Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 2: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 2: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 2: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 2: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 2: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 2: there's going to be nothing new here for you, But
Speaker 2: you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 3: What's up, y'alls.
Speaker 4: Your favorite cousin again, prop is in the building? Yeah,
Speaker 4: saying well in your earbuds or speakers, however the hell
Speaker 4: you listen it is your favorite cousin is here. I
Speaker 4: am going to assume that that is the truth, and
Speaker 4: since you can't answer me, we just gonna go with that.
Speaker 4: It's been a while since I tapped in with y'all.
Speaker 4: I ruined your music festivals and then told you about
Speaker 4: your municipalities and your waters. Somebody reached out to us,
Speaker 4: who you know, gestures wildly. We have not been able
Speaker 4: to get back to her, but about how she was
Speaker 4: a part of an effort to non privatize the water
Speaker 4: inside of her neighborhood and district and they won. So
Speaker 4: shout out to you. We apologize if you've you know,
Speaker 4: our job has not been boring since the start of
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five. But today I'm gonna bring you some blackness,
Speaker 4: some genuine blackness, and then some This has to be
Speaker 4: a black conversation.
Speaker 3: Because you might of facts are racist.
Speaker 4: I have to approach it like this because crime has
Speaker 4: become a color mute term in the era of Trump.
Speaker 4: It kind of always has been, but it's really obvious
Speaker 4: now with the National Guard being unleashed onto the streets
Speaker 4: of Washington, d C. There's some sort of clearly obvious
Speaker 4: conflation between the houseless population, poverty, crime black folks. Like,
Speaker 4: it's all kind of like one thing with this food,
Speaker 4: which is not rocket science for y'all, it's just you
Speaker 4: know what he talking about. You know how I know
Speaker 4: this how he thinks is because whenever he talks about
Speaker 4: black people supporting him, he talks about criminal reform, because
Speaker 4: apparently that's what all black people care about. Only just
Speaker 4: like you know, when he say immigration, he mean Latino
Speaker 4: and the whole not feeling safe is just because you know,
Speaker 4: the crime that the houseless population of DC have is
Speaker 4: being ill.
Speaker 3: That's the crime because they No one has ever given me.
Speaker 4: A legitimate reason as to why not having a place
Speaker 4: to stay as a crime.
Speaker 3: Hell, you know, Margaret kill.
Speaker 4: Joined him have this whole joint about loitering and loitering
Speaker 4: laws like truancies. Why I'm getting ahead of myself. The
Speaker 4: point is the crime is that you exist. So today
Speaker 4: I want to talk to y'all about something that y'all
Speaker 4: already know, which is it's never.
Speaker 3: Been about the crime.
Speaker 5: All right.
Speaker 4: Now, First of all, some stuff that don't matter. Y'all
Speaker 4: still following Drake. I don't know if y'all like, Okay,
Speaker 4: my crowd is following Drake. Let me stop making a
Speaker 4: difference between us. But listen, so you know, Drake's suing
Speaker 4: UMG and his label over you know, not like us,
Speaker 4: and just proving that he's not like us anyway. The
Speaker 4: new thing in this man's lawsuit he is he's the
Speaker 4: man in UMG. Bring evidence over to push the teeth thing?
Speaker 4: What do I mean by to push the teeth thing?
Speaker 4: When push the t came at him, which we can
Speaker 4: all agree if you in the rap, he won also
Speaker 4: shout out the clips. So when you go back to
Speaker 4: the push the teeth time, this is the back to
Speaker 4: back and I'm charged up that time. He was like, Yo,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna show y'all the emails, and y'all bring in
Speaker 4: the emails from when you guys were suppressing Push the
Speaker 4: T's stuff, when you guys were like making sure that
Speaker 4: like it got copyright claimed and stuff getting off the
Speaker 4: streamers and pulled down all this. Say, man, you helped
Speaker 4: me suppress this man's music when Push the Tea came
Speaker 4: after me, Why y'all don't do it with not like us,
Speaker 4: which means your corny ass you just told on yourself.
Speaker 3: Oh so Push It was right.
Speaker 4: So what you're saying is in you trying to take
Speaker 4: down Kendrick You done snitched on twenty eighteen? You right, Okay,
Speaker 4: So because you had to label interfere with this battle fam. Now,
Speaker 4: if you want to hear some more like real just
Speaker 4: rapping ass rappers, there's this great battle that was going
Speaker 4: on between Joey Badass and Ray Vaughn and then somehow
Speaker 4: it became a triple with this dude named Daylight and
Speaker 4: this other brother named Reason. These were some really really
Speaker 4: dope bars. Now Absol got into the middle of it.
Speaker 4: But now Apsol Rhapsody and Joey are going on tour,
Speaker 4: which sucks because I'm on the same management team as
Speaker 4: all of them and I ain't on that tour. I
Speaker 4: wish I was, though it'd be a rap and rapping tour,
Speaker 4: But I definitely don't do the numbers they do anyway. Today,
Speaker 4: you know, in light of like I said, the Feds
Speaker 4: in DC, Trump keep claiming these emergency cases that gives
Speaker 4: him these powers to do these different things. And as
Speaker 4: a side note, remember when J six happened and he
Speaker 4: was like, well, Nancy Pelosi should have called in the
Speaker 4: National Guard. Shan't call in the passional Guard? What was
Speaker 4: President Trump's supposed to do? Well, I would think what
Speaker 4: He's doing now, because they used to say these same
Speaker 4: people that was arguing that Trump ain't had a power
Speaker 4: to stop it, meaning he didn't have the power to
Speaker 4: call in the national Guard, are also praising him right
Speaker 4: now for using his presidential power to call in the
Speaker 4: National Guard. Boy, I tell you, racism make you dumb
Speaker 4: as hell. But in light of this, despite all evidence
Speaker 4: showing that the crime rate has dropped thirty percent in DC,
Speaker 4: this man still keeps talking about the crime wave and
Speaker 4: the safety or the lack of safety that people feel
Speaker 4: in DC. Now, I'm gonna let Bridget do a full
Speaker 4: episode on really what's going on in Chocolate City? My
Speaker 4: mama from DC. You know, my whole mama side of
Speaker 4: the family still out there. So I used to spend
Speaker 4: every other summer in DC. Now, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 4: being down thirty percent is absolutely positive. But DC ain't safe.
Speaker 4: Now it depends on what part you in.
Speaker 3: See. That's the thing about crime statistics.
Speaker 4: But before I get into crime statistics, I need to
Speaker 4: talk about the concept of crime.
Speaker 6: Period.
Speaker 4: This will be no surprise to y'all because you listen
Speaker 4: to Cools on media.
Speaker 3: Crime is made up.
Speaker 4: Now, criminal crime, I think it's very important to understand
Speaker 4: that it is a social construct. Now what do I
Speaker 4: mean by that? But on me is it's situational? Right,
Speaker 4: How the same act can mean two different things. Now,
Speaker 4: this is a conceptual thing that obviously our felt experience
Speaker 4: is a little more real.
Speaker 3: But let me give you an example.
Speaker 4: Let a disaster hit, a hurricane, an earthquake, a flood.
Speaker 4: If I go into that grocery store and get some bread,
Speaker 4: am I looting or scavenging? Am I stealing or surviving.
Speaker 4: And the answer is depends on what color you are.
Speaker 4: Crime is a social construct. Because if that's the case,
Speaker 4: how is George Zimmerman still walking? Having said that, one
Speaker 4: could take this argument and go super bonkers on it
Speaker 4: and say the same thing about pedophilia, Like, who's to
Speaker 4: say that what Epstein did is a crime? Because, like
Speaker 4: you said, crime is a social construct. Here's my answer
Speaker 4: to that, it's social because we live in a social
Speaker 4: souci it t fam. Although borders are made up, so
Speaker 4: is money, and sow are driver's licenses. Of course, there's
Speaker 4: no force field at the forty ninth parallel that separates
Speaker 4: Canada from America. However, we have decided that before you
Speaker 4: get behind the wheel of a car, you better have
Speaker 4: passed some sort of examination for us to know that
Speaker 4: you're safe enough to drive behind this You could physically
Speaker 4: drive this car, but we live in a society that says, hey, homy,
Speaker 4: I need you to make sure.
Speaker 3: We need to have some sort of due diligence.
Speaker 4: We have decided, as a species that is self aware
Speaker 4: that our children matter.
Speaker 3: Their safety is important to us.
Speaker 4: The person standing next to you has the right to exist,
Speaker 4: whether you like that person or not. They have the
Speaker 4: right to exist. You cannot hold them against they will.
Speaker 4: That's heybeas corpus, apparently unbeknownst to Christy Nole, who clearly
Speaker 4: don't know what hate be as corpus means as all
Speaker 4: the time it what is criminal and what is lawful
Speaker 4: is something that we've agreed upon in our social contract. Now, we, however,
Speaker 4: live in a modern secular democracy, which says that we
Speaker 4: have a say in what becomes laws or not so
Speaker 4: and got to just lay down and let you just
Speaker 4: call stuff a crime that ain't a crime or that
Speaker 4: shouldn't be a crime. Now, speaking of what is and
Speaker 4: isn't a crime, here's the thing. Black people have been
Speaker 4: telling you the answer for a long time, specifically rappers. Okay, Now,
Speaker 4: I saw a TikTok about this, and it's very irresponsible
Speaker 4: of me that I can't remember the hommy's name and
Speaker 4: I can't you know, you get the suggested, you know,
Speaker 4: or yeah, just stuff pop in like before you I
Speaker 4: cannot find brad Brush TikTok black Man, super brilliant. But
Speaker 4: he reminded me of some lyrics that Freeway said that
Speaker 4: captures the point of what we're trying to make I
Speaker 4: love his dude's TikTok Man, God, I gotta find it.
Speaker 3: Hopefully, Hopefully I'll find it and put it in the
Speaker 3: show notes.
Speaker 4: But Freeway's verse with a song with jay Z, says,
Speaker 4: we still hustle till the sun come up. Crack a forty.
Speaker 4: When the sun go down, it's a cold winter. Y'all,
Speaker 4: niggas better bundle up. I bet it's a hot summer.
Speaker 4: Grab an onion just to rock it down. You hot,
Speaker 4: Now listen up, follow me. You don't know the cops
Speaker 4: soul purposes to lock us down.
Speaker 3: Throw away to key.
Speaker 4: But without this drug shit, your kids ain't got no
Speaker 4: way to eat.
Speaker 7: Huh.
Speaker 4: We still trying to keep mom smiling because when her
Speaker 4: teeth stops showing and her stomach start growling, then the
Speaker 4: heat start flowing. If you from my hood, you know
Speaker 4: you feel me keep going, the sneaks start leaning and
Speaker 4: the heat stop working, then my heat start working.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna rob me a person. Okay, now listen.
Speaker 4: These are the lyrics that Little Bruh quoted in his TikTok,
Speaker 4: and the point he's making, which is the same point
Speaker 4: I'm making, is that he's talking about the solutions to crime.
Speaker 4: Like he said it right there, like I just want
Speaker 4: my mom to smile. My kids don't have any other
Speaker 4: way to eat. And then he says, when the heat
Speaker 4: stopped working, then my heat start working.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna rob me a person. It is resources.
Speaker 4: But again, follow what this brud trying to tell you
Speaker 4: is that you putting law enforcement in our neighborhoods doesn't
Speaker 4: fix anything. Does you follow? Does what we're saying? He's like, no,
Speaker 4: you just want to lock us up. That is not
Speaker 4: solving the problem. The problem is I'm hungry, My mama's hungry,
Speaker 4: my kids are hungry. My sneaks start leaning. What he's
Speaker 4: talking about is this tennis shoes as sneakers, they're leaning.
Speaker 4: You know, when you walk on your sneakers too much
Speaker 4: in the back of your shoes in the back house,
Speaker 4: start running around the side, then it start thinning out,
Speaker 4: so it's like the back of your shoe just looks uneven.
Speaker 4: That's when your sneaks are leaning. This is what he's
Speaker 4: trying to say. My stomach is rumbling. Had we had
Speaker 4: better funded schools, had we had more opportunities, He was like,
Speaker 4: I'm robbing this person because there is no other option.
Speaker 3: Now, are there other options?
Speaker 4: Maybe, But if you gonna do the math, listen, this
Speaker 4: is simple economics. If you want to make one thousand
Speaker 4: dollars tonight because the rents do tomorrow, you go over
Speaker 4: to Spanish Jose's house. Spanish Jose say, hey, listen, you
Speaker 4: ain't got to do nothing. Just put this bag in
Speaker 4: your back seat and drive the park slope, drop it
Speaker 4: off a comeback. Or you can go work twenty dollars
Speaker 4: an hour at McDonald's. Ain't no uncles with endowments and
Speaker 4: check this out. Let me push you even further, even
Speaker 4: if you are smarty autar, even if you're a smart one.
Speaker 4: The government just told Harvard that they can't recruit in
Speaker 4: my neighborhood even if I got the grades for it,
Speaker 4: because that's woke shit.
Speaker 3: So what you want? What the fuck you want me
Speaker 3: to do?
Speaker 4: Now here's the premise of what I'm talking about, which is,
Speaker 4: we know the solutions.
Speaker 3: It's never been about crime.
Speaker 4: Okay, but let me talk about some folks, some black
Speaker 4: folks who do care about the solution, who do care
Speaker 4: about crime, Because if we're talking about crime in our
Speaker 4: urban areas, who the fuck do you think the crimes
Speaker 4: are against and see that's the part that makes me
Speaker 4: so mad.
Speaker 3: When I be talking to these people.
Speaker 4: You think we don't care because who are these crimes
Speaker 4: getting carried out against.
Speaker 3: You think we happy to see all them police.
Speaker 4: One would think if it worked, we would be happy
Speaker 4: to see all these police in our streets.
Speaker 3: But you know what, the shit don't help.
Speaker 4: Okay, what I'm gonna do in the rest of this
Speaker 4: show is prove to y'all, based on decades of research,
Speaker 4: what does reduce crime.
Speaker 3: We're gonna link all the things in the bio.
Speaker 4: I knew I had to come my a game if
Speaker 4: I'm going on the cap and Year, because these some
Speaker 4: of the smartest people like y'all. Listen, the people on
Speaker 4: this show, y'all. Y'all is like real journalists. I'm just
Speaker 4: a rapper that knows how to explain shit. So I
Speaker 4: needed to make sure that I had my ducks in
Speaker 4: a row. So I'm about to show y'all a trillion
Speaker 4: examples of where if you really from these blocks, if
Speaker 4: you really do care about the welfare of black people,
Speaker 4: then maybe you should listen to black people. See and
Speaker 4: let me bring in my trans community here because they
Speaker 4: problem with you this to be honest with y'all, I'm
Speaker 4: gonna be transparent, which this is part of what radicalized
Speaker 4: me whilst really started to understand the trans experience is
Speaker 4: because the shit they say about us is the shit
Speaker 4: they say about you.
Speaker 3: Your crime is we just don't like you around.
Speaker 4: At the end of the day, all these laws against
Speaker 4: trans people is really just because you just think they gross.
Speaker 4: And so with us, it was just like you, like,
Speaker 4: what is redlining, discriminatory practices in jobs?
Speaker 3: You just don't want us around. What is white flight?
Speaker 3: You just don't want us around?
Speaker 4: And your justification of this is this made up ass
Speaker 4: word name crime and that you care that crime matter.
Speaker 4: But Nikki, you don't. Okay, I'm getting getting ahead of myself.
Speaker 4: Let's take a break. All right, here we go. I've
Speaker 4: calmed down. So the first thing you want to think
Speaker 4: about is how crime is reported, right in the ways
Speaker 4: for which it's reported, and then the geographical locations that
Speaker 4: we're talking about. So when you say the crime in Washington, DC,
Speaker 4: it's not like the crime happens in an even distributed thing,
Speaker 4: like it's not all of DC. If you will, there's northeast, northwest, southeast,
Speaker 4: south southeast and southwest now due to gentrification. Southeast which
Speaker 4: is where Anacostia is and was at one time the
Speaker 4: sort of mecha of just like Black DC of chocolate
Speaker 4: cy Chocola Cy's, The whole city was chocolate forever. Like
Speaker 4: I said, I noticed because I spent every other summer
Speaker 4: there and my mama from there. But like Southeast, DC
Speaker 4: is the last non gentrified area.
Speaker 3: Now do you.
Speaker 4: Think it's thugs sitting on the National Monument sipping forty ounces?
Speaker 3: No, you out there with the tourists sipping macha.
Speaker 4: So in one sense is when you say crime has
Speaker 4: dropped thirty percent, it's like thirty percent since when?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 4: And is it averaged across all of DC or are
Speaker 4: you talking about in its areas where things like carjackings,
Speaker 4: homicides and stuff like that happen right now? Remember what
Speaker 4: I talked about a long time ago, at least on
Speaker 4: my show. Hopefully y'all remember this that the crime rates
Speaker 4: in America is always a weird situation because we don't
Speaker 4: live in America. You live in your city, so maybe
Speaker 4: it is going crazy in your own local neighborhoods, so
Speaker 4: you feel like, damn this place is wild. Or maybe,
Speaker 4: like I said, maybe you're in like Northwest Portland, you
Speaker 4: know what I'm saying, Like you know over there off Gleason,
Speaker 4: you feel me in like it's nice, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean, Like you don't never see a single But
Speaker 4: if you live over there in Chinatown next to Voodoo Donuts, Dog,
Speaker 4: you seem like you walking over zombies.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: What I'm trying to say is sometimes the statistics can
Speaker 4: be deceiving. Now Granny and them who you know, bought
Speaker 4: their house a long time ago. They see the graffiti
Speaker 4: on the wall and they think, you know, YadA YadA,
Speaker 4: the boys like loitering outside. How do you fix it? Well,
Speaker 4: allow me to introduce it to Philadelphia, which coincidentally is
Speaker 4: where Freeway is from.
Speaker 3: So the data is pretty clear, you know.
Speaker 4: If you look at the Violent Crime Reduction Report, it's
Speaker 4: literally it's at the Department of Justice.
Speaker 3: You can read it yourself.
Speaker 4: It tells you exactly what has worked to drop homicide,
Speaker 4: violent crime, carjacking, theft.
Speaker 3: It tells you what has worked what has not worked.
Speaker 3: A simple google right.
Speaker 4: And the intro of this is this is a violent
Speaker 4: crime reduction between twenty twenty one and twenty twenty five,
Speaker 4: and it says for the past three years, the Justice
Speaker 4: Department has been executing comprehensive strategies to reduce violent crime
Speaker 4: rooted in local communities, and we're seeing trends in the
Speaker 4: form of crimes being prevented and live saved. According to
Speaker 4: available data from twenty twenty three, murder, rape, robbery, and
Speaker 4: aggregated assault is in a considerable decline and nearly ninety
Speaker 4: major cities across the country violent crime has continued to
Speaker 4: drop during the last six months of this year compared
Speaker 4: to the same period last year, including a seventeen percent
Speaker 4: decreasing homicides. This is the Deputy Attorney General Monkyo on
Speaker 4: September seventeenth, twenty twenty four. Now, to keep it very
Speaker 4: real again, violent crime rates being up and down are
Speaker 4: obviously relative.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: One thing was, well, we were in a pandemic, so
Speaker 4: there's that, right. Another thing is it's almost like how
Speaker 4: everybody was complaining again that crime was up. It is
Speaker 4: like y'all forgot the nineties existed, like I'd lived it,
Speaker 4: and baby, this ain't nothing, you know, the actual fear
Speaker 4: of pain and suffering. This pales in comparison we live
Speaker 4: in a great place in relation to what we went
Speaker 4: through in the eighties and nineties. Now again we're talking
Speaker 4: national trends right again in your local neighborhood.
Speaker 3: It may be a green light afvenent. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying for you to.
Speaker 4: Say that our country's becoming a cesspool means you not
Speaker 4: reading the data. According to the Conversation, it's like independent journalist.
Speaker 4: This author, her name is Katerina g Roman. She's a
Speaker 4: professor of criminal justice at Temple University and as a
Speaker 4: side note, at Temple University, Mahomie Timothy, he's teaching a
Speaker 4: class on Kendrick.
Speaker 3: Lamar and his lyrics and hip hop and justice.
Speaker 4: I actually spoke at his class a couple of times,
Speaker 4: so that was pretty dope to hear what he's doing.
Speaker 3: But now check this out.
Speaker 4: According to her writing, it says that the Pennsylvania spends
Speaker 4: roughly two hundred thousand dollars a year for each juvenile
Speaker 4: it incarcerates. According to the twenty twenty one report from
Speaker 4: a bipartisan Pennsylvania Juvenile Justice Track Force, that's fifty times
Speaker 4: the cost to deliver evidence based family therapy that would
Speaker 4: prevent kids from going into the justice system in the
Speaker 4: first place. I'm gonna tell you before I even read
Speaker 4: the rest of this, because I lived it. We just
Speaker 4: be bored. It ain't nothing to do. There are no opportunities.
Speaker 4: When the heat stopped working, then my heat start working.
Speaker 4: In Philadelphia, juvenile incarceration involves the confinement in City ran
Speaker 4: Philadelphia Juvenile Services and other residential placements facilities. Young people
Speaker 4: leave these facilities with lower chances of graduating high school,
Speaker 4: freed mental health, and the higher likelihood of re arrest
Speaker 4: or being shot.
Speaker 3: Can I again, please speak from my own experience.
Speaker 4: When you go into these juveniles cases, you have to
Speaker 4: pick a location of people that you would be You'll
Speaker 4: pretend even if you don't run with them, even if
Speaker 4: you don't know them niggas outside of here. When y'all
Speaker 4: get outside, y'all may never have talked again. But in here,
Speaker 4: even if you went in there over some stupid like
Speaker 4: shoplift and some damn spray paint, whatever the case may be,
Speaker 4: you now got to run with the people that got
Speaker 4: your same skin tone and are from your part of town.
Speaker 4: You have to kids don't go in being members of gangs.
Speaker 4: You have to join one to stay alive. Now check
Speaker 4: this out. When you get out. Part of the terms
Speaker 4: of your probation is you can't be around certain criminal
Speaker 4: festivities or activities or people with criminal records.
Speaker 3: Where you're gonna go.
Speaker 4: If I just happen to live on sixtieth Street next
Speaker 4: to my uncle, I just live here. You mess around,
Speaker 4: go visit your granny house and then got a report
Speaker 4: to your PO. You've been fragnized with known gang members.
Speaker 4: You're probably going back. The shit don't work, y'all. But
Speaker 4: what does now?
Speaker 3: Again?
