James Delingpole
Politics • Culture • Writing
Erudite but accessible; warm and witty; definitely not woke
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Ukraine: Suddenly War Crimes Are Sexy and Cool and Kinda Heartwarming...

Did you have a good laugh over the Ukrainian soldier’s practical joke: the one where he picked up the mobile phone of a Russian soldier’s corpse and called the lad’s parents to rejoice in his death?

Or maybe you found the videos of Russian POWs being kneecapped more to your taste?

Or perhaps what really got you going was the Ukrainian army doctor who said he considered it legitimate to castrate captured Russian soldiers?

Unless, of course, it’s the proper stuff you’re into: the crucifixion and burning-alive? The dead woman - a filthy collaborator, must have been! - with swastikas carved into her flesh?

Clearly I must be sick in the head for I don’t find any of this remotely satisfying or titillating or poetically just. But judging by the comments on social media I appear to be in a minority.

Here’s a particularly egregious example from TalkRadio presenter Mike Graham.

He was asked:

I want to hear your view on the way Ukrainian soldiers shot Russian POWs in the legs and filmed them bleed out.

Graham replied:

I’ve seen the video. No idea what’s going on. But if I was in Ukraine fighting Russia I’d probably do the same. What’s the problem? It’s a bloody war zone.

There have been lots of comments on Twitter and elsewhere in a similar vein: ordinary, decent people who know what the Geneva Convention is and who all their lives have been using it as the benchmark for correct and honourable behaviour during war, suddenly deciding: ‘But it doesn’t apply where Russians are concerned. They’re such verminous scum that they deserve all the torture and emasculation and brutality they get - even after they’ve surrendered.’

I only cite Graham because he’s a public figure. And public figures, as a rule, tend to be more circumspect when voicing enthusiasm for war crimes like helpless, tied and bound young men being shot at point blank range in the legs and possibly being left to bleed to death.

When was the last time you heard a broadcaster on heavily-regulated British radio come out so shamelessly in favour of unspeakably brutal and blatantly illegal behaviour? I honestly cannot remember ever having encountered such a thing before, even from professional shock jocks. It’s the sort of thing which, up to now, would have got you fired.

That’s because culturally we’ve long tended to take a dim view of exulting in torture and violent death, even when its directed against our most bitter enemies.

Sure, I don’t doubt that at some time or other, one or two of us have let out a whoop of joy on seeing footage of a Taliban being taken out by a helicopter gunship or on hearing tales of some Special Forces sniper drilling an ISIS sheikh from two miles distant. But it’s the kind of response generally understood to belong to private internet chat rooms or drunken pub conversations. It’s not something you’d want to boast about publicly.

After all, there are good reasons why we’ve evolved a code of practice over the centuries as to how we fight our wars. One is that, just like in murder trials, we sense that there is a moral distinction between acts of violence committed in the heat of the moment and those practised against the helpless and vulnerable in cold blood; and we feel, insofar as it’s possible, that this distinction should temper our behaviour in war. Another, perhaps, is that we know that one day we or our children or grandchildren might end up involved in such a conflict and we’d like to make the experience as unhorrible as we possibly can.

That’s why, artificial and unrealistic though it may be in an activity whose main aim is to kill the opposing side, we set such store by conventions like seeing that prisoners are properly cared for and that enemy wounded are treated as well as our own wounded. These are traditions which date back at least to the Age of Chivalry. And though it’s true that these codes are often honoured more in the breach than in the observance that doesn’t mean that they are a worthless aspiration. After all, our literature and traditions suggest that ‘good’ behaviour in war is something we genuinely value. It’s why, for example, many people’s favourite story from the entirety of the First World War is the one from Christmas Day 1914 when the Germans and the British came out of their trenches to exchange gifts and play football. It’s why when Henry V kills the prisoners in Shakespeare’s play, it’s not generally considered a moment to be celebrated but rather an indication of a flaw in his character.

