Josh and Stelios talk about Trump and Zelensky s meeting, Roman salutes and the takeover of the Notre-Dame Theatre in Paris by highly qualified academics. Also, we talk about the Ukraine crisis and how to deal with it.
00:00:20.840And today we're talking about Trump and Zelensky's meeting, also features J.D. Vance, of course.
00:00:27.340I'm going to be talking about the trend of Roman salutes and then we're going to be talking about a theatre in Paris getting taken over by some very highly qualified academics.
00:00:42.040They're the most scholarly of gentlemen and there's a beautiful irony to it.
00:00:47.560And this is one of those stories, they don't come up very often, but they're just sort of the perfect analogy.
00:00:53.960Exactly, yeah. And there's a really deep analogy, as you said, with cultural issues because they are recreating a traditional of excellence and cultural excelsior.
00:01:07.620That's right. They're bringing in all of their microscopes and engineering equipment, aren't they?
00:01:12.460Exactly. And some of them have doctors in engineering.
00:01:23.780Right. So I suppose we're going to talk about the meeting that happened last Friday between Trump and Zelensky at the Oval Office and how it went south and what happened afterwards.
00:01:34.360But before we say more about this, we have Islander number three.
00:02:38.100Obviously, the question is, what are the terms according to which it's going to end?
00:02:42.040But I think that what is interesting now is that right now we're on the show period.
00:02:47.720I think that right now a lot of things are going to get much, much worse before they get better.
00:02:52.360And I've said also in previous segments I have been on when it comes to Ukraine, I think right now there may also be an escalation in violence at some point.
00:03:01.980Because normally the way things go in war, as far as I understand, obviously I've never fought in one, but just from my knowledge of them, things tend to escalate right until the day in which a ceasefire or peace agreement is signed.
00:03:15.720And because you want to get the best terms for, you know, the peace agreement, right?
00:03:27.320Because, I mean, it's difficult when you want to stop the war and end the war, you're going to something that's called, I think, an antebellum balance.
00:03:36.280You can't go back to where it was in the beginning.
00:03:38.720You have to strike a new balance of power and find exactly where to draw the borders.
00:03:43.900So one of the things that, for instance, the Ukrainians would want right now is to escalate their effort in order to have more carrots on the table in exchange for an end negotiation.
00:03:56.860That seems to be a pretty standard, well, you know, it's not even a partisan view that that's the sort of natural course of things.
00:04:04.720Everyone's sort of saying that that's going to happen.
00:04:06.600Exactly. Right. And I think we should definitely say that a lot of the speech acts involved in the rhetoric of politicians, wherever they are from, is, I think, more an expression of resolution than something to be taken literally as either true or false.
00:04:25.740That's very true. I think that there's been a lot of posturing and I imagine that a lot of what people are saying publicly just around the world about the conflict is more about image than it is about substance necessarily.
00:04:41.180It could be in some cases, but as a general rule, people are trying to get themselves in the correct position.
00:04:48.080But I think also this extends to politicians because they are trying to increase their power in order for the next negotiation table, let's say.
00:05:00.540So I think a lot of people understand this when it comes to Trump, that he isn't always veridical.
00:05:08.080A lot of the times he's just recognizing the field, but they don't recognize it to other leaders, whether they agree with them or not.
00:05:15.580So I think the Europeans, for instance, are doing just that at the moment.
00:05:20.080They're also expressing resolution, not necessarily something that is true or false.
00:05:25.140Right. So we have some context before the meeting.
00:05:28.520We have here Trump in the 18th of February saying at the end that you shouldn't have started the war, implying Ukraine.
00:05:38.500And then we had another case of doublespeak coming from Trump.
00:05:43.600On the one hand, he said Zelensky is a dictator.
00:05:48.480And on the other, when it came in front of Keir Starmer, he said, did I say this?
00:07:12.580And also, one of the main contextual factors here was the U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal.
00:07:23.520Because Zelensky knew that he was going to talk about the minerals deal with Trump, and Trump also knew that he was going to talk about it.
00:07:31.860You're going to talk a little bit more about this, because there is something I would like to point out about this, that I've been thinking about this.
00:07:38.200And obviously, Trump's doing this from the perspective of a lot of Republicans are rightfully annoyed that a lot of money has gone for the defense of a foreign country when it could be going to America.
00:07:48.300I entirely understand that I would feel the same, and I do, in fact, because Britain has done the same thing.
00:07:55.260And so Trump going and getting something in return, which is this minerals deal, helps sort of placate some of the concerns, even though it would be better that all of the taxpayers got their money back.
00:08:07.280But this is serving that purpose for them.
00:08:11.360But for the Ukrainians, what people have perhaps overlooked more so is that what they get in return is that U.S. contractors, U.S. citizens, are going to be in Ukraine doing the mineral extraction, right?
