'World War Three Fought Piecemeal'

0:00Welcome back everybody to the long game podcast with myself, your host Jason Osborne, and as I say, a much more aesthetically pleasing Ben Scalan this week. Maria mains poor Ben is stuck. No, but that's so Maria very graciously agreed to step in. Thank you for joining me this week Maria. Good to see you, Justin. Did you have a good weekend? I had a very good weekend. I longtime viewers will know I'm obviously in Poland rather than Ireland and I don't know how the weather was for you guys over the weekend because the news has definitively moved off the weather for the moment, but the weather it was the death throws of winter over the weekend. I would say and the spring came with force because it was a lovely 17 degrees. So that was literally all I needed. The weekend was great. I was so sick of gray skies of the sub like there was minus 10 minus 12 fell like minus 20 temperatures over here for weeks and I'm over Christmas. So yeah, crazy.

1:02Yeah, I know it's nice to see the spring. It was cold. I was actually in Edinburgh the weekend, so it was in. Oh, very good. I had a ham party on so all the the hens shenanigans, but it was lovely. It's really nice and it's it's very Scottish like it's very quintessentially Scottish. The the tartan and like people the trench coats and like it's just lovely like and the short price. It's very it's very touristy, so it was nice, but it was freezing. It's really cold. Oh, and to use the word again, though, it's a very aesthetic city as well. It's especially with the castle looming over everything. I really, really very fall in love. It's lovely and it's nice to go to a city where it actually fades like you're in that you know, you're in that country. It's very cold. Yeah, yeah. It's different. It's very distinct. So yeah, it was good. So but we're back to reality now. So well, the the warm winds of spring have not I suppose broad all good things to put it that way. As viewers will be well aware at this stage and the topic

2:06we're going to lead off with this week was the outbreak of insane hostilities in the Middle East. So for those who I don't know, more disciplined than I, we're off their devices for the weekend or otherwise chose not to tune into the news. And the US and Israel launched a joint air campaign against Iran on Saturday morning. And so this was obviously a significant eska. It's not the first time that they've launched strikes. There was obviously the I think it was called Operation Midnight Hammer last June in which the US I think was the US and Israel was certainly the US struck nuclear targets across Iran. And you know, they were at the time very satisfied that the job was done. No, no more need for any of that, but sure enough here we are. I think as I say Saturday, I think it was the 28th of February. So there's a significant escalation as the Air Force has started bombing targets across Iran. And I suppose the most

3:09significant geopolitical outcome from this straight off the bat is the death of the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khomeini, which I hope I pronounced correctly. Funny enough for the amount of times I've been reading that name for the past couple of days, I haven't actually heard it said. So I hope I pronounced that properly. But it has to say that it's spiraling would probably an understatement as these things always do because so the Americans and the Israelis have struck thousands of targets already across Iran, according to both of those countries. And in the meantime, Iran has started retaliating by striking obvious Israel American military bases in the Middle East. Earlier this morning, they struck an RAF base in Cyprus. They've struck the Iranian missiles and drones have hit population centers in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi, and in Qatar, in Doha, I think specifically,

4:16but also in Kuwait. And then there's been a whole load of ripple effects like big unrest outside the US, US consulates and embassies in various countries I saw over the weekend. Protesters breaching the outer wall of, I think, was the US consulate in Karachi in Pakistan. And that resulted in, according to reports over the weekend, a number of protesters, a number of the people who did the breaching being killed. The last number I saw, that was nine people were killed. But that may well have climbed. It's just such a rapidly developing situation. It's hard to have the final word on it at any given time because it's just keeps snowballing. And I suppose, before we get into sharing our own opinions on this, if indeed we have any, this would always have been the danger with an operation like this because Trump obviously posted an eight-minute long video to coincide with the launch of the campaign, which he sort of set out the fact that negotiations were not going well with the Iranians from his perspective. They were negotiating

5:19about a whole variety of things, but foremost, among them were sort of Iran's nuclear arrangements. And according to Trump, they would agree to more of his terms and things would seem to be going well, and then they would back out of it, and then they would agree again, and then they would back out of it. And it seems like he got fed up with that and decided that this would be the more effective way to get more of what he wants. But I mean, so a lot of people in support of it, because the Iranian regime, not particularly popular in the West, for obvious reasons. Many Western reports indicating that it is on the ground a very repressive regime. Obviously, earlier this year, we had anti-regime protests in Iran, which again, sort of dissident reports, which were amplified and reported on in Western outlets indicated that up to 30,000 protesters had been killed and cracked down by the Iranian regime and cracked down on those protests. So at the time, Trump had told those people, if I remember

6:23correctly, the help was coming. And then he came under fire because he'd said that, and sure enough, there was no American follow-on action. But here it is. And it does seem as though the aims are, I mean, he would maybe see all of these aims were encompassed in this current campaign, crippling Iran's nuclear capabilities, taking out the obstinate from their perspective leadership. And as he was sort of, he was quite strong on this in the video, he did say that they were minded to sort of create the conditions for the Iranian people to overthrow their regime and implement new governance should they be so inclined. But as I was sort of indicating a few moments ago, very easy to say that, not so easy to bring that about, because Iran is a huge country with extraordinarily difficult terrain. It would be near impossible to put boots on the ground, as the saying goes, in a new sort of meaningful capacity.

