The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1423

00:00:00.080 Hello, and welcome to the podcast of The Lotus Eaters, episode 1423 for Thursday, the 21st of May, even, not June yet, getting ahead of myself, for 2026.

00:00:12.480 I'm your host, Luke, joined today by Harry and Firas.

00:00:15.280 Hello.

00:00:16.100 And today we're going to be talking to you all about how APAC strikes again.

00:00:20.560 We're then going to talk about how the fact that modern writers just can't seem to finish, make a good ending for their series.

00:00:29.420 It seems to be a dying art.

00:00:31.820 The quality of slop is ever declining.

00:00:34.540 Even the slop is slopping.

00:00:36.840 And then we're going to talk, speaking of slop, 0.98

00:00:39.320 we're then going to talk about Modi's migrant madness 0.55

00:00:42.640 as he just seems to throw migrants in with every trade deal that he tries to create.

00:00:49.440 Every McDonald's Happy Meal sold in India comes with a free Indian. 0.97

00:00:54.820 You have no choice. 1.00

00:00:56.660 You just have to take him.

00:00:59.420 Right, before we get into the first segment, though, ladies and gentlemen, two announcements for you.

00:01:04.060 We have the latest Chronicles by popular demand.

00:01:07.780 Dan and I have sat down to talk about the second novel of the Flashman papers, Royal Flash,

00:01:14.180 where our anti-hero Flashman is caught up in the machinations of Lola Montez,

00:01:20.980 a very famous 19th century nymphomaniac, and sort of the will of Otto von Bismarck.

00:01:30.000 And it's very interesting, very fun watching Flashman try to navigate his way through those

00:01:35.780 two very different temperaments. So anyway, all good fun. Dan and I had a great laugh with it.

00:01:40.500 If you're interested, go check it out. Also, something else to say is that the

00:01:45.340 The LotC is live event footage for our prequel debate

00:01:49.540 on whether or not the prequels were actually good

00:01:52.520 is now on the website for you to check out

00:01:54.900 if you're a subscriber, obviously, as you can see there.

00:01:58.340 Harry and I dominating the competition

00:02:01.340 on the other side of Bo and Carl.

00:02:04.000 And, Firas, as a moderator, you agree that we won?

00:02:06.720 Very confused the whole way through.

00:02:08.580 I think you won.

00:02:10.640 I think you made a decent enough case.

00:02:12.420 Well, not to spoil anything for those who haven't watched it yet, but it helps that we were actually making arguments, which the other side struggled with for some reason.

00:02:21.940 I will maintain neutrality here rather than...

00:02:26.640 Okay, Switzerland, we'll let you do that.

00:02:28.560 Trying my best.

00:02:29.460 Honestly, it was a really fun debate and we actually had some great talking points on there all around. Great fun. Go check it out.

00:02:38.300 So, with all that said, Firas, tell us all.

00:02:43.000 Yes, so there was Thomas Massey's primary on Tuesday, and he lost.

00:02:50.600 And there's a lot of arguments going on as to what happened.

00:02:54.140 Was it the Trump factor? Was it about Israel?

00:02:57.040 Was it because Massey didn't vote for Trump on a bunch of things?

00:03:01.420 And I thought I'd start by giving the Israeli perspective.

00:03:05.600 And this is the time of Israel saying the GOP primary, Massey's primary, is now a costly battle over Israel.

00:03:15.580 So just to sort of settle that question from the outset, was it about Israel, was it not about Israel, the Israelis are saying that it was.

00:03:24.120 And they're also saying, I suppose implicit in that title, is that they were very threatened by one man.

00:03:31.540 Yes.

00:03:31.880 just to clarify some of the confusion and arguments that I've seen going on I've seen a

00:03:37.760 lot of people in the MAGA die hard camp trying to argue that this was all about Massey's stance

00:03:44.080 on immigration that he had voted against things like the one big beautiful bill last year and

00:03:49.480 other immigration measures which is what pushed the administration against him and what pushed

00:03:54.560 the public against him. Despite the fact that the people who dumped the most amount of money

00:04:01.840 into his adversary's campaign, Ed Galrain, you know, there's figures going around of something

00:04:08.180 like $15 million from AIPAC-associated sources, all seem to have dumped that money and not on

00:04:15.100 the basis of, well, Ed Galrain is going to be much harder on immigration than Thomas Massey is,

00:04:20.040 more going on the line of, well, this will be better for Israel?

00:04:24.400 Firstly, they were openly admitting that this is what it was. And you had people like Paul

00:04:28.700 Singer donating bigger amounts of money. You had Miriam Adelson. Paul Singer, he was the big winner

00:04:34.600 from the Venezuela thing, right? Paul Singer made a lot of money on the Venezuela thing because he

00:04:38.900 acquired one of the oil companies that had contracts with Venezuela. And then the Venezuela

00:04:43.900 invasion happened, or the takeout of Madura happened. What a lucky guy. And then his stake 1.00

00:04:48.060 It just sort of, I think it's worth quadrupled or something like that in an insanely short

00:04:52.920 amount of money.

00:04:54.840 Miriam Adelson, Trump said in the Israeli Knesset that she is more for Israel than the

00:05:00.340 United States.

00:05:01.980 The Republican Jewish conclave, Congress, something like that.

00:05:06.540 These guys threw a lot of money and said, we're going to win this essentially.

00:05:10.160 So the whole, you know, outside of some MAGA accounts, this was seen clearly as an Israel thing.

00:05:21.420 The Times of Israel says as much.

00:05:25.960 Haaretz says as much.

00:05:28.060 Well, I also don't...

00:05:29.360 It's sort of, you know, Israel's own view is that.

00:05:33.440 When it comes to these Republican primaries as well, I don't see the lobby getting quite so involved

00:05:38.680 when it comes to other candidates that might be in the primaries who are, well, one's more hardline

00:05:43.720 on immigration, the other is softer on immigration. I don't see them jumping in every single time

00:05:48.020 to dump a load of money into the hardline. They are single issue voters. Like Alan Dershowitz,

00:05:52.760 who was a Democrat for all of his life, then saw that the Democrats were not supportive enough of

00:05:58.340 Israel, and so he became Republican. They are single issue voters. They only care about one

00:06:04.700 thing and one thing only but don't you dare call them a foreign lobby so this is like how say for

00:06:10.780 instance mark zuckerberg was a lifelong democrat until october 7th and then joe biden early on in

00:06:17.140 2024 comes out not quite as hard line for israel as a lot of people within the lobby would like

00:06:23.080 and then all of a sudden mark zuckerberg makes an overnight spectacular change

00:06:27.000 it's magic it's magic um so you sort of see the israelis saying that clearly and the haaretz one

00:06:37.840 they had an earlier title saying that it was just about israel then they changed the title

00:06:42.480 but when they go into it mag uh they they make it clear what the issue is right massey has long

00:06:48.740 been a thorn in the sides of both the gop leadership and the pro-israel and jewish

00:06:52.440 establishment. He is an advocate for the release of all Justice Department files related to

00:06:58.200 convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Going as far as to accuse Epstein of being a former Israeli

00:07:09.520 intelligence asset, which was rather obviously the case. I mean, it's worth pausing here and

00:07:14.640 thinking about this, because your question about what is the issue is a very valid one.

00:07:20.120 Was it really about voting this, that, or the other?

00:07:22.900 No, people in the conservative movement

00:07:24.760 accept that Massey is one of the best congressmen.

00:07:28.500 Here's Matt Walsh saying as much,

00:07:30.220 as much of a mega supporter as you can get.

00:07:33.540 Donald Trump gave him a full-throated endorsement in 2022.

00:07:37.940 This was clearly, you know, they were aligned.

00:07:40.620 It's just that Massey was always like,

00:07:45.240 when things went bad,

00:07:47.420 the reason that they went bad was basically because Massey on the SAVE Act voted against

00:07:54.080 a change in regulation that would have allowed Congress to pass any spending without giving at

00:08:01.460 least 24-hour notice. That's the thing that I've noticed when people attack him against immigration

00:08:06.660 because they'll put these immigration measures into these enormous bills bundled in with loads

00:08:12.140 of stuff to just keep increasing the deficit, which is why he votes again. If you just presented

00:08:16.740 him a single page bill that said will be hardline immigration. As far as I can tell, he wouldn't

00:08:21.660 have a problem with that. The fact that it gets snuck in with everything else. And that's the way

00:08:25.940 that Congress works. The idea is that the legislators and the public shouldn't see what's

00:08:31.640 going on. So you just try to bundle a bunch of things together. We had a bunch of Syria sanctions

00:08:39.200 and Iran sanctions passed in spending bills. There were all kinds of different things just

00:08:45.100 pulled together and you just pass them all in one package and you don't give lawmakers anywhere

00:08:52.260 near enough time to look at them. And the two people who object the most to this are Massey

00:08:56.940 and Rand Paul. And Trump is going on a rampage against both of them, calling Massey Rand Paul

00:09:04.580 Jr. and making fun of him and things like that, as if that was an insult. Like, Rand Paul Jr.

00:09:11.660 links you to Ron Paul, who was right about everything at the end of the day. And so you

00:09:17.140 see this anger from Trump over this issue. And it really, really began with the Epstein files.

00:09:31.340 So this is Massey explaining what he voted against on the act and whatever. And he voted

00:09:37.860 against the Big Beautiful Bill

00:09:38.980 because the Big Beautiful Bill

00:09:40.100 added $4.3 trillion in deficit.

00:09:43.700 Which is, if you're a fiscal conservative,

00:09:46.080 which is what he's supposed to be,

00:09:47.720 then that's a little bit crazy.

00:09:53.160 And so you had two Republicans

00:09:56.040 against the bill,

00:09:58.860 Thomas Massey and Brian Fitzpatrick.

00:10:01.860 The difference is that Fitzpatrick

00:10:03.900 does take APAC money.

00:10:05.140 whereas Massey does not take APAC money and so the objection from Fitzpatrick was ignored but

00:10:13.780 the objective from Massey was not and of course we remember that there was a huge fight over the

00:10:21.240 Epstein files where Massey played a critical role along with Rohana and Nancy Mace and a couple of

00:10:26.860 others forcing the administration to release I suppose it was also the fact that it required for

00:10:32.800 for Massey to push through with that, it required him to put himself in alliance with Democrats as

00:10:38.360 well. Which obviously they didn't take too kindly to, but it's like, look, if that's what it takes

00:10:44.720 to get something as seismic as the Epstein files out there. I mean, the thing is, you have to

00:10:49.720 remember what we learned from the Epstein files, right? Because the things that we learned from

00:10:53.440 the Epstein files were genuinely insane. We learned that Macron was coordinating with the

00:10:59.100 Epstein network, Macron being a former Rothschild banker, was coordinating with the Epstein network

00:11:04.120 and the World Economic Forum to basically implement a single agenda. We learned that

00:11:10.400 Peter Thiel, who is fully engaged in basically collecting everybody's data and surveying it

00:11:16.640 through Palantir, is leading another network interfacing with Epstein. We learned that the

00:11:24.320 Indians, when they want to approach Trump, get told that what Modi has to do is go to Israel 0.64

00:11:30.400 and dance with Benjamin Netanyahu, and that will put him in Trump's good books. 0.98

00:11:35.720 We learned that random Yemenis, when they want to make a deal to end the Saudi war on Yemen, 0.93

00:11:44.140 believe that they need to go through Epstein. The things that we learned from the Epstein files 0.72

00:11:49.340 were genuinely insane. And Trump was saying that if you release the Epstein files, you are going

00:11:54.460 to be hurting my friends. Which suggests that the problem is Trump's friends. Yeah. And the fact

00:12:01.940 that they have power over... And the fact that they have any power. Especially when you take

00:12:06.340 someone like Macron as well, just being hooked up to that entire system while spending all that time

00:12:11.020 as French president, residing over immigration, the deterioration of France, just the betrayal

00:12:16.600 of the french people it's like okay so you do it's not that you're you don't have loyalties

00:12:22.360 it's just that they're the wrong ones and exactly it also smashed a little bit of the whole left

00:12:27.880 right theater stuff when it came to somebody like steve bannon turning out to be collaborating

00:12:33.560 seemingly with noam chomsky on how to do a media push to rehabilitate epstein's public image and

00:12:41.080 now to attack the Pope and working with Epstein to meet with the Qataris after the bid to sort

00:12:49.820 of eliminate the Muslim Brotherhood's headquarters in Qatar failed. And that had to go through Epstein. 0.57

00:12:56.760 The reconciliation between anti-Islam America first and the literal Muslim Brotherhood 0.67

00:13:02.120 went through Jeffrey Epstein. The peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians,

00:13:09.260 The guy who organized much of the Oslo agreements was regularly in contact with Epstein and his children were left, I think, $10 million each or $10 million total by the Epstein estate.

