of course that isn't the case. So there is, you know, people forget that it works both ways. You know, you've, you've, in order to discriminate, discriminate on behalf of someone, you have to discriminate against someone else.
00:43:29.780So you're using, it just, it depends on what metric you want to equalize for. Right.
00:43:33.780Peterson's talking about this for years.
00:43:35.540Current discrimination to fix like past injustices.
00:43:39.760Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's Kendi's idea, right? I mean, it's the only, it's the only remedy, apparently.
00:43:45.440He, I think he walked that, that quote back after.
00:53:08.320So maybe this is our, the theme of this episode is that like money laundering and corruption.
00:53:14.680And it's not just exclusive to like, um, I think if you uncover most countries, they, you, this is just what you get over, over years and years.
00:53:25.400When you get like corporate interests being mixed with government interests, which is.
00:53:31.800Well, and having no consequences for behavior like this.
00:53:34.640Like no one, I'm, I'm sure that even like we've even seemingly forgot from just like a week and a half ago that the emergencies act was unconstitutional.
00:53:46.260Like no one is even worried about having this, the slightest bit of consequences from that.
00:53:51.640I hope that, I hope that the, the law firms that are pursuing this, it's an Alberta based law firm, I think that's pursuing this now, but, uh, I hope they don't stop because somebody, I need, this is my inner, like, you know, my inner SJW from 2007.
00:54:10.800Like somebody needs to face consequences for this, you know?
00:54:13.400Well, you, you'd hope that there'd be enough checks and balances that like we can both prevent these things from happening again and also punish people, um, who have let these things happen or who were involved in it.
00:54:42.520Some, some, uh, you know, hedge fund manager, like take the fall for it and get put up in a, put up in a five-star prison for two years.
00:54:49.560Like there's, there's no way there's, there's gotta be some, because otherwise, like how do you, how do you disincentivize every other politician from just doing the same thing over and over again?
00:55:01.460Because they found that it can work and we're too weak-willed as a population to actually hold anyone to account about it.
00:55:08.780And maybe you get a perspective of, well, we need to fix this problem by any means necessary, or somebody defines a problem where they say, well, the climate's going to kill us.
00:55:20.560Because, therefore, we need to fix the climate by taxing, or if you have a, by any means necessary mindset, and, well, what is, yeah, you can, if there's no consequences, then like the sky's the limit, uh, that way, so.
00:55:38.560Or if the, if the, if you're being gaslit into believing that the consequences are so dire, that this, what is this small inconvenience on top of small inconvenience on top of small inconvenience in the long run, if our children's, you know.
00:57:54.880And there's even, you'll see listed, like, oh, 5% of energy in this area was from ecofuel or renewable resources where it's just wood pellets being burned.
00:58:36.360Because in the 1900s, wood was burned as fuel for, like, the average house.
00:58:43.240And they built everything out of wood as well.
00:58:46.600So most of the trees that we see in all these, like, scenic areas are, it's new growth.
00:58:52.460It's not the original forests that were there.
00:58:54.900So the whole reason we've been able to make these massive improvements in our quality of life is because of these energy-dense fuel sources like oil and coal that makes it so we don't have to cut down trees to keep ourselves warm.
00:59:15.860In this cold, cold country that we live in.
00:59:20.600Or you could be like Germany right now and be reverting to fuel to wood.
00:59:27.600And I've even heard, I don't know if it was Germany or if it was some other European country, but there was a, whatever the politically correct term is for dung fuel is being floated as an option.
00:59:43.680When, you know, there's just, hey, the Prime Minister said there's no business case in selling natural gas to Europe.