This is London calling, London, calling mother. Collins went to Rostov,
the other towards Moscow. Not a single soldier was killed. We regret that
we were forced to strike at an aircraft, but they threw bombs at us.
He goes on to say, we went at two hundred kilometers short of
Moscow. The purpose of the campaign was to bring justice to those who made
mistakes. This was demanded by the public and military personnels. Welcome to London,
calling with me, James Delingpot. I'm a very good friend, mister
Toby Young. I find that not much has been happening in this in these
sort of dog days of is it dog days yet? Of summer? You
mean apart from the Titan submersible story, the attempted coup in Russia, the
possibility at the head of the Wagner group has got hold of some nukes.
We can talk about those, and I've interested to hear or take on those.
No, I just mean in your life. You mean in my life,
And I mean because the ground's too hard for riding. Really, the
horses don't get her excited? Um, I mean my squash plants that I
planted a week ago have started sprouting that. That's exciting. But I'm trying
to think, Um, did you get my message, James. Someone someone
bumped into they were I think they were in Shropshire. Yeah, well maybe
they I think this was in Gibraltar. They easily confused. They met someone
who was involved in the Shropshire Hunt and she's very keen for you to go
hunting with them. Oh good, No, we would love James Delingpole to
come to the South Shropshire Hunt. And I passed on her details to you,
and I don't know if you've got them. I passed them on to
your usually mail address. Okay, I'm going to share WhatsApp. I try
sharing them with your Yeah, do that? Do that? Because that sounds
like my kind of thing. I mean, I have to say, as
a warning to to Team James people, I don't know whether I'm revealing any
deep secrets here. I can be quite flaky, and I'm really flaky at
the moment. I've got I've got about a renewed bout of my whatever my
health condition is, so I you know, call it lime, call it
whatever, and it just makes you feel completely spaced out and kind of apathetic.
So I just don't do anything. I just don't answer you miles and
stuff. But that said, I would very much like to come hunting with
the South Shropshire before they before they ban it, which I'm sure was the
plan. I'm sure what happened when Kastoma gets it. But yeah, have
you been doing it? I mean you're you're an orcoholic tope, so you've
probably been doing loads of stuff and fighting lots of free speech union cases that
you want to tell me about before we move swiftly on. Yeah, well,
um, I've had a fairly busy time. So on on Wednesday,
I was the I was an invited speaker a Gentleman's club for their annual midlife
cris Crisis dinner. Um, and I was terrible. Yeah that's actually quite
fun. And then you like drinking, so you would, Yeah, and
you like you like gentlemen's clubs. I really don't anymore. I do quite.
I do quite like them, yes, um, and I particularly like
this one I've only been to. I've only been to it once before,
but I the food and the wine over lunch. Anyway, the first time
I went was very very good. Um, so I was. I was.
I was happy to be their guest speaker. But when I you funny,
well, I gave a well just before I was due to speak,
I sort of I thought i'd better double check I had in fact written a
speech, And I said, what is it you're expecting me to talk about?
What of previous speakers talked about? And he said, well, a
lot of the people here probably aren't very politically correct. I think if you
shared some of your opinions about some of the things happening in the news,
you'd find them a very receptive audience. And of course my speech wasn't about
that at all. I'd written a speech was sort of basically cataloging my career,
sort of describing how from one failure to the next with no loss of
enthusiasts and telling kind of you know, the best anecdotes from my time at
Oxford. The Times, vanity fair, why I'd been kent sorted, why
I'd set the free speech with accents, with amusing accents on the way with
amusing accents James, Yes, but kind of well worn territory, it must
be said, well worn territory. Yeah, my greatest hits. And anyway,
it seemed to go down okay, even though it clearly wasn't what they're
expecting. Um, but after it's tough, Oh, it is tough.
After that, James, I then went along to another party where which I've
been I've been invited to a dinner, um, and couldn't go to the
dinner because I've already committed to this, this this speech. So I went
along for drinks afterwards and Boris Johnson was there and m and I had a
nice chat with him. Actually, um, he was He's quite he's quite
changeable. So sometimes when I've bumped into him at events, um, fundraisers,
Tory stuff, um, he kind of gives me a quizzical look because
if to say, what are you doing here, and then kind of moves
on to the next outstretched hand. But this time he'd evidently had had a
little bit to drink. He was very He sort of leapt up. And
why would you not be friendly to Utubes? I mean, you've never dissed
him. Well, the first thing he said to me was, oh no,
no, juby jibby. I remember you saying I should resign. You
said I should resign when I was PM. Why why why did you say
that? So there you go, James, not only have I dissed him.
He recalled it. It was the first thing he brought up, um
and um, And I said, well, um, we had a difference
of opinion about the best way to respond to the pandemic. And I thought
your initial response was bang on the money. But I was really dishard you.
Yeah, but I was really disheartened when you changed your mind and told
us all to stay in our homes. And then did that you know too
much? And did he explain to you that the reason that he had to
do it was because basically that he was he was he was forced to fake
having COVID and can near death experience and taken into a room where he was
warned that he didn't play ball, he was going to get off, and
that's why he changed tag. Funnily enough, he did not say that,
But I suppose he wouldn't he had to keep it secret, that wouldn't he
It's not that big a secret, But I mean, I mean, it's
it's a fairly open, yeah, open secret. But yeah, well I
do you No, I don't, I mean, but I don't think.
Um. I mean the problem with that particular theory, James is the timelines
don't work out because he changed his mind about plunging Britain into lockdown before he
contracted coronavirus. So it wasn't as if, but there are probably stages that
was then't have been the deciding factor. No, there there were probably stages.
They were probably twisting the thumb screws further and further, and that was
the next the next step. I mean, he was gracious enough to um
acknowledge without without doing it too explice and without giving me much that I could
kind of take away and write about. He was gracious enough to acknowledge that
that he might not have got the pandemic response completely right. Big of him.
