The Bugle - Bugle 4154 - Terra Firma Warriors
Episode Date: May 30, 2020Andy, Alice and Anuvab get sweet release from Covid to discuss the possible Chinese incursion into India, as well as the latest nonsense from BJ and Tr*mp. We are funded entirely by Buglers! Supp...ort The Bugle. We carry no ads and exist because you make it happen: http://thebuglepodcast.com/#donateWe have a sister show, The Last Post, which you can hear here. Follow us on YouTube or Insta and see parts of this episode with actual video.The Bugle is hosted this week by:Andy ZaltzmanAlice FraserAnuvab PalAnd produced by Chris Skinner. FUB. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Hello, Bugleers, and welcome to whatever you want to call this podcast.
Just make up your own name for it.
We'll give you some vague guidance this podcast is called the Bugal,
but if that doesn't suit you, call it whatever the fuck you want.
And the Salzman's Magic Tonelle show may be Schoxlam 5000,
or Fox News with Nick Machiavelli,
or even why don't turtles have tits.
It's entirely up to you.
I am who I think I am. I am where I am, deal with it losers, and joining me this week
are a bucket of eels, fresh from an experiment which has shown that yes, they would be a more
effective leader than at least two current heads of government of G7 nations.
Don't get cocky as slithery little shit, that is no achievement whatsoever.
And I'm also joined by a palpable sense of global baffle months at everything and B, two bugle co-hosts from Australia, Alice Fraser and from
India, Ado Vapal. Hello, both of you. Slosh, slosh, slosh, enemy. I'm the bucket of
eels in this scenario, I feel.
And in that case, I am, I am the global confusion, I think the global baffled him.
I see very much as a voice of global battleman, I think that is what you've been put on this
planet today to express the baffledness of the half of humanity.
Well I don't know if you guys read about this, but as of yesterday Mumbai was supposed to be hit by a locus attack.
So we've had cyclones, we've had this ongoing thing, whatever you want to call it, this
COVID thing which is so passé now and we were now going to get hit by this giant locust attack that was
supposed to eat all the crops in India. Now I haven't read much of the Bible but I think
it goes famine, pestilence, something, something, forehorsesman of the apocalypse. Now if the
Gideon Bible Company is trying to popularize the Bible in India, this is a really weird way
to do it. Yeah, it's worked surprisingly well over the years, to be honest.
I mean, you say that one locust attack in. Wait till there's a rain of blood and people
will be buying that shit off the shelves.
Alice, how's Australia fed this week? Australia Australia is fairly relatively well, Andy, in that
our lockdown is easing up and children are back on the streets, which I'm finding disappointing.
And just getting in your way, talking to each other, being teens. Yes. Gross. I know that
is something that is really, really, very, very disappointing, really. I know that is something that is really very very disappointing really. I spend two days a week at the moment
Baby sitting my niece who's 16 months old and I think oh, I'd love to have a baby and then I see teenagers and think oh, I don't want one of them
That's why people get dogs
They're inherently menacing
We are recording on the 29th of May in the year 2020. It is World Paperclip Day. So this edition of the
Google is held together by audio paperclip, not the usual audio staples. So we apologise if some of the
joins and all as smooth as you are expecting to be. It is a bit harder to keep the touches lined up as near as normal.
On this day, people are just going to think that's my shit editing now.
Well, it was beautiful. That was the pinnacle of an art form and I think we should all take
a minute to celebrate that. Yes, any sort of jarring sound is not going to be Chris' paper-could-fed it?
It looks like you're trying to make a joke.
On this day, in 1953, Tenzing Noggan, Edmund Hillary,
became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
Or did they?
New research suggests that the whole thing was faked in a studio on the moon. It's the way the flag is fluttering and the unrealistic
attempts make gravity look normal. Also on this day in history, the opening of one of the most
important art exhibitions in history in the 34,866 BC, a new exhibition by the influential artist
entitled What It Is, What I Am Not,
in the avant-garde gallery suit de Hanier,
in what is now France.
Works included classic paintings such as
Oax, Bison,
another Bison,
probably a horse and splodge.
His work influenced artists
for around about the next 30,000 years.
As always, section of the bugle.
Sorry, I enjoyed that bit slightly.
It's so good. It's so good. You showed it.
