Smug Australian radio host mocks 'conspiracy theorist' Joe Rogan - before her own colleague Josh Szeps offers a blistering defence of the American podcaster
ABC Radio presenter Josh Szeps has defended Joe Rogan once again after the American podcaster was mocked by The Drum host Ellen Fanning.
In an episode of the ABC talk show that aired earlier this month, Fanning called Rogan a 'conspiracy theorist' and a 'cage-fighting guy who does no research' while grilling Szeps over his decision to appear on the comedian's podcast.
Speaking to The Australian on Monday about the contentious interview, Szeps doubled down on his defence of Rogan.
'He’s a polarising figure because he’s not a newscaster, and he interviews dissident figures,' said Szeps, who is friends with Rogan even though they disagree on certain issues.
'But he also interviews people who represent the orthodox view. Tens of millions listen to him. Are we going to win the hearts and minds of people by not talking to him?'
Szeps explained he was on Rogan's show to represent 'the orthodox view when it comes to the safety of vaccines', adding that he 'stood his ground' against him during their heated discussion.
The 44-year-old has appeared on Rogan's podcast seven times over the years.
Szeps was grilled by Fanning on The Drum earlier this month, with the ABC hosts disagreeing on how much research Rogan should be expected to do for his twice-weekly three-hour podcasts.
Fanning mocked Rogan, 54, before complaining about his popularity and some of the controversial guests that have appeared on his podcast.
'Here's this guy with all this money from Spotify and he says, "This is going to be intellectual jousting about Marxism and the history of the world and, y'know, I'm just a cage fighting guy," but he does no research!' she said incredulously.
'He says this is going to be an intellectual jousting exercise, that's what you're gonna see, he's going to have the stogy [cigar] in his mouth, he's going to be all this kind of razzle dazzle,' she continued as she waved her arms around in the air.
'And at the same time, he kind of has all these edgy people on and he doesn't bother to do any research about them.'
Szeps responded: 'How much research would you have to do to have a three-hour conversation, twice a week, with people all over the political spectrum?'
Fanning shot back: 'If you gave me a hundred million bucks, I'd probably hire some pretty fine producers!'
She continued to complain about Rogan during the interview, repeatedly claiming he 'doesn't do any research' and adding that 'sometimes he's stoned'.
Rogan, an advocate for the legalisation of certain drugs, often smokes marijuana while recording his podcast and famously once got high with Elon Musk.
Fanning also said Rogan has 'a head full of alternative facts' and was negatively influencing his listeners by spreading 'misinformation'.
Szeps continued to defend Rogan, as did AFR columnist Jennifer Hewitt, who was also appearing on The Drum as a panellist that night.
'He's not trying to be journalist or a gatekeeper or profess to have the answers,' Hewitt said.
'First of all, I'll point out that you can do an awful lot of research and get in vicious disagreements about all sorts of things,' she continued.
Last month, Szeps praised Rogan in an interview with Mediaweek and claimed his podcast has far more reach than a mainstream show like NBC's The Today Show.
He went on to call Rogan a 'ferociously curious, very engaged, highly disciplined puppy dog'.
'He and I disagree about a lot, but I would rather engage with deeply enthusiastic, deeply curious people who I think are mistaken about many things, than only ever hear from people whose opinions I already understand,' he added.
The Joe Rogan Experience is the world's most popular podcast. In 2020, it moved exclusive to Spotify in a deal worth $100million, making Rogan the world's highest-paid podcaster.
Szeps has appeared on Rogan's show multiple times over the years, and the pair have socialised off camera too.
His most recent appearance made headlines when they got into a debate about Covid vaccines and potential side effects.
Rogan argued vaccines increase the risk of heart condition myocarditis, but Szeps said the real risk of developing myocarditis is actually from contracting Covid-19.
At first, Rogan tried to say this was incorrect, but then his own producer stepped in to say Szeps was right.
The podcaster, who some have accused of being a vaccine sceptic, later tweeted a video of the moment and was happy to acknowledge Szeps was correct.