So yeah, that millions or certainly hundreds and hundreds of thousands have had
their lives completely ruined as a result of his policies. So it's nice to
know that Boris is prepared to concede that maybe in not every detail was his
response perfect. I felt a bit, I felt, I felt after we
were having a fairly kind of warm and friendly exchange. I think by that
point I was quite pissed, and so was he. Hugs may have been
involved, James, and I felt a bit. I felt, I felt,
I felt a bit of a weasel because at the Gentleman's Club Midlife Crisis
dinner only forty five minutes earlier, I had actually i'd been asked. One
of the members asked me a question, asked me about Boris. Did I
still support Boris? What did I think he should have done during the lockdown?
And I and I said, you know, I was really pleased by
Boris's initial response. This is the guy that I've campaigned for and supported most
of my life, the guy wanted to be PM. He's made exactly the
right decision. He's holding his ground, he isn't caving into pressure public opinion.
He's it may even be a minority of view in his own cabinet,
but he's holding fast to it. And that's the guy I voted for because
it's the right decision, that's Churchilian. And then of course he allowed himself
to be browbeaten into changing his mind. And I think the culprits weren't,
you know, um agents of the cabal. I think it was, or
maybe you describe him as such, but I think it was just pressure from
Dominic Cummings and Michael Gove and Matt Hancock within the kind of within the confines
of Downing Street and maybe maybe not, but yeah, anywhere. But and
I said, you know, we in that in that moment, you know,
when Britain was facing a pivotal decision, it was a time of national
crisis. What we needed was another Churchill. But actually what we ended up
with was another Chamberlain. So I felt a bit guilty having having described him,
yea a chamberlain then making nice with him forty five minutes later. I'll
tell you what I'm hearing you talk about about this stuff I think is very
useful for those people. There was a sort of hardcore element on Team James
who think that you are just absolutely in the pockets of big evil and that
you don't believe any of this stuff that you say, um and that you're
just controlled. But it's obvious to me listening to you talk about this,
do you actually do believe this stuff? That you genuinely do believe that politicals
have autonomy? And you did have faith in Boris and as I hate calling
him um and and and so on. And it's not just I mean,
you're the worst that can be said about you is that you're from jam James
perspective, is that your naive that you're under a spell. It's not that
you're kind of spinning a line because your your paymasters would be my take,
Yeah, I think thank you. And by the same token, many people,
and many people in the previous week actually have come up to me and
said, why has James gone down all of these rabbit holes? What's happened
to him? What happened over the past three years? Is it just that
because he that's his audience, those are the people giving him donations and coming
to his live events and subscribing to him. Were you saw that idea in
their heads last week? I don't know what I don't see. I don't
think it was. But anyway, James, so they effectively accuse you of
bad faith in the opposite direction. But I but I do say to them,
nope, I think he genuinely believes it. And my my and my
way of explaining it to them and persuading them that you know, it's perfectly
possible that you are saying all of these things in good faith, is I
say? I think of him, think of him as someone who's made a
late life conversion to become an evangelical Christian. You know, um, you
wouldn't you wouldn't you know, you wouldn't accuse someone of making that late life
conversion of being a kind of hustler, you know, a preacher like some
American who's caught with his pants down in spite of preaching sexual purity from the
pulpit. And nor would you think that person if they made a late life
conversion and became an absolutely zealous evangelical Christian, You wouldn't necessarily think they were
mad either. I mean, you might think it a little bit odd and
you might have difficulty kind of reconciling it with the person you knew, But
I then think you would jump to the conclusion that they've just gone mad.
So that's my way of explaining that's my way of explaining your late life conversion
as it well, it definitely wouldn't be a rational choice of all the things
that were going to become you wouldn't you know, if you had, if
el the options were on the table, you definitely wouldn't become a Christian because
Christianity is about choosing the hard path. It's you look at the lives of
the saints and the prophets and the apostles. They had a pretty raft.
They didn't. There weren't many material rewards for it. So so yeah,
I think you made a perfectly fair point that, yeah, let's have a
break for an add a fox James Lax, you're for a ricochet dot com.
The other day I was looking at the member feed, which unless you
remember, you can't read, and I was writing a little private piece about
my daughter's graduation. And I said it to private because I wanted it to
be for the community that is Ricochet, and gosh, I wish you would
have been able to read it. But that's on you, isn't it.
Now. I know everybody on the internet wants you to give them money streaming
services and subscriptions, and your apps have subscriptions, and it's just it's annoying.
And you look at it, you say, you know, I really
don't want to be burdened with another thing to pay. But the thing is,
Ricochet is not a burden. It's a gift. And once you go
there and start seeing all the voices, meet all the friends and between the
diverse post I mean, we talk about a radio and jazz and old music
and sports and everything else, you'll realize this is the place you've been looking
for all these years on the internet. Forget Twitter, forget Facebook. Ricochet
that's the community that you have been looking for, Ricochet dot com. I'm
not at you go there right now. By the way, the aunt you
just heard is what's called a programmatic ant, so it's essentially it's it's selected
by an algorithm, which I think doesn't use any It doesn't The algorithm doesn't
know what the content of London Calling is or our positions on various hot button
missus. I think it just knows, you know, the IP addresses of
the people who were going to hear the ad, so it just sells things
to them, as it were, and it thinks they're most likely to buy,
which is why sometimes people hear ads they consider completely inappropriate slammed into the
middle of a London Calling episode, like I think in one case someone said
they had an ad for The Guardian in the middle of it. Happens quite
a lot. They've obviously got a huge advertising spend, haven't they, Yes,
although I don't think it's very expensive, but that yeah, So we
should say to our listeners, you know, we haven't selected. We didn't
select the ad you just heard, and listeners in different parts of the country,
different parts of the world will have heard completely different ads. It's they're
tailored for you based on your esp and maybe some of your previous preferences.
So if you just had an ad for The Guardian that maybe because you've just
bought some crunchy granola from Wait frozen. Yes, yeah, green ones I
think happened quite a lot, sort of sort of cellar panels or I don't
know, did they advertise carbon credits or stuff like that? Maybe? Yeah.
