Iran bans puppies, and other stories from the Middle East

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4345 of the Bugle, the audio newspaper for a visual world that holds up a mirror to the world that holds it up the wrong way around.

So all the world can see is the picture of Raby's adult polecats fighting to the death that is painted in graphic detail on the back of the mirror

no sorry i didn't turn around that's just the way the world is that would explain the aging white man floundering out talking absolute bullshit while i was watching in the mirrored side although that also worked both way rounds as well anyway joining me for the latest installment in the long-running real-life computer game that is humanity slide into oblivion two people who as far as i'm aware have never launched tit-for-tat aerial bombardments on their near neighbours that bring the planet skipping to the precipice of oblivion.

But what do I know?

From Australia, it's Tom Ballard.

Hello, Tom.

Hello, Andy.

I did do a bit of that in the early 2010s.

It was a crazy time for me.

But,

you know, what are you going to do?

It was nothing.

The music was sick.

I was on a lot of drugs.

You do a bit of Tiffany Tad in

those kind of times.

So that's what happened on my end.

Well,

we're very forgiving on this podcast.

We don't hold these things

against people.

As you'll discover.

I have a right to defend myself, you asshole.

You will discover when we have Netanyahu and Ayatollah Kamene on next week's show.

But

they couldn't make it this week.

But luckily, Tiffany Stevenson could.

Hello, Tiff.

Hi.

Sorry.

In a pre-emptive move, I've not worn any makeup in order to make the playing field for all participants of this call equal.

I don't want to be so much hotter than everyone else on this podcast.

I've now...

If you're watching this online, you will see my handle says makeup free NBC, which means not by choice.

Not by choice.

I just didn't have time.

I didn't have time to do it.

It's an act of feminism, whatever, sure.

But yes, hi, hi, good to see you both.

Good to see you too.

And I've got a receding hairline by choice.

I rub a special cream onto it to get rid of the

luxuriant growth of

hair that has bedeviled me on top of my head for many years.

But it's good for the branding.

It makes me look more intelligent than I actually am.

We are recording.

On the 16th of June in the year 2025, on the 17th of June, 1579, Francis Drake, the celebrity sailor and Bowles superstar,

claimed for England a land that he called Nova Albion, that is what is now known as California.

Now, there were certain legal complications involved in this claim, and California currently does not belong to England.

However,

given what is going on there at the moment, let's not rule out an emotional reunion within the next 20 minutes.

A bit plundery, the old Francis Drake.

He certainly wasn't afraid of acquiring stuff that wasn't technically his.

I think we can say that about the man.

As always, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin this week.

We have a summer summer solstice uh section the uh the solstice uh in the northern hemisphere at least is uh is coming up uh this week 21st uh 21st of june the longest day ever recorded this year uh it will be and uh tom down down uh down where you are the the shortest i imagine they so often go together but we ask do we actually need solstices anymore what the f is the need for a solstice in a crowded model modern calendar alongside uh stuff like uh christmas New Year's Day, Father's Day, International Point of the Bench Day, World Unicycle Awareness Day, and Pentecost.

Why not just cancel solstices and have regular-length days all through the year instead of these ridiculous swings from long days to short days that solstices necessitate?

They've tried it on the equator, and no one seems to give a shit.

Or should the solstice be marketed better, like Christmas and Easter, but without the harrowingly graphic childbirth and death scenes?

Or should we just sell the summer solstice to a Saudi investment fund and be done with it?

The path of all flesh.

Also, in the bin, we have a.

I want a solstice card.

Can we start sending solstice cards?

I think so.

Let's have another Hallmark holiday.

Yeah, there's a great gift.

The commercialization of the solstice continues.

You know, it used to be about long days and short days.

Now it's just about gifts and capitalism.

What have you bought me for solstice, Tom?

A dance as old as time itself.

Also in the the bin, a commemorative section on the FIFA World Club Championships with everything that football fans are looking forward to in this new 32-team competition that is taking place in the USA involving some of the world's best footballers and some enthusiastic amateurs.

And we can list all the things the football fans are looking forward to.

There you go.

That section in the bin.

Top story this week.

Well, let's.

I think it's clear where we have to start this week.

So, we're going to start with some jokes this week, some classic set-up punchline jokes.

Here we go.

What do you get if you cross an oppressive theocracy moving towards nuclear capability with a war criminal megalomaniac trying to distract attention away from one horrendous military campaign by starting another?

I don't know, but we're currently finding out

it needs work.

Let's try another one.

Why are news reports on the Israel-Iran conflict like the abstract expressionist artist Mark Rothko?

Because they paint a very gloomy picture.