7:28And it's very difficult to sort of unseat a regime that, again, as far as I can tell, objectively speaking, it's not black or white whether the Iranian people are for or against the Iranian regime. A lot of, again, news outlets were reporting on, you know, the diaspora being very excited about the overthrow of the Iranian regime. And sure enough, that does seem to be the case. A lot of Iranians in Western cities celebrating the death of the Khomeini. But at the same time, there also seem to be rallies and support of the regime in various Iranian cities. People obviously listen and can take from that what they will whether they want to trust the sort of Iranian sources or the sources on the internet that are conveying those pro-Iranian regime rallies to us. But certainly what reliable Iranian sources I follow has seen, it's not a black and white situation. There are the remain in Iran religious hardliners who

8:30would very much be against America, against Israel, while there are obviously modernizing sort of forces at work, both in Iran and abroad who would love to see the regime over thrown and shot at different governance. So it is an extraordinarily complicated picture, which is pretty much to get on to our, I'm not sure whether you have thoughts on this Maria and I don't want to hog the whole thing because obviously I'm on this every week. No, that was a good explainer, Jason. I think we're kind of playing catch up over the weekend of things. But what is what we have seen on social media, ever in the Middle East, it just is in flames. It's very scary, obviously, even when I was with my friends this weekend, everyone like every Irish person knows at least like two or three people here in Dubai, here in Doha, a lot of teachers, a lot of people have gone over for work and like it's so interesting how quickly things can change because Dubai and all those places they would always

9:34have been seen as very safe, like you can go over it's a good place to be. So that is interesting and I think obviously the death of Iran Supreme Leader has, it has left a dangerous kind of a par vacuum. One of the things that I, so it's very hard to know what's going to happen, it gets easy for us sitting here to kind of speculate, but one of the sentiments that I've kind of seen broadly online even this morning was very much a lot of people kind of coming out and saying you know they don't support the actions of really the US or Israel in the context of this. And like I think that automatically there's kind of an inclination people are saying that automatically means that you support the Islamic regime and I suppose people say well it doesn't, I just because I don't support the actions of the US or Israel doesn't mean that I support the Islamic regime. And I think people that I think are, I think after COVID and after the kind of the herd mentality of COVID people are a bit more questioning of certain narratives, they're more

10:40questioning of what the media puts out with regards to the Middle East. And I think questioning the relationship or questioning the intervention doesn't make someone automatically pro-Islamist, it makes them more, you know, you're capable of thinking about the situation, but there is a sentiment like there like you can see it everywhere online that what is happening with this action is not going to benefit ordinary people in Western countries, like you're seeing a lot of that that more instability, more money poured into these conflicts that don't have very much to do with us specifically that that, and it's not going to improve the lives of people here, people are kind of, they're fed up of that and they're, they seem to be voicing a lot of objection to that and you know, the continued destabilization of countries and the displacement of people and there was obviously the horrible attack on the school as well and I really spoke. So it's all

11:43it's all very unstable and it's hard to know what way to be it in but that's kind of the sentiment that I've seen online at least Western commentators anyway. No, it's very interesting what you say, it does much to the annoyance of many of our viewers who's been and I are kind of much much the same on this one and we do get some annoyed comments about this but I just categorically refuse to be pushed into treating these conflicts like black or white issues. God knows people just keep trying to make you support one side. They're like you have to be, you know, pro is if you're not as you say you're pro islamist or you have to be, or you have to be pro Iran or you're on the Zionist payroll would be the, it would be the line from obviously a lot of people on the internet, especially if you occupy any sort of media position, it drives me nuts because the world is so complex. These incidents that are so kinetic, that are so dynamic, like as I was saying on the

12:48recent podcast in relation to the Israel Gaza stuff, I don't know how people come to such confident opinions on this when they have, when they're not on the ground in these places and even if you were on the ground over there, that stops you from being on the ground and all of the other places involved in this that you would need to be seeing in order to get a full accurate picture of what's going on. You're presumably not getting the like the objective unbiased truth from any side involved in the conflict. Obviously it's in American interests to, you know, paint this as being a very moral crusade to use the very loaded term. Obviously it's in the interest of the Israelis to paint this as being a very moral thing to engage in. Obviously it's in the interest of the Iranians to point the other to paint the others I should say in as bad as possible a light. And so it just seems like if you are removed from the conflict at all and even if you're engaged in the conflict, it is very hard to come to any sort of perfectly objective view on the matter from which you might, you know,

13:53reasonably decide who's in the right and who's in the wrong here. All you can really do it seems to me with this as with the Israel Gaza stuff is look at certain aspects of these things and draw your conclusions from it. Like as you alluded to one of the the big talking points over the weekend was the I don't have the details here in front of me. The striking of what appears to be a school in Iran. Now obviously people a lot of people who support the strikes disregard it's out of hand because it was being reported by Iranian media. But I've seen some sort of what are they called them on X like O sinned guys open source intelligence who seem to be corroborating that this was a Western strike that Hish and Iranian school something like that and a killed oh I think the number now is over a hundred a school children are there out like that is deplorable that's the sort of thing that you know if Iran dash Iran struck I don't know a school in Israel or wherever