I think. I think what it's indicative of is just how much the
world is blancrolled by stuff. The money that we've paid in the form of
taxes that then gets channeled back to these various green green entities, and then
they have a huge, huge advertising budgets to spend pushing products that we don't
want. Yeah. Yeah. So on Thursday, James I went to an
event were at any you would have been entirely out of place. So it
was a two hour interview on stage with Michael Schellenberger and Matt Tayebee, the
two American journalists who produced the first tranche of Twitter files and who've testified before
Congress on what they call the censorship industrial complex, and I think by naming
it they have kind of increased awareness of it. And by that they mean
ngeo's commercial companies paid by large foundations and various Western states to police and suppress
what they identify as misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, and hate speech, but
which you and I would recognize as dissent of various kinds. Anyway, they'd
drawn attention to this kind of metastasizing disinfo sector that they call the censorship industrial
complex, and they'd come to London to try and whip up some opposition to
it over here and try and form a kind of international organization initiative that can
take it on, because it is it is a global thing, and just
trying to take it on in individual countries given the global reach of these various
anti dysinfo organizations, makes sense. I mean, sorry, doing it internationally
makes sense anyway. And the person interviewing them on stage was Russell Brand Schellenberger.
Is it's either Californian, the Democrat who's stood as a yes, the
anti environmentalist. Well, he wouldn't describe himself as an anti environmentalist, but
yeah, he's a climate contrarian. Yeah, yeah, So yeah, I
did a podcast with him. It was great. We we bonded enormously,
his lovely, lovely chap Yeah, very nice. Indeed, really he's good
and um yeah yeah. Anyway, so it was it was quite a fun
meeting in Central Hall in Westminster. There must have been about five hundred people
there, um and um. And then the following day a much small all
a group of people about forty five people met at Unheard with Michael Schellenberger and
met Tybee. And there were people there from different countries who are fighting this
particular battle in their countries. There was a group from Brazil, there was
a woman from Italy, there was a there was a the Free Speech Ireland
group who who who are campaigning against the Hate Crime Bill in Ireland, which
is a very sinister piece of legislation, and and we were discussing, you
know, what can we do about this, and we did come to a
conclusion to do something which which I think is for the time being secret,
but which which will announce shortly. But yeah, Michael Schellenberger was an excellent
chair of this meeting and managed to put us all together towards the end and
to unite around a kind of comment good idea. I'm very suspicious of all
these these groups. I just think that they're they're like they're they're designed to
corral the opposition. I don't I don't think that they achieve anything. I
mean, I listen, I'd be really glad if you and your your team
managed to do something effective. But I'm very suspicious of like, like anything,
any group purporting to represent the freedom fighters is almost certainly controlled opposition in
one form or another. I mean the fact that it was hosted by Unheard,
which which in itself is called controlled opposition. That makes me smell a
rat. It's a bit like Together, you know, it's one of those
groups that you think just pushes it so far, but not so far that
there's any threat to anything. Well. I don't think Together or Unheard a
controlled opposition. But I also think that it that this this group may be
able to achieve something. I mean, I think the UM the group in
Ireland have run a six accessful campaign against the Irish Hate Crome Bill and they're
gradually winning over more and more Irish politicians to their side. They're raising awareness
of the bill in the Irish and international media, and I don't think it's
a foregone conclusion that that bill will pass, certainly not in its current form.
It may I bet it will, Well, we'll see it may be
it may pass, but in an amended, less raconian form, which would
be yeah, but you know what this is. This is this is this
is the Hegelian dialectic. It's problem reaction and solutions. So the best you
can hope for I find in these situations is, yes, it's gone through
the bill, but we did manage to secure these really vital amendments that that
you know, we're not going to close you down from speaking on a Tuesday
afternoon, and that's I think that's quite a win for our team. And
it's not really, it's just like we should be. They're winning, they
win all the time, but it's we're too reasonable. Well, there was
one way which I think we can take on the sensitive industrial complexes. We
can at least persuade various state departments which are supposed to be politically impartial,
to stop stop giving them huge grants. We haven't yet succeeded in doing that
in the UK. So, for instance, the one of the players in
the COVID industrial complex is the Global Disinformation Index, which was originally anyway a
UK company and is at present part funded by the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office,
and which there was a big news story in America a few months ago
because it identified what it called the ten least reliable and ten most reliable news
publishing sites, and the ten least reliable were almost all right of center,
and the ten most reliable were almost all left of center. And the news
publishing sites included on the least reliable list, which it also referred to as
a blocklist, and it was intended to discourage advertisers from advertising on these particular
sites. They included The American Spectator, The Federalist Reason, Real Clear Politics,
the New York Post, and of course the publications on the most reliable
side were the New York Times and CNN and MSNBC and the rest of them.
