Bugle 4009 – Trump, Turkey & Trains

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers

and welcome to issue 4009 of The Bugle.

This is the 303rd installments of this austere audio journal of record for the week beginning Monday, the 19th of December 2016, with me, Andy Zaltzmann here live in London, where the pavements are paved with paving slabs for the most part.

And joining me from Mumbai, India, which has once again just missed out in its attempt to be crowned the world's most relaxing and laid-back city.

uh just out of the top 3 000 cities on that list it is the bugle's official rest of the world correspondent and general fount of wisdom anuvab pal hello andy hello hello yes uh we we did lose out that spot by a narrow margin.

We were right up there with Oslo and Tokyo as the cleanest, most technologically advanced, environmentally conscious city.

But then the small issue of 20 million people in a crowded space got in the way.

But otherwise we were right up there.

I found when I've been in Mumbai that

when it doesn't just basically go for a walk about 300 yards is equivalent to smoking about 60 cigarettes in terms of lung health.

That is correct.

That is correct.

And that's when you're walking inside your home.

I don't even even want to go into the details of what happens outside.

I think the other day I realized that there are more people in my apartment complex than all of Hungary.

And when that struck,

that struck me as a disproportionate balance of

humans in one place versus another.

I mean, I think there are trains that have more people on them them than live in New Zealand as well, aren't they?

That is correct.

That is correct.

That is correct.

You know,

the overarching religion that governs the Western world, what is the name of that?

Christianity, right?

You guys have a thing in that.

The Ark, Noah's Ark.

Everyone gets in there with livestock, and

it's a helper leather thing.

You're trying to save all these animals, and it's you and a bunch of goats and your wife and everything, and the ship, and you're sailing.

Getting on a local train in India is Noah's Ark every morning

that's basically the morning commute it's 16 million people all their belongings moving to some destination in the hope of an income

we will touch more on the glory of Mumbai's suburban trains later in the in the show

Before we start, so this is the bugle for the week beginning Monday the 19th of December.

50 years ago ago on this day

the United Nations adopted the Outer Space Treaty which was formally signed in January of 1967 the official title of the Outer Space Treaty was the treaty on principles governing the activities of states in the exploration and use of outer space including the moon and other celestial bodies now speaking as someone with a celestial body this is a very important piece of legislation for me uh the treaty was aimed at stopping humanity behaving like and i quote the treaty as much of an absolute dick in space as it has always tended to on Earth.

And it included rules like no nukes in space and you cannot own Jupiter, as well as practical advice such as how to play snooker in zero gravity and polite etiquette for making big green aliens know that we don't want them taking over the planet and eating us all.

Not everyone has signed the treaty though, Anivab.

Not all nations have signed on the dotted line.

Look out for Chad.

biding their time, the cheeky little Saharan Republic, until its space program really takes off and they nuke New Zealand from space while saying didn't sign the treaty we're allowed and then start charging royalties every time someone looks at the moon.

Saturday the 17th will mark the 113th anniversary of the Wright brothers first successful powered heavier-than-air flight and in another delve into the Global History Sound Archives here at the Bupil we have audio from that historic first flight

Welcome aboard Wright Airways Flight 1 to Just Over There.

I am your captain Orville Wright and we should be taking off today at 10.35am.

We will be cruising at an altitude of approximately 10 feet and at a ground speed round about the 6.8 miles per hour mark.

So we should be reaching our destination which as I said is about 40 yards over there if you look over there in a flight time of approximately 12 seconds.

Due to the short journey time today and the fact that I am the only person in the aircraft, there will not be a full trolley service.

But if there is anything I or my brother Wilbur, who's standing over there on the ground flicking me a V sign can do to assist please do shout quite loudly.

Now sit back and enjoy your flight.

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

This week audio highlights of the wildlife photograph of the year competition with the lead judge Stanley Pertzlow.

That is a butterfly with some dew.

That is a wolf in the snow.

That is is an orangutan looking surprised.

That is a bear looking a bit like a person.

That is a spider

in a web about to have his dinner.

Fly Carpacho by the looks of it.

And seal eating a fish.

There you go.

Also in the bin this week, 12-month horoscopes.

And we can exclusively reveal that everyone from Capricorn to Sagittarius will, in the next year, have some good things and less good things happen in their lives.

Probably.

Those sections in the bin.

Andy, in a top story this week, and I'd like to know what you think of this, a bunch of people in India were arrested for not standing up during our national anthem at a film.

