Speaker 1: Old Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Executive Dysphonia, a podcast about people who are
Speaker 2: in executive positions but can't hear well. Right, isn't that
Speaker 2: what the show we're doing is?
Speaker 3: This is it could happen here executive disorder.
Speaker 2: Oh I guess I have Executive Dysphonia.
Speaker 3: Our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House,
Speaker 3: the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm
Speaker 3: Garrison Davis. That was Robert Evans, also joined by James Stout,
Speaker 3: with a segment later on by Mia Wong. This episode
Speaker 3: we are covering the week of March eleventh to March eighteenth.
Speaker 2: And I was wrong about dysphonia. That's just horseness.
Speaker 4: Okay, well yeah, that probably are people in the executive
Speaker 4: branch who who a horse?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, horse and wearing shoes too big for their feet.
Speaker 3: We have to start by issuing an apology.
Speaker 2: That's right, a serious apology.
Speaker 3: We have both failed you the odd send ourselves as
Speaker 3: an outlet by neglecting to cover a story the way
Speaker 3: that it deserves to. Last week we reported on the
Speaker 3: Buffalo wild wings Espresso proteini, that's right, and promised an
Speaker 3: in depth report on the drink upon delivery this past weekend,
Speaker 3: which was National Expresso Martini Day. And there I was Sunday,
Speaker 3: March fifteenth, on my phone googling to find the closest
Speaker 3: Buffalo Wild Wings when I discovered that the Espressoproteini was
Speaker 3: in fact only to be served in five cities.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in Tennessee.
Speaker 3: Illinois, Georgia, Texas, and the Sea World location in Orlando, Florida.
Speaker 3: And I failed myself and you by not traveling specifically
Speaker 3: to the Sea World location to try the Espresso Proteini,
Speaker 3: which would have been the correct choice, That would have
Speaker 3: been the right to deliver the sort of coverage that
Speaker 3: you expect out of us and deserve. It's going to
Speaker 3: take a while to win your trust back, and we
Speaker 3: understand this, and we are we are hoping to be
Speaker 3: able to demonstrate that to you in the coming in
Speaker 3: the coming weeks.
Speaker 2: Garrett, this isn't all your fault. You know, I knew
Speaker 2: years ago that we should have moved the entire production
Speaker 2: team to the Buffalo Wild Wings at SeaWorld. This was
Speaker 2: a foreseeable mistake. Yeah, you know, Sophie and I are
Speaker 2: to blame for this as well. Is all I'm saying,
Speaker 2: and we apologize then.
Speaker 4: Obviously, as a British person in the sea World location
Speaker 4: in Orlando, Florida is our spiritual home, so that really
Speaker 4: should have been at the very center of my bee.
Speaker 2: Just imagine how much more sunburnt you could be every
Speaker 2: single day we record this podcast, James.
Speaker 4: You could be I'm wearing a red shirt right now
Speaker 4: for this, but you could probably never tell if I
Speaker 4: lived in Orlando, Florida, if I was wearing a red
Speaker 4: shirt or just had extensive sunburns.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So yeah, let's go over some small news ite ofs.
Speaker 3: Meta is shutting down. It's VR Metaverse Worlds.
Speaker 4: On June fifteenth, it.
Speaker 2: Stuck being named Metah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the Horizon. Worlds continued to exist as a
Speaker 3: mobile phone only application. The metaverse portion is going to
Speaker 3: be sunseted. Like I said on the fifteenth of June.
Speaker 4: I'll be on there in June fourteenth, thrown up to
Speaker 4: till midnight. Just it's enjoying my final moments of beauty.
Speaker 4: Is there a SeaWorld Orlando that I can visit in
Speaker 4: the Metaverse? I bet there was too soon, James, too soon.
Speaker 4: In the United District of Illinois, Evanston Mayor, Daniel Biss
Speaker 4: beat Kat Abagazzali and Laura Fine. This one over thirty
Speaker 4: five thousand votes. Cat won over thirty one thousand votes
Speaker 4: and find the APAC back to candidate to got twenty
Speaker 4: four thousand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know it's a It was a. It was
Speaker 2: a really impressive first campaign from Kat, who's a friend
Speaker 2: of the show. We're proud of her and her whole team.
Speaker 2: And yeah that's politics baby under the next thing, I guess.
Speaker 3: Columbia student Laka Cordella was released from ice custody after
Speaker 3: over a year in detention after government lawyers declined to
Speaker 3: appeal a judge's third release order. Her name was one
Speaker 3: of the four on the list that Marmon Donnie gave
Speaker 3: to Trump during their last meeting.
Speaker 4: Cuba is facing another blackout amidst its aging infrastructure in
Speaker 4: a United States enforced blockade on the country. It has
Speaker 4: been running largely on thermoelectric sola and natural gas sources
Speaker 4: of electricity as imports from Venezuela have ceased. The United
Speaker 4: States has threatened to tariff anybody sending oil to Cuba,
Speaker 4: but on Sunday, Claudia Scheinenbaum, President of Mexico did say
Speaker 4: that Mexico would continue to send aid to the Caribbean nation.
Speaker 4: Also checking in on the show shields the Americas, which
Speaker 4: we mentioned last week, Gustavo Petro, President of Columbia, has
Speaker 4: responded to what is to be an Ecuadorian bomb falling
Speaker 4: on Columbia. So we are a couple of weeks into
Speaker 4: this and Ecuador's already bombed the wrong country. Oh good,
Speaker 4: not great. It was an area very close to the border.
Speaker 4: But Petro posted today on egg dot com, the everything website.
Speaker 4: I'm blighted by the fact that groc thinks it can
Speaker 4: speak Spanish better than meat. So I'm just going to
Speaker 4: read whatever this shitty translation is. I suppose it has
Speaker 4: been confirmed that the bomb in Colombian territory belongs to
Speaker 4: the Ecuadorian Army. The investigation continues and a diplomatic protest
Speaker 4: note will be sent. So yeah, that's Ecuador playing with
Speaker 4: fire there. Yeah, finally PBS is reporting today. Then an
Speaker 4: offer is on the table from the White House to
Speaker 4: end the shutdown. I'm just going to read I guess
Speaker 4: the terms that have been offered by the White House.
Speaker 4: So the first one would be the expansion in the
Speaker 4: use of body worn cameras by DHS law enforcement, and
Speaker 4: they will increase congressional oversight by requiring retention of body
Speaker 4: worn camera footage. The next one they would limit civil
Speaker 4: immigration enforcement at certain sensitive locations. They go on to
Speaker 4: say sensitive locations include places like hospitals and schools, which
Speaker 4: is current practice. There were other places that were considered
Speaker 4: sensitive locations previously, not to be churches, right, But that's
Speaker 4: not a definitive list, and I don't does it mean
Speaker 4: they will return to the old senstive places doctrine. It's
Speaker 4: a little unclear. Yeah. They talk again about increasing congressional oversight,
Speaker 4: particularly by creating mandatory review and compliance reporting from the
Speaker 4: Spectro General of DHS. They talk about visible officer identification
Speaker 4: and the administration would require officers to clearly verbalize their
Speaker 4: agency and identification upon request when engaged official duties. And
Speaker 4: then finally, they will adhere to existing practices of law
Speaker 4: and practice of not deporting US citizens. And then they
Speaker 4: go and say they only detain them of a crime
Speaker 4: has taken place. Some of these appear like concessions, but
Speaker 4: they kind of only matter in so much as you
Speaker 4: trust them. They've always got like even the sensitive places
Speaker 4: has an exemption for like a terrorist threat, given that,
Speaker 4: for instance, it was suggested very shortly after Alex Pretty
Speaker 4: was killed that he was a terrorist attempting to kill offices, etc. Yeah,
Speaker 4: none of this matters, and like it's still going to
Speaker 4: be this is we are pleasing ourselves, right, So perhaps
Speaker 4: we should move on talking of DHS, Let's talk about
Speaker 4: Friend of the Podcast, Gregory Bovino.
Speaker 2: Oh, Greg, Oh, Greg Gregy b.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's been a frequent frequent call zone all across
Speaker 4: the cool Zone universe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, friend of the Pod. But no, nothing Gold can
Speaker 2: stay you know.