'If anyone was going to make me look dumb on the podcast I’m glad it’s Josh Szeps, because I love him, and he’s awesome,' he wrote.
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Indian state’s hijab ban in school sparks religious freedom furore
Bengaluru: A request by a group of high school girls to wear the hijab in class has snowballed into dulling protests between Hindu and Muslim students in India, deepening religious polarisation as regional elections approach.
Debate over the hijab in schools took off last month after students at a pre-university college in Karnataka state’s Udupi district began protesting against a rule barring them from wearing the Muslim head covering in classrooms.
In late January, the girls petitioned the state’s high court, challenging the restrictions. But protests quickly spread across the state, as more educational institutions began banning Muslim students from wearing the hijab. Hindu activists have staged counterprotests, demanding that the saffron shawl - a Hindu religious symbol - be allowed in schools.
The opposing movements have deepened festering religious polarisation in the region and prompted the state to temporarily close secondary schools this week. On Tuesday, protests turned violent, with reports emerging from some cities of stone-throwing and arson, according to the BBC.
Muskan Khan, a student in the city of Mandya in Karnataka state who wears the headscarf, became the face of resistance to the hijab bans after a video of her went viral this week.
The clip showed Khan, 19, pumping her fist and shouting “Allahu akbar” (“God is great”) at a group of men who were heckling her as she entered her college. The men wore saffron scarves and chanted “Jai Shri Ram” - “Victory to Lord Ram,” a call popular among Hindu nationalist groups.
“All that I want is to stand by my rights and education,” Khan told the BBC after the incident.
Demonstrations have spread to India’s capital, Delhi, and cities including Kolkata, where students blocked roads in protest of hijab prohibitions in Karnataka. On Thursday, women in two cities in neighbouring Pakistan protested in solidarity.
Unlike some European countries that have fiercely debated the right to wear the veil, there are no nationwide restrictions on wearing the hijab in public places in India. But a growing number of schools and officials in Karnataka have begun saying that religious garments should not be worn in the classroom.
“Government is very firm that the school is not a platform to practice dharma [religion],” Karnataka education minister BC Nagesh told CNN affiliate CNN News-18.
Officials have also said saffron scarves are forbidden in class.
A student identified as Al-Rifa told the Indian news publication Scroll.in that her school in Karnataka was “forcing us to choose between studies and the hijab” and that female Muslim students feel unsafe on campus.
“I was made to realise that I am a Muslim. Someone who dresses differently,” she said. “I have never thought about these things before.”
The protest movement got a high-profile endorsement on Tuesday, when Nobel Peace laureate Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani advocate for girls’ education who also wears a headscarf, condemned the hijab ban on Twitter.
“Refusing to let girls go to school in their hijabs is horrifying,” she wrote. “Objectification of women persists - for wearing less or more. Indian leaders must stop the marginalisation of Muslim women.”
The All India President of the Students’ Federation of India also criticised the ban, writing on Twitter that the hijab was being “cited as reason to deny Muslim women’s right to education.”
Human Rights Watch also decried the ban as discriminatory.
The rival protests between hijab-wearing Muslim students and saffron scarf-wearing Hindu students has deepened communal tensions in the region.
Karnataka authorities closed high schools and colleges for three days this week as the threat of violence mounted. Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai announced on Thursday that classes would resume on Monday. The state’s high court had ordered the government to reopen schools but prevent students from wearing any religious dress until it delivers a verdict on petitions seeking to overturn the hijab ban.
Muslims make up about 13 per cent of the population in Karnataka, which is a stronghold of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu right-wing BJP party. Since coming to power in 2019, the regional government has passed orders tightening the slaughter of beef in the state and introduced a controversial bill that would make it more difficult for interfaith couples to marry and for people to convert to Islam or Christianity.
Five other states in India head to the polls to kick off a high-stakes election season and identity politics are taking centre stage.
Experts say the BJP has sought to benefit from polarisation between Hindus and Muslims. Across India, anti-Muslim hate speech is on the rise. And police have taken little action against those involved in events where crowds pledged to kill Muslims.