14:58else it would be you wouldn't hear the end of it and you know rightly rightly so but it's just to say that like these things aren't black and white at the same time on the flip side like Iran is clearly not people do the opposite thing there where they want to paint Iran as a force for good against sort of Western tyranny so they'll say you know Iran is sort of a sort of beacon against the hegemony of the U.S. and Israel but like I would go back to the fact that Iran funded Hamas I don't know if it's still those funded funds Hamas this balla Hamas did carry out the October 7 the attack which regardless of the whole context are there now I'm coming from a Catholic vantage point as I presume you are as well Maria yeah the ends don't justify the means in the Catholic moral worldview yeah exactly and like the the October 7 that I was deeply violent lots of innocent

15:59people were killed obviously a lot of people who support Iran were cheering it on the day was taking place which is just astonishing to me but it's just like every side involved in this is morally implicated is sort of damn morally damaged by what they're doing every side is also suffering as a result of what's going on and when that is what's going on on the ground you know people will forgive me for you know if I don't have to sort of go gong the hoe on one side of it I'm not going to do so because it's a it is just a huge mess and I've been thinking a lot recently about the late Pope Francis's comment that the world is in the third world war is increasingly being fought piecemeal he said something like that and that's just so much the impression I have these days that you've obviously got this engulfing the entire Middle East region almost you've got just at the end of last week Afghanistan and Pakistan declaring open war on each other you've got obviously Russia Ukraine still rumbling on over there you've got massive civil war in Sudan

17:04it's a yep this isn't even dimension obviously the world events moving so quickly this isn't even dimension the sort of hell violence that broke out in Mexico last week as well it really just seems like things are spiraling it's spiraling as well and I think one of the one of the concerns with the conflict in the Middle East I think is that we've seen I would say a real increase in concern about the the Islamification off the west of Britain especially we're not quite there yet the scale that they are maybe 20 30 years behind them but I think people are making the point that hoi is you know hoi is more chaos in the Middle East go into benefit people here and if people are displaced including those who have like the most hardline beliefs that that's a concern because it will probably mean that large numbers of those people will end up here they will end up in

18:05in the west because of the conflict there so that's also a concern and I was going through the papers the latest the latest update on it this morning with obviously the president of the European Commission Ursula Vonderland she has come under fire for she's waited until today to convene an emergency meeting on the situation and obviously people are like it's a pretty flow reaction and you've got you've got a lot of people in social media saying that you know world war three is literally happening and Europeans are just are just out of touch and it's very slow so someone said everything you need to know about european strategic relevance in one tweet so you'll have those foreign ministers they're going to be meeting today so that's the latest on and I think but it's just the ability is huge like uh it's and this is another aspect of the thing you know for people who might uncritically support what's taken away because this is I it's messy I don't

19:10preclude say the very messy yeah I certainly don't I don't how's it going to put it the supreme leader of Iran strikes me as being a bad man I don't mind standing behind that opinion yeah yeah I don't think it'll be a great loss to the world that you know he's really he lived by the sword he died but the summary that that kind of thing um but for any good that might come out of the operation it seems to me that the potential for destabilization and mess is almost infinitely higher um you obviously saw um this is a saw with Libya for example which is at western forces obviously top toppled Gaddafi there and that country has just devolved into anarchy essentially since then it's a country through which many migrants come to europe just use one example that people would say affects their daily lives I imagine that would be amplified many times over by the collapse of the regime in Iran and say the devolution into civil war obviously that's a worst case scenario

20:16and there's no guarantee that things will you know play out that way but it's just when you engage in something like this it's very much playing with fire and of course it won't be America the primarily suffers the consequences of things do go wrong in this regard although I don't think they'll come out of a completely scot-free I mean Trump very much suffer politically um they could suffer indirectly in a whole load of ways but you know if there's going to be an influx of refugees if anywhere is going to be getting an influx of refugees it's likely to be euro um and as one of the points you alluded to I think is very important as well which is that these conflicts in the Middle East aren't so set upon like national lines they very much run more so along ideological lines which is why it was so interesting after after October 7th that it created such a stir in Europe and in America and obviously there's many factors in that

21:17but one was certainly the the the larger Muslim population in Europe than there used to be and I've experienced this firsthand I've had a couple of um I just haven't spoken to them in a long time because I'm not living nearby but I had a couple of Muslim friends and I was living in Ireland who obviously were deeply affected by say what was going on in the Middle East at any given time and understandably so but this is a new dynamic in Western countries and so the most recent example or most recent experience I had of this was getting a taxi in London late last year where I was chatting to he was a he was from Pakistan but he'd been living in London for decades and he was essentially saying that the UK government's biggest failure was not any of its domestic policies but essentially it stands on Gaza and I just found that quite remarkable because I imagine that if you're sort of a native Britain that is very much not likely to be your view of the British government's primary failing um and so as I said this runs along kind of ideological

22:24lines and obviously the the heightened Muslim populations in Western countries is changing that dynamic and you know um obviously not all Muslims are violently inclined but some of them certainly are like I saw just before joining this that the chairman of the I think was that I saw this just before coming in so I might be um open be corrected on this but I think it was the chairman of the Bundestags Parliamentary Control Committee which has uh which oversees Germany's intelligence services had warned of the risk of retaliatory measures by pro-Iranian regime terrorists including sleeper cells in Europe and it's like of course that's the possibility now like there's there's um 100 percent you know pretty much any political position that you might find in the Middle East you can find in Europe now as well um and indeed in America there's been a number of sort of uh incidents the motives for which haven't been established yet so I you know you can't definitively say that these are linked to what's going on in Iran but certainly one of them that was