And it’s why, by contrast, whenever we’re looking for examples of the ‘war is hell’ moments which fill us with a burning desire to ensure that none of this stuff happens ever again, we tend to focus on incidents where the tacitly accepted ‘rules of war’ are violated. One example of this would be the atrocity that inspired The Great Escape, when the Gestapo - acting on the personal orders of Adolf Hitler - machine gunned 50 Allied prisoners of war who had attempted to escape. Another would be the appalling crime committed by the SS ‘Das Reich’ Panzer Division in the French village Oradour-sur-Glane, when 642 civilians were slaughtered in cold blood.

In the first seven or so decades after the Second World War, such atrocities would have been considered a by-word for the purest evil. It would have been a brave contrarian indeed who tried to justify them on the lines of, say, ‘C’mon. Escaped prisoners are fair game. They had to be shot pour decourager les autres,’ or ‘Das Reich were desperately needed at the Normandy beachhead. They were understandably pissed off at the delays brought about by the Resistance and needed to set an example…’

Not any more, though, apparently. Today, for perhaps the first time since those SS thugs herded those French women and children into Oradour’s church, set it alight, and machine gunned anyone who tried to escape, war crimes are being celebrated by the general public on social media as understandable, justifiable or even as kind of cool and admirable. By weird coincidence, the soldiers committing a lot of these atrocities are the spiritual successors to the ones who did those terrible things to French civilians back in ‘44: Ukraine’s notorious Azov regiment.

Though the BBC has done its best to gloss over this with some characteristically misleading fact-checking, the Azov regiment is made up of self-claimed Nazis who actually model themselves on the SS Das Reich Panzer Division. They have even borrowed their insignia. [Somehow, h/t Alex Thomson, this awkward detail slipped out in a French TV report https://www.francetvinfo.fr/economie/emploi/metiers/armee-et-securite/guerre-en-ukraine-un-membre-du-regiment-azov-decrit-les-combats-a-marioupol_5047864.html].

Now I have little doubt that some of the Russian units currently deployed in the Ukraine are not the kind that takes prisoners. It’s obvious, for example, that the Chechen units sent in to take Azov strongholds like Mariupol have been selected for their battle-joy and their ruthlessness. No quarter, I suspect, is being given on either side. But the fact that this is clearly turning into an ugly, no-holds-barred war in which crimes are likely being committed on both sides should not, I think, be a cause for glee.

Even if you believe - as I do not, by the way - that Russia’s ‘invasion’ of Ukraine is a wholly undeserved act of aggression, I still don’t think that makes the case for treating every Russian ‘invader’ as lower than vermin. Conscripted soldiers get no choice as to where they are deployed; nor for that matter do professional soldiers. Are we really arguing that the ones who happen to have been born in Western Ukraine should be championed whatever they do, however barbaric? But that those who were born in Russia have no right to sympathy of any kind because being Russian, and coming from the land of the New Hitler (TM the entire MSM) Putin they don’t even count as human beings?

It makes no sense to me. A war crime is a war crime whichever side commits it, even if that side is the one you’ve marked down as ‘the goodies’. In fact, if it’s the ‘goodies’ doing it it ought to make the crime worse in all reasonable people’s eyes because as ‘goodies’ they really should know better. (Or could it be, heaven forfend, that contrary to the media’s relentless protestations they’re not such goodies after all?)

This - perhaps even more than Covidmania - is what ‘mass formation’ looks like. People who couldn’t have placed Ukraine on a map even a month ago are suddenly so hot for vengeance against the Russian ‘invaders’ that they’re happy to see them crucified, to have their balls chopped off, to have them tortured and shot - the kind of barbaric wartime practices which till recently, we tended to imagine were only committed by savage, brainwashed, alien creatures like the wartime Japanese or the SS or Islamic State.

One Twitter commentator, a mild-looking individual who writes books, sought to put me right on my squeamishness by declaring airily that war crimes were par for the course on the Eastern Front and that really I should know this so why should I be making such a fuss about Russians being brutalised in Ukraine.

Well I do know this. I’ve been studying military history for years and have written books on the subject. But the point my Twitter chum has missed is that, up till very recently, the Eastern Front (and the Pacific Theatre) were viewed as paradigms of unacceptable cruelty and horror, not as model ways to fight a war.