So that was so blatantly politically biased that I think a congresswoman, a
Republican congresswoman, managed to persuade the National Endowment for Something or other, which
was funding GDI in the US, and which gets most of its money from,
if not all, from the State Department, to stop funding GDI,
So it has been defunded at least by the US government, so the next
step is to try and get it funded by the UK government. But given
the success of the defunding campaign in America, I don't think it's inconceivable that
we might achieve the same in the UK. And News Guard another of these
pillars of the censorship industrial complex, which you'll you'll you'll dislike, in particular
because it's part funded by Microsoft. They and what they operate in a similar
way. They give news publishing sites a ranking out of a hundred, and
if if they get a low ranking, or even a ranking below eighty five,
or possibly even below ninety, it's very very difficult to attract advertising on
your website. And the Daily Skeptic was it got a ranking I think of
seventy five, and I complained about this, and it got a ranking of
seventy five because it said we frequently published misinformation and fulsome misleading claims in various
articles, particularly about climate change and the vaccines. Anyways, I wrote to
them and said, you know, this is ridiculous. I can't get any
advertising because you're only giving me seventy five out of a hundred. Can we
review my ranking? And after about six months I got a reply and they
said, yeah, okay, well we'll conduct a review. And they sent
me all the pages that they thought, all the stories and the Daily Skeptic
that they had flagged as containing misinformational, fulsomeness leading claims. And I then
responded in great detail the things they'd flagged up in these pieces, in which
I pointed out that I think every case what they had classified as misinformation was
just a difference of opinion about how to interpret particular data. But I did
say, I said to them, look, I think this is an honest
difference of opinion, and we should just agree to differ. There isn't there
isn't a fact of the matter in how to interpret this complicated and sometimes fluid
data. But so we're not guilty of making false and misleading claims any more
than you would be if you published your interpretation of this data. But what
I will do is I'll publish the fact that you have reservations about this particular
article, and I'll link to any fact checks that you've sent to me about
this particular article, and then beneath that, I'll publish our rebuttal. And
I thought that would be enough for them. They'd be able to show their
funders like Microsoft, that websites that they regard, as you know, Dodgy
are acting more responsibly by agreeing to publish links to fact checks beneath contentious articles.
But as I was expecting them to kind of upgrade me having engaged in
good faith over a lengthy period of time, I mean it must have taken
weeks of work games and I then did put all these postscripts beneath all the
articles they FLAQ, and then of course their reaction was to downgrade me from
seventy five out of one hundred to thirty seven and a half untouchable. Yeah,
it was worth it for that payoff tabs. I think we should,
but I think I want to. I want to hear your your take,
your hot take on the submarine. Well, I thought, James, as
an experiment, we could we could. I could give what I think is
your take, and you could give what you think is going to be my
take, to see if we know each other's side well enough to do that.
Well, I'm kind of I'm only only peripherally interested in your take.
I just imagine it was pretty much the story that was played out in the
newspapers. So but am I wrong? Do you do you do you have
special insights that that that weren't in the By the way, I'm meant to
ask you, Tabs, what newspapers do you read? Do you read the
newspapers? Yeah, I'm constantly combing through lots of newspapers news publishing sites looking
for stories which are the main one of the main papers. We do it
because, you know, because I I we either need to summarize them in
the Daily Skeptic or include them in the news roundups. But I guess the
I mean I saw I look at all the papers, James, mainly UK
papers, but not exclusively. I sometimes look. I mean, I look,
you know, Telegraph, Times, Guardian, Sun Mail, very occasionally
the Independent, but its website is just so bad it's almost impossible to navigate.
Ditto the Express, the Conservative, Woman, Spectator, Unheard in America,
Brownstone Institute. And then we will look a lot of sub stacks to
see if we want to republish any of them, which is a good source
of stuff for us. Right. Sometimes I suppose to cut to the chase.
Would it be fair to say that, roughly roughly speaking, your take
on the Titans? I believe it's called the Titan sub It's roughly the version
of events that you one read in in the those various mainstream media legacy media
news. Well, would the actually the coverage was there, wouldn't The jury
seemed to be out on whether, um, the the US was it The
US Navy had had deliberately kept back the evidence it had stumbled across that there
had been an underwater explosion, um for kind of um sinister reasons, or
whether it had just kept it back because it was still unsure exactly how to
interpret these audio signals it had received what it had described them as anomalous.
I think it was an underwater anomaly, but they didn't know for sure it
was an explosion, so um, but they didn't seem to be a clear
line on that particular point in the MSN. But some people were saying,
the US Navy sat on this information and we were all strung along thinking that
there was a possibility the people on these submersible might be rescued. Why didn't
they tell us sooner? That's very sinister what's going on? And there are
others who thought, well, there's a perfectly innocent explanation. They just hadn't
worked out exactly what the data meant at that point and didn't. What do
you think, what's your best guess what really happened? My best guess is
that, well, one one one conservative take, James, is that the
chap who ran the submersible company is a great exponent of equity, diversity and
inclusion, and had said I think at some point that he's not a great
believer in hiring middle aged, heterosexual white men. He likes to give engineering
opportunities to a much more diverse group of people. And so people were saying,
well, no, wonder the submersible imploded. You know, you didn't
hire the best people to design it. You you know, if you if
you'd had a more marriage credit hiring policy, maybe this wouldn't have happened.
Yes, you're taken, James, Well, it's funny I thought you might
mention that detail that when I read that that detail, I thought, this
is such an obvious piece of red meat, like like almost ground bait for
the for people of a conservative persuasion, that it just made me think maybe
the whole story is fake. So clearly, clearly people who consider themselves conservative
commentator's right wing would elatch onto this, this fantastic cherishable detail that basically this
woke, woke billionaire was using cut priced subs run by interns basically chosen for
their for their diversity or whatever, rather than for their technical skills, and
that this is it was a kind of tremendous I mean, schadenfreuder on stilts
for conservative commentators, but there was also there was also a scharden freud angle
for left wing commentators too. I mean, there was a lot of triumphalism
and cackling about the fact that these these men with obviously more money than sense,
yeah, had had effectively killed themselves by by trying to go on this
exotic adventure. There was a kind of you know, anti billionaire schaden freuder.
I think we can agree there was something for everyone, which is again
what makes me smell a rat, must smell several huge rats about the story.
I look. My view is that suppose all the facts or some of
the facts that's presented to us were vaguely true about the run up to this
story, I think it is even that everyone knew, I mean, the
US Navy, the Biden administration, certainly the senior bods in the media all
knew that the suburb imploded by last weekend, and yet they they ran this
story this will they won't they survive? Oh, we've only got a few
hours left before rescue them. This this story which had loads of people,
including members of my family, on the edge of their seat because submarine stories
there was there was there was a famous incident before the Second World War when
a submarine went down and there was a sort of will they won't they survive?
And there was that incident with the Russian submarine a few years ago.
And so these stories are always very, very gripping because everyone can identify.