Speaker 4: Back to this article, drawing from about thirty five years
Speaker 4: of work in Philadelphia and other cities to understand what
Speaker 4: makes neighborhoods safe for I believe the surist returns home
Speaker 4: from prevention strategies aimed at young people who are not
Speaker 4: yet immersed in robbery, shootings and gun activities. So they
Speaker 4: give some examples of the things that they've done. First
Speaker 4: of it is a school based case management In Barthrom
Speaker 4: High now in southwest Philly, John Bartram High Schools has
Speaker 4: a youth violence reduction initiative that launched in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 4: It was designed by former school safety chief in Philadelphia
Speaker 4: now Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel, School Safety Offer Programs
Speaker 4: Manager Ken Rosa, and criminal justice researcher Brandy Blasco and.
Speaker 3: This person that wrote the article.
Speaker 4: Students who have been involved in fights or show other
Speaker 4: risk factors of violence and street gang involvements are referred
Speaker 4: to this pro The initiative's core idea is simple, earn
Speaker 4: students trust through consistent, credible mentorship, and step in when needy.
Speaker 4: Stepping in means teaching conflict resolution skills, running engaging workshops,
Speaker 4: buying a meal, intervening when a fight is brewing or
Speaker 4: a student is on the verge of being expelled. Each week,
Speaker 4: a team of administrators, counselors, school safety officers, and community
Speaker 4: outreach workers, most of whom are based in the school,
Speaker 4: review the participants progress tracks, follow through referrals, and coordinate
Speaker 4: communication with family, school and staff. This is a tightly managed,
Speaker 4: relationship driven safety net that gives students quicker access to
Speaker 4: help make school climates calmer and safer. This seems so obvious.
Speaker 4: You just need somebody you trust.
Speaker 3: Listen. One of the things even.
Speaker 4: In my own house, my own life, was I knew
Speaker 4: my neighbors and my neighbors knew me, and if they
Speaker 4: call me outside standing with the wrong people, I knew
Speaker 4: they was gonna tell mama. Sometimes, since they're teenagers, they
Speaker 4: don't have conflict resolution skills. All they know is to
Speaker 4: pop off. You ever been angry, You don't think kids
Speaker 4: be angry. Your teacher in there asking you about your
Speaker 4: algebra homework, your stomach rumbling. I ain't got shit to
Speaker 4: say to her because I'm hungry. And sometimes it's just
Speaker 4: the meal. Sometimes it's just knowing somebody cares. Sometimes it's
Speaker 4: just you feel like I know. I've experienced it too.
Speaker 4: I feel like it's not even they ain't even know no
Speaker 4: reason to explain my position to you, because you're not
Speaker 4: gonna believe me, or you just gonna call the police.
Speaker 3: I taught a kid.
Speaker 4: I've said this story so many times, who used to
Speaker 4: show up late in class? When I used to teach,
Speaker 4: you show up late in class maybe three to four
Speaker 4: times a week, always had his homework in his hand.
Speaker 4: You've tarty that many times were supposed to call a
Speaker 4: truancy officer. Ain't no way in the world I'm calling
Speaker 4: a truancy officer because that mean they Mama gonna have
Speaker 4: to pay a twenty five hundred dollar fee number one
Speaker 4: and number two. Now he got a record. All I did, guys,
Speaker 4: I just asked him, why are you late every day?
Speaker 4: He say, because he trusts me. My daddy'd be drinking
Speaker 4: too much a night, so he can't get up and
Speaker 4: take us to school. So I take my brother to
Speaker 4: school first and then come here.
Speaker 3: And this is just the time I get here. I
Speaker 3: never marked him.
Speaker 4: Thwarty, since all you do is ask, right, which leads
Speaker 4: me to the second thing, the power of credible caring adults.
Speaker 3: It's real simple. You got people that care, you got
Speaker 3: food programs. All right, let me nerd it up again.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 4: According to the Youth Justice Services, Relationships, Rehabilitation, and the
Speaker 4: Reality of Young People Involved a metasynthesis of qualitative literature.
Speaker 4: This is a scholarly literature review dude results that says
Speaker 4: that just having an adult who you know cares, just
Speaker 4: having one that cared, changes significantly the chances of a
Speaker 4: student getting into a life of crime.
Speaker 3: But just knowing somebody care.
Speaker 4: I'm going to link in it again into these show notes,
Speaker 4: all of the data, all the stuff I've been looking at,
Speaker 4: so you can check it out yourself. I know, it
Speaker 4: seems like a gross oversimplification by the way that I'm
Speaker 4: just saying it right now.
Speaker 3: Usually you know what I'm saying. We was doing the
Speaker 3: it can happen here thing.
Speaker 4: I gotta be able to read this stuff out to you,
Speaker 4: but I can read a part of it.
Speaker 3: It says that that the themes.
Speaker 4: That broke out after interviewing one hundred and fifty kids
Speaker 4: is that young people reported first being pessimistic about entering
Speaker 4: these services, and their past experiences impacted their ability to
Speaker 4: trust and were initially.
Speaker 3: Cautious of professionals. But watch this.
Speaker 4: These were the themes and sub themes they felt valued
Speaker 4: and finding worth within their system. The reciprocal nature of
Speaker 4: understanding and respect these kids felt respected, the importance of
Speaker 4: having one good person, creating a secure base for expiration
Speaker 4: and development, and then showing a genuine care by going
Speaker 4: above and beyond.
Speaker 3: So basically, just.
Speaker 4: Be kind and it helps a student sixsed.
Speaker 3: Ain't that crazy?
Speaker 4: But at the end of the day, homicides in Philadelphia
Speaker 4: at the lowest level they've been in twenty five years.
Speaker 4: How it's long time and it takes effort. But next
Speaker 4: I want to talk about who the city of Baltimore.
Speaker 3: What is new? Mayor up there cooking? All right?
Speaker 6: Next?
Speaker 3: All right, we bike. Now Baltimore.
Speaker 4: I don't know if you know this, which I love
Speaker 4: about it, and of course you probably don't know about it.
Speaker 3: Because a black man did this.
Speaker 4: Baltimore's homicide rate has fallen forty percent. Now, Baltimore, you
Speaker 4: understand this is where the wire took place. Don't get
Speaker 4: me wrong about Baltimore. Baltimore active murder capital of a dog.
Speaker 4: Oh listen, Baltimore was active now. According to the Guardian,
Speaker 4: violent crime in America's big cities has been receiving since
Speaker 4: the pandemic for about two years, but even in comparisons
Speaker 4: Baltimore improvement is breathtaking. Fewer people have been killed in
Speaker 4: the city over the last seven months than any other
Speaker 4: particular period for fifty years. Here's the funny part. Mississippi
Speaker 4: talking about sending a National Guard up to DC. Do
Speaker 4: you help with the crime in DC? Meanwhile, Jackson, Mississippi,
Speaker 4: got a higher murder rate than DC. Right now, y'all, people,
Speaker 4: is weird. It's never been about crime. Now, back to Guardian.
Speaker 4: As of fifteen August, the running three hundred and sixty
Speaker 4: five day total for murders in Baltimore stood at one.
Speaker 3: Hundred and sixty five dead.
Speaker 4: Assuming the city remains at this pace, the murder rate
Speaker 4: will finish below thirty per ten thousand residents for the
Speaker 4: first time since nineteen eighty six. If it remains on
Speaker 4: pace since the first of January, it would have finished
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five at one hundred and forty three murders,
Speaker 4: a rate of about twenty five per one hundred thousand,
Speaker 4: the last scene in Baltimore since nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 3: Now check this out.
Speaker 4: Y'all may not remember this, but y'all remember Freddie Gray,
Speaker 4: the boy that got killed in the back of the
Speaker 4: police holding tank.
Speaker 3: See, that's what happens when you just bring into a place.
Speaker 4: It ain't about the crime though, back to the Guardian,
Speaker 4: since twenty fifteen, there has been here in Baltimore, this
Speaker 4: acknowledgment that the equity needs to be the priority.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Mayor Brown said the riots were as much about the
Speaker 4: conditions of poverty as it was about Gray's death. I
Speaker 4: hope you hearing that people losing their homes and foreclosures
Speaker 4: to water bills, for example, as they were about police brutality.
Speaker 4: But the heavy handed response to the cops to the protests,
Speaker 4: failed to hold the police accountable for misconduct, right, viscerating
Speaker 4: the relationship between the Baltimore police and the public. Baltimore
Speaker 4: State Attorney Marion Moseley laid murder.
Speaker 3: Charges on the officers.
Speaker 4: Involved in Baltimore's police union, closed ranks and response, eviscerating
Speaker 4: the relationship between the police and politicians, and serious scandals
Speaker 4: at the city Hall and the state's attorney offers, and
Speaker 4: the failure of Moseley's charges to result in convictions.
Speaker 3: Violence skyrocket.
Speaker 4: Here come this young brother, Brandon Scott, young black man. Right,
Speaker 4: he's a former city council member. Right, he's been a
Speaker 4: long observer of the violence, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: And before he became the mayor in twenty twenty, then
Speaker 4: he implemented what he's calling a comprehensive three pillar approach.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: The first pillar is called public health approach to violence. Right.
Speaker 4: The second pillar is community engagement and interagency coordination.
Speaker 3: Right. The third pillar is evaluation and accountability.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 4: So, like I said in the beginning, it starts with
Speaker 4: the community, all right. So check this out again from
Speaker 4: The Guardian against Baltimore's police budget topping a half a
Speaker 4: billion dollars, the largest police budget per capital of any
Speaker 4: large city in the USA. The political establishment gave its
Speaker 4: new millennial mayor room to experiment with fifty million dollars
Speaker 4: of Washington's money. So they took that budget that was
Speaker 4: a half a billion, gave him fifty million, right, And
Speaker 4: since Trust was like solo, the first step was to
Speaker 4: get everybody aboard. So he took that money the cops,
Speaker 4: the hospitals, the jails, the school the social services, the
Speaker 4: state Department, the Feds, and he appointed this dude named
Speaker 4: Richard Worley Oh who is the city police commissioner in
Speaker 4: June twenty twenty three. Wesley was a lifelong Baltimore officer,
Speaker 4: picked in part to bring the rank and file in
Speaker 4: line with Scott's anti violence program. Scott emphasizes partnerships as
Speaker 4: an important part of the process. Now, he took other
Speaker 4: federal grants, and he gave the money to the people
Speaker 4: that actually do the services.
Speaker 3: He ain't just keeping for them.
Speaker 4: Now here's the thing cuts my mouth to say it,
Speaker 4: But if you are going to stop violence in the
Speaker 4: situation that we live in, the cops got to be involved.
Speaker 4: Because most of the time, the cops are the problem.
Speaker 4: It's always punishment in prison with them. They only come
Speaker 4: with a stick when something already happened. So you got
Speaker 4: to get them on the table, and you got to
Speaker 4: get them at the table with somebody that's gonna be
Speaker 4: willing to be held accountable.
Speaker 3: And remember that's pillar three.
Speaker 4: Now now far being for me because I don't live
Speaker 4: in Baltimore.
Speaker 3: Would I ever shill for no mayor like this.
Speaker 4: I'm just telling you what the data say is and
Speaker 4: I got family in Baltimore. Now, what Scott said is
Speaker 4: again we focus on the individuals and groups that are
Speaker 4: most likely to be the victim or perpetuator of violence.
Speaker 3: We go to them. Listen, they knock on doors.
Speaker 4: There's a social worker that comes to the door with
Speaker 4: a letter from the mayor that says, yo, you're trying
Speaker 4: to be a part of this, and they're only targeting kids,
Speaker 4: are families that they know got low poverty rates and
Speaker 4: high chances of crime. You looking for the people who
Speaker 4: are most likely gonna fall a victim, to perpetuating it
Speaker 4: or receive you get because remember how we started this
Speaker 4: whole thing before you think we don't care about crime,
Speaker 4: we're the ones that's happening too, so, he says. Quote
Speaker 4: Curtis Palomero, who runs the youth violence prevention nonprofit RAKKA
Speaker 4: in Baltimore, says, we're talking about young people with the
Speaker 4: elevated risk. We're not talking about the young person that
Speaker 4: says FU to his teacher or tells his mom and
Speaker 4: dad or grandpa he don't want to do X y Z.
Speaker 4: We're talking about kids who have literally probably have two tracks,
Speaker 4: jail and death. He knocks on the door while the
Speaker 4: cop is carrying met the mayor's letter, and as often
Speaker 4: as not he has to knock on a dozen doors
Speaker 4: before he gets a chance. Why cause niggas don't trust
Speaker 4: the cops right, Why would they? But since there's no
Speaker 4: single thing that is preventative, trust must be built. Right
Speaker 4: moving on in this article, there are two types of
Speaker 4: people that are most vulnerable, nasays, the people in their
Speaker 4: early twenties who are feuding over trivial matters someone looked
Speaker 4: at me wrong, somebody bumped in as somebody right, or
Speaker 4: other people who are in the drug game more around.
Speaker 4: The violence that has to do with other criminal enterprises
Speaker 4: are so much more calculated. Critically, it's not every young
Speaker 4: person with Instagram beef, and not every stand down neighborhood
Speaker 4: street dealer that rises to their attention. The risk factors
Speaker 4: creates a reasonable, articulatable, illegally defensible basis for contact, which
Speaker 4: means you're not being hunted by the cops.
Speaker 3: Do you understand the piece I would have felt hit.
Speaker 4: I known that since I wasn't involved in none of
Speaker 4: this shit, they may not be coming up to me.
Speaker 4: You've already calmed my nervous system down right. There's another
Speaker 4: story about a young man who was recovering after a
Speaker 4: gunshot and in this life coach Nigga from a youth
Speaker 4: advocate program approached him and Jalen said, this is This
Speaker 4: man said, he just had been in the wrong part
Speaker 4: of West Baltimore at the wrong time. Now, most of
Speaker 4: us who grew up like this, that's true. He wasn't
Speaker 4: especially receptive to this first life life coach at all.
Speaker 3: He said, I thought there was a catch.
Speaker 4: I thought I'd have to pay them back in the future,
Speaker 4: because when the police do it to you, that's exactly
Speaker 4: what it is.
Speaker 3: You got to pay them back later.
Speaker 4: But this person is funded by the city to just
Speaker 4: be a life coach, I ain't asking you to snitch
Speaker 4: on nobody. I ain't asking you to make yourself put
Speaker 4: yourself in danger. Outside is somebody who understands what it's
Speaker 4: like to live out here. This life coach says, it's
Speaker 4: about follow up. Today, they might say get the fuck
Speaker 4: out of here tomorrow. They might be wanting some services.
Speaker 4: It might be something tragic that happens and they need change.
Speaker 4: Like I said, my mother's not smiling no more. I
Speaker 4: need a way to pay my mama's life bill. Can
Speaker 4: you help me with that? Here's what's crazy. Yes, I
Speaker 4: can help you with that. We have services. Why because
Speaker 4: I'm talking to the other departments. Right on the law side,
Speaker 4: here's the prevention. They dismissed thirty four percent of non
Speaker 4: violent charge. I was a non violet offender. It was graffiti.
Speaker 4: Just make me pay the fine, Like it's fine. I
Speaker 4: gotta pay the fine. I don't care. Right, you have
Speaker 4: like a nickel bag of weed in your pocket. You
Speaker 4: looking at five years. The shit is not working. That's
Speaker 4: over policing. But if the district attorney look at you
Speaker 4: and say, nigga's some weed man, get the fuck out
Speaker 4: of here. Go take care of your mama. Matter of fact,
Speaker 4: I want you to talk to this brother over here.
Speaker 4: You're gonna help get your plumber's license. Oh so there's
Speaker 4: job placement, right. There's all that, and then finally evaluation. Listen,
Speaker 4: you got a carrying adult, you got services available to you,
Speaker 4: and you know if somebody in this program, if any
Speaker 4: of these law enforcement, these city people act the fuck up,
Speaker 4: there are consequences.
Speaker 3: That is pillar three. I'm gonna link all this stuff
Speaker 3: to you.
Speaker 4: There's a four year evaluation, and you will get fucking fired.
Speaker 4: If I know that if you treat me right, something
Speaker 4: gonna happen to you. I might think a little. Listen,
Speaker 4: the heat stopped working, so my heat start working. But
Speaker 4: if my stomach is full, and the bills are paid,
Speaker 4: and there's after school programs that go to and I
Speaker 4: know these old people around me are gonna trust me
Speaker 4: when I tell them stuff. When I'm dealing with situations
Speaker 4: that may or may not be out of my control,
Speaker 4: when I got big homies pressing me to do this,
Speaker 4: and there's somebody I could trust that I could talk
Speaker 4: to that's not gonna turn me into a snitch, because
Speaker 4: you ain't telling the cops just to get them to
Speaker 4: give me information about a crime that happened over there.
Speaker 4: That's not what's happening right now. You are trying to
Speaker 4: prevent the violence. You're not trying to catch a criminal.
Speaker 4: You're trying to prevent criminality, and it's at a fifty
Speaker 4: year low. But sure, go and send the National Guard.
Speaker 4: Now listen. Obviously this ain't the system. I won't, but
Speaker 4: it's the system we got.
Speaker 3: This is not ideal.
Speaker 4: You would never see me shill for no police department
Speaker 4: or mayor, but cities like Philly in Baltimore are proven. Nigga,
Speaker 4: if you just care and you spend money on trusted
Speaker 4: sources and provide resources, the crime it drops itself. Seems
Speaker 4: so simple. But you know what do we know? We're
Speaker 4: just black people and all this tells me what we
Speaker 4: already knew. It was never about crime, ever, because there's
Speaker 4: research that shows what actually works in reducing crime.
Speaker 3: What this about? You just think we're you and you're
Speaker 3: a white supremacist.
Speaker 4: You just want a white world and you think it's
Speaker 4: cool to have military in our streets.
Speaker 3: Don't get me wrong, you didn't invent that. You was
Speaker 3: in Trump.
Speaker 4: You know how I know you ain't invent that because
Speaker 4: there's an amendment in the Constitution.
Speaker 3: That says that we don't want to.
Speaker 4: Live in a world where the military is on every corner,
Speaker 4: but apparently you do.
Speaker 3: It's clearly not about crime.
Speaker 1: Welcome to it could happen here a podcast about a
Speaker 1: world on fire and how to put it out. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, Nia Wong. The world is fucked. It's the
Speaker 1: one thing everyone agrees on in the vacuum of a
Speaker 1: defeated Democratic Party and a hideously unpopular fascist takeover that
Speaker 1: is nevertheless on the march ideologies VI for the mantle
Speaker 1: of resistance to the fascist purge, Sir on mom Donnie's
Speaker 1: victory in New York represents a resurgent social democracy in
Speaker 1: the streets. Everyone from the roles to communists to anarchists
Speaker 1: are fighting against ice and the National Guard occupations. To
Speaker 1: get our bearings in the swirling vortex of ideology, let
Speaker 1: us check in slightly further to the right, but still
Speaker 1: firmly in the grounds of liberalism, on a new movement
Speaker 1: called abundance. What is abundance? Brust into Prominence by a
Speaker 1: book in March twenty twenty five simply called Abundance by
Speaker 1: liberal stalwart Asracline and Derek Thompson, who was well known
Speaker 1: futures people like Matthew and Glycias. They argue that growth
Speaker 1: is good. They argue we should make more things. They
Speaker 1: argue we should have bold visions of the future with
Speaker 1: to quote Malcolm Harris's description in The Baffler, desalinated ocean
Speaker 1: water flowing from the taps, skyscraper farms, growing our food indoors,
Speaker 1: and quote star pills manufactured in space, clean air, and
Speaker 1: super fast planes. Think big, think fastest, solve problems by
Speaker 1: building more. They even have a new magazine run off
Speaker 1: of Substack called The Argument, which is supposed to be
Speaker 1: about bringing these new ideas to the left. It includes
Speaker 1: Social Democratic stalwart Matt Prunek Isn't that nice? Semaphore, and
Speaker 1: the reporting on the launch of The Argument wrote, quote
Speaker 1: many of The Argument's writers have supported or, in Thompson's case,
Speaker 1: authored The Ideas of Abundance, a recent book advocating for
Speaker 1: reforms to improve government deficiency, lower the cost of housing,
Speaker 1: and improve public transportation, among other initiatives. And those sound
Speaker 1: like good things, don't they. Let's take a look at
Speaker 1: who's funding The Argument. It's funded in part by Emergent Ventures,
Speaker 1: which was created by the Coke Brothers work can'tas Center
Speaker 1: with seed money from Peter Keel Wait what they have
Speaker 1: a conference every year? They had one in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: The twenty twenty five conference was last week. Who was
Speaker 1: speaking the Appondance Conference twenty twenty five? Speakers include Charles
Speaker 1: Lehman from the right wing Manhattan Institute, an organization founded
Speaker 1: by Ronald Reagan's director of the CIA. Well, let's hear
Speaker 1: him outs, Let's see what he thinks. Lehman advocates what
Speaker 1: he calls deportation Abundance witches his plan to make a
Speaker 1: more efficient deportation machine that could actually deport every undocumented
Speaker 1: person in the US.
Speaker 5: Wait what?
Speaker 1: This conference is also sponsored by the Koch Families organizations
Speaker 1: Stand Together. It includes speakers from the American Enterprise Institute,
Speaker 1: one of the co sponsors of the event, did another
Speaker 1: conference with special guest Kevin Roberts, the guy who wrote
Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five. Isn't this supposed to be a
Speaker 1: liberal movement?
Speaker 7: Oh no, what's coming here?
Speaker 1: Can Abundance really be funded by all these right wing
Speaker 1: billionaires and tech fascists? Oh no, as you may have
Speaker 1: guessed from the title, most of today's episode is going
Speaker 1: to be about what the people behind Abundance actually want,
Speaker 1: and it's not what you or I want. It is
Speaker 1: what Peter Teal wants, what Mark Andrieson wants, what jd
Speaker 1: Vance wants. In a sense, it is what Donald Trump wants.
Speaker 1: Because Abundance as an ideology is an attempt by the
Speaker 1: tech oligarchs to take over the left the same way
Speaker 1: they took over the right, and that makes the ideology
Speaker 1: extremely dangerous, as we are going to unfailed. This project
Speaker 1: is directly tied to many of the worst people in
Speaker 1: this country right now. It is tied to Peter Teal,
Speaker 1: It is funded by Peter Teele. It is funded by
Speaker 1: Mark Urson, who is another effectively Tea Ali, who believes
Speaker 1: in most of this, if not all, of the same
Speaker 1: things that Heel does. These ideas are normally unacceptable on
Speaker 1: the liberal left, but because Abundance is wrapped in the
Speaker 1: ideology of liberalism, because it wears the faces of liberal
Speaker 1: star warts like Ezra Kleine, it can be smuggled in
Speaker 1: in a way that leaves the left and liberalism as
Speaker 1: a whole subsceptible to broad ideological capture by the very
Speaker 1: same tech fascists we are all trying to oppose. Before
Speaker 1: we fully get into what the funders of abundance actually want,
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about what the ideology of
Speaker 1: abundance is. The very very basic ideology of abundance is
Speaker 1: that we need more things, we need to build more,
Speaker 1: and that government regulations are standing in the way of
Speaker 1: building things. Now, if this sounds suspiciously Reaganite to you,
Speaker 1: that's because, in a sense is asra client describes this
Speaker 1: as the progressive supply side economics. Now, supply side economics
Speaker 1: famously is Reagan's thing. You will note that basically everyone
Speaker 1: across the entire political spectrum, at least sort of when pressed,
Speaker 1: will agree that supply side economics simply does not work.
