The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1016
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 30 minutes
Words per Minute
166.60521
Summary
Dan and Dan travel to an island in the Indian Ocean to find out what's going on on Diego Garcia, a joint UK-US military base in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Also, there's a quiz this Friday!
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for the 7th of October 2024 and I am
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joined today by Dan. Hello everybody. And today we're going to be talking about how the sun has
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set or will soon set on the British Empire. How James Lindsay has done the piece of journalistic
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work of the decade and discovered a dark plot to enslave humanity. I think that's really worth
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digging into because there was something at the root of all of that that needs to be uncovered.
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And Japan's problem with its newfound multiculturalism. So this is a new film.
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Oh right. You might not have even known that Japan has multiculturalism now
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but I've covered it once before. They're about to be enriched are they?
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Oh they're already enriched. Oh lucky them. But the consequences are already coming in
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because I covered that it started and now it's you know coming home to roost.
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Well I look forward to hearing about all that good cuisine and whatever else it is
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the other benefits that they're getting. Yes because everyone knows Japan you know their food.
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Yes. Sushi not good. No it is. I love sushi. But we have some announcements. It is the last week for
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Islander number two. If you haven't bought it already cry in a corner somewhere. And also there is a quiz
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for lads hour this Friday. And so if you would like to ask us some quiz questions you can send them to
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quiz at lotus eaters.com which is the same as the last one apparently which I wasn't involved in I
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think as a way. But yes we would appreciate you sending your questions in and it'll be a good bit
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of fun. And if you want to see how stupid we are. Oh are they video comment ones as well are they?
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Oh video comments as well. Okay okay. Samson says there are also video comments. You must have heard.
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You can hear it. Anyway let's get on to the news shall we. So here is Diego Garcia. No it is not a
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Mexican man but an island. An island in the Indian Ocean. And this is of course British. And it should
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remain so in my opinion. And one thing that is certainly British is Islander magazine. It's in
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its last week of being sold so get it while you still can. What are you doing if you haven't bought
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it already? Only a week left and you'll never ever be able to buy it again. So there is that.
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There you go. There's the merch store on screen right now. You can see the address. You can also
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find it via our website. And as well as the magazine there are also t-shirts which are cool
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and a mug. So check it out. If you want to support us we make no money from our new segment so please
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do. With that out of the way let's go to where Diego Garcia is. So here it is. That same island.
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And we zoom out. There is nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Oh wait hang on. There we go. So you
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can see that this is a pretty good location for say a military base. Because look at all
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of this stuff surrounding it. And all of that nothing.
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We wouldn't be of a large military base would it?
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If you want a little bit of land that's pretty useful isn't it?
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I mean it's about the same size of I don't know. Is it the same size as an aircraft carrier or
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something? I mean. Well we can cut to a better picture of it here. So here's. Oh right there we
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go. Military base. I think this was when it was being constructed. I don't know how old this picture
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is. It looks old. Because it's an active military base I couldn't find any contemporary pictures of
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it obviously. I could go on Google Earth and zoom right in but I'm not going to do that because I
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don't want to get in trouble. But this is home to a very secretive joint UK-US military base and
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it's both a port and an airfield. And obviously it's useful for military operations such as refueling
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and storage. And it's one of the and this is a direct quote here from the people discussing it.
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Extremely limited number of places worldwide available to reload submarines. So obviously quite
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it's important. It's also off limits to civilians. You need permission from the military to even go
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to the island. There are no commercial flights and boats are not permitted to go there either.
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Okay well it. I didn't know we had this but it seems very handy.
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It is. And I think the fact you don't know about it is probably by design.
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And there were a small population of civilians on the island about a thousand people that were removed
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in the 60s. I think 1967 off the top of my head. And actually many of them have come to live in the UK
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which is interesting. But it's worth mentioning that this island will soon be gone. It will soon no longer
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be a possession of the British Empire. Because as a Frenchman points out which is adding salt to the wound
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it was in that little patch there of daylight that would have meant that no matter where you are
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you know no matter what time of day it is on planet Earth there'll be a part of British territory
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that is daylight. As in the sun never sets on the British Empire.