When I was growing up and indeed for much of my adult life, one of the great mysteries we all used to ponder when reflecting on the Second World War was how a civilised, cultured people like the Germans could end up embracing Hitler’s worst excesses. But in the last two years it has become perfectly obvious how. A cynical, corrupt political class backed by a mendacious media is all you need to whip most of the populace into a frenzy about whatever cause you like.

Six months ago, many of those exulting in Ukrainian war crimes against the hateful Russians were cowering behind masks that didn’t work, snitching on neighbours who didn’t obey the rules and taking multiple shots of an experimental mRNA treatment they didn’t need because the Government had told them that a flu-like virus with a 99.9 per cent survival rate was the new Black Death. Now these same gullible, snivelling, hypochondriacal cowards are hot for nuclear war, crucifixion and castration. I despair.

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James and Dick’s CHRISTMAS Special 2025

Featuring Dick. And James. And Unregistered Chicken. And possibly some other special guests.

Not included in ticket price but available so you don’t starve/die of thirst: nice pizzas out of wood-fired ovens; street food.

VIP Tickets - £120 including bell-ringing lesson, walk with James, front row seats, church tour

Location is: My neck of the woods. Northants. Nearest stations, Banbury/Long Buckby. Junction 11 of M40.

Friday, 28th November 2025. Starts at 5pm

https://www.jamesdelingpole.co.uk/Shop/?section=events#events

00:02:47
Big Birthday Bash

James Delingpole’s Big Birthday Bash August 1st. Starring Bob Moran, Dick Delingpole and Friends. Tickets £40. VIP Tickets (limited to 20) £120

Venue: tbc Central England/East Midlands - off M40 and M1 in middle of beautiful countryside with lots of b n bs etc.

Buy Tickets / More Info:
https://jamesdelingpole.co.uk/Live/bob-moran.html

If you have any questions regarding the event - please contact us via our website:
https://jamesdelingpole.co.uk/#Contact

00:04:15
Nick Kraljevic

If you had to escape to another country which would it be? James runs through some of the options with Aussie cybersecurity guy and entrepreneur Nick Kraljevic. Nick - a Delingpod addict since Australia’s crazy lockdowns - talks about how to claim dual citizenship (handy if your family originates from somewhere like Croatia, as Nick’s does) and which countries are currently the most welcoming. His two top choices may come as a surprise. Nick is the founder of Societates Civis - www.soc-civ.com - which can help you make the move.

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How environmentalists are killing the planet, destroying the economy and stealing your children's future.

In Watermelons, an updated edition of his ground-breaking 2011 book, JD tells the shocking true story of how a handful of political activists, green campaigners, voodoo scientists and psychopathic billionaires teamed up to invent a fake crisis called ‘global warming’.

This updated edition includes two new chapters which, like a geo-engineered flood, pour ...

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Posted by Tom Woods this morning. I concur! Breakfast is for farmers.

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James's Big Birthday Bash - August 1st. Be There!

Because I love you all and want you to be happy, I’d like few things more than if you were ALL able to join me at my James Delingpole Birthday Bash on August 1st.

Unfortunately, numbers are strictly limited. So please don’t be one of those people - I’m the procrastinating type myself, so I know whereof I speak - who sends me a pleading message a few days before the event saying: “Can you squeeze me in?” Because tragically I might not be able to help.

Here’s why I think you’ll enjoy it. The main event is me doing a live Delingpod with Bob Moran and the conversation is going to be great. You know it is. Apart from my brother Dick - who’ll also be appearing, obvs. - there’s probably no one with whom I have a greater rapport than Bob. And, gosh, do we have a lot to talk about: chemtrails, death jabs, dinosaurs, Satanists, the New World Order etc. All the stuff, basically, that you can’t discuss with your Normie friends, but which here we’ll cover freely and frankly because, hey, you’ll be ...

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Christianity 1 New Age 0

If you haven’t already - I’m a bit behind the curve here - I urge you to watch this car crash encounter between Christian apologist and scholar Wes Huff and ‘ancient civilisation’ researcher Billy Carson.