23:28being reported on last night when last I looked at it was uh there was a shooting in a bar in Austin and the last report I saw and I saw something to do with uh the person who seen who's the suspect in that who's whose um it's alleged carried out the shooting in a bar in Austin uh was in possession of a crown in his car and something as vague as Islamic gar but people were taking from that that um it may be connected to what's going on in Iran especially even that some figures in Iran have called for uh G hat um in light of what's going on so it's just it's extraordinarily again as well ideologically messy and with the historic movement of peoples over the past 30 years in particular um it means that the the the conflict is not necessarily limited to the Middle East even if that's where all the strikes are being carried out now I know we wanted to discuss as well and move on to this topic perhaps the some of the other ramifications of these sort of new demographics of Europe you wrote a

24:30piece at the end of last week about the uh the sort of historic uh you call bi-election just outside Manchester the Gordon indent and bi-election could you tell us a bit about that and why it relates to what we're talking about here yeah like this is such an interesting story it's fascinating so this was the bi-election on may have it printed out here just so you get the details right this was the bi-election uh in Gordon and Gordon and Denton which is in Greater Manchester the Greater Manchester constituency on Thursday night and all the headlines were this huge green party when um they're candidated in the area Hannah Spencer uh you know this very liberal white woman she became the new MP in the area um and it's an area that has been held for for decades by by Alia Brampi so it was a huge uh portrayed as a huge victory for the Greens um but one of the the fascinating things about this story is that like if you go onto the Greens um their social media you

25:35can see that they're campaign they they ran this um multi-lingual kind of campaign in the Erdoe language it's a very some of these areas are very densely populated by Muslims um and they ran an Erdoe language campaign so these Erdoe language leaflets urging people to vote for the party for a strong voice from Muslims um and you had Spencer wearing Islamic clothes um beneath the message like stop Islamophobia stop reform and I honestly thought like I thought people were were blowing it out of proportion potentially on social media and then I went in and this was all this was all real so it's it's it's crazy um you had some in Leibor so the Greens uh came first in the election then you had Leibor um you'd reform sorry you'd reform second then Leibor were pushed to third um but it was very much a move away from Leibor and and the Greens relying on the Muslim vote um it led some Leibor figures to accuse the Greens of whipping up hatred among Muslim voters by

26:38deliberately yeah by deliberately raising the salience of Gaza in the area whipping up this kind of tension um you had a video that was produced by the Green Party in Erdo and you had Keir Starmer uh Keir Starmer Sir Keir Starmer he was depicted as shaking hands with the Indian Prime Minister who's a very unpopular figure in Pakistan um yeah and then you had David Lamey when he was foreign minister I think he was in the video shaking hands with Benjamin Netanyahu so very provocative um and you'd loads of Muslims celebrating this vote but the me and part of the story is that independent election observers so completely independent this grip of election observers flagged what they called concerningly high levels of family voting in that by election so that is an illegal practice where you have two voters or more where they will confer or they will collude and direct each other hard to vote so often it would be husbands like from Islamic countries

27:42Islamic culture is telling their wives hard to vote families pulling to polling booths together so this grip I have it here the grip is democracy volunteers and they said they observed family voting in 60% of polling stations which is enormous affecting 12% of voters who were observed so it's it's it's crazy and a lot of people on social media were saying rightly that you know you have you know the grains are kind of the puppets for you know the Islamic vote and so it's very interesting like I was only sort of tangently following that election until I read a good bit about the result but I was only tangently following it while it was going on and obviously despite being the greens the environment seems to have played next to no role in that election as far as I can tell like I really saw very little of the kind of things that you would traditionally associate green parties with yeah it means you say a lot of the folks was on kind of sectarian politics very spectacular yeah playing communities off each other

28:46and sure they sure enough they benefited by it I mean I saw a really interesting and again less people think these were coming from just sort of you know an embittered reform after losing the election or sort of the right wing and British politics sky news was news like I can't sound coats I think was the journalist's name was what's going to use was speaking as well about this practice of family voting I think he was also speaking to democracy what were they called democracy democracy volunteers democracy volunteers that's it he was chatting to them on the ground and sort of corroborating the they'd been saying that this this practice had been taking place there and then you were seeing sort of population maps of this constituency Gordon and Denton and it was kind of split almost fifth it's probably not 50 50 but there were huge Muslim populations in I think it was the Gordon half might have the mixed up it might have been done but one of the half yeah nearly 50 percent Muslim in some of the areas yeah exactly yeah it was really striking

29:46and those areas much more inclined to vote green party than than the white the sort of British constituencies yeah areas I should say and it's really interesting because you know the phrase obviously turkeys voting for Christmas or if you're American turkeys voting for Thanksgiving comms to mind because it's obviously it was it was an electorally successful ploy on the green parties part they got Hannah spends were elected and they're all very much vibing before and after lots of very dancing industry yeah celebratory videos yeah exactly but like this is obviously what people who aren't inclined to vote that way can't wrap their head around it's like if you were to sit down and talk indeed I think it was one of the telegraph podcasts one of their contributors was saying like why is it that Islamic voters Muslim voters