00:13:23.260 So what we learned from the Epstein files was genuinely cataclysmic.

00:13:27.700 And we wouldn't know any of it if it weren't for the efforts of Thomas Massey.

00:13:31.440 If it weren't for Thomas Massey.

00:13:33.840 And that is why he's being accused of being anti-Semitic and being punished.

00:13:40.260 And so you saw this big push to get rid of Massey, but it was because he took principled

00:13:46.820 stances like release the Epstein files, be an actual fiscal conservative, stop getting the

00:13:51.900 United States into more and more debt. And we're seeing the price of that now with the Iran war

00:13:55.600 and don't go to war with Iran. Because again, he worked with Rolkhana to make sure that the

00:14:01.120 Congress would have to vote on a resolution backing the war in Iran. Because constitutionally,

00:14:08.440 that's how it's meant to be. I'm not an American, but I know enough about that bit of the American

00:14:15.820 Constitution that the war powers reside actually in Congress. And so you get this kind of craziness

00:14:25.420 going around, but I think it's worth highlighting that there is a pattern there that is really

00:14:33.120 important to notice and that the war on noticing must not continue there must be a war for noticing

00:14:39.680 and here's thomas massey basically committing the worst kind of blasphemy everybody but me has an

00:14:46.340 apac person what does that mean an apac person it's like your babysitter your apac babysitter

00:14:50.920 who is always talking to you for apac they're probably a constituent in your district but they

00:14:57.120 are firmly embedded in apac and every member has something like this that's how it works on the

00:15:02.540 Republican side. And when they come to D.C., you go have lunch with them and they've got your cell

00:15:06.680 number and you have conversations with them. That's absolutely crazy. I've had four members

00:15:11.420 of Congress say, I'll talk to my APAC person. And it's clearly what we call them, my APAC guy.

00:15:17.680 I'll talk to my APAC guy and see if I can get them to dial those ads back.

00:15:21.640 Why have I never heard this before? Why would they want to tell their constituents that they've

00:15:25.440 basically got a buddy system with somebody who's representing a foreign country? It doesn't benefit 0.99

00:15:30.740 the congressman for people to know that so they're not going to tell you that everybody but

00:15:34.640 so this is one of his many many sins for which he is being punished he's sort of showing how

00:15:42.260 the sausage is made and he's saying that look this is what's what's happening um and it should

00:15:50.260 be remembered how strongly trump opposed the release of the epstein files saying that they 0.85

00:15:55.360 were a hoax saying that it was basically mentally ill people saying that it's crazy people who

00:16:00.060 believe in them. When in fact- I'm asking you to hold counter opinions in your head at the same

00:16:06.020 time about whether they exist or not. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So it should be said

00:16:13.980 how strongly Trump opposed the whole Epstein files and called them a democratic hoax and said

00:16:21.480 that there was nothing there. There was no there there. And that's what he went to the mat for.

00:16:29.640 That's what the fight was actually about. 0.55

00:16:32.040 It was the Epstein files in Israel.

00:16:33.640 And the Israelis are saying that it was over the Epstein files.

00:16:35.960 And so is everybody else.

00:16:37.660 And now we know that Trump has pretty much decided to punish Marjorie Taylor Greene,

00:16:44.320 who, whatever you want to think about her, I'm open to your opinion here. 0.93

00:16:48.280 But she was pretty straight on the Epstein stuff. 0.52

00:16:52.400 And she definitely insisted on it. 0.80

00:16:54.940 And we had Nancy Mace also pushing in that direction. 1.00

00:16:58.340 and now the Trump team doesn't want to let her continue in politics. She's trying to run for 1.00

00:17:04.840 governor of South Carolina, which is a pretty important state in the way that the American 1.00

00:17:09.460 primary system works for the presidential elections, and they're trying to obstruct her.

00:17:13.820 Well, it only shows to prove, isn't it, that there's something more important than preserving

00:17:18.860 a Republican governor of South Carolina, and that's who that governor has loyalty to.

00:17:24.140 Exactly. And it's not just us crazy speculating. I mean, Politico went as far as to document

00:17:32.280 how much money was poured by the Israel lobby against Massey. So you had AIPAC putting in

00:17:42.640 around $9 million. And then you had pro-Israel donors dumping a lot of money into other public

00:17:52.200 action committees, totaling another $7 million. So they poured $15 million into the $16 million

00:17:58.660 into the primary against one libertarian, fiscally conservative, principled Republican congressman.

00:18:10.900 And the fact that you can just spend that much money to affect the outcomes of elections

00:18:18.720 does betray a real crisis in the system.

00:18:21.620 It just means that the system is bought and paid for.

00:18:24.260 And unless you can throw an equivalent amount of money,

00:18:27.840 you're not going to be heard. 0.94

00:18:29.840 And the reason why all of these Gulf states

00:18:32.860 and now India are sort of playing these political tactics,

00:18:37.620 they're looking at the Israel lobby

00:18:39.620 and they're thinking,

00:18:40.260 we can influence the West in the same exact way.

00:18:45.220 We can make them pretend that, I don't know, 0.67

00:18:48.720 Indians in the United States are just regular American citizens or Indians in Britain are just 0.81

00:18:53.740 regular British citizens. Oh, this will be topical come the third segment. Yes. Yes. And mimic this 0.74

00:19:00.320 kind of collective action by ethnic groups intended to achieve the outcomes that they want 0.94

00:19:10.300 while really actually subverting the democratic system. 0.99

00:19:16.020 And this is, I'd argue that this is a problem.

00:19:21.240 And this is a pattern.

00:19:23.640 Because the three most expensive primaries so far

00:19:26.900 have all been against Congress members who are anti-Israel.

00:19:34.080 Now, Jamal Bowman and Cori Bush are not exactly people

00:19:36.960 that you would be proud of. 0.99

00:19:39.560 They are, I mean, they're all lunatics. 0.99

00:19:43.700 I mean, these are democratic primaries. 0.99

00:19:45.400 And these are democratic primaries.

00:19:47.480 But come on.

00:19:50.380 Like, there is a pattern there.

00:19:53.420 And you see this all the time with this kind of massive spending.

00:19:58.940 And I thought that rather than just having me go on about this,

00:20:03.480 I thought it might be highlighting this issue in its historic context.

00:20:08.780 And here's Richard Nixon, who is very, very unfairly maligned in my view, and I will resume Nixon posting soon, but let's talk about Richard Nixon.

00:20:19.780 Richard Nixon is a hero.

00:20:21.360 He is, and I won't hear a word against him.

00:20:24.380 It isn't a question whether I felt it.

00:20:26.660 The fact is that American Jews support Israel, and I understood that.

00:20:31.460 And the fact is that every Jewish prime minister that I have known has enlisted American Jews to bring as much pressure as possible in the political process on American presidents. 0.77

00:20:43.780 That's understandable. 0.95

00:20:44.640 I don't object to it.

00:20:46.180 Now, a president must not go along with it on occasion because some – let me explain something about what is called the Jewish lobby in this country. 0.54

00:20:55.800 In the first place, Jews, understandably in the United States, because of what happened in World War II, because of the Holocaust, are going to put first priority on the survival of Israel.

00:21:12.380 Now, as good Americans as they are, they believe that America's survival and security is directly related to Israel's.

00:21:24.680 In other words, their belief is that being for Israel first means that that does not mean you're putting America second because they think it goes together.

00:21:35.820 An American president, however, has to approach it in a different way, in my opinion.

00:21:40.200 He's pretty much.

00:21:42.940 Oh, it's fair. 0.72

00:21:43.740 And he goes on to say that the Israel lobby should be treated in the same way as, I don't know, a Polish lobby or an Irish lobby or a Chinese lobby. 0.58

00:21:54.080 or any other country, if that isn't the United States.

00:21:58.240 If there were Chinese super PACs setting up

00:22:02.660 and pouring $15 million into primaries for either party, 0.83

00:22:06.540 you would say, well, that's the Chinese bought and paid for candidate.

00:22:10.720 Yes, and we constantly hear about Chinese spies

00:22:13.580 because you're not allowed to assume that your origins matter,

00:22:19.700 that your actual ethnic affiliation matters.

00:22:24.080 And so you get this kind of...

00:22:26.520 Wasn't there a mayor in California just recently

00:22:29.340 who ended up being a Chinese spy?

00:22:31.200 Yes.

00:22:31.540 You never would have guessed.

00:22:32.720 And what's her name? 0.95

00:22:33.720 The very elderly California congresswoman 1.00

00:22:37.600 who also turned out one of her staff was a Chinese spy.

00:22:42.060 I can't remember.

00:22:43.080 I think she was the one who had to vote

00:22:44.680 when she was 90-something and unconscious.

00:22:48.200 I'm trying to remember her name.

00:22:49.080 Many such cases.

00:22:50.100 Yes, indeed.

00:22:51.120 Yes, indeed.

00:22:51.580 I mean, and this goes as far as deep as the State Department.

00:22:55.920 I mean, you spoke with Marta Maid the other month, didn't you?

00:22:59.220 In one of his old videos, interestingly, when he's talking about Epstein and his Epstein series,

00:23:04.540 he talks about his time in the State Department and they were given a seminar on how to spot somebody who's trading insider secrets.

00:23:12.020 And they were going through all of these different details and things that were really peripheral to the main factor,

00:23:17.740 which is that he spotted that it was you know Chinese people giving secrets to the Chinese

00:23:23.240 government Jewish people giving secrets to the Israeli government Turks giving stuff to the

00:23:28.300 Turkish government every single time there was the obvious ethnic loyalty element but when he

00:23:33.860 brought it up they were just like nope nope we're not allowed to talk about that it's like these are

00:23:38.420 state secrets in the state department maybe we should recognize that it shouldn't be controversial

00:23:45.340 It's actually just very sensible from a perspective of ethnic loyalty.

00:23:49.700 I'm sorry, if I was working for the American government,

00:23:52.380 I would understand if they suspected me of trading secrets back to the English government.

00:23:57.960 Because why wouldn't you?

00:23:59.200 Yeah, of course you would.

00:24:00.380 And it's not just Nixon speaking about this in the 80s.

00:24:05.140 This is Pat Buchanan in the 1990s being called names for saying the bloody obvious.

00:24:10.760 You've also said that Congress is an Israeli-occupied territory.

00:24:16.140 Now, what do you mean by that?

00:24:18.020 I said on the McLaughlin Group in response to a question, Jim.

00:24:22.240 They said, do you think that the Congress of the United States will resist this demand for further aid?

00:24:27.720 I said, threw out a crack at her.