It’s an excruciating experience - probably best to watch it on double speed - for a couple of reasons. First, the hapless podcast host/debate moderator Mark Minard is somewhat out of his depth and is also clearly embarrassed at having one of his guests (Carson, sitting right next to him) eviscerated in front of him by his other guest. This causes him to interrupt the debate at intervals and expound well-meaningly but not very interestingly on his own half-baked views on the mysteries of the universe. You feel a bit sorry for him but you do rather wish he’d shut up.

Second, and mainly, it’s painful to watch Carson being outclassed and outgunned by someone who knows and understands his purported field of expertise so much better than he does. Carson was reportedly so upset by the encounter that he ...

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I Wish I Weren't a Christian

No, not really, obviously. I’m just venting my frustration on how incredibly hard it is sometimes.

For example, if you read your scripture regularly you will notice that time and again Jesus enjoins us to forgive our enemies. This is emphasised in Matthew where He tells us that there’s only one prayer we really need and that’s the Lord’s Prayer.

In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus leaves us in no doubt that for followers of the way forgiveness is not an optional extra.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.

There’s an implicit contract here. If you want to be worthy of God’s forgiveness then you must do likewise.

I say the Lord’s Prayer every day, from the moment I wake till the moment I’m about to go to sleep - and lots of times in between.

The first parts are easy. What’s not to like about hallowing the Lord’s name and celebrating his eternal kingdom and being assured of all that daily bread He provides?

But the forgiving trespasses part can be a bit of a stumbling block because it seems so onerous - and unfair.

Surely if someone wrongs you, especially when unprovoked, the proper and proportionate response ought to be to smite them sevenfold? At the very least.

How can it not be right to retaliate when you’ve got right on your side?

How can it especially not be right when you happen to have been blessed by God with a mind that can produce the kind of next-level invective, weapons-grade cattiness and implacable, Daisy-cutter bomb logic that utterly obliterates anyone foolish enough to cross you?

Not only would the revenge be just - but fun too!

I’ve tried these arguments, over the years, on my morning walk with the dog, which is one of the occasions where I go through the Psalms and commune with God. But I can never quite get my point past the goalkeeper.

I’ll say stuff like: “C’mon, God. Give me a break. I’m not St Francis of Assisi. Can’t you just give me a bit of leeway, just this once, to satisfy my baser urges? I’ll be good afterwards, promise.”

Or: “But taking out wrong ‘uns in an amusing way is my brand. It’s how I make my living. You surely don’t want me to starve, do you?”

Resisting the temptation to deploy my powers is tough. It’s like being blessed with a huge penis only to discover “No sorry. The Lord has decided that your path is to become a monk. So I’m afraid that magnificent appendage is for peeing, only.

Why, God? Why?

The problem is that the Bible doesn’t really offer many get-out clauses. It’s not just the Lord’s Prayer that enjoins forgiveness. There’s that possibly even more annoying bit where Jesus tells us - say what? Really?? - that we should ‘Turn the other cheek.’

And then there are all the Psalms - which Jesus quoted more than almost any other book, so they must be on point - urging us to be patient and to let God take care of all the smiting.

https://www.jamesdelingpole.co.uk/Podcasts/Archive/show.php?slug=2025-08-13-psalm-37-pooyan-mehrshahi

For example, there’s Psalm 37:

Leave off from wrath; and let go displeasure. Fret not thyself else thou shalt be moved to do evil.

Time and again you find the psalmist - usually David - asking, in so many words, “How much longer am I going to put up with this injustice? It’s so unfair!”

And God’s reply is always: “Fret not. I’ve got this!”

In Psalm 73, another of my favourites, the psalmist gets so frustrated he wonders why there’s any point being good when behaving badly seems so much more profitable.

Yea, and I had almost said even as they. [ie the Ungodly] But lo, then I should have condemned the generation of thy children.

But then he goes into the sanctuary of God and learns the fate of the ungodly.

Namely how thou dost set them in the slippery places and castest them down and destroyest them.

O how suddenly do they consume, perish and come to a fearful end.

Yea, even like as a dream when one awaketh, so shalt thou make their image to vanish out of the city.

https://www.jamesdelingpole.co.uk/Podcasts/Archive/show.php?slug=2025-12-09-james-is-joined-by-preacher-stephen-white-to-unpack-the-beauty-and-depth-of-psalm-73

The language and imagery of the Psalms is so magnificent that I could spend all day reciting them. But if you’re reciting them merely for the great poetry then you’re surely guilty of the kind of vainglorious burbling Jesus warned us against in Matthew 6. You need to imbibe the meaning also - and accept that if Jesus took this stuff seriously then you probably should too.