Speaker 4: Nope, and sadly Greg cannot stay at his job. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it'd be fair.
Speaker 2: Even before Trump took office, he was talking about retiring
Speaker 2: in like two years, Like he's been talking about that
Speaker 2: for a while.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it's this is not.
Speaker 2: Like super weird, but the timing of it is earlier
Speaker 2: than he'd previously talked about wanting to do. And I
Speaker 2: think pretty undeniably connected to you know, him being made
Speaker 2: the sacrificial bond of the regime.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the fact that he he for instance said
Speaker 4: shortly after Alex Pretty was killed by CBP agents, a
Speaker 4: Pretty was planning to quote massacre agents. We have seen
Speaker 4: no evidence that that is true.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: He's currently the chief patrol agent of the El Centro sector. Previously,
Speaker 4: he was CBP's commander at large of its interior enforcement operations.
Speaker 4: That he was removed from that job in late January.
Speaker 4: He gave an exclusive interview to bright Bot News. But
Speaker 4: have a former Board patrol agent who writes for him,
Speaker 4: So I'm guessing that's why saying quote, watching these agents
Speaker 4: out there giving it they're all in some of the
Speaker 4: most dangerous of environments we have ever faced, was humbling cool.
Speaker 4: He will be retiring just a few days after his
Speaker 4: fifty sixth birthday. The agency's mandatory requirement ages fifty seven,
Speaker 4: and I've seen a lot of places citing that that
Speaker 4: applies to offices hired after the middle of two thousand
Speaker 4: and eight, but Vino was hired in nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 4: But at fifty five, with thirty years of service, he
Speaker 4: would be eligible for optional retirement under the FERS. He
Speaker 4: hasn't reached some minimum retirement age, so I think that
Speaker 4: would impact the amount of retirement he gets.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, Oh yeah, yeah, he usually does, unless they
Speaker 2: make a special exception. For him or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because previously, right, like previously, border patrol agents were
Speaker 4: essentially hired. It's like federal employees or civil servants. It
Speaker 4: was only after two thousand and eight that they're hiring
Speaker 4: I guess came slow, slightly more in line with people
Speaker 4: in the armed services, for instance, or police and so
Speaker 4: like under first you'd have to do the thirty years
Speaker 4: plus reach the minimum retirement age, versus under the newer
Speaker 4: system when they have a mandatory retirement of fifty seven.
Speaker 4: I do feel like this, plus Gnome, plus the stuff
Speaker 4: that you've mentioned up top Garrison, it suggests that the
Speaker 4: tides are perhaps turning. Plus this, we've seen Republican sheriffs
Speaker 4: in Florida opposing mass deportations this week, right, we've seen
Speaker 4: Republican congress people making public statements about this. We are
Speaker 4: probably beginning to see the beginning of the end of
Speaker 4: the right being in lockstep behind mass deportations. I don't
Speaker 4: think that means with going to see the end of
Speaker 4: ice raids. I don't think that means we're going to
Speaker 4: see the end no, of massive detention and of massive deportation.
Speaker 4: But it's clearly as we are looking towards the midterms,
Speaker 4: something that some parts of the Republican Party want to
Speaker 4: distance themselves from.
Speaker 3: And there's movement on this, and it shows that these
Speaker 3: forces are fluid in can actually be changed through taking
Speaker 3: like agency, like through through through imparting yourself upon the world.
Speaker 3: Like what's happened in Minneapolis for those for those weeks
Speaker 3: to to, you know, months, showed that the world actually
Speaker 3: can be changed through through mass action.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like like border patrol and ice went to Minneapolis
Speaker 4: to fight, and it seems like they came off worse, right,
Speaker 4: Like they were not able to subdue the city in
Speaker 4: a meaningful way, and it has resulted in most of
Speaker 4: their leadership being removed. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about something
Speaker 2: that's happened this week that I kind of I felt
Speaker 2: a deep sense of foreboding reading this article. It's going
Speaker 2: to sound like this is another piece of kind of
Speaker 2: Israel Palestine reporting, but it's really not. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: where this particular story is set. But we're we're talking
Speaker 2: about something that's going to be an increasing factor in
Speaker 2: the lives of everyone gathering news and everybody consuming it,
Speaker 2: which is poly market our gamble on everything happening in
Speaker 2: the world app that apparently the world needed for some reason.
Speaker 2: So on Tuesday, March tenth, twenty twenty six, as hostilities
Speaker 2: continued between Iran and Israel, a ballistic missile got past
Speaker 2: Israel's defense systems and landed in near the city of
Speaker 2: bait Chemesh, just outside of Jerusalem. It did not land
Speaker 2: near anything, but it looks like trees you can see.
Speaker 2: There is video captured of the explosion and posted by
Speaker 2: a journalist named Immanuel fabian oh Ye, who wrote with
Speaker 2: his post, no injuries are reported in our end's latest
Speaker 2: ballistic missile attack on Israel. The fourth to day one
Speaker 2: missile struck an open area just outside bite Schemesh, first
Speaker 2: responders say, and footage shows, and the footage doesn't show
Speaker 2: a ballistic missile impacting. There is an explosion. This does
Speaker 2: not look like fragments of a missile that were taken down.
Speaker 2: You know, based on what I know of ballistic missiles,
Speaker 2: and based on what people who I know no more
Speaker 2: than me know about ballistic missiles, this was an intact
Speaker 2: ballistic missile hitting. It didn't hit a target that was valuable.
Speaker 2: It didn't hurt anybody as far as we're aware, but
Speaker 2: it got through the missile shield and a hit in
Speaker 2: Israeli territory. Normally you would wonder, like, why does this this?
Speaker 2: I mean, this matters, you know if you're a local reporter, obviously,
Speaker 2: but why would anyone else care? Well, the day after
Speaker 2: Manny Fabian posted this video and this brief bit of reporting,
Speaker 2: he started receiving emails, weird emails, mostly in Hebrew, and like,
Speaker 2: here's one example from Times of Israel piece that he wrote.
Speaker 2: Sorry for reaching out without a prior introduction, but I
Speaker 2: assume we will get to know each other well. I
Speaker 2: have an urgent request regarding the accuracy of your report
Speaker 2: on the missile attack on March tenth. I would really
Speaker 2: appreciate a response if possible. There is an inaccurate report
Speaker 2: from you about the missile attack on March tenth, and
Speaker 2: it's causing a chain of errors. If you could reply
Speaker 2: to me tonight, you would be helping me, many others
Speaker 2: and of course the state of Israel, and along the
Speaker 2: way you would gain a good source.
Speaker 4: So that's really weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the fuck is going if you're this guy.
Speaker 4: All you did was.
Speaker 2: Post, oh, hey, a rocket hit, but it didn't hit anything, Yeah, like,
Speaker 2: not a big deal given the state of the war.
Speaker 2: And he starts getting spammed with a bunch of similar
Speaker 2: emails like this, And in addition to that, he's got
Speaker 2: people like on Twitter responding saying like hey, One person
Speaker 2: responded to one of his posts saying, there are people
Speaker 2: saying they've received word from you that the missile strike
Speaker 2: in Baite Schamesh on March tenth was in fact intercepted.
Speaker 2: Is this true or did no such interaction occur? So
Speaker 2: people start posting and sharing in other places that oh,
Speaker 2: I reached out to this guy and he said the
Speaker 2: missile was actually intercepted and it was just a piece
Speaker 2: that fell, and he reported it wrong, which is not
Speaker 2: at all what this guy had reported. So he's really confused.
Speaker 2: He has like, why are all these people bugging me
Speaker 2: about this very minor story and why are they spreading
Speaker 2: disinformation claiming that I debunked my own star when I didn't.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 2: The obvious reason why is that people that day on
Speaker 2: Polymarket on March tenth were gambling on when Iran would
Speaker 2: strike Israel. There were fourteen million dollars wager that there
Speaker 2: would be a strike on March tenth. The rules of
Speaker 2: the bet per polymarket stated, this market will resolve to
Speaker 2: yes if Iran initiates a drone, missile or airstrike on
Speaker 2: Israel soil on the listed date in Israel time GMT
Speaker 2: plus two. Otherwise, this market will resolve no. Missiles or
Speaker 2: drones that are intercepted will not be sufficient for a
Speaker 2: yes resolution.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So that's why fourteen million dollars was in the air.