Speaker 1: But let's hear them out. I think another way to
Speaker 1: understand what abundance is and why it works the way
Speaker 1: that it does is to look at it in the
Speaker 1: context not of American political ideology and debates, but of
Speaker 1: Chinese political debates. Now, Chinese political debates have for most
Speaker 1: of the last decade, really decade and a half, taken
Speaker 1: the form of arguments about either increasing the size of
Speaker 1: the pie or splitting the pie more evenly. On the left,
Speaker 1: you have a case for redistribution right, for higher taxation,
Speaker 1: for higher welfare benefits, for giving people things from the
Speaker 1: states and redistributing it from rich people to the poor.
Speaker 1: On the rights, you have grown the pie which argues
Speaker 1: that instead of redistributing wealth, we should simply grow more
Speaker 1: wealth and that wealth will trickle down to everyone else. Wait,
Speaker 1: this is just Reaganism again. It's it's all Reaganism. This
Speaker 1: is This is the very frustrating thing about abundance is
Speaker 1: that when you actually go past the language they're using
Speaker 1: and you look at what they think will happen, it's
Speaker 1: just trickle down economics. Again, It's just trickled down economics,
Speaker 1: and abundance is on the right wing side of it. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, there are definitely arguments for places where we
Speaker 1: do in fact need to build more things, right, and
Speaker 1: this argument has become particularly prominent with the rise of yembiism,
Speaker 1: and like, yeah, I don't know, building more houses is good.
Speaker 1: I mean it was literally a demand of the Hungarian Revolution, right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we need more of it. But Comma, we need to
Speaker 1: be very very careful here because the way that abundance
Speaker 1: structures its arguments, and the ways that, for example, a
Speaker 1: really really vulgar version of yembiism has been deployed by
Speaker 1: these people in order to just sort of wholesale opposed
Speaker 1: government regulations. And we're not just talking about things here
Speaker 1: like eliminating zoning requirements, right. We are talking about, as
Speaker 1: we'll get into later, the people behind this movement wants
Speaker 1: to create their own city states and special economic zones
Speaker 1: where no government regulations supply. But the fundamental argument here
Speaker 1: is that lifting government restrictions on production will increase the
Speaker 1: size of the market, and because price is just supply
Speaker 1: and demand, prices will fall because there's more supply. None
Speaker 1: of this is how markets actually work. One of the
Speaker 1: crucial insights of anthropology is that markets are not simply
Speaker 1: neutral objective forces that function according to precise mathematical laws.
Speaker 1: They are socially constructed, even in neoclassical economics, by their
Speaker 1: own logic. Price is not just supply and demand. That's
Speaker 1: something that's only true in perfectly competitive markets, and perfectly
Speaker 1: competitive markets do not exist. They probably cannot exist, but
Speaker 1: they do not exist in the real world, and they
Speaker 1: do not represent something like the housing markets in the
Speaker 1: real world, markets are defined by power. Neoclassical economist attempt
Speaker 1: to explain the role of power in markets through monopoly. Right,
Speaker 1: you know, you can look at monopoly and monops Andy,
Speaker 1: there are a bunch of very different things that they
Speaker 1: think are sort of deviations of this perfect competitive market
Speaker 1: where people band together to build power and thus are
Speaker 1: able to distort what the perfect free market should be doing.
Speaker 1: And this is a feature of basically every market that
Speaker 1: actually exists. Right, There aren't perfectly competitive markets. They all
Speaker 1: have power in them, and they all have degrees of
Speaker 1: monopoly to use a sort of Marxian term in them
Speaker 1: as well. Now do you know what else has a
Speaker 1: degree of monopoly? That's right, it is the products and
Speaker 1: services that support this podcast. So what does this actually
Speaker 1: have to.
Speaker 6: Do with abundance?
Speaker 1: Long long ago, in a galaxy far far away, I
Speaker 1: explained rent on this show, and this is specifically here
Speaker 1: rent in the context of what you pay to your landlords.
Speaker 1: I promise this will circle back to this will circle
Speaker 1: back to sort of abundance the mbeism.
Speaker 8: In a second I.
Speaker 1: Attempted to explain rent by drawing on the work of
Speaker 1: the legendary Venezuelan anthropologist Fernando corneal To argue that the
Speaker 1: rent that we paid to our landlords functions similarly to
Speaker 1: oil rent. Reprice is not set by supply and demand,
Speaker 1: but instead by the social power of oil producers. Now
Speaker 1: people got very, very mad at me for this, but
Speaker 1: the long derier of history has vindicated me. In the
Speaker 1: real world, it turns out I was right. The most
Speaker 1: powerful example of this in the housing market is the
Speaker 1: case a Real Page, a service that allowed landlords to
Speaker 1: get recommendations on their pricing based on information from all
Speaker 1: the landlords who submitted their data, thus creating an algorithmic
Speaker 1: machine for price fixing. This got bad enough that even
Speaker 1: the Biden Just Department got involved. Here's from the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice's lawsuits against Real Page.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 1: Real Page acknowledged that its software is aimed at maximizing
Speaker 1: prices for landlords, referring to its products as quote driving
Speaker 1: every possible opportunity to increase price, avoiding the race to
Speaker 1: the bottom in down markets, and quote a rising tide
Speaker 1: raises all ships. A Real Page executive observed that its
Speaker 1: products help landlords avoid competing on the merits, noting quote
Speaker 1: there is a greater good in everybody succeeding versus essentially
Speaker 1: trying to compete against one another in a way that
Speaker 1: actually keeps the entire industry down. A Real Page executive
Speaker 1: explains to a landlord that using competitor data can help
Speaker 1: identify situations where a landlord may have a fifty dollars
Speaker 1: increase a seat of ten dollars increased for the day.
Speaker 1: Another landlord commented about Real Page's product, I always liked
Speaker 1: this product because your augurithms used proprietary data from other
Speaker 1: subscribers to suggest rents in terms that's classical price fixing. Now,
Speaker 1: I was derided for arguing that landlords would ban together
Speaker 1: use in the social power to prevent rents from falling
Speaker 1: even with the units sit an empty, And it turns
Speaker 1: out I was right the whole time. They were doing
Speaker 1: exactly that. It turns out, in the actual real world
Speaker 1: of the market, all of these companies on all of
Speaker 1: these landlords had found a way to ban together in
Speaker 1: order to use their social power and use the information
Speaker 1: in their possession to fix the price of rent. Here
Speaker 1: is from Reuters, drawing from yet another lawsuit, this time
Speaker 1: from the Attorney General of DC. A monthly report from W. C.
Speaker 1: Smith in twenty twenty two showed the company had increased
Speaker 1: revenues per unit by four point six to four point
Speaker 1: seven percent despite decreased occupancy levels. According to the lawsuit,
Speaker 1: so what is that saying. That is saying that the
Speaker 1: actual number of people in these apartments is decreasing, the
Speaker 1: number of apartments staying open that have no one in
Speaker 1: them is increasing, But the price is not going down,
Speaker 1: even though there's more supply, the price is still going up.
Speaker 1: Why is the price still going up? Well, well, well,
Speaker 1: the Justice Department calls this price fixing large scale collusion
Speaker 1: to disrupt the functioning of the perfectly normal competitive market.
Speaker 1: The anthropologist for Nando Coronel, as I argued before, calls
Speaker 1: it absolute rent, rent extracted by virtue of the social
Speaker 1: power of the landowner. As I wrote in that episode, quote,
Speaker 1: absolute rent does not obey the law of supply and demand.
Speaker 1: It is the product of social power, of the power
Speaker 1: of landownership itself and the organization of the landowning class.
Speaker 1: And they're backing by the state, and it's b militaries
Speaker 1: and police. And this causes economists attempting to use supply
Speaker 1: and demand to explain rent to get very very important
Speaker 1: events very wrong. Morris Aedelman, the famous oil economists, predicted
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two that the price of oil was
Speaker 1: going to collapse based on over supplying competition. Instead, it
Speaker 1: increased four hundred percent between nineteen seventy three and nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four because oil producers banned together to exercise their power,
Speaker 1: and their organization, known as OPEK, became a genuine world power.
Speaker 1: As Coroneial put it, quote, the sharp increase of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three and nineteen seventy four and oil prices did
Speaker 1: not result from a world shortage oil. It was rather
Speaker 1: the outcome of a long historical process by which OPEK nations,
Speaker 1: acting as landowners, developed a means to extract a rent
Speaker 1: on the basis of their ownership of the oil fields
Speaker 1: and absolute rent in addition to the differential rents they
Speaker 1: had collected in the past. In nineteen seventy three, a
Speaker 1: set of converging political and economic conditions helped establish their
Speaker 1: collective ability to restrict the world's supply of oil. With
Speaker 1: this power, OPECK felt entitled to set the market price
Speaker 1: of oil, thus freeing the level of rent from the
Speaker 1: previous constraints of market price. Now rent itself, absolute and
Speaker 1: differential would determine the market price of oil.
Speaker 3: What does that.
Speaker 1: Sound like, Oh, it sounds like Real Pages price fixing algorithm.
Speaker 1: Why does it sound like Real Pages price fixing algorithm.
Speaker 1: It's because in the real world, markets are not neutral
Speaker 1: institutions that operate according to neutral laws. Their institutions created
Speaker 1: and enforced by the state. Landlords can check up your
Speaker 1: rent because they wield collective power together and have the
Speaker 1: ability to use the state to drag you out of
Speaker 1: your home at gunpoint. Abundance is, to a large extent,
Speaker 1: an attempt to harness widespread discontent over the price of goods,
Speaker 1: the price of rent, the price of food, and argue
Speaker 1: that you can simply produce more and this will make
Speaker 1: all of the prices go down. As we've seen here,
Speaker 1: as long as the social power is held by the
Speaker 1: rent extractors, they can simply set their own price. None
Speaker 1: of this is addressed in abundance, and there's a simple
Speaker 1: reason for that. The people funding the abundance agenda are
Speaker 1: the very same people profiting from their social power. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about the money. I'm going to be quoting
Speaker 1: here from a report from Prospect, which is very good.
Speaker 1: The Institute for Progress IFP, which co hosted Abundance twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four and is listed as a key institutional partner
Speaker 1: by the Inclusive Abundance Initiative, has a bevy of corporate ties.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty two, IFP received one hundred and ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars from FAI and has fai's executive director on
Speaker 1: its board. Now, FAI is the Foundation for American Innovation.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read this is also an Abundance co host,
Speaker 1: which is very funny. I am going to read a
Speaker 1: quote from Kate Willett, who has also done some excellent
Speaker 1: reporting on this, and she describes how the FAI hosted
Speaker 1: another conference in twenty twenty four called rebootquote the quote.
Speaker 1: Surprise guest of the conference was Kevin Roberts, president of
Speaker 1: the Heritage Foundation in chief architect of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: Now back to the Institute for Progress. Part of what's
Speaker 1: going on here, right is that this is an increadin,
Speaker 1: you know. And what I'm trying to emphasize by how
Speaker 1: confusing this whole thing is, is that Abundance is composed
Speaker 1: of a series of think tanks and weird institutes that
Speaker 1: are all tied into a bunch of tech money. Right,
Speaker 1: keeping the acronym straight is very difficult. You do not
Speaker 1: need to hold all of them in your head. The
Speaker 1: other thing that you need to understand about this right
Speaker 1: is if you look at who is co hosting these conferences,
Speaker 1: and who was behind these books, and who was behind
Speaker 1: these media outlets, a very very clear picture starts to emerge.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go back to quoting from Prospect. One of
Speaker 1: the funders of the Institute for Progress was Emergent Ventures,
Speaker 1: which is a product of the Coke Back Mercantis Institute
Speaker 1: at George Mason University. Emergent itself was launched by a
Speaker 1: grant from Peter thel Peter Thial is a right wing
Speaker 1: billionaire with a vast influence network at the intersection of
Speaker 1: technofuturism anti democratic thought, who has called technology an alternative
Speaker 1: to democratic politics small d democratic by the way, he
Speaker 1: means the concert of democracy to quote unilaterally change the world.
Speaker 1: Vice President elect J. D. Vance is a known scion
Speaker 1: of Peter Thiel. Let's look at the Chamber of Progress,
Speaker 1: another one of the groups that is heavily involved in abundance.
Speaker 1: Chamber of Progress, which self identifies its work as part
Speaker 1: of a growing abundance policy movement, is a trade group
Speaker 1: started with Google seed money by Google alum Adam Kovakovich.
Speaker 1: Kovakovic proudly touts his college activism, leading an effort to
Speaker 1: cross a United farm Worker's picket line. The Chamber of
Speaker 1: Progress's partners red funders include A sixteen Z Circle, Coinbase, Google,
Speaker 1: Kraken Ripple, Wai Mo, and Dreesen Horowitz or A sixteen
Speaker 1: Z is, a venture capital firm heavily invested in Ai
Speaker 1: and Crypto co founder Merchandrisen believes the technology solution to
Speaker 1: every problem. He's also on Meta's board. He is also
Speaker 1: a theolite tech fascist. This is it, in some sense,
Speaker 1: a very very interesting collusion of forces. Right, we have
Speaker 1: the Koch Brothers, who are, you know, sort of the
Speaker 1: ancient libertarian right side of Republican dark money. They are,
Speaker 1: you know, the people who have traditionally funded right wing
Speaker 1: movements in the past. They are the tea party people.
Speaker 1: They are, you know, they are sort of the boogeyman
Speaker 1: under the bed for anyone who has wanted to make
Speaker 1: the world a better place for a very very long time,
Speaker 1: and they and their organizations are working with the emergent
Speaker 1: tech fascist rights you know, people like people like Mark Andreeson,
Speaker 1: people with Peter Teel, and these are the organizations that
Speaker 1: have gotten in bed together in order.
Speaker 6: To do this.
Speaker 1: Now, these people have a bunch of absolutely hideous beliefs.
Speaker 1: We're not even going to get in to the eugenics here,
Speaker 1: but like these the people funding this thing are huge eugenesis.
Speaker 1: We literally do not have time to do all of
Speaker 1: the eugenic shit associated with this, because if I were
Speaker 1: to actually do the eugenic I mean we talked about
Speaker 1: some of like Mattie and gleciass bullshit on this podcast earlier,
Speaker 1: but like if I actually went through and did this,
Speaker 1: this episode would be like twelve hours long. I am
Speaker 1: going to cover this sort of Network States peer theolite
Speaker 1: eugenics circle at some point later. That is a forthcoming episode.
Speaker 6: But yeah, for.
Speaker 1: Now, here are these ads hopefully are not eugenics.
Speaker 6: Woo.
Speaker 1: So let's get back to who I think are really
Speaker 1: the two primary villains of this story, and that is
Speaker 1: Peter Theal and Mark Entrieson, who are two of the
Speaker 1: most dangerous people in the entire world. Teal and Reason
Speaker 1: are fascists who believe the state should be a corporation
Speaker 1: run by the tech elite. They do not believe in democracy,
Speaker 1: and particularly thel has said that democracy is the enemy
Speaker 1: of freedom.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: When these people talk about running the state like a business,
Speaker 1: they mean that there should be an unaccountable fucking philosopher
Speaker 1: CEO king, and that there shouldn't be democracy. A common
Speaker 1: feature of this, and you know, the physical manifestation of
Speaker 1: this thing is an idea called the network state, and
Speaker 1: a very common theme of the founders of Abundance is
Speaker 1: their support for the network state, both as a concept
Speaker 1: and in terms of building them. So what is the
Speaker 1: network state? The network state is, to a large extent,
Speaker 1: the thing I've just been describing, Right, The version of
Speaker 1: it that they pitch is that these are like they're
Speaker 1: like opportunity zones, right, they are these like tech cities,
Speaker 1: you know that will eventually become like real states that
Speaker 1: are that are based off of special economic zones where
Speaker 1: you know, special economic zones are like the normal regulations
Speaker 1: of the state do not apply. So you can and
Speaker 1: you know, do whatever you want, right, you can we
Speaker 1: can build prosperity by having no government regulations and run
Speaker 1: everything through corporations. These network states would be again actual
Speaker 1: straight up corporations that own and control territory and run
Speaker 1: it as the state. These states are already coming into existence.
Speaker 1: Maybe the most important prospera a corporate city for profit
Speaker 1: in hont Duras that is run by a corporation, again
Speaker 1: in a special economic zone where the state does not apply.
Speaker 1: It does not have a mayor, it has somewhat appointed
Speaker 1: by the corporation who runs the city. This is happening
Speaker 1: all over the world, particularly in developing countries, where it
Speaker 1: is being pushed by all of these just absolutely demonic
Speaker 1: tech cools, and they're also being started in attempts at
Speaker 1: being started to run them in the United States. I'm
Speaker 1: going to quote here from Shanley's venture capital blog, venture
Speaker 1: Capital Status, which is a very very good resource on
Speaker 1: the network state, which will be covering more fully later,
Speaker 1: because we don't have time to do much more than
Speaker 1: a brief introduction to their ideas here. In Soleerro County, California,
Speaker 1: a cartel of venture capitalists associated with Andreas and Horowitz,
Speaker 1: which is again a mark Entrecent's firm bought up over
Speaker 1: sixty five thousand acres of rich, fertile farmland and using
Speaker 1: secretive and threatening methodologies including suing local farmers, they plan
Speaker 1: to build a city with weapons, developments and manufacturing, aerospace
Speaker 1: and robotics companies, shipbuilding homes, and schools. This network state
Speaker 1: is called California Forever. Also in California, there has been
Speaker 1: a discussion by network state operatives of taking over Presidio
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, and there is a network state planned
Speaker 1: in Somona County. Its founder is a quote former promonist
Speaker 1: venture capitalists. These are the same people funding Abundance. Here's
Speaker 1: from Kate Willet again, one of the California Forever millionaires.
Speaker 1: California Forever is again the name of the network state
Speaker 1: they want to set up by buying a bunch of
Speaker 1: land in Soledo County. One of the California Forever billionaires,
Speaker 1: Patrick Collison, the CEO of Stripe, looms large in abundance world.
Speaker 1: Along with open Philanthropy. He donated to fund a one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty million dollar Abundance grant tied to Ezra
Speaker 1: Klein's book release. Coulson is a key backer and inspiration
Speaker 1: for the Institute for Progress, the think tank which works
Speaker 1: closely with others in the Abundance network, including the Abundance
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four conference. The goal of the network state
Speaker 1: movement is to accelerate the destruction of the United States
Speaker 1: and create these corporate network states in their wake. They
Speaker 1: want the world to be composed of these networks of
Speaker 1: venture capital tech corporations, run and ruled by them by
Speaker 1: the tech elite for profit. These are the people that
Speaker 1: are funding all of the fucking movements. These are the
Speaker 1: people funding the argument. These are the people funding the
Speaker 1: Abundance Conference. These are the people that people like Ezrakline
Speaker 1: have been brought in to run cover for. These are
Speaker 1: Trump people. They are the forces behind jd Vance. They
Speaker 1: want to inflict their vision of tech fascism on the world,
Speaker 1: but they are hideously popular in power. In order to
Speaker 1: achieve their regenda, they cannot simply rely on their incredible
Speaker 1: hegemony on the right. They need you, They need your
Speaker 1: buy in. They need the support of good and kind
Speaker 1: hearted liberals who they can radicalize into TRUMPI and tech fascists.
Speaker 1: This is their opening gambit, and they've played it well,
Speaker 1: but there is still time for them to fail. There
Speaker 1: are still time for us to build a future built
Speaker 1: by us and for us, by and for each other,
Speaker 1: based on mutual aid and the benefit of all of
Speaker 1: worlds without death squads and ice, of world ruled not
Speaker 1: by corporations but by us. The fight for that world
Speaker 1: he can's here and now.
Speaker 7: Welcome to it could happen here a show about things
Speaker 7: falling apart. One such thing frequently falling apart is any
Speaker 7: notion of privacy or digital privacy. Ever, encroaching surveillance is
Speaker 7: one of the biggest global issues affecting free expression and
Speaker 7: a free press, both directly through surveillance technology but also
Speaker 7: by chilling speech. I'm Garrison Davis, and this past week,
Speaker 7: news has swept the Internet that ICE is using software
Speaker 7: from an Israeli company called Paragon, which allows ICE or
Speaker 7: DHS to secretly hack into any smartphone, break encryption, access messages,
Speaker 7: track real time location, and turn your iPhone or Android
Speaker 7: into a walking listening device, all of which sounds very
Speaker 7: scary and some of which is true, though some of
Speaker 7: these claims are exaggerated or even likely false based on
Speaker 7: what we can currently infer from published research. Due to
Speaker 7: legitimate fears, we live in a world of surveillance paranoia,
Speaker 7: which can lead to surveillance myths. This is a core
Speaker 7: function of the Panopticon. People should take ICE's new enhanced
Speaker 7: smartphone surveillance capacity seriously, but to adequately do so requires
Speaker 7: an accurate understanding of the threat model, which we will
Speaker 7: get into later this episode with some help from the
Speaker 7: Electronic Frontier Foundation. But first let's address the news where
Speaker 7: the aspect of this story what has actually changed recently?
Speaker 7: DHS first contracted with the US branch of Paragon in
Speaker 7: September of twenty twenty four for two million dollars, but
Speaker 7: later that October the contract was put on hold thanks
Speaker 7: to a Biden executive order restricting a government use of
Speaker 7: foreign spyware, and ever since then the contract has been
Speaker 7: frozen pending a compliance review. But then on September first,
Speaker 7: twenty twenty five. Just last week, investigative journalist Jack Paulson
Speaker 7: reported that the stop work order affecting the Paragon contract
Speaker 7: had quietly been lifted, allowing Ice to follow through on
Speaker 7: the contract and start using Paragon's spyware technology, most likely
Speaker 7: including their flagship product, Graphite. What is Graphite? Great question
Speaker 7: one that I felt underqualified to fully answer myself. So
Speaker 7: I spoke with an expert, Cooper Quentin of the digital
Speaker 7: rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation. You'll hear from him
Speaker 7: throughout the episode.