Everyone's seen or many of us have seen dust built. We can all identify
with with the claustrophobic horrors, and we think about what a way to go
and stuff. Um I do I do believe that the media. The media
knew about this, They knew they were they had already gone. But at
the behest of the Biden administration into Alia, they ran with this complete distracting
story in order well the number of things, revelations about Hunter Biden, revelations
about Durham. Um, you know, the Durham investigations in the US.
I thought the failure of the of the Ukrainian counter offensive it's never clear.
But I mean, let me explain in in my velt an showing my understanding
of the world, that the whole of the whole of everything you read about
them in the media is a lie. It's not that I'm being evasive when
I say I don't know what particular story is this. This crap is distracting
you from because almost by definition, and you're not going to know, because
that is how these stories work. They are designed to focus our attention on.
Look at these shenanigans. Look at this. Here is this character,
this billionaire that you've never heard of, who lived in who lives in Dubai.
So you start thinking, well, who is he? Have I never
heard of him? Where did he get this airline company that I never heard
of? And stuff? And what about the eighteen year old boy who didn't
want to go with his dad but it was Father's day. So when you
can identify all the stuff, I can see why people are drawn into this
stuff, which is which is how the media works. It's a distraction device.
But I don't know exactly what the many stories are. They weren't reporting
or lightly reporting. It was designed to distract us from. But yeah,
another thing too, which will come to an a minute when you when you
made your point. Well, I just gonna ask you if, if,
if the media is so controlled that it does the bidding of various people who
want, who want, who want, who want, who want, members
of the pub to be distracted from their wrongdoing, how is it that the
story then emerged that the US Navy and others knew that or suspected that the
sub had imploded days before the search concluded. I mean, doesn't seem that
they're doing a great job of controlling the media that story got out? Nonetheless,
No, Well, because happily there are others, There are other sources
of information other than the legacy of media, the mainstream media, that they
don't yet. Although I'd like to have total control over all the information we
get, so inevitably this stuff slips out and while we're another although you know,
even then you're never sure whether you can trust it. You have to
kind of compare sources and decide which story you trust, don't you that that's
that's all you can hope to do. The other detail and the other reason
I sort of have my doubts about so many aspects of the story, I
mean, get given that the media played us along for three or four days
with what they need to be a lie. Certainly at a senior level,
I'm sure, I'm sure one of these stories were prepared and planted. Um
there's the nature of the of the exercise that was being conducted. Um,
you know what what the titan was doing. It was looking at the wreck
of of what the Titanic. Titanic didn't really think that was just a big
the Olympic. This see the story obviously, this is this is Team James,
Tim Toby. People will be poored by this. They'll think it's a
kind of crazy conspiracy theory whatever because they haven't read read up on it.
But the Titanic as it was sold to us, did not sink as a
result of hitting an iceberg, not least because just as jet jet fuel can't
melt steel steal reinforce steel girders, So the whole of the of the ice
of the Titanic stroke Olympic was was more than enough to handle bump into an
iceberg. The Titanic was actually sunk for a couple of reasons, partly as
an insurance job by the incredibly corrupt and wicked owner of the White Star Line,
JP Morgan, and partly to bump off four. I think it was
key opponents of the Federal Reserve. You remember what year the Titanic sank in,
nineteen thirteen, nineteen twelve, and when was the Federal Reserve created?
Can you tell me, James? Nineteen thirteen, So a year, a
year, within a year of the Titanic sinking the Federal Reserve being created.
And happily for the people who created the Federal Reserve, several of the key
opponents of the Federal Reserve had gone down with the ship on this maiden voyage,
which which amazingly JP Morgan at the very last minute was found himself too
ill to attend. You might have to get off the ship. Um so.
And you saw a hint of this in the I don't know you saw
it. There was a story in the in the papers about how it may
be that there was another factor in the sinking of the Titanic besides the iceberg.
And it was a story about something about the boiler room exploding or the
engine room. In other words, what they were already doing is seeding the
idea that maybe if the if the record was examined, it would be shown
that there had been an explosion as well as the as the damage from the
outside done by an iceberg. Um yeah, so I think the Titanic probably
sank because it was blown up, but sabotage rather than hitting an iceberg.
But it's worth it. Look when you've got time ted because I mean,
obviously we can't cover this on this this particular, it's worth looking into.
Always good to hear another conspiracy theory. So, um, should we cut?
Should we have one more break? I mean we haven't talked about the
bargainerking. Maybe we should briefly talk about that. I think we should definitely
talk about that. You think it's important culture corner. Um, so let's
do the next break before culture corner. So what's your take on the failed
wagoner? But yeah, it's interesting because because you got quite cross. When
I was, I was like suggesting that there wasn't much. There wasn't much
in the news this week. Um I got I got invited onto a to
do a show yesterday about on this subject. And I said, look,
if there's one thing I've seen in the last um this this is on Sunday,
there's one thing I've noticed in this this weekend of news from Russia.
It's all these pundits um coming up with these wildly contradictory version of events,
versions of events about what's gone on. And I don't want to be one
of those people. I mean, I don't want to be to you who
I don't want to be John Sweeney? Did you did you see him?
He has gone a bit mad, he has, but I mean he used
to be. I suppose people are saying what happened to Sweeney? But I
say, people say, what's happened to James John Sweeney? Well, I
mean he was quite the thing, wasn't he Wasn't he observed like BBC?
Yeah, I think he was for a long time at Panorama, Wasn't He
made several panoramas? Yeah, SA, the flagship the documentary Current Affairs show.
Okay, so this John Sweeney was pictured wearing did you notice this way?
Maybe you don't follow him. He was wearing blue and yellow um now
nail polish on his fingers signify his allegiance, and he was getting really excited.
He was saying that the tanks are now the tanks of the Wagner group.