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Yes because it's always sunny somewhere on the British Empire but
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No because you see that patch on the right-hand side there. Well all of that will be gone.
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Because of course with the island gone we don't have that right-hand patch anymore.
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The closest one would be Pitcairn. Well who you have to blame is Keir Starmer of course.
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So he's saying this headline by the way is misleading. Starmer hands Chagos Islands back to Mauritius.
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First and foremost I don't think it's actually happened yet. He hasn't actually formally handed
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it over as of yet as far as I'm aware. I could be mistaken in that. And also it never belonged
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to Mauritius in the first place and in fact Mauritius belonged to us. It was ours.
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But you but when you were scrolling out on that Google Maps thing with Mauritius a few
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moments ago. I mean Mauritius popped up briefly for a second. I mean it is close in sort of
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geographic terms but it's thousands of miles away isn't it?
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Yes it's very far away from anything. And also it's worth mentioning.
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So how can you hand it back to Mauritius if they've never owned it and it's thousands of
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miles away and they have no claim on it? Interesting question. It's kind of BS in my opinion.
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So we actually got the island Diego Garcia in the Treaty of Paris in 1814 in the Napoleonic
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period. And I would presume, I didn't have the time this morning to look into the Treaty
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of Paris, but I presume that we probably got it from the French who owned it before us.
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Well if it's called Diego Garcia. And it could have been Spanish.
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Yes. Who knows? I suspect there's a Spanish connection in there somewhere.
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I would say so. But either way, it's never belonged to Mauritius. And Mauritius won its
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independence from the UK in 1968. So we've had the island longer.
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Well also hasn't Mauritius kind of come into the orbit of the Chinese as well?
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I was going to touch on that. Oh yes. They're pretty China aligned on stuff. And so
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the notion of a very secretive base all of a sudden becoming the property of the country
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Okay. So hang on. If I've got this right, we're taking what is actually a very valuable,
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very strategically located military base that supports submarines and handing it over to
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the Chinese at a time of rising geopolitical tensions.
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And the excuses that we're giving it back to Mauritius who have never owned it. I think
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there's part of this story that we're not being told.
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So a United Nations High Court, the highest court in the UN, as an advisory opinion that doesn't
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have to be followed by the way, that the UK's administration of the territory is unlawful
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and must end in order to complete the UK's decolonization. I didn't realize that that was
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something that had to be done, but okay. We've just got to decolonize things that never really
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belonged to a country in the first place. What decolonization effort?
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Well, it's justified as, well, you've decolonized Mauritius. Why have you not given back this
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Right. Now, that sounds like the sort of excuse you would give to a child because you don't
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want to explain what's really going on. You know, the dog has gone to them on auntie's
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farm or something like that. Clearly, the UK military is not handing this over because
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No, no, as in that's the reason the UN is trying to get us to hand it over to the island.
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Yeah, but that's a fig leaf for whatever is really going on.
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Of course. So it's also interesting to me that the deal was rather rapidly done. It was agreed
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to within weeks and to the terms of Mauritius, who seemingly, because they've got an upcoming
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election, wanted to go into their election with, look what we just did. Isn't this wonderful?
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So there's a strong incentive there for Mauritius, of course, China-aligned country. And also,
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one thing that I did find interesting is before this was announced, the BBC ran an article
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only a few days, about five days before, six days, what I found on the secretive tropical
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island they don't want you to see. So this seems to have been dropped. Perfectly timed
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It does actually look quite lovely, doesn't it?
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You've got that kind of land thing going around the outside and you've got this beautiful
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laguna in the middle that presumably is excellent swimming. The only thing that puts me off slightly
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Yes, and also there are lots of sharks in the water.
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I don't know. But I read that it's quite shark-infested around there.
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Yeah, but I think you could put up some nets or something and then that would make a lovely...