00:24:30.000 I said, no, the Congress of the United States is Israeli-occupied territory. 0.72

00:24:33.660 What I meant by that is the most powerful lobby in Washington, which Congress can't stand up to, one of the most powerful, is certainly the pro-Israeli lobby. 0.76

00:24:43.920 It has gotten its way in this town year in and year out.

00:24:47.440 And I don't think the automatic votes of the Congress of the United States for $3 and $4 billion worth of aid to Israel are necessarily in the national interest of the United States. 0.93

00:24:56.700 And that comment, which is to ridicule the subservience of the Congress of the United States, is perfectly valid. 0.90

00:25:02.620 Do you believe there are members of the Congress of the United States who are voting the interest of Israel over the interest of the United States? 0.90

00:25:08.020 No, I think they're voting the interest of a powerful lobby, which they can't stand up to in many cases, one of many.

00:25:13.920 They cave into lobbies all over this city.

00:25:17.020 I think the Congress of the United States, where it's got brave men on both sides, is an institutional coward.

00:25:22.760 And that when a powerful lobby can influence or defeat them back at home and they can't get much support on the other side for a vote,

00:25:31.100 Many of them who will even tell you privately, they will tell you privately,

00:25:34.860 I can't stand up to that kind of heat.

00:25:36.340 They will vote for it.

00:25:38.220 But why have you singled out this particular, if you say there are many powerful lobbies?

00:25:42.180 Well, this was a question that was thrown to me on the McLaughlin Group about Israeli aid.

00:25:46.480 Should I have talked about the National Rifle Association at that point?

00:25:51.680 I wanted to see that part.

00:25:53.340 I wanted you to see that part because I think he killed the conversation.

00:25:56.500 When we're talking about, say, the Iran war and say the Israel lobby is a problem with the Iran war, well, it's obviously not the corn lobby that is pushing for the Iran war.

00:26:06.220 Let's just be honest about this.

00:26:07.660 Let's just, you know, get over ourselves a little bit and just state the facts as they are.

00:26:12.940 And I thought that I, you know, I found this other example of Senator William Fulbright saying on CBS in 1973.

00:26:23.240 So this is before the 1973 October war, the 6th October war.

00:26:28.700 And he says that the Senate was subservient to Israel much too much.

00:26:35.660 We should be more concerned about the United States interest rather than doing the bidding of Israel.

00:26:39.960 This is a most unusual development.

00:26:42.940 Now, this isn't any crank speaking, because Fulbright was actually the longest-serving

00:26:49.700 chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, which eventually ended up being

00:26:55.240 headed by one Joe Biden, who was, in fact, completely subservient to Israel. 0.63

00:27:01.460 That should be remembered. 0.92

00:27:02.640 There's that famous clip of him saying that if there wasn't an Israel, we would have to 1.00

00:27:06.180 create one. 1.00

00:27:07.100 Exactly.

00:27:08.020 Exactly.

00:27:08.480 So this isn't a new issue, and it's clearly about Israel.

00:27:15.180 And again, in case you're wondering, here's Ynet, which is the English version of Yadiot Aharonot, one of the biggest newspapers in Israel, making it clear that the defeat of Thomas Massey was a victory for Trump and AIPAC.

00:27:30.680 and then you have AIPAC saying no no no it wasn't us it was just the voters

00:27:37.820 then they say actually our community was proud to help pro-israel candidates win these races

00:27:45.240 against people who are anti-israel and you have to okay so which one is it

00:27:50.300 like pick one pick a lane and stick to it it's amazing you know we don't you know millions and

00:27:58.160 millions of dollars into it but it wasn't anything to do with us nothing to do people just came to

00:28:02.740 their own logical and rational conclusions which is why this is a multi-million dollar industry

00:28:07.400 because advertising never affected anybody exactly exactly i mean come on and just to sort of settle

00:28:14.000 this and be done with the nonsense john potter came out and just said it and that's the last

00:28:20.280 clip that i will play i think it is a good thing if massey and the people like him and others believe

00:28:27.940 that if you cross the line into anti-Semitism, Jews are going to use the power that we have

00:28:37.340 openly to go for you. Because what other recourse is there? Are we just going to sit here and take 0.51

00:28:46.100 it, beg for scraps, hope that nice people are nice to us? The Democratic Party is going

00:28:54.820 explicitly anti-Semitic. We can see it happening. People are getting benefits, as Seth says,

00:29:00.560 for being anti-Semites. That seems to be part of an appeal in primaries to the left and the party.

00:29:08.080 We have to use what means there are at our disposal. And in my view, and I'm going to put

00:29:13.620 that is Jewish money. There is an enormous amount of Jewish money in politics, by which I mean

00:29:19.060 jewish donors wildly disproportionate not only charitably

00:29:25.600 the thing is right it's like on the one hand you're very concerned about a perception

00:29:32.800 of you that is currently taking hold in america and on the other hand you're saying and the way

00:29:39.060 to fix this is not to have an open dialogue about it with the people who maybe feel aggrieved or

00:29:45.160 slighted or lacking representation in their own government. It's to just outfund them forever

00:29:52.220 so that they never get a look in. And that's supposed to help the optics. That's supposed to

00:29:59.780 make it calm everything right down, I assume. Here's the thing. If you say Jewish money cost

00:30:09.280 Massey the election, you're an anti-Semite. If Potter says it, he's bragging, and it's a good 1.00

00:30:19.220 thing. So the truth and the perception of the truth don't depend on objective facts,

00:30:27.340 they depend on who is saying it. When you say it, you're evil. When he says it, it's a good thing,

00:30:35.720 and what else did you expect? And that's the standard that's being applied here.

00:30:41.840 And that's the bottom line. You just have to be able to just walk through this. You just have to

00:30:48.980 wade through the nonsense that's going to be thrown against you and say, this is what you're

00:30:53.480 saying, mate. You're saying it out in the open. As most people would if they got charged with

00:31:00.300 Islamophobia. They don't care just carrying on because it's the evidence before you was like,

00:31:05.600 Exactly. So that's my segment. Sorry, I went a little bit over time.

00:31:10.900 It's all right.

00:31:11.920 But, you know, just wanted to make sure that this was covered.

00:31:15.320 Speaking of people with contentions, we do have quite a few rumble rants.

00:31:18.860 And I'm sure if there are any questions that people want answered regarding disagreements, that we can answer them here.

00:31:26.600 Right.

00:31:27.980 McLeod says, Massey raised 10 times his opponent.

00:31:31.040 Loads of money was from Middle Eastern countries and places like ActBlue.

00:31:33.860 He had some Jewish donors. I don't know if he raised 10 times more than his opponent,

00:31:38.020 because that would make it a little bit insane. I saw that it was 30-something million dollars in

00:31:43.280 total, of which 15 million came from the pro-Israel lobby. So I can't see how he would have raised

00:31:49.060 150 million for it. I'd seen RazorFist mention this on Twitter and looked into it. As far as

00:31:54.980 I can tell, I've no idea where this information comes from. But the information that I was able

00:31:59.220 to see was that Galrain had about $15 million raised for him, as said by AIPAC and other

00:32:06.960 pro-Israel lobby donors. Whereas Massey seemed to have had about $10 million. So if he was

00:32:14.480 able to raise 10 times Galrain, he would presumably have, what, $150 million? I've no idea where

00:32:21.100 this figure is coming from, personally. I've just seen it thrown about. If you could tell

00:32:25.280 us where you got that information so that we can look we'll happily stand corrected yeah uh but

00:32:30.060 what sigil stone says that massey's largest donor is also a zionist jeff yes that is true yeah that

00:32:37.460 is true but clearly i mean this is why i'm not being actually anti-semitic because the problem

00:32:45.400 is the agenda of one single country whereas jeff yes is taking a stance that says actually it's not

00:32:53.000 good for the united states to keep on borrowing money and to have zero um zero concern for how

00:32:58.840 its money is being spent but hey i support israel as well fair enough if you're jewish this is what

00:33:04.060 you believe yeah there are like when we talk about these people as much as it may come across the sum

00:33:09.660 we're genuinely not trying to look at them as a monolith we understand like in any group exactly

00:33:14.980 there are rifts and disagreements and there are going to be people who are outliers and sent

00:33:19.160 and people in the center and people part of the establishment within that group are all going to

00:33:23.280 have different views on different things. Like it's possible to generalize about Islam and Muslims

00:33:27.640 without actually having a problem with every single Muslim, which is sort of my position on

00:33:33.040 Islam. And it's the same issue here with the AIPAC lobby, who are openly saying, if you oppose

00:33:41.120 Israel, we're going to destroy you. You're going to have to go through a buzzsaw, et cetera, et

00:33:45.680 etc so yeah we know that both every single side in the united states gets gets jewish money but 0.87

00:33:53.800 we also know that there is this very powerful lobby that since the 70s has had this insane

00:33:59.940 influence and arguably since well before the 70s so yeah there's a bunch of other comments we don't

00:34:07.020 have time to go through all of them but yeah okay thank you thank you all right moving on to

00:34:14.280 sunnier subjects, less serious subjects, I'm horrified to have to announce to you that the

00:34:23.720 quality of slop has reached an all-new low. Audiences have been shocked to find that The

00:34:30.920 Boys, the Amazon original series, had a terrible ending, which is another to add to the pile of an

00:34:39.060 ever-increasing list of television programs where everybody got strung along by them for a long while

00:34:45.100 and then the ending revealed it to have been a giant stinking turd the entire time. See, for one

00:34:51.320 of the most famous, probably the most famous examples of such after Dexter went and shat the

00:34:57.200 bed for its television finale, we have Game of Thrones, which of course very famously in its last

00:35:04.080 series series 8 took not only a nosedive but frankly just careened straight into the abyss

00:35:11.340 for the final few episodes particularly with the last one uh the iron throne now why is this

00:35:18.320 important frankly it's not that important which is why i'm putting it in the middle to give us a bit

00:35:23.980 of a break between the two horrifying segments that we've got but also people do absorb a lot

00:35:31.240 of information. They absorb a lot of their worldview and how they understand the world

00:35:35.960 around them through television as it's propaganda. And the fact that propaganda's quality is

00:35:42.640 declining quite so significantly as it has done over the past 10, 15 years since we've

00:35:49.240 gone through the woke period and then now we're kind of in the post-woke period where

00:35:54.260 they're still trying to push woke messages but not quite as in your face. So they've

00:35:59.900 kind of toned it down a little bit but they're still trying to subliminally get it in there

00:36:03.380 euphoria didn't get the message no euphoria didn't get the message and frankly the boys didn't get

00:36:07.560 the message either the fact that the quality of it has dropped so significantly does lead to

00:36:13.200 interesting questions of in the future what happens if people stop watching this stuff quite

00:36:20.680 so compulsively what happens if people switch off from the television propaganda will social

00:36:28.900 media propaganda take its place will people be left as we are kind of right now in this place

00:36:35.320 where there's no shared culture what happens in that situation but that's a question for the

00:36:41.080 future for right now we can just take a look at how politics brain has completely destroyed

00:36:46.220 writers ability to write compelling television anymore one of the other ones that happened

00:36:51.320 recently was i think it was earlier on this year uh yes the very first day of the year january

00:36:58.380 the first 2026 the final episode of stranger things came out which the imdb review score of

00:37:06.320 being 7.5 out of 10 doesn't quite give credence to how spectacularly bad this ending was now i

00:37:13.960 hadn't watched it since the second series which is kind of a theme that we'll find through here

00:37:18.380 because frankly the second series sucked and i didn't want to watch any more of it may i just

00:37:23.560 say as well there is when it comes to imdb in particular just constant examples of them

00:37:28.540 deleting a lot of lower star reviews from people so yeah to review bomb wars where i'm gonna give

00:37:35.420 you one out of ten well i'll give it ten out of ten yeah either way um what really really sells

00:37:41.720 this for being a really bad final to episode to a television show is that a conspiracy theory

00:37:48.200 started up after it had finished airing that there was a secret good episode of the show

00:37:54.440 to finish it off that had been withheld and that they were going to broadcast at some secret as

00:38:02.620 yet unspecified time because people were coping that hard at the end of the show was bad this is

00:38:08.860 the same thing that actually happened with um with bbc sherlock holmes right the one with benedict

00:38:14.420 Oh, yes.