Boom.

Doctor, doctor, I get this strange pulsating ache in my head and a knot of anxiety in my stomach whenever I watch the news.

That's because it's 2025, you dickhead.

Almost that discover more.

Why did the Israeli and the Iranian both buy a CD of songs by the 19th century composer Franz Schubert?

Because they both wanted better leaders.

I mean, leader, as in the German word for song, is already plural, but the joke just about stands.

And finally, what did the polar bear say to the penguin?

We're all fed.

Funny because it's true.

So

sometimes you just have to

find jokes amidst the tragedy.

Tom.

Brum Tisch is the sound of bombs being dropped across the Middle East.

I know neither of you are huge fans of exchanges of military fire between heavily armed nations in a tinderbox region.

Me neither.

I prefer sport.

What have you made of

the last few days, which I've been doing my absolute best to ignore?

We can look at the Pentagon Pizza Report.

I guess that's a bit of

a slightly more light-hearted take.

That apparently

any establishment slinging dough within three miles of the Pentagon on Thursday nights or a sudden spike in footfall.

And as of 6:59 p.m.

ET Eastern Time, nearly all pizza establishments near Pentagon have experienced huge surge in activity.

10 minutes later, a significant drop in footfall.

Um, it was if there it was as if there was a gap between meetings, which had prompted a flurry of takeaway and delivery orders, which then tailed off again as work resumed.

Now, this is men's equivalent of horoscopes.

I mean, I could pretend that it's women playing war games, but let's be honest.

This is men's equivalent of Mercury being in retrograde, but instead it's footfall in dominoes.

What else are we we tracking?

A drop in chili sauce because military strikes do tend to give you a bit of heartburn.

Apparently, Wolf Blitzer was the original astrologist because he said, I always knew there was some sort of crisis going on in the West Wing after hours when I saw the arrival of pizzas.

Bottom line for journalists, always monitor the pizzas.

So Wolf Blitzer was there.

He was the mystic meg of deep dish.

Right.

I mean, I think a Wolf Blitzer is

a type of pizza you can get with

wolf meat and match not vegetables, I think.

Is it it's yeah, wolf meat, and the blitzer is just like mayonnaise liberally spritzed across the top of it.

I think it makes sense.

If you ask me, any good pizza party needs three things.

You need lots of pizza, fizzy drink, and the covet execution of a large-scale missile strike to protect the imperial aspirations of the military-industrial complex.

Okay, that's why whenever I'm hosting pizza night, I always invite my best friends, Jimmy, Peter, and Lockheed Martin.

But it's not just the pizza, apparently.

Like it's not just if pizza places around the Pentagon are busy, you know, shit's going down.

Come 10 p.m.

Freddy's Beach Bar in DC, the closest gay bar to the Pentagon, had abnormally low traffic for a Thursday night, potentially indicating a busy night at the Pentagon.

All the military industrial gays were too busy helping Israel.

to head to the clubs.

Instead of doing drag, they were doing drones.

They weren't getting messy.

They were firing missiles.

They weren't voguing.

They were bombing.

They weren't slaying.

They were slaying.

And

they weren't doing ammo.

They were participating in a military action that made humanity clench its butthole extremely tightly.

Right.

So, I mean, it's quite an interesting...

The opposite of poppers.

The opp of pop.

A military poperation, indeed.

So, I mean, it's interesting, this does seem to be scientific proof that the Pentagon gets gayer or less gay as war approaches.

I can't make it out of Rue de Gras.

I mean, if you...

That's all fabulous.

I mean, Tom,

you obviously are Bugle's official correspondent on

the global impacts of homosexuals contravening God's holy laws, bringing about natural and man-made catastrophes.

So, I mean, are you feeling guilty about this at all?

Yeah, it's my fault.

That makes sense.

Although, if I've taken some of the heat, you're taking some too, Andy Zaltsman.

God damn it.

Don't you walk away from this, sir.

And Tiff, you're Iranian, right?

I think you've got some button.

I mean,

the pizza story is, I mean, it doesn't paint the Pentagon in

a particularly good light if they're that unsubtle.

Despite having had this monitored for a long time, that they haven't worked out an alternative.

I guess they have to, the problem is now, because people monitor the number of pizzas going in and out of the in well in generally to the to the Pentagon that they have to order exactly the same number of pizzas at exactly the same time of day every day or everyone will assume something big is about to go down or they need a secret underground food farm and restaurant complex so that no one can tell when something fishy is afoot, even if there is an unusually large delivery of fish, which is often the precursor to something fishy happening in the Pentagon.

They're very unsettle about these things.