Speaker 6: My name is Cooper Clinton.
Speaker 9: I am a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Speaker 6: There I do a lot of different things.
Speaker 9: Most specifically for the purposes of this talk, I do
Speaker 9: malware research on malware that targets activists, journalists, and civil society.
Speaker 9: So Graphite is a type of spyware that is able
Speaker 9: to read your messages from your phone the same way
Speaker 9: that you or you know, maybe a cop could if
Speaker 9: they had physical access to your unlocked phone, right.
Speaker 6: That is the main capability that it has.
Speaker 9: According to the reporting published by Citizen Lab, its main
Speaker 9: job is to hook into WhatsApp and into other encrypted
Speaker 9: chat apps and just read the messages in those apps,
Speaker 9: like in the messages you've already sent and any future
Speaker 9: messages that you send.
Speaker 6: That's really it's the that's the meat of Graphite.
Speaker 7: Something that sets paragone apart from their fellow is ray
Speaker 7: Le competitors is that Paragon has marketed itself as the
Speaker 7: ethical choice for spyware. One of their early investors in
Speaker 7: Israeli firm called Red Dot wrote quote Paragon builds best
Speaker 7: in class cyber intelligence software to empower democratic countries, providing
Speaker 7: cutting edge capabilities that make the world safer unquote. On
Speaker 7: their US website, Paragon says that they are quote unquote
Speaker 7: empowering ethical cyber defense and that they provide customers with
Speaker 7: quote ethically based tools, teams, and insights to disrupt intractable
Speaker 7: threats unquote. Though they use the term cyber defense on
Speaker 7: their US site, Paragon's startup page reads quote Paragon is
Speaker 7: an offense focused cyber company using digital intelligence for smartphone
Speaker 7: and internet surveillance solutions. The company applies strict moral restrictions
Speaker 7: on itself, limiting its extraction of information from targeted devices
Speaker 7: to conversations on chat apps. Paragon works solely with police
Speaker 7: forces and intelligence agencies that meet the standards of an
Speaker 7: enlightened democracy, which includes only thirty nine countries unquote. One
Speaker 7: of Paragon's senior executives told Forbes in twenty twenty one
Speaker 7: that they would only sell their technology to governments that
Speaker 7: quote unquote abide by international norms and respect fundamental rights
Speaker 7: and freedoms, and that quote authoritarian or non democratic regimes
Speaker 7: would never be customers. Unfortunately, Paragon was not pressed on
Speaker 7: what their definition of authoritarian regimes includes. In recent reporting,
Speaker 7: there's been a lot of misconceptions about the capabilities of
Speaker 7: Paragon's main product, Graphite. The Guardian wrote, quote By essentially
Speaker 7: taking control of the mobile phone, ice can not only
Speaker 7: track in individuals whereabouts, read their messages, look at their photographs,
Speaker 7: but also open and read information held on encrypted applications
Speaker 7: like WhatsApp or signal. Spyware like Graphite can also be
Speaker 7: used as a listening device through manipulation of the phone's
Speaker 7: recorder unquote. But research into Graphite by the surveillance watchdog
Speaker 7: group Citizen Lab has not indicated that graph Fight has
Speaker 7: all these capabilities or tries to quote unquote take control
Speaker 7: of the entire device. But other tech journalists have since
Speaker 7: parroted The Guardian's unfounded claims that Graphight fully takes over
Speaker 7: a phone and can record audio through the microphone.
Speaker 9: This is actually less full featured than other spyware we've
Speaker 9: seen in the past, like NSL groups, Pegasus spyware. Other
Speaker 9: types of spyware that I've seen tend to have a
Speaker 9: lot more capabilities. Right, they have the capability of like
Speaker 9: turning on GPS location tracking, the capability to turn on
Speaker 9: a hot.
Speaker 6: Mic, to do all these other things.
Speaker 9: And this seems as far as as far as Citizen
Speaker 9: Lab has reported to not be present within the graphie
Speaker 9: maware and I think this is because Paragon has presented
Speaker 9: themselves as kind of being the quote unquote responsible malware
Speaker 9: manufacturer rate and they're like like trying to minimize the
Speaker 9: amount of data they collect. It doesn't mean they couldn't
Speaker 9: add this stuff in the future, but that's the gist
Speaker 9: of it. It's actually, you know, kind of a very
Speaker 9: stripped down malwur. I don't want to minimize like how
Speaker 9: impactful it would be for this mawur to get all
Speaker 9: of your messages, right, Like that could have a huge
Speaker 9: impact for people. But we don't need to make up
Speaker 9: capabilities that our adversary has, especially under fascism, right, like
Speaker 9: we can we can just work with the capabilities that
Speaker 9: we know they have.
Speaker 7: A lot of reporting and discussion of graphite and Paragon
Speaker 7: frame it as an equivalent to nsoss by where Pegasus,
Speaker 7: which has been banned in the United States for four years.
Speaker 7: Pegasus seeks to completely hijack the target device more broadly,
Speaker 7: similar to guardians claims about graphite, but by forcing this comparison,
Speaker 7: people might be inadvertently boosting Paragon's brand with free marketing
Speaker 7: by making the product ought to be something that I'm
Speaker 7: sure Paragon would like to have people think it is,
Speaker 7: but doesn't actually equate their realistic threat model, similar to
Speaker 7: how predictions of an evil super intelligent AI actually currently
Speaker 7: serve to boost the stock price of AI companies.
Speaker 9: I think a lot of people are doing the work
Speaker 9: for these companies that are aligning themselves with fascism, right,
Speaker 9: And I don't think it's a great trend actually, Right,
Speaker 9: Like people are assuming that you know, Palenteer is sort
Speaker 9: of watching everything, right, and it really Palenteer is just
Speaker 9: like fancy visual graphing software essentially, right, Like the danger
Speaker 9: of Palenteer is combining these two government databases, right, this
Speaker 9: malware the GRAPHI maware, right, Like, yeah, it's it's not good,
Speaker 9: but you know it's not magical, right, it's not omniscient.
Speaker 9: It's not able to you know, I don't know, go
Speaker 9: eat the fridge out of your food and you know,
Speaker 9: beat up your dad or something. You know.
Speaker 7: Well, now we're talking now, now that's a good app.
Speaker 9: If only, if only tech bros could solve such social problems.
Speaker 7: No, no, they would never no.
Speaker 9: But yeah, you know it's not it's not a magical right,
Speaker 9: and we don't need to do their work for them, right,
Speaker 9: We don't need to do their myth making for them.
Speaker 10: Right.
Speaker 6: A bigger threat to the majority.
Speaker 9: Of people in the US is getting your phone seized
Speaker 9: by the cops.
Speaker 6: Right, totally.
Speaker 9: There's nothing this maur can do, according to public reports,
Speaker 9: at least that the cops can't do if they get
Speaker 9: hold of your unlocked phone.
Speaker 7: Right. Having faced idea or fordit pass code is much
Speaker 7: more dangerous to your digital security. Yes, as an average person,
Speaker 7: even as it like an anaged person, like going to
Speaker 7: a protest.
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 9: You know, Celebrate, which is the machine that police plug
Speaker 9: your phone into to make a copy of all the
Speaker 9: data on it, is much more dangerous to the.
Speaker 6: Average American than the paragont is. They're much more likely
Speaker 6: to encounter that.
Speaker 7: This is more of a niche gripe, but one that's
Speaker 7: still important. There's been claims that quote ice can now
Speaker 7: hack any phone and break encryption, but graphite doesn't actually
Speaker 7: a quote unquote break encryption. It's not going after the
Speaker 7: encryption on Signal or WhatsApp. Instead, Paragon tries to circumvent
Speaker 7: end to end encryption by trying to gain access to
Speaker 7: content on a target device once it's been unencrypted by
Speaker 7: an application like WhatsApp for the user to read. Similar
Speaker 7: to how if you have push notifications on for an
Speaker 7: application like Signal. If the police seese your phone and
Speaker 7: push notifications display messages from Signal, that doesn't mean the
Speaker 7: police have quote unquote broken signals encryption. Now, in order
Speaker 7: for Graphite to extract messages from your phone, it needs
Speaker 7: to get onto your phone in the first place. Graphite
Speaker 7: is just the implanted code that can read and extract
Speaker 7: your messages. First, it needs to get onto your phone
Speaker 7: via what's called an exploit, which is usually a message
Speaker 7: sent to a phone number or a WhatsApp account that
Speaker 7: attacks a vulnerability in your phone's code to gain permissions
Speaker 7: to load the Graphite onto the messaging apps. Graphite and
Speaker 7: the exploit are two separate programs that work together, but
Speaker 7: exploits need to be frequently changed to keep up with
Speaker 7: software security updates, and that's expensive. You need different exploits
Speaker 7: for Android and iOS Paragon has been using zero click exploits,
Speaker 7: meaning the owner of the phone doesn't have to manually
Speaker 7: click a link or intentionally download a file for the
Speaker 7: exploit to try to gain permissions on the device. You
Speaker 7: don't have to click or do anything. You just have
Speaker 7: to receive the message and then the spyware gets to work,
Speaker 7: which is very scary. But this technology cannot be deployed
Speaker 7: on mass because of how expensive and specific it needs
Speaker 7: to be in order to work.
Speaker 9: The other thing that I think is missing a lot
Speaker 9: from the conversation about Graphite in particular.
Speaker 6: Is that the malware is just the program.
Speaker 9: That runs when it gets on your phone, and first
Speaker 9: before they can install Graphite, they have to get onto
Speaker 9: your phone through some sort of exploit. If your phone
Speaker 9: is up to date and fully patched, this will have
Speaker 9: to be as zero day exploit, which means it's an
Speaker 9: exploit that has had zero days for Apple or Google
Speaker 9: or whoever to fix it because it is unknown to them.
Speaker 9: And these exploits cost millions of dollars right now. Paragon
Speaker 9: is not going to pay that millions of dollars for
Speaker 9: each person they're exploiting, but there is a large per
Speaker 9: person cost to ice for each person they're going to exploit,
Speaker 9: because Paragon doesn't want to blow their zero day, which
Speaker 9: costs them millions of dollars to either buy or develop themselves.
Speaker 7: Welcome back. I'd like to get into a little bit
Speaker 7: of Paragon's backstory and how they've grown as a company.
Speaker 7: Farragon was founded in twenty nineteen by former Israeli Prime
Speaker 7: Minister A hood Brock and A hood Schnorsen, a former
Speaker 7: commander of the IDF's cyber warfare unit, basically Israel's equivalent
Speaker 7: of the NSA called Unit eight two hundred three. Other
Speaker 7: Paragon co founders are also ex Israeli intelligence. The startup
Speaker 7: got early financing from a Tel Aviv investment fund called
Speaker 7: Red Dot Capital. The Paragon also received backing from American
Speaker 7: venture capital. In twenty twenty one, Forbes reported that the
Speaker 7: Boston based Battery Ventures had invested between five to ten
Speaker 7: million in Paragon. Bloomberg Capital has also supported the company.
Speaker 7: In twenty twenty two, Paragon launched a US subsidiary and
Speaker 7: started recruiting former US Feds to help break into the
Speaker 7: American market. The New York Times reported that the DEA
Speaker 7: has used graphite as far back as twenty twenty two.
Speaker 7: Former CIA assistant director John Finbar Fleming became the exis
Speaker 7: executive chairman of Paragon US in January of twenty twenty four,
Speaker 7: according to his LinkedIn. In December of twenty twenty four,
Speaker 7: Paragon was acquired by AE Industrial Partners for nine hundred
Speaker 7: million dollars. AE Industrial Partners is a Florida based private
Speaker 7: equity fund with a specialized security portfolio. Once they bought
Speaker 7: Paragon emerged with another AE asset, the cybersecurity company red Lattice.
Speaker 7: Back in twenty twenty one, Paragon had about fifty employees.
Speaker 7: Now it has over five hundred. In June of twenty
Speaker 7: twenty five, they were hiring one hundred and fifty more.
Speaker 7: Just a week ago, executive chairman John Finbar Fleming shared
Speaker 7: a recruitment post that red Lattice was hiring quote emerging
Speaker 7: and offensive cyber engineers unquote. Next, let's discuss the biggest
Speaker 7: case study of graphite being deployed that we know of.
Speaker 7: On January thirty first, twenty twenty five, Meta, this encrypted
Speaker 7: messaging app WhatsApp, sent a notification to ninety accounts that
Speaker 7: their smartphones were suspected of being targeted by spyware, which
Speaker 7: has since been traced to the Paragon product Graphite. People
Speaker 7: targeted were journalists, human rights activists, and members of civil
Speaker 7: society across Europe and the Mediterranean, but primarily based out
Speaker 7: of Italy. This was a zero day and zero click exploit,
Speaker 7: meaning it both attacked of previously unknown vulnerability and required
Speaker 7: zero user interaction to infect the device. At first, the
Speaker 7: Italian government denied knowledge, but Paragon canceled two contracts with
Speaker 7: customers in Italy and a parliamentary oversight committee later confirmed
Speaker 7: the Italian government was using Paragon technology for spyware attacks
Speaker 7: against c migration activists. One thing that's interesting to me
Speaker 7: is that we talk about this technology is being very expensive,
Speaker 7: verily individual. They have to individually target you. But then
Speaker 7: you see ninety people on WhatsApp and you're like, that's
Speaker 7: that's a lot of people can talk about how this
Speaker 7: attack was like structured and what we've learned from it.
Speaker 9: For sure, ninety people is a lot of people for
Speaker 9: such a targeted attack, although it's you know, in terms
Speaker 9: of most malware, like most commercial maer, ninety people would
Speaker 9: be a very very small attack, right, Like it wouldn't
Speaker 9: be worth your time.
Speaker 6: So, you know, it depends on the scale of things.
Speaker 9: I don't know what the scale of Italian civil society is, right,
Speaker 9: but ninety people is likely, I think a small fraction
Speaker 9: of the whole of Italian civil society.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 9: But yeah, those so those people that were targeted by Paragon.
Speaker 6: The ones that we know about.
Speaker 9: You know, one was a Italian anti fascist journalist, right,
Speaker 9: I think another there were a couple of other journalists
Speaker 9: that were covering migration issues, and you know, just a
Speaker 9: sort of a large swath across Italian civil society. So
Speaker 9: the way they were targeted was on WhatsApp. They were
Speaker 9: added to a group and then they were sent a
Speaker 9: malicious PDF which they didn't even have to open, and
Speaker 9: they didn't have to approve being added to the group.
Speaker 9: But as soon as that malicious PDF was received by
Speaker 9: their WhatsApp app, but by their WhatsApp client, the WhatsApp
Speaker 9: client processed the PDF and it contained code which exploited
Speaker 9: WhatsApp and allowed Graphite to start running. So Graphie doesn't
Speaker 9: actually install anything. To get a little bit technical, Graphite
Speaker 9: only runs in memory of the phone, right, it only
Speaker 9: runs in the like temporary ram so to speak. Okay, right,
Speaker 9: So rebooting the phone would have cleared out of the
Speaker 9: graphite infection and they would have had to reinfect the person.
Speaker 6: Interesting, right in this case.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's possible that in the future Paragon will find
Speaker 9: a way to make graphite persistent. But it does make
Speaker 9: it more stealthy, It makes it harder to detect, it
Speaker 9: makes it harder to forensically analyze. For people like citizen
Speaker 9: Lab and like eff if it just runs in them sure, right,
Speaker 9: so it kind of makes sense that they would want
Speaker 9: to keep running it in memory, even though rebooting it
Speaker 9: would clear out the infection because you can just reinfect
Speaker 9: the person.
Speaker 7: Even like like developers like WhatsApp or like Apple might
Speaker 7: have a harder time, like yeah, realizing that they've been attacked.
Speaker 7: If it can get cleared out so quickly, I guess.
Speaker 9: Yeah, absolutely absolutely, And in this case WhatsApp, they'd realized
Speaker 9: they had been attacked, they quickly figured out the pattern,
Speaker 9: and you know, to their credit, warned everybody immediately. Often,
Speaker 9: the only way I think people will find out they've
Speaker 9: been you know, infected by this spywere is if WhatsApp
Speaker 9: or you know, somebody else maybe Apple warned you. That's
Speaker 9: not great, but it is, but it is better than
Speaker 9: the alternative where they just don't warn you at all.
Speaker 7: Right after the targets were notified of the spyware attack,
Speaker 7: some including journalists and migrant refugee activists in Italy, agreed
Speaker 7: to participate in a forensic analysis of Graphite by citizen Lab.
Speaker 7: They found that Paragon spyware had spread from one to
Speaker 7: at least two other apps on the device. In April
Speaker 7: of twenty twenty five, we got forensic confirmation of Graphite
Speaker 7: spyware on iPhone with a zero click exploit attacking I message.
Speaker 7: Citizen Lab was able to analyze the devices of a
Speaker 7: prominent European journalist who requested to remain anonymous, and an
Speaker 7: Italian journalist linked to the previous cluster of attacks in Italy.
Speaker 7: iPhone is slightly harder to target than your average Android,
Speaker 7: but certainly not impervious to this sort of attack, as
Speaker 7: we've seen from these examples in Europe. To date, citizen
Speaker 7: Lab has also identified suspected Paragon deployments in Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Israel,
Speaker 7: and Singapore. Though the encrypted messaging app signal is not
Speaker 7: mentioned in the citizen Lab reporting. Their analysis did find
Speaker 7: that graph Fight had the capability of going after several
Speaker 7: different messaging apps, and it's probably safe to assume that
Speaker 7: Signal would be one of the apps that Paragon would
Speaker 7: want to extract messages from. We don't have much information
Speaker 7: about this spy where targeting Signal, possibly because Signal does
Speaker 7: not have as large as an international user base compared
Speaker 7: to other apps like WhatsApp, I Message or Telegram, despite
Speaker 7: Signal being much more secure. So what can you do?
Speaker 7: Though Graphite might not be the total phone hijacking super
Speaker 7: spyware that the Guardian and others claim it to be,
Speaker 7: it still poses a significant security threat. Some basic digital
Speaker 7: security precautions apply here. Get into a habit of regular
Speaker 7: digital cleaning. Remove unnecessary content from your device, save space.
Speaker 7: Old photos can be uploaded to an external encrypted hard
Speaker 7: drive in question. If you really need years of messages
Speaker 7: stored on your phone, use an encrypted chat app like Signal,
Speaker 7: which has disappearing messages, so that there isn't a large
Speaker 7: backlog of communications that could be suddenly accessed by a
Speaker 7: hostile actor. Be very wary of cloud back They're often
Speaker 7: one of the least secure aspects of your digital life.
Speaker 7: Especially if they are unencrypted, And though it won't deter
Speaker 7: zero click exploits, it's still best practice to avoid clicking
Speaker 7: mysterious links or downloading files and photos is sent to
Speaker 7: your phone. Another tip is to regularly reboot your phone.
Speaker 7: Contrary to claims that once your phone has been targeted
Speaker 7: by graph its now compromised forever something called malware persistence,
Speaker 7: to our current knowledge, rebooting can wipe Paragon's exploits. It
Speaker 7: does not appear that Paragon spyware is at the moment
Speaker 7: reboot persistent, and it seems that rebooting would actually remove
Speaker 7: it from the phone.
Speaker 6: My reading is that rebooting it would remove.
Speaker 9: The malware from your phone until you were re exploit,
Speaker 9: which so you know, if you just reboot and you
Speaker 9: don't update, or you know, the zero day isn't out yet, right,
Speaker 9: they're just going to run the exploit again.
Speaker 11: Right.
Speaker 6: I think it's a fair bet that they're just going
Speaker 6: to run the exploit again, But it would be.
Speaker 12: Enough to get it off for that time, right, And
Speaker 12: I mean, I think as far as the mitigations, my
Speaker 12: friend recommends that people like reboot their phone every every
Speaker 12: morning when they're brushing their teeth, right, and I don't
Speaker 12: think it's a bad bit of security hygiene.
Speaker 6: If these guys are going dude, in fact.
Speaker 9: You might as well make it, you know, more of
Speaker 9: a headache for them, right, You might as well make
Speaker 9: it more costly to them, because there is going to
Speaker 9: be a charge to them for each time they have
Speaker 9: to reinfect you.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 9: But yeah, it's certainly I think overblown to say that.
Speaker 9: You know, once it's on your phone, it's on your
Speaker 9: phone forever. There's you know, you just got to, you know.
Speaker 6: Throw your a thousand dollars phone in the trash and
Speaker 6: go buy another one.
Speaker 9: Like, no, you can, you know, if you don't feel safe,
Speaker 9: just rebooting it, right, like a factory reset, that would
Speaker 9: be the next step, right, I think that would That
Speaker 9: would most likely get rid.
Speaker 6: Of any persistence mechanisms that were installed.
Speaker 9: I'm not familiar with any iOS mawer certainly that would
Speaker 9: survive a factory reset.
Speaker 7: But probably the most important thing besides using signal is
Speaker 7: to keep your phone software updated. That's the simplest and
Speaker 7: best way to make it harder for spyware like graphites
Speaker 7: to make it onto your phone in the first place.
Speaker 7: Out Of date software has many more known vulnerabilities to attack.
Speaker 7: For extra protection, enable lockdown mode on iPhone or Advanced
Speaker 7: Protection on Android.
Speaker 9: So the reason it's important to keep your phone up
Speaker 9: to date and always install the latest security updates, even
Speaker 9: if it's a pain in the ass, and I know
Speaker 9: it's a pain in the ass, is because this makes
Speaker 9: an attacker have to use zero day exploits. So, if
Speaker 9: you have an old version of the software on your phone,
Speaker 9: there are known exploits. Known exploits are you know, more
Speaker 9: or less free?
Speaker 6: Right? They are already out there, they are already burned.
Speaker 6: They do not matter, right, like the company already knows
Speaker 6: about them.
Speaker 9: An exploit loses basically all of its value as soon
Speaker 9: as you know the company knows about it and it's patched.
Speaker 6: Right, So if you.
Speaker 9: Have out of date software on your phone, if you
Speaker 9: have out of data software in a computer, it changes
Speaker 9: the entire economics of attacking. Right, It's basically free for
Speaker 9: me to exploit your phone at this point, and I
Speaker 9: you know, I will exploit it as many times as
Speaker 9: I want, and I don't care if that exploit is burned.
Speaker 9: I don't care if you find it, because again it's free, right.
Speaker 9: Zero A exploits for especially for Apple for like you know,
Speaker 9: Android pixel phones, for for Graphene, the alternative Android OS
Speaker 9: not graphite.