00:38:15.600 If you remember, where the fourth series of that

00:38:18.120 was so spectacularly terrible.

00:38:20.460 That's bad.

00:38:20.920 If you all remember, Sherlock had a secret super sister

00:38:24.920 who he remembered in his brain, was it as a dog?

00:38:30.540 Something like that.

00:38:31.740 He'd camouflaged his own memory of his sister

00:38:34.960 who was a secret super genius ten times his level 0.99

00:38:37.960 but also an evil, murderous psychopath. 0.95

00:38:41.880 Who he'd forgotten about. 0.99

00:38:43.260 Yeah, yeah.

00:38:43.620 Who he had forgotten about.

00:38:45.520 What did Conan Doyle know he's just made?

00:38:48.000 Who then, in the final episode,

00:38:50.060 enacted a series of saw traps

00:38:52.360 on an island off of the coast of Tenty in Wales.

00:38:55.160 Which is a shame because I actually,

00:38:56.860 from what I remember, it's been years,

00:38:58.160 but I did quite enjoy the first two seasons or so of that.

00:39:01.800 I thought that the chemistry between the two leads

00:39:03.720 was really strong.

00:39:04.760 Well, it was so bad that people didn't believe

00:39:06.840 that it was bad and as such tried to come up

00:39:09.680 with the theory that there was a super secret,

00:39:11.480 actually good smart fourth episode of the fourth series that makes it all make sense spoiler there 0.69

00:39:18.480 wasn't it was shit the whole time which is something that happened with stranger things

00:39:23.820 spoiler again it was just a bad ending to the show and you can see that from people who gave 0.92

00:39:29.700 their reviews on here again there's a number here you can see the sort of like review bomb war that

00:39:35.780 was going on there's very few people in the middle uh people just saying meh why what was the point

00:39:41.300 of anything that's how you know you've really struck a great landing with it with the ending

00:39:45.460 especially why did i watch this to begin with right well yeah that's just what i was going to

00:39:49.300 say when people have had years of anticipation just traveling along with the story investing

00:39:53.680 themselves in it for it to just you know flop in their face it's uh it's not great yes and uh again

00:40:01.040 the boys is the latest victim of this uh the episode i believe aired last night right and i

00:40:07.560 watched a bit of it with my missus because she carried on watching the show post series two now

00:40:15.180 i watched the first two series and then the third series opened with a scene because it is a gross

00:40:21.260 out crass satire political satire of a show opened with a disgusting scene of an ant-man parody 1.00

00:40:30.840 shrinking down to tiny size and crawling into another man's penis to give him sexual pleasure 0.99

00:40:36.660 before accidentally losing control of his power, 1.00

00:40:40.560 growing to full size and exploding the man from his penis outwards. 0.99

00:40:44.700 At which point I decided, I don't need to watch this anymore. 1.00

00:40:51.260 I honestly just sat there, watched that scene and said,

00:40:54.560 watching, this isn't good for me to watch this.

00:40:58.360 This is gross.

00:40:59.520 This is just crass and gross for the sake of it. 0.77

00:41:02.520 But the show had these kind of illusions that it was something bigger

00:41:05.440 that it actually was. It wasn't just this disgusting gross-out show, it was a really

00:41:11.280 serious political satire, and you can see that through the kind of descriptions, and the show

00:41:17.500 was very inconsistent with this. By the time you get to series four, where there are some episodes

00:41:22.300 that are described from an omniscient third-person perspective, here's a brief outline of some of the

00:41:27.980 stuff that happens in the episode, and then there are some descriptions given in-universe which give

00:41:32.700 an idea of the kind of tone that we're going for and who the show's mocking. And I know this is

00:41:38.180 very high IQ Rick and Morty stuff. You've got to be really on the ball to be able to understand who

00:41:44.100 this is making fun of. But like, for instance, the second episode of series four, did you know

00:41:48.700 that globalists put chemicals in our food that make us gay? Dakota Bob is a demon from hell and 0.99

00:41:55.540 the moon isn't real find out what they want to keep from us hashtag truth con are you guys i know 0.97

00:42:03.240 it's subtle i know it's difficult right this might be a bit above your pay grade but are you getting

00:42:08.980 at what they're getting at here no idea really are they referring to something i don't is this

00:42:16.000 some kind of this might allusion to something else this might shock you but i believe it's trying to

00:42:21.960 satirized right-wing conspiracy theorists like alex jones really i know i know never heard of

00:42:28.800 went over my head they they maybe did a little bit of a too good a job integrating it into the

00:42:33.920 universe that was established in the first series and not making it too obvious but you know um

00:42:41.820 that's the kind of show that we're talking about and then we get to series five and it has the

00:42:47.180 classic rotten tomatoes breakdown alpha the the the reviewers love it the media critics they love

00:42:54.880 it audiences yeah little bit conflicted little bit conflicted what what are audiences saying

00:43:03.740 about it well you've got a four star half star five star four five four and a half star one star

00:43:11.160 half star half star it's a bit it's a mix it's a bit conflicted which we also see on the episode

00:43:19.520 list for series five as well and you know i watched a bit of it and the whole time i was kind of just

00:43:26.740 like because i've not been keeping up with the show i've kind of know through social media some

00:43:31.520 of the stuff that was going on you know you see all of the homeland and yeah show up on twitter

00:43:35.400 all over the time uh all the time and i kept just turning to my missus and going what happened to

00:43:41.120 that character and she just said oh homelander killed him and what happened to this character 0.70

00:43:45.600 oh homelander killed her what happened to these people homelander killed them so he's a right

00:43:50.100 wing stalin basically that's what they're trying to well they're trying to make him trump that 0.83

00:43:54.460 it's like what they imagine trump would be like if he had superpowers and yet israel is never

00:44:00.160 trump of their imagination please what's crazy as well is that they're still playing this trick now

00:44:05.120 to go back to um the original slide you had on game of thrones yes it's like i remember back when

00:44:10.620 they introduce Euron Greyjoy into the story in season six and that the actor who was playing

00:44:16.980 Euron in that it was like yeah well obviously I'm gonna try make it a bit of a reference and

00:44:22.040 nod to Trump and what he's like it's like why would I want my Greyjoy pirate who has been and

00:44:27.740 seen the dark arts of like the far world and is like imbued with mysticism and like all these

00:44:33.800 sorts of things to be like a cat like a poor imitation of like a modern presidential like

00:44:39.980 It's like, this is supposed to be another world.

00:44:43.260 Why are you doing this?

00:44:44.420 But they couldn't help themselves.

00:44:45.720 They couldn't help themselves in 2016.

00:44:47.700 And the fact that they still can't help themselves now.

00:44:51.680 The thing is, now they're not actually really making fun of Trump as he is.

00:44:57.040 They're making fun of the holdover liberal hallucination version of Trump

00:45:05.660 that they had back in 2015 and 2016

00:45:08.740 when they thought that he was going to be literally Hitler again, right?

00:45:13.280 And there's, you know, I'm not a huge Trump guy.

00:45:16.400 Nobody would accuse me of being one.

00:45:19.560 So there is plenty of legitimate things that you could make fun of Trump for these days,

00:45:24.940 but they don't actually make fun of him for any of those things.

00:45:28.820 They just make fun of him for their weird delusions of what he might have been like in 2016

00:45:34.340 had he actually been Hitler again.

00:45:36.660 and that's why you get these shows going so off the rails because they become so obsessed with

00:45:43.400 becoming political satire and trying to make everything about what's current that they forget

00:45:49.460 that they are trying to tell a story that's set in its own universe and again it's become more and

00:45:55.340 more obvious so I'm wondering if people are going to keep watching it if people are going to finally

00:46:01.200 cotton on to the fact that this is the trick that they pull again and again and again you'll have

00:46:05.640 one series that sets up this universe that has its own self-contained logic and characters and

00:46:11.340 chain of events and then the second series all of a sudden will be a rug pull and you'll go oh

00:46:17.440 this was about Trump the whole time which they do every single time but I don't know I don't have

00:46:23.360 much hope that people are going to stop falling for people over the years have proven again and

00:46:28.700 again that there's an infinite number of fell for it again awards that they can take over and over

00:46:34.380 but people were almost shocked that this was a bad show I will admit people on the right

00:46:40.420 were not shocked that this ending was absolutely terrible but the other thing I kept asking my

00:46:45.700 missus to get back to that was like is this it is this it the main villain of the show spoilers

00:46:52.240 dies halfway through the episode in the most pathetic wormy way possible and that's all

00:47:00.340 everybody's talking about because frankly everything that happens after it doesn't matter 0.94

00:47:04.280 because all anybody was watching the show for in the first place was Homelander the Trump stand-in

00:47:09.620 who was charismatic and entertaining to watch. Anthony Starr was just carrying the show on his

00:47:13.860 back. Yeah pretty much pretty much and the writers hated the audience for that the fact that they

00:47:20.420 were watching for Homelander and as far as I can tell also the character Soldier Boy who seemed

00:47:26.360 cool and principled and interesting but they wanted you to know he was a racist therefore he

00:47:32.620 was a very very bad man you shouldn't like him which is why he wasn't even in this episode i even

00:47:37.960 i was kind of like in in the simpsons where it's like whenever whenever poochie's not on screen

00:47:43.080 all the characters need to be asking where's poochie through this episode i was just asking

00:47:48.020 like where's where's soldier boy you know the only other good character in the entire show

00:47:53.080 but the writers didn't let you have that it was an incredible um it was incredible showcase of just

00:47:59.380 cock teasing the audience five series of them teasing this guy's gonna go off the edge this 0.95

00:48:07.100 guy's gonna go mental you've no idea what he's gonna do when he goes crazy doesn't go crazy

00:48:13.180 two series of like you're never gonna believe what happens when these two finally collide

00:48:19.240 doesn't happen yeah right at least with game of thrones you know denarius does go crazy it was

00:48:25.500 rushed and it sucked but she went crazy and you got the game spectacle yeah you got the spectacle

00:48:31.420 this was just a bunch of guys in a poorly choreographed fist fight in a bad set of the

00:48:36.780 oval office when the propaganda can't even give you the spectacle anymore yes what is there to

00:48:43.600 hold on to other than bad, annoying, in-your-face political messaging?

00:48:47.760 I think the point that you made is that the writers hate the audiences. That's the most

00:48:53.540 important thing. They are pulling your leg. They are having you on. They are pranking you.

00:49:01.360 They are roping you into these nonsense shows with the aim of annoying you at the end and making you 0.98

00:49:09.900 feel retarded for having invested that time in watching it i i will say and they keep on doing 0.77

00:49:15.180 sorry and they keep on doing it and apparently i didn't i didn't watch a single episode of the 0.88

00:49:21.580 lord of the rings amazon series i don't expect that neither did i no i refuse to hate watch it

00:49:26.300 exactly and it's sort of so transparent all i know about it is that they made the orcs into

00:49:32.800 normal human beings as opposed to being literally the most evil of evil they did the thing they did

00:49:39.020 the thing where they see the orcs and they go oh my god this is literally like brown people 0.96

00:49:43.640 and so they gave they gave one of this they gave one of them a really evil looking little

00:49:49.620 orc baby and made them refugees so you're supposed to feel bad for them um i was going to say there

00:49:55.500 is one exception because i've been sitting here thinking yeah that was bad that was bad and yeah 0.92

00:50:00.120 i heard that was terrible i'm like is there any exception like in the past five years of a series

00:50:05.000 that has had a good finale.