As always, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin. This week we'll look at all the
new shows that have been brought about by Lockdown TV, some exciting new shows of emerged
from the current circumstances, including the new
Norma and Al, a fascinating historical speculative fly in the wool sit-comumentary examining how
two significant 20th century figures would have coped if they'd been flatmates during the
current lockdown.
Gulf War General Norman Schwarzkopf and prohibition era Supergangster Al Capone make for hilarious
forced buddies.
As the rigid military discipline of Stormin Norman rubs up against the rule-bending brutality
and subterfuge of old snorky scarfice.
That's the new Norman owl, all 53 episodes currently available on any streaming device.
Masking Michael Angelo.
Interesting art documentary about the controversial updating of the
Sistine Chapel frescoes by the legendary Renaissance art star to make them more suitable for
a COVID audience. Obviously, a head of a lot of face masks going on and the perspex screen
between Adam's finger and God's finger. That is a lovely touch. Also, interestingly, they
don't cover the penises at all. Well, you can't. Penises
do not do not do not spread COVID. I mean, to be honest, you know, science, we've had so
many different bits of science, I'm going to throw that one out there, let's see if it's
got legs. I mean, that's how science works, isn't it? It's not a process of discovering
something. It's a process of discovering something.
It's a process of suggesting something that might be the case and then let another people
work out if it's right or wrong. Also, you lock down shows, so well, a new series, rewriting
the classics of ancient literature as if the authors had been living under coronavirus
restrictions, or the first three in the series, viral Virgil, homeschooling Homer and self-isolating Sunsu.
Homer's in Homer's Iliad very different under lockdown, basically Menolace and Helen,
share a very awkward 10-year lockdown after he caught his famously hot wife having Skype
sex with a young Trojan hunk. Virgil bangs out a deluge of wistful tedium about cupboards,
and Sunsu's
art of boar deals with the parenting skills needed to control children in the third f***ing
month of f***ing lockdown.
That section in the bin.
Top Story This Week Not the virus, not the virus, that is not our top story this week. The world's two biggest countries are on the brink of war.
At last, a genuine new story that is not about the coronavirus.
The world has been waiting patiently for any real news that is not
a virus. And now it has a India and China in a military stand.
Of short, it would have been nice if this non-virus story was not a story
about the two most popular nations in the world to giant nuclear powers, brinkmen shipping the hell out of
each other. The words, border tensions escalate. Not words you want to hear, at least not since the
early days of Alan Borders time, as Australian cricket captain as he presided over a fractious and
pleasingly unsuccessful team. And sure, I mean, we have to talk this up a bit to make it a top story,
fighting between India and China so far seems to involve a couple of fist fights and some mid-level
taunting. Oh, military tactic that, of course, but still, it's a non-virus top story this
week. I don't fucking care what it is. It is not the virus. Anuvaab, you are the bugles
Indochinese military grandstanding correspondent. And you are on the spot for us just two or three thousand
short kilometers away from the scuffle front line.
Tell us what you can see.
Well Andy, I mean, I'm virtually almost at the Dock clam border.
She's just the crossing of India and China,
the foothills of the Himalayas.
And you know, there are many positives here,
many positives.
New stories are reporting that China,
the Chinese army has made an incursion into Indian territory. India has responded by doing nothing because
you know, China has taken into any territory they want, claimed it for themselves, and you
know, so we've said, we've stood up to the standoff, what we've really done is just
called up the Chinese counterpart and said, would you
mine stepping back a little?
And they said, we don't understand Hindi and they haven't.
In the middle of all this, Donald Trump, President of the United States, called Prime Minister
Modi and said he could help de-escalate the tensions of China entering the Ladakh region
of India.
And Prime Minister Modi rejected the offer, saying that any offer from President Trump
to de-escalate tensions is actually an offer to escalate tensions.
Yes.
A bit of a concern.
A bit of a concern.
And I don't know how you guys feel, but the only positive coming out of India and China going to full on nuclear war is that only three billion people are at risk of losing their
lives as opposed to the coronavirus, which is all eight billion people.
Well, all I can hope for is that as the armies move into position, that they're all taking
proper socially distanced precautions, because you don't want to risk anyone's
health when going into war.
It's kind of something really about that.
It was a scuffle.
Just got a scuffle in the charming wave Indian news reporting,
which broke out an altitude of 14,000 feet.