Speaker 6: This has been giving me real problems lately. Zero a exploits,
Speaker 6: meaning exploits that the manufacturer does not know about and
Speaker 6: has not had a chance to patch, cost millions of
Speaker 6: dollars for these platforms, and a zero click exploit where
Speaker 6: where the victim doesn't have to interact with it at all. Right,
Speaker 6: I don't have to click a link, I don't have
Speaker 6: to do something.
Speaker 9: You just send me, you know, a PDF, an infected
Speaker 9: PDF or a magic file, right or something, and my
Speaker 9: phone is infected.
Speaker 6: Those are the most expensive above all, Right, those.
Speaker 9: Those are sort of the Those are the golden ticket
Speaker 9: for malware companies, right a million, These cost million dollars
Speaker 9: And if you burn it, right, if it gets caught,
Speaker 9: like like you know what happened with WhatsApp and citizen
Speaker 9: lab in Italy, right, that's millions of dollars.
Speaker 6: Down the drain for para con.
Speaker 9: You know, they're going to pass that on to the
Speaker 9: Italian government to ice to whoever their contractors are. Right,
Speaker 9: So keeping your front up today totally changes the economics
Speaker 9: of running a malware attack against you, right, like anybody
Speaker 9: can run, you know, out of their office old you know,
Speaker 9: end day, right more than zero day malware attacks against
Speaker 9: any me, right Like, those are cheap. But if your
Speaker 9: stuff is patched, no, it's gonna it's it's It totally
Speaker 9: changes the entire game. And you've got to be doing
Speaker 9: really good work for ICE to to want to burn
Speaker 9: that much money on you.
Speaker 7: All these tips can make it considerably harder and more importantly,
Speaker 7: extremely expensive for this spy work to get onto your device.
Speaker 7: These exploits could only be deployed against individual targets, and
Speaker 7: that gets quite expensive. Just because ICE could theoretically hack
Speaker 7: your phone, that doesn't mean that your phone is necessarily
Speaker 7: at a high risk of being hacked by ICE. Who
Speaker 7: are the possible targets for graphites bywear Who is at
Speaker 7: higher risk? Journalists who report on ICE and immigration, people
Speaker 7: who work for immigration advocacy organizations, immigration lawyers, as well
Speaker 7: as high profile activists. It goes without saying that anything
Speaker 7: you do on your phone or on the Internet carries
Speaker 7: a level of inherent risk. We'll close this episode with
Speaker 7: a longer segment from my interview with Cooper discussing who's
Speaker 7: at the most risk of ICE using Paragon software and
Speaker 7: more of Cooper's recommended surveillance mitigation practices. This is not
Speaker 7: something that can be deployed at a protest and sweep
Speaker 7: up you know, thousands of people. This does go after
Speaker 7: like individuals because of its cost and the way that
Speaker 7: it needs to be deployed. Yeah, who are the people
Speaker 7: that you would say are most at risk of this?
Speaker 3: Like is this here like your.
Speaker 7: Local like you know, food not bombs organizer, or like
Speaker 7: an immigration lawyer?
Speaker 6: Like? Right?
Speaker 7: Who should be concerned? I guess and and take take
Speaker 7: this threat like more seriously?
Speaker 9: Definitely, I think people who should be concerned are I mean,
Speaker 9: you hit the nail on the head, right. The people
Speaker 9: that should be concerned about this are people who have
Speaker 9: you know, been a special pain in.
Speaker 6: The ass for ICE and basic heure.
Speaker 9: Right, you know, people who might be under HSI investigation. Right,
Speaker 9: people who you know have been threatened by the president
Speaker 9: or by Pam Bondi you know specifically, right, like had
Speaker 9: their name called out specifically, right, People who are you know,
Speaker 9: very loud, very active, right, like the sort of leaders
Speaker 9: what's the term tall poppies?
Speaker 11: Right?
Speaker 9: Like the people that are really have their heads sticking
Speaker 9: out right in a way that's like very public and
Speaker 9: very well known. If you have risen to the level
Speaker 9: where like Calm Homan knows your name personally, right, that
Speaker 9: makes it a pretty good chance that you know, you
Speaker 9: might become a target with this, right, Like that's that's
Speaker 9: who we're talking about.
Speaker 7: Well, and like as we've seen in Italy, like that
Speaker 7: can that can include like like anti fascist journalists, Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 7: people who work for like migrant human rights organizations, yes,
Speaker 7: high profile activists. And I think like there's a real
Speaker 7: concern with with you know, trying to comprise the phone
Speaker 7: of journalists because of how journalists like talk to sources.
Speaker 7: The journalists might have information about like other people besides
Speaker 7: the journalists on their phone, and they may be targeting
Speaker 7: through the journalists, but trying to get after other people
Speaker 7: who they're talking to. Same thing with like immigration lawyers,
Speaker 7: and like there is real concern about harm spreading from
Speaker 7: those factors. And I think that's why if you are
Speaker 7: in those sorts of like roles that like like a
Speaker 7: human rights organization, a journalist, or a lawyer, you need
Speaker 7: to be like extra careful about keeping your phone updated
Speaker 7: regularly engaging in like digital hygiene, having disappearing messages, maybe
Speaker 7: putting on lockdown mode onto your iPhone, be very ware
Speaker 7: of being added to mysterious group chats. These are just
Speaker 7: general practices that are I think worthwhile to like engage in,
Speaker 7: whether or not you're actually gonna get tuck targeted by.
Speaker 9: This, absolutely, and I want to especially single out lockdown
Speaker 9: mode there, Like, we are not aware of any infections
Speaker 9: of anymour right, Pegasus, Graphite Right, any others that have
Speaker 9: managed to successfully infect an iPhone on lockdown mode. So
Speaker 9: if you are worried about this, lockdown mode is the
Speaker 9: single most effective thing you can do to protect yourself
Speaker 9: against this mour right, is go turn on lockdown mod.
Speaker 6: If you're on Android.
Speaker 7: I think Google calls it advanced protection mode.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, advanced protection mode.
Speaker 9: So advanced Protection mode used to be not very comprehensive,
Speaker 9: and I think like with the new Android update with
Speaker 9: Android sixteen that came out, you know, I think like
Speaker 9: last week or something, it's now much more comparable to
Speaker 9: lockdown mode. So you know, I highly recommend churning that
Speaker 9: on if you're on Android.
Speaker 7: All my homies love lockdown mode.
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, that is the number one protection right.
Speaker 9: The other The other thing I strongly recommend always and
Speaker 9: I be this drum like every day is turn on
Speaker 9: disappearing messages. If you're on Signal or WhatsApp, go turn
Speaker 9: on disappearing messages, right because this is good against you
Speaker 9: know a lot of different things, right, Like this is
Speaker 9: good against celebrate as well as pigass, as well as
Speaker 9: grab me. Right, Like if the messages are gone by
Speaker 9: the time you get infected, there's no way to recover those, right,
Speaker 9: You're minimizing your footprint. Right, ye, go delete old chats
Speaker 9: right like if you if you get a second right,
Speaker 9: like we've all Google has trained us to all be
Speaker 9: digital hoarders, right and keep depending How will you are
Speaker 9: twenty years of email.
Speaker 6: Ten years whatever?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 9: Never never delete? Right, And that's don't ignore them, ignore Google.
Speaker 9: Google doesn't want you to delete things because they want
Speaker 9: to use all that data for selling you ads.
Speaker 6: Right, delete everything.
Speaker 7: I want more underwater data set.
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, exactly, delete everything. Delete your files, you know, like,
Speaker 6: get rid of those old group chats, right, get rid
Speaker 6: of those old chats that you don't need anymore.
Speaker 7: You need to be like that lawyer in death notes.
Speaker 7: Delete yes, delete.
Speaker 6: The death note referenced.
Speaker 7: Do you wanna plug Citizen Labs slash EFF and tell
Speaker 7: people where to find both your work and then also
Speaker 7: other people who are doing research into graphite And like,
Speaker 7: you know, if you've been suspected of being targeted by
Speaker 7: you know, maybe a notification how you can participate in
Speaker 7: forensic analysis to help everyone be more secure against this
Speaker 7: in the future.
Speaker 6: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 9: So one of the best ways to find out you've
Speaker 9: been targeted by state sponsor malware is to get a
Speaker 9: notification from Apple or Google or WhatsApp or some other
Speaker 9: large company that you have been targeted by state sponsored malware. Typically,
Speaker 9: these notifications don't contain much more information than we believe
Speaker 9: you've been targeted by a nation of state or by
Speaker 9: state sponsor maware. But if you do get one of
Speaker 9: those notifications, take it very seriously, you know, reach out
Speaker 9: to access now or to EFF or to Citizen Lab
Speaker 9: and let us know, right, and we will.
Speaker 6: Help figure out what's going on.
Speaker 9: Right, Like this is this is the number one indicator,
Speaker 9: right because like this malware is usually fairly stealthy, right,
Speaker 9: Like it's not actually, but you know, I don't know
Speaker 9: flashing you're infected on your screen, right, But yeah, citizen
Speaker 9: Lab is always doing amazing work. I'm a fellow there,
Speaker 9: so I get to work with them sometimes, which is
Speaker 9: very exciting. They are based out of the Monk School
Speaker 9: of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto and their
Speaker 9: website is CitizenLab dot org, where you can find a
Speaker 9: lot of really excellent research on the types of threat
Speaker 9: the target civil society.
Speaker 7: Er erm, I have citizen Lab dot c A. Oh,
Speaker 7: but I'm Canadian.
Speaker 6: You are probably correct. I can never remember.
Speaker 7: The as a Canadian. I was very I was very
Speaker 7: put off by you erasing our nation's history, of our
Speaker 7: of our coveted dot c A. We love, we love
Speaker 7: our dot c A.
Speaker 6: I am not trying to start a war with Canada.
Speaker 7: Uh well, many many people are, so.
Speaker 6: Listen, I'm firmly on the side of Canada and the
Speaker 6: war against Canada. Okay, please take me in lease.
Speaker 7: Yeah, your solidarity is a is a noted So citizen
Speaker 7: lab dot.
Speaker 6: Org actually redirection cism Lab dot c So we were
Speaker 6: both right there you go, or you were maybe more right.
Speaker 9: So yeah, citizen Law and yeah, they're they're really fantastic,
Speaker 9: A lot of really good research going on there at
Speaker 9: e FF dot org, the Electronic Frontier Foundation where US
Speaker 9: based nonprofit been around for thirty five years defending civil
Speaker 9: liberties as they intersect with technology. So a lot of
Speaker 9: a lot of free speech work, a lot of you know,
Speaker 9: privacy and Fourth Amendment work. And we also have a
Speaker 9: really excellent set of guides called the Surveillance Self Defense Guides,
Speaker 9: which are at SSD dot e FF dot.
Speaker 6: Org, which I highly recommend people go and check out.
Speaker 9: It's the most sort of evergreen guide for defending yourself online.
Speaker 9: A lot of the problem with the online security guides
Speaker 9: that they get out of date very quickly, and we
Speaker 9: have a totally whole, full time person dedicated to making
Speaker 9: sure that our guides stay up to date.
Speaker 7: I'll put a link in the description.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and we're a nonprofit.
Speaker 9: Members support a nonprofit, so you know, if you like
Speaker 9: to work, throw us a few bucks. We work for
Speaker 9: tips and yeah. Are the chief places that I'm at
Speaker 9: that I want to plug? Only other thing to plug?
Speaker 9: I guess you can follow me on social media. I'm
Speaker 9: at cooperq dot com on blue Sky and cooper q
Speaker 9: at Masto dot hackers dot town on Mastodon.
Speaker 7: Hell yeah, yeah, all right, well, thank you so much.
Speaker 7: Thank you for the work you do at a e
Speaker 7: FF and Citizen Lab.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 7: Yeah. I guess we should alwas throw away our phone
Speaker 7: since there's no way to use our phone safely anymore.
Speaker 6: I mean, throwing away our phones isn't a terrible idea.
Speaker 7: That's why I bad. You know what I could be
Speaker 7: onto something I.
Speaker 6: Think for our own sanity just in general.
Speaker 7: No, I think they're making us more connected, and I
Speaker 7: think they're making us more stable.
Speaker 9: They are making us more connected, that's for sure. In
Speaker 9: that I get five billion notifications per day, if that's
Speaker 9: what connected means.
Speaker 11: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 13: Hello everyone, and welcome to say it could happen here.
Speaker 13: My name is Dan el Kerd. I'm a writer, analyst,
Speaker 13: and researcher of Palestinian and Arab politics. I'm an associate
Speaker 13: professor of political science and a senior non resident fellow
Speaker 13: at the Arab Center Washington. What a wild time in
Speaker 13: the Middle East? Am I right? I mean not to
Speaker 13: be flippant, that's putting it mildly. Today before I recorded,
Speaker 13: Israel bombed the capital of Katar, Doha, in an assassination
Speaker 13: attempt against Tamas leadership. They bombed in a residential area
Speaker 13: in the middle of the city, surrounded by nurseries, schools, businesses,
Speaker 13: and you know people. I have a lot to say
Speaker 13: about Arab Israeli relations historically and what's happening on that
Speaker 13: front today and the sometimes shared interests of Arab regimes
Speaker 13: with the Israeli state. So stay tuned for a deep
Speaker 13: dive episode on that topic soon. Today, I want to
Speaker 13: talk about the issue of Palestinian statehood. It's been in
Speaker 13: the news quite a bit these days. A number of
Speaker 13: different countries have expressed a willingness to recognize Palestine as
Speaker 13: a state. In July, for example, France announced it would
Speaker 13: recognize Palestinian statehood, and it was soon joined by a
Speaker 13: number of other countries, Canada, Malta, Belgium, the UK. Kir Starmer,
Speaker 13: the Prime Minister of the UK, actually made it into
Speaker 13: an explicit threat. Basically, we will recognize the state of
Speaker 13: Palestine if the Israelis don't agree to a ceasefire. I'd
Speaker 13: like to underscore the absurdity of that comment for a second,
Speaker 13: but we'll get.
Speaker 7: Back to that one.
Speaker 13: For all these countries, they say that they are recognizing
Speaker 13: Palestine as a state because they desire a two state solution.
Speaker 13: Their condition for recognizing Palestine as a state also includes
Speaker 13: Hamas being completely out of the picture quote demilitarized in
Speaker 13: the language of French President Macron, as NPR reported back
Speaker 13: in August first, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Karney also said
Speaker 13: that the Palestinian authority needs to hold elections in this scenario,
Speaker 13: but one that excludes Hamas. So all of these recent
Speaker 13: announcements are coalescing around the same conditions. I guess the
Speaker 13: big deal here is that these are major powers, France
Speaker 13: and the UK who have veto power in the UN
Speaker 13: Security Council, for example. So the plan to recognize Palestinian
Speaker 13: statehood has gotten a lot of press and attention.
Speaker 6: But the thing is a one.
Speaker 13: Hundred and forty five countries already recognize Palestine as a state.
Speaker 13: Palestine was given observer status at the UN in twenty twelve,
Speaker 13: and the Palestinian authority has been working for quite some
Speaker 13: time to get more recognition internationally and to be able
Speaker 13: to use the international legal system to advocate for themselves.
Speaker 13: So what does this recognition actually mean a state that
Speaker 13: is occupied entirely by another and is currently undergoing ethnic
Speaker 13: cleansing at different levels of severity in all parts of
Speaker 13: its territories. What state is actually being recognized here? What
Speaker 13: does statehood mean in the context of occupation and ethnic cleansing.
Speaker 13: It might help to go back to the Oscilocords that
Speaker 13: were signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization the PLO, and
Speaker 13: the State of Israel. This was the first time that
Speaker 13: Israel and the Palestinians agreed to something directly. A stipulation
Speaker 13: of the OSCOLO Accords was mutual recognition, meaning Israel would
Speaker 13: recognize that the PLO was the representative of the Palestinian people,
Speaker 13: and the PLO would recognize Israel's right to exist. This
Speaker 13: was later criticized as uneven by Palsaidinian negotiators such as
Speaker 13: Hannan Ashroi, because the PLO was already internationally recognized as
Speaker 13: the representative of the Palestinian people. So her argument more
Speaker 13: recently has been they accepted Israel's control for getting recognition
Speaker 13: in return. The US ambassador to Israel at the time,
Speaker 13: Daniel Kurtzer, concurred with that assessment, saying to The New
Speaker 13: York Times that the OSCLO agreement was full of holes.
Speaker 13: The mutual recognition was asymmetrical, and that was to hurt
Speaker 13: the Palestinian negotiating position for years to come.
Speaker 7: End quote.
Speaker 13: Nevertheless, the Osclo Accords of nineteen ninety three are widely
Speaker 13: understood to be the attempt to bring about a two
Speaker 13: state solution of some kind, and it's been the framework
Speaker 13: that many international powers have paid lip service to ever since.
Speaker 13: By the way, September twenty twenty three marked the thirty
Speaker 13: year anniversary of the accords, we all know what happened
Speaker 13: October seventh, just a few days later. The thing is,
Speaker 13: the also framework didn't say two states. The Alsco Accords
Speaker 13: just said that they would continue negotiations on some eventual
Speaker 13: final framework. Now Palestinians wanted a state, of course, and
Speaker 13: the Israelis were committing to negotiations. So the Palestinians were
Speaker 13: told to start building up a sort of state, a
Speaker 13: quasi state in parts of the occupied territories, to start
Speaker 13: governing themselves in particular ways, and this was called the
Speaker 13: Palestinian National Authority. I talked about this at more length
Speaker 13: than the episode for it could happen here titled Palestine's
Speaker 13: Stolen Future. So if you're interested, you can listen to
Speaker 13: that one. The Also Accords split the occupied territories into
Speaker 13: three parts, Area A, B, and C, all of which
Speaker 13: remained under the Israeli occupation's control, but still there were
Speaker 13: some differences between them. In Area A, which is less
Speaker 13: than twenty percent of the land, that's where a lot
Speaker 13: of the urban centers are, the Palestinian Authority was allowed
Speaker 13: to function, build and run institutions of governance. So if
Speaker 13: you go to Ramalo, for example, you'll see big bil
Speaker 13: buildings with Palstinian Authority insignia. An Area B the Palstein
Speaker 13: and Authority had partial access, and an Area C, which
Speaker 13: is the majority of the territories, the Palstien Authority was
Speaker 13: and continues to not be allowed to function, But the
Speaker 13: PA did use this as an opportunity to create the
Speaker 13: basis of a state, creating ministries, beginning of parliament, writing laws,
Speaker 13: and importantly creating security forces. Throughout all this, Israel maintained
Speaker 13: military control over the entire territory, and Israeli settlements continued
Speaker 13: to expand. So what the Israeli has got out of
Speaker 13: the Also Accords was they got out of providing certain
Speaker 13: services and they let Palestinians do that for themselves. But
Speaker 13: they didn't actually seed meaningful control over any part of
Speaker 13: the territory. Now it's important to pause here. An occupying
Speaker 13: force is obligated under international law to provide services to
Speaker 13: the population it occupies and to return the land to
Speaker 13: the sovereign the occupy people as soon as possible, As
Speaker 13: the European Society of International Law notes, quote, the nineteen
Speaker 13: oh seven Haigue Regulations, the nineteen forty nine Fourth Geneva Convention,
Speaker 13: and modern body of international human rights instruments contain a
Speaker 13: number of provisions which protect the lives, property, natural resources, institutions,
Speaker 13: civil life, fundamental human rights and latent sovereignty of the
Speaker 13: people under occupation, while curbing the security powers of the
Speaker 13: occupying power to those genuinely required to safely administer the occupation.
Speaker 13: And if the occupier occupies indefinitely, then it's not really
Speaker 13: an occupation anymore, is it. Again? As the European Society
Speaker 13: of International Law notes, the concept of prolonged occupation may
Speaker 13: well become a legal guise that masks a de facto
Speaker 13: colonial exercise and defeats the transient and exceptional nature which
Speaker 13: occupations are intended to be end quote, but that is
Speaker 13: exactly what has continued before and after the Ascol Accords.
Speaker 13: The Asco Accords never ended, the occupation never gave back
Speaker 13: land to Palestinians. All it did is strip the occupier
Speaker 13: of its responsibility under the guise of working towards a
Speaker 13: two state solution. And really, anybody who has looked at
Speaker 13: what has transpired honestly would say that there has always
Speaker 13: been a mismatch between what the Israelis wanted and we're
Speaker 13: willing to give, and what the Palestinians wanted. Even to
Speaker 13: the degree of what both sides meant when they set
Speaker 13: state has always been mismatched. So I'll explain what I mean.
Speaker 13: Palestinians have always wanted a legitimate state. What does that mean. Well,
Speaker 13: a state has sovereignty, It has control over its own territory,
Speaker 13: it has the monopoly on the use of violence within
Speaker 13: its boundaries. That's the most basic definition of state sovereignty.
Speaker 13: Israel never intended for any of that. Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin,
Speaker 13: who signed the Oscio Accords, in his final address to
Speaker 13: the Kanesset before he was assassinated by a right wing Israeli,
Speaker 13: clearly stated that what was on offer for the Palestinians
Speaker 13: was something quote less than a state. Yitzak Rabin was
Speaker 13: in the Labor Party. But again, if people are being honest,
Speaker 13: this is a bipartisan position Israel. Israeli political leaders have
Speaker 13: at best offered something less than a state, and at
Speaker 13: worst offered surrender or annihilation. I'm not being hyperbolic here.
Speaker 13: Bezdals Mootrich of the Religious Zionist Party, who is now
Speaker 13: the Finance Minister, has for years actively promoted his quote
Speaker 13: decisive plan, which has become the policy of the state today.
Speaker 13: The plan proposes that one any Palestinian who was willing
Speaker 13: and able to relinquish the fulfillment of his national aspirations
Speaker 13: would be able to stay and live as an individual
Speaker 13: in the Jewish State, not as a citizen. And two,
Speaker 13: any Palestinian who is unwilling or unable to relinquish his
Speaker 13: national aspirations will receive assistance from them to immigrate to
Speaker 13: one of the Arab countries. So essentially, what he's saying
Speaker 13: is Palestinians have to either give up and be a
Speaker 13: subject or leave, surrender or transfer. The US as a
Speaker 13: supposed mediator and third party has not really straight from that.