00:08:25.640I would imagine if they're going to be 50 percent U.S. owned, as has been discussed, there's going to be a considerable number of U.S. citizens in Ukraine, which means if Russia then invades again, there's a surprise attack, then there's going to be a lot of additional U.S. casualties.
00:08:44.240And that's a massive disincentive for the Russians who don't want to provoke an even more, you know, boots on the ground response from the United States because it wouldn't end well for them.
00:08:53.880Exactly. I think it's actually something that is really sensible. Also, it would be sensible for Zelensky.
00:09:01.680They're also not in a position, really, after having their country on war footing and being bombed to smithereens to pay back all of their loans because, of course, you know, offering access to the resources directly allows them to sort of mitigate the inability to get all of this capital at such short notice.
00:09:22.100I'm a bit more cynical than that. And I think that it was always going to come to this.
00:09:27.900Probably. Yeah. Even if the Democrats were at the moment and the even if they had the administration and the presidency, it would come down to that.
00:09:38.900Mm hmm. So in one sense or another. Now, I'm not talking about the specific deal and the specific clauses, but it would there would be exchanges.
00:09:48.460Mm hmm. I mean, when it came to Afghanistan, were there some companies, some of them, I think, had the ties to Donald Rumsfeld that were in surprise that were involved into the into building infrastructure of Afghanistan again.
00:10:04.460It sounds about right. Yeah. So it was always going to come to this. And I think people who think otherwise would be completely unrealistic, but I don't know about the specifics of the details.
00:10:14.880But one thing that is really good that you mentioned is that economic entanglement and economic presence and the presence of extended U.S. interests in Ukraine, whether whether they say it or not in the deal would function as a sort of security guarantee.
00:10:32.440That's exactly it, isn't it? And it's sort of a softer way of, you know, rather than the U.S. having troops stationed in Ukraine of the United States saying, hey, Ukraine's not our protection now.
00:10:45.600And I think that it's not so much Trump as much as some of the lobbies behind him.
00:10:51.520And I've said so also in another segment we did when we were discussing about Greenland and Canada and not many people liked it.
00:10:59.740But there are the tech bros who want access to rare minerals for tech industry products.
00:11:24.920Right. So according to the BBC, the terms of the deal were as follows.
00:11:28.400The preliminary agreement envisages that an investment fund will be set up for Ukraine's reconstruction.
00:11:35.980And they said that according to the deal, Ukraine will contribute 50 percent of future proceeds from state-owned mineral resources, oil and gas to the fund.
00:11:46.100And the fund will then invest to promote the safety, security and prosperity of Ukraine.
00:11:50.400I think whether directly or indirectly, that that was what it was going to come down to.
00:11:56.640So I think at the end of the day, what they're discussing is the percentage.
00:12:01.800Most probably Zelensky doesn't want to give 50 once less.
00:13:02.400It doesn't make for productive conversation, does it, really?
00:13:06.860If you've got a number of people stood around with microphones, boom, you know, boom mics, cameras, it sort of makes it all for show, doesn't it?
00:13:16.720Which a lot of the discourse around this has already been.
00:13:45.480Things that, you know, Zelensky wants to look as if he's buddy-buddy with the US because if it looks like the US has got Ukraine's back, then he's got a better position in Ukraine against the Russians.
00:13:58.640And, of course, you don't want to see this rift between the US and the continent of Europe because a lot of the Europeans have just unequivocally backed Zelensky, whereas Trump has been a lot more critical, which I understand from his position.
00:14:15.780Yes, but I will say this, and this is an unpopular take or something, but I think that the more eagerness is shown to end the war, the more the war is going to be prolonged.
00:14:26.020No, I'm a big believer into the peace through strength narrative, and whether it's in more Reaganite form, if you want to put it, yes, that's my view.
00:14:36.640If you go to your enemy after talking for a long time how much you want peace and how the war is not going well for you, you're not exactly going to the table of, you know, the best deck of cards to, you know, the best hand.
00:14:48.880But also the point is, I think that it's not a good idea to show excessive eagerness to end the conflict and be way more eager than the people who are fighting in it.
00:15:00.880I think you should be, they should come to ask you to stop it.
00:15:08.580You shouldn't project that, no, I want to end this because I can't sustain it.
00:15:14.200It could be the case that it's unsustainable.
00:15:17.900But as I said in the beginning, rhetoric is expression of resolution, and it has nothing to do with truth and falsity in geopolitics.
00:15:28.380That's why I'm saying that this, the more it's televised and the more it shows a rift within this camp of allies, and for the time being they are allies, the more it shows excessive eagerness.
00:15:44.400The best way to keep peace is to be strong.
00:15:47.900Weakness brings about war, doesn't it?
00:15:49.700That's one of the sort of truisms of all of humanity.