Aliya Assadi, 17, who has worn the hijab since she was 7 years old, said she and her classmates sat in the hallway of their all-girls secondary school in Karnataka all day after they were barred from attending classes.
Initially, their Hindu classmates were supportive. But that soon changed, Assadi said.
“It breaks my heart to see my classmates and friends change so fast and speak on communal lines. It simply makes my cry,” she said. “I know they are not bad people. I know they are being used by politicians. But still, it is painful to see your friends endorse hatred.”
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UK: The Highway Code to hell
I did a speed awareness course on Monday. For the uninitiated, you have the option of doing one of these if you’re caught speeding and want to avoid getting three points on your licence. It only lasts two and a half hours and there’s no test at the end, so it’s a no-brainer, although you have to do it again if you’re spotted playing on your phone at the back. I’ve never heard of anyone choosing the three points instead.
Like most people forced to undergo this humiliation, I was convinced I had nothing to learn. We all know about the laws of motion: the faster you’re going, the longer it takes to stop. And, inevitably, I found myself silently correcting the poor English of the two trainers. It’s either ‘more safe’ or ‘safer’, not ‘more safer’, and what are ‘road signages’, for Pete’s sake? But they won me over — and, I suspect, the other 12 arrogant ne’er-do-wells in the basement of Ealing’s Crowne Plaza hotel — by quizzing us about the meaning of different road signs in the Highway Code. I suspect they deliberately include this at the beginning to persuade their reluctant students that there’s actually a good deal about speed restrictions they aren’t aware of.
For instance, did you know that the meaning of the ‘national speed limit applies’ sign varies according to which part of the United Kingdom you’re in? The maximum speed for HGV drivers on single carriageways is 10mph lower in Scotland and Northern Ireland than in England and Wales.
Maximum speeds also vary according to what sort of vehicle you’re driving, as the owner of a Transit van discovered to his astonishment. No sooner had we finished laughing at him — ‘No wonder you’re here, mate’ — than we were introduced to the ‘street light rule’, whereby a national speed limit of 30mph applies to all roads with street lights, including dual carriageways. Who knew? And when the trainers asked us how fast you’re allowed to go if an electronic sign outside a school says ‘Max speed 20 when lights flashing’ — and the lights are flashing — every single one of us got it wrong. The correct answer, astonishingly, is 30mph.
The Highway Code, it turns out, is like the tax code: incomprehensible to everyone except paid experts. Einstein said the hardest thing in the world to understand is income tax, but I’m guessing he wasn’t a British road-user. Which brings me, finally, to the point of this column: the Highway Code is about to get even more mind-bogglingly complex.
As it stands, it includes 307 rules, and eight annexes, but from 29 January it will be longer still. The new Code is the result of a consultation process that began in October 2018 and didn’t conclude until last month, and it reads as if it’s been written by the same crack team that covered Britain in cycle lanes, Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and pop-up one-way systems during the lockdowns.
Its great innovation is to create a hierarchy of road users, with pedestrians at the top, cyclists below them, and drivers at the bottom. So if a pedestrian is waiting to cross at a junction, drivers must give way, even if it causes a ten-car pile-up. Worse, on quieter roads cyclists are advised to ride in the centre of their lane to make themselves more visible and, if it’s a narrow country road, they should ride two abreast. Talk about incitement to road rage! And here’s the kicker: that guidance applies even if there’s a cycle lane running alongside the road. They are entirely optional, apparently. The town-hall Sir Humphreys who’ve spent tens of millions of ratepayers’ money disfiguring Britain’s roads must have had a good laugh at that.
It’s hard to dismiss the suspicion that the new Highway Code is designed to make life even more miserable for motorists. It’s not enough to force us all to switch to Priuses from 2030; for the net-zero zealots, all drivers will have to be constantly humiliated. And if that doesn’t ‘nudge’ us into abandoning our vehicles, other measures will be called for.
It won’t be long before you’re given an instant lifetime ban if you’re done for speeding — and more and more of us will be, as our society approaches Chinese levels of surveillance. Indeed, it’s already beginning: since 2019, any driver who’s had a licence for less than two years has been required to take the test again if they rack up six points.