I presume it's Wagner rather than Wagner, the Wagner Group are now within
twenty miles of Moscow. The unthinkable has happened. There was no resistance,
There was no popular will to resist this, this glorious coup against the evil
Putler. Um. And unless something has happened since we started the show,
I don't think Putler has been has been deposed that. I mean, it
was a big fact nothing burger, wasn't it the this if it was a
coup, well, it was a bit anti climatic, certainly. Um.
One moment, you know, the I'm going to call him the Wagner Group,
but I don't know what the correct pronunciation is. One minute, they
were, you know, their tanks and troops and missile batteries were on their
way to Moscow, as you say, um. And the next and a
settlement had been negotiated by the president of Belarus. Um And and it turned
out how do you pronounced the name of the leader of the Wagner Group,
Progogin. So next we knew he was he was, he was, he
was, he was going to go to Belarus, and Putin was safe.
And it was unclear exactly why he'd abandoned his coup. So quickly. I
mean he was. I guess he's been given that all charges against him have
been dropped, so he's no longer being targeted for criminal prosecution by the Russian
state, and maybe that's what prompted him to mount this coup in the first
place. Then there's a suggestion that he might have picked up some he might
have picked up some nukes from one of the towns cities he's successfully captured during
the coup's twelve year life. Were you sound like you're word about this,
because you you were quite emotional about at the beginning of the podcast. I
didn't need to be emotional, and I was just I just thought, I
thought when you said nothing has happened in the last week, I was thinking,
quite a lot has happened. I didn't mean to stand emotional about being
nu gen acton by by precausion's wicked forces. No. No, I think
more likely he's if he's captured any nukes at all, he's captured some tactical
nukes and he may in turn use them in Ukraine. I think that would
be the that would be the biggest fear. But then there was also a
suggestion in the papers today that putin and his goons had threatened family members of
Pergossian uh, and that's why he called it off. But yeah, it
was very mysterious. Why it was a little bits a correct name, his
correct mainstream media name Putler, because he is the most evil man in the
world. So I read I glanced at some of the some of the the
legacy media reporting of this story, and it was just like reading it was
like sort of m I six Cia pawn just just designed for to fool everyone.
I mean, I read the mail on Sunday and I read the Telegraph,
and they're all saying, like, the moment just calm, and lots
of the talking heads were saying that this was the final moment where where Putler
was going to be going to be defenstrated. People had had enough and he
was really unpopular and he shot his bolt and blah blah blah. And yet
I don't know, I've got a suspicion that what may have gone on here
is some classic Russian mass I don't have how to pronunce it correct because I
wish I could speak Russian. I mean, I was really in balanced the
other day when I was talking about a character from Anna Karna and I was
calling I was calling him Levin and it's not Levin, it's Yaven Leaven that
all these kind of company anyway, But mask have you heard about the concept
of Maska Rovska Maska Rovka. The Russians are really big on this. It's
the section basically, and there is a theory abroad and you could you know,
I mean, I don't, I don't know, because I don't think
anyone knows anything about about this. The Brigossion actually has cooked this up with
his old pal Putin, and that it was a way of moving forces um
to the north of Ukraine right in order to facilitate an attack on Kiev or
Key as you probably call it, Muse. And they've just done that.
Anyway, why do they Well, because because you see, it's about geography
and about about the area where they can move. So they're obviously being watched
by NATO all the time. And if they simply move their the wagoner group,
the forces wholesale to the north of of of within striking position of Kiev,
which is in the north, it would be very obvious. But if
if they can do it as a pretend coup, which which which requires them
to retreat to Rostov and then sort of advance towards Moscow and then dramatically been
told that they've got to go to Belarus, which is on top of Ukraine.
If you look at a map, Um, I mean there are now
I read one report that there's going to be eight thousand Wagner Group people stationed
in in Belarus. Why where did this agreement come from him? I mean
surely, surely, if Precosson was staging a real coup, Putin would have
had him off. I mean, you know, there would have been a
lot more bloodshed than than than there has been. So what I'm saying is
that there's a lot about this story that doesn't make sense. And it's possible
that the Western media, certainly John Sweeney and possibly a few others, have
been completely played by what looked like a cool reported like as a coup but
actually a military tactic. Yeah, but um, against that, James,
weren't a lot of Russian aircraft military aircraft shot down by the Wagner Group in
the course of the COO, would would put In really willing to sacrifice all
those aircraft in order to kind of engage in a bit of sub diffuge to
reposition the Volner group north of Kiev. From what I mean, I'm not
aware of this, of this this story about can we believe it anyway?
Don't do we know how many aircraft was shotdown? I think what I what
I would suggest is that and this doesn't apply to us, to Russia,
this applies to all all countries. I think they're prepared to take a bit
of a bit of collateral damage in order to advance a particular I mean,
for example, look at Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor, the the American senior
military stage that they sacrificed the lives of the people on the on the various
ships that went down in order to um to drag to to to widen scope
of the war. They knew it was coming, You mean they knew it
was coming. Think you think they knew it was coming and didn't alert their
naval base in Pearl Harbor. Yeah, totally, totally. It was.
It was a trick they weren't. You don't the Americans look Okay, And
in the same way that Churchill, Churchill allowed the sinking of the of the
Lusitania um in order to drag America into the First World war. That's what
I mean that you think that the guys who make these decisions are kind of
like you and me, that they would not sacrifice their own people, But
actually they didn't give a toss. They really don't. People like us are
just worm food to them. Um should we types? Should? We?
Should? We? Should? We? Should? We have one more at
break and then do culture Kuna. Hello. I'm Dennis Neal, and here's
what's bugging me. The media are burying some of the biggest scandals of our
lifetime, and I'm here to call them out on it and make fun of
them for it. The Twitter files and government censorship, the Biden documents,
the Hunter laptop, the lies of the FBI, and the Russia Gate hoax,
China spy balloons and toxic chemical burnoffs. Join me to hear things no
other journalist will dare tell you. All that and more on What's Bugging Me?