It's not clear exactly what was in these pizza orders, but you, I think we all assume it included garlic bread, doughballs, coleslaw, corn, and a salad.

It was going to the Pentagon.

There were always going to be five sides.

Oh,

actually, that's given me an instant headache.

Not now.

Haven't the world suffered enough, Andy, please?

it's my the world is hurting right now it's my only way of dealing with it tom

um

and i don't know what you know what the interpreting the toppings of the pizzas apparently in um

um when uh operation desert fox in the the late 90s a major bombing campaign against iraq was underway um the white house this is according to the washington post the white house ordered 32 more extra cheese pizzas than normal i mean i sometimes think when i'm sitting doing my cricket stats that my my job is completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

But there are people checking the number of extra cheese pizzas being ordered in the late 90s by the White House.

I think I can sleep happily with myself at night.

I believe they ordered a side of mousse as well.

It was all part of Operation Dessert Storm.

Now you're doing it as well.

I know.

I'm sorry.

He's influenced me.

I feel so alone.

So, I mean, in terms of what was ordered, you know, if there's lots of mushrooms on a pizza, you just assume nuclear war is imminent.

That's, you know, just a couple of cloud recognition skills.

Lots of rukella or rocket everywhere.

That's not good.

Pepperoni signals that things are about to get spicy.

Any pineapple, that's just obviously a sign of the end of times.

It's an absolute abomination, whatever.

And loads of olives, that's more optimistic.

A peace deal, because obviously they needed a branch of the, so they took the olives off, put them on a pizza.

But anyway but

time time will tell um

i mean in terms of the um

uh the uh well the conflict itself it's still a bit early to to to calculate exactly the um level of uh armageddonry that will emerge uh emerge from it and there's always positives and negatives i mean

uh on on the minus side uh the people involved if you heard about a picnic in the park involving Benjamin Netanyahu, aka Bibi, due to the sound of honking car horns because he's always in the way on the road to peace, and Ayatollah Kamane, the self-styled Sabrina Carpenter of Hardline Theocracy, with Donald Trump wading in with suggestions for the food, you'd probably not only steer clear of the picnic, but you'd probably try to leave the continent or hemisphere or planet that you're on at the time.

So a military conflagration involving the three of them...

Well, that's enough to put you off the metaphorical sandwiches that you hastily wolfed down before leaving that hypothetical picnic.

Tom,

any shards of optimistic lights for humanity that you can see in this situation?

And Andy, honestly, I've been delighted with this news.

I'm 36 now.

I'm getting quite nostalgic, and I've been going through that a lot lately.

And now, here we are.

A Western-aligned country has launched a pre-emptive strike on a country whose name begins with the letters IRA after making spurious claims about its ability to produce weapons of mass destruction.

Holy shit.

Crank up the outcast.

Watch me sliff into some low-rise jeans and a crop top, Andy, because 2003 is back, baby.

Shake it, shake, shake, shake, shake it, shake, shake, shake, shake it like a balleroid picture.

We've learned nothing.

What's up?

Yes, very well.

Seriously, preemptive strike is a real blast for the past.

Well, blast from Israel.

And this is the idea that if I think you're going to attack me, I'm justified in attacking you before you get around to it.

You see?

It's peace through strength.

It's defense through attack.

I'm de-escalating by shooting missiles at you.

Do you see?

And if you don't see that, shut up.

I know you are.

You said you are, but what am I?

Of course, some snowflake piece nick cucks out there will argue that probably the number one way to guarantee that Iran will attack you is by attacking Iran.

But real preemptive strike heads will know that just because your preemptive strike provokes a retaliatory attack of a similar nature to the kind of attack you were trying to preempt, that does not invalidate the preemptive strike.

It simply proves just how necessary the preemptive strike was in the first place.

This is what's known as the preemptive strike grandfather paradox and comes from the school of international diplomatic thought known simply as stop hitting yourself.

I can't keep hearing preemptive strike without thinking that is sexual in nature.

It's like premature, I see.

Yeah.

Premature strike.

Preemptive is a

preemptive jizz.

Guys, I've just been on the National Library of Medicine on the cheese point, which states that there's growing evidence linking ultra-processed foods, including processed cheeses, to various neuropsychiatric outcomes and antisocial and aggressive behavior.

So I think actually maybe those extra pizzas that they're getting in might be the root cause of all this chaos.

Oh, right.

Everyone's having a

cheese fever.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it's true.

So basically what you're saying, Chris, is if they only use

pure unadulterated buffalo mozzarella, then things will be fine.