Speaker 3: It's people who had a lot of money on this event.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, specifically, And these people don't care if anyone
Speaker 2: is right. They don't care that a missile was fired.
Speaker 2: All they care about is whether or not the missile
Speaker 2: made it through the defense network intact, right, because these
Speaker 2: were people who I guess had bet against that because
Speaker 2: they didn't want that to be the case.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: He initially ignores these weird emails, and they start getting
Speaker 2: more and more aggressive, and people are like, when you're
Speaker 2: gonna update the article, Daniel, Daniel, update the article. You
Speaker 2: have to update the article. You know you were wrong.
Speaker 2: And after the weekend he starts getting messages like you
Speaker 2: have exactly half an hour to correct your attempted influence,
Speaker 2: despite the fact that you receive countless inquiries you insist
Speaker 2: on leaving it this way. If you do not correct
Speaker 2: this by one am Israel time today March fifteenth, you
Speaker 2: are bringing upon yourself damage you have never imagined you
Speaker 2: would suffer.
Speaker 4: That's already easer if I've ever seen one.
Speaker 2: Like there's a bunch of shit like this. Someone said,
Speaker 2: after you make us lose nine hundred thousand dollars, we
Speaker 2: will invest no less than that to finish you.
Speaker 3: Like this is insane, Yeah, but.
Speaker 2: It's inevitable if you think about how polymarket works, right
Speaker 2: that once people are putting fortunes on the line around
Speaker 2: stupid shit, you know, like betting whether or not, oh
Speaker 2: the missile make it through or not on this That
Speaker 2: is dumb, right, missiles and stuff that's very serious to
Speaker 2: a lot of people who live in the region. But
Speaker 2: betting on it this way is fundamentally stupid. But it's
Speaker 2: all poly Market's all stupid bets like this, and they
Speaker 2: are going to increase inly come after people once they realize, hey,
Speaker 2: maybe I can actually change and get a winning resolution
Speaker 2: or whatever if I harass the journalist on the ground.
Speaker 2: There's a vested financial interest in going after people over
Speaker 2: stuff like this. So this particular story is happening in
Speaker 2: Israel involves the reporting of an Israeli journalist. This isn't
Speaker 2: going to stay limited to that conflict or to that
Speaker 2: region of the world. This is going to be thing
Speaker 2: that journalists all over the world increasingly deal with. This
Speaker 2: is an important story and one that I think says
Speaker 2: some pretty bleak shit about the immediate future of news
Speaker 2: gathering in this country.
Speaker 4: So that's cool.
Speaker 2: On the upside, Polymarket is about to open a splashy
Speaker 2: new bar in Washington, DC called the Situation Room, and
Speaker 2: I found Polymarket made a post on their substack in
Speaker 2: which they announced this, saying, the world's first bar dedicated
Speaker 2: to monitoring the situation. Imagine a sports bar, but just
Speaker 2: for situation monitoring live Xpeeds, flight radar, Bloomberg terminals and
Speaker 2: Polymarket screens. Grand opening this Friday. Imagine the first response.
Speaker 3: This is every bar in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2: First response is just someone saying, drink your way through
Speaker 2: World War three, which just also every.
Speaker 4: Bar in Washington, DC.
Speaker 2: Yeah, someone else says this seems awful, but I guess
Speaker 2: that perfectly aligns with your company in general.
Speaker 4: Get on that passion.
Speaker 2: Uh cool? Yeah, So I love poly market. It's good
Speaker 2: that this is what we've turned society into. No notes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll just add this to the list of things
Speaker 3: that prediction markets will destabilize geopolitically. Yeah great, not just
Speaker 3: the insider trading problems of people with you know, beforehand
Speaker 3: knowledge of military strikes or certain world events, but trying
Speaker 3: to influence the reporting of events to sway polymarket or
Speaker 3: how she's decision on whether whether the market was correctly fulfilled.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: Yep, interesting and yeah, foreboding.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, so yeah, here's some ads. You build the animals.
Speaker 2: We're back. Here's some James. You've built the animals.
Speaker 4: Yeah, lucky you. First you want to talk about the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court, and then I'm going to throw to Garrison
Speaker 4: to talk about some other court stuff. This is our
Speaker 4: court segment. The Supreme Court has schedule cases for the TPS.
Speaker 4: That's a temporary protected status pertaining to Syria and Haiti
Speaker 4: for April, meaning these statuses will remain in effect, likely
Speaker 4: until the end of June or July. The justices didn't
Speaker 4: alter the position of the New York and DC judges,
Speaker 4: who indefinitely postpone the termination of the TPS. The Trump
Speaker 4: administration has hustled really hard to get this to the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court. They first tried to get the Supreme Court
Speaker 4: to let them remove people while it waited to weigh
Speaker 4: in on the case, and then they tried to get
Speaker 4: the Supreme Court to take the case before the second
Speaker 4: Circuit had a chance to weigh in. This is called
Speaker 4: thirty or right before judgment. Is how the case got
Speaker 4: to the Supreme Court. This, I should note it's different
Speaker 4: from the Venezuela case where the TPS was terminated because
Speaker 4: the numbers are much smaller, and therefore it's going to
Speaker 4: be harder for the US government to show harm. Right,
Speaker 4: it pertains to thirty forty thousand people, If I had
Speaker 4: to guess. By contrast, it's very easy for people to
Speaker 4: show potential harm in Haiti or Syria. Right, just to
Speaker 4: give an example of Syria, that has been violence directed
Speaker 4: against Alavites, Dru's people and Kurds largely unimpeded by the
Speaker 4: government since a sad fell last year, and Syria remains
Speaker 4: on the State Departments do not travel list. Yeah, you
Speaker 4: had some stuff about prairie Land. Do you want to
Speaker 4: share in it?
Speaker 3: Yes, let's talk about the prairie Land trial. Yeah, we're
Speaker 3: going to be doing a more in depth episode next week.
Speaker 3: The started next week on prairie Land. It's about double
Speaker 3: the length of today's summary, but I do want to
Speaker 3: go over some essential information about the trial that concluded
Speaker 3: last week. So last week, the Trump administration got their
Speaker 3: first conviction in an antifoot heroism case. On Friday, March thirteenth,
Speaker 3: eight people were convicted by a federal grand jury on
Speaker 3: charges of riot, conspiracy to use and carry an explosive,
Speaker 3: and providing material support to terrorists. One of the defendants
Speaker 3: was convicted of attempted murder of a police officer, and
Speaker 3: another person was convicted onto accounts of concealing documents, bringing
Speaker 3: the total number of federal defendants to nine. This case
Speaker 3: stemmed from the defense argued was a noise demonstration protest
Speaker 3: outside of an ice attention facility in prairie Land, Texas,
Speaker 3: last summer. On the night of July fourth, After protesters
Speaker 3: through fireworks and vandalized property, DHS personnel called local police
Speaker 3: for assistance. One officer arrived, drew his handgun and yelled
Speaker 3: stop at a person in all black clothes who was
Speaker 3: running away. One of the defendants, named Benjamin Song, then
Speaker 3: yelled get to the rifles before firing toward the officer
Speaker 3: with an air of fifteen, hitting him in the neck.
Speaker 3: A week into the trial, US District Court Judge Mark
Speaker 3: Pittman ruled at defense attorneys could not argue that the defendants,
Speaker 3: including the accused shooter, were acting in self defense or
Speaker 3: the defense of others against unlawful force just because the
Speaker 3: officer had already drawn and pointed his handgun before Song fired.
Speaker 3: Prosecutors compared this to Waco. Judge Pittman ruled that the
Speaker 3: officer drawing and pointing his handgun at a fleeing suspect
Speaker 3: is not quote unquote excessive as a matter of law
Speaker 3: because as the officer did not actually use deadly force
Speaker 3: or shoot first, and he listed three federal precedents for this,
Speaker 3: let's get into this action and the role of Antifa
Speaker 3: in the court case. This action was originally planned on
Speaker 3: the encrypted messaging app Signal and via an in person
Speaker 3: quote unquote gear check meeting the day before the action.