Available for download and streaming every Thursday right here on the Ricochet Audio Network
and wherever you get your podcasts. Ricochet joined the Conversation. So, James,
I haven't really seen anything new on TV this week because I've been so
busy, so um, but I have I have I've finished a book called
Traffic by Ben Smith, which is really about the rise of BuzzFeed and how
internet traffic became the sort of oil of the two thousands, and how those
who managed to attract the most traffic it's boss still going rolling in money.
Well, no, it isn't that extra. Isn't that weird? I think
that's really weird that that BuzzFeed was this enormous thing and now it's just nothing.
It's just like, I don't know if it has it been closed harbage.
I think it still exists, but I think it in a march reduced
state and it's no longer valued at you know, one point one billion or
whatever. No, it's like it's like the the i EA, or it's
like always institutions which used to be we used to care about and now just
mean nothing. They're just gone over. Um I mean the instudent I Economic
Affairs. Yeah, that's still garring James, It's um yeah. But what
I mean is it's credibility shot. It's just like nobody I know just takes
it seriously anymore. I mean, I think all the people that that that
that didn't take a strong line on the on the on the vacs and stuff.
Their credibility is so shot that that nobody who thinks will ever take them
seriously again. I think maybe maybe amongst people like you awake, I think
I think it's their clock shot killed YAB. But I don't think many people.
I don't think their their opinion of the IA will have been affected by
that. No, I think it's still I think it's still a fantastic think
tank. They published a fantastic book book length paper on which was a meta
analysis of the effect of various non pharmaceutical interventions like lockdowns, and judged them
to be almost completely ineffective. They published a couple of weeks ago, and
they got quite a lot of pressed. The Telegraph gave it some good coverage.
I'd take them seriously if they started covering things like what seventy five percent
increase year on year in cancer deaths in the US. Gosh, I wonder
what could have caused that? Or I think I think they didn't. I
think they I think in this book they do take account that it's all about
the collateral damage called ye think they're going to be blaming a lot, You
know, all these people, they've only got their own dying of cancer because
they didn't get at early treatment because of the lockdown. Where's not that It's
what I mean is when they start making the connection between the death jab and
these they I'll start taking them seriously again. If they kept the lockdown,
I'm thinking, No, you're just you're running cover for the enemy. Oh
well, I think it's a I think you're wrong about that, But yeah,
I wouldn't. I don't think i'd recommend traffic why Ben Smith, It's
it's it's it's really it should have been an essay in Wired and didn't really
didn't really kind of hold up as a book. But I've just started I've
just embarked Tom Framily Parsonage by Anthony Trollop, which is the I think it's
the third book in the bars to chronicles. And I'm really as read by
Timothy West, who is still unsurpassed, I think as as as a voice
actor, as a reader of audio books, he really is the best.
Yes, And so I'm really enjoying that. Um well, I'm just on
on number two of the paliss Okay, right, yeah, I've read those
two. He narrates those two, doesn't he. He doesn't do the first
one, but he does the second because I think he's probably better at Irish
accents than than the original. Okay, yes, the one about the Irish
MP exactly. Yeah, yeah, who's there are some great yeah, hunting
scenes in that they're actually good, quite a bit of hunting in in the
in Framley Parsonage as well. Actually, what's really interesting is that I think
he's quite good at getting inside the heads of young men, effectless young men
who want to get on. Um So some of the scenes I've very much
seen myself, um in when I was a younger man, sort of wanting
to land invitations to big houses in order to be and to be invited shooting
and staff and yeah, without really sort of what I mean, why would
why would anyone want to invite somebody like you or me to these these big
houses, and yet sort of consciousness of this need to get on and and
yes any effort, yeah, and and also being being flattered by the attentions
of airresses and duchesses all that, all that incredibly superficial world, which of
course i've now and the young and the young men. Yeah, and it's
kind of it's almost as though, yeah, that that that that in every
Trollope novel that the central male protagonist is one of these ambitious young men,
you know, not quite an aristocrat, but fairly well educated, respectable,
a gentleman um and um. And he he's seduced by, or allows himself
to be seduced by, this kind of world of glittering prizes, the vanity
fair um. And often he's kind of pulled in two directions. You know,
he recognizes that this world is you know, is not very substantial and
isn't going to bring him any lasting satisfaction, and he sort of starts from
self loathing because he allows himself to be seduced by it. Um. And
that's often represented by a conflict with choice between two women. There's the kind
of good, simple, kind of country mouse um. Who who's who's in
love with him? Um? And then and then and then there's then there's
the kind of there's the ambitious, ruthless um female socialite what we call him
girl today, who he's initially dazzled by, but who clearly is not going
to make him happy um. And without wishing to give away any spoilers,
by the end of the books, he usually chooses the nice, pure hearted
that's such they are ultimately formulate pot boilers. But he's just got he's got
an engaging way, hasn't he that that he's got a great turn of phrase,
And he's he's very good at drawing these characters and making you care about
them, isn't it sort of they come off the page, they leap out
of them, leap fine. Spin is the one that I'm mini. Yeah,
yeah, there's there's a bit too much politics in it. But but
but but it's clear that by this stage. And it's good because you know
that Trollop when he was younger, he wanted to be an MP, and
he ended up campaigning to become an MP and spent something like four hundred pounds
which was presumably an awful lot of money in those days, campaigning to get
this Northern seat, which he didn't win. And I think it gave him
a quite quite a jaded view of politics and election agents and how just just
pointless the whole system was that previously he had admired. But yes, I
wanted to just castigate you briefly for one of your semi recommends from last week
This is life. I'll never get back that I spent watching that crappy the
Afghanistan movie about the Guy Richie, a Guy Richie film like ot work nant.
Yeah, yeah, he didn't like it. Well, the thing is
once you once you make the heroic journey and go down the rabbit hole,
you you start realizing how propagandistic so much of the crap that comes out of
Hollywood is. So you could see what the purpose of this film was.