Yes, that's that's the peace plan i'm right with you i've tried it out in my life and it works very very well indeed um

uh but anyway domini this is this is where we are um it's it's it's a bit hard to be hopeful at the moment but as regular uh audio uh readers to this non-physical news journal uh will know this is just the disappointing version of reality we're trapped in somewhere in another parallel Everyone has been listening to John Lennon's Imagine and has been thinking, you know what?

It's a bit simplistic, but the lad's got a point.

Let's give it a spin.

In another parallel, political and religious leaders are given a special mind-altering pill that makes them act in the interest of their people rather than being vessels for their own unquenchable egotisms.

And in another, all war has been replaced by sport and the world is in a joyous utopia of jolly triviality.

Try it, everyone.

It's absolutely awesome.

I spent much of the last week at Lourdes watching Australia play South Africa at cricket in the World Test Championship final.

And it was a great occasion.

South Africa won slightly unexpectedly.

But then

it did make me think the last time Australia and South Africa played a cricket, a test match at Lourdes

was in 1912.

And two years later, the First World War broke out.

And, you know, it's just,

I mean, it's maybe a little early to see that, you know, a causal link between Australia and South Africa playing cricket at Lourdes and global conflagrations.

I'm just saying the evidence is starting to stack up.

It really makes you think.

Of course, cricket is your horoscope, Sandy.

Yes.

Only based in pure fact.

Have you heard what it's called?

It's called Operation Rising Lion.

And I'm going to be honest, that does not sound like partridge.

Idea for military strike, Rising Lion.

Leela, pierced my foot on some shrapnel.

I don't know.

It's got a very distinct

partridge vibe.

I like how everyone's sort of playing along with the game.

Like, Israel's initial strike has been described by some as contravening international law, which I just think is adorable.

Like, guys, are we still doing this?

Are we still pretending international law is like a real thing?

You may as well say Israel is acting in a way that will certainly upset Santa Claus, or today Israel acted in flagrant violation of the preferences of the Loch Ness monster.

And everyone was very sad.

I mean, also, as always, in these things, Israel says Iran wants and is getting close to to nuclear weapons.

Iran says it doesn't want them and has absolutely no idea, has not even can't even spell the words nuclear weapon.

And nuclear weapon is a bit of a tricky one, to be honest.

But the problem is both regimes have proved about as trustworthy as a shark turning up to surf school, insisting it just wants to learn how to catch a wave whilst lipping its lips and perusing a wine list for something that pairs nicely with surfer Carpaccio.

Sadly, the threat of nuclear war has not as yet

come across its obvious solution, which is a global amnesty, under which everyone who has or thinks they might have a nuclear weapon or weapons gathers them together and fires them all simultaneously into space to travel through the endless vacuum of nothingness for years and years until they hilariously blow up a distant planet.

And also, we need to ban all study of physics so that no one works out how to build another nuke in future.

That's a key part of this

plan.

But instead, we are all sitting here watching the testarone-fueled

Brinkman shipsterism, I believe, is the term, of leaders who do slightly give off the vibe of thinking, well, I'm near the end of my life.

I've always wondered what Armageddon would look like.

I'm not going to be around to have to clean up the mess.

I deserve a treat.

There's no eye in radioactive fallout.

And in the movies, it usually doesn't end up quite as bad as the doommongers make out.

So let's put the boo into kaboom.

And so here we are.

Here we are.

Armageddon out of here.

All I can say is this.

I'm I'm about to start work, if I can use that term advisedly, on the England v India Test Cricket Series.

That is a potential 25 days of cricket in the next seven weeks.

If any of that gets cancelled, because either a world war officially rather than unofficially breaks out or the world actually ends, I will be f ⁇ ing furious.

So

just bear that in mind, everyone who's involved.

Don't worry, Andy.

Donald Trump is working towards securing peace.

I think he's going to be totally fine.

He's on this.

He's a safe pair of hands.

They seem to be sort of getting their story, they're struggling to get their stories straight, the U.S., in terms of how involved they were or across the details.

At first, the official line from the White House was, whoa, that shit's crazy, Israel.

You guys are mental.

That had nothing to do with us.

You guys are mad dogs.

You're mental.

Then later, when asked what heads up the United States received about the attack, Trump told the Wall Street Journal, heads up.

It wasn't a heads up.

We know what was going on.

Too bad, Israel.

You would have got away with it too if it wasn't for that meddling president.

Why is everyone acting so coquettish about their nuclear weapons?

That's the thing that I was like, do we have them?

Maybe.

I don't want you to, but you do, though.

But you did.

No, do I?

Do I?

I think it is an open question.

You know, who can really say whether Israel is a nuclear power apart from everyone?

Truly, Israel's nuclear capacity is like the basilerman sexuality of geopolitics.