Speaker 13: Sovereignty has always been approximated with self governance from the
Speaker 13: United States perspective. Jared Kushner, for example, in his Peace
Speaker 13: to Prosperity plan, which was the lynchpin of Donald Trump's
Speaker 13: Israel Palestine proposer back in the first Trump administration, invokes
Speaker 13: the idea of sovereignty, only to insist that it should
Speaker 13: no longer be the crux of negotiations. According to the
Speaker 13: Trump administration quote, the notion that sovereignty is a static
Speaker 13: and consistently defined term has been an unnecessary stumbling block
Speaker 13: in past negotiations, and this amorphous concept is best put
Speaker 13: aside to focus on pragmatic and operational concerns. Ironically, the
Speaker 13: liberal version of a two state solution espoused by every
Speaker 13: democratic administration, essentially envisions the same endpoint, a Palestinian entity
Speaker 13: demilitarized and subordinate to Israel's economic and security concerns. But
Speaker 13: Palestinians want a state. They want a state in the
Speaker 13: full meaning of the term, and that state has to
Speaker 13: be legitimate, not only internationally, but in the eyes of
Speaker 13: the Palestinian people. Political scientist Tanya Alberts argues that sovereignty
Speaker 13: is an identity of states. It's constituted by the norms
Speaker 13: of international society. States are recognized as sovereign if they
Speaker 13: achieve self determination for a group of people. The fact that,
Speaker 13: on rare occasions, the international system has refused to recognize
Speaker 13: certain political entities as states, specifically because they had violated
Speaker 13: the right of self determination, highlights how we now think
Speaker 13: of political authority. So, for example, the international community did
Speaker 13: not recognize Rhodesia as a state because it violated the
Speaker 13: self determination of the black majority in that country, even
Speaker 13: though white people in Rhodesia did exercise material control over
Speaker 13: that country. In other words, the state's right to sovereignty
Speaker 13: must flow from some sort of legitimacy. A state rules
Speaker 13: because society approves. This doesn't mean that every sovereign state
Speaker 13: is democratic, but simply that states derive their status from
Speaker 13: the citizens buy in, and because the state claims to
Speaker 13: represent the will of maybe a certain ethnic or civic identity,
Speaker 13: it's understood as an executor of the law enacted by
Speaker 13: the people who are sovereign. So sovereignty then should also
Speaker 13: be understood as the ability of people who consider themselves
Speaker 13: of that place to exercise control over territory and have
Speaker 13: a say in its future. Populist movements, secessionist movements, and
Speaker 13: other movements that challenge a certain state, sometimes popular sovereignty,
Speaker 13: legitimizing their assertions with reference to their historical legacy or
Speaker 13: continuity or indigenity, even in the absence of a representative state.
Speaker 13: And Palestinians are one such group. They've struggled not merely
Speaker 13: for the right to exist, but also for political control
Speaker 13: in state institutions that represent and uphold their national identity.
Speaker 13: And the legitimacy of their sovereignty claim stems not only
Speaker 13: from their long ties to the territory, but also from
Speaker 13: the fact that they have long conceived themselves as a nation,
Speaker 13: a nation that has never ceded its demand for a
Speaker 13: sovereign state with the promise of subjugation, subsistence, or integration
Speaker 13: into another state. So, to make us very clear, Palestinians
Speaker 13: want the state that is sovereign. They certainly don't mean
Speaker 13: self governance. And Palestinians, after thirty years of OSLO that
Speaker 13: has only left them worse off, certainly don't want to
Speaker 13: go back to trying the same process again. So when
Speaker 13: these countries recognize Palestine as a state as a way
Speaker 13: of pretending to pressure for the two state solution. They're
Speaker 13: not saying anything about what happens to the territories that
Speaker 13: are currently being wiped out, like literally all of Gaza
Speaker 13: and even parts of the West Bank. They're not saying
Speaker 13: anything about Israeli settlements, They're not saying anything about reparations.
Speaker 13: And because of that, some Palestinians have argued that these
Speaker 13: statehood recognition things are a cynical ploy to distract from
Speaker 13: the inaction of these countries on addressing the genocide in Gaza,
Speaker 13: basically pretending to act without actually doing anything. Palestinian analyst
Speaker 13: Main Nobani said this to NPR recently. Quote in the end,
Speaker 13: simply recognizing Palestinian statehood is a low cost option. It
Speaker 13: may placate that domestic audience demanding action, while doing very
Speaker 13: little to actually change the situation on the ground end quote.
Speaker 13: Others have argued even further that not only are these
Speaker 13: declarations of recognition a cynical ploy to distract, but they
Speaker 13: may even be a sort of trap. Legal expert and
Speaker 13: professor nouraa At and international lawyer and professor shad Haamuri
Speaker 13: wrote for Jidlia on this, which I'll link in the
Speaker 13: show notes. They argue effectively that the best thing to
Speaker 13: come out of this is a challenge maybe to the US.
Speaker 7: Quote.
Speaker 13: The greatest promise of this renewed statehood bid, the most
Speaker 13: recent push being in twenty eleven twenty twelve, is a
Speaker 13: united front to challenge US and transigent support for Israel
Speaker 13: end quote. However, they also point out that quote states
Speaker 13: do not need to recognize Palestine to end the occupation,
Speaker 13: to end the genocide and advance Palestinian self determination. They
Speaker 13: argue that states quote need decisive will to impose arms
Speaker 13: and energy embargoes and trade with an investment in Israel
Speaker 13: unseated from the UN, hold Israeli war criminals and complicit
Speaker 13: corporations accountable in their national courts, and arrest Prime Minister
Speaker 13: Benjamin Nataniehu in compliance with the ICC's arrest warrant end quote.
Speaker 13: So the bit for statehood doesn't solve problems. It only
Speaker 13: gives states the fig leaf to actually delay solving problems.
Speaker 13: On top of that, it risks empowering illegitimate and corrupt
Speaker 13: Palestinian leadership in any future negotiations. I'm talking a leadership
Speaker 13: that includes Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who eighty percent of
Speaker 13: Palestinians polled said they want him to resign and an
Speaker 13: institution like the Palestinian Authority that only fifteen percent of
Speaker 13: Palestinians are satisfied with, according to the latest polling as
Speaker 13: at the Hamorine quote. The terms of the High Level
Speaker 13: International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine,
Speaker 13: convened in New York, led by France and the Kingdom
Speaker 13: of Saudi Arabia confirm these risks. The Palestinian Authority is
Speaker 13: glorified in at least seven clauses entrusted with governing the state,
Speaker 13: effectively paving the way for a police state alongside a
Speaker 13: settler colonial entity end quote. None of the talk of
Speaker 13: recognizing Palestine amid all of these conditions and stipulations ever
Speaker 13: say anything about the power imbalance between the two parties
Speaker 13: or address the root causes of conflict now. On the
Speaker 13: other hand, political scientist Paul Post, writing for a World
Speaker 13: Politics Review, says, quote, recognition isn't just theater. Recognition is
Speaker 13: a long standing legal institution that has the important function
Speaker 13: of identifying major actors in the international system, and for policymakers,
Speaker 13: recognition is the looseness in the rules that allows them
Speaker 13: to use recognition not only to identify actors but also
Speaker 13: to express opinions about them or to secure concessions from them. So,
Speaker 13: from his perspective, these declarations of recognition are meaningful in
Speaker 13: some shape or form. Here's my take. Statehood recognition is
Speaker 13: not meaningless. In fact, it's probably dangerous in this current moment,
Speaker 13: because what it's trying to do is to cement the
Speaker 13: conflict in its place. These countries recognizing Palestine want to
Speaker 13: hurry the current Palestinian leadership into accepting a state and
Speaker 13: name only that is not sovereign. They want to force
Speaker 13: the Israelis to the table to do that, and they
Speaker 13: want these conditions to become the precedent for future negotiations.
Speaker 13: And we see signs of this in other ways. For example,
Speaker 13: the international community and regional powers pressured Palestinian President Mahmoud
Speaker 13: Abbass into changing the rules of the PLO's internal governance
Speaker 13: in order to appoint a successor because they were afraid
Speaker 13: he was going to keep over, and he appointed a
Speaker 13: very unpopular figure named sen richech as I wrote for
Speaker 13: The Guardian alongside palestiniancially and activist Pablo of ABUFOM. In
Speaker 13: May of this year. Abbas also expanded the Central Council
Speaker 13: of the PLO and appointed friendly people to it. All
Speaker 13: of this shows that the international community, in pressuring the
Speaker 13: Pastinian leadership in these directions, has no interest in democratic
Speaker 13: buy in, in actually getting the buy in of the
Speaker 13: Palestinian people, really thinking that a legitimate negotiation would ever
Speaker 13: be sustainable under these circumstances. This state of affairs, these
Speaker 13: schemes where international powers try to ignore what the Palestinian
Speaker 13: people want yet again, is the reason Palestinians don't really
Speaker 13: have any hope in any solution. In polling on one state,
Speaker 13: two states, etc. Forty seven percent prefer the two state
Speaker 13: solution based on the nineteen sixty seven borders, fifteen percent
Speaker 13: prefer confederation between the two states, and fourteen percent of
Speaker 13: Palestinians prefer the establishment of a single state with equality
Speaker 13: between the two sides. Twenty four percent of Palestinians polled
Speaker 13: said that they did not know or did not want
Speaker 13: to answer. Also, when asked about the public's support or
Speaker 13: opposition to specific political measures to break the current political deadlock,
Speaker 13: sixty eight percent of Palestinians supported joining more international organizations
Speaker 13: but still fifty percent supported resorting to unarmed popular resistance,
Speaker 13: forty six percent supported a return to armed intefaldo, and
Speaker 13: forty two percent supported the dissolution of the Palstinian authority.
Speaker 13: Twenty six percent supported abandoning the two state solution and
Speaker 13: demanding one state for Postinians and Israelis. What this sort
Speaker 13: of polling shows is that Palestinians now understand very clearly
Speaker 13: that the international system is screwing them over, international law
Speaker 13: hasn't been able to help them, and that the solutions
Speaker 13: for a two state solution being proposed with all of
Speaker 13: these conditions won't ever actually get to two states and
Speaker 13: won't give them real sovereignty. The mass protests and actions
Speaker 13: that took place in twenty twenty one Palestinian activists called
Speaker 13: this the Unity Uprising or Intefalda, showed that this has
Speaker 13: always been about sovereignty. In the unit Intofada of twenty
Speaker 13: twenty one, Palstinian activists spoke of a shared struggle against
Speaker 13: Israel's continued erasure of Palestinians. Palestinians living under Israeli rule
Speaker 13: across the country, whether they had citizenship or they didn't,
Speaker 13: rejected the old style of politics. They rejected what they
Speaker 13: saw as artificial fragmentation and they insisted instead on their
Speaker 13: national identity and shared struggle. As a result, at that time,
Speaker 13: we witnessed an extraordinary amount of organizing across the Green line,
Speaker 13: so in the territories and in Israel with Palestinian citizens
Speaker 13: of Israel, and it was a way of reclaiming Palestinian sovereignty.
Speaker 13: The same activists in groups involved in the Jerusalem neighborhood
Speaker 13: of Sheesharrah linked up with those organizing in Haifa and Umlfahim.
Speaker 13: They built on these connections to launch campaigns over and
Speaker 13: over in Massafarieta, the Knapbub and much more. Sovereignty has
Speaker 13: always been an animating demand for Palestinians since before October seventh,
Speaker 13: and that's surely on everyone's minds now that the war
Speaker 13: in Gaza has extended this long. So the takeaway here
Speaker 13: is recognition isn't the solution. Statehood may not even be
Speaker 13: the solution, at least not in the terms they're offering.
Speaker 7: Sovereignty has always.
Speaker 13: Been what the demand is and these pushes for recognition
Speaker 13: miss that point. Yet again. That's it for me. Thank
Speaker 13: you for listening to another Palestine episode, and I'll be
Speaker 13: back with more soon.
Speaker 11: Take care.
Speaker 7: This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder, our weekly
Speaker 7: newscast covering what is happening in the White House, the
Speaker 7: crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison
Speaker 7: Davis today I'm joined by Sophie Lecterman, Robert Evans, and
Speaker 7: James Stout. This episode, we are covering the week of
Speaker 7: September fourth to September eleven events.
Speaker 2: Never wait, remember what, never forget, whichever one of those
Speaker 2: were supposed to do.
Speaker 7: So we had a very big news week already, and
Speaker 7: then a very big piece of news happened yesterday when
Speaker 7: we usually record Executive Disorder, but this is Thursday. We
Speaker 7: waited a little bit to get some more information before
Speaker 7: we talk about this story, which will probably be the
Speaker 7: biggest story of the week, the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 2: So on Wednesday, September tenth, at Utah Valley University at
Speaker 2: around twelve twenty three pm Mountain time, Charlie kirk was
Speaker 2: shot during a campus event. It was a big outdoor event.
Speaker 2: The crowd, I mean, there's some good footage of elevation
Speaker 2: of the size of the crowd it was. It looked
Speaker 2: like several thousand people who had shown up to I
Speaker 2: think it did all. It seemed like largely supporters, but
Speaker 2: there was certainly a mix of supporters and protesters around. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and yeah, Kirk was shot one from a distance of
Speaker 2: I think the right now. The best estimate is around
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty yards. I mean that's precise, not accurate,
Speaker 2: because people are kind of basing it on just sort
Speaker 2: of like looking at the images and doing like that.
Speaker 7: Perhaps the satellite estimation right.
Speaker 2: Right, But that does seem credible based on what I've seen,
Speaker 2: about one hundred and fifty yards or so, Yeah, which
Speaker 2: is not long range. That's not like short range. It's
Speaker 2: like low medium range for a rifle. And they found,
Speaker 2: or at least the FBI is saying they found the rifle,
Speaker 2: and the pictures show it to be an extremely normal
Speaker 2: looking bolt action hunting rifle. Kirk was shot once in
Speaker 2: the neck. It hit his brain stem. You can kind
Speaker 2: of tell by the way his arms moved after he
Speaker 2: was shot, so he probably lost consciousness immediately and he
Speaker 2: was declared dead about two hours later at the hospital.
Speaker 2: But that's largely because that tends to be how it's handled.
Speaker 2: When somebody is shot like this, they don't like to
Speaker 2: announce their death immediately, even if they died immediately, Like
Speaker 2: that's just kind of it's best pret you want to
Speaker 2: make sure you've contacted the family and everything like that.
Speaker 2: So that's what happened.
Speaker 14: Yeah, and his case of family were present I think
Speaker 14: at the at the event.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm sure some of them, but there's yeah,
Speaker 2: like not ever like they would have probably wanted, Like
Speaker 2: I doubt his parents or whatever were all there or whatever,
Speaker 2: like even if his wife and kids were sure.
Speaker 8: Yeah, totally makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, those are the facts that we can verify.
Speaker 2: And there's actually fairly little besides this other than some
Speaker 2: time stuff that we can verify perfectly. Like they're currently
Speaker 2: saying that about eleven fifty two am Mountain time the
Speaker 2: shooter arrived near campus, because they do have some videos
Speaker 2: of the person they think was the shooter. There were
Speaker 2: at least two people who were taken into custody right
Speaker 2: after the shooting who proved not to be the guy,
Speaker 2: and I think they were just grabbing people like it
Speaker 2: did not They did not seem to be any good reason.
Speaker 2: One of them had a pellet rifle.
Speaker 7: The first guy started shouting after the shooting and I'll
Speaker 7: do it again, and this prompted him to be detained,
Speaker 7: but was later found to not be a legitimate suspect
Speaker 7: in the shooting.
Speaker 2: No, because he was right next to the shooting. Yeah,
Speaker 2: had no weapon, nothing. So I mean, those are the
Speaker 2: facts as they stand right now. The photo that has
Speaker 2: been released of the guy they think did it looks
Speaker 2: like about eighty percent of the male population of Utah
Speaker 2: clean shaven, but otherwise he looked just as nondescriptives like
Speaker 2: this dude takes his hat off, maybe shaves his head
Speaker 2: like it would not be wildly difficult for him to
Speaker 2: hide because he does not look like.
Speaker 7: Pretty greeny pictures not as clear as something like the
Speaker 7: healthcare CEO shooting.
Speaker 15: Yeah, and the FBI did offer a reward of up
Speaker 15: to one hundred thousand dollars for information.
Speaker 7: We do know that, Yeah, which points towards the usefulness
Speaker 7: of the tips they have been getting so far. Exactly.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 14: Yeah, the rightfle is for anyone interested. It looks they
Speaker 14: thought it was a mauser.
Speaker 2: I guess it didn't look like one from the photos
Speaker 2: that they released, but maybe that maybe that was yet again,
Speaker 2: not the gun, because the FBI has said a lot
Speaker 2: of things and then backtracked on it.
Speaker 14: Yeah, the New York Post has a picture of a
Speaker 14: sporterized Spanish mouser with a composite stock.
Speaker 8: Have you seen that one, Robert.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's the one I saw that. It looked like
Speaker 2: a savage to me. But is that is that a
Speaker 2: sportized eight millimeter that was rebarrel the thirty eight six?
Speaker 8: That would be my guess.
Speaker 14: The Spanish mousers the only one I'm aware of that
Speaker 14: has the bolt turned down in that way. Good idea,
Speaker 14: but that it's not a great picture. It could also
Speaker 14: be something else.
Speaker 2: Because it just looked like any hunting rifle on a
Speaker 2: store rack the photo that I saw.
Speaker 14: Yeah, Yeah, No, I think it's someone has done a
Speaker 14: sported job on it.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 14: What's somewhat interesting about that, like, other than just being adweeb,
Speaker 14: is that potentially one could acquire a gun like that
Speaker 14: without having filled out forty four to seventy three form
Speaker 14: right like an FBI background check. I know they will
Speaker 14: if they have the weapon, they will certainly be pursuing
Speaker 14: trying to trace that as one of the ways they're
Speaker 14: trying to locate the shooter. Yes, so if this person's
Speaker 14: either a relative could have acquired it before it was
Speaker 14: necessary to do a forty four to seventy three yes,
Speaker 14: or I think with curios and relics in some states,
Speaker 14: or antique weapons, you don't have to do a background check.
Speaker 2: No, and you don't have to do a background check.
Speaker 2: I mean, face to face sales are I believe legal
Speaker 2: in Utah. Yes, private, face to face sales are legal
Speaker 2: in Utah.
Speaker 7: Okay.
Speaker 2: So if this guy bought Basically, what that means is
Speaker 2: if this guy just bought a gun in cash from
Speaker 2: a dude, there's not a record of that, although said
Speaker 2: dude might come forward.
Speaker 6: Sure.
Speaker 2: That said, the fact that this is a sportized old
Speaker 2: mouser means this could be a gun that's put in
Speaker 2: the family a while that he's sportalized, in which case
Speaker 2: there's absolutely no record of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, definitely, I'm guessing.
Speaker 14: I've seen people call it a high powered rifle and
Speaker 14: stuff like, just just be aware it's kind of an
Speaker 14: old gun.
Speaker 5: It's an old gun.
Speaker 2: I mean, if it's thirty, If it is thirty at six,
Speaker 2: I would say that's a high power cartridge.
Speaker 8: No it is.
Speaker 5: That's a big round.
Speaker 8: But yeah, it's a full size rifle cartridge for sure.
Speaker 2: People hunt deer with thirty at six all the time.
Speaker 2: It's an extremely normal hunting rifle.
Speaker 14: Yeah, like probably top five most common kinds of rifle
Speaker 14: for someone to have in this country.
Speaker 2: And that was bolt action hunting rifle was my assumption
Speaker 2: as soon as I saw the video, because the guy
Speaker 2: fired one shot, and it's relatively uncommon for people who
Speaker 2: are shooting in mass crowded public situations like this to
Speaker 2: limit themselves to a single round, which it just suggests
Speaker 2: number one, like a bolt action, which I also thought
Speaker 2: was likely because they didn't leave any amo behind. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and if he was firing something like an AR, those
Speaker 2: can fling brass so widely that you can't easily catch it,
Speaker 2: like if you're especially if you're trying to escape immediately
Speaker 2: after shooting. And yeah, I would guess. I'm seeing a
Speaker 2: lot of people online obviously conspiracy start. I'm seeing so
Speaker 2: many people say like this had to have been a hit,
Speaker 2: This was a professional, Only a.
Speaker 8: Professional could have done this.
Speaker 7: This trump distracting from Epstein. This was the massage that
Speaker 7: this was any number of unhinged theories around this event.
Speaker 2: And I will say right now as pertains the competence
Speaker 2: of the shooter, anyone who had picked up a gun
Speaker 2: for the first time couldn't have easily done this. Like
Speaker 2: I doubt this as someone who was new to firearms,
Speaker 2: but anyone who like shot a deer once or twice
Speaker 2: a year could have made this happen. Anybody who went
Speaker 2: to the range, you know, once or twice a month
Speaker 2: for a while, could have gotten competent enough to make
Speaker 2: a shot like this very easily.
Speaker 7: Very doable for like hobbyist shooters, which there are many
Speaker 7: of in the United States, and any other in Utah.
Speaker 2: I would be shocked if like less than about eighty
Speaker 2: percent of the adult male population of Utah could have
Speaker 2: made this shot.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 7: You do not need like military training, You do not
Speaker 7: need to be a veteran to make this shot.
Speaker 5: Absolutely not.
Speaker 14: And I think it's very irresponsible to see so many people,
Speaker 14: like including people who had journalists Spec eighteen like that. Like,
Speaker 14: I know that generally firearms are not covered well in
Speaker 14: the US media despite being ubiquitous here, but like in
Speaker 14: cases like this, it's okay no to no, but it's
Speaker 14: better to be quiet if you don't know.
Speaker 2: Yes, the other thing I guess we should get into
Speaker 2: is in terms of the escape and what we know.
Speaker 2: This is also not something that necessitates fucking Navy seal training, right, Like, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you're a white, clean cut guy in fucking Salt Lake City.
Speaker 2: If you have a bag that you can hide your
Speaker 2: gun in and you get down, maybe throw on a
Speaker 2: different jacket or something like that over your shirt or
Speaker 2: change shirts, walk away, get to your car, drive off.
Speaker 2: Very hard for them to track you. Salt Lake City's
Speaker 2: not New York. It's not blanketed in cameras, not like
Speaker 2: New York. There's not a massive police presence for this rally,
Speaker 2: and there certainly wasn't a massive police presence doing concentric
Speaker 2: circles around the rally. This was not like a fucking
Speaker 2: the President's in town and the Secret Service is walking
Speaker 2: everything down for two miles.
Speaker 7: And Charlie's own security tends to stay close to him
Speaker 7: at the event. They're not set up with giant perimeters.
Speaker 2: No, because none of them expected something like this.
Speaker 14: Yeah, I'm sure that Charlie Kirk has received threats before,
Speaker 14: But yes, I mean, there's only so much a private
Speaker 14: individual can do.
Speaker 7: Right In these situations, he often wears a bulletproof vest.