Speaker 3: Benjamin Song advertised the action in a larger group chat
Speaker 3: of dozens of quote unquote trusted individuals. When asked about
Speaker 3: bringing firearms. During action planning, Song repeatedly stated I'm not
Speaker 3: going back to prison, I'm not getting arrested. I'm bringing
Speaker 3: guns unquote. So the trial, Song was characterized as the
Speaker 3: de facto leader of the Antifa cell or affinity group,
Speaker 3: but he did not have a close relationship with all
Speaker 3: fellow defendants. At the gear check meeting on July third,
Speaker 3: Song proposed to free detainees using quote unquote suppressive fire,
Speaker 3: but this idea was shot down by others meeting attendees.
Speaker 3: Some of the defendants attended a daytime protest outside the
Speaker 3: ice facility earlier that day, on July fourth, after which
Speaker 3: they reported back to fellow defendants details regarding the facility
Speaker 3: security prior to the nighttime action. Two defendants were neither
Speaker 3: in these planning chats nor attended the gear check meeting,
Speaker 3: but all of defendants that attended the protest carpooled in
Speaker 3: two vehicles, bringing a total of eleven firearms, body armor,
Speaker 3: eye facts, and all war black block which were all
Speaker 3: presented as government evidence exhibits. The government argued that the
Speaker 3: defendants were members of a quote unquote North Texas and
Speaker 3: TIFA cell. The indictment describes Antifa as a quote militant
Speaker 3: enterprise made up of networks of individuals and small groups
Speaker 3: primarily ascribing to a revolutionary, anarchist or autonomous Marxist ideology
Speaker 3: which explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States government,
Speaker 3: law enforcement authorities, and the system of law on Prosecution
Speaker 3: argued that this cell was linked through a triple ven
Speaker 3: diagram of the Socialist Rifle Association, the John Brown Gun Club,
Speaker 3: and the Emma Goldman Book Club, which is a local
Speaker 3: Zene Destro group that also put on community events. Prosecution
Speaker 3: said that this ven diagram converged on quote unquote direct
Speaker 3: militant action. The government called on David Kyle Sheeter as
Speaker 3: an expert witness to testify about Antifa. Cheter's a member
Speaker 3: of the Center for Security Policy, an SPLC designated hate group.
Speaker 3: Defense tried to object to this witness's expertise, but the
Speaker 3: judge informed the defense that they missed the deadline for
Speaker 3: such objections, which would have been in a pre trial motion.
Speaker 3: Much of this case was spent arguing over whether the
Speaker 3: defendants were quote unquote antifa, what that even means, and
Speaker 3: if it's relevant to the charges. According to Prairie Land,
Speaker 3: support Committee court notes. Judge Pittman asked the prosecution, quote
Speaker 3: is it necessary to prove this stuff about Antifa? The
Speaker 3: prosecution responded that Antifa ideology, particularly black Block, was how
Speaker 3: the group operated. The judge pressed, whether it's Antifa or
Speaker 3: the Methodist Women's Auxiliary, why does it matter? The prosecution
Speaker 3: argued they took direct action against the ice facility. The
Speaker 3: prosecution argued black Block and Antifa ideology were central to
Speaker 3: how the alleged attack was carried out.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 3: The government described black Block for the purposes of this
Speaker 3: case as quote dark clothing with head and face coverings
Speaker 3: that concealed their identities, designed to hide each individual's identity,
Speaker 3: but also aid in a bet those members engaged in
Speaker 3: illegal acts by making members indistinguishable from one another to
Speaker 3: law enforcement. Now, all of this raises the question whether
Speaker 3: this prosecution is against the defendant's political ideology or the
Speaker 3: specific criminal acts of throwing fireworks or shooting at a
Speaker 3: police officer, rather than being convicted of being members of
Speaker 3: Antifa the terrorist group, something that still doesn't really have
Speaker 3: legal precedent. Prosecutors argued that the Antifa ideology, left wing
Speaker 3: anti authoritarianism, played a role in inspiring defendants formed the
Speaker 3: basis of political affinity that brought the collection of individuals
Speaker 3: together and relates to a collection of security practices, subcultural practices,
Speaker 3: and associated tactics which were employed before, during, and after
Speaker 3: the criminal acts related to the Noise Demo protest. There's
Speaker 3: been a lot of reporting on people being convicted for
Speaker 3: possessing zines. These are short political pamphlets, usually with some
Speaker 3: kind of radical political ideology. There's a lot of anarchist
Speaker 3: zines out there now. Zines did play a role in
Speaker 3: this trial, a two part role. Prosecution argued that the
Speaker 3: presence of insurrectionary zines is indicative of an alignment with Antifa,
Speaker 3: even if possession of these zines itself is not a crime.
Speaker 3: The other relevancy of zines to this case relates to
Speaker 3: the concealing documents charges against Daniel Ronaldo Sanchez Estrada and
Speaker 3: his wife Marcela Roeda, based on transporting a box of
Speaker 3: political zines from his wife's house to a friend's house
Speaker 3: in dent In, Texas. The government claimed that Rieda called
Speaker 3: Sanchez Estrada from jail on July sixth, instructing him to
Speaker 3: conceal evidence by telling her husband to tow her vehicle,
Speaker 3: which was at the action staging site. Quote toe it.
Speaker 3: My phone is in the back. Do what you got
Speaker 3: to do. Just toe it unquote. The defense claimed that
Speaker 3: she was worried about her car being repoed Centre's Estrada
Speaker 3: never got to the car or the phone, but Raeda
Speaker 3: also said, quote move whatever you need to move in
Speaker 3: the house unquote. Sanchacestrada mentioned already being at the house
Speaker 3: and replied, we're good quote unquote, in reference to moving
Speaker 3: stuff from the house. Prosecution argued this meant moving evidence.
Speaker 3: Defense noted that Raeda was talking about her pets at
Speaker 3: the time. According to support committee notes, Sanchizstrada and his wife,
Speaker 3: Rida were found guilty of conspiracy to conceal documents and
Speaker 3: other objects that would implicate Reeda in the riot and
Speaker 3: shooting at the Prairie Land Facility. Now Nine of the counts,
Speaker 3: count one, two, four, and five through ten cited Pinkerton versus.
Speaker 3: United States, nineteen forty six. The judge explained to the
Speaker 3: jury that a defendant can be criminally liable for the
Speaker 3: offenses committed by a another co conspirator if the offense
Speaker 3: was quote reasonably foreseeable and committed in furtherance of the
Speaker 3: conspiracy unquote. From very early on in the trial, prosecution
Speaker 3: argued that song firing on the officers was quote unquote
Speaker 3: reasonably foreseeable based on the planning of the protest and
Speaker 3: previous statements made by Song. The jury found all defendants
Speaker 3: charged guilty of counts one, two, three, and four that's riot,
Speaker 3: material support, terrorists, and explosive charges, but did not find
Speaker 3: other defendants besides Song, guilty of attempted murder or discharging
Speaker 3: a firearm using this Pinkerton co conspirator liability. Lastly, let's
Speaker 3: discuss two charges which now could carry worrying potential to
Speaker 3: be used against protesters in the future based on this
Speaker 3: case's precedent. First conspiracy to use and carry an explosive
Speaker 3: and using and carrying an explosive during a riot. The
Speaker 3: only explosives used were fireworks, and even the judge confirmed
Speaker 3: in this case that it was established that the fireworks
Speaker 3: caused no damage to the ice facility. Yet Stephen Brenneman
Speaker 3: and ats explosives a special agent testified that fireworks still
Speaker 3: meet the statutory definition of explosives under eighteen USC. Section
Speaker 3: eight four four IJ because they contain gunpowder as defined
Speaker 3: in the statute. Me and Robert have been to and
Speaker 3: reported on a fourth of July protest also in front
Speaker 3: of a government building back in twenty twenty, where people
Speaker 3: launched a lot of fireworks up at that federal courthouse.
Speaker 2: A lot of fireworks and other places.