30:51who would have a lot more in common socially with say a right wing party than they would with the greens why is it that the votes are going to the greens rather than to like say reform which is socially speaking as far more aligned with say Islamic sort of views on a variety of things than the green party would be labor what's that sorry labor would be oh I was going to say that like well the reform would be more sort of aligned I suppose with Islamic views probably on say like abortion on things like that okay I get like conservative yeah exactly I conservative I suppose you had to put it that way that's really conservative but obviously what Trump's that so I follow a UK Islamic news site five pillars because their editor and I think their deputy editor are very vocal on social media and they very often give insights into the way

31:53that sort of Muslims think in the UK and one of them was saying I wish I pulled the tweet up before this but I don't have it in front of me he was essentially saying that well the reason is that in there of you reformer a bunch of racists who want to disadvantage Islamic communities ultimately would love to see a lot of Muslims deported and therefore that Trump's any sort of commonalities they might have on a social level like you know opposition to sort of social progress emphasis on the family they actually they would they at Trump's any of that they're going to vote for say the green party who even though they would differ hugely on social issues aren't going to antagonize them along the lines of ethnicity or religion and so that's sort of why the vote goes there but like as I say I think Muslims in voting that way are very clever I think it's it's kind of a winning strategy and indeed it's a strategy that's employed in I've mentioned it before in the podcast Michelle Welbeck the French author who recently celebrated

32:58the 70th birthday he wrote a sort of fictional political fiction in I kind of remember what your couple years are going to have submission in which France becomes Islamisized or Islamized whatever the word would be and in the plot of that novel yeah again the French left aligns with recently established Islamic party to block the Marine Le Penz party essentially from gaining power and sure enough once that happens the Islamic sort of wing of that alliance takes over and begins to make France more Islamic and I do think that the left or obviously I'll get your thoughts on this now in a sec but just to say that the left I think are in trouble here because according to their own kind of worldview they can't really stand up against a lot of this out of fear of peering racist or out of fear of appearing intolerant but the idea that Muslims and left wing

34:01politicians in Europe are natural allies you know it's sort of cynically used at the moment by voting blocks it's they are not natural allies and I think the day that the day will come that that will dawn on dawn on a lot of people and I mean you kind of have to question why is there this alliance between you know a lot of the times is very very far left and people hear Muslims and you know more like hear more radical Muslims and I would say personally like the link between even feminists and you wonder why are these Muslims supporting abortion campaigners for example they don't have to see them views on marriage or whole range of things but it's almost a disdain for Christianity and it's almost divide and conquer like what you see here as well that's the only thing that's going to unite them really and what you see here is you see I think it was Farage and I just Farage who said that it was a victory for sectarian voting and shading and that's true and there's a

35:04huge huge issue because you see people from these other cultures and these other countries and predominantly Muslim countries they have a disdain for Western rules for Western laws they are not abiding like they're going into these polling booths voting however many people like this is into the 60% of this particular constituency like it's enormous but it's a complete disregard for Western values of democracy and the rule of law and how we do things in the West and you know you can very much make the argument looking at a story like this you know if you don't want to abide by our rules and our democracy and how we have always functioned as Christian countries where democracy has developed and civilisation has developed then that there should be a crackdown and I think in Britain like there's there's there are huge issues about the level of immigration from non-Christians like if you look at Ireland the amount of people from Somalia for

36:08example no it's it's enormous and that's a 97 98% predominantly Muslim country and what is the threat to social cohesion because there's a tension and there's that there's a huge threat to social cohesion and also if you look at for example just on a practical level and how do we sustain like the benefits system for example there's far too much pressure if you look at these countries women you know in in Muslim households they don't work like if you're abiding by the time you don't work so these households are very much either on one wage or they're on on benefits that's placing a pressure on people and there's a huge level of of tension and this I think people have seen the grains that there's an almost a desperation to attract the Muslim vote and the lengths that they will go to like I think if this was anyone else they'd be accused of like cultural appropriation to be very quick to accuse someone else of that but they can dress up in the that is um garb and they can have these leaflets in Urdu but it's it's a very I think important story looking at social cohesion and where we are at like even the grip they came out and they said the

37:14democracy volunteers they said we rarely issue a report on the night of an election but the data we've collected today on family voting when compared to all the recent biolactions is extremely high so they were like we have seen they said we have seen concerningly high levels of family voting and based on their assessment it was the highest level of family voting ever seen in their 10 year history of observing elections in the UK but I think people need to sit up and pay attention what's happening so this is a point on the podcast that I've made many times and in the podcast and in articles that I've written that people are probably tired of hearing but I'm going to keep banging on with it anyway religion is not going away it's only going to become more relevant I think in the public square in Europe it's certainly not going the religious shape of Europe is clearly not going to look like like it ever has before really there's just so many so many different creeds and so many different groups at play but the religion as a sort of phenomena is going to

38:20remain remain relevant or increase in relevant seems fairly clear to me and I think things like this only emphasize that it's a because I really feel like when I was when I was for my entire life really if I'm honest I'm turning 30 this year religion was taken as a kind of purely personal purely private thing you know nice for you if you have it if you do have it kind of keep it yourself it helps you get by in life that's about it it sure it shouldn't really inform anything else and it's kind of that view is born of a warped understanding of the distinction between the sort of sacred and the secular which indeed was a sort of development of a Christian development development over the centuries but say other creeds like Islam for example don't recognize that distinction to put it that way Islam doesn't have a sort of distinction as far as