Speaker 8: Yes, a really Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's only so much a private individual can do,
Speaker 2: And there's only so much you can do if you're
Speaker 2: holding an event outside, Yeah, like to stop somebody who's
Speaker 2: got us a scoped rifle from getting on top of
Speaker 2: a roof, right Like. I'm sure his family is firing
Speaker 2: their current security right now, obviously, But I really don't
Speaker 2: know what they could have done, like what his personal
Speaker 2: security could realistically have done, other than say, don't do
Speaker 2: an event outside, Charlie.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: A few other notes that we should touch on. On
Speaker 7: Thursday morning, some unverified information related to the ongoing investigation
Speaker 7: notes leaked online through fellow campus to be Stephen Crowder.
Speaker 7: Stephen Crowder shared an internal memo which contained unverified information,
Speaker 7: which reads in part quote atf another law enforcement located
Speaker 7: an older model imported Mouser thirty odd six caliber bolt
Speaker 7: action rifle wrapped in a towel in a wooded area
Speaker 7: near the campus. The location of the fire room appears
Speaker 7: to match the suspect's route of travel. The spent cartridge
Speaker 7: was still chambered, in addition to three unspent rounds in
Speaker 7: the top Fed magazine. All cartridges have engraved wording on
Speaker 7: them expressing transgender and anti fascist ideology unquote. So this
Speaker 7: claim linking the shooting to transgender and quote unquote anti
Speaker 7: fascist ideology, whatever that means, spread around the internet like
Speaker 7: wild as expected, though a few hours later, The New
Speaker 7: York Times reported quote according to a preliminary internal report
Speaker 7: circulated inside the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives,
Speaker 7: federal and local officials recovered ammunition with the show tutor's
Speaker 7: rifle that appeared to be engrave with statements expressing transgender
Speaker 7: and anti fascist ideology. But a senior law enforcement official
Speaker 7: with direct knowledge of the investigation cautioned that report had
Speaker 7: not been verified by ATF analysts, did not match other
Speaker 7: summaries of the evidence, and might turn out to have
Speaker 7: been misread or misinterpreted. In fast moving investigations, such status
Speaker 7: reports are not made public because they often contain a
Speaker 7: mixture of accurate and inaccurate information unquote.
Speaker 5: Yes and again.
Speaker 2: When that person with the pellet rifle was arrested, Cash Betel,
Speaker 2: director of the FBI, posted on Twitter, we have the
Speaker 2: man who killed Charlie Kirk. And then had to post
Speaker 2: like an hour later. Nope, which is not a thing
Speaker 2: you saw with previous directors of the FBI. For a
Speaker 2: good reason.
Speaker 14: Yeah, like that their handling of this has been pretty unorphodox.
Speaker 2: No, And I can see why a fucking Stephen Crowder
Speaker 2: fan in the ATF would want to get that out
Speaker 2: immediately totally actually, because he probably knew at some point
Speaker 2: that's going to get corrected. But what matters is it
Speaker 2: gets out for some degree of time.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and then that bakes into the reality of a
Speaker 7: certain number of people forever.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right, And that's what matters. Whether or not it's true.
Speaker 2: We don't know yet. Is it true or not?
Speaker 5: Right? We simply don't know.
Speaker 7: Heyesus Garrison. This is just a short update. On Thursday evening,
Speaker 7: law Enforcement gave a press conference where Utah Governor Spencer
Speaker 7: Cox cautioned against quote unquote a tremendous amount of disinformation
Speaker 7: circulating online about the killing of Charlie Kirk and specifically
Speaker 7: cited boughts from China and Russia which were encouraging violence
Speaker 7: and instilling disinformation into discourse around the shooting. Now, while
Speaker 7: there certainly have been many on the left who have
Speaker 7: been joking or even celebrating this shooting.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, lots of people.
Speaker 7: Rhetoric from the right has been similarly violent, with calls
Speaker 7: to do mass violence or purge the Democrats or people
Speaker 7: on the left. I'm going to play video of the
Speaker 7: White House released late Wednesday night of Trump giving a
Speaker 7: statement on the shooting.
Speaker 10: It's a long past time for all Americans and the
Speaker 10: media to confront the fact that violence and murder are
Speaker 10: the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree,
Speaker 10: day after day, year after year, in the most hateful
Speaker 10: and despicable way possible. For years, those on the radical
Speaker 10: left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and
Speaker 10: the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of
Speaker 10: rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing
Speaker 10: in our country today, and it must stop right now.
Speaker 10: My administration will find each and every one of those
Speaker 10: who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence
Speaker 10: and voting, the organizations that funded and support it, as
Speaker 10: well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials,
Speaker 10: and everyone else who.
Speaker 6: Brings order to our country.
Speaker 10: From the attack on my life, in Butler, Pennsylvania last year,
Speaker 10: which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on
Speaker 10: ICE agents, to the vicious murder of a healthcare executive
Speaker 10: in the streets of New York, to the shooting of
Speaker 10: House Majority leaders Steve Scalise and three others. Radical of
Speaker 10: political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken
Speaker 10: too many lives.
Speaker 7: The Trump assassin was not left wing.
Speaker 5: Now he was a registered Republican.
Speaker 7: There's currently no indication of the political alignment of this
Speaker 7: shooter whatsoever. Just because they killed Charlie Kirk does not
Speaker 7: mean that this was a left wing ANTIFA super soldier.
Speaker 7: Charlie Kirk has had a memafied status on the Internet
Speaker 7: for the past few years, which is encouraged vitriol and
Speaker 7: threats from those on the extreme right as well as
Speaker 7: the far left.
Speaker 14: Yeah, he's particularly disliked by like the hardcore anti Semites
Speaker 14: on their right, and.
Speaker 7: The Grapers have long had fun with making threats against
Speaker 7: Charlie Kirk and the quote unquote groper war, which we
Speaker 7: don't have time to get into. But it's not just
Speaker 7: Trump's worrying statement there promising a degree of crackdown. Jesse
Speaker 7: Waters on Fox has claimed quote, We're gonna avenge Charlie's death.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 7: Here's a clip of Jesse Waters on Fox News last night.
Speaker 16: Trump gets hit in the ear, Charlie gets shot dead.
Speaker 16: They came after Kavanaugh with a rifle to his neighborhood.
Speaker 16: They went after Musk's cars. They just shot two Jews
Speaker 16: outside the embassy.
Speaker 5: Think about it.
Speaker 16: Scalice got shot, barely survived.
Speaker 6: It's happening.
Speaker 16: We've got transshooters, the got Riots and la They are
Speaker 16: at war with us. Whether we want to accept it
Speaker 16: or not, they are at war with us. What are
Speaker 16: we going to do about it? How much political violence
Speaker 16: are we going to tolerate? And that's the question we're
Speaker 16: just going to have to ask ourselves now. Charlie would
Speaker 16: want us to put as much pressure on these people
Speaker 16: as possible.
Speaker 3: Dana nailed it.
Speaker 16: This is unacceptable and has to stop, and it has
Speaker 16: to stop now.
Speaker 6: And everybody's accountable.
Speaker 16: And we're watching what they're saying on television and who's
Speaker 16: saying what the politicians and the media and all these
Speaker 16: rats out there. This can never happen again. It ends now.
Speaker 16: Greg's right again. This is a turning point.
Speaker 2: And we know which direction we're going he made a
Speaker 2: turning point.
Speaker 7: Joe huh, Yes, that's Jesse Waters doing a turning point. Time.
Speaker 14: Also, the use of rats to refer to other people is,
Speaker 14: I know, it's giving like radio milklan vibes.
Speaker 2: It's also worth noting Republican Repersentative Clay Higgins from Louisiana
Speaker 2: is saying that he's seeking to have social media companies
Speaker 2: place lifetime bans on users who celebrated the assassination.
Speaker 7: It's not just Jesse Waters calling for war. Other commentators
Speaker 7: are employing very similar rhetoric, including Alex Jones and Steve Bannon.
Speaker 5: We're in a war.
Speaker 1: The Latins was saying, put a bulls on Trump at
Speaker 1: Bullson As supporters.
Speaker 6: Charlie Kirk's a casualty of war? Would war in this country?
Speaker 7: Chaia Wrtcheck tweeted on the lips of TikTok account quote
Speaker 7: this is war. The Oathkeeper founder Stuart Rhodes announced on
Speaker 7: Info Wars that his militia would be reforming to help
Speaker 7: with security at right wing events.
Speaker 5: Great, oh gosh.
Speaker 7: It was a good Wired article Wednesday night, which collected
Speaker 7: various cost of violence among the right in the aftermath
Speaker 7: of the shooting. Quote. Ed Martin, US pardon attorney and
Speaker 7: former acting with Stornay for DC wrote on Twitter, quote
Speaker 7: for it is written, vengeance is mine. I will repay,
Speaker 7: says the Lord. Citing Romans twelve nineteen, Elon must posted
Speaker 7: the left is the party of murder, then quoted a
Speaker 7: post blaming the left wing and mainstream media, as well
Speaker 7: as figures like Gavin Newsom for radicalizing people against right
Speaker 7: wing figures like Kirk. Katie Miller, who works with Moscat
Speaker 7: Doge and is the wife of Stephen Miller, wrote on
Speaker 7: x that even liberals condemning violence quote have blood on
Speaker 7: their hands. You could be.
Speaker 6: Next.
Speaker 7: Influencer and unofficial Trump advisor Laura Lumer posted on Twitter,
Speaker 7: the left are terrorists. Christopher Ruffo, a conservative activist who
Speaker 7: popularized the demonization of critical race theory, suggested in a
Speaker 7: Twitter post that the radical left was responsible for the
Speaker 7: shooting and urged the US government to quote infiltrate, disrupt, arrest,
Speaker 7: and incars rate all those who are responsible for this
Speaker 7: chaos unquote. There's many, many more. This is after the
Speaker 7: right has long celebrated certain types of political violence.
Speaker 5: Oh yes, constantly.
Speaker 7: Yeah, like that old guy in Panama who shot a
Speaker 7: protester blocking the street. The entire right rallied behind that man.
Speaker 7: Kirk himself has embraced Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot and killed
Speaker 7: two people after a plastic bag was thrown in the
Speaker 7: direction of Kyle Rittenhouse. Kirk was vocally supportive of the
Speaker 7: man who tried to attack Nancy Pelosi in her home
Speaker 7: and did attack pol Pelosi.
Speaker 2: Yes, specifically specifically urged his audience to bail him out.
Speaker 7: It was like not even two months ago that Minnesota
Speaker 7: state senator and her husband were killed. Political violence exists
Speaker 7: across the spectrum. This is not a left wing problem.
Speaker 7: This is an American problem.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean the vast majority of political of terrorist attacks
Speaker 2: that are politically motivated in the US are right wing
Speaker 2: like and have been for the last several decades.
Speaker 7: Per the FBI, in the twenty twelve to twenty twenty one,
Speaker 7: fifty five percent of murders tied to political streamism came
Speaker 7: from white supremacy fourteen percent, anti government six percent to
Speaker 7: other right wing twenty percent, Islamist four percent left wing,
Speaker 7: and the white supremacy fifty five percent are far right Nazis.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In terms of like who did this? Yeah, I think
Speaker 2: we touched on Grouper's a little bit. We should probably
Speaker 2: talk a bit more about the kind of online feud
Speaker 2: between a chunk of Nick Fuintes's fan base and Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 7: It was certainly more prominent a few years ago. As
Speaker 7: Kirk has himself has moved further to right, has adopted
Speaker 7: great replacement theory, the feud kind of dissipated, but it
Speaker 7: certainly was like a legitimate thing in the right for years.
Speaker 2: Yes, to the extent that that's a number of folks
Speaker 2: that kind of have suspected that, like maybe that's who
Speaker 2: did it.
Speaker 5: Again, we really have no idea.
Speaker 2: I'm just bringing this up to make the point that, like,
Speaker 2: there's a variety of reasons why this guy could have
Speaker 2: done this, why this person could have done this, including
Speaker 2: could be an Epstein related thing. Right, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of anger at figures who kind of bought into the
Speaker 2: Trump line that we're done now with the Epstein stuff.
Speaker 2: There's no way to know, and I think that's kind
Speaker 2: of where we have to end that part of artist
Speaker 2: here is we don't know why this was done, and
Speaker 2: to extent, it doesn't matter if it comes out tomorrow
Speaker 2: that this guy was like a White House staffer working
Speaker 2: for Donald Trump who did it because he thought Charlie
Speaker 2: Kirk had disre Like if some crazy shit like that happened,
Speaker 2: it wouldn't change at all the way that they're talking
Speaker 2: about this shooting, right, like it just doesn't matter, Like
Speaker 2: we are where we are with them, and they're saying
Speaker 2: a lot of the same stuff like that, this is
Speaker 2: an escalation in rhetoric, but it's not a massive escalation
Speaker 2: in rhetoric over the way they've been talking about fucking
Speaker 2: the people, changing light, like the.
Speaker 7: Crocker barrel logo logo, we have to go to war,
Speaker 7: we have to.
Speaker 5: Go to war, We're at war.
Speaker 14: I was thinking about that when you said that, like
Speaker 14: the lips of TikTok had tweeted that we were at war,
Speaker 14: Like you could probably go back and see dozens of
Speaker 14: other instances almost exactly the same statement.
Speaker 2: Right, And is this something that could lead to mass
Speaker 2: Could this be because I've seen people comparing this guy
Speaker 2: like Charlie Kirk to Horst Wessel, who was a Nazi,
Speaker 2: was literally a pimp, was a member of the Nazi
Speaker 2: brown Shirts who was murdered and it became a huge
Speaker 2: rallying cry for the Nazi Party, right, they made a
Speaker 2: song about him. It was a big deal. I think
Speaker 2: that's kind of a very silly comparison. For one thing,
Speaker 2: Horse Wessel is meaningful because he was killed before the
Speaker 2: Nazis came to power, and they used his death in
Speaker 2: order to get to power, and Trump is in power.
Speaker 7: If you're not aware, they don't need to invent excuses
Speaker 7: either to like crack down on the left or no,
Speaker 7: or carry out their policies. They're already doing that. I've
Speaker 7: seen people go into complete panic mode because they're gonna
Speaker 7: be like, they're gonna use this this shooting to now
Speaker 7: do terrible things, as if they're not already doing terrible things,
Speaker 7: Like they don't need to wait for events to happen.
Speaker 7: They are more than willing just to do whatever they
Speaker 7: want when they want to.
Speaker 2: Yes, that is exactly like, that's exactly what I would
Speaker 2: tell you. And in terms of like comparisons, I don't
Speaker 2: even think it's super useful to try to compare this
Speaker 2: to specific figures from fucking German history, because there's.
Speaker 7: Really not America in twenty twenty five. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 7: viral TikTok of a man talking about the Book of Mormon,
Speaker 7: like like seconds after the shooting.
Speaker 2: Standing next to where Kirk died, and we now know
Speaker 2: that he stole a bunch of shit from the booth
Speaker 2: that was covered in blood to sell it online. Like this,
Speaker 2: this is all of the books of the America in Germany.
Speaker 5: You won't find anything like that in it.
Speaker 14: Yeah, Like a better historical comparison we will see, right,
Speaker 14: might be Jose Carvo, whose death did immediately sort of
Speaker 14: was one of the things that accelerated the start of
Speaker 14: the Spanish Civil War, I guess, yeah, But even then, like,
Speaker 14: no one was tiktoking and grabbing much that was stained
Speaker 14: by his blood.
Speaker 2: No, And there's no you can like say, like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: this figure's assassination preceded this kind of violence, but like, okay,
Speaker 2: was that figure a guy who did what Charlie Kirk
Speaker 2: did and was connected in the way that No, like
Speaker 2: this is an American thing, this is new. Yeah, this
Speaker 2: is a novel. His moment in history, and we don't
Speaker 2: know what's going to happen. I'm not saying, don't you
Speaker 2: know if you're the kind of person who has been
Speaker 2: worried about right wing violence accelerating. You shouldn't be less
Speaker 2: worried right now, and I think that's a good thing
Speaker 2: to be worried about. There's been a spree of bomb
Speaker 2: threats called into like historically black colleges today and DNC
Speaker 2: headquarters last I checked. I don't think anything actually has
Speaker 2: been done, but it makes sense. It's an anger reaction
Speaker 2: from the right. You know, you've got some people who
Speaker 2: woke up pissed off this morning and decided to call
Speaker 2: in some bomb threats. Apparently we'll see you know who
Speaker 2: the culprits were there. But I didn't want to touch
Speaker 2: on something else that I've seen in the wake of
Speaker 2: all this that is pretty novel. But we should do
Speaker 2: an ad break first, all right, coming back, I wanted
Speaker 2: to talk briefly about the way AI is being used
Speaker 2: by civilian investigators to try and crack this caper. People
Speaker 2: have been using AI to enhance the images that the
Speaker 2: FBI released of the maybe shooter. Again, we don't even
Speaker 2: know that that guy's the shooter because they fucked up
Speaker 2: very badly on this initially, but people have been using
Speaker 2: to like clarify and we know that the AI is
Speaker 2: doing a bad job because again he's wearing a distinctive shirt.
Speaker 2: People found the shirt online and when the AI was
Speaker 2: like solidifying the image on the shirt, it did it wrong,
Speaker 2: Like it put like a silhouette of a man on
Speaker 2: there that wasn't on there.
Speaker 7: Like it like you can also submit the same image
Speaker 7: to like five different AI imaging programs and get five
Speaker 7: wildly different results for what the face quote unquote looks like.
Speaker 2: And I just brought that up because I haven't seen
Speaker 2: that happen before with one of these things. And it
Speaker 2: was like, oh, okay, cool, that's a fun new.
Speaker 7: This is gonna be something we'd have to deal with
Speaker 7: now for every single right preceding event in absolutely, yes,
Speaker 7: whatever this hellscape of the American century of humiliation looks like.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 2: The other thing I wanted to bring up is, within
Speaker 2: about like two to three hours after Kirk was killed,
Speaker 2: and after again it had been announced that he was dead,
Speaker 2: people were asking Grock is this video? Because the video
Speaker 2: was spreading wildly of him dying on everywhere. Really, but
Speaker 2: people asked on Twitter, they asked grok elon Musk's AI
Speaker 2: is this real? And the response that was posted initially
Speaker 2: was Charlie Kirk takes the roast in stride with a laugh.
Speaker 2: He's faced tougher crowds. Yes, he survives this one easily.
Speaker 2: And then someone responded, Grok, he got shot through the neck.
Speaker 2: What are you talking about? And Grok responded, it's a
Speaker 2: meme video with edited effects to look like a dramatic shot,
Speaker 2: not a real event. Charlie Kirk is fine, he handles
Speaker 2: roasts like a pro. So again, I bring this up
Speaker 2: just because this is going to only become more of
Speaker 2: a factor in the immediate wake of shootings and terror
Speaker 2: to tax and disasters. Is people going to AI's for
Speaker 2: information about the validity of videos, about the validity of threats.
Speaker 2: And what scares me is not this didn't do any damage, right, Like,
Speaker 2: this doesn't didn't hurt the man hunt for the killer.
Speaker 2: It didn't like do anything. It's just ridiculous. But let's
Speaker 2: say you've got videos of a disaster ongoing, I mean,
Speaker 2: like a fucking natural disaster coming or whatever, and people
Speaker 2: are being told to leave their homes and somebody asks
Speaker 2: the fucking groc hey do I need to hear I'll
Speaker 2: plug this video and it'll tell me if the storm's
Speaker 2: going to hit my house or if I can stay here,
Speaker 2: people are gonna do shit like that, like.
Speaker 5: That's gonna happen.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you're right anyway, just as heads up. Ah, that's bleak. Yeah,
Speaker 8: that's pretty terrible.
Speaker 5: All right.
Speaker 2: Well that's that's I think all we got to say
Speaker 2: on this.
Speaker 14: Yeah, we'll keep updating you is we learn more. I'm
Speaker 14: sure this will be developing over the weekend.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is going to keep being a major story. Well,
Speaker 2: I'm sure we'll do a dedicated episode on it next week.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Something else that happened on Wednesday, the same day as
Speaker 7: the Charlie Kirk assassination, was a school shooting in Colorado.
Speaker 7: Two students were shot before the shooter killed himself. Police
Speaker 7: have said, quote, we are looking at a mode if
Speaker 7: we don't have one yet. He was radicalized by some
Speaker 7: extremist network in the details of that will be down
Speaker 7: the road, and we wanted to give you that much
Speaker 7: about maybe a mindset for him. Unquote.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I guess it's just a marking
Speaker 2: of what kind of shootings Americans are aneured to and
Speaker 2: not school shootings that's business as.
Speaker 7: Usual, especially if it's just a regular white male teenager.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 14: Yeah, we'll be kind of following that one as well
Speaker 14: to see what it's online radicalization was. Yeah, they've already
Speaker 14: found so early, but yeah, it's pretty tragic that two
Speaker 14: school shootings happened in a day.
Speaker 7: It was reported in multiple outlets last week that the
Speaker 7: Department of Justice was considering restricting gun ownership rights for
Speaker 7: transgender Americans in the wake of the Minneapolist Catholic school
Speaker 7: shooting last month. This was first reported by the Diggity Wire,
Speaker 7: who quoted the source inside the Justice Department saying, quote,
Speaker 7: Individuals within the DOJ are reviewing ways to ensure that
Speaker 7: mentally ill individuals suffering from gender dysphoria are unable to
Speaker 7: obtain fire arms while they are unstable and unwell unquote.
Speaker 7: CNN said that their sources described the proposal for a
Speaker 7: transgun ban as quote preliminary in nature, and since then,
Speaker 7: the DOJ and the Trump administration have not made any
Speaker 7: clear statements confirming or denying this reporting. A DOJ spokesperson
Speaker 7: acknowledg THEES reports with the statement, reading, quote, the DOJ
Speaker 7: is actively evaluating options to prevent the pattern of violence
Speaker 7: we have seen from individuals with specific mental health challenges
Speaker 7: and substance abuse disorders. No specific criminal justice proposals have
Speaker 7: been advanced at this time. Unquote. Trump declined to answer
Speaker 7: a question about it possible transgun ban last Friday. This
Speaker 7: is something right wing influencers have been advocating for years now.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 7: On September fifth, the NRA made a statement reading, the
Speaker 7: Second Amendment isn't up for debate. The NRA supports the
Speaker 7: Second Amendment rights for all law abiding Americans to purchase, possess,
Speaker 7: and use firearms. The energy does not and will not
Speaker 7: support any policy proposals that implement sweeping gun bands that
Speaker 7: arbitrarily strict law abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights
Speaker 7: without due process. Yep, which you know is consistent with
Speaker 7: the NRA's messaging four years because the Lion is the
Speaker 7: recent messaging yet definitely Yeah, well, I mean the lion
Speaker 7: has been for as long as I have been a
Speaker 7: gun owner, which is twenty years now from the NRA
Speaker 7: that after the Civil Rights movement.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, registration and like laws forcing people to register their.