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If I was an eccentric billionaire and I wanted a place to hang out at the end of the world,
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So, this BBC journalist was only allowed to visit under permanent escort.
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Even while they were sleeping, they had someone stood outside their door, an armed guard.
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Interesting that they approved of it just before it was handed over.
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It could be that, you know, the people in the military disagree with the political decision
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going on and they're just like, well, come on, journalist.
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Maybe we'll finally allow you here because otherwise this undermines what's going on.
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So, one thing that I did find interesting, but bearing in mind this is a thousand miles
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or 1,600 kilometers away from the nearest landmass, that some refugees have turned up
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Some Sri Lankan Tamils have turned up to this island, a top-secret military base,
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And apparently, according to the BBC, they've been stranded there for nearly three years, which...
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Surely the British military cannot be that shit, right?
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This is apparently such a top-secret base that if you go there,
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you have to have a soldier standing there watching, staring at you the entire time,
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even when you're asleep, even when you're on the loo,
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you've got to have this soldier just, like, making death eyes at you the entire time
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And yet they let a whole bunch of dinghies turn up and they were powerless to stop it.
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I can actually believe that the British military is that bad, somehow, worryingly.
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So, one of the reasons that the hesitation to keep hold of the island is
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the territory has been costing the UK tens of millions of pounds,
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with the bulk of this categorised under migrant costs.
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Let's hear what David Lammy has to say about it, shall we?
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Well, presumably we had to build them a four-star hotel on the island
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I don't know what on earth the world's come to,
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Secretary, sorry, and known genius David Lammy has said,
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this government inherited a situation where the long-term secure operation
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of the Diego Garcia military base was under threat,
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with contested sovereignty and ongoing legal challenges.
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Today's agreement has secured this vital military base for the future,
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so it's worth mentioning here, as Lammy has pointed out,
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that the military infrastructure is allowed to remain as part of the deal,
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but the island itself will now belong to, potentially belong to Mauritius, China-aligned.
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That doesn't sound as secure as it could be to me.
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you don't want a country aligned with one of your major enemies
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to be allowed to just turn up and potter about next to your military base.
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If they're going to keep this top-secret military base
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that requires somebody staring at you the entire time
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when a Mauritian delegation takes a Chinese general
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You know, if the Chinese started flying drones over,
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maybe we would get a little bit upset about that
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We're going to be paying them to take the island as well
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non-japanese and this is just going on on a nice orderly japanese street which to my mind seems
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no i i think this is one of their religious rituals i don't know okay but
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not really respecting japanese culture that they're not really integrating are
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they're not seamlessly fitting into their environment they're kind of
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belligerently taking over taking over yeah almost like they have it everywhere else they're not willing to integrate because they're culturally dogmatic they want to impose their culture on other people that much is entirely obvious here is a
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curd just releasing fireworks or i don't know firecracker a flare something like that just on the street for no reason when i go to a foreign country i try and make an effort to
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to be respectful yes be respectful and fit in these folks aren't doing that
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yes and uh on the darker side uh so this guy pakistani yes there are pakistanis in japan now
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25 000 of them in japan now um he was convicted of sexually assaulting a japanese school girl
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on the train yes um because of course the pakistanis have earned their worldwide reputation for being
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chinese man stabs a japanese woman to death at night
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um arrested for stealing copper cable from solar power generation facilities in koshu
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and apparently their resident cards had expired but instead of going back to cambodia they stayed
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if you invite in foreigners they do stuff like this
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they do all of these the things that have just happened
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i think it was a train station or something like that