Speaker 3: And this was a very similar event with the launching
Speaker 3: of fireworks at federal property, which now under this president
Speaker 3: could be charged as a crime. Finally, let's talk about
Speaker 3: providing material support to terrorists. That's eighteen Usc. Two three
Speaker 3: three nine. This statute has two sections. One relates to
Speaker 3: material support provided to a designated foreign terrorist organization. This
Speaker 3: is not what the defendants were charged under. They're not
Speaker 3: saying that Antifa qualifies as one of these designated foreign
Speaker 3: terrorist organizations. That's not what's being argued here. The defendants
Speaker 3: were charged under Section A, alleging they provided and attempted
Speaker 3: to provide material support and resources including property that can
Speaker 3: be money, services, training, communications, equipment like walkie talkies, weapons, explosives,
Speaker 3: personnel including themselves, and transportation, knowing and intending that they
Speaker 3: were to be used in preparation for and in carrying
Speaker 3: out an offence identified as a federal crime of terrorism
Speaker 3: or in carrying out the concealment of an escape from
Speaker 3: set offense. The statute lists at least twenty eight possible
Speaker 3: terrorism offenses. Relevant to this case are three eighteen Usc.
Speaker 3: Eight four to four f It's maliciously attempting to damage
Speaker 3: government property by means of fire or an explosive fireworks
Speaker 3: count eighteen Usc. One three sixty one, willful depredation against
Speaker 3: any property of the United States exceeding one thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: This is property damaged by other means exceeding that one
Speaker 3: thousand dollars threshold, and eighteen Usc. One one four killing
Speaker 3: or attempting to kill any officer or employee of the
Speaker 3: United States. The government accused the defendants of providing material
Speaker 3: support to terrorists in these three different ways, but to convict,
Speaker 3: the jury only had to decide there was proof beyond
Speaker 3: reasonable doubt on one of these ways. They didn't need
Speaker 3: all three.
Speaker 4: To quote.
Speaker 3: The jury instructions quote if a defendant's speech, expression, or
Speaker 3: associations were made with intent to knowingly provide material support
Speaker 3: or resources to be used to prepare for or carry
Speaker 3: out a violation of federal law. Or to carry out
Speaker 3: the concealment of an escape from such violation, then the
Speaker 3: First Amendment would not provide a defense to that conduct unquote.
Speaker 3: Benjamin's song now faces a minimum penalty of twenty years
Speaker 3: and a maximum of life imprisonment. Other defendants at Prairie
Speaker 3: Land to face sentences ranging from a minimum of ten
Speaker 3: years to up to sixty years in federal prison, and
Speaker 3: the husband convicted of concealing documents faces up to forty
Speaker 3: years in federal prison.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a very bleak case and I don't
Speaker 2: really have much to add. It's very sad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, and it's worth understanding the specific way they're
Speaker 3: using this material support statute. Yeah, just establishing someone is
Speaker 3: a member of quote unquote Antifa is not really what
Speaker 3: they're going after. But they're using Antifa as this way
Speaker 3: to link the defendants through this ideological unity to show
Speaker 3: that there's a conspiracy, some kind of like political conspiracy
Speaker 3: then could tied to offenses that are terrorism, like damaging
Speaker 3: government property with the intent to influence or intimidate government policy. Right,
Speaker 3: That's that's the sort of framing that was used in
Speaker 3: the guilty Please for some other former defendants of this case,
Speaker 3: and that's what the government is trying to argue. Here.
Speaker 3: We're gonna go on a break and return for one
Speaker 3: final segment touching on the economy and.
Speaker 5: Iran as Brocky jazz Bod sarryl as Locking jaz Bond.
Speaker 7: Let's check in with the Strait of Frameuse, where things
Speaker 7: are going extremely poorly for the US, Israel and every
Speaker 7: country in the world that relies on oil and liquefied
Speaker 7: natural gas, as well as helium fertilizer and a whole bunch
Speaker 7: of other exports. All attempts to actually open the strait
Speaker 7: have failed. Now, Iran has still been shipping a decent
Speaker 7: amount of oil out to some extent, They've been able
Speaker 7: to send their own tankers through and the US and
Speaker 7: Israel have not attacked them thus far. Now there has
Speaker 7: been some developments in terms of attempts to open the strait.
Speaker 7: Israel claimed they would help reopened the strait. We also
Speaker 7: got a report in Reuters that Britain, France, Germany, Italy,
Speaker 7: the Netherlands and Japan have agreed to help open the strait.
Speaker 7: This is a kind of weird group of countries. It
Speaker 7: is the G seven, which is the good group of seven,
Speaker 7: which is a very sort of influential group of American allies.
Speaker 7: But it's the G seven minus Canada with the Netherlands
Speaker 7: in its place, which is sort of odd. Now, this
Speaker 7: is not going to do anything to actually open the straits.
Speaker 7: There are two reasons for this. One is that none
Speaker 7: of these countries have actually committed to do anything other
Speaker 7: than quote, to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe
Speaker 7: passage through the Strait and start quote preparatory planning, which
Speaker 7: means absolutely nothing. And the second reason is that if
Speaker 7: all of these countries, you know, put every single naval
Speaker 7: asset at the disposal for some reason, to put all
Speaker 7: of them in the street and four news, it wouldn't
Speaker 7: do anything to actually open the strait. There's a good
Speaker 7: piece and defector about this called Trump to World, Please
Speaker 7: help Me unshoot my own leg off, where the author
Speaker 7: Albert Burneco points out, and I think this is a
Speaker 7: very useful way of understanding the problem here that these
Speaker 7: oil tankers are the size of skyscrapers. They're not getting
Speaker 7: oil takers do the straight as long as a Runlet's
Speaker 7: do this. Every week I say this, and every week
Speaker 7: a bunch of people go, oh, they're gonna open the
Speaker 7: straight ooh do do do?
Speaker 4: There's all these pre cycles, and.
Speaker 7: Like the stock market, oil prices go down and the
Speaker 7: stock market goes up, and then everyone collectively realizes it's
Speaker 7: not true, and then the herd animals go back to
Speaker 7: raising the stock prices. So this leaves us in the
Speaker 7: same situation we were before, except everything has gotten significantly
Speaker 7: worse because on Wednesday, Israel hit the largest natural gas
Speaker 7: field in the world when they attacked Iran's South Pars
Speaker 7: gas field. Now, as political points out, these are the
Speaker 7: fields that fueled Iran's domestic energy grate, which means any
Speaker 7: hit to them is extremely painful because it means that
Speaker 7: people lose like heat and power. Now, Trump did very
Speaker 7: quickly make an extremely funny post that is sadly too
Speaker 7: long to read here begging Iron not to attack Cotter
Speaker 7: or saying the US didn't know anything about it and
Speaker 7: that Cotter didn't have anything to do with the strike.
Speaker 7: There's been a bunch of contradictory information. Netanyahu has claimed
Speaker 7: publicly now that the US didn't know anything about the
Speaker 7: strike in Israel unilaterally. There's also been reports that the
Speaker 7: US knew it was going to happen this whole The
Speaker 7: US didn't know anything about it. Please don't hit Cotter.
Speaker 7: Seems to be a kind of pr strategy on their part.
Speaker 7: It didn't work. Iran ignored it and retaliated on Thursday
Speaker 7: by hitting Cotter's massive liquid natural gas processing facility. This
Speaker 7: is one of the largest facilities in the world for
Speaker 7: liquid natural gas, of which Catter is one of the
Speaker 7: world's largest suppliers. I think they're the second largest of
Speaker 7: liquid natural gas. I'm going to read this from Brouiters
Speaker 7: because this is what the straight laced analysts are saying now. Quote,
Speaker 7: we are now well on the road to the doomsday
Speaker 7: gas crisis scenario, said Saul Kavona, can energy analyst at
Speaker 7: MST Financial. Even once the war ends, the disruption to
Speaker 7: liquid natural gas supply could last for months or even years.
Speaker 7: Raiders got some statements from Catter's State natural gas firm
Speaker 7: saying that they had lost seventeen percent of their total
Speaker 7: export capacity and that was destroyed for three to five years.
Speaker 7: That is catastrophic for significant parts of the economy worldwide.