Not, by the way, that I am remotely wasting any time fantasising about my enemies consuming, perishing and coming to a fearful end. On the contrary, I feel sorry for them because choosing the wrong path, away from God, is punishment in itself.

I prefer to take my example from one of the extraordinary monks featured in Archimandrite Tikhon’s Everyday Saints. [Unfortunately I can’t look up his name because I gave my copy to ortho bro Dick].

This monk was sent to the Gulag by the Soviets - but not before being cruelly tortured by a sadistic NKVD man who broke all his fingers. Many years later, the monk was reunited with his torturer, now so thoroughly ashamed he became an ardent Christian.

Please don’t think for a moment that I am comparing my feeble attempts at forbearance to that of this saintly monk. I’m sure I will fail to meet the exacting standards of saintliness on many, many occasions in the future, which will be my loss and your gain. After all, I’m sure my articles are SO much more fun when I’m putting the boot in rather than when I’m turning that other cheek.

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James and Dick's Christmas Special - Don't Miss Out!

I was about to start writing Part Two of my piece Most Journalists Don’t Realise They Are Working For Satan, when a thought occurred: “Hang on, James. Shouldn’t you be plugging your show?”

It’s this Saturday, on the off chance you are interested. I quite understand if you’re not: you’re probably busy, this miserable weather doesn’t make you feel like venturing away from home, and anyway, it’ll just be me and Dick on a stage talking rubbish as usual.

You’re right. Dick and I sitting on a stage talking rubbish is indeed what you’re going to get this Saturday evening. As usual we won’t be at all prepared. Well, Dick might but I won’t because I’m lazyI like to keep it real.

The only thing I will have to do in advance is wrap Dick’s present which I got him from Russia. He’s going to really love it because it is about as Dick a present as you could possibly imagine and I want to watch his little eyes light up as he tears off the wrapping.

But to be fair, I do have roughly in my mind some of the few things I want to talk about. One of them is ‘Who Really Runs The World?’, which obviously for us batshit-crazy tinfoil hat loons is one of those ongoing conversations which keeps changing the more we learn. Another is ‘Was Churchill more evil than Hitler?’ We’ve talked about this stuff before but my take on these issues in 2025 is going to be subtly different from the ones you heard in 2024 or 2023, let alone in say 2019 when I was about 90 per cent Normie. (I’m allowing myself 10 per cent off because I did at least know back then that climate change was bollocks).

Will we play the “Yes/No” game? I doubt it because the answer always “No” these days. But you never know. Perhaps Dick might surprise me. Or perhaps he might introduce a wild card game he has invented for the occasion.

There will be no Christmas decorations. Sorry but it’s too early.

Nor, likely, will I wear my Christmas jumper. Too hot.

But we will do the Lords Prayer at the beginning - inter alia, to ward off any demons and because it makes everyone feel amazingly uplifted - and Jerusalem at the end.

Also, you get to see Unregistered Chickens, who just get better and better. Or so I’m told by one of the band members. Dick and Andy the lead singer keep making bitchy remarks about the fact that even when they’re playing at my events I never come to see them. Or only for a few minutes. I try to explain, honestly, that this isn’t because I’m too grand or because I think they’re crap but because before you do a show the very last thing you want to be doing is hanging out with the audience because it drains all the energy you need for the show.

Still I think the thing you’ll enjoy most about the event is hanging out with like minded folk. You’ll be able to put faces to the names of some of the fellow Awake people you know from online. And you’ll be able to talk about all the things - Michelle Obama’s big swinging lunchpack; hybrid creatures bioengineered in the same Antartica DUMB where they breed the children for adrenochrome, were the Thunderbirds puppets actually devised as a result of remote viewing technology which enabled Gerry Anderson to see into the future from the 1960s and watch Konstantin Kisin and the other one presenting Triggerpod? etc - that you will probably avoid bringing up with family round the Christmas dinner table.