Everyone knows what's going on, but we just don't talk about it.

And you know what?

They seem pretty happy.

So who cares?

Nuclear arsenals should be on a use-it-or-lose-it basis.

You can't just like sit on them for ages, get all out in the open.

Shit, all get off the pods.

Is that what you're saying, Andy?

Yeah, they should have a use-by date.

You're right.

They should brand on the side of it best before

2025.

And let's move through.

Does uranium go off?

Does it?

I mean, it goes off for sure, but like

is there a sell-by date?

Is there a best before consumed, like we're saying?

Do you get it discounted if it's only got like six months left on it?

I don't know.

I reckon you guys are just being paranoid.

Then again, I'm in Australia, aka planet Earth's natural underground bunker.

So I'm probably going to be okay either way.

Andy and Tiff, what can I tell you?

Sucks to be you.

In other Iranian news, there's been a clampdown on dog walking.

Now, I don't know whether this makes the world think Iran is less likely or more likely to have nuclear weapons, but the authorities have extended a ban on dog walking that was imposed in Tehran in 2019 to numerous other cities.

The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, he'd said in 2017 that keeping dogs for

reasons other than herding, hunting, and as guard dogs is considered reprehensible.

But as with all things, there's always loopholes, aren't there?

I mean, does it count as herding if the dog herds you onto the sofa to stroke it and chat to it whilst you both watch the tennis?

Can hunting cover any dog walk that could theoretically result in you encountering an edible thing, such as a rabbit, a carrot, or a stick?

And a guard dog, one bark is all that's needed to prove that your dog is guarding something.

So, you know, it's very unclear, as is so

often the case.

Walking a dog is apparently viewed by some as a sign of Western cultural influence.

I mean, whatever next?

Are they going to ban football phonemes twerking and being haunted by the echoes of history as well?

I mean, it's so hard to enforce

those things.

I mean,

is this a sign of a regime that

is showing its weakness by clamping down, specifically on people taking their doggy for a walk.

I would say when it comes to the crimes of Western cultural influence, keeping puppies as pets is nowhere near the top of the list of the crimes.

Like we would use that as a selling point.

If there was like a brochure for Western culture, the front cover would be a puppy in sunglasses skateboarding on the Mona Lisa, right?

Like we're leading with that.

It's not that surprising.

You know, Persians are famously cat people, so it makes more sense.

But

I don't know.

I just think religions have such weird hang-ups with like adorable creatures.

Islam, they don't like dogs.

Judaism, they don't like pigs.

Catholics, altar boys.

You know, I just think they've got to really sort of

work out their weird relationships with these cute things.

Don't you think, Andy?

Don't you want to comment on that?

Well, you know, as a

lapsed Jew, I'm completely neutral on all these things.

What about a relapsed?

Maybe a prolapse Jew.

A prolapsed.

I think, I mean, this is not particularly funny, but I do want to say, like, I think like dogs are like possibly the purest thing in the world.

And there aren't, I don't know if there's another animal that can glue people together.

Like, recently, I've been in town.

I had a horrible day in town and a horrible train journey in.

And I think there was like a match on, and there was a lot of like,

like.

you know, kind of rowing on the train and just people being dicks.

And on the train home, this lady got on with a very, very cute two-year-old Labrador.

Like, I would go as far as to say it was a flirty Labrador because it went down my section of the carriage and it greeted every single person, wagging her tail like crazy.

And there wasn't a single person that wasn't delighted to see this dog.

It was like a dude in his construction clothes, a moody teenager, someone who's possibly an accountant, they look miserable in a suit, a woman with shopping bags, someone else who'd been on a date.

And every single one of these people

genuinely makes me tear up.

They lit up when the dog went up to them it was like a rainbow had got on the train right and and the dog didn't care

about how much money anyone had whether they'd been in a fight whether any of those people were good people she just wanted to say hello to everyone and she worked that courage and when i think of all the horrific things that the irgc have done and there have been many to take away the chance to be loved or even seen be seen by for a minute by something as pure as a dog it's up there it's up there with the worst things you could do this is it right Like, look, I get a lot of critiques of uh Israel, and I don't want war here, and I think what they did as a strike is terrible.

But it is hard to sort of root for the team that has banned puppies for that sec, like,

and when it isn't, it's like, come on, Iran, I'm trying to help you out here.

Jesus Christ.

Uh, so essentially, what we're saying, Tiff, is

we just need to replace all international

mediators or ideally leaders with Labradors, yes, and

the world would be a better place.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

Let the dogs run countries.

Right.

When they say this country's gone to the dogs, we'll be like, yes,

finally.

