In this episode of The Lotus Eaters, we discuss the good news of Antifa finally getting arrested, how Trump is teaching Harvard a lesson or two, and whatever chaos is going on in Ukraine. We also talk about the Christian protest in Seattle, and the fact that the counterprotesters were counter-protesting against it.
00:00:17.560Yeah, more good news. And whatever chaos is going on in Ukraine.
00:00:22.080I haven't been following it, so I'm actually quite looking forward to finding out.
00:00:24.640But, in the meantime, go and pick up the Trivium, but also join us on Thursday at 7pm for our free webinar,
00:00:33.060where Dr. Nima Parvini and myself will be discussing my favourite part of the Trivium, rhetoric.
00:00:39.380Rhetoric is by far the most interesting part of the Trivium, in my opinion.
00:00:44.560Obviously, writing and logic are very important, and you need these foundations to be able to actively and efficiently put across your message.
00:00:53.060But it's in the rhetoric where the magic happens, so join us on Thursday at 7pm British time for that.
00:00:59.840So, let's begin, shall we? Because I've been covering Antifa for probably about 10 years now.
00:01:06.580So, coming on something like that. And it was insufferable watching Antifa essentially kind of crawl out of the woodwork
00:01:13.000in the United States and Europe and in Britain.
00:01:16.320In Britain, our Antifa was a lot more muted than elsewhere.
00:01:20.980The American ones were quite radical, but it was really the German ones that are the most insane.
00:01:26.020The largest black bloc ever of about 13,000 people took place, I think it was in Frankfurt a few years ago.
01:03:26.000because you would think that it would be very easy to have some kind of jamming technology that would just interfere with the signal or something like that render the drone useless you think that'd be a really easy defense
01:03:37.440i don't know you know i don't know but apparently not
01:03:40.860christ um i'm sure that countries will put um
01:03:44.320money and time and resources into oh yeah research and development into anti-drone measures
01:03:49.140yeah they've got to um quite often when you're often a few times on twitter and things i've talked about drones
01:03:54.620um people say oh you just all you need is an emp device and they fall out of the air
01:03:59.760that's all i need is you can build your own emp device at home for 30 dollars it's like can you
01:04:04.400um yeah is that going to be battlefield effective most of the time is it um
01:04:09.460well at the moment again if you believe that and and other videos and accounts i've seen and read
01:04:15.920um say that yeah the the anti-drone side of the ledger is falling behind um significantly um
01:04:24.180it's very science fiction isn't it i mean like there there was a there was a movie back in the 90s
01:04:29.720where humanity is fighting like a robot uprising they have like buzzsaw drones that go along the uh
01:04:35.580the ground or go into the ground and then you know kill people it's just horrific and we're arriving in that sort of stage
01:04:42.020so impersonal yeah i just i i feel like the future might be both sides drones fight each other
01:04:52.800long before the actual men do yeah um they just become redundant or pointless to send any men
01:05:00.040into a battlefield area because the drones will dominate them so easily and so quickly then it's
01:05:06.540just manufacturing capacity as to who wins the war so it's just a drone on drone thing and taking out
01:05:11.400your enemy's ability to manufacture drones yeah yeah maybe welcome to the future yeah um okay so back
01:05:19.360to back to sort of the politics side of it um even the mainstream media sort of admitting that uh
01:05:25.580that russia are confident again purely in military terms that uh all the sort of momentum is kind of
01:05:33.440with them um here's one about ukraine's quote chaotic withdrawal from from russia saying the article
01:05:42.560goes on to say that uh ukrainian forces used to even in on a small scale relatively small scale bounce
01:05:48.700across the russian border not with impunity but here and there where they could and they're not really
01:05:52.820doing that anymore in fact they're sort of on entirely on the back foot or nearly entirely on the back
01:05:58.360foot um so there's that um yeah even like the bbc saying is at the beginning of the end um are we
01:06:06.320there at what point is zelensky completely painted into a corner yeah i mean completely at some point
01:06:13.740there'll just be no options left it'll be i don't want to compare him to hitler obviously but like
01:06:18.240you know where i i watched a video about downfall the other day was it the history buffs one it was
01:06:24.320yeah yeah yeah um but the the the point is going to be the same though uh obviously they're not the
01:06:30.480same people but like the point is the same where it's just like okay what can we do but there's
01:06:33.460nothing we can do you know at some point the red army is going to be arriving in berlin at some point
01:06:37.640the russian army is going to be arriving in kiev and we just don't have any men or munitions to fight
01:06:41.980them with so it's over i mean yeah very interesting i don't know if the if the russian army will