39:22I understand it between the sort of religious and the secular spheres and so that's why so many you know Islamic countries are so sort of strikingly theocratic or so sort of strikingly or religiously authoritarian it's because there isn't that distinction and you are kind of seeing in these demographic enclaves in Western countries you're seeing that dynamic at play where religion very explicitly informs the way Muslims conduct themselves I'm not even funny enough saying that as a criticism I think there is a lot you can criticize about Islam obviously I'm a Catholic I think it's um I think Jesus Christ is God I you know all of the things we're familiar with here but there is a lot are he funny enough and this might get me in trouble respect about Islam or at least that I think I think secularism is in some way no less ideal well not in some ways as we're

40:22going in our next segment as we're going to be discussing I think secularism some ways can be far worse um and I know that'll be a shocking statement of some of our listeners but I would be coming at this again as I say from a kind of non-secular viewpoint I would be coming at this from a Christian viewpoint which is that you know for example I think God exists I think that therefore Muslim even though I think Muslims have say a worked understanding of the actual nature of God and I think that they are closer to the mark and at least believing that God exists and trying to order their lives around that reality then say a secular person who thinks that life is ultimately whatever you want to be you know above the elevated autonomy to the sort of many people in the West of autonomy to the primary sort of I'd the primary God with I would say disastrous effect and I think obviously the Islamic emphasis on family is another another strength obviously there's massive differences in terms of

41:25understanding of the family between say Catholicism which would obviously be our denomination and Islam but even still I think that they are probably closer to sort of reality in terms of their understanding of the family than kind of the the most progressive flourish which is the family kind of you know ears and looks like whatever you want it to be and so I think that and even on a very personal level like I had this experience the other day that I was looking on X and one of the things that was live streaming on X was Islamic prayers from one of their it was Reuters sometimes goes to a live cat or goes to a webcam and some holy or some you know landmark location around the world or there were livestream was Islamic prayers from some shrines somewhere I can't remember where is and I might possibly be in the dome of the rock and Jerusalem and seeing that as a Catholic I'm reminded that I really ought to I hadn't prayed yet that day and it reminded me that I really ought

42:28to you know get off X and go and you know pray myself I better I would be better off inhabiting my own faith tradition and scrolling on social media and that is a really valuable challenge it's something that I'm one of my favorite church men Cardinal Robert Sura wrote about in one of his in his biography God or nothing he spoke about how the I think I think he's from New Guinea if I remember correctly and he was saying he was saying that there's a large Muslim population there and their devotion or their faith was extraordinarily helpful in the development of his own because it was kind of like a helpful challenge and I think that's obviously the sort of the sort of best dynamic between Christianity and Islam is that sort of it can result in sort of mutual challenge to sort of be better ultimately obviously that's quite idealistic and frequently doesn't work out that way but even still that dynamic can be at play and I've experienced it so it is just to say that Europe is

43:34go ahead no no I was finished I don't know I would push back um I think as a woman like I just see it as as very backwards and I see it as very medieval and actually I'd probably take like I understand when you see people and they're devolved and they have a belief and it's like I've you know spoken to some people who will say they've been in an Islamic country and they've seen the call to prayer and the devotion and all of that but I think you know if if you look at Islam it's not to say that there's anything inherently wrong with anyone who is Muslim or anything like that but I would say there are things that are inherently wrong with Islam itself and I would just say you know just to just to clarify just just to clarify I mean as would I I mean my honest really I do you think it's a heresy it's ultimately born out of a complete misunderstanding and it's and christian theologies and it's more it's it's more I think the actual knock on effect like if you look at the women and they they have to to cover their hair and it's very in terms of

44:40the steps forward for women and you know even like in a lot of these countries women were even able to drive until like five ten years ago it's it's it's a completely different way of life and it's a different understanding of the roles of of men and women and women working and even I was I think it is the keyest that I have friends you know here in the Middle East work in and they very much they're right there and they're kind of you know they're a bit naive like they're celebrating Ramadan and you're kind of pulled into that once you're there but when people from those feasts come here we bend over backwards backwards to accommodate them in a way they wouldn't like I was talking to to my hairdresser and she was saying you know she has customers and their ladies are Muslim and it's very much they want the the blinds pulled on when they're getting their hair done because no one can see their hair like there are just things that are very very different and we are giving away so much of our own culture that we fought for and you know the liberation and the freedom and the the progress from Christianity and Christian

45:40civilization and I think you know the more and more and more we give away um the the more unrecognizable that it's kind of become but I do see your point I do see your point and it's not to criticize um it's not to be unfair or to kind of have a sweeping brush over all people it's not about that I think it's just the tense of Islam and how compatible it is um with the West and certain Kias is like the horrible Sarah Sharif Kias in Britain where this little girl have been undergoing so much horrendous abuse but no one wanted to challenge it because they didn't want to you know they didn't want to be seen as a Islam of full-back you know I know these like the Islam council of of of Britain pushing for a stricter definition of Islam before we are to crack down like on things that we're saying right now and for example in the Kias's Sarah Sharif no one kind of probed that because you know she had her hair covered and they didn't want to you know to hide bruising and things like adding her face on her forehead and things and they