Speaker 7: As we are going to talk about in a second,
Speaker 7: all of this is also happening in the context of
Speaker 7: Trump's threats to destroy carg Islands, which is where ninety
Speaker 7: percent of Iran's oil imports flow through, which would likewise
Speaker 7: be absolutely catastrophic for the Iranian economy because it would
Speaker 7: take a significant amount of time to repair. However, Comma,
Speaker 7: these are all kind of empty threats. Well, when I
Speaker 7: say empty threats, I don't mean that the US or
Speaker 7: Israel won't do it. I mean that it doesn't solve
Speaker 7: the problem. Because the problem with any threat you can
Speaker 7: make against Iran is like you already killed the Iyatola,
Speaker 7: Like what else are you going to do? Right, you
Speaker 7: can completely destroy Iran's economic capacity for a significant period
Speaker 7: of time. But if you do that, then the Iranian
Speaker 7: government is still just going to not open the strait. Right,
Speaker 7: the more you attack them, the more incentive they have
Speaker 7: to continue to retaliate. And that's what's going to happen
Speaker 7: if you continue this campaign, which it seems like the
Speaker 7: US and Israel are determined to do. They're just holding
Speaker 7: all this talk about like revenger to do phase of
Speaker 7: the war, and the war is going to now last
Speaker 7: like several months longer. And again, the problem here is
Speaker 7: that the more that you attack critical infrastructure inside Iran,
Speaker 7: the more that the Runian government gives less of a
Speaker 7: shit about again destroying significant portions of the world's natural
Speaker 7: gas supply, or hitting more oil facilities or you know,
Speaker 7: and this is the one that I really haven't seen
Speaker 7: any talk about, but is a thing that Iran could
Speaker 7: do if they decided that, you know, this is like
Speaker 7: the end for our people. Is starting to hit desalinization
Speaker 7: plants in places like the UAE and Cotter, which are
Speaker 7: i mean, infrastructure that will make the countries uninhabitable. And
Speaker 7: right now there haven't been any attacks on them because
Speaker 7: that's a really hideous thing to do, and it's also
Speaker 7: the sort of absolutely last resort. But it's a thing
Speaker 7: that like, you know, if you keep hitting them, they're
Speaker 7: going to keep hitting more and more targets that are
Speaker 7: going to significantly impact the lives of everyone in the
Speaker 7: region and around the world. Now, now on the sort
Speaker 7: of economics end, we've been kind of in this little
Speaker 7: bouncing up and down Stace's lock, A little bit of
Speaker 7: this has been broken because of again we're now seeing
Speaker 7: instead of just the already very very bad damage of
Speaker 7: nothing can get through the strait, we're now starting to
Speaker 7: see permanent damage to oil infrastructure right, and by the way,
Speaker 7: it's as as are worth noting Royer's reports that the
Speaker 7: estimated damage I think both from revenue lost and from
Speaker 7: to actually repair the facility that Carter state run gas
Speaker 7: company is talking about. They're talking about twenty billion dollars
Speaker 7: of damage. This has finally caused a sort of tank
Speaker 7: in the Asian markets, which are down around three percent
Speaker 7: in a lot of places. We're seeing like somewhere between
Speaker 7: two to three percent for things like the DK in Japan.
Speaker 7: We're seeing like one percent down in Shanghai. And you
Speaker 7: know this is because a lot of these countries, particularly
Speaker 7: in Asia, use a large quantity of not just oil
Speaker 7: but also natural gas from the Gulf, which means that
Speaker 7: these are the countries that are on the front lines
Speaker 7: of this crisis. Now, the Brent Crude Index, which is
Speaker 7: your sort of basementk for oil prices, is over one
Speaker 7: hundred dollars. Now it's staying over one hundred dollars. Experts
Speaker 7: are saying it's only going to increase, which yes, no shit,
Speaker 7: of course, it's only going to increase. It's just going
Speaker 7: to be continued to be more tax I have seen
Speaker 7: some reporting saying that like worst case scenario, we could
Speaker 7: see it at two hundred dollars. Two hundred dollars is
Speaker 7: like a nightmare, like the nine dollars gasoline, unbelievable, hideous nightmare.
Speaker 7: I'm not going to weigh in on whether we're going
Speaker 7: to get to that point before Trump like bails out
Speaker 7: of this war, but it's going to continue to go
Speaker 7: up as both the actual global oil supply is reduced
Speaker 7: and also as the capacity for a rebound once if
Speaker 7: this war ends, is decreased by the continued destruction of
Speaker 7: oil infrastructure. So all in all, things continue to be
Speaker 7: extremely bad, and the outlook for the global economy is
Speaker 7: very bad. The outlook for the people of Iran is
Speaker 7: very bad. The outlook for people across the world is
Speaker 7: not good.
Speaker 4: Thank you, miya. And for a final segment, I'm going
Speaker 4: to talk about the ongoing war against the rhyme, Yeah,
Speaker 4: which I guess we're still deciding if it's a war
Speaker 4: or not. Earlier this week, Donald Trump denied the existence
Speaker 4: of uncrewed surface vessels, something Garrison and I talked about
Speaker 4: in the podcast that came out earlier this week. I'm
Speaker 4: just going to pay you the clip, so.
Speaker 6: They put out phone and cornies during the Kamakazie boats.
Speaker 6: The Karma Kazie boats don't exist. They're fake and you
Speaker 6: can almost see that when you look at them. Look
Speaker 6: say yeah, because if they did exist, we'd hit them
Speaker 6: just like we hit other boats all over the place.
Speaker 6: But they don't exist. In fact, some of the people say,
Speaker 6: where are the boats? Well, how come nobody's see the bots?
Speaker 4: You know why?
Speaker 6: Because it's AI generated, it's naked I found just before
Speaker 6: they've we started. But Narana is known for a lot
Speaker 6: of fake news, and they deal with our fake news.
Speaker 6: And I actually think it's pretty criminal because our media companies,
Speaker 6: who have no credibility whatsoever, are putting out information that
Speaker 6: they know is false.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So uncrewed surface vessels.
Speaker 2: Are real, Yes, they sure are. They've been used massively
Speaker 2: in Ukraine among other places.
Speaker 4: Yeah. In fact, Robert, would you like to hear about
Speaker 4: Saint Coom Commander Admiral Brad Cooper talking about uncrewed surface vessels.
Speaker 2: I will always listen to someone named Brad James. You
Speaker 2: know that about me?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Here you see a photo from March first of
Speaker 2: a naval drone storage facility located near the Strait of Hoar.
Speaker 4: Moves so as you can see naval drones uncrewed surface vessels.
Speaker 4: This is going to be an issue in this conflict
Speaker 4: and many others going forward. People are going to do
Speaker 4: any reality that they don't want to engage with by
Speaker 4: saying that it is ai Yep and that's deeply troubling.
Speaker 4: So let's talk about what has been happening since we
Speaker 4: last spoke Hag Island and only did the Persian Gulf
Speaker 4: that is replete with oil infrastructure and storage facilities. It's
Speaker 4: the island through a large amount of Iran's oil exports travel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a basically, so the most of the coast
Speaker 2: of Iran is too shallow for the huge vessels that
Speaker 2: are necessary to actually move crude oil and carg Island
Speaker 2: is like a very rare deep water port basically, so
Speaker 2: it's kind of the hub.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I was struck by the United States last weekend
Speaker 4: of raid. The plane that the raid only hit oil
Speaker 4: infrastructure on Kig Island. It's very hard to get any
Speaker 4: independent information from Iran currently because of blackouts, because of
Speaker 4: the lack of connectivity, and because of regime oppression. Right
Speaker 4: so we just it's quite possible that what the US
Speaker 4: is saying is not true. It's also quite possible what
Speaker 4: the Iranian state is saying it is not true. We
Speaker 4: can confirm that there were strikes there using all kinds
Speaker 4: of information by satellite imagery, open source flight threatening, et cetera,
Speaker 4: that strikes definitely happened. Strikes this week by the IDF
Speaker 4: also killed Ali Larijani and Bassige Unit commader Hola Moreza Solemoni.