I was just curious to understand whether this was standard practice around the world or we were unique in our patriotism.

during motion pictures.

This is a really old story for me.

I mean, is it necessary to display patriotism at the start of film?

I mean, this is a Supreme Court ruling, and I understand that there are something like 30 million pending cases that the Supreme Court in India has not quite got around to, or something like that.

But they have managed to pass an edict directing all cinemas to play the national anthem before the start of films.

And it is mandatory for everyone to stand up as a mark of respect.

I mean,

you work in the film industry.

I mean, do you, do you, because you write for various movies,

do you constantly sing the Indian national anthem

whilst writing scripts?

Well, Andy, a couple of things here.

I work as a script writer in the Bollywood motion picture industry, which is the opposite of the motion picture industry.

We don't necessarily just sing during the national anthem, we sing throughout the motion picture,

which is occasionally interrupted by the thing the Western world known as dialogue.

We consider that an impediment to storytelling, which is usually told through song.

And also, you know, a lot of people are finding this very amusing.

You know, people are upset that, or not upset, but they're raising this, they're bewildered by the fact that people have to stand up during the national anthem.

But we here are not.

We see it as a logical extension of patriotism.

In the holiday season, if you cannot stand up to show your patriotism while Office Christmas Party 2 is playing,

or

when 50 shades of grey, the sequel comes on, then how do we really know you're a patriot?

How?

How do we do it?

And the Supreme Court has sensibly also added in their ruling that great institution left behind by the British, and I mean that literally because the building was left behind by you,

in which our Supreme Court resides.

They have declared that one of the things you have to do

while standing up for the national anthem, one of the things theater owners have to do, is they have to make sure that they do not bolt the doors.

So you have freedom of access.

So, I guess, in some way, if you are frightened by the national anthem and you want to run away,

you have the freedom to do that because they're not going to bolt the doors.

So, that was also critical

a decision for the Supreme Court to take in a situation where they have 40 million pending cases of murder and terrorism.

This was the key priority, having the doors not bolted when the national anthem played during Office Christmas Party 2 or Hangover 4 Extreme Bangkok when that happens.

I really, I really, I don't know about you, maybe our value systems are different.

I live in the tropical regions here.

And here we show our patriotism by standing up every time a Judd Apato comedy plays.

That's just how it works here.

So

the police detained 12 people for not standing at a film in,

and correct me if I'm pronouncing this wrong, Thiruvananthapuram, also known as Trivandrum, the film festival of Kerala.

Now, I think, Anuvab, there is a time and a place for patriotism, and that time was in about the year 1730, and that place was probably somewhere up a pretty mountain on a sunny day.

But the national anthem before a film, I do not understand.

I don't see how watching a film requires an overt, compulsory display of national pride.

To me, that makes as much sense as singing the national anthem before drinking a milkshake, filling your car up with petrol, or taking a dump.

And also, the last thing this planet needs right now is more pointless nationalism.

That said, the Indian national anthem is

quite fascinating.

I didn't know much about it until

researching this story.

And when I say researching, I mean that in the sense of journalism circa 2016, which is looking at a couple of things on Wikipedia.

The Indian National Anthem is rather fascinating, written by the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, a hymn to Indian pluralism, set to his own rather reflective, melancholy music, somewhat at odds with...

some other national anthems that largely focus on killing the shit out of as many enemies as possible.

Now, I don't know what you think, I mean, what would Tagore have thought of this?

Also known as the Bard of Bengal on the pro-wrestling circuit in the early 20th century.

Well, I mean, how would I mean, how would he have reacted to this compulsorization of a national anthem in cinemas?

Well, you know,

I think startup Tagore, who was an esteemed wrestler from my hometown, actually, Calcutta,

once the capital of the empire,

he, I think, would be quite surprised that this was the national anthem because he had originally written the first verse as a welcome for George VI, who never actually showed up.

And I think that a lot of it was written in praise.

But a lot of people don't know this, but we had only six days

in which to prepare for our independence.

Our independence was supposed to be a month after we got it, but one of your viceroys and governor generals got a stomach upset, as is common in Delhi,

and the things got moved moved around.

And so, in six days, we had to very quickly come up with a lot of things: a national bird, a national anthem, various national symbols.

I would not want to be in the Parliament House or anywhere in the vicinity in that week, because I'm just thinking of all the things that must have been thrown at leaders like Nehru and Gandhi.

