The Chaser Report - ARVO: Bring on the war with Sami Shah

Episode Date: February 24, 2022

Sami Shah joins Charles for an Arvo Chat about World War 3. Why hasn't it begun yet, and how long do we have to wait until there's some good telly? Find out with Sami and Charles! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to the afternoon chat of The Chaser Report for Thursday the 24th of February. I'm Charles Firth. And with me today is Sammy Shah. How are you, Sammy? Hi, Charles. How are you doing? I'm all right. You don't sound all right. You sound tired. Well, you know, I thought by now we would have World War III that there'd be something to watch. I mean, the Olympics finished on Sunday. True, true.

And it's all been, there's no war at all. It's just been meetings and threats and, you know, build up and tension and, you know, lots of men talking from podiums. But there's no actual, you know, like, laser playing back and forth and waters and bombings. As a Marvel Cinematic Universe fan, I completely understand. Because for me, right, like last year was the golden era in terms of we'd have, you know,

a Marvel movie, and then we'd have a Marvel TV show, and then the TV show as soon as the TV show and we'd have another Marvel movie and then another Marvel TV show. And it was going amazing, and then the Spider-Man movie came out. And since then, we've had nothing for a while now.

This is a gap. I know Moon Night is on the horizon, but it's not here yet, and I've got nothing to put my eyeballs to words. Are you not counting Eternals? I don't. That doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned. Any movie where Kumedlanjani spent six years bodybuilding but forgot to take a single Bollywood dance class is dead to me.

But the idea that, you know, we should have had something by now. It's a programming disaster. This is what happens when producers take the day off. And this is, it's lazy on their part. Can I pose to you a different idea, which is that actually what happened was they had planned. for Australia and China to have a showdown because remember last week

was all about China and then the whole laser pointer thing and you know it was all going to... Do you think... And I think that they assumed that there would be a war between China and Australia

and then it just fizzled out. Yeah. And so they're now it's sort of like they'd... Oh man like it's a... And then the Ukraine thing was a bit too late, you know.

I think what happened is basically Albanese didn't step up. The point was they were going to keep pushing him until he snaps, he reveals himself to be a quote-unquote Manchurian candidate and then we have a reason to go to war because he starts speaking Mandarin

in the parliament or something. It didn't happen. Now we're going to have to have to have to have Albinisi being accused of being Russian. They're going to have to find video of him somehow, I don't know, having a glass of vodka at some point in his life. And that accusation is going to come forward.

The thing that bothers me in all of this is the fact that why are we getting involved? Why is Australia even allowing Russia to notice us? Because we have zero influence or impact on the Russian psyche. And somehow we're going, we're going to put sanctions. And now Putin is going like, who is Australia? What are they doing here? And it's going to break bad.

No, no, no, no. It's because we have to get involved because there's an election within three months of, today, and nothing, you know, sells votes better than a good war. So we have to get our, like, did you hear Morrison this morning saying that we were now at risk of cyber attack? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Russia is now going to target us. And you just go, first of all. But China's already been targeted. Scott Morrison, that is wishful thinking. Like, the idea that they've ever visited a domain name with dot A.U. I think, it's just because they probably just mistyped dot are you. You know what it is? They've got, they've got a ton of hackers, obviously, the massive hacker farm.

They assign the intern to Australia. And the Australian intern goes, the password is password. And oh, yep, I'm in. I'm in the system now. I've got all the Medicare records. Oh, look, this my health record thing is the privacy disaster that we always thought it would be. But also, we've got, you know, we've already got China hacking our systems. they don't need to, Russia doesn't need to hack us,

they can just get our information from China on the black market, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't need to worry about it. It's just this thing. Maybe we should ask Russia to sort of fix up some of the code while they're in there.