Speaker 4: Shortly after these claims first surfaced, a note was published
Speaker 4: in Lara Johanni's handwriting. But it is fairly certain now
Speaker 4: that he is dead. Larijani's assassination, I guess, or killing,
Speaker 4: whatever you wanna call it by the IDF is notable
Speaker 4: because he's one of the people who would have had
Speaker 4: the sway in the regime to negotiate with the United States.
Speaker 4: You could make a case that the IDF killing him
Speaker 4: is a way for a negotiated piece to be even harder, right,
Speaker 4: for this conflict to continue even more. He is also
Speaker 4: a person who is responsible for massive crimes against the
Speaker 4: citizens of Iran, right including the violent, murderous clampdown on
Speaker 4: protests that we saw in January of this year, the
Speaker 4: United States is also deploying the thirty first Marine Expeditionary
Speaker 4: Unit to the Middle East as part of an amphibious
Speaker 4: response group that includes the USS Tripoly. In fact, it's
Speaker 4: approximately twenty five hundred marines who will be deployed. This
Speaker 4: is the closest we've seen twenty official communication of United
Speaker 4: States boots on the ground in the region. There's a
Speaker 4: number of things that a marine expeditionary unit could do.
Speaker 4: One of them is to do search and rescue or
Speaker 4: provide evacuations for people on vessels in the Strait of
Speaker 4: hornm Mooes that are struck right. Another of them is
Speaker 4: to assault or take islands where Iran may have based
Speaker 4: its military infrastructure, so to do things that are either
Speaker 4: not possible or not easy with air strikes. Another one
Speaker 4: is to add more air power that's closer to the
Speaker 4: region that the Tripoli can carry their thirty five lightnings.
Speaker 4: So it could be that. Another one is for these
Speaker 4: two thy five hundred marines to invade Iran, right and
Speaker 4: to begin a land war to attempt to They could
Speaker 4: also be training Iranian opposition groups right that that's possible,
Speaker 4: It wouldn't it's not like a core Marine Corps mission,
Speaker 4: but there's a special Forces mission. But there's a number
Speaker 4: of things it could be doing. There are also a
Speaker 4: number of more Marine expeditionary units and other forces that
Speaker 4: could be moved to the region. It's interesting to see
Speaker 4: this just a few months after we saw that National
Speaker 4: Security strategy which focused heavily on the Western hemisphere. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, right,
Speaker 4: the US isn't going to involve its OLM Forever Wars
Speaker 4: in the release anymore.
Speaker 3: I can't believe it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, shocking.
Speaker 3: What's the status of these marines right now?
Speaker 4: I believe they are motoring who the region? Right? So
Speaker 4: Triple is a big boat. It's called an amphibious assault boat,
Speaker 4: but that makes it sound like it's like a Higgins boat.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, if this is not the boat that you
Speaker 4: see in the DDA movement, okay, in fact, I don't
Speaker 4: think it can actually have this particular one if I
Speaker 4: understand correctly, doesn't carry those kinds of boats, Like it's
Speaker 4: not set up for doing like a beach landing on Amphoebisssault.
Speaker 4: But these Marine Expeditionary units are like the like the
Speaker 4: first response, I guess like they have their own air power.
Speaker 4: They have helicopters. Yeah, obviously they come on a boat.
Speaker 4: They can move quite quickly. They have the marine, so
Speaker 4: a caople of doing infantry stuff. So like it makes
Speaker 4: sense that this would be what they would send. Talking
Speaker 4: of US forces in the region, a US case, one
Speaker 4: pint thirty five aircraft crashed over Rock last week. This
Speaker 4: is not a combat aircraft, right, it's not a fighter bomber.
Speaker 4: But to my knowledge, the only way out of these
Speaker 4: planes is bailing. All six crew members on border confirmed
Speaker 4: to have died. The United States SAT cons As has
Speaker 4: flown over six thousand sorties since OEF began.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, a's Operation Epic Fury.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's great because Operation During Freedom had the same acronym,
Speaker 4: and I'm sure that's not a mistake. But yeah, this
Speaker 4: is Operation Epic Fury. It's a very high tempo, right,
Speaker 4: and it's a very crowded air space. The six thousand sorties, yeap, Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's a lot. Yeah, accidents like this will happen, right,
Speaker 4: Not everybody who dies in warfare dies in combat. And thirdly,
Speaker 4: this means that another six people are coming home from
Speaker 4: Iraq and coffins as they have been since before. Many
Speaker 4: of our listeners who were born and of course a
Speaker 4: lot of people in Iraq who have no quarrel with
Speaker 4: anyone that will also be innocent victims of this. It's
Speaker 4: I don't mean by any means to suggest it's only
Speaker 4: US service people who are the victims. Here I want
Speaker 4: to talk about the conflict between the United States and
Speaker 4: Hushda Chaby. The US has carried out ace series of
Speaker 4: air strikes against PMF groups, so these are popular mobilization
Speaker 4: forces for its Shia groups in Iran for the Islamic State.
Speaker 4: A strike on a house in Baghdad killed the leader
Speaker 4: of Katib Hasbola in a rug. The strike was confirmed
Speaker 4: on Sabrine News. Sabrine News is like their telegram outlet.
Speaker 4: It's like an aligned telegram news outlet for the group
Speaker 4: Yeah for the PMF, and they made the statement quote
Speaker 4: we announced you the martyrdom of hajj Abu Ali al Asgari.
Speaker 4: In the days since he's killing, we have seen many
Speaker 4: attacks on United States facilities in Iraq. The embassy's SRAM.
Speaker 4: SRAM is counter rocket artillery and mortar. When you see
Speaker 4: videos of drones being shot down, when you see like
Speaker 4: a you hear like a run and then you see
Speaker 4: a burst of like tracer fire and the drone explodes.
Speaker 4: It's normally the cram, so the embassy cram and is
Speaker 4: destroyed drone. But other footage posted online shows an FPV
Speaker 4: drone that's the first person viewdrone FPV drone. It looks
Speaker 4: like you're flying as opposed to let you're looking directly down,
Speaker 4: flying over the embassy compound for almost two minutes. I'm
Speaker 4: guessing it was a fiber optic controlled drone, right, so
Speaker 4: there's no means of like jamming the signal, but this
Speaker 4: is still a monumental failure for security. Right At the
Speaker 4: same time, we saw two drones at least enter and
Speaker 4: explode in the Victory Base, which is near Baghdad Airport.
Speaker 4: The videos from those are bizarre. It seems that the
Speaker 4: drone gets into the base and then it's just like WHOA,
Speaker 4: what the hell. It didn't seem like they had a
Speaker 4: clear target. It kind of flies around it like seems
Speaker 4: so shocked that it was able to penetrate this supposedly
Speaker 4: impenetrable area.
Speaker 3: How much of these security systems are designed to counter
Speaker 3: drones versus originally designed to counter older types of like
Speaker 3: aerial threats.
Speaker 4: Yeah, drones is a broad category, I guess. So you
Speaker 4: have like yoshahed drone, which kind of blurs the line
Speaker 4: between a drone and a missile, right, it's like a
Speaker 4: missile that can take a more varied flight path. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: it doesn't just don't go in the arc like ballistically.
Speaker 4: In those cases, there are things that there are things
Speaker 4: that you can do to shoot them down. Right, you
Speaker 4: can have your Patriot missiles, you can use of see RAM,
Speaker 4: you can shoot them down with various weapon systems on
Speaker 4: an aircraft. But if we group FPV and like drop
Speaker 4: A drones as commercial off the shelf drones, this is
Speaker 4: the thing, right, you know, the United States has been
Speaker 4: supporting Ukraine since twenty one, since before twenty twenty two,
Speaker 4: but it's including since twenty twenty two with the false
Speaker 4: scale evasion. It has not been supporting the revolution in Memmar.
Speaker 4: But clearly they have not learned enough from those two conflicts,
Speaker 4: right in terms of the use of these small commercial
Speaker 4: off the shelf drones, and this is now showing up
Speaker 4: as a weakness in their defense strategy. Like this is
Speaker 4: a serious thing for the US government. For someone to
Speaker 4: be and for them to just fly a recondrone over
Speaker 4: the embassy, like you know, obviously they now know where
Speaker 4: everything is, and for them to publish that footage it
Speaker 4: is like a public somewhat like humiliation, right, the sort
Speaker 4: of security infrastructure. So finally, I guess a couple more things.