00:50:06.800 Better Call Saul?

00:50:07.680 Better Call Saul, which I've not seen, but I do know,

00:50:10.320 because obviously, as you know, I just finished Breaking Bad.

00:50:12.600 Breaking Bad.

00:50:13.340 Yeah, but the other one is Cobra Kai.

00:50:16.140 Cobra Kai had a genuinely solid finale.

00:50:20.340 So, I mean, if you're...

00:50:21.640 Not that it's a waste on you guys, but that was good.

00:50:24.000 That was genuinely good.

00:50:25.660 And a crowd pleaser.

00:50:26.880 It gave the fans what was earned and wanted.

00:50:29.020 It sounds like the writers didn't hate the audience.

00:50:32.520 No, no.

00:50:33.260 And that's the thing, is you shouldn't keep giving money and time and attention to people who absolutely hate your guts.

00:50:39.580 And the thing is, half of, like, oh yeah, just here's some of the things that people have been saying as well.

00:50:44.440 Just like, here's the villain, all those cool things that he was hinted that he should be doing, nothing.

00:50:50.560 Never does any of it.

00:50:52.340 Oh, he's going to really lose it next year, he doesn't.

00:50:55.080 The biggest rampage he ever did was a fantasy.

00:50:58.200 Just wait until he gets his hand on the MacGuffin, he gets the MacGuffin, nothing happens. 1.00

00:51:03.260 and then he dies amazing fantastic writing all because they hate you the chuds and half of the 0.99

00:51:10.280 audience also hates the other half of the audience because one half was watching it because they 0.67

00:51:15.280 unironically thought man this is excellently written biting cutting satire and the other end 0.93

00:51:22.640 was watching it kind of waiting for homelander to actually go crazy and just start killing liberals 0.58

00:51:28.820 because they were going to turn it into hype edits on Twitter and that's all that's all though so

00:51:34.580 both of these parts of the audience diametrically despise one another and only one got what they

00:51:40.500 wanted and are trying to desperately convince themselves that because it reaffirmed their

00:51:45.560 political beliefs back at them that makes it's good it parroted what I wanted to hear therefore

00:51:51.300 it good excellent and people are just trying to like explain the most obvious thing in the world

00:51:57.740 So at the end of the show, well, in the middle of the last episode, this evil Trump supervillain, superpowered, godlike creature gets his powers taken away from him, tries to run away, and then just gets murdered. 0.99

00:52:10.460 And as he's being murdered, he begs, he says, oh, I'll suck you off if you don't kill me. 0.99

00:52:18.020 I'll debase myself in all manner of ways. 1.00

00:52:20.760 And they still kill him.

00:52:22.380 Isn't that the same ending as that Civil War film?

00:52:25.740 Pretty much.

00:52:26.480 and that's that's the thing that they they always push this same message and they may they spell it 0.88

00:52:32.540 out right here that eric kripke the creator of the show said he's so cowardly and blubbering and

00:52:38.080 pathetic as our most strong men when you remove their power and they're brave and and they're 0.72

00:52:44.160 faced with their intimate death they rarely handle it bravely so what we have here is a classic case 0.89

00:52:50.900 of revenge of the nerds logic it's revenge of the nerds writing all the shows which is why so many

00:52:57.220 people for so long had this idea in the back of their minds that blonde haired blue eyed interesting

00:53:03.960 how those those two features always go together in this um tall athletic handsome men are awful 0.67

00:53:12.200 evil people who are actually secretly really insecure cowards and they've also probably got 0.81

00:53:18.140 loads of weird sexual hang-ups and the people who are really morally virtuous in real life 1.00

00:53:23.460 are spineless, pathetic, cowardly nerds. They're probably about five foot six, they've probably got 1.00

00:53:30.680 dark hair, receding hairlines, they wear glasses, they've got a body mass of maybe

00:53:36.800 50 pounds soaking wet and they really like computers and girls never liked them in high

00:53:43.620 school but that's only because the evil big handsome jocks bullied them and they just stacy

00:53:49.320 never could see the real me on the inside that's how these kind of like cultural stereotypes got 0.98

00:53:56.820 pushed through the media because um the spiteful disgusting nerds were the ones writing this the 0.86

00:54:02.740 whole time and they still are they still are but they just make it more and more obvious because 0.98

00:54:10.740 now they just come out and say yeah i wrote this because i'm a spineless spiteful weasel 0.56

00:54:16.800 i wrote this because tall blonde strong men intimidate me and i just hope that they're 0.99

00:54:24.280 as weak and pathetic on the inside as i am and that's all that's all you ever get from these 0.97

00:54:29.940 shows that's all you ever get and people like people have just been making fun of this like 0.97

00:54:34.620 howling mutant when i saw this scene oh my god i finally realized he was the bad guy i'd spent 0.92

00:54:41.820 five years idolizing him but he wasn't a hero after all he would even engage in gay stuff to 0.78

00:54:48.340 save his own life which is the worst thing that a man can do which is an ironic bit of messaging 0.97

00:54:53.780 that the show put forward there because they they're so animated by hatred and anger that

00:55:01.880 They can't keep their lines straight.

00:55:03.800 They can't keep their stories straight.

00:55:05.760 They can't stick to their own messaging.

00:55:07.920 There's a weird contradiction in the show

00:55:09.840 where all of the villains are also portrayed 0.99

00:55:12.380 as being degenerate sexual perverts, 0.99

00:55:15.300 which is this weird old-school morality being put onto it, 0.99

00:55:19.000 but mainly because, like you say, they confuse the messaging.

00:55:22.100 They know that it grosses people out,

00:55:24.240 so the otherwise conservative and right-wing coded people

00:55:28.380 have to be portrayed as being you know like yep morally hypocritical but also you get to judge 0.98

00:55:33.840 them for being disgusting perverts at the same time you know here's just some writing advice 0.99

00:55:39.080 you don't humiliate your villains as pathetic because it makes your heroes look like they've 0.99

00:55:43.500 barely achieved anything yes that's that's like that's like a classic heroic trope like goliath 0.85

00:55:50.440 doesn't turn out to have been a weaselly coward the whole time because if he had then david barely

00:55:56.580 achieved anything right exactly yeah right it's just it's just the obvious thing to do i mean

00:56:01.220 fortunately this has had no impact on me whatsoever because i take all of my moral guidance from

00:56:05.780 writers for amazon there you go but sadly a lot of people do or at least they pretend to do to

00:56:12.460 annoy people online and why is all of this again it's because they decided to like imprint their

00:56:19.620 political biases onto this they've been very very clear about this the whole way through show a

00:56:26.040 showrunner Eric Kripke, yes Homelander on The Boys is supposed to be Donald Trump and this was

00:56:33.400 such a pervasive problem in the writing that Anthony Starr who played him has said that you

00:56:40.080 know I agree with all of these mild references to the real world but in the clip here he has to go

00:56:46.200 on and explain but I do keep having to remind him that this is a character in a fictional universe

00:56:51.180 and I'm more interested in playing him than a Donald Trump parody.

00:56:56.700 And that's amazing.

00:56:58.880 You have to keep telling the writer.

00:57:01.020 That sounds to me like the opinion of a serious actor.

00:57:04.480 Yeah, even if he is a liberal with views that I disagree with strongly,

00:57:08.660 at least he's like, I do kind of want to be playing a character.

00:57:11.380 Yeah.

00:57:11.780 I want to be playing a character here.

00:57:14.580 And here's just some other examples.

00:57:16.800 There was this character in the show apparently called Firecracker

00:57:19.880 where the showrunner Eric Kripke again said that he was looking to try and make the character

00:57:25.740 into an allegory for Marjorie Taylor Greene, Megyn Kelly, and Lauren Boebert and Pam Bondi,

00:57:32.180 people who Donald Trump has stabbed in the back, as the character of Homelander does to this

00:57:36.940 character in the show. So again, it's just like, I can't, the propaganda can't even be subtle.

00:57:42.640 It's just like, this has to be propaganda first and foremost. But to be fair, I'm grateful for

00:57:48.560 them making it as clear as possible because maybe more people will notice this as has been happening

00:57:53.640 over the past 15 years and then that one of the one of the amazing things they waste people's time

00:57:59.520 by putting in the final episode of the show they just introduced this guy out of nowhere to be

00:58:05.240 elon musk really they they just do it to be elon musk but again they do this contradictory thing

00:58:12.620 where he's there he goes i need to talk to you about white fertility rates i'm the world's

00:58:16.620 richest man I want to bankroll you and then Homelander just like flies him to space and 0.98

00:58:21.480 kills him because no scene in the show can end without Homelander murdering somebody in a 0.92

00:58:26.920 gratuitous manner right and you just sit to yourself and you think but if the point is to 0.92

00:58:32.460 say that like Homelander is Donald Trump and he's evil and he cares about all of these evil things

00:58:37.800 like white fertility rates why also have him enact your liberal fantasy of murdering Elon Musk by 0.75

00:58:46.000 sending him to space and letting him suffocate he's he is he is all things for all times because

00:58:52.600 he needs to be every revenge fantasy he enacts the writer's revenge fantasies while at the same

00:58:59.240 time being the subject of the writer's revenge fantasies in his final moments it's completely

00:59:05.760 incoherent and it's so obvious what the writers are doing which is why it's all the funnier

00:59:11.740 that some people think that they're still very smart 0.98

00:59:14.320 when they say dumb right-wingers not understanding 1.00

00:59:17.260 the show was always about how dumb and toxic they are. 1.00

00:59:22.060 Really? 1.00

00:59:24.140 Really?

00:59:25.260 Oh, my God, there's 16,000 likes.

00:59:27.920 No.

00:59:30.100 I mean, I hope they're all ironic.

00:59:32.120 I can't believe it.

00:59:32.720 I thought that Homelander was literally me this whole time. 1.00

00:59:38.780 I don't know how I'm going to live with this now, chaps. 1.00

00:59:41.740 I guess I'm just going to have to go to the rumble rants instead. 1.00

00:59:46.120 All right.

00:59:47.060 So, oh, there's quite a few.

00:59:50.080 Start with one tall order.

00:59:51.940 Yeah.

00:59:52.440 Finally caught back up on the podcast.

00:59:54.780 Broke my leg on the 19th of October last year.

00:59:57.920 Didn't listen to any of my podcasts while recovering until the 28th of January.

01:00:01.600 Took almost four months, but I'm finally listening live.

01:00:03.820 Well, I hope that you've been recovering well.

01:00:07.360 And thanks for tuning back in.

01:00:08.740 Yeah, thank you. 0.99

01:00:09.320 sigil stone i long for the days of how i met your mother when the ending just plain old sucked ass 0.89

01:00:14.460 i never watched it uh once i'll order again it's very strange listening to you all in real speed 0.66

01:00:19.760 again instead of 1.5 times it sounds like everyone on the panel is sloshed lmao sounds like

01:00:24.680 uh random name every everyone wanted homelander to fed post everyone and instead he got cooked

01:00:33.560 somehow art imitates life sigil stone reminder that that is actually more true about trump than

01:00:39.020 anything else yeah pretty much reminder that eric kripke's previous show supernatural ends with

01:00:44.640 killing god and replacing him with what i'm sure is not totally eric kripke's self-insert again

01:00:50.420 it's the spiteful uh spiteful mutant revenge of the nerds mindset they just can't help but do it

01:00:56.320 every single time uh all right over to mine samson please thank you all right then ladies and

01:01:07.000 gentlemen. So we have the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, who has been doing something of a

01:01:13.460 European tour in the past week. He's been to the Netherlands. He's been to Norway, Sweden. He's been

01:01:20.500 to Italy. And there are a few commonalities and things that sort of, you know, just strike you

01:01:26.960 as obvious as you go through these trips with various and, you know, diplomatic meetings with

01:01:32.840 various European leaders, and the sort of things that Modi is obviously trying to get from them.