00:15:54.060And by showing a form of weakness, what they're doing is potentially, and you know, I think there's probably blame on both Zelensky and Trump and Vance's behalf.
00:16:04.980Maybe not proportionate, but there's an imbalance there.
00:16:08.340But I think that both sides could have behaved more tactfully that had things gone slightly differently, it probably would have been a much better resolution for both sides.
00:16:18.740To be honest, I think this was going to happen, and probably it will happen again.
00:16:23.940It will happen many times, and it may have happened many times.
00:16:27.260It's just that right now, because it's televised, it adds pressure into the mix.
00:16:43.440Sorry, I don't think it's a serious question, because this is a choice by wartime leaders to convey a sense of a situation being a situation of emergency.
00:16:55.420And the same happens here with Winston Churchill in 1942, or 43.
00:17:04.720He's doing it to convey a message, and I think that they knew why he's not wearing a suit.
00:17:10.440It's a choice of image, and it's not like it's a surprise.
00:17:13.580Like, if he turned up in, like, a tracksuit after wearing a suit the entire time, maybe it'd be fair to say, hang on a minute, are you turning up scruffy?
00:17:21.200If you invite Zelensky in, it's fair to assume that he's going to turn up like that, I suppose.
00:17:27.800Right, and here we have the, for anyone who wants to see, I think you may have watched it a thousand times by now, we have the video of the shouting match between Zelensky and Trump.
00:17:36.860And I want to say that if we look at the whole clip, I think the first 40 minutes were relatively okay-ish.
00:17:44.120Yes, and I think that at some point there was some tension, which was understandable, and there was tension also in the first 40 minutes.
00:17:53.680But I think that at the end of the day, most probably what was going on is that Trump and Vance decided that they should play good cup and bad cup.
00:18:03.240And because they are adding pressure to Zelensky, maybe because they want him to stop asking for NATO entry, or maybe because they want to take more into the minerals deal.
00:18:16.220Yeah, I don't think Ukraine joining NATO would necessarily be a good idea.
00:18:20.960Well, most probably that's what's happened.
00:18:23.180So now they're playing tug of war, and yeah, that's basically it.
00:24:04.020But doesn't it, can't it be explained with what I'm saying about statements not being true or false in their minds, but them using statements as expressions of resolution?
00:24:28.420And I think that that's why the idea that it's Zelensky messing up, it's no, it's Trump working with a lot of his Republican colleagues, really.
00:24:41.300Somehow now Zelensky says, tells BBC that Ukraine, that he's ready to sign the mineral deals with the US.
00:24:50.040And after that, he went to London, he came to London, he met Keir Starmer.
00:24:55.120They had an emergency meeting in London with several leaders.
00:25:01.980Zelensky says, here, I'm exchangeable for NATO.
00:25:51.120But also he said that the US must be involved.
00:25:54.460So this basically means, I want to liaise between the two of you.
00:26:00.020So Keir Starmer, on this sort of thing, a lot of people have been mistaking what's actually going on here.
00:26:06.960People think that Keir Starmer is saying that we're going to put UK troops in the trenches of Ukraine before there's peace settled.
00:26:13.600And from what I actually understand, it's more that we're going to send people to guarantee, it's like a security force basically, to guarantee the peace signing and the discussions to just keep the country safe whilst there are negotiations and no war going on.
00:26:31.880So there's got to be a ceasefire before we send troops there.
00:26:35.000So there's not really, unless something terrible happens, going to be a conflict.
00:26:39.080And I'm not necessarily saying we should even do that.
00:26:41.980That's just, it seems like lots of people are misunderstanding what's being proposed or discussed, from what I gather anyway.
00:26:48.580But it has been unclear, so it's not necessarily unfair to go to that sort of direction.
00:26:56.320But also, because that's also the theme of the segment, it's not an issue of what Zelensky, Trump, Vance or Starmer are saying.
00:27:15.880And he actually also said that explicitly afterwards, that he says that he is working with Macron from France in order to create a negotiation deal and then present it to the US.
00:27:55.140And here we have the European Union hosting an emergency meeting in London.
00:27:58.640And we have Donald Tusk saying 500 million Europeans are asking 300 million Americans to defend them against 140 million Russians.
00:28:11.200Europe today lacks the belief that we are truly a global power.
00:28:15.420And I mean, I think it's insane that Europe has put itself in that position.
00:28:22.220To another extent, it has been placed in such a position post-World War II.
00:28:27.640Yeah, I mean, the American government has deliberately orchestrated this.
00:28:31.840And I do like the fact that what Trump and Vance are trying to do is give us a little bit more, basically give us a kick up the backside to start sticking up for ourselves.
00:28:44.200And I think that that's a good direction for us to go in because in many ways, Europe could be one of the major martial powers in the world.
00:28:55.260And I know that Britain still projects its power beyond its means militarily, but a lot of other European countries don't do a similar thing.