Like, people who are coming in with ostriches and penguins, it's like, is this all right?

And they're like, no, no, we need a bigger national animal.

You know, and I think all the music that got got rejected, you know, they were coming in with some early David Bowie and they said, no, no, no, get us a different song.

So a lot of stuff they had to sift through till we got to this.

So I think Tagore would be very surprised that this was the pick.

Right.

You know, and not something from Bruno Mars, for example.

Well,

I can only imagine the scene that has visionably been played out in Indian movie theaters since this law was passed recently.

What are we going to see today, Dad?

Well, son, we're going to see the Angry Birds movie.

Oh, well, we'd better sing the national anthem then, I suppose.

Yes, son, we better have.

No point watching a film originating from a smartphone game involving catapulting birds at pigs without first expressing pride in our country.

No, Dad, I'm pretty sure that's what Rabindranath Tagore had in mind when he penned our national anthem in 1911.

He'd have been thinking, this is really going to focus people's minds on the need for tolerance and cooperation between the various peoples of our vast and diverse nation when they sit down for two hours of mindless commercially driven entertainment and popcorn.

Yes, son, that is the way Tagore rolled.

You are entirely correct.

I think, Andy, you've just summarized 100 years of Indian history through Angry Birds, which just hasn't been done by the great post-colonialists of our time.

I think it took a video game app on an iPhone to finally understand the entire post-colonial struggle.

I'm just surprised that there's a lack of patriotism in other countries.

Why doesn't God Save the Queen come on before extreme wrestling or whatever it is that's on on Sky Television?

I think it's one of the smartest things the Supreme Court could do because

it's really hard to get a bunch of Indians in one room and get them to listen to anything.

So if you've got them in a dark hall

and I preferred their previous decision when they bolted the doors and you've got the doors bolted, then you can make them do anything.

It's good to start with a national anthem, but then you can sign them onto a preferred citibank credit card, anything you want, really.

I mean, you say it's not, I mean, you'd like God Save the Queen to be played before wrestling events.

We do have something close to that.

My local ice hockey club, the mighty Streatham Redhawks, who I've been watching quite a lot recently, they have this curious tradition, and I think this is probably, I don't know if this is across all ice hockey matches in Britain, but they play God Save the Queen, just the recorded instrumental God Save the Queen, before every match, before a load of grown men start whizzing around an ice rink, body checking each other into walls and trying to whack a small round round bit of vulcanized rubber into a tiny gull guarded by a man kitted out like Mr.

Stay Puffed from Ghostbusters.

And it is unbelievably good fun to watch, but not exactly an activity that you would think has the full undivided attention of Her Majesty the Queen, and therefore requiring of her theme song, or indeed the full undivided attention of God.

And even if the Almighty was taking some time out from trying to reboot his obviously malfunctioning computer by repeatedly switching it off and on again at the wall, he's unlikely to want to be reminded that he needs to save the queen.

I mean, I don't know if he's listening in to the Streatham Ice Ring thinking, oh, they're singing that I've got to save the queen.

That's an ice hockey match.

What is she finging playing?

Has Elizabeth II, aged 90, joined the Bracknell Hornets?

Is she their new enforcer?

In which case, yes, she probably does need a bit of saving.

With all due respect, she does not have the physique to hack it in the NIH health South Division 1.

I'll step up to the plate with a classic god save.

I think with national anthems, and we see this,

I mean, we do seem to be living in an age of increasingly regularly demanded overt displays of patriotism.

I think unless national anthems can be updated week to week to reflect changing national ethics and priorities, good and bad, then I think we need to really consider singing them a hell of a lot less.

I mean, for example, if God Save the Queen, you know, had an extra verse that was, you know, a topical verse that could be updated about, you know, all the good and bad things in Britain about institutional cover-ups, about Britain being one of the more generous nations when it comes to charity in the world, about massively underfunding public services, about being tolerant, intolerant, open-minded, xenophobic, happy, unfurious, whilst fostering innovation, social equality, creativity, and drunk vomiting on war memorials.

Then I see no need to sing about the Queen or God whilst going about my daily business.

Of course, sports and national anthems go together like Friday nights and fist fights.

in other words more often than would be ideal and the NFL protests have continued a number of players throughout the season have been refusing to stand or just kneeling during the playing of the Star Spangled banner before before matches led originally by Colin Kaepernick and this is bear in mind this is you know they've been kneeling or not standing this is you know an act of massively aggressive protest.