And of course, the tension moves more quickly through the
thin air at that height, which is why the crisis has escalated so rapidly. Fortunately, it was just a fist fight or as rugby commentators
would call it a little bit of over excitement. And I guess it's, you know, it's just one
of the rights of passage that new superpowers have to go through before they fully join
the gang. You've got China and India looking to move into the void caused by the collapse
of the Soviet Union
a few decades ago and America locking itself in its kennel and barking at itself until
it leaves itself alone.
So it's exciting time.
And what's it all about?
And it seems a slightly odd area to be having a territorial dispute.
I mean, could those crucial extra Himalayan mountains make all the difference to the people
of Kerala or Helaung Jiang. Well you know and the what's basically happening you know
what's being defined as a skirmish you know I mean one man's skirmish is another
man's invasion basically so when the Chinese say there's a border skirmish what
that means is that there's literally a right of passage so there's a border skirmish. What that means is that there's literally a right of passage.
So there's a passage there called the Katam Pass
through which Chinese troops have entered India and are in India.
So I suppose a border skirmish can easily
be replaced by vast numbers of Chinese trucks who've
entered India and are saying, this is now ours.
So I mean, it's really how you define borders,
kurmish and invasion really.
Now the interesting thing is the Indians have claimed it
is their territory and it shows up on Indian flags and maps
and so on. But as you know and you were Dallas,
no India well, Indian borders, you know, you don't really
on the Chinese side and on the Pakistan side.
And the reason we have all these fights with our neighbours, we don't really know where the country ends.
We don't actually know, please understand the Chinese side.
It could be well into Tibet, we don't know.
I'm sure we left full instructions when we left in the 1940s, didn't we, Adam?
Exactly, now this is where I'm really missing serial Radcliffe.
serial Radcliffe is the guy who drew the India Pakistan border.
Yes.
I mean, just let me stop you there, Adelaide.
Those are words you do not hear very often.
This is where I'm really missing serial Radcliffe.
I mean, for various reasons, you just don't hear those words.
What you want in a situation like this is a man with a moustache
and a ruler who's just gonna draw a line
in the sand wherever he feels like it
and just be like, that's that's that.
What you do not want is Donald Trump offering to mediate.
Cause what's more suitable when two aggressive blocs
are winding up for a punch up outside a pub
then for the man who lives on the corner
and spends his day screaming pigeons
to pitch in as the referee.
You know, Alice is absolutely right.
You know, one of the big benefits of having Cyril Ratliffe
is that he had a ruler, like Alice said,
and he had a map and he'd shown up in India two days before
and he had terrible dysentery.
So he just drew a line where he felt like.
But the important thing and the Alice is the line held. We're fighting over it,
but we know where the line is. He drew the line, we divided the country, no one was expecting it,
everyone thought Lahore would be part of India, Lahore went to Pakistan. It was chaos, but there
was a line. And this is why I love the British Andy. A line is very important. They didn't do anything
on the India Chinese side for whatever reason because China was separately
There's no need to draw that light so it's chaos over there
You know basically the you know
Arunachal Pradesh which is a northeastern Indian state China has always claimed
residents of Arunachal Pradesh don't need a visa to go to China because they're Chinese and this is the only time in India
Where India insists that citizens get a visa to go to China because they are Chinese. And this is the only time in India where India insists that
citizens get a visa to go to China, whereas Chinese open the door
and are like, you don't need a visa.
You're Chinese, this is very much part of India.
Again, because civil rat lived did not draw a line.
What India needs every time it's in trouble is a British man
with a ruler and some dysentery who just landed. And been told to draw a line.
If the line was drawn, we'd have a war, millions would die,
but at least we'd know what we were fighting for.
There would be a real cliff line.
Because that's the man who gives a shit.
The man who can't stop giving a shit.
I will point out that in current circumstances
of the last few months, asking for a British
person with an illness to take charge of something, that is a risky strategy where we are learning
that to our cost on an almost daily basis.
One defence analyst, quote, on the Al Jazeera website, said, and this really gives an idea
of how serious this is.
Thousands of Chinese troops are on Indian soil
and they are not and are repeat not made of terracotta.
So the Chinese really mean business,
this starts how you can tell.
They also said we do not know what Chinese objectives are.
And this is further evidence of China's new super power status.