The G7, they're just at everybody, each other, humping everybody, left, right, and center.

Or I think they fall asleep in the game.

Good boy, the good boy G7.

It would be the GB7.

It would be the good boy 7.

I think we've just workshopped the greatest ever comic disaster movie plot in history

what's your dog's name chris that was fantastic oh yeah we should we should point out to listeners that

oh oh oh sorry daphne sorry this is daphne

who just happened to walk in the room as tiff started talking about dogs oh hi daphne

and she would

daphne named after daphne de maurier here would definitely contest that uh she's better than a labrador although they're both as

each other.

Oh, see, this is how it begins.

You might say that Daphne, uh, Daphne was cute, but according to uh Abbas Nefaji, the prosecutor of the Western Iranian city of Hamadan, dog walking is a threat to public health, peace, and comfort.

So, um,

you know, there's always different ways of looking at the same thing.

That guy,

Australia news now.

And well, this is exciting news for you, Tom.

Apparently, Australia has a chance to save itself from itself, according to

monarch fondling former Prime Minister Paul Keating, who, as I recall,

he groped the late queen full on the arse, didn't he?

Is that if I'm remembering this correctly?

She was alive at the time in Paul Keating's defense.

Can I please make it very clear?

He's not an an nephrophiliac.

You guys won't let that shit go.

What did you call him?

The lizard from Oz or whatever the fuck?

Slightly tap her on the shoulder, I think, but it was basically the closest that the UK and Australia have come to war.

Until now, it seems.

Next to the wonders.

of AUKUS.

Yes, if I was being witty, Andy, I might say that AUKUS is getting a little bit awkward.

And if I wasn't being witty, I'd say that when when it comes to AUKUS, Trumpus has fed us.

Last week, the Pentagon announced that it would be launching a review into the AUKUS deal to ensure that it aligns with Trump's America First agenda, which is fair enough.

I mean, to be fair, in the acronym AUKUS, the US is dead f ⁇ ing last.

Presumably, the review will recommend renaming the whole thing Us AUC, and that'll be that problem solved.

But just in case people have forgotten, AUKUS is the big submarine deal arranged between Australia, the US and the UK.

Apparently, it means Australia is going to buy some of America's old nuclear-power submarines from the early 2030s.

Then together, we're going to build new submarines that will definitely, absolutely, be delivered in the 2040s.

And we get these nuclear-powered magic beans for the low, low price of Australia's only cow.

And about $368 billion.

All of this, of course, is to protect us from the looming threat of China, a country which is simultaneously our greatest enemy and our largest trading partner, which is really fun for us.

It's the ultimate will-they-won't-they relationship.

We're like Ross and Rachel, if Rachel was a rising superpower with one of the largest military forces in the universe, and Ross was just Ross, really.

I like the name AUKUS.

It sounds like how an Australian would describe a British person flirting.

AUKUS mate.

This limey doesn't know what the f he's doing.

It's very hard to believe that the submarines are going to be of much use to Australia in terms of protecting ourselves from China, as China is a country of more than a billion people, which means they could probably wipe all of Australia out with a coordinated fart in our general direction.

But anyway, forget about it.

Well, the Monty Python defense.

Yes,

very much so.

It's a fantastic deal, AUKUS.

Everyone loves it.

It's a good use of time and money.

And everyone, all the leaders are fully behind it, including President Trump, who in February was asked by a journalist, hey, what do you think about AUKUS?

To which he replied, what does that mean?

Really inspires confidence, Andy.

It reminds you of that time when FDR was asked to comment on the Manhattan Project, and he famously replied, the Manhattan, what now?

Apparently, the UK isn't exactly exploding with excitement either.

In January, the UK government's own major projects agency described the UK's plan to build the nuclear reactor cores needed to power Australia's AUKA submarines as unachievable.

Come on, team.

Just because something's unachievable, are we going to let that stop us from trying to achieve it?

Yes.

Well, if you've been here recently, you may have viewed HS2, Tom.

So

just

test what you need from that.

Still struggling on that one, too, right?

Don't worry about the submarines.

But yes, Paul Keating, a former Australian Prime Minister, is a very big AUKUS sceptic.

He thinks the review is great.

He thinks that this is a good chance for us to move away from the whole deal.

He thinks that the AUKUS deal, he described it as hurriedly scribbled on the back of an envelope by Scott Morrison, along with the vacuous British blowhard, Boris Johnson, and the confused president, Joe Biden, put together on an English beach, a world away from where Australia's strategic interests primarily lie.

That's right, people.

This thing was written on an English beach, the worst possible place in the world.