They've not been eating voodoo dolls of George Washington and vomiting his chewed remains into a stars and stripes bucket it's just been kind of passive silent protest and yet um kaepernick's been heavily criticized for being uh anti-american breitbart um

who uh so so chris uh breitbart

uh you you said a germanic

because it's ei so it would be breitbart if we were in germany right now or in the late 30s okay let's call it breitbart then let's try and get it away from that German connotation.

Breitbart, the alleged news, alleged website that will in January become the first website essentially to be a sitting member of the US cabinet, and of course the outlet personally endorsed by Herman Goering via Ouija board, or so I read on another website.

They criticized Kaepernick

for his, quote, anti-American protests and said that fans are boycotting the NFL

because of it.

Now, what Kaepernick has been doing quite Americanly, as it happens, is just basically, as I said, peaceful peaceful protest against social injustice.

Another article on Forbes suggests it's not had much impact on ratings.

I guess we don't know the truth on how much the ratings have come down because of the protest, how much it was the election, how much it was just that, you know, Americans have suddenly realized that cricket and snooker are far better sports than American football.

We may never know, but what does it tell us about

the NFL if...

They have been abandoning their sports because of this protest, that its fans had been thinking, well, I love this sport.

It's a unique combination of intricate chess-like tactics and brute, life-endangering violence.

I've followed its narratives and evolution since I was a little nipper.

It's provided me with a patchwork of unfolding dramas that have been part of the tapestry of my life.

But now that I know that someone involved in it does not think exactly like me and has the capacity for independent thought, I am fing done with it.

Done.

Perhaps, though, you know, Kappening is being un-American in the sense that when 100 million or so Americans fail to vote in presidential elections, it's clear that the truly American thing to do is to express no political opinion whatsoever, or at least least keep stumbling and take the money.

Andy, I don't know if you've been following this Turkish currency thing, but it seems like the Turkish currency is plunging.

I'm trying to think of a clothing example of how far deep it's plunging.

It seems inappropriate to mention this in civil society, but it's plunging.

And

what the Turkish President, the wonderfully democratically elected

Recip Erdogan, I'm going to mispronounce this, and also it's the first time in the history of the world an Indian person is doing a Turkish accent.

But

even though it's just the pronouncing of a name, but Mr.

Erdogan, who has had a clean record, no coups against him at all, or any sort of accusation

of stifling the freedom of the press, etc., he went out and he said, okay, the currency is plunging.

What you need to do is if you've got any foreign currency, if you've got US dollars, if you've got Euros, exchange them for Turkish lira, do it proudly and preferably do it while singing the national anthem.

Now, the last part

I received from a very trustworthy news source, an Indian news website.

But given we live in a post-truth world, it doesn't really matter.

The point is, he is trying various methods

in trying to get people to exchange their currency.

And it is an approach that the way the world would look at is the opposite of the other approach that has worked for so many years.

And that approach, in a word, can be summed up as economics.

And the question I have at Day is that, you know, you've had years of economics, right?

People have studied it.

You have the Malthusian theory of rent.

you have the theories of Ricardo, you have purchasing power parity theory.

But in

the modern world, I feel like we're living in an era of the economics of the mad despot, the economics of the one crazy lunatic who was elected.

So, for example, you know, if you're worried about corruption and black money, you have a leader in a certain country, I will not name which, who just says, Well, what if we just made money illegal?

And you've

someone's like, well, what a brilliant idea, sir.

And when someone says, sir, you know, our currency is collapsing.

And someone says, well, should we maybe have the Reserve Bank buy the currency and prop it up against the dollar?

The mad lunatic theory of economics says, no, just get your entire population to show up at various currency exchange booths run by Thomas Book and sing really loudly while changing currency.

Because if we get the faith of the people through voice and melody,

you will have a direct impact on the FTSE and the New York Stock Exchange.

And I think that the mad theory of economics, I think, is here to stay.

And I'm really looking forward at the to what further things will happen in economics that makes it sound like these are policies devised by a Pixar villain.

In certain cultures, if they're running into trouble and they're like, well, we don't have enough printed currency, could they then decide, can we just get all the the bakers and all the Starbucks we have to start printing currency?

Well, you say, you mentioned bakers.

Bakers jumped on board with

President Erdogan and his cool patriotic money changing.

One Istanbul baker quoted on AFP

was offering free bread to people who'd changed $250 into Turkish lira and said these words, with the help of God, we will raise the lira and annihilate the dollar.