It was it was one trying to give the completely false impression that there was
anything good about America's involvement in Afghanistan, there was anything noble about it,
they were achieving anything useful. And secondly, it was it was it said,
it might have been written on there, we need to make sure that
more or aga Afghan immigrants come into the West in the form of interpreters who've
heroically served our forces. And it was like it was like a sort of
advert for a cause. And that's how these films get their get their budgets,
to get their support from the military, et cetera. It's it's there,
they're they're just propaganda. But it wasn't. It wasn't propaganda, was
it because it really condemned the US in particular for not honoring their promise to
these Afghan interpreters that they would blame the bureaucracy. Residential visas blame the bureaucracy,
not the military or the politicians. Well, yes, it blames.
It blames the bureaucracy in order to generate an anger within the viewer, which
then translates into calls for more. Is this is how it works, like
like sort of pressure that we've got to have more open borders, We've got
to have like we shouldn't we shouldn't be asking questions, which is just letting
let them all in, let them all in. So I think it would
be very very much suited to, for example, the Biden regime, which
is which takes that view about everything. Just then I thought that, you
know it was it was essentially criticizing the Biden regime for abruptly withdrawing from Afghanistan,
leaving an arsenal of valuable military equipment behind. I didn't get that message
those who'd help them. I didn't get the message at all. And also
I just thought, yeah, I thought the Taliban were just like painted as
these sort of they were and incompetent at the same time they were they were
cannon fodder. But they were really nasty cannon fodder in whose deaths you were
invited to rejoice. And I was thinking, actually, I think if my
country had been invaded on a false pretext like Afghanistan was, I think I
might have joined the Taliban. Actually, I think I can see you actually
with with with the kind of beard and the mustache, wearing the the white
robes and having in my Toyota cruiser. Yeah yeah, yeah, absolutely,
with my technicals they're called on there with one of the machine guns on the
back. Yeah, I'd probably been very good at that. And I hope,
by the way, they're looking after Lord Myles Routledge, the young adventurer
Chap is being imprisoned by the Taliban. It is the champion just goes to
danger zones, right, Okay, yeah, yeah, I think But the
Taliban the nicest inasmuch as the I mean, they're all obviously infiltrated by the
CIA, so you don't know who's who. But yeah, um, anyway,
um, that was it. I just thought it was just bollocks.
I wouldn't recommend it. Okay, all right, we'll disagree about that.
When have you seen anything you like? You wrote about the the bicycling documentary
on Netflix. I saw in the Spectator but we talk. Yeah, I
watched the tennis one. I watched the updated so I know that Jokovic beat
the angry Australian who's quite fun. Last year. Okay, Wimbledon. Oh
I did see something, James I'm now remembering. I went and saw the
latest Indiana Jones movie, fifteen year Old Sign. He's an Indiana genter fan.
It was it was a multimedia screening and actually was quite good. Really,
I quite like I quite like that franchise. I didn't like the last
one, but you know, I like the first one. I quite like
the second one. And of course it's slightly odd that you know, this
eighty year old geezer is playing an action hero, even odder than seeing Schwartzeneger
play an action hero in Foo Bar and clearly you know the I think Harrison
Ford is now eighty. I don't know if he was eighty when he made
picture, but they have to use some quite creative CGI to kind of have
him kind of, you know, um do his action hero stunts. Um.
But he has and he and his sort of main his main sort of
partner in crime as a as a as a young woman who you know is
implausibly good at knocking out kind of fully grown men and fighting off hordes of
bad guys, but some of them. But it's quite cartoonish, so you
can kind of suspend disbelief about that. Almost takes a leaf out of the
kind of John wu school of filmmaking, in which you know, you're not
supposed to take it seriously. And but it but it's um that some of
the kind of set pieces, the set piece action sequences, like the chase
sequences and so forth in the film, they're about three extended set pieces are
really good, really well choreographed. Thrillingly. What era is it setting?
It's set well, interestingly, it's set in the It's set in um eineteen
sixty nine, right to the moon landings, um and and it does it
doesn't. It does sort of contain a there's a kind of Von what was
he? What was Von Brown? Character? He's the main villain, and
he's making up these landings. I mean, I know, not because of
about no he's he's thought to have genuinely helped Americans land someone on the moon,
but he's um, he's doing it for kind of he's got this other
agenda. He's trying to get hold of this kind of ancient artifact which will
enable him to travel back in time to a crucial period. What he wants
to do is he wants to travel, which is maybe it's a bit of
a spoiler, so I won't I won't tell you, but he's thought of
a way to enable Germany to win the Second World War if he can get
hold of this time traveling ancient artifact invented by Archimedes Um. So that kind
of that's the mcguffin. The film is all about, you know, the
battle to get hold of this artifact, and then at the end they do
travel back in time. So basically they've shoehorned shoehorned in Nazis because this is
basically Operation paper Clip, because you know Operation paper Clip, don't you.
All these these many of the key Nanzwers were basically assimilated into American society,
Indian American establishment, be they rocket scientists like von Brown or whatever. They're
all given sort of new identities and absorbed into the system. So that,
yeah, that's so the world is full of Nanzers and and I suppose that's
what the film is telling you, it's slightly it's revelation of the method is
it's known as I don't think so. I think they're just they're just because
it's almost like reboot and an Marge to all the other Indiana Jones films.
So they needed to bring Nazis in somehow, even though you know, Harrison
Ford has clearly aged forty years since the first one was made. But they
couldn't. They couldn't bring it up to the present because you know, it'd
be dead or it'd be dead. So because the first one set, you
know, during the Second World War or on the eve of the Second World
War. So um, so I think they had to kind of inject a
Nazi into the plot and make it all about the Second World War again by
hook or by crook, And they've done back quite well anyway. I thought
James Mangold, the director, did a good job. It's pretty entertaining immediately
two hours and twenty minutes, a bit too long, but still quite fun.
Modest recommendation from me, I see well, I'm good. Um,
well, I'll see you next week. I guess okay, all right,
James, bye everybody. By yeah it's London. Fully Ricochet joined the conversation