01:01:39.500 So first of all, we have his arrival in Amsterdam, where he went and met King William Alexander and

01:01:46.700 Queen Maxima, and basically got the red carpet rolled out for him. Now, naturally, some plans

01:01:53.420 were made, trade deals were struck, and all sorts of things were put together. But the one that is

01:01:58.560 really worth talking about is the fact that uh if i go well i've got it here forgive me goes on to

01:02:05.300 say that the two prime ministers acknowledged the strong people to people ties which represent

01:02:12.060 thanks harry which represent an important pillar of the india netherlands relationship

01:02:18.040 what important pillar of the india i didn't realize there was one um prime minister people

01:02:24.420 to people. What? Apparently, it was just, you know, such incredible ties. Prime Minister Yeten

01:02:30.520 showed gratitude for the contribution made by the Indian community in the Netherlands to Dutch

01:02:36.920 society. Both leaders reaffirmed their resolve to further facilitate people. I thought the rivers

01:02:42.660 were very clean in the Netherlands. You know what, as well, this might surprise you. The Netherlands

01:02:47.840 is not close to India. Really? They are not neighbours in any way. People to people contact

01:02:54.360 between the two countries, particularly through youth, academia, professional workforce, sports

01:03:01.400 and cultural exchange. Noting the importance of facilitating fair migration, bloody cheek of the 1.00

01:03:08.480 phrase, and mobility between the two countries, both leaders welcomed the signing of a memorandum

01:03:14.500 on understanding on migration and mobility. The two countries also agreed to further strengthen

01:03:21.100 cooperation with a view to prevent and combat illegal, they say irregular, but they mean illegal

01:03:27.720 migration and trafficking of human beings and encouraging the fair mobility of high-skilled

01:03:33.800 professionals. I mean, if you can point me to some evidence of them, I would love for it, but 0.99

01:03:40.140 I find it wanting. This approach is guided by international standards that ensure migrant 1.00

01:03:46.860 workers are treated with dignity and respect, including fair mobility, transparent visa

01:03:52.540 processes, and the protection of workers' rights. Now, the obvious thing...

01:03:57.080 Dare to say that to the Saudis. 1.00

01:03:59.000 No, you wouldn't. But this is the point, isn't it? Modi knows how weak our leaders are when 1.00

01:04:06.120 it comes to all of these sorts of things. And they know as well that the EU bureaucrats

01:04:11.660 and the leaders have no moral scruple whatsoever

01:04:14.680 because it's all just about birth rates, birth rates, 0.98

01:04:17.700 which just means bringing in more foreigners

01:04:19.620 and not actually solving the underlying problems,

01:04:22.800 which include mass immigration,

01:04:25.460 that are obviously, you know, really hampering our own ability 0.98

01:04:28.540 to get on the housing ladder, have our own children and all the rest.

01:04:32.260 But the other thing as well is that the Netherlands is a country

01:04:35.720 with a population of 18 million.

01:04:38.060 It's tiny.

01:04:38.800 It's tiny.

01:04:39.420 If some Dutch academic wants to go to, you know, to New Delhi to study at one of their universities or something, no one's going to notice it.

01:04:51.280 But if you were to move just a small, like 0.1% of India's overall population into the Netherlands, everyone would notice it overnight.

01:05:02.200 They'd be overwhelmed. 1.00

01:05:03.480 That's the thing.

01:05:04.360 When they say fair migration and they're talking about mobility between the two countries,

01:05:08.140 well who's going to be getting more of whom exactly how many dutch are going to get a pension in india

01:05:14.400 they do them yeah apparently maybe maybe we've read this all entirely wrong because you'll notice

01:05:21.740 a pattern here that this is something that comes up with many of the countries that is visited

01:05:26.260 now we might be wrong maybe this is modi saying guys hundred you know had good few decades of

01:05:33.420 independence at this point we really need you back i'm going to give out treaties with european

01:05:38.960 nations and you can all just come and have your little share of india but i suspect that that's

01:05:43.700 not what's actually going on can i give my guesses as to three reasons why this is happening oh please

01:05:49.400 and why modi's main main diplomatic process seems to be i will give you as many indians as you are

01:05:57.100 willing to accept. One, expansion of soft power. Just having lots of Indians everywhere means that

01:06:03.740 you've got different nodes in different countries through which to exert influence. Two, expand the

01:06:08.740 remittance base so you've got more money. India already has over 100 billion dollars worth of

01:06:15.460 remittances coming into the country every single year. Five percent of GDP. Yeah, it's a ridiculous

01:06:19.800 amount of GDP. So a lot of their GDP is dependent on it, so it gets that. And three, it also

01:06:26.740 alleviates interstate migration pressures that exist within india india is not just a country

01:06:33.560 with a huge population india is a huge country with a massively dependent population and a lot

01:06:40.420 of people who can't get work in their own home states so they try and move from one state to

01:06:45.740 another which puts huge pressure this is a way to alleviate that that's my three guesses as to

01:06:50.460 what's going on yeah well we'll we'll um we'll focus in on the first one that you provided

01:06:55.280 because that's definitely the case here from Modi's own words.

01:06:58.340 So it goes on to say that, as reported by the Financial Express,

01:07:03.800 the Netherlands is home to over 90,000 Indians and persons of Indian origin,

01:07:10.700 as well as a significant Suriname-Hindustani community.

01:07:15.960 Modi's visit included a community programme and discussions with Dutch business leaders.

01:07:21.380 The bio talks about semiconductors, clean energy, defense, innovation, technology.

01:07:27.460 I mean, you know.

01:07:28.220 Tesla just abandoning India now.

01:07:31.060 I think Tesla is, I think I read somewhere that Tesla is ditching India because they can't make it work there.

01:07:37.080 And I think Apple tried a big investment in India and it was like, thanks, no, it doesn't work.

01:07:44.540 So he's trying Europe.

01:07:47.340 Well, there has been the new EU trade deal as well, hasn't it?

01:07:52.520 And with New Zealand as well, and all corners of the Anglosphere.

01:07:57.160 Well, Elon Musk, if he's abandoning deals in India,

01:08:00.460 he's clearly going with plan B and has been for a while, 1.00

01:08:02.920 which is bring the Indians to you. 0.97

01:08:05.600 So that might be what's happening with Europe. 0.99

01:08:08.580 Yeah.

01:08:09.080 But listen to the way that Modi speaks here.

01:08:11.100 When he actually went on to meet some of the diaspora

01:08:15.760 living in the Netherlands, it says,

01:08:17.340 Your ancestors left many things behind when they came here, but some things always stayed with them.

01:08:23.740 The fragrance of their soil, memories of their festivals, the melodies of devotional songs, and the values passed down by their forefathers, Modi said during his address.

01:08:34.000 Now, this immediately suggests, of course, that they actually have Indian values and Indian identities and not European values and European identities.

01:08:42.760 I know that this is not a very big brain take.

01:08:45.900 However, seeing as all of our leaders seem to be gullible enough to accept it, perhaps it is a more insightful comment than they're able to get.

01:08:56.620 I'll just read some more passages going down where it says that generations change, countries change, surroundings change, but family values in the sense of belonging never changed.

01:09:07.260 and from from a separate interview that i don't have the link for it said it's always a delight

01:09:11.780 to interact with the indian diaspora so much love and enthusiasm to tell you the truth for a while

01:09:18.360 i even forgot that i'm in the netherlands feels like um some festival is going on somewhere in

01:09:24.740 india he said it's like yeah yeah i i guess it would feel like that how is this good for dutch

01:09:31.120 people right where is the dutch uh can you do a stone toss meme now yeah and so then we move on

01:09:40.500 to sweden you know poor poor sweden which is going through the exact same thing and has had to have

01:09:46.240 um um you know a visit from modi as well and would you believe it uh it just so happens if

01:09:54.400 you go to an article further down here he talks about the fact that uh the prime minister underline

01:10:00.160 the importance of connectivity and the greed to advance talent attraction and active promotion

01:10:06.080 of people-to-people exchanges. This word keeps coming back time and time again, including

01:10:11.920 mobility of students and researchers study in Sweden and highlighting skilled labour

01:10:17.460 work in Sweden. The Prime Minister Moreau...

01:10:20.320 Why isn't it the other way around?

01:10:23.640 Because no one wants to.

01:10:25.080 Oh.

01:10:25.340 because who in sweden like and also you've got any country in the world to go to

01:10:32.440 why would you choose india what what are you saying i'm saying that there are places that

01:10:39.880 would be less stressful to maybe go and do your work experience well a lot of people want to go

01:10:44.880 there to find themselves i suppose yeah i think i think the the funny thing is like if you said

01:10:52.620 this 10 years ago I think everybody would have just said like oh yeah I'd love to go to India

01:10:56.360 it's so spiritual and magical but in the past year especially it's his reputation online has

01:11:03.640 just completely tanked yeah and strange as well there was another point I wanted to draw on here

01:11:10.260 which is that whilst Modi has been going about having the meetings and you know the private

01:11:14.880 ceremonies with all of these European leaders as well a lot of the entertainment and kind of like

01:11:21.240 cultural connection that they're trying to do, the diplomacy of it, is to show him things like

01:11:27.400 this. As Modi says here, this isn't Oslo, which you'd never guess by the picture, but this is in

01:11:33.820 Oslo. It says, including rhythms of India, which reflects the cultural diversity of India. Now,

01:11:39.180 I do also have points about this as well when he comes to Italy, but I'll just actually make the

01:11:45.260 larger point here, which is that what's very strange is that if a European leader goes to

01:11:50.660 India. India, Modi, his, you know, government, always use it as an excuse to show like the

01:11:58.400 cultural majesty of India. That, you know, how beautiful India is and its culture to say to the

01:12:04.040 Europeans, look how vitalistic we are. Look how in sync we are with our own heritage and our own

01:12:10.760 sense of place. Which is a reasonable thing for a place to do that is proud of its own heritage.

01:12:14.860 Absolutely. But when it comes to Europe, it's full of European leaders not showing him what is best about Dutch culture, what is best about Norwegian culture, what is best about Italian culture.

01:12:28.740 It's them saying, oh, look, here's like a sort of mock-up of that thing that you guys do over there.

01:12:33.900 because they have no confidence in their own culture.

01:12:38.180 They've eroded it down so much

01:12:39.700 that the leader wouldn't be able to tell you

01:12:42.340 something that was innately Norwegian in culture

01:12:45.280 or Italian in culture that is distinct,

01:12:48.280 truly distinct from the overall sort of rules-based values

01:12:52.860 that they're trying to impose on everyone.

01:12:55.080 So we're diluting our own culture in all of this

01:12:57.940 whilst basically saying, look, your culture is on the ascendancy.

01:13:01.300 Can we see this work of art?

01:13:03.900 Yes.

01:13:11.660 Very sweet and much like him.

01:13:14.760 What's with the ominous music in the background?

01:13:17.300 That was like dark.

01:13:18.540 He knew what he was doing.

01:13:20.660 That was like Jaws music.

01:13:22.200 Yeah.

01:13:27.400 Yes, Feras.

01:13:29.020 I'm just looking at this comment from That's a Random Name.

01:13:32.820 Ah, yes.

01:13:33.900 i'm looking at it too now uh so then we had the fact that he attended the third indian nordic

01:13:40.160 summit now i don't know what geopolitical um sort of reasons that scandinavia might have to be

01:13:49.740 i mean it's it's the wrong side of europe if any we're not even talking about you know greece and

01:13:54.800 the mediterranean here like you know just think god over the medias for a reason security i guess

01:14:00.980 They need Indian help securing their borders from Russian aggression.