Having no discernible objective,
you dick around destabilizing stuff first
and then you formulate your objectives retrospectively based on what then happens. Exactly, Andy. Exactly. You know, this is how,
I mean, we understand this Chinese strategy in India because for years, when India was a
socialist country, this is how Indian businessmen did business, you know, which is they had a
strategy which began with, if you live in a corrupt country, start by bribing everyone.
with if you live in a corrupt country start by bribing everyone then figure out what product you want to make. First bribing every lawmaker then figure out what you want to make.
You could always make petrochemicals or cars, doesn't matter. First bribed the whole
parliament and it served us well, you know, till the Indian economy liberalized
in the 90s for 50 years, it was fantastic. We had monopolies and we had corrupt politicians,
but at least, you know, at least you knew that you had entered the territory. This is what China's
doing. Their first invading, then figuring out if they want to invade at all, after they've
invaded. There's also this interesting thing going on, Alessandia, I want to know what you think. The Indian government are in a
conundrum because on one side they have to attack, you know, they have to at least
counter China. But on the other side, all the equipment the Indian army has is
Chinese. So all the cell phone, all the Huawei networks, India's entire technology infrastructure is built
on the backbone of Chinese chips and servers.
So, the government is in a dilemma because even when the Prime Minister is having an encrypted
phone conversation with the Home Minister, the basic network is Chinese.
So, I think they laid the groundwork of the invasion much before the landing region.
Unbelievable shittness of the British government news now and Britain has been rocked by another
political scandal this week, Dominic Cummings, one of the key cyclists in the Machiavellia Drome of British politics, the government's, well, key advisor
has refused to resign and has not been sacked after taking a 260 mile journey during lockdown
whilst ill with COVID symptoms with his wife and child in the car, then taking a further
car journey to test whether or not his eyesight was potentially
legally dangerous for use as a car driver with his child in the back of the car to a tourist
hotspot.
And I believe his wife's birthday.
I might have got a few of the details mixed up.
First, you've not heard of him.
Dominic Cummings is Boris Johnson's key advisor and he advises Boris Johnson in very much the same way that Lewis Hamilton advises his car how to get around a track or how Ronald McDonald advises cows,
how they might like to see whether they'd prefer to be disc shaped rather than cow shaped.
He was quite early on in the lockdown process and now to, I mean, to be honest, I don't think many people in Britain can say that they've
abided by all the rules all the time.
But this was early on, and I guess he, you know, he claims that he just did what anyone
else suspect they have a highly contagious potentially fatal virus would do.
A return to work at the heart of government, be, travel the length of the country to make
sure the virus wasn't just something to be enjoyed by the London elite.
And then, because he was worried about his eyesight, not being safe at driving, strapping his young child
into a car and driving him 60 miles, just to be on the safe side. He's well here in rumors,
no confirmation yet, but just to make that journey extra safe, he also cut the brake cables on his car
and had someone's true shot of broken glass all over the road as well. Just, just to be safe.
I know, you know, I'm not gonna judge him.
I know whenever I've got out of date food in the fridge,
I don't really know, slightly moldy piece of meat or something.
I make my kids eat it first for their own good.
Also with his wife, he then wrote a heartfelt account
of their virus life that didn't mention any of these things
until the story was broken by the Guardian and the mirror about
a week ago. What's the, I mean, here in Britain, there's been a reaction, and even the arch-Torrey
press and a lot of Tory Memes' apartment have been highly critical of the government. What's
the global response to this lunatic story? Well, I mean, as an Australian, I feel like it provides an insight into the cultural,
maybe let's say, features of the British landscape. It feels from here, and I'm not sure if you could say this from where you are,
but from here it's almost like the people tasked with serving the people of Britain
think that they are above the laws they make because they've been inculcated into a culture where they control the narrative around what is and is not a fact,
what is and is not a law, what is and is not a law, and what is and is not a
c*****. I feel I feel like you can't really blame them anymore
then you can blame a kid that denies eating all the chocolate biscuits with a
big chocolate ring around his mouth if he then gets away with it for raiding
the biscuit tin again that the next available opportunity, except at this
instance stealing the biscuit is rubbing the faces of
the entire population of a country in the fact that you think that you're allowed to do
the thing that you've been telling them for literally months.
They are on no account to do.
It's like saying don't f***ing goad, it's very bad for public health when you're wiping
goat off your dick.