01:06:48.740actually go to kiev because this is a classic example of a limited war right it's not total war
01:06:56.620sure putin could nuke kiev if he could nuke carpet nuke all of ukraine if he wanted to this is a
01:07:02.600limited war um i don't i don't think his war aims are to storm kiev uh i don't i don't think he does
01:07:12.540want to take the whole thing uh i mean showing no signs that there was right at the beginning of the
01:07:17.580war they put armor as though it were going to kiev yeah it was a really aggressive attempt to
01:07:22.680surround the capital yeah some say that was a feint that was a tactical thing that that was a feint to
01:07:29.380take uh ukrainian material away from the east of the country um there's another time more in the
01:07:36.360middle of the war where they did a similar thing it looked like they were going to kiev but it might
01:07:40.240have been a shimmy it might have been a feint uh well it was um so anyway here's an interest i think
01:07:45.880quite an interesting uh web page where they show us a few different maps um one of them i think's
01:07:54.720quite interesting is this one uh we're around in the kursk region where even last summer we were
01:08:05.280we were told all about sort of the ukrainian push towards kursk or certainly across the border into
01:08:12.220russia proper and that now um it it just utterly failed it just utterly failed russia taking it
01:08:19.600all back um so it seems like and i could be wrong i don't know all the details and the secrets of
01:08:26.660ukrainian military tactics and strategy but it looks like that they're they're kind of done
01:08:32.180on the battlefield well the surely the only thing that would actually change this calculus
01:08:40.320in any conceivable way would be european boots on the ground or you know just other countries
01:08:46.900british troops french troops whoever it may be aren't there thousands of european troops in ukraine
01:08:52.220at the moment as well uh well not i don't believe that they're fighting well well okay that's an
01:08:57.020interesting question um and there's also special operations people where
01:09:03.340the reality is that countries like britain and the united states wherever there's a hot spot where
01:09:09.780there's even remotely our interests are involved there will be covert special special forces dudes
01:09:17.320no doubt i mean like technically the sas is supposed to be completely secret right technically
01:09:24.240that is what it's supposed to be um but you it gets out people know um so yeah there will be
01:09:31.400western or european soldiers of whatever ilk um in and around there uh so yeah i just don't know how long
01:09:40.760zelensky and the political side of it can keep going and if putin just keeps ramping up the pressure
01:09:50.500uh how long can they how long can they take it um that's what's being you know trump saying he's
01:09:59.980crazy he's crazy i don't like it stop doing it and putin's just ignoring it the kremlin just
01:10:04.380completely ignoring it yeah if you if you cut the signal out of the noise you see that russia has just
01:10:09.840advanced on every front and is winning victory after victory right like they're consolidating the
01:10:15.220things they've taken and there doesn't seem to be a lot the ukrainians can do about it right
01:10:19.600i mean look at this set of maps it just it tells the story yeah so from 2022 to now it just tells
01:10:25.660the whole story really the ability for the ukrainians to push the russians out of anywhere
01:10:29.900has failed it's this old thing from from sun tzu to von klauswitz don't start a fight you can't win
01:10:38.600or you're almost certainly not going to win even if the odds if the odds are anything less than 75
01:10:43.340percent you likely to win it's best not to do it yeah like it's me starting a fight with john jones
01:10:48.840it's not a good idea it's not a good idea i mean sun tzu the end result of it is i get beaten up
01:10:54.120sun tzu would argue that the the best battle is the one you don't have to fight right yeah your
01:10:58.640objective so right and we tried the thing of giving them fantastic amounts of money lots and lots of
01:11:05.540material crazy amounts really that all that has all now failed so and even trump throwing his oar in
01:11:14.760politically isn't doing anything trump thought he was going to leverage his leverage his relationships
01:11:19.920with them uh which didn't go anywhere so all the cards are really with the ukrainians or zelensky
01:11:25.480to come to the peace table now it seems well they had um uh the other week didn't they there was uh
01:11:31.740two delegations that met in istanbul with one another but all they actually agreed on was just an
01:11:37.080exchange of prisoners of war they couldn't get any further than that as regards to winding down the
01:11:42.460actual conflict because at some point they will just have to come to terms with the fact that
01:11:47.660they've lost it puts me in mind of the the german surrender in world war one yeah but the last thing
01:11:54.780they want to do is it's so much so embarrassing humiliating to have to give in but it's that or you
01:12:02.980or you lose all your men right it's that or you are truly crushed world war two style where they