It’ll be fun. You’ll really, really enjoy it.

It will be no skin off my nose if you don’t. But I just think if you don’t come you’ll be missing out.

https://www.jamesdelingpole.co.uk/Shop/Events/james-and-dick-s-christmas-special-2025

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All They Want Is Your Soul

One of my unlikely podcast guests this week is Nick Griffin.

I say ‘unlikely’ because I’m always slightly wary of people who have been involved in mainstream politics - even if, like Griffin, it was only at the margins.

https://locals.com/jamesdelingpole/feed?post=7481845

Griffin - or Nick, as I suppose I should call him, now he’s my new mate - used to be the leader of the notorious British National Party (BNP). Like the party from which it splintered, the National Front, the BNP was and is one of those outfits which the mainstream media likes to brand as ‘fascist’ and ‘far right’ and ‘basically a bunch of Nazis.’

This would be why, in my days as an MSM journalist, Nick never crossed my radar. He wasn’t the sort of character of whom you could say to your editor “How about we hear what that Nick Griffin has to say for himself?” It would be tantamount to career suicide because, imagine, what if you quite liked him or he said something people agreed with? Far better not to take the risk - and to ignore him - as all self-respecting media folk did.

Anyway, now that very belatedly I’ve had chat with him I’ve discovered that, yes, I do quite like him. And also that he says lots of things I agree with. Many of the people who’ve listened to the podcast share my pleasant surprise. Here’s a typical comment:

“I was brought up believing the BBC hype - NickG is equivalent to Satan […] Please do bring Nick back on. Even some of my ‘awake-ish’ friends still recoil in horror at the mention of his name. This exposure can right this wrong.”

My main reservation about inviting Nick onto the Delingpod wasn’t that he’d be too controversial but that he might be a bit too conventional in his outlook, a bit Normie.

But on this, too, I was pleasantly surprised. As an example of how interesting his conversation is - and perhaps as an incentive to encourage those of you who aren’t already paid subscribers to sign up for an early listen before the podcast goes out free - I want to share with you one of his best anecdotes.

It was prompted when I asked him about whether any attempts had ever been made by shadowy forces to buy him off.

Yes, Nick said. Attempts had been made on a couple of occasions, one of them when he was a member of the National Front.

Representatives of an ultra-orthodox Jew in New York called Rabbi Schiller offered the National Front a large sum of money, on one somewhat surprising condition, which I shall reveal in a moment.

In Italy, meanwhile, on another occasion, some of Nick’s ‘far-right’ fellow travellers were made a similarly generous offer by a wealthy Jewish outfit. Again, the money was dependent on the fulfilment of one surprising term.

Then, Griffin went on, there was the example of his friend in Northern Ireland, a social marketing genius who was offered a blank cheque by Jewish interests, but only on one condition.

Here’s the interesting part. Perhaps you thought - as I certainly did - that in all three instances the Jewish donors would have made the same request: talking more about the Holocaust, maybe; toning down the anti-Semitism; avoiding criticism of Israel; something like that.

But no. The things that were requested were all very different - and also quite unexpected.

In the case of the National Front, the request was that they should stop griping about the perils and iniquities of the banking system.

With the Italians, the request was that they cease to sing the praises of Corneliu Codreanu, a Romanian fascist leader - founder of the Iron Guard - assassinated in the 1930s.

And in the case of the Northern Irish marketing guru, it was that he should stop talking about the evils of abortion.

The three very different provisos only had one thing in common: each was very dear to the heart of the people to whom the money offer had been made. To the National Front, banking was the key plank of their economic argument. To the Italians, Codreanu was a beloved romantic hero and role model. To the Northern Irishman, crusading against abortion was a moral imperative.

“They offer you everything you need,” explained Griffin. “But in every case they are only prepared to give it to you on condition that you sacrifice the thing closest to your heart.”

Perhaps experts in the Kabbala, or the Babylonian Mystery Religions, or the occult generally can explain to me what is going on here. But clearly these offers have great ritual significance - and also go some way towards explaining the nature of a world whose temporary god, according to the scriptures, is Satan.

Yes, you will be granted whatever you want. But not until you’ve first sold your soul.

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