46:42didn't want to um to challenge that for fear of seeming reassist and I think we have to be strong and we have to be you know understand what where we're at and what we stand for but I think the erosion of Christianity has has led us here like if we had the zeal and if we had oh yeah um what some of those people have we would be in in a far better place which is what you were saying really no 100% I don't disagree with anything you're saying I think uh the point I'm simply trying to make that I think it can be overlooked at times is as I say Cardinal Roberts or I said in that book that I would highly recommend that there can be goods appreciated in a different faith tradition and let's say even in Islam but as I preface my comments with as well I obviously as I said I do think it's a take the quite traditional view of it that it is ultimately a heresy and that it's completely mistaken and that there's very much uh it is born a lot of bad fruit to put it that way um but as you correctly identify um you know a lot of people are very quick

47:48quick to abandon sort of the Christian roots of our societies and I think one of the worst fruits of that was something you was that you also wrote about it Maria for gripped uh the shocking report that uh a hundred and eight babies born alive uh and left a die after abortions since since 2019 absolutely appalling so I have this story here just to make sure I have the figures and things right so we publish this on gripped over the weekend, Maddie McGrath contacted me on Saturday night I think so if I played a Maddie McGrath he's one of the few titties that we have he's actually you know asking really good pqs you also a powder to being different people and they're bringing this information into the public to me and but I don't care where you stand on abortion if you voted for a pay like this should horrify every single person it is barbaric like that is the only way to look at it so um it's he found out through

48:48pq that between 2019 and 2023 in Ireland uh one hundred and eight babies were born alive after abortion um and it's very hard to read it said that those those children could have received life saving interventions um they were clearly then left to die and you've got gripped uh pro life grips calling for a full inquiry one of the things that there's been very little media coverage of this there is really a total media blackout when it comes to abortion like before repeal we had yeah it was abortion abortion abortion abortion in the papers every day all the time personal stories everything once that was voted through you have no there seems to be absolutely no appetite to look at the abortion regime in this country and what is happening and this is like something out of a horror film like it's like Frankenstein like it's really bad um so if you look at these figures um in 2023 that's the most recent year for data available 29 be it be survived

49:51an abortion procedure in that year alone and he's got a table of figures um and this is quite disturbing so while so the t-able released Stephanie McGrath showed that there were 108 babies who were born and then recorded as an early neonatal death after termination of pregnancy while 17 babies were born alive after abortion in 2019 that number had almost doubled to 29 in 2023 so things are actually getting worse um and obviously figures are not available for 2024 2025 but you've got a total of 108 cases in a five year period and also you have in the figures the data showed that 47 babies who were greater than 24 weeks gestation approximately six months so children can live at that time in some cases or 500 grams at the time of birth after abortion were listed as having suffered an early neonatal death after termination off pregnancy um so i mean the fact that these children are just there's so many questions to be asked

51:00like were these children simply left to die were they denied life-saving interventions and i think it's very clear that that like computers are standing i agree that we need answers and we need transparency and it's very clear that the legacy media and the political establishment are really doing their very best to ignore the quite frankly horrendous outcomes off um this abortion law and like you won't say you won't see the national women's council you won't see the abortion campaigner saying anything about this yeah they will push and push for the removal of the three day we thought will be all over the papers we need the three day way of calm we don't need reflection for women we need to stop women having to go abroad to have late term abortions and yet you have these these children being born alive no one wants to question it it also links back just to be i don't want to go on for too long but there was a a piper back in 2020 and it got very little media coverage i think gripped was one of the only ones at the time to kind of cover this so it was a piper produced by university college cork and it was examining

52:04the practice of a term abortion of fetus side which is injecting um potassium chloride into the heart to give the baby a hearted unborn child a heart attack um but that piper painted a very and as i said if you voted for a pale if you're a pro life for it like this no matter where you're at i think we need to really engage humanity here and actually think what is happening so in that piper you had doctors who were talking about their experience of providing abortions in Ireland and they were talking about how the study so the study showed that Irish doctors were very divided at his comeback six years on the provision of late term abortion here and that those who were carrying out these late term abortions saw the procedure as brutal awful emotionally difficult referring to it as stabbing of the baby in the heart one of the doctors said i remember getting sick out in the corridors afterwards because i thought it fetus side was such an awful procedure and so dreadful so one one doctor was quoted as saying that

53:06and obviously things haven't gotten any better since then they've actually gotten worse um so i think it's we have to hold a mirror at this stage and say what is going on it it is absolutely astonishing the the disparity like i it is one yeah i find very difficult to think about or to um talk about without absolutely flying off the handle because the disparity between the fact that i think it is up there with the worst crimes being carried out in the world um abortion really um and the lack of discussion it like it's just faded into the background in western countries um it's uh i remember that 2020 report it was with the Irish Catholic at the time and i think we had stuff on it as well and it's like there is nothing redeeming about it it's it's genuine as i say these doctors even who were willing to carry it out describing getting sick after carrying it out you know being horrified by the procedure and it's like

54:14the only way you can be untroubled by this is through and i'll say strike pay ignorance you have to be completely intellectually and curious about what's involved here and what's going on i've got two children um one nearly three and one just after turning one and thanks be to god was there for every step of the like development i got to go to the earliest ultrasound and see unlike i'm obviously of the opinion that abortion is never okay um but that obviously that that hold has very little political traction in western society so even if like you know it's um the Irish situation where abortion from pretty much any reason is okay up to the first 12 weeks if i remember correctly um people really should know how quickly uh unborn children look and resemble unborn children and have and like and for all intents and purposes you can tell