If you ask me, the idea of an English beach doesn't even make sense.

It's an oxymoron.

It's like military intelligence or concise bugle.

It doesn't exist.

Are you guys still on board AUKUS?

Are you loving the AUKUS vibe?

Well, we

absolutely love it.

But of course, if Australia pulls out and Australia insists on precedent, it will then become just the US, UK.

So it'll be be known as USUC, which seems slightly more appropriate to

the whole project.

But it's interesting that Keating and Malcolm Turnbull were saying this is now an opportunity to jump ship from the submarine deal, which could leave Australia floundering underwater like an overstretched metaphor.

So it's, you know, you can see why, you know, it's just slightly split opinion.

And as you say, it's a very clever scheme, AUKUS.

The submarine scheme that announced to the world that there could be a subsurface sea-based military chess piece fully up to date for the challenge of Asia-Pacific geopolitics in the 2020s as soon as the year 2046, if not later.

So

you can see this is all going to

work out tremendously well for everyone.

It sort of comes at a time of like peak America hatred in Australia, too.

There was polling from the US-based Pew Research Center this week, which showed that Australians hate Trump bigly.

Only voters in Sweden have stronger anti-Trump views than Australians, who believe the president is unable to understand complex problems, not qualified to hold his job, and is unlikely to deal with major issues such as the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Now, in fairness, that also describes most Australians.

My local Bristol, for example, appears completely unable to understand the complex geopolitical economic impact of trade tariffs.

The flower he tries to draw on the foam on my latte looks like dog shit.

And when it comes to Ukraine and Gaza, as far as I can tell, he's done fall.

Did these people not poll Canada?

I feel like Canada's being left out of the

we're higher than Canada and Mexico.

It's kind of crazy.

It's almost like a bit paranoid.

It's always a bit like, okay, Australia, you could probably calm down.

Like if Canada and Mexico should probably be more freaked out than us, but apparently we're losing our minds down here.

Yeah.

Rich, powerful men showing off news now.

And well, let's start with

Donald Trump.

I was just thinking to myself, I tell you what America doesn't do enough of, and that is superficial tributes to its military and lip service gratitude to service personnel, whilst thousands of them live on the streets with no social support network.

But luckily, they have a president who, overcoming his deep-seated sadness at being denied his chance to serve and prove his manhood bravery by the cruel fate of Bonespurs, nonetheless loves nothing more than to pay devotional homage to those who have been able to fulfill his dream on his behalf.

And

Donald Trump hijacked

the U.S.

Army's 250th birthday celebrations to put on

a great big military parade, the like of which America has not done since

the first Gulf War.

And it hasn't always been the case that American presidents have looked eastward to North Korea's Kim family for inspiration.

But Trump got his Zhong on and added this parade to the U.S.

Army's

long-planned commemoration schedule.

It's drawn criticism for its cost.

60% of people in a survey felt the parade was not a good use of public funds.

To be fair, it was probably a better use of public funds than Trump hiring 3,000 Statue of Liberty impersonators to do a pole dance for him, which was basically the alternative.

I think Stephen Miller was pushing for that one, wasn't he?

Yes, I think it could cost, Well, they say the cost would be about $45 million, including a couple of million dollars, just to repair Washington's roads after they may have been damaged by having tanks drive down them.

Now, just to reiterate to any Americans listening, your government would love to provide you with health care, but I'm afraid there is simply not enough money.

America cannot afford to provide you with any health care unless, of course, you are a road suffering from the debilitating, pointless tank compression syndrome.

Then they'll talk about about it.

The protests, Trump responded to it really made me laugh like a harassed mum on the school run to the no kings protest.

And I don't feel like a king.

I have to go through hell to get stuff approved.

We're not a king at all.

Thank you very much.

Chill out, Donald.

Yes.

I mean, that's the whole no-kings movement, which does sort of tap into the fact that Donald Trump doesn't fit.

entirely snugly into that whole George III was too much of a dick vibe that the founding daddies tried to eternalise in their constitutional codifyings back in in the day.

But in terms of like no kings as a, I think they might have missed out three letters before the K of kings and another four before the S of kings, but it was organized in the past, so it's an

understandable mistake.

Donald Trump at this parade spoke briefly, as he tends to,

at

events where things might get awkward, to thank those present for their service.

And he said this, our soldiers never give up, never surrender, and never ever quit.

They fight, fight, fight, and they win, win, win.

And that buzzing vibrating sound you can hear, buglers, that's America's phone going off.

History is calling to pick him up on some details of that claim.

Well, this is it.

He said he wanted the parade because every other country celebrates their victories.

It's about time America did too.