Like actually, because Russians are really good at computer programming. We could get them to sort of actually strengthen our systems. Yeah, true. Absolutely. Installed some antivirus software for us, things like that. The thing that worries me is we haven't done any polling. We don't know whether there's more, Ukrainians in Australia immigrants or Russian immigrants in Australia

because what if we take Russia's side in this and then there's a huge voting block that goes no way we want Russia to invade Ukraine and then they vote against the Liberal Party government so the Liberal Party government in the next two or three days will be doing some furious polling to figure out whose side they should actually be on in this whole war

yes that's very true because it's not about right or wrong no not at all it's got nothing to do with I mean there's a whole traumatized trans teenagers who'll tell you it's got nothing to do with right or wrong when Scott Morrison makes a decision. You know that, can I just tell you, Sammy, which is that I don't have any internet today.

Yes. Because the NBN is down in my area because it rained a bit last night. So I'm just going. Like, I don't think we should go up against Russia. I don't think we're not prepped for that. I mean, I suppose it's good in a way because presumably, like, it's very hard to cyber attack a country that doesn't really. have internet. Yes. Well, other countries do war games to see, you know, prep for a worst

case scenario. We have rain days. Well, I guess it's a bit wet outside. Our system's completely collapsed. We're dead. The entire country died. Let's try this again. Okay. Well, this is very so when do you think, what's your tip for when it's all going to kick off? Like, I, look, I think this is, it's from, did you watch a yes, prime minister? Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, there's a great, there's a great episode, right? Which, believe it or not, my political science professor showed us in university back when I was in college 20 years ago. And in that, it was an episode with a talk about the salami strategy where you don't invade a country. You take it like you take slices of a salami, you know, you just go in one little bit of time, one little bit of time until the whole country is yours.

I think that's what Putin's going to do. Putin was what he's doing. You know, he stared down Tony Abbott's threat of a shirt front. I mean, this is a man who clearly has no fear. Because who else could do something like that? Who else would look at Tony Abbott's threat of a shirt front and go, no, no, I'll take this on. So, yeah, good on him, and here we go. Yeah, so they've taken two regions now.

Yeah. We're also sending in Ben Roberts Smith, I heard, to get them back, those two regions. So it'll be sorted very quickly. Oh my God, yes, that's exactly what we do. We just send him Ben Robert Smith and everyone will just scatter. Yeah, absolutely. Just clear out you crying. There's a Chaser interned Furiously photoshopping Ben Robert Smith

in the captain of Australia costume right now. I'll just call out. Hey, guys. Just Ben Robert Smith, yeah. Okay, go. There we go. The Chaser Report. More news.

often. So we, yeah, so there's not going to be, oh, so that's really disappointing, Sammy. Well, I mean, look, we might get a proper war. I know. Because Tony Abbott addressed that think tank earlier in the week in Hungary, and he said that it's about to be World War III. How disappointed was it. And that Russia was about to invade Poland.

Yeah. That's what he said. Imagine being a part of a think tank, you know, like surrounded by intellectuals, surrounded by the smartest and the brightest of your place and people. The people around you, you know, at the height of their intellectual capabilities. And then Tony Abbott speaks to you for like a while. And you're just like, is this a crash now? What is happening?

Was he the children's entertainer brought in? Why is he in his underwear? They probably thought he was a comedian. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They probably thought he was like pretending to be a former prime minister of Australia and it was some sort of comedy act. They booked Sammy J. and Randy. And then the management company screwed up and said Tony Abbott instead.

Yeah. All right, so here we go. AFP news right now breaking on Twitter says Ukrainian president says nearly 200,000 Russian troops on border. I don't know why that's breaking. We've known that for ages. We've known that. There's literally been the last three months. Yeah, exactly.

So AFP news clearly is just bored. All right, well, look, here's what I'm looking forward to is footage of Anthony Albanese drinking a vodka and being accused of being a Russian spy. Or the spy who came in from the cold. I think is the reference that Scott Morrison go with there. Yeah, okay. And, well, I presume, I mean, there must be,

they'll be able to dig out all the Reds Under the Bed stuff from 1950s and 60s, the leaves, right? Like, this is rinse and repeat stuff. Did we have a Red Scare in Australia? Yeah, yeah. Oh, God, yeah. So, in 1953, or 1951 election, Menzies tried to actually ban the Communist Party from existing.