00:30:41.860The engaged few says, Vance should have said, go back to the Lollipop Guild.
00:30:47.660The engaged few says, gosh, I think a man could be forgiven for thinking that Miss Lindsay's change of heart is explained by his 2026 Senate re-election.
00:31:23.260The whole thing started with Zelensky bringing up Crimea.
00:31:27.440Look at the around the 14th minute and Bold Eagle, 1787.
00:31:33.120VP Vance was wanting a thank you for the American people.
00:31:36.520Zelensky only thanked the people who gave him thanks, i.e. the politicians and bureaucrats, never the citizens who paid the taxes for everything.
00:31:51.600To be honest, I think he said and the people, but it's just a publicity thing.
00:31:57.400It was a weird question from Vance to ask because he had easy answers to give.
00:32:08.360So, I hope you've all got your 2025 bingo cards out because one of the things that I imagine many of you didn't mark down is a social trend of people throwing out Roman salutes.
00:32:22.960And if you know what a Roman salute is, there's a mid-century Austrian painter that was quite the enthusiast of them.
00:32:33.260But talking about social trends that are storming the globe, Island Magazine is out now.
00:32:39.200Number three, it's a beautiful work of art, you see.
00:32:42.160You know, you can see that Rory didn't get turned down from art school.
00:32:47.500And there's some lovely sort of neo-medieval artistry in this particular edition.
00:32:53.200Some great articles from lots of our favourite guests.
00:42:20.320There's a great big statue, you know, they might be holding a torch, but you know what, you know, those people at Charlottesville were holding, they were holding torches.
00:42:28.580And you know what they were, you know, you wouldn't, the media wouldn't lie to you about that, would they?
00:42:32.340And is it, is it brown if you scratch it, the statue?
00:42:56.600It's the, and also lots of, lots of, yeah, lots of Democrats have done it.
00:43:01.160But, yeah, it's sort of an inane conversation at this point, because anyone can freeze frame something and find someone doing this arm gesture if they are a public speaker.
00:43:12.540There are lots of reasons you could do this.
00:43:15.280And it's such a boring and sort of inane bit of political commentary to be like, the Democrats do it too.
00:44:28.280I don't think every single person who did that there, secretly, some sort of mid-century German enthusiast or fascist.
00:44:36.460Though the Italians are a lot more unapologetic about their history than the Germans are.
00:44:41.620And in fact, you know, it's pretty normal for people to say, yeah, I joined the, I don't want to say that because it's going to get cropped out of context.
00:44:48.420But an Italian will say, I joined the fascist party.
00:44:54.880And it will be like a run-of-the-mill thing.
00:44:56.800And it's just like, yeah, I went for a run the other day.
00:44:59.600But there's also people talking, this is a very long and boring thing, but apparently teachers are now worried about children doing it as well.
00:45:11.240And they're saying that there was a child pointing in their class and they were worried that they were actually trying to do a Nazi salute.
00:45:18.800But they changed it to a point when they turned around.
00:45:21.040And this level of paranoia about young children is absolute madness.
00:45:27.440You can see this sort of neuroticism of these left-wing people.
00:45:32.100And the thing I do want to read is, social studies teacher here, I shut that down immediately.
00:45:37.260I asked them what they think they're doing.
00:45:38.700And if they try and play cute and hurt her, then I thoroughly explain exactly what that stands for, what Hitler and the SS did, how many people, Jews, LGBTQ, Romani, Eastern Europeans and other minorities were killed just for existing.
00:45:52.640I don't think they were killed just for existing, by the way.
00:45:55.980Then I ask if they want a significant portion of the people they know abducted and most likely killed.
00:46:04.440It's like, if you do, if you put your hand up in a way I don't like, I'm going to say that a significant portion of your family are killed.
00:46:16.600I mean, well, the point is, with young people, if you approach them in a very authoritarian way, it's going to have the exact opposite effect.
00:46:28.720So, yeah, when, for instance, you see them doing things you don't like or you think that they have a sort of meaning that eludes them, you have to explain it to them.
00:46:42.120And if you are not the person to explain it to them, then don't explain it to them.
00:48:40.800I posted a post just like, she's obviously just doing it for attention.
00:48:44.520Because when her ex-account was still there, it was loads of pictures of her, you know, making silly, annoying girl social media faces where they put their lips out.
00:48:55.820And, you know, she's posting, like, good morning of her lying in bed.
00:48:59.880And it's like, you're obviously just fishing for engagement.
00:50:09.860But she also posted a link trying to grift to get people to buy energy drinks just to show that people are now noticing this social trend and are just jumping on it for attention and money.
00:50:25.140Even though she's trying to LARP as someone involved in politics, I don't believe a 19-year-old girl has actually, you know, been reading the Nazbol texts, has she?