I felt a bit miffed about having to do a speed awareness course, but soon we’ll look back on them as belonging to a golden age.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/01/highway-to-hell
*******************************************Australia: Muslim men awarded $61,755 in costs after court played police bodycam vision
Five men who were wrongly accused of assaulting police have been awarded $61,755 in legal costs after a magistrate noted there were “glaring and serious discrepancies” between the police version of events and video footage of the incident.
Khaled Zreika, 21, and Hussein Zraika, 22, had just bought disposable face masks at a petrol station at Guildford in Sydney’s west on September 24 last year when police entered the store and arrested them for failing to wear masks.
The situation rapidly deteriorated when the men followed police outside and questioned why they were being arrested, with the officers from Raptor Squad wrestling the pair to the ground and calling for assistance.
Noah Obeid, 19, Fadi Zraika, 20, and Zachariya Al-Ahmad, 20, who approached police to criticise them for the arrest, were also arrested as scores of officers responded.
The five were charged with various offences including assaulting police, harassing police, hindering police and resisting arrest, however all charges were later withdrawn apart from a breach of the public health order.
On Thursday, Magistrate Greg Grogin said it was “abundantly clear” there was a “major” discrepancy between vision of the incident and the officers’ claims.
He found the proceedings against the men were initiated without reasonable cause, and ordered police pay $61,755.80 of legal costs.
Police had earlier conceded there was no reasonable cause to bring the charges and agreed to pay costs, but argued the amount sought by the men was manifestly excessive.
In bodycam footage played to Parramatta Local Court on Thursday, Constable James Katsetis and Constable Dylan Leyshon from Raptor Squad can be seen walking into the service station, with one of the officers greeting the men by saying “hey brother, how you going”.
“No mask, both you boys,” Constable Katsetis continues. “You’re both under arrest ... can you hop outside for us?”
The officer, who initially admonishes Hussein Zraika for swearing in a public place, is depicted a short time later wrestling with him on the ground before telling him, “you f---ing move, I’ll knock you out c--t”.
Constable Katsetis then moves to where Khaled Zreika is being restrained nearby and knees him multiple times, causing him to shout in pain, before telling him: “don’t f---ing move c--t”.
Mr Grogin said lawyers representing the men had criticised the actions of police, but the award of costs could not be viewed as being a punishment.
“The fact that costs are not punitive does not require this court to come to a decision as to the actions of the police on the day,” he said. “Suffice to say, a picture paints a thousand words.”
Mr Grogin said he had viewed the facts sheets prepared by police, as well as CCTV footage and bodycam vision, and “there are obvious, glaring and serious discrepancies, to my eyes”.
“It would be obvious to anybody involved with the criminal law and the criminal courts the reason why these charges were withdrawn,” he said. “To say that the video showed nothing but a very serious physical altercation between police and the defendants would be an understatement.”
Police prosecutor Lachlan Kirby told the court he has not been informed why charges against the five men were withdrawn, but there is a “clear inference, having watched that footage, that this matter was not going to end in favour of the prosecution”.
“I’m drawing the same inference as everyone else as to the reason the matters were withdrawn” Senior Sergeant Kirby said. “I’m not an idiot.”
Mr Grogin said the lawyer for the men, Abdul Saddik, began to carry out his own investigation including sourcing CCTV from the petrol station due to fears the footage would not be disclosed by police.
“It would appear his concerns were well-founded,” Mr Grogin said.
The court heard police did not serve a brief of evidence containing CCTV or statements, in defiance of a court deadline, before the charges were withdrawn. Some documents were given to the men for the first time on Thursday.
Mr Grogin said the costs proceeding was “not a forum for criticism” or the “airing of grievances” and “I am not determining the actions of anybody, particularly any police officers involved”.
It is understood that lawyers for the men will ask for police to investigate the officers’ actions and consider criminal charges. If this is not done, the lawyers will consider a private prosecution.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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