and that completely split the Labour Party for a generation. And there were actually two Labour parties. There was the Labour Party and the Democratic Labor Party. The Democratic Labor Party were made up of all the Catholics, and they were fervently anti-communist and voted with the coalition. So they were sort of a bit like the Clive Palmer Party or something like that. But they split the Labour Party in Twain, and that's why the Labour Party could not be elected for a whole party.

generation. And several generations offer that. And yet have yet to recover from that body blow, clearly. And that's also why we have Catholic education

that's completely funded by the federal government in this country because Menzies went, oh, okay, I'll do a deal with the Catholics, bring them over, like these conservative

anti-communist Catholics, and we'll give them private education, we'll just give them a shit ton of fucking money and then they'll vote for us instead of the Labor Party. I had no idea

That's really fascinating And I'll tell you Just a little piece of personal Yeah Which is that it was my great granddad Who stood up to Menzies And he was then He was then targeted

In the media as being the red bishop Because he was He was the bishop of Canberra and Goulbon And he He didn't believe in banning the Communist Party And for that Was he also ginger like you?

No, he was Oh, okay. That'd be really funny if he was, though. Yeah, because the ginger bishop. That is fascinating. So you have a real history of pissing off the Labour Party. Yeah, and of being pretty pro-communist. So I suppose what I'm saying is... By the way, yeah, go on. I just said I was going to say, as you wear a T-shirt that's making fun of a bank right here in Australia right now. But the thing is, I think, you know, I think the... The whole point is, you know, like, you know, he was accused of being pro-Russian.

I don't think he was actually pro-communist at all. He just didn't believe in banning the Communist Party. Right. But the point is, you know, when the Russians do take over Australia, as presumably we're going to be told that they will in the coming months in the lead up the election, I for one welcome our Russian overlords, and I have a long history to prove it. That's right. That's right.

So I'll be fine. In fact, I'm happy to be one of those puppet government things who invite. Oh, that's a good idea. Because that's what's happening in Ukraine is they've gone to the governments and gone here. Why don't you invite us in? And so the Russians have now been invited in to two regions. I think that that's what we should do here. We should invite the Russians in.

And you become the puppet leader. And then maybe Chase the report gets a bit more funding. Do you want to be part of my cabinet? I wouldn't mind being minister for... Minister for comedy festivals So I can finally win an awarded one That would be my purely I feel like that's a sort of low ambition

I'm a very low ambition person One thing you're going to learn about me Is I aim low And I still somehow fail to hit those goals Because if I were you I would be you know like Minister for Defence or Minister for Police And then what you do is you send in your police

goons to make people give you the awards. Yeah, very true. I don't know, Susan Provin might be listening and the next thing I know, she's going to see it, I'm going to get myself kicked out of the festival for threatening her with my secret police. Well, while we're talking about Susan Provin, don't you remember that wonderful time back in 2020 when they had to cancel the Melbourne Comedy Festival, but the Melbourne Comedy Festival decided that the trickiest way to do it would be to put all the responsibility on the artist

for it and that the Melbourne Comedy Festival would actually keep all the deposits even though nobody's shows were able to go on. They did eventually give the deposits back. I do remember that because... They gave back the deposits after about four days of them going... Of everyone losing their minds on Twitter. Yeah, and you're just going, like, in what you... So that's Susan Proven.

There you go. My favorite thing about that was the day they announced it that the festival is canceled. It's the same day that the festival programs were dropped in stores and shops everywhere. So I was on stage at a comedy gig and I gave those out to audience members saying, look, toilet papers run out. So if you need, we've got this going here. So wait a minute, you were still allowed to perform as, no wonder you got it so bad. So you were performing on stage as it all just broke out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We literally were told just before we were getting up on stage that, oh, the first, festival just cancelled so you know we all live with our trauma just like the ukrainians we have also been through some shit okay well um lovely to chat to you as always so this time next week we probably won't be at war still so that's a bit yeah yeah exactly we'll be still talking about the war about to happen yeah disappointed by it basically okay well good luck and i hope it doesn't rain down in melbourne because um we have great skies today oh do you well watch out because if it Ryan's your NBM might go.

Our gear is from road microphones, and we are part of the Acast Creator Network. Catch you tomorrow. Bye.