And that's not true, Donald.

Here in Australia, we have Anzac Day, a commemoration of a military battle in which we got our asses f ⁇ ing handed to us.

Okay?

It's called self-deprecating humility, my friend.

Look it up.

Actually, I'd be okay if America celebrates all its victories as long as, yes, it also acknowledges all the losses.

Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, democracy, the Star Wars franchise, the war on Christmas.

You know, let's have a balanced view here.

And of course, the first ever international cricket match in which it lost to Canada in 1844.

And

that's so weird I didn't put that on the list.

That's

just

a lot of Trump's resentment towards Canada and the rest of the world can really be traced back to that day, I think.

There's some great signs.

There was one that said, get this taco to go.

No kings since 1766.

They want 1939 Germany.

Let's give them 1789 France.

My favorite.

Oh, and remember your ancestors were immigrants too.

That was a good one.

I mean, we're all immigrants.

I think that, like, we all start in one place and we end up in another.

You know, we all start in a vagina and end up in a country.

We all start in a woman is what I mean.

We all start in a woman end up in a country so technically we're all we're all we're all immigrants

there was some seems to be like just some hassle some like hustlers there some people trying to you know make some sweet business out of the whole affair this is from a guardian article a tent managed by a beverage company handed out room temperature bottles of an energy drink form the flavor called screamin' freedom tasted like hard candies dissolved in water and an advisor around the cans warned that they were not to be consumed by minors or pregnant women.

Mmm, that's the delicious taste of freedom, everybody.

Sweet, delicious, non-FDA approved freedom.

It really makes you feel proud, though not legally liable, to be American.

And there was a group of women from Pennsylvania who were sitting on the grass, and one wore a red, white, and blue blouse, the other a flag-printed dress.

Trump wants to keep us safe, said the woman.

He's not Hitler.

Which I think we can all agree is the lowest setting of a bar in recorded human history.

In this cynical world of ours, Andy, it's important to focus on the positives.

So, why not spend some time writing in your gratitude journal about all the ways in which your president isn't like Hitler?

Yeah,

I know that I get it, you know, when right-wing commentators suggest that the left say everything I don't like is Hitler, like ad reducio Hitler is real.

But if you, if you've seen the videos of ice

with their faces covered snatching people off the streets um and not giving out badge numbers and with no names i mean who does that remind you of like the secret police the gestapo like

in this case it literally it's literally out the playbook like i think yeah but you're making the very modern mistake here tiff of judging politicians by the things they say and do and um

you know that it doesn't work anymore i'm afraid the typical intolerant left there, looking at things that people say and do and facts and that bullshit.

Right.

Well, that brings us to the end of this week's bugle.

Tom, anything to plug?

Ah, peace.

Yeah, world peace.

Could we try that for once?

Also, look at my YouTube channel.

The two big ones.

World Peace.

And Tom Ballard on YouTube.

You can watch a bunch of specials there for free.

If you look for my special Tom Ballard Eaters Eye, that's an 800-pound gorilla.

People have a look at that.

That'd be fantastic.

Thank you.

Spoken like a true Miss World contestant.

Big two.

Do you reckon?

Yeah, do you reckon Miss World contestants these days call for World Peace and then also plug their social media handles?

Steph.

I am in Luxembourg on Friday doing my show, Husband Material.

So I don't know how many buglers there are in Luxembourg, but do come out, buy a ticket to that if you're around.

Also, just a big old general fat plug for, well, actually, I have a preview in London on the 24th at Top Secret Comedy.

And then a general plug for the Edinburgh fringe, which I will be at Monkey Barrel 2.50 p.m.

from the 30th of July to the 24th of August.

And I'd like to get those pre-sales really, really going because they leave me in less state of panic.

But yes, shout out to the monkey barrel who make it a possibility to even do Edinburgh now these days.

So yeah, looking forward to that.

The new show is called Post-Coital.

Holy shit.

I'm doing a one-off performance of my Zoltgeist tour show at the Froome Festival on the 7th of July.

Tickets are available via my website, andesoltsman.co.uk.

other than that I will be banging on about cricket for as previously mentioned most of the next two months due to the aforementioned cricket we are having a week off the bugle next week we will put up a sub-episode with some

delectations for

Chris is giving that the thumbs up and hopefully well that gives the world two weeks to sort its shit out by the time that we next do a full bugle so yeah that take that sometimes we just need a bit of space to clear our heads and get things sorted.

So we are giving that to the world.

And then we'll be back early in July.

We have Josh Gondreman and Josie Long.

Until then, goodbye.

Goodbye.

Hi buglers, it's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast Mildly Informed which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.