01:14:04.660 Oh, wait.

01:14:06.040 And how better allies...

01:14:08.320 I was going to say, what does the I in BRICS stand for?

01:14:10.320 Oh, no.

01:14:12.220 And how better to help shore up India,

01:14:16.460 the joint effort of Indian-Norwegian security 1.00

01:14:19.900 than making sure that a load of Indians go to Norway for work

01:14:24.620 and studenting and...

01:14:26.780 I just lost a word for a second there.

01:14:29.660 I've studies. Thank you. Yeah, for their studies and studenting. And so it's all very, very

01:14:37.460 frustrating. As you can see, this is as well. He met Ursula von der Leyen when he was in Gothenburg

01:14:42.060 and the EU have made a deal with India, which is exactly on the same lines as well. I mean,

01:14:48.640 at the risk of being provocative, you know, in Snatch by Guy Ritchie, where they talk about the 0.97

01:14:53.660 fact, it's like, oh, you know what it's like with the gypsy soul? It's like they're always throwing 1.00

01:14:57.520 dogs in with deals it's like with this it's like they're always throwing migrants in with deals 0.97

01:15:02.800 it's just you can't have an agreement with india without allowing them to let tens of hundreds of

01:15:09.520 thousands of their people and there's just sorry no go we'll enable some trade benefits here we'll

01:15:15.760 maybe reduce some tariffs and we'll get these products over to you if you give us these raw

01:15:20.420 materials oh we've got some very specific raw materials we'd like you to accept as well which

01:15:25.520 will definitely strengthen all in the long game because your entire country will have been taken 0.89

01:15:31.340 out from beneath you in the name of just my gdp uh and so we get to it in italy of course here

01:15:37.840 where the italians are now learning how to um how to do some indian music was it performing

01:15:45.060 ham sad wani i assume because italians i mean they're not very famous for culture are they

01:15:52.260 What do they know about it?

01:15:54.180 I'd like to see...

01:15:56.100 What's her face? Who's the...

01:15:58.420 I've forgotten her name. Maloney? Maloney, yeah, that's her name. 1.00

01:16:01.260 Sorry, I've been away for a few weeks.

01:16:03.900 I'd like to see her go to India and for Modi to rustle her up

01:16:08.100 some handmade pasta and spaghetti bolognese and stuff like that.

01:16:12.980 I'd like to see that.

01:16:14.820 In some great Indian sculptor who has made his very own Michelangelo,

01:16:19.980 you know, his own David. 1.00

01:16:21.780 I don't think that's what they'd do, though.

01:16:23.380 No, but, I mean, if what, you know, to do it all fairly.

01:16:27.360 And so then you've just got this picture as well.

01:16:29.420 And bearing in mind that Maloney is just someone who was brought into power

01:16:34.440 based on a lot of anti-migration sentiment.

01:16:38.780 Anti-illegal migration.

01:16:40.560 Oh, wow.

01:16:41.120 Very different thing.

01:16:42.280 Migration half a million a year, I think.

01:16:44.600 Got me there. 0.79

01:16:45.780 So this is the most boomer picture I've ever seen.

01:16:48.360 It's pretty terrible, isn't it?

01:16:50.500 I mean, it just makes a point as well.

01:16:51.820 So everywhere that Modi goes, there's no European city that he's not thinking about,

01:16:58.380 hmm, how can I fit 100,000 Indians into this?

01:17:01.620 In this image right here, he's thinking how many Indians could fit into that coliseum behind him. 0.92

01:17:06.460 How many coliseums of Indians would be required?

01:17:12.060 And then as well, we go back to the fact that, oh, the Indian community in Italy,

01:17:16.900 I thank them for my warm welcome to Rome last evening.

01:17:20.320 It's like, that's funny. 1.00

01:17:21.500 I thought they were Italians, you know? 0.97

01:17:25.340 Administratively, they're Italians,

01:17:27.540 but they've all come out to see this man that, you know,

01:17:31.460 I mean, especially the way that they're dressed as well.

01:17:34.360 Sorry, go on, Harry, you had a...

01:17:35.560 I was just going to say, but you are right

01:17:37.080 that all of our leaders just keep protecting it.

01:17:40.560 Right, and it comes back to what we were saying

01:17:42.940 in your segment as well, Firas, about APAC.

01:17:45.400 It's like, look, from their own sense of preservation and their own power, it's like, you get why they're doing it. I understand why Modi is doing this. What I don't understand are why our leaders are allowing it to happen.

01:17:58.960 And the other problem that we have is that the longer it's allowed to go on and the more that the Indian diaspora is able to flourish and, as you say, Harry, create this soft power throughout the continent, not just in Europe, but in America, in Canada, in New Zealand and many other places as well, it's going to make it much harder to detangle ourselves from that power when we get to a point where it's like, actually, it's time for your community. 0.96

01:18:28.960 communities for obviously foreign communities, which is why you're doing things like this, 0.74

01:18:33.280 it's time for you to go home now, right? And then all of a sudden, because of all these trade deals

01:18:38.580 you've done with India and you've linked your economy to them inextricably, it's going to 0.84

01:18:43.820 really, really hurt. It's going to really hurt. Well, one of the other reasons for this, like you 0.57

01:18:49.140 say, is my GDP, but a lot of these governments will face a lot of business pressure from enormous

01:18:56.200 multinational corporations who are trying to get as much cheap labor into every nation that they

01:19:01.280 operate in um as possible you know like in london britain there's the chamber of commerce which says

01:19:07.300 like oh there are all of these different jobs which aren't going right now we're not filling

01:19:11.860 these positions we have this many vacant positions so there's this deficit so we need to bring more

01:19:17.500 people in so that we can fill that deficit rather than pay more rather than pay more ignore as well

01:19:22.140 the fact that a lot of those positions will just be ghost positions put up online that don't

01:19:26.720 actually go anywhere because they're just putting the job up so they have something to advertise

01:19:30.380 which is just a completely different subject that'll be happening all over europe those

01:19:35.460 businesses will be saying therefore because of this we need more people in so there is a huge

01:19:40.780 business incentive and so if we're talking about italy frankly in classic italian fashion one of

01:19:48.860 the ways that you stamp down on political pressure to continue doing this, you would have to bring

01:19:54.200 the massive corporations under heel, whether that be through antitrust action or greater

01:20:01.840 regulations on them. Obviously, you want to give them enough room to be able to conduct their

01:20:07.020 business without them just shifting somewhere else in the globalized system. But you do need

01:20:12.160 to really bring these people under heel because they do not care about your country. They care

01:20:17.420 about their bottom line. Yeah. I've gotten some flack for saying this, but a system in which

01:20:21.640 billionaires fall from windows is better than a system in which billionaires buy elections.

01:20:26.820 Yeah. Just to conclude with this point here as well, and I swear, if there are Italians 0.99

01:20:33.400 listening to this, just really take this in. Maloney and Modi welcomed the launch of the ICI

01:20:40.240 Italy Calls India, a university enterprise talent bridge aimed at enhancing the talent of

01:20:46.860 indian students enrolled in italian universities by offering concrete pathways for guidance matching

01:20:53.960 and qualified integration into italian enterprises they also discussed the possibility of strengthening

01:21:00.940 the cooperation to fight against irregular migration because why have irregular migration

01:21:06.500 when you could have regular indian migration because nobody on a student visa ever overstayed

01:21:11.360 right no and and also right we absolutely didn't just have some tamil guy come from india in the

01:21:18.160 past three years and he's now a green member of the scottish parliament on the student visa still

01:21:24.060 applying for a longer term visa as well i mean what we're describing here and what we're describing

01:21:28.780 in a lot of these cases when it comes to the universities and the student visas it's just a

01:21:32.500 gigantic pyramid scheme to keep these universities open and making money universities need to be

01:21:36.740 broken yeah their backs need to be broken yeah and there's there's got to be an acceptance that

01:21:42.100 there's going to be a massive recession but after that things will improve but nothing will improve

01:21:47.260 before a massive recession that sort of stamps on big businesses and stamps on the universities

01:21:52.520 in 2008 could have been that but they just decided to keep bailing all of the all of the

01:21:56.820 all of the culprits out um and whilst all of this is going on as well you've just got Ursula von

01:22:04.280 and giving just medals out to all of the wonderful Eurocrats and, oh gosh, aren't they all doing a

01:22:11.280 wonderful job? Angela Merkel, you get an order of merit for all of the good that you've done for

01:22:17.460 Europe. I mean, it really is. It's just the most sickening sight as all of them go on and just

01:22:22.300 take these deals that are obviously bad for European peoples, especially when Modi is so

01:22:30.280 overt with his intentions of what this is going to lead to and why he's doing it and who his

01:22:37.100 loyalty is towards which actually he seems to be indians i you know imagine that how strange

01:22:44.240 yeah who he knows will always be indian yeah yeah no matter how many generations he knows

01:22:49.680 that they're always going to be indian but everybody in europe is pretending that russi

01:22:55.040 but i am loyal to england and the english and of the europeans and so uh i just think i should

01:23:03.660 bring your attention to it you know you are it is interesting how it works so you've just reminded

01:23:09.240 me of how um ian smith you know at the end of rhodesia he wasn't african when he come back to

01:23:18.140 came back to england because ultimately we are always we always carry where um our history with

01:23:25.920 us and we can't and we can't escape it and that's what he's banking on yep uh i can't read that

01:23:31.020 that's a random name but we know uh pseudelstone made an excellent point very valid question but

01:23:38.740 yes it does call for a uh space marine intervention well mcleod also answering our

01:23:44.720 query from earlier said, correction for earlier comment wasn't 10 times, but still a difference.

01:23:49.680 Galrain fund raised $2.4 million, while Massey fund raised $5.5 million, according to FEC data.

01:23:56.420 Oh, you're confused about this. The amount that the candidate raises is one thing.

01:24:02.420 The amount that the PACs and the super PACs spend in support of a candidate is an entirely

01:24:07.360 different thing and so even going by your numbers uh that would give around 17 million just counting

01:24:15.400 the israeli money plus the 2 million 17 million to um massey's opponent and just 15 million to

01:24:24.100 in total just assuming that there's no other division in the remaining 10 million so just by

01:24:30.740 your numbers you're mistaken because you need to count the packs and the super packs which always

01:24:35.220 outspend the candidates. That is how big money buys elections. And that rests on a case that was

01:24:40.840 adjudicated under Obama, that pretty much allowed businesses to spend as much money as they wanted

01:24:46.620 to buy elections. So no, you're wrong about this. Thanks, Obama. Video comments? To be fair, Obama

01:24:52.920 opposed it. Obama opposed the Supreme Court ruling, but it was adjudicated under him.