01:12:10.240where we do have to come all the way to your capital and end you sort of carthaginian style
01:12:16.020um are you going to go there is zelensky going to play his political hand to the point where
01:12:22.760putin's got no option but to do thunder runs through the middle of kiev is that where he's going to take
01:12:29.180it i hope not uh so one other thing that one other development for the ukrainian update is that um
01:12:35.920putin took a trip to the front or near the front the region on the on the border yeah and um the
01:12:43.180ukrainians tried to take out his helicopter uh i'm like lads i'm surprised both sides haven't tried
01:12:50.460to assassinate their leader more yeah again this is a limited war this is a limited war i'm surprised
01:12:57.180the russians haven't tried to smart bomb zelensky before now um yeah i'm surprised because both sides
01:13:04.960are doing it a bit but the ukrainians are also assassinating generals and things in moscow yeah
01:13:09.560i'm surprised they haven't tried something more aggressive against putin's uh actual physical body
01:13:18.360but um he went to the front and um they tried to take out his his helicopter and various various
01:13:23.960outlets reporting on that so i'm saying that his helicopter was able to sort of thwart the drone strike
01:13:30.220um uh there you go it fended off a drone attack um but okay so they're sort of the updates
01:13:40.220from the weekend and uh it's just it's just a sad story i mean it was always sad from the beginning
01:13:45.360um but it feels like to me that zelensky is running out of options quite quickly yeah and if the russians
01:13:55.680play their hand ruthlessly which is kind of what they do best it's what i expect them to do um then
01:14:02.280uh he's going to be truly painted into a corner if if not already um okay so there's that matt says
01:14:09.640could trump have expected when he said he was going to end the war that the european allies would have
01:14:13.500undermined his request for peace well if trump had been more diplomatic with his european allies to
01:14:19.440begin with and maybe he could have brought them along but the problem is trump uh did the diplomacy
01:14:25.040after attacking them and putting them in their place which okay i mean don't get me wrong i enjoyed
01:14:31.420watching the europeans getting humbled as well uh but tactically i think that was the wrong move
01:14:37.140trump should have been shoring up his alliance making them essentially completely dependent on him
01:14:41.200and then judo flipping the table saying right so this is what we're doing now and they would have
01:14:46.160committed and but i've spoken about it before but you said this about with the canada question
01:14:50.060and all sorts of things i think you're absolutely right it's just the 2024 maga administration was
01:14:56.660don't be like we're going to annex canada and then rely on canada for things that's not
01:15:01.320their headspace was simply we don't need anyone else to tell us what to do ever on any level what we say
01:15:07.960goes we are the boss of the world we're the hegemon of the world uh we don't need coalitions
01:15:12.620what we say goes and yet on a couple of different fronts that hasn't worked it has worked on a i
01:15:18.920think it has worked on a number on some but on others this particular one it hasn't uh the engaged
01:15:26.000few says it might not be so ruinous for putin as he could blame the loss on western interference
01:15:30.100uh i hope he can do that because i think putin is standing in the way of even worse russian leaders
01:15:34.520uh to be honest with you that's probably true possible uh the one i i was at a sort of meeting a
01:15:41.600while ago speaking to a bunch of conservatives i was like look it is like putin is not unrepresentative
01:15:47.840of russia like putin is like thematically like uh the sort of leader i'd expect russia to produce
01:15:55.060at its best like at its worst you could have a way worse leader in russia who understands the
01:16:01.100situation far less than what we've got you'd have a starling figure true mania yeah yeah someone who's
01:16:06.760actually mental uh in charge someone who would have used the nukes maybe like you know someone who
01:16:13.620wasn't capable of laying up because putin has spent a long time planning for this and shored up his uh
01:16:20.620position in the right ways and things like this and so the the western sanctions didn't crush russia
01:16:25.520didn't in fact hurt ourselves and things like this so the the point being there could definitely be a
01:16:30.580leader in russia than putin um the engaged few says microwave-based weapons are likely the most
01:16:36.020effective anti-drone countermeasure interesting i don't know anything about that so uh oph uk says
01:16:42.420american drones cost 10 million a piece russian drones put together with plywood duct tape and
01:16:46.280alcoholism yeah that's another thing but the the americans have got a lot more money to spend than
01:16:50.540russia so um and the american drones are probably more effective i imagine the russian drones are just
01:16:56.480one-shot drones whereas american drones can find missiles and then return again it um just i said