I mean, that's, that is a, that is a big goal.

I think you have to set achievable goals in life.

And the annihilation of the world's dominant currency might be a step too far for a single baker from Istanbul, but fair play to him

for attempting it.

He's not the only person that's been offering freebies to people who are responding to the president's economic call to money-changing arms.

There have been offers of free bus tickets, free haircuts, free weddings free fish and free tombstones now if you took advantage of all those offers at once that would be a weird collection of things to come home with at the same time hey darling i've changed all our dollars into lira and look at this lot of freebies hmm tombstone bus ticket haircut wedding license fish looks like you're going to kill me elope with your lover and change your identity uh yep yep you might be you might be right about that why have you got the fish i i i like fish i like like fish.

That is indeed a fantastic summary of stuff, Andy.

And I really think,

like you said, I don't think you can ever get economic prosperity unless you look at currency as a zero-sum game, which is the only way you can prop up your currency is by destroying another currency.

And I think that is a fair way to think about world economics.

Not the way we've thought about it, thanks to Adam Smith and a bunch of others for 200 years, which is to create a stable monetary policy so that all currencies currencies can give and take a little.

No, I think the way it has to happen is by getting your entire population to make bread, start singing, making tombstones, while planning to destroy another currency.

Just to add to that, just a little nugget, Prime Minister Modi, in fact, in a similar move,

said that anyone who can move away from currency and move away from cash money in India, he's giving them refrigerators, washing machines, and promises he's going to send some money directly to their bank account if they suddenly switch to digital transactions.

He, of course, has not solved the problem of how he would make all these 500 million illiterate people literate for them to be able to read and write

to be able to have a digital bank account, but that's a different problem.

At least they'll have a washing machine and some sort of a fruit mixer.

Russia News now and the CIA have briefed members of Congress that according to their analysts, the Russians did actively seek to help contribute to Hillary Clinton's election defeat, that the Kremlin was deliberately trying to put the dart into Donald Trump and to catch Hillary and Vladimir Putin's fishing net.

Basically what happened is the

Russians hacked into the Democrats'

one computer, I think, and signed Hillary up for a load of newsletters about golf and a farmers-only dating website and released a load of other email stuff that might have damaged her election campaign.

And it does appear that I mean Trump and Putin get on alarmingly well for a man who's about to become President of the United States and a man who appears to be entirely casual about genocide happening in Syria.

That that makes me more than a little bit uncomfortable, Anuvab.

Well,

I don't know what here is making you uncomfortable, Andy, because you know, Donald Trump, who I listened to very carefully, the other day he said, because he's a true statesman, he's a leader, he's a scholar, you know, in the great tradition of, say, Benjamin Disraeli, you know, somebody you guys had.

And in that vein, he made in one of his most eloquent speeches, he said, I like Putin because he knows some stuff about stuff.

if that's not a fair summary of foreign policy, I do not know what is.

And, you know, I think the way Russians look at diplomacy is really the way more of us should look at diplomacy.

You know, they'll sign some documents that's some sort of a peace treaty, but then they'll go back to Moscow, sit around, and be like, what is this?

This is just some agreements on paper signed in a Hayat hotel where the coffee was bad.

Why do we have to honor this?

And then that is the worst Russian accent in the history of the world.

Point one.

Point two.

I enjoyed it.

I enjoyed the Russian accent.

i'd be proud of it anuvan

thank you andy thank you andy uh not since the uh during the cold war the soviet indian alliance has there been such a strong attempt for an indian person to reach out to moscow as what you heard about a minute and a half ago but having said which you know I think this this whole thing of NATO and all these alliances where people actually honor the things they say it's a really outdated concept right because everyone's attention span is now a couple of minutes.

The Russians go back to Moscow, they said, Well, what is this?

What is this?

This is just some stuff on paper.

I don't need to honor it.

Basically, my border does not end at the edge of Turkmenistan or wherever the Russians think the border ends.

Now the border ends on the western edge of Syria.

And the Russian border will keep ending wherever Vladimir Putin thinks it ends that day, after he's done fighting with his bear and swimming across the Volga, whatever it is he does for fun.

I do get a slight sense that Putin is essentially playing a Cold War computer simulation.

I find it deeply unsettling.

He's a man who has the humanity of a dinosaur skeleton and a moral compass that points unerringly towards total.