Speaker 4: Iran is now militarizing the area of Kurdistan between the
Speaker 4: Iranian and Iraqi states. So that's the Iran Iraq border
Speaker 4: in Kurdistan. Right. It seems to have issued orders preventing
Speaker 4: people moving around the region as they habitually would people
Speaker 4: move around because they've always moved around. People move around
Speaker 4: with their animals, right. The Iranian government appears to have
Speaker 4: ordered its troops to shoot people who perceived to be
Speaker 4: moving around without permission. People often get near the border
Speaker 4: with a ruck to access cell signal, and the government
Speaker 4: forces appear to have left their bases in the region
Speaker 4: in favor of occupying the mountains as what as local
Speaker 4: educational institutions of sports facilities. Right, So that means that
Speaker 4: people in towns are now its threat. And Hengar has
Speaker 4: some incidents where people have been shot by security forces
Speaker 4: in the region. Finally, then I want to talk about
Speaker 4: the resignation of the director of the National Countess Terrorism Center,
Speaker 4: Joe Kent. Kent resigned this week, saying quote, Iran posed
Speaker 4: no imminent threat to our nation. It does seem that
Speaker 4: that is where a lot of people stopped reading anything.
Speaker 4: Kent said, Yeah, are people who did not know who
Speaker 4: Joe Kent is, right and don't have access to Google
Speaker 4: for reasons that I don't understand. Yeah, yeah, some really
Speaker 4: incredibly shitty reporting on this. Kent went on in his
Speaker 4: note to among other things, talk about the death of
Speaker 4: his wife, which is genuinely tragic. Kent has some disgusting views, right, like,
Speaker 4: but it does seem like the death of his wife
Speaker 4: was kind of a I guess a turning point. Is
Speaker 4: that fair to say? Gair, Like, you've looked at Kent
Speaker 4: a lot, like in his politics. He talks about it
Speaker 4: a lot.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's very load bearing for him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So it's just with people aren't aware. His wife, Shannon,
Speaker 4: was a cryptologist and linguist attacked to the ISA Intelligence
Speaker 4: Support activity sometimes called Task Force Orange. She was in
Speaker 4: Mambij in Syria when she was killed by in Islamic
Speaker 4: State suicide bomber she was in the buffer zone, like
Speaker 4: that that was like the buffer then that Turkey had
Speaker 4: forced to exist. He calls that in his resignation to
Speaker 4: statement quote a war manufactured by Israel, and he also
Speaker 4: seems to suggest that Trump was conned by Israel into
Speaker 4: starting the war with it ran far too much reporting
Speaker 4: has missed this context, So he's essentially using what on
Speaker 4: the face of it as an anti submit like saying.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, he he like is he is he
Speaker 3: is like an anti Semitic fascist.
Speaker 4: Yes, his reason for retiring is like explicitly anti Semitic.
Speaker 3: This like yeah, this is the same justification that someone
Speaker 3: like Nick Quentes uses to oppose the war in Iran.
Speaker 3: Not out of you know, principled solidarity. These people don't
Speaker 3: care about civilians dying in Iran. No, And it's not
Speaker 3: actually about any sort of like notion of anti imperialism.
Speaker 4: No, it's anti Semitism.
Speaker 3: They believe that this is a Zionist occupied government. Yeah,
Speaker 3: in the zog meaning of the term, like there's like
Speaker 3: literally literally like a total Jewish control over all state operations.
Speaker 3: Not linked to actual lobbying groups that lobby for Israel
Speaker 3: within the United States, but conspiratorial framework invoking anti Semitic
Speaker 3: tropes and stereotypes. This is the sort of an army
Speaker 3: that Joe Kent comes out of. As we are recording this,
Speaker 3: Joe Kent has an interview dropping with Tucker Carlson, Yes,
Speaker 3: where he's going to expound on this. Carlson has similarly
Speaker 3: voiced these sorts of objections based on if any intelligent
Speaker 3: person you know, reads into it based on anti semitism,
Speaker 3: not actually based on again principal solidarity with oppressed people's
Speaker 3: or anti imperialism.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think if you're reading new sources of like,
Speaker 4: oh wow, Trump is beginning to lose people, and they
Speaker 4: have I mentioned any of this, really consider if you
Speaker 4: want to be reading those news sources. I'll just say that,
Speaker 4: I guess. Caroline Levitt responded with a post on X saying, quote,
Speaker 4: the commander in chief determines what does and does not
Speaker 4: constitute a threat because he is the only one constitutionally
Speaker 4: empowered to do so, and because the American people went
Speaker 4: to the ballot box and it trusted him and him
Speaker 4: alone to make such final judgments. That is a remarkable
Speaker 4: statement for those of us who lived through the whole
Speaker 4: Iraq has wnd's era.
Speaker 3: But the United States has long history of involvement in
Speaker 3: the Middle East. And yes, the extent to which we
Speaker 3: are partnering with Israel is often in support of our
Speaker 3: other objectives in the Middle East and our ability to
Speaker 3: use Israel as like a proxy state. That's why the
Speaker 3: United States government has such a large interest in Israel.
Speaker 3: Is we have other reasons for wanting to be active
Speaker 3: and control parts of the region or influence the region.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Often the priorities of Israel not always right, like
Speaker 4: in the first time the United States invaded the Persian Gulf.
Speaker 4: That often they are fighting alongside each other because they
Speaker 4: have similar interest not because of any nefarious Jewish conspiracy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yep, which very frustrating that it continues to be
Speaker 3: something that needs to be reiterated.
Speaker 4: Yeah, even on the left, but it does.
Speaker 2: And the first time I started seeing people who had
Speaker 2: previously been doing other campus to shit start using the
Speaker 2: phrase zog, I was like, Okay, we've come, We've come
Speaker 2: full circle. Everything's where it was always going to be beautiful.
Speaker 3: The normalization of zog and like goy across parts of
Speaker 3: the online left.
Speaker 2: Is from Anarchisparian of the New Turks, the Young Turks
Speaker 2: whatever the fuck the ty t they.
Speaker 3: Call them the youngs has fallen.
Speaker 4: Yeah well let yeah, let let's be honest, choosing that
Speaker 4: name didn't predispose them to the anti genocide.
Speaker 2: She has always been like that, she's sucked for a while.
Speaker 2: But just seeing her use the freight the word GOI
Speaker 2: like that was like.
Speaker 4: Whoa, wow, Yeah I haven't seen that, Okay.
Speaker 2: I used to have to go to Telegram to see
Speaker 2: people boasting shit like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, that's sort of shit you would
Speaker 4: hear like ham Radio, like it's just like old school racism.
Speaker 3: Yeah no, there is. There is this interesting emergence of
Speaker 3: like a red brown alliance specifically targeting like Israel or
Speaker 3: people's notions of Israel's global influence.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, no, great, no great stuff at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we should just say, since this is gonna
Speaker 2: be one of the big news stories this week and
Speaker 2: coming into next week, The New York Times has published
Speaker 2: a in article with very extensive sourcing, including from people
Speaker 2: very close to Cesser Chavez, who reported that he sexually assaulted, raped,
Speaker 2: molested an abused mix of girls and women, including a
Speaker 2: lot of girls preteen girls started grooming them as young
Speaker 2: as eight or nine. In some cases, there's evidence of
Speaker 2: molestation of girls as young as like twelve thirteen. And
Speaker 2: then Delor Swerta, who was his very famously one of
Speaker 2: his organizing partners for quite a long time, came out
Speaker 2: and said that he sexually assaulted her on raped her
Speaker 2: on at least two occasions, which led to pregnancies. So
Speaker 2: that is all coming out now, and it's all pretty horrific.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I like, there's not much more to say.
Speaker 2: You can read the article, yeah and should.
Speaker 4: Yeah, will link to finish shirt. If you'd like to
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Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm believe me, buddy. We're gonna if people keep
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Speaker 4: Yah, right it, We'll say it, we'll post it.
Speaker 3: We reported the news.
Speaker 4: M we reported the news.
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