Even people who agreed with you on the original in-advisability of goat f***ing are going to
start asking questions in this instance of goat f***ing you're going to start asking questions
in this instance we go to the metaphor for infection control.
Nicely put, there's the kind of words that we've not been hearing from the government and it's
nice to hear it expressed in such forthright language. Anuvaabh, I mean India of course,
no stranger to lunatic political scandals.
Has this been a big story in India?
Well, they have covered it, but this sort of negligence
is what we actually call normal life in India.
This sort of ethical breakdown is seen as ethical, actually.
But I did a bit of research, Andy, to figure out if this was the most callous thing done
by a British government servant ever in history
during a pandemic.
And it appears it may not have been,
I did a bit of research in the 1919 pandemic,
which swept through India,
when India was in the hands of,
and I'm going to mispronounce this, in the hands of, and I'm going to
mispronounce this, when the hands of one Lord Frederick Thessager first vi-count of
Kemsford, and he was known as Lord Kemsford, India was gripped with the Spanish flu,
millions are sick, Mumbai hospitals, desperate need of beds, Lord Kemsford thought
this would be a good time
to go looking for a particular royal Bengal tiger that bothered him because he hadn't
shot it through there. And so while the cases were rising, he was missing, he'd gone off
with a bayonet and an elephant to look for a tiger.
To be fair, he was only looking for the tiger to see if his eyesight was still good. It's a great point, Alice.
So I think I don't know if he wins or dominic coming wins, but in terms of present-day
Indian politicians, all of them have been violating the lockdown.
But that's not uncommon because it's's India and any sort of rules is only
personal. It doesn't apply to the population.
There's an element of this story in which it is a storm in a Westminster take up.
Fundamentally, it doesn't affect people's lives, but the government is insisting on keeping
the take up with a storm going on in it and forcing people to drink tea
out of the teacup. They are bringing them this on themselves. Boris Johnson has exacerbated
the situation by well being himself. I mean, the story is also, it's a distraction in many ways.
It's distracted from more important issues, such as Johnson and his government being barely
functional polyps and another Bodge government scheme
with the contact tracing and effort to belatedly ram the cap back into the bag, but the cap
is now a fully grown lion and the bag is a condom full of locusts, two locust references
in the show.
But, and this week Boris Johnson faced the Parliamentary Liaison Committee, and this
is an important parliamentary committee which traditionally, across examines the Prime Minister three times a year on what the government is doing. This is the
first time Johnson's faced it and he's been Prime Minister for nearly a year now and I
can't, but I still can't believe those words are not a complete lie. And he responded to
their questions very much like a self-obsessed, who hasn't got a fucking clue about anything
relevant would do for whatever reason. He also stopped his scientific advisors from answering questions from journalists,
which is not a great look for fans of openness and accountability.
And it's been instructive to see the change in Boris Johnson.
Gone is the confident bluster and truth twister
who hoodwinked Britain into making him king,
replaced by a hesitant bluster and truth twister
who can't even trick his own face into looking like it believes him.
Boris Johnson has been telling people to move on, which is not being told to get back
on the horse by someone who's just knocked you off your horse and is now sitting on your
horse poking you with a javelin every time you try to stand up.
So Boris Johnson has finally sat down with the Commons Committee.
For the first time, apparently, he's been avoiding it a lot.
Ordinarily, Prime Minister would engage with this particular committee.
He's a very bad man, but he...
It is a Prime Minister who joined the election campaign,
hitting a fridge to avoid a journalist.
So there is a bit of an above, yeah.
Well, he passed his use by date in that fridge,
and now he's come out and just proven that
he absolutely cannot answer a question.
Cannot will not definitely cannot.
He just came out with so many bizarre and startling statements.
I think my favourite one was when Johnson said he was forbidden from announcing any more
targets and deadlines, which raises the question,
who is forbidding him?
And isn't he the prime minister?
And also, why does he constantly pretend
that he's still a private schoolboy?
He's constantly using the language of private school.
When Dominic Cummings, when the Dominic Cummings scandal
came up, he said, I didn't mark him down for that, for his family trip.
Most people leave school and then stay left.
I can't even remember most of what happened in high school,
let alone allow the structures imposed on me
by the system to continue to fully control
my conceptualization of the outside world.
One side story from the Dominic Cumming story
is that Twitter's anti-pornography filters
blocked his name.