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so i didn't realize the japanese had that as well
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they thought it was such a palpably absurd explanation
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but yeah i think that that's the most likely thing
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you know one of the silver linings to doing without electricity
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is that it really gives you an opportunity to hone the craft of rhythm
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you can barbecue in safety while everyone doesn't have their power
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and now for another in our series of lamentations
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yes it's always fun to watch the videos of those people who have quote unquote returned to africa
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thinking that they would be welcomed as cousins
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and instead find that they're constantly being overcharged mistreated
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yes this is the world of the people who sold your ancestors into slavery
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and it's worth mentioning as well that liberia is a country
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and they enslaved the natives as soon as they moved there
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america would have been better off if they picked their own cotton
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mostly here's a quickie way to lower your blood pressure
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a simple wall set we're gonna try to keep all the joints at right ankles
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we're gonna hold it for two minutes and if we feel it needs to maybe release the lower back
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i i understand that it is really good for you because
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i once saw a man who started practicing yoga and after two years he could tuck his head in between his knees
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that it was very difficult to hear what you were actually saying
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i believe we have some written comments now don't we
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i'm really glad i bought islander magazine number two so i can hear directly from the leader of our cult
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all of you at home should do the same and buy your own copy
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the dominions of canada australia and new zealand are still under
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but they're not directly british though are they
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i think the greatest indignity of losing the empire is that britain didn't even lose a war
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britain has lost tremendous swathes of territory despite being on the winning side in both world wars
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yes well the american the american government you know all of europe lost world war one and two
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right it was the mass the biggest transfer of power from europe to another continent in human history
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but we had to do it to stop poland being um subjugated by germany allowing it to be subjugated by russia that was perfectly fine
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but we had to destroy the empire in order to stop germany doing the same thing
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yes um and you're you're not justifying any actions in the 20th century by the way by saying that um
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uh charles burgess says that the us will never allow diego to be returned because it
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can host b-52 bombers i did read about that and i'm hoping that the americans are going to intervene
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and stop starmer being a lunatic that's part of the reason i included their um
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in devet intervention is that the americans tend not to be nearly as good or as well trained at giving
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up their power as in i mean the american state of course not america is it possible starmer is
01:22:42.020
because starmer wanted to bomb russia didn't he that he's undermining the u.s well is it so so he
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wanted to let the ukrainians use british missiles to bomb russian territory pre-2014 russian territory
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and biden said no don't be stupid that's how you start world war three which is you know impressively
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joe biden actually did something sensible is it possible starmer's doing this as a way to say
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screw you america look um you wouldn't let us bomb russia therefore we're going to do this i think
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because the the negotiations were already opened by cleverly in 2022 i'd be quite surprised
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possible uh so lars says mauritius was dutch first and they killed the dodos okay it's the
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the dutch sneaky dutch who can blame you for killing the dodos i mean fair enough they're just so tasty
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aren't they i don't know were they tasty i think they were just incredibly easy to catch i imagine
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they'd be tasty they're very plump aren't they i don't know never tried one or have i i wish i could
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yes that's the problem that's why they went extinct but um would you like to read some of your comments
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oh yes all right where where am i once let's have a look um the alpha beta says there's no such
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thing as the woke right there is only james lindsey's uh policing of the overton window from
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moving outside of his comfortable safe space of milquetoast conservatism yes well that's what you
01:24:07.320
would say if you're part of the right right wouldn't you um woke right as mithred monckton says woke
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right as i understood it's just homo commies uh that are confused beyond distraction and remedy
01:24:18.900
could could could well be that um george happ says um lindsey posted a leftist meme of an explanation
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because he got triggered by christian imagery while stellius was trying to analyze the segment