He is the kind of man you can imagine waking up every morning and whilst other people might have a coffee or a shower to perk themselves up, Putin just stands in front of a mirror in the nude going,

And essentially it appears that he has now had the casting votes in a US presidential election.

These are odd times we live in.

Odd times.

Barack Obama, though, is not taking it lying down.

He says, I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections, we need to take action and we will at a time and a place of our own choosing.

Now, bear in mind, he is going to be out of a job in...

approximately one month's time.

This sounds like the first thing he's going to do when he finishes is try to bombard Vladimir Putin with spam emails from wherever he chooses to retire to.

This is also the thing that I'm quite interested in, Andy, and I want to ask you about this, which is that, of course, a large number of facts are being laid in front of the American people, and they're being told that the Russians did hack into the various emails of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, and they chose to selectively release what they wanted to release.

But the American people have sort of wholeheartedly sort of united in not believing these facts.

And I find that that's a really interesting, this is a very interesting time, the early part of the 20th century, 21st century,

for facts.

You know, this very interesting time for where facts are and what their place is.

Because I think what the American people have shown us now is that facts should not get in the way of the truth.

And the truth should be whatever it is they believe, which is the truth, which is basically a lie.

So

that these words have come to mean various things depending on what they want it to mean.

So I think the real success of Vladimir Putin is that he's been able to change the definition of the word fact.

Well, on the subject of the sort of post-truth era and fake news,

Facebook, who've come under some criticism for their role in sharing fake news stories,

they have been in the news with the news that they've announced new features to combat fake news.

But the question arises, will this news be out-news by the breaking fake news that Facebook sees a Mark Zuckerberg, A, owns a 150% scale replica of Rolly Wonka's chocolate factory and is secretly sending all the sweets it produces to the Saudi Arabian royal family?

B screams if his coffee is brewed at anything other than 92 degrees Celsius.

C, is so allergic to tennis that if he even hears the word Jokovich, blood drips out of his eyes, and D, keeps a colony of pure-bred Canadians in a giant cage in his garden in an attempt to breed the perfect ice hockey team.

Or is that fake news actually so fake that it spins a full 1260 degree three and a half twists and becomes to all intents and purposes true?

Check your social media feeds to find out.

Latest appointments to the Trump cabinets include ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State.

In a world where many expect the effects of climate change to lead to greater instability and conflict, Tillerson's experience at the head of a company that has eagerly helped to accelerate climate change could be absolutely invaluable.

I think that is the logic logic behind that.

Exxon

have invested around 1% of their profits in alternative energies from that's what I've from what I could find in a two-minute search engine research project, which I think counts as hard-edged investigative journalism in the post-truth world.

That is the equivalent, 1% of Exxon's profits going to

alternative energies.

That is the equivalent of a shark savaging 20 seals in your living room and then offering you a box of tissues to help clean up the mess.

I think, I'm not a scientist, but still, at least it shows that the shark does care.

Another man in line to join Trump's cabinet is the former Texas governor Rick Perry, who once suggested that the Deepwater Horizon disaster was, quote, an act of God.

If so, the big man certainly delegated that act down a very human chain of command.

But perhaps the biggest challenge...

for Big Donald in his quest to win the Nobel Prize for Looney Leadership is the sheer quantity of absolute nutters who appear to be coming to the fore of global politics at the moment.

Anywhere, I know you've been having a look at some of the contenders for nuttiest leader of 2017 and it's possible Trump might not even make the podium.

That is correct, Andy.

In fact,

Donald Trump, in comparison, is almost saintly, it's almost pope-like in comparison.

One of my favorite leaders right now is the current leader of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte,

who recently announced that when he was mayor of a certain town in the Philippines, he's currently conducting a big war on drugs.

And there have been a number of extrajudicial killings and executions all across the Philippines.

But his claim was that when he was the mayor of a town, he actually went around killing people.

And when he said this, his popularity soared.

His popularity went up by 6,000 points, which goes to show that this is the world we're living in, Andy.

And it's wonderful, really, because I don't know about you, but I'm very tired of the justice system.

You know, it's invented some liberal democracy mechanism to give fairness to the people.

But I think we're at a point, Andy, we're ready.

We're ready as a world where a judge can listen to a case and be sitting on his judge's table with a gun under the desk, holding the gun, and then shooting the person point blank when he's found guilty.

I think we're there.

And I think Rodrigo Duterte is just stating that.

So

he's highly

encouraging of anyone who wants to go out there and shoot a person suspected of being a drug dealer.