So stories about him weren't being shared as widely as they could have been.
This could prove to be a very valuable tactic, I think, in politics.
If you could have a dodgy behind the scenes, an accountable adviser, whose name
will not crop up due to such filters, you know, expect us to see behind the scenes micro
Macchi of Ellies in the Cummings mold, going by names such as Peaneds, Spludge Gobbler,
GoNad, GoNadze and Dick Nageables. Just keep them out of the search engines.
Great minds, thinker like Andy.
I said Dominic Cummings name is being filtered out by Twitter's anti-porn algorithms.
Dom Cummings obviously short for his full name Dominic Cummings which is short for his
other name Dominatrix short Cummings.
Other government ministers realising the license this gives them to miss behaviour while
avoiding significant part of the public censure.
They might be incurring a planning on changing their names to gaping whole tentacle
hen tie and cream pie step brother.
Wasn't that a spin off from the grateful dead in the 1960s?
This is the time when I say English is my second language.
I don't know what you guys are talking about.
Yeah, but your Indian is your second of about 15 languages.
In other Twitter news, Donald Trump is trying to end Twitter.
He's got very angry this week. Twitter has started highlighting some of his tweets, which might not be entirely, for
example, truthful or not encouraging violence.
As only Trump can, he stood up for free speech by threatening to shut down an outlet of free
speech.
He said Republicans feel that social media platforms totally silence conservative voices,
which would explain the eerie silence over the past four years from Trump's own social media feeds.
It's a fairly extraordinary story.
They add to put fact checker warnings on a tweet that he did about a postal vote fraud.
He's also, as we've talked about in previous shows, being essentially accusing a TV news host of murder,
despite the pleas of the widower of the woman
who died almost 20 years ago,
desperately asking him to stop,
and they're being absolutely no evidence whatsoever,
suggesting that there's anything in his claims.
The problem for Trump from a free speech
angle, is that for example, certain outlets do not want to let him have his freedom to
freely accuse people of murders that they are not even slightly suspected of having committed.
Now, I'm pretty sure that's what George Washington and the split squad were after
when they ditched the UK. That tax on representation nonsense was a smokescreen. What they really
wanted was the freedom to accuse Georgia
third of killing Queen Victoria.
I mean, Andy, you sent this story through yesterday
when he was merely accusing people of murder.
Since then, he's threatened to suspend the rule of law
to shoot rioting protesters.
And it's so depressing.
I feel like trying to make meaningful,
satirical jokes about Trump is like chasing a hyperactive dog
with constant explosive, corrosive diarrhea,
trying to catch it in a bag and turn it into art.
After a while, you can't help feeling a little unclean,
and maybe someone needs to stop feeding that dog,
whatever they're feeding it.
LAUGHTER
Like, fact checking is no more censorship than STD
testing is putting your dick in a cage.
Fact checking is no more an infringement of your right to free speech than vaccine testing is
the infringement of your right to inject yourself with bleach.
Fact checking is no more a corruption of the public's right to access information
than speed cameras are a corruption of your right to do car jousting on the public highway
standing through the skylight of your Toyota Prius Alpha G with a spear.
way standing through the skylight of your Toyota Prius Alpha G with a spear. Like, you're entitled to say whatever the f*** you want as long as it's not
inciting violence. You don't then have a right to avoid someone else calling you
a lying shithead with a gazing anus from out.
Mark Zuckerberg from the Facebook founder said that Facebook will not be
quotes arbiters of truth. So we'll not put such fact warnings. from the Facebook founder said that Facebook will not be, quote,
arbiters of truth.
So we'll not put such fact warnings or faulted warnings on its post.
And in the case of this supposed murder that Trump accuses Joe Scarborough
of having committed, there is no need for Facebook to be arbiters of truth
because the police and medical examiners were arbiters of truth almost 20 years ago. So when Zuckerberg says we will not be arbiters of truth, what
he really means is we will be enablers of lies. It's a small difference, but I believe
an important one. I mean, it's sort of astonishing to me that he says that Facebook is keeping
is refusing to interfere in such things when they have an algorithmic process that presents you with information or removes information from your site.
I feel like someone needs to sign Facebook and Twitter and all these social media platforms up to a media code of conduct as the algorithmically curated networks that they are,
their media networks, they're not the public square, however much they would like to object that they are and point to the fact that they happen to have gallows in the corner.