01:17:02.200in the segment there's drones and there's drones there's like the super high-tech sort of uh reaper
01:17:06.900drones uh and then there's those little quad things chasing down an individual uh pickup some are super
01:17:15.480high-tech and really advanced and some aren't yeah there's heavy drones yeah there's all sorts of things
01:17:20.680the habsification says you have to sell c and dural they're an american defense company that only
01:17:25.640develop and use autonomous drone war devices well i hate the name uh why oh that's the name of
01:17:32.060aragon sword yeah i was gonna say why do you well well because it's like it's a sword of a king it's a
01:17:37.320well sure and it's like drone what again to go back to that impersonal thing it's yeah yeah but the i
01:17:44.080mean the thing is eventually it's going to be ai dominated drone warfare because the nature of the
01:17:49.880war will require sort of 24 7 administration of the drones right so you're going to have just ais
01:17:56.360commanding fleets of drones and you'll get a report oh we've lost this one oh have we okay well there
01:18:02.020we go we've lost this war the ai has told us this war is over and therefore that's going to be what
01:18:07.540war is going to become it'd be funny you realize you've lost the war when you're your drone app
01:18:11.920there's a pop-up on your drone app saying you're lost notification comes through it's going to be
01:18:17.200like you know a game a paradox game where he's looking as oh yeah you've lost you know three
01:18:21.520provinces and the enemy has gained three provinces and your war indemnity is x amount and this is
01:18:28.220just what you have to pay now so this is being garnished from your wages oh brilliant you know
01:18:33.220just brilliant anyway uh lotha says i wonder if donald will continue consider starting a reverse
01:18:39.280cuban missile crisis and sticking a few hundred nukes in poland in the baltic states would putin
01:18:43.880sit down for that or embrace escalation i have no idea man like like i i really don't like making
01:18:50.260predictions in such uncertain times um and oph uk says the usa doesn't need coalitions they just need
01:18:57.120the germans and russians not to form a coalition well the thing is they kind of do and that's the
01:19:02.040problem with like europe's support for ukraine in the face of america's desire to in the war
01:19:06.020but if zielinski had all of his resources essentially pulled from the west he would have
01:19:11.160no choice and he would have to sit down which is what trump obviously wanted i just think he went
01:19:15.240about it in the wrong way i feel like um yeah the us doesn't need coalitions well not in order to
01:19:20.660defend its own skies and its own coastline but yeah to do something by proxy in central europe it does
01:19:27.500need coalitions even at the height of the british empire we still had other foreign allies we still
01:19:32.240needed you know coalitions or i mean think about taking on napoleon well just every every time
01:19:37.940britain's engaged in a major war in europe we had a coalition yes i mean was it like the eight
01:19:42.580coalitions or something fighting napoleon all right yeah you know it's like literally they call them the
01:19:46.520war of the fifth coalition or whatever you know so it's like the idea that coalitions aren't
01:19:51.220essentially uh needed it's kind of bizarre unless you want to go full crazy like the u.s could
01:19:58.760drop paratroops or send in the entire marine corps or something anywhere it wanted okay it could do
01:20:04.760that right and in in that sense it doesn't need a coalition okay sure but like it could send a giant
01:20:12.040fleet anywhere in the world in any sea it wants if it wants to go there but if you don't want to do
01:20:18.480that or you're not prepared to do that then you then you need a coalition right let's go to the video
01:20:23.180comments hey i was just thinking about the guy who blew up that fertility clinic and i was reminded
01:20:31.020of a time i was trying to sell one of my books to a lady at a show a couple of years ago and i said
01:20:37.640that the main character by the end of the story she decides she wants to get married and have kids
01:20:42.820and the lady turned around and said oh she'll change her mind once she has kids
01:20:47.620and she was surrounded by her own children who were younger than 10
01:20:51.460that's not nice jesus i've got a little update for coop oh yeah um i did a fair about a fair amount
01:21:00.880of uh writing this weekend oh well done on my novel because he always asked me right he said he'll
01:21:05.600help me get published if and when i finish when i finish my novel um still a long way off letting
01:21:12.540anyone see it but i did a fair amount of writing this weekend so um well that's tremendous still get
01:21:16.940i will get there one day you do at least a page a day and then you'll get i know it's the little
01:21:22.200and often yeah um that's easier said than done or you just turn out crap gotta commit nine but i've
01:21:29.280tried that before and then you look back at it and nine tenths of it is crap and unusable so is that
01:21:33.920i'm the best way of doing it i'm absolutely sure that yours will come out before george r r martin's does