55:14this is a human unborn child um if you were to examine them closely but even looking at them on an ultrasound as um as i say the only way you cannot be troubled by this is through ignorance it's choosing to be ignorant the internet is there if you care if you if you profess to care about the signs of so many people who are pro pro choice like for pro abortion do um um the signs is all in the pro life causes favor um this is uh as as we were referring to in the last segment the last thing we were discussing i do think this is the worst fruit uh absolutely rotten for recent years um and i think that uh i'm kind of out of loss for words with this topic in particular because like it's just astonishing to me that this is happening you have the numbers on us like there there's absolutely nothing redeeming can be said about it there it's just not reported on her comment it on as i say we're like we're quite possibly the only news out that i

56:19didn't say lia haven't looked yet but i wouldn't be surprised at all if we were the only news out that the touch of this story with the ten-foot pole and i just thank thank god that there are treaties who will actually speak up about this you've got Carl Nolan different independence independent and as well but i would love to see uh a government treaty from you know follow from the gil say something like wouldn't that be great like why i think they're just so terrified to highlight this you will have a small group of politicians who will highlight that this is happening and i mean if you look back at that ucc study like we have to really tune into the reality on the ground what is happening because even well well that study recorded was it specialists who were carrying out abortion were frustrated by conflict with neonatologists who were like in the neonatrium who were unclear as like who would look after the babies whose job that was if the baby was born alive following an abortion by like induction of labor and so you have even this study i'm

57:23bringing it here it would leave the doctor he performed an unsuccessful late term abortion begging people to help them provide palliative care if the baby survived the story recorded so like i just find it just so outrageous that you have these abortion extremists in the doll you've got Ruth coppinger you've got Paul Murphy you've got these tvs who just you know they will bang on and on and on about more abortion we need you know we've got 10,000 abortions a year and it's still it's not enough we want more abortions we want later term abortions and is it just that they have no humanity to recognize that this is happening and like even doctors that the trauma for doctors and for medical staff who are involved in this and they want the the time limits to be even greater so you're going to see more of this um so and again like Stephen Donnelly I think he was pressed on this before a few years ago um and he was was very clear that there wouldn't be action taken um obviously he's not a TD anymore but when he was health minister he was very clear

58:23there wouldn't be action taken on baby's born alive after abortion so there seems to be absolutely no will to investigate this it's deeply disturbing um it's political card as that's what it is yeah no and this one is particularly puzzling it's like even if your favor of allowing abortions like why will you hold out on not being allowed to do anything after a child is born after a after essentially a botched abortion um you do just got the most heartbreaking headline that we hadn't reported on them I think I only saw it after the fact there was a there was a report from Australia there a couple of weeks ago about a child who uh if I remember correctly would have been viable had they received care um but after the abortion um not only was he not cared for he was left to die sucking his thumb like he was already well enough well enough form that you could see that um it is as I say I think sort of the the most prominent moral stain

59:28on western societies at the moment and the fact that it's not reported on that no one talks about it if anything only makes it worse um one I hold out hope that uh one day in the same way I don't want to say in this in the same way that like slavery was recognized after a long time as an absolutely abhorrent uh moral stain that one day just two will be recognized but as I say you just don't know with this world I mean we really we've really tethered our horse to this destructive nose autonomy or not to be preeminent and even like even for someone who voted for a pill even for someone who's not he's not he's not pro he's not pro life who who thinks abortion in certain circumstances whatever like how you still have to ask the question regardless how on earth have we ended have we gone from you know the the catchphrases of the repeal campaign rare see if in legal and the hard cases and here and about this and that the coil we gone from

1:00:30that and here and about restrictions and everything else and all all the things that we heard about if the Trojan horse kind of arguments two five years you know five six years down the line you have babies born alive in late term abortions like how in such a short time like it's just the serious questions need to be asked and I have absolutely no faith unfortunately that people will have the courage in the media to ask questions and as I said those establishment and tds and I was actually you know pleasantly surprised whenever there was that vote and it was the people before profit bill to decriminalize abortion fully and there were a few new female tds particularly female tds from the establishment party to voted against it I saw Jim O'Callaghan also voted against it so and he had changed his vote he'd abstained and then he voted against the bill and you know it's a bill from these abortion extremists and so hopefully there are signs that people are you know they're going to look at a story like this and think well I don't want to be on the side of that because if you're citing with the abortion campaigners unfortunately you're on

1:01:35the side of this maybe you don't think you are but this is this is what they will feel to highlight and this is what will continue happening if the law becomes more and more liberalized and there will just be radio silence really I think you know a long way from sort of being in a good place again in relation to this issue but I do think that at the very least people should be cognizant of what's actually happening it shouldn't be the case that like someone voted back in 2018 and then didn't pay a thought to it again I really think that you know if you sort of state support for this for this practice you should at least be aware of what's going on and indeed we are regardless of how you voted we should all be aware of that but anyway we're getting on a bit and on this immensely depressing note perhaps we'll end but oh god is good in my humble opinion and I think as you as you say it is it is depressing but there are still important stories I think

1:02:36for readers to know about no fortunately frequently the depressing stories are the most important ones but we'll leave it there thank you very much for joining us again this week Maria filling in for Ben it's such a short notice I'm sure that'll be a treat for our viewers and for our viewers thank you all very much for tuning in again this week hope you enjoyed it and of course as ever if you have any feedback feel free to get in touch with any of us that are gripped emails and without further ado we'll see you next week God bless