01:24:57.500 Interesting. Okay, let's go, Samson. So nets have gone down, and you can't use debit cards in all

01:25:04.280 of europe that's an empty self-checkout behind me and large lines in the direction for cash so

01:25:11.080 testless society might not have been that great of an idea anyway

01:25:15.760 yeah it was interesting actually one one of the things i was pleasantly surprised about when i

01:25:22.180 went when i visited japan a few years ago was how much emphasis ordinary people put on still using

01:25:28.140 cash like they make an active decision to use cash and you wouldn't expect that i suppose from

01:25:33.000 are places technologically forward as japan but fair play to them

01:25:36.680 so there's this interesting old uh battle tech novel called ideal war very relevant to our times

01:25:45.160 it's about a military officer basically being sent to some fringe military theater that's

01:25:49.860 basically grinding on for like 20 years or something and the thing is everyone's saying

01:25:54.620 everything's going according to plan we're winning every battle but why are we still there

01:25:58.520 so he gets to the front line it turns out everyone is cooking the books everyone's lying

01:26:03.840 about the data so they're counting like every insurgent kill as 20 dead and sam applies to

01:26:09.600 everything else and keep that in mind whenever a left winger says the data says the crime is going

01:26:14.680 down yeah cool any more samson i think we've got a few more this message is a little bit late but

01:26:25.160 i felt that it's best to send it anyway the united rallies was a good sign of process

01:26:32.720 against tyranny in the uk but the right wing is still divided settle aside your differences

01:26:39.440 and disagreements and stand united for a common cause and remember you are not alone

01:26:45.260 on behalf of all australians we stand with you guys against your fight against tyranny 0.74

01:26:55.160 thank you for the good day to you too yeah and i do just see uh aussies as they're brits on the 0.72

01:27:02.940 other side of the world absolutely that's what you are yeah so i appreciate it yeah and good

01:27:06.680 luck to the aussie patriots in your own you know with your own problems you know i find

01:27:12.060 incredibly funny at times but the mark carney pm of canada finds it like real is piss not america

01:27:18.960 You know, the people, they pour like 70 to 90% of all their foods, processed foods some, you know, everything that's not bread, bread, juice, everything, everything that's processed.

01:27:33.400 I mean, Canadians have like their own stuff.

01:27:35.880 I mean, they have raw vegetables.

01:27:38.440 I'm sure they love this, not the grocery.

01:27:43.700 I didn't really make out some of what you were saying.

01:27:45.480 No, sorry, I struggled to hear a lot.

01:27:47.860 I'm sorry, the first half of that was a little bit choppy.

01:27:51.240 I could make out what you were talking about

01:27:52.920 with processed foods and vegetables and such towards the end.

01:27:56.680 Canada.

01:27:57.360 Yeah, in Canada, Mark Carney.

01:27:59.500 Apologies if we can't really answer that as a result.

01:28:02.280 Yes.

01:28:02.460 But thank you for sending in the video comment anyway.

01:28:10.580 Yes, we're talking about this.

01:28:17.860 yeah basically i can't believe my asian wife turned out to be a chinese spy 0.51

01:28:29.820 oh brother first time 0.86

01:28:33.160 oh that's the car that you spent like three years working on that's what it actually looks like

01:28:46.760 Nah, I just bought the E-Type.

01:28:48.820 It was a sitting for 10 years, sort-em-out mechanics special.

01:28:52.420 Screamin' deal.

01:28:53.320 Never thought I'd own one.

01:28:54.640 This is what I've been working on for the last three and a half years.

01:28:57.580 My grandfather's 66 Dodge wagon.

01:29:00.220 Anything that ain't blue, I made.

01:29:02.560 Note, nothing is blue. 1.00

01:29:04.420 She'd be ready for final assembly if my body man would just get off his fat ass and paint the damn thing. 1.00

01:29:09.340 And when it's done, you'll know about it. 1.00

01:29:11.640 I won't even need to submit a video comment.

01:29:13.880 You'll hear it across the Atlantic.

01:29:16.760 I love the energy of that.

01:29:19.000 That's nice.

01:29:19.920 Also, the E-Type is just sublime.

01:29:22.080 Can I have that E-Type, please?

01:29:23.860 I have no money to offer you for it.

01:29:26.300 Still, give it to me.

01:29:27.760 I want an E-Type.

01:29:28.860 One of the greatest cars.

01:29:29.620 I'm not a car guy, but an E-Type.

01:29:33.460 Jag.

01:29:33.900 Jag.

01:29:35.160 Jag.

01:29:35.520 Jag.

01:29:37.820 Jag.

01:29:38.380 Jag.

01:29:38.580 Jag.

01:29:38.600 Jag.

01:29:38.660 Jag.

01:29:38.720 Jag.

01:29:38.740 Jag.

01:29:38.760 Jag.

01:29:38.820 Jag.

01:29:38.900 Jag.

01:29:39.320 Jag.

01:29:39.340 Jag.

01:29:39.440 Jag.

01:29:39.520 Jag.

01:29:39.540 Jag.

01:29:39.640 Jag.

01:29:39.660 Jag.

01:29:39.700 Jag.

01:29:39.720 Jag.

01:29:40.200 Jag.

01:29:40.700 Jag.

01:29:40.720 Jag.

01:29:40.780 Jag.

01:29:40.800 Jag.

01:29:40.820 Jag.

01:29:40.840 Jag.

01:29:40.860 Jag. 1.00

01:29:40.940 I love our country and one of the things about our country is good manners not very British

01:30:03.740 that was some beautiful if you're not british i i mean i just magic i mean i personally don't

01:30:14.780 think that um covering up the rape gangs was good manners rachel you know from your party but you

01:30:20.300 know what do i know about manners god what do i have to say sometimes it's lovely to see some

01:30:25.120 good old-fashioned Patriot.

01:30:28.840 I mean, can you name a single franchise,

01:30:34.120 a single mythology, a single, you know,

01:30:36.320 sort of like nerd culture, just fandom

01:30:40.220 that has been taken over the past few years

01:30:44.160 and been done justice in this way?

01:30:46.960 Actually, yes.

01:30:49.940 Have you never seen that Angry Birds film?

01:30:53.500 Pretty based.

01:30:56.080 No, I haven't actually.

01:30:58.180 Well, I have to say, Angry Birds wasn't really on my mind

01:31:03.020 when I was thinking through the great fandoms of the 21st.

01:31:07.480 But I hear your point. I hear your point.

01:31:09.700 Okay.

01:31:10.920 I'm just trying to think of an answer to your question.

01:31:13.400 I really...

01:31:15.020 There isn't one.

01:31:16.180 I really can't.

01:31:16.960 Beyond Cobra Kai, there's nothing.

01:31:19.540 All right.

01:31:20.140 uh well a few of them video we've got website comments yeah um okay uh do you want to go

01:31:30.460 through one or two from yours for us we're running a bit over but yeah sure dreadnought

01:31:34.280 logan america gets more money from qatar in lobby money than israel and china has both

01:31:38.940 beaten with billions spent um this is only if you don't count apac as a foreign lobby and if you

01:31:47.820 I don't, the way that AIPAC works is that it's a sort of clearinghouse.

01:31:52.300 When AIPAC gives you money, it's a signal to a bunch of other billionaires

01:31:56.400 that are associated with it to also start giving you money.

01:31:59.400 And these guys are also very, very Zionist in their outlook.

01:32:03.460 Ken Griffin, as an example, he isn't Jewish, but he always puts his money in with AIPAC money.

01:32:10.880 So you're thinking about this in a very narrow way that doesn't extend to looking

01:32:17.260 at the interconnected relationships.

01:32:19.640 I don't think Peter Thiel is Jewish,

01:32:21.640 but Palantir is working very closely with Israel

01:32:24.260 in terms of targeting

01:32:25.420 and in terms of military development

01:32:27.780 and things like that.

01:32:28.660 The guy who runs Palantir, Alex Karp.

01:32:30.860 Well, Alex Karp is, Alex Karp is, yes.

01:32:33.820 So it's, you have to think about it

01:32:36.780 a little bit more holistically,

01:32:39.020 if I could say.

01:32:41.160 And then with Qatar, 0.58

01:32:42.520 you have to look at Qatar and the Epstein files.

01:32:45.360 Like they were working with him on everything,

01:32:49.120 including I think in some bank in Angola or Congo

01:32:53.960 or something like that.

01:32:55.480 So you're just not seeing it.

01:32:58.800 You're just missing the forest for the trees

01:33:02.080 because that's not it.

01:33:05.200 The Qatari lobbying money is disclosed properly.

01:33:09.040 AIPAC is not registered under Farah as a foreign lobby.

01:33:12.040 and if it was and if the people who were backing it were clearly identified as working in the

01:33:18.400 interest of the of the israeli government the numbers would be quite different so no you're

01:33:23.100 not thinking about this clearly okay any more that you would like to read from your segment

01:33:29.880 uh no it's it's fine it's fine that's all right i'll go with a couple of mine uh well also we got

01:33:37.040 some two other rumble rants that are missed uh fictage it's hard to get on with the side that

01:33:41.200 literally tried to get you imprisoned over lies fair sigil stone so if i had to guess firaz likes

01:33:46.700 the black templars luca likes the salamanders and harry is obviously a fan of the world eaters

01:33:52.360 i have no idea no forgive my ignorance i have no idea what that's templar is in the name i'm fine

01:33:57.920 yeah i have been playing halo recently though for the first proper time ever and really i'm on to

01:34:04.300 the last level of the first game and uh is pretty good the library sucked balls that was a terrible

01:34:11.360 level uh but the rest of it's been pretty damn good especially 343 guilty spark that was an

01:34:16.880 amazing level i did not know it was a horror game uh dirty belter uh the only good modern shows that

01:34:23.640 i've seen recently have been and or and pluribus pluribus being the um vince gilligan from breaking

01:34:29.600 oh right okay that's a cool soul i heard mixed things on that but i'm glad that you enjoyed it

01:34:34.960 i've not watched it because it's apple plus and or as a show the quality of the actual story was

01:34:41.660 very sophisticated very good like it was it was a new high bar for star wars it's just a shame that

01:34:48.780 the media literacy crowd around it are insufferable i'm sure it ain't got nothing on sand

01:34:53.080 otherwise it's a desert a desert i've been re-watching fast yeah i only experience modern

01:35:00.000 television through what my missus happens to be watching at the time and so much of it i just

01:35:06.500 i've just like sat on the sofa reading and she's watching some absolute tripe and i just look up

01:35:13.660 and i'm like why are you watching this she's like leave me alone just let me enjoy you go back to

01:35:18.860 your Pat Buchanan books, you know. I've been reading Watchmen recently, which I've got my

01:35:24.900 complaints about, but still. I've been re-watching Farscape. It's fantastic. The mental decline of

01:35:30.040 John Crickton is fantastic. I also forgot how pro-life the show was, with numerous points where

01:35:34.860 an unborn child's life is protected at great risk to the heroes. I hope we don't have to wait for

01:35:39.300 much longer before media improves again. Farscape was back in the time when I believe conservatives

01:35:43.680 were still allowed to write good television shows probably why pluribus is a good show because

01:35:50.180 vince gilligan seems like he might lean that way although i've never actually seen him talk about

01:35:55.540 politics um but some of the messaging behind his shows has a strong bent to it so if you live

01:36:01.400 strangest thing here is that after completely discarding the comics for years they recreated

01:36:05.920 multiple comic book series for the finale but without any of the original context or build-up

01:36:10.500 those scenes sucks yes butcher also killed homelander with a crowbar and huey killed 0.60

01:36:15.760 butcher in the comics but it didn't suck it was actually the culmination of an intentional build 0.96

01:36:19.700 up and butcher having gone too far long ago i've heard other people say about that for years people 0.87

01:36:24.820 were saying the comics are shit the tv shows such a good improvement over it and all of a sudden

01:36:29.860 this endings come out and everybody overnight has gone uh maybe we weren't giving these comics a 0.97

01:36:35.500 fair shake after all uh anyway that's right i'll just read one from mine then um park white says

01:36:42.340 um i dated a tamil uh girl in the past she was obsessed with her own status and was settling in

01:36:48.060 the west she wanted to be in other indian communities here and it was so gross it was

01:36:53.560 one of the many reasons i broke up with her she loved modi in israel too your classic 1.00

01:36:58.240 trying to destroy our societies and make it their own. 0.98

01:37:04.280 Well, it sounds like you made the right decision there, Parker.

01:37:08.220 Well, we have rung over, ladies and gentlemen,

01:37:11.160 so thank you for joining me, Ferris Harry.

01:37:13.020 We hope that you've enjoyed the show

01:37:15.140 and look forward to seeing you 1 p.m. tomorrow.

01:37:18.820 Take care.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - May 21, 2026

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1423

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