And to me, if that isn't due process, I don't know what is.

You say you want a system whereby the judge has the gun.

I mean, Duterte, he sort of accelerated that process even further by appointing himself as a freelance judge and dispensing a guilty verdict before any evidence was heard.

I mean, he is so keen on streamlining bureaucracy that he's taken justice into a whole new era.

Yes, I mean, look, judge, jury, executioner is three jobs.

He's fused it into one.

I mean, that's economic progress.

And it's just him going around with a gun.

And it's very different.

You know, I'd like to to bring up another example, Ande.

It's very different, for example, than the leader of Gambia.

Yaya Jame is the leader of Gambia.

And he goes around, as the leader of Gambia, carrying a plastic rocket launcher.

It's just something he carries around.

He had it with him when he met President Ababa.

Now, my thing is that that's plastic.

That's plastic.

He's not getting anything done with that.

It's just a thing he's carrying around.

It's really an affectation.

Duarte isn't messing around with that stuff.

He's walking around with an actual gun.

And I think that to be is a world leader who's doing what he says he's going to do.

He's shooting you in the face.

I think that that is the leadership of the 21st century.

Well, you say that, of course, not everyone agrees with that claim.

There have been counterclaims that Duterte was not, in fact, involved in death squads.

And those claims were made by Rodrigo Duterte himself.

So I guess whether you believe he was or wasn't involved in those squads depends on whether you believe Rodrigo Duterte or Rodrigo Duterte at different times of his crazy life.

But I can't imagine a British leader coming out and saying something similar.

I mean, David Cameron would not even fess up to having whacked his drongle prong in a dead pig's mouth, let alone gangland slayings.

And, you know, going further, John Major, our prime minister from the 1990s, quite a softly spoken guy.

I can't imagine him having come out and said, yes, when I was a boy in London, I clocked up 15 kills in my local neighbourhood just to keep things moving.

See you at the oval for the cricket.

Exactly, exactly.

You know, and you know, the trouble with your country, for example, is that there is a voice, there is an opinion and a counter-opinion, right?

Duterte is doing away with that.

If Duterte is agreeing or opposing Duterte, then again, that's two jobs that's been fused into one.

Again,

an economic benefit, right?

To be the proposition and the opposition at the same time.

And I think Britain is at a loss when your Prime Minister is not walking around the local neighborhoods shooting drug addicts in the face.

I think somehow democracy suffers.

In fact, if you look at this landscape, if you look at this landscape, Andy, the world as it is,

I have a question for you, actually, because in the post-truth world, what is making me really sad is that the great lunatic leader of our time, King Jong-un, is appearing the most normal

among all these people who are competing.

How do you feel about that?

Well, I mean, that's

I guess like when you know Nadal and then Djokovic started challenging Roger Federer at the top of the tennis rankings.

You thought you know he was untouchable, unassailable.

But you know, and Federer responded, but whether he can, you know, he never quite got back to that level of dominance.

And Kim Jong-un's got a huge challenge ahead of him, not only from Trump, but also, as you say, from Duterte.

And Jammer, you mentioned in the Gambia, they recently lost an election convincingly until he decided that he hadn't lost the election.

And when armed soldiers are sent to take over the offices of your electoral commission, that is not generally a sign that the results of an election are being 100% respected.

Precisely, precisely.

And that is really the right approach, you know, when you not only disagree with the result, but you disagree with the institution that's having the thing in the first place.

You know,

maybe in cricketing terms, the way to look at it is: if, say, for example, example, you're unhappy at the results of Lords, you don't necessarily just beat up the other team, but you burn down lords.

You know, that seems to be the approach here at Gambia.

Again, a sensible approach.

I think the only thing now to wait and watch is whether Donald Trump will appoint Kanye West as the chief economic secretary of the United States.

And then we'll have to see what Kim Jong-un does to play that game.

Bugle feature section now and trains.

Well, Anuvab, it is tough times here in London.

We have a rail strike going on.

Southern Trains, who run a lot of trains in and out of London, particularly the trains I have to get in and out of London, which are therefore the most important trains on the network.

They are on a full strike this week.

No trains at all were running today.

on my part of the line, which was a marginal improvement on their usual level of service.

At least you knew where you stood this morning.

Now, the government's trying to reach an agreement with Southern Trains on steps to improve the service.

The latest suggestion for how to improve Southern Train service is to flood the lines, to turn them into canals, and then to float a single turd up and downstream every hour.