But Andy Alice, you know, I have a question, and just to play devil's advocate, I can sort
of see Trump's point of view about social media.
Because think about it, what kind of social media would we want if fact checking and truth
started featuring, and if fake news was corrected, you know, I feel, you know
Don't you feel we're long past that world? What is this 2005?
When you expect
Information to be filled with facts would we be going back to another world that we're long past?
That is a world that we cannot risk going back to. A world where truth is definable.
Human conversation would end as we know it.
Destruction of the cultural heritage of Aboriginal people in Australian news now.
Alice, as a white Australian, this is very much in your ballpark.
Bring us up to date.
Yes, it's heartbreaking news. A number of Aboriginal heritage sites have made just significance
have been destroyed in Western Australia, in the Pilbara region. A Rio Tinto obtained legal
permission to blast these sites before they were fully uncovered. The things that they
contained, including evidence of continued human occupation through the last ice age,
28,000-year-old
tool made from bone, each one of the oldest examples of these technologies known in Australia,
a piece of 4,000-year-old platted hair belt whose DNA has been linked to today's occupants,
the traditional owners of that land. And I for one applaud this behavior on the part of our
mining companies. It's sort of a form of spring cleaning, I like to think of it as.
Historians and people with a love of culture and the wonder of human existence
are essentially the hoarders of the natural world,
always trying to hold on to the glorious miracles of human survival
in the astonishing complexity of our shared past.
I mean, it's not like Australia has spent the last 200 years diminishing
and denying
the multifaceted and sophisticated science and civilization of its indigenous population in
favor of a facile, linear narrative of Anglo-centric superiority that conflates colonial dominance
with evolutionary fitness and a right to cultural ascendancy that includes aligning the presence
of previous occupants as me as ciphers and crayon drawn placeholders for a God given right to European
annexation or anything like that. I am as big a fan of European culture, legal and rights-driven
narratives as the next privileged bookworm with a Cambridge education. I just don't think I need
to pretend that nothing else has ever had value to enjoy Shakespeare. Well, I mean, I mean, maybe I'm seeing this from a from a white European perspective,
but, you know, whilst it might be land of cultural and spiritual importance to the Aboriginal
people of Australia, what about the cultural and spiritual importance to to white people like me
of the tradition of exploiting any and all mineral resources,
regardless of the consequences and non-financial costs.
Is that not a heritage that we have to protect as well?
You mentioned Rio Tinto was responsible for this lovely action.
I'd like to know what people in Australia think
of this fantastic Indian company called Adani,
who after they were done with the destroying large
parts of the state of Gujarat, have set their eyes on large parts of minds in Australia.
And I read about a bunch of protests against them. And I feel like this is the sort of thing
that brings the world together. You know, large global corporations who've destroyed
things in one part of the world really think the best practices to another part of the world.
And thereby bridge that gap between India and Australia.
Are they being talked about?
Yeah, it's reassuring, Anavab.
We do talk about Adani, we talk about Rio Tinto.
It's reassuring to know that there are organizations in this world
that would literally blow the top of the path and on
if someone had dropped the coin underneath it.
You know, just.
It's already been done.
But I guess, you know, it's a fair contest, isn't it?
The mining industry against archeological cultural heritage.
It's like a kind of rock paper scissors style game
of 28,000 year old bone tool industrial explosives
unfettered capitalism.
You know, it's kind of three corner games.
The thing is industrial explosives
and unfettered capitalism tend to gang up
on 28,000 year old bone tool.
So it's, you know, it's a general rule.
Yeah, yeah, it's a general rule.
The thing is, the difficult thing about something being, you know, priceless is that priceless isn't worth as much as some money.
Oh, I think that's a good place to end this episode,
charting the latest week in the lunacy of our great species.
Thank you for listening. We'll be back next week with a regular
bugle on the Saturday, the 13th of June. We're going to have the inaugural Bugle live streamed quiz.
And it will be the greatest quiz in the history of all humanity, as I'm sure you would
unhesitatingly agree, Bugle. On the 27th of June, we will have another Bughal live stream live show.
Alice, other than the wonderful last post, which is up to, what, episode?
150?
150 something, yeah.
Yeah.
Anything else to alert all of us?
I still have my regular tea with Alice show that isn't funny at all, and also Savage
is available on Amazon Prime.