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of right-wing people who fall for the leftist behavior of purity spiraling and power politics lindsey
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is doing the cringe my both sides centrist position because he's an over sensitive atheist
01:24:44.420
yes that's right uh texas gal says james is either engagement trolling or he's had a schizo breakdown
01:24:51.400
the latter probably or both possibly schizo engagement farming that's that's a new method
01:24:57.820
yeah i i i i i quite like that um whatever i've got theodore pinnock in my experience woke
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right is an accusation levied by right-wing liberals against conservatives who want to enforce
01:25:10.720
moral standards as as far as they're concerned they're no different to the woke left who want
01:25:16.060
to force everyone to accept their insane politics hence woke right yeah it's very good what else have
01:25:23.060
i got uh did i do the sean one uh sean gaffney i wonder if lindsey is trying to do what he did in
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academia um i get people to buy into bullshit to show the left and right are not so different he
01:25:37.100
tore the left down and now wants to show the right is just the same but he's wrong he ends up looking
01:25:41.680
like an idiot that or he just lost his marbles or he's correctly called you out josh one of the two
01:25:47.500
you'll never take me alive yes um derrick power says um if the penis didn't exist it would be necessary
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for the feminists to invent it or invert it oh that's a horrible thought isn't it let's change
01:26:01.220
the topic quickly quickly quick um so on the japan stuff um as a brit who has been living in japan for
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over seven years in total i have to say that mass immigration here is my worst nightmare even now where
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i work in the countryside it's plain to see that the immigrant population is already forming its own
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little bubble in which nobody speaks japanese or integrates into the culture i don't want to tar
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everyone with the same brush but so many of them are so rude loud and don't seem to understand the
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culture of keeping yourself to yourself and not imposing yourself on others knowing what's
01:26:32.160
happening to the uk it's scary well i'm sorry to hear that and um i think uh we've we've obviously
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got very similar views on how to construct a society britain and japan because those are the
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sorts of things that we used to do and we've since become more basal and animalistic in our culture
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which i despise i think it's it's the lowest thing a human being can do is to behave in those
01:26:57.620
ways george happ says japan is um at most five years behind the west if they open their doors
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despite the uh protestations from some of the weebs in japan is not immune to wokeness they had
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feminism for decades and their big corporations like sony capcom and square enix are very much globo
01:27:15.040
homo dei companies completely correct the proletariat says i hope they bring uh back the old japanese
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saying from the boshian war period glory to the emperor expel the barbarians i like that last part
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i mean actually if we could make king charles into an emperor again it'd be worth it i like the word
01:27:37.120
barbarians as well in fact i don't want to be woke right i want to be barbarian right
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i can live with that barbarian is like a judgmental term it's saying you don't you
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aren't civilized you can refer to londoners as barbarians for example that's fine no because i
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because what the barbarians do is they come along and they find a power structure which is crumbling
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under its own contradictions and tear it down that's what i want to do fair enough no that's
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that's a fair point so ross diggle says uh we used to call foreign people who entered a different
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civilization with the idea of not showing respect something barbarians oh there we are
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again the word just keeps on coming up um japan is not completely homogenous the ainu are a native
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inhabitants of hokkaido and there have been chinese and korean ethnic minorities there for centuries
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because of trade links but even then they're pretty similar peoples and the numbers are such that it
01:28:28.020
might as well be homogenous also the uh you know hokkaido right in the very north it's not say the
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nation's capital or places whereby the means of reinforcing the the dominant culture emanates from
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we've also got um another super chat here cranky texan says why does it seem uh only a matter of time
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before people who read the writings of people with global hegemonic hegemonic ambitions and tell us
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about them are declared insane um i can see it happening yeah i mean look at the people saying
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uh the concerns about globalism or um being replaced that already sort of exists and that's all sort of in
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that same sphere of hegemonic global power isn't it what japan does have going for them is they are
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one of the few ethno states in the world um where it's kind of written into their constitution but
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they are ethnically japan and that is a constitutional right i think it's japan mexico and israel the
01:29:36.160
ethno states pretty much yeah so anyway one to uh end on 34 million yen stolen good god that's like
01:29:45.300
four dollars anyway have a good week josh and dan well thank you very much i think it's about 180 000
01:29:50.580
quid that's a lot of money yeah yeah that's worth stealing
01:29:53.640
do not take that as moral advice uh anyway hope you enjoyed the show bye islander too
01:30:02.320
bye islander too uh same time again tomorrow bye i would send samson quiz questions or something
01:30:09.000
oh yeah quiz questions keeps on going on about that yep that also bye yeah also bye