And I think most commuters would accept that as

a compromise.

Now, as you mentioned, The suburban trains in Mumbai are, I mean, that's one of life's great challenges, isn't it?

I mean, it's, you know, people used to look at climbing Everest as one of the most difficult things, running a four-minute mile, getting to the South Pole.

But getting to and from work in Mumbai must be up there in terms of the biggest physical challenges facing humanity.

Well, that's correct, Andy.

You know, the way I'm going to describe this is

the train experience in India is one where the environment smells faintly of urine while simultaneously not smelling faintly of urine at the same time.

It's an aroma that I can best describe as

sort of gently fecal.

That's the environment that you're in all the time.

You get into it, it's a mass of humanity, and if you're able to make it out off the train, you're probably in another city.

You're probably not

at your destination, you're probably in another country.

If the train has moved in the direction it promised to, that is a success.

Sometimes the trains have moved backwards, sideways.

There's a lot of fog going on in Delhi right now.

And oftentimes,

people on cross-city trains are waking up to find themselves in South India when they were supposed to be in North India.

So,

in comparison, I think your problems are very mild.

Your emails now, and Anivab, we have this email.

Maybe you can help with from your outsiders' perspective.

This came from Rob in Kinross in Scotland, who writes, hello, buglers.

Judging from the comments of people on Facebook, the biggest problem with Brexit right now is that Ramonas like me aren't enthusiastic enough about it.

But how could this come about?

I dread the politics, I fear the economic consequences, and my stomach groans at the potential impact on our national dinner plates once pasta has been sent back where it came from.

This was not discussed enough.

This was not discussed enough, Rob, in the campaign.

The fact that pasta and all other non-British foods will be banned and we will only be able to eat Lancashire hotpots and gravel.

Then it hit me, Rob continues.

We need a mascot,

like a sports mascot.

He says, has anything bad ever had a mascot?

Olympics, World Cups, football teams, nothing bad has ever had a mascot.

So I ask you, what mascot for Brexit could could enthuse the 48 of brits who voted against it um now aniva i don't know uh i don't know what your view on this i i can see uh you know like a a huge giant pantomime middle finger um

marching around trying to cheer people up about it i think i think that might work i mean it went when we had the olympics here in 2012 we essentially had two giant sperms representing the spirit of the olympics any any suggestions from your your indian perspective as to you know a cuddly toy figure that might inspire Brits to get more behind our leap into the unknown?

I don't know if

this got reported in the British press, Andy, but your foreign secretary, Mr.

Boris Johnson, was in India and he was doing a tour of India.

There were several unsuccessful attempts for him to climb on top of an elephant during a press photo shoot.

And in the end, a rather sort of mediocre photograph was taken of him standing next to an elephant's bottom.

And I don't know if

that is some sort of a metaphor for where we are with Brexit, but

I have that photograph of your foreign secretary dressed as a Maharatha standing next to a giant Indian Tusker's bottom

as a sort of summary of

where nationalism and pan-Europeanism stand.

And I don't think he's smiling.

That's the other thing I noted on the photograph.

Do keep your emails coming in to hellobuglers at thebuglepodcast.com.

Next week's episode is a Christmas special that will have been pre-recorded, in fact, directly after this episode.

But do keep them coming in for the New Year's episodes.

HelloBuglers at thebuglepodcast.com.

Anuvab, thank you very much once again for your glorious contribution to the Bugle.

You'll be back in January, where you will be here in London for your next appearance on the show the end towards the end of January.

Anything you'd like to plug in the meantime?

Any shows you've got coming up?

Well, I'm doing a

comedy special with Amazon.

Amazon, who entered the United States in 1995 as a website, are now a global giant.

And they have decided to enter the Indian market right after,

by which I mean 30 years later, with a series of comedy specials and shows.

And I'll be recording one with them tonight actually

in a gigantic comedy venue by which I mean a bar for a couple of hundred people

if you want to see my end of the year review show 2016 the certifiable history it begins at the Soho Theatre on the 20th of December running on and off until the 7th of January and my UK tour begins on the 2nd of February.

See websites.

For details.

The Bugle is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, made possible with great support from our founding sponsors, the Knight Foundation and MailChimp, celebrating creativity, chaos, and teamwork.

Until next time, Buglers, for next week's Christmas special, when I will be joined by my sister Helen.

Until then, thank you for listening and 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.