But do listen to the last post, it's a lot of fun and very stupid and
excitingly not set in the real world.
Anivab any shows you'd like to?
Well, two things Andy, I would like to plug Alice's last post,
all because she did send me to another planet as a legal representative
of that podcast and secondly I we do a podcast in India called Our Last Week which is on Spotify
which I normally don't love because it's just nonsense but this week is a cricket episode, a cricket conundrum episode,
and featuring on it is leading Indian cricket commentator
and exaltsman with cricket conundrums.
So that comes out Thursday.
So any fads of cricket conundrums
or whatever is left of cricket at the end of this pandemic
can listen.
Well, thank you for listening once again. If the planet is a whole
is listening, please grow the f*** up at some point this year.
Until next week, Bugle is goodbye and we will play you out
in the time-honored tradition with some lies that were out our premium level
voluntary subscribers to join them, go to thebuebobodgos.com
and click the donate button. Goodbye!
and click the donate button. Goodbye.
Rachel Harding thinks the world could do with some more positive phobias. Fear is a natural evolutionary impulse, argues Rachel, for which we should be eternally grateful.
It is what has stopped us going the way of the now seriously endangered overconfident jungle pigeon
and the thoroughly extinct cocky cliff horse. But continues Rachel, phobias always tend to be negative. I personally
am a phobia phobic. I'm terrified of not being terrified of enough things.
Rachel's fellow Rachel, Rachel Moore, is much taken with the first Rachel's idea. The
second Rachel ventures a couple of suggestions. How about trying to get people to take up Ecclei Pagapantophobia, the fear of not appreciating
flowers enough, or maybe even a Mato Paraca philophobia, the fear of not telling people
you love them?
These could have great social impact, we just need a celebrity to say they've got these
phobias and within a few years they will be rampant.
It's all for the good of humanity.
David Fowles believes that the global aviation industry
will need to modernize in the wake of all the stuff, et cetera.
And one of the ways in which it should do so
is by being more flexible with where it takes people to.
Airports are an outdated idea, suggests, David.
With modern parachute, drone, GPS,
and above all mattress technology,
it should be possible to drop people off pretty close to where they actually want to go, reasonably safely, and
thus save the environmental cost of ground transportation. By my calculations concludes
David under my scheme, 75% of airports could be turned back into fields.
John O. Michelle once spent a year plotting out a comic book detailing the adventures of
Vegittita, whose
superpower was the ability to turn meat into vegetables. Vegita was trying to move the
world away from excessive meat heating for the good of the environment, whilst also providing
alternative crops for the affected farmers because he was a great guy.
Jono then abandoned the idea however. I ended up thinking that Vegita was a bit of a tool
explains Jono, and would
have been better off persuading people politely and lobbying governmental organisations rather
than spoiling people's barbecues. Jonathan Stewart likes to see the look on his neighbours'
faces when he turns up outside their house with a load of friends dressed as archaeologists
with metal detectors, chisels and all the rest of the kit, and with some heavily annotated
ground plans before peering into their garden, pointing at a specific spot and saying,
I'm pretty sure it's there, about 10 feet down, but it's worth doing the whole plot and seeing what
we find. It's a great prank, says Jonathan, although it usually only works once,
so I move house quite regularly to have new people to try it on.
Mark Foley used to try the self-same prank on his neighbours by the greatest of made-up
coincidences.
Mark recalls an occasion on which the neighbour threatened to call the police and shove
quote that hammer somewhere you do not want it to be shoved.
Mark Julie withdrew, giggling quietly to himself.
Three days later his neighbour popped around and told Mark that he'd unearthed a 3,000
year old bronze terrapin and invited Mark to join him in the rest of the dig. It was, acknowledge Mark, quite weird.
And finally, continuing the archaeological theme, Lawrence Mitchell wonders if we've got
the great pyramids of Egypt all wrong. What if they weren't burial thingies at all speculates
Lawrence, it does seem a bit of a stupid way to entomb someone with all due respect to
the Egyptians? What if instead they were in fact some form of early computer or an escape
from type installation that everyone in Egypt could use at once, or maybe even sports venues,
like inverted stadiums, with the crowd on the ground and the players on a chuckle ball
into a bucket on top. Lawrence concludes somewhat, I just don't think we should assume
they were pimped up coffins. That's all.
Here end if the lies.
Bye bye.