Speaker 5: Guns, and like gun control laws in general.
Speaker 2: Are that restrict at all access to firearms are a
Speaker 2: prelude inevitably to mass confiscation. Right, Like that has been
Speaker 2: the that has been the line for a long time.
Speaker 2: This does not surprise me. Yeah, No, the stance doesn't.
Speaker 2: The fact that they said something publicly during this does.
Speaker 2: Because the NRA has been quiet a lot when there's
Speaker 2: an issue, like, for example, that the shooting the Filando
Speaker 2: Castile right, who was legally carrying a concealed firearm when
Speaker 2: the police murdered him in his car. They kept pretty
Speaker 2: fucking quiet about that. So I am a little surprised
Speaker 2: that they said something. But what they're saying is is
Speaker 2: very consistent with other shit they've been saying.
Speaker 7: Yeah, there's no current legal mechanism that exists for them
Speaker 7: to do this. They would have to invent or heavily
Speaker 7: alter the current weight that gun rights can be taken away,
Speaker 7: which is right now through individual court cases where a
Speaker 7: judge finds an individual person quote unquote mentally deficient. Yeah,
Speaker 7: and it's highly unlikely that the gun lobby will support
Speaker 7: any policy proposals that start adding certain diagnoses to a
Speaker 7: list that excludes you from gun ownership, because sure you
Speaker 7: if you add gender dysphoria, Now, that might not be
Speaker 7: a huge problem to many on the right, But let's
Speaker 7: say a Democrat administration and Democrat House and Senate come
Speaker 7: into power. Now there was this precedent that you can
Speaker 7: add diagnoses to take away gun rights, which would enable
Speaker 7: adding things like depression or PTSD, which a lot of
Speaker 7: veterans have. And this is like the slippery slope that
Speaker 7: the NRA warns about, So it makes sense that they
Speaker 7: would be taking this stance. Similarly, I don't necessarily see
Speaker 7: a very clear path for them to restrict HRT through
Speaker 7: this mechanism. SIS people, including a lot of men who
Speaker 7: own guns, take testosterone and CIS women take estrogen, so
Speaker 7: that would be a very tricky way to handle this.
Speaker 2: I think the only way they could again would be
Speaker 2: if they try to restrict en mass like the prescription
Speaker 2: of hormones specifically to people with gender dysphoria or trans people,
Speaker 2: which is difficult for a lot of reasons, but would
Speaker 2: provide it like a pretext for Okay, these people are
Speaker 2: now taking stuff an illegal substance, and you can go
Speaker 2: after people with guns for that. But I feel like
Speaker 2: I don't know how you would judicate that how you
Speaker 2: like force like the federal government does not theoretically have
Speaker 2: the ability to force the medical community to say nobody
Speaker 2: who's got generous for you gets hormones.
Speaker 11: Ever.
Speaker 14: Again, Yeah, I mean, you could maybe do something through
Speaker 14: the FDA, but I don't see how you could do
Speaker 14: it just to trans people and.
Speaker 2: How right, like, how would you keep it legal for
Speaker 2: all of Joe Rogan's friends, and that's just like through
Speaker 2: the FDA, right, I don't I literally just don't know.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I'm not super familiar with that.
Speaker 7: But this is obviously something that we will keep an
Speaker 7: eye on. This is this is like a possibility that
Speaker 7: we've discussed the right wanting to enact for years now,
Speaker 7: and the fact that the DOJ might even have some
Speaker 7: people in there who are doing preliminary considerations. It obviously
Speaker 7: is a worrying sign of the general position on trans
Speaker 7: rights and transgund rights.
Speaker 14: Yeah, for our immigration update this week, I want to
Speaker 14: start by talking about the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court
Speaker 14: confirmed in its case that CBP and more permanently ICE
Speaker 14: can continue their policy of racial profiling. This overturned a
Speaker 14: lower court judges ordered that prohibits them from stopping someone
Speaker 14: in Los Angeles based on ethnicity alone. It didn't just
Speaker 14: look at ethnicity, It said that it prohibits them from
Speaker 14: using either one or a combination of four factors, which
Speaker 14: were a parent race, their accent, or their use for
Speaker 14: non English language, their job. Their jobs that tend to
Speaker 14: have a higher proportion of undocumented people. Right, they get
Speaker 14: construction and some agricultural jobs. And their presence at a
Speaker 14: certain place again right, places like a home depot or
Speaker 14: a farm garrison. Smiling at how I correctly pronounce the
Speaker 14: word defo there. CBP has always been able to profile
Speaker 14: you at the border. Right, that's kind of what they do.
Speaker 14: There was a nineteen seventy five Supreme Court decision that
Speaker 14: one is called USA versus Bridnion. I think it's BRIDNIONI
Speaker 14: like Italian Brigni ponce. That decision looked a roving traffic
Speaker 14: stop up hearing. I lives in San Clemente. And in
Speaker 14: that case, the CBP had stopped someone not a checkpoint,
Speaker 14: but while sitting by the side of the highway in
Speaker 14: their vehicle, and they had done so solely based on
Speaker 14: the apparent ethnicity of the driver. That was ruled unconstitutional,
Speaker 14: and the standard that offices needed to have was quote
Speaker 14: reasonable suspicion that pertains to roving stops, which is kind
Speaker 14: of what Ice is doing in La right. CBP officers
Speaker 14: have also previously been sued, more recently for using a
Speaker 14: language as a sold basis for the tension, like if
Speaker 14: you're speaking Spanish, yeah, exactly, that was the case, right,
Speaker 14: it's pseudo and Hernandez versus US Customs and Border Protection.
Speaker 8: That one was in Montana.
Speaker 14: The ACLU of Montana sued them to Spanish speaking ladies
Speaker 14: were speaking Spanish in a store. They actually said hello
Speaker 14: to a board of drill agent in Englis, who proceeded
Speaker 14: to detain them on the basis that not many people
Speaker 14: speak Spanish in Montana.
Speaker 8: I think the name is from Spanish, like Montagna, but
Speaker 8: maybe I'm wrong.
Speaker 14: The State Department has also issued guidance that non immigrant
Speaker 14: visa applicants can now only schedule interviews in their own country.
Speaker 14: So this is a further burden for people seeking visas
Speaker 14: to come to the United States. Right Previously, you could
Speaker 14: do it another US embassy or consulate for instance. You know,
Speaker 14: if you were let's say French but resident in Spain,
Speaker 14: you could apply at the consulate or embassy there. Right
Speaker 14: now you have to go to your country's embassy. In
Speaker 14: some cases, there are designated embassies or consular places for
Speaker 14: for national states where the US has no embassy or
Speaker 14: similar presence, like a US hasn't got an embassy in
Speaker 14: Afghanistan right now for pretty obvious reasons, right, So I
Speaker 14: believe it's such a lama bad for those people.
Speaker 8: For example.
Speaker 14: Finally, I want to get onto the case of the
Speaker 14: dozens of watermelon children who came to the US and
Speaker 14: accompanied by adults they are related to and who the
Speaker 14: Trump admin attempted to deport over the Labor Day weekend.
Speaker 14: Sometimes I don't like the phrase ou accompanied miners because
Speaker 14: maybe they are accompanied by someone who's just not in
Speaker 14: their family, right that people have taken care of them
Speaker 14: on the journey, almost certainly, and I've seen this myself,
Speaker 14: and so I don't know the idea that they're not
Speaker 14: just walking alone, but they are not with their relatives,
Speaker 14: right if undertaking this journey themselves. So Judge Sparkle sugno
Speaker 14: Nan temporarily halted their removal in the early hours of
Speaker 14: Sunday morning of Labor Day weekend. This is an extremely
Speaker 14: unusual decision, right, but the judge decided it was warranted
Speaker 14: because not doing so would put the children in potential
Speaker 14: extreme danger. The government categorically attempted to remove these children,
Speaker 14: like very quickly and literally got them out of bed
Speaker 14: right like, we've got these little children out of beds
Speaker 14: in their foster homes and attempted to shove them on
Speaker 14: a plane to Guatemala. Their attorney literally ran onto the
Speaker 14: tarmac at the airport to tell flight control personnel that
Speaker 14: they were likely in violation of a court order if
Speaker 14: they allowed the plane to take off. It couldn't be
Speaker 14: more last minute than this, right, They were literally working
Speaker 14: all night. Judge Tim Kelly now has to rule on
Speaker 14: the legitimacy of the government's claims. The claim the government
Speaker 14: makes here is that it was quote reuniting children with
Speaker 14: parents abroad, not deporting them, and that would mean the
Speaker 14: children don't have the statutory protections that they do if
Speaker 14: it were being deported as quote unquote unaccompanied miners.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 14: Previously, the government had made the claim that the children's
Speaker 14: parents wanted them to be returned. It's dropped that claim
Speaker 14: after Router's published a Guatemalan government document which completely refutes
Speaker 14: that none of the children's parents seem to want them
Speaker 14: to come home. So what the government is claiming here
Speaker 14: is that the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is under HHS,
Speaker 14: is moving the children, not the Department of Homeland Security.
Speaker 14: So they're not being deported, they're being reunified with their families. Yeah,
Speaker 14: that's a pretty sketchy claim. Meanwhile, the kids are in shelters.
Speaker 14: Many of them were in long term foster care and
Speaker 14: have been now removed from that environment, and they're in shelters.
Speaker 14: Law Fare, which is an online publication, has a pretty
Speaker 14: good account of the courtroom exchange that I've linked in
Speaker 14: the notes. I also several people have asked about this,
Speaker 14: so I should talk about it. I wanted to talk
Speaker 14: about the Hyundai plant in Georgia. I don't know what
Speaker 14: to call this raid. Yeah, in Georgia, I guess raid
Speaker 14: is the right word. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, Like more than
Speaker 14: three hundred South Korean workers were attained.
Speaker 8: At the plant. They should be going home today.
Speaker 14: They were supposed to go home yesterday, but there were
Speaker 14: some delays so far. ICE has claimed that these people
Speaker 14: were working without proper authorization and Slash or but not
Speaker 14: in the US with proper authorization, their lawyers have claimed,
Speaker 14: and The Guardian has foundly documents that confirm that many
Speaker 14: of them had B one visa status.
Speaker 8: B one is like you can do some work on
Speaker 8: a B one.
Speaker 14: It also can be just an extended term tourist visa
Speaker 14: and you can do certain jobs but not other jobs,
Speaker 14: and you still get paid at home where you were
Speaker 14: on to B one, which seems to be what these
Speaker 14: people were doing. Right, Like, they can supervise construction on
Speaker 14: a B one, but you can't do construction, and it
Speaker 14: would make sense for people who are very expert in
Speaker 14: the construction of these highly technical buildings to supervise that construction.
Speaker 7: It seems that they were in the country to supervise
Speaker 7: the setting up of this car plant.
Speaker 14: Correct, Yeah, most South Koreans can also get est visa waivers,
Speaker 14: which like it's not exactly the same, but it's kind
Speaker 14: of a ninety day B one visa.
Speaker 8: So there are some people who cannot.
Speaker 14: Right like, if they have been cremated of crimes in
Speaker 14: such that they'd have to go through the B one process.
Speaker 7: But it seems very.
Speaker 14: Unlikely at least that that they were not in the
Speaker 14: country without any documentation and because like that would be
Speaker 14: a stranging to do when they can get a best
Speaker 14: of visa waiver. What's really weird about this is the
Speaker 14: state of Georgia has invested millions, if not billions, in
Speaker 14: bringing this plant to Georgia. Right, it has created a
Speaker 14: significant economic boost. Something like ninety percent of the products
Speaker 14: that go into the car come from there. So there
Speaker 14: are lots of small businesses and local businesses that have
Speaker 14: started up to provide this factory with the goods it needs.
Speaker 14: You know, there are all the other services that come
Speaker 14: with that. Right, Like, it's brought economic benefit to the region.
Speaker 14: I know the state has spent more than three hundred
Speaker 14: million on improving the roads. Apparently they've deepened ports in
Speaker 14: some regions to allow larger, larger ships to arrive. It's
Speaker 14: bought in over twelve billion investment, more than eight thousand jobs.
Speaker 14: It's received massive tax breaks. It's going to total over
Speaker 14: two billion dollars according to reporting that are link to
Speaker 14: in the notes. Yet, Georgia State Police blocked off roads
Speaker 14: as part of the raid, and it was Georgia Department
Speaker 14: of Corrections buses that took people away. This seems an
Speaker 14: odd choice for Kemp. Brian Kemp, right, Georgia governor. He's
Speaker 14: not Trump's favorite. Maybe he's trying to become Trump's favorite,
Speaker 14: but previously even Republicans in Georgia have been very behind this.
Speaker 14: I mean, Garrison, you lived in Georgia for a bit, right,
Speaker 14: this was a thing that, yeah, the Republicans has supported,
Speaker 14: a way to revitalize a place where there wasn't much
Speaker 14: economic opportunity before.
Speaker 7: Well, and this follows the whole point of Trump's tariffs.
Speaker 7: We're trying to bring, Yeah, manufacturing to the United States.
Speaker 7: You have these specialized workers to help supervise the construction
Speaker 7: and managing of equipment. They get this plant up and running.
Speaker 7: And even if you're even if you're doing that, even
Speaker 7: if you're bringing manufacturing back to the States, somehow you
Speaker 7: still get bitten, Yeah, big time, bitten by the Trump horse.
Speaker 8: I guess yeah.
Speaker 14: I mean it does sort of line up with this
Speaker 14: working closer to the Feurer hypothesis, right that you have
Speaker 14: these counter valent impulses and everyone's just trying to do
Speaker 14: things that they think Trump will like, and kind of
Speaker 14: sometimes those can directly contradict each other, as is happening here.
Speaker 14: There's not really a coherent policy platform.
Speaker 7: No, they're just so focused on trying to get like
Speaker 7: the base numbers up, to get the number of deportations
Speaker 7: higher than it's ever been.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 14: And therefore, and you have this this sort of series
Speaker 14: of impulses which motivate Trump is and one of which
Speaker 14: is deport as many people as possible.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 14: Another is broadly bring manufacturing jobs back to America, but
Speaker 14: not if foreign people are helping supervise the construction. I
Speaker 14: guess Understandably, South Carea is very upset. More so, I
Speaker 14: think because these are like middle class professionals who have
Speaker 14: been detained. Right, they appear to have negotiated a voluntary
Speaker 14: departure for these people, which it's not like a voluntary
Speaker 14: departure like you came on toil they Disney landed, you're
Speaker 14: going home on the plane. It can still have long
Speaker 14: term consequences. But the hope there is that that won't
Speaker 14: make it harder for these people to get US visas
Speaker 14: in the future. They have to come back, because obviously
Speaker 14: it's going to be very hard for this company to
Speaker 14: build a plant in Georgia if they can't bring any
Speaker 14: of their staff to Georgia.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that is about all I have.
Speaker 14: I'm going to keep looking, especially this Georgia story, see
Speaker 14: if it develops any further, and if it's worthy of
Speaker 14: a whole episode.
Speaker 8: We'll we'll do a whole episode on that.
Speaker 7: Speaking of Georgia, the long delayed Cop City reco case
Speaker 7: has finally made some progress in the courts. I have
Speaker 7: been working on the final scripted piece of my Cop
Speaker 7: City coverage for basically this whole summer. I've been slowly
Speaker 7: chipping away at it. Part of the reason why I
Speaker 7: have not finished that yet is because essentially the whole
Speaker 7: court case, like the sixty one defendant Rico case, got
Speaker 7: reset in May. They changed judges, and that has delayed
Speaker 7: an already long delayed case even further. I was waiting
Speaker 7: to see a little bit of the results of the
Speaker 7: court case, or at least get a better indication where
Speaker 7: the court case is going to go before I finish
Speaker 7: that final piece. And we're going to get that final
Speaker 7: piece out properly in the next six month or two here,
Speaker 7: but I will give this small update because it's pretty substantial.
Speaker 7: This past Tuesday, September ninth, the defense successfully argued that
Speaker 7: the State Attorney General's office did not have the jurisdictional
Speaker 7: authority to prosecute the sixty one defendants under the state's
Speaker 7: reco statute. This was due to simple procedural error in
Speaker 7: neglecting to first ask Governor Brian Kemp if the AG's
Speaker 7: office could prosecute the case. Judge Farmer found that the
Speaker 7: AG does not have the authority to prosecute Count one
Speaker 7: of the Rico indictment, which is the racketeering and conspiracy
Speaker 7: charges affecting sixty one people. So without the sweeping Rico
Speaker 7: charges in golfing the sixty one defendants, just five defendants
Speaker 7: would be left with Count two of the indictment, the
Speaker 7: domestic terrorism charges, which the AG does have the authority prosecute,
Speaker 7: and Count three, which is the arson charge, which Judge
Speaker 7: Farmer indicated could be thrown out on a similar technicality
Speaker 7: as the racketeering and conspiracy charges. This is still heavily
Speaker 7: in flux. The prosecution is going to appeal this decision,
Speaker 7: and it's unclear how this ruling will affect how the
Speaker 7: rest of the Copcity case will unfold, as removal of
Speaker 7: the Rico charges kind of undermines the rest of the indictment.
Speaker 7: On Wednesday, they were arguing about the constitutionality of George's
Speaker 7: domestic terrorism statute, which has never been tested in course before,
Speaker 7: so a lot of this case is currently up in
Speaker 7: the air, but this is a positive sign for the
Speaker 7: defendants at this point. One brief RFK Junior update. I
Speaker 7: guess RFK Juniors soon to be released autism report from
Speaker 7: HHS is reportedly going to include the claim that use
Speaker 7: of tailanol during pregnancy could cause autoism in children.
Speaker 6: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 7: This is not believed to be true by reputable medical authorities,
Speaker 7: but the report is set to release some time in September.
Speaker 7: It was announced like months ago when Aarvika Junior said
Speaker 7: that by September we will finally know the cause of
Speaker 7: autism quote quote, And it seems the report is still
Speaker 7: churning away but set to be released this month, and
Speaker 7: it will include a few other claims, which we will
Speaker 7: report on in more detail once the report is actually out.
Speaker 7: But the Wall Street Journal got this little heads up
Speaker 7: about the Thailand all inclusion in the report.
Speaker 8: Fantastic.
Speaker 14: So I heard from somebody who is waiting on their
Speaker 14: work permit. A Kurdish woman who came to the United
Speaker 14: States to claim asylum from Turkey from Northern Kurdistan, and
Speaker 14: because she doesn't have a work permit yet and she's
Speaker 14: gonna be waiting for her work permit. Sometime she's asking
Speaker 14: for help to cover her basic sort of day to
Speaker 14: day expenses. And this is a thing that people often
Speaker 14: find themselves in a situation. Right, they have come here,
Speaker 14: done all the documentation, but it can take a long
Speaker 14: time to get their work permit, and without friends or family,
Speaker 14: it can be very.
Speaker 3: Hard for them.
Speaker 14: The website is gofund dot me slash DA thirty nine
Speaker 14: F seven D zero B. We'll have that link in
Speaker 14: the show notes as well. If you'd like to email us,
Speaker 14: you can do so. The way to do it is
Speaker 14: to reach out to cool Zone tips at proton dot me.
Speaker 8: That is an encrypted email address.
Speaker 14: All that means is that you will have to also
Speaker 14: use an encrypted email address if you like it to
Speaker 14: be end to end encrypted.
Speaker 2: All right, and here's some ads. We're back and I
Speaker 2: guess it's time to drop some bars about Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 7: Somehow Epstein has returned learned.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that joke. It always gets old.
Speaker 2: So one of the big pieces of news this week
Speaker 2: before the thing that we started the episode with, I mean,
Speaker 2: this was the story before that happened, is that, as
Speaker 2: a result of the ongoing investigation into Epstein and whether
Speaker 2: or not you know how involved was Trump, how involved
Speaker 2: were Democrats? What do we care that the book, the
Speaker 2: first fifty years birthday book, that that drawing that Trump
Speaker 2: is accused of having done, where he signed his name
Speaker 2: as the pubic care of a very obviously young girl
Speaker 2: with a poem that seemed to hint at child molestation.
Speaker 2: That the whole book that Epstein had has has been
Speaker 2: released to Congress and is now public right now.
Speaker 7: We did Democrats on the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the
Speaker 7: Epstein birthday book from Jeffrey Epstein's estate once the estate
Speaker 7: made a statement saying that they have the book and
Speaker 7: wouldn't cooperate with a subpoena.
Speaker 2: And there's a a bunch of news articles summarizing it.
Speaker 2: If you want to read the thing for yourself, just
Speaker 2: google document cloud Jeffrey Epstein fiftieth Birthday Book, and the
Speaker 2: whole thing is in there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 14: Right, I would say, like just the kind of slight devotion,
Speaker 14: I guess between this and Charlie kirkshooting, maybe.
Speaker 7: You don't need to give yourself a break.
Speaker 5: I'm not saying you should.
Speaker 2: I just wanted to let people know where they can
Speaker 2: get to the original source if they don't want to
Speaker 2: have it mediated by a media, right.
Speaker 8: It's always good to do that.
Speaker 5: We're going to mediate it for you now.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So it opens, as far as I can tell. The
Speaker 2: first well, I mean, there's there's a list of contents.
Speaker 2: The prologue is written by Gilan Maxwell. Then there's letters
Speaker 2: from the family, Paula Seymour and Marco I guess your relatives.
Speaker 2: Then it's split into Brooklyn. So there's friends of his
Speaker 2: from Brooklyn who are Warren Eisenstein, neutral, I don't know
Speaker 2: who that is, Terry Kafka. Very funny that there's a
Speaker 2: Kafka involved, doctor Stephen Levy, and Michael Bookoles. The next
Speaker 2: section is all girlfriends, their letters from girlfriends. All of
Speaker 2: those names have been blacked out for reasons that should
Speaker 2: be obvious. The section after that is children. God almighty,
Speaker 2: I don't know whose kids because this is blacked out too,
Speaker 2: but oh boy. Yeah, and then we get to the
Speaker 2: section that is friends. That is all the letters from friends,
Speaker 2: and the friends are Leon Black is on there, Bill
Speaker 2: Clinton is on there, Alan Dershowitz is on there. The
Speaker 2: dersh himself.
Speaker 7: Is the letter is really unsettling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Donald Trump is in there. We'll get to that
Speaker 2: in a second. Yet, Donald Trump is in there, obviously
Speaker 2: these are not. Morton Zuckerman is on there, Leslie Wexner
Speaker 2: is on there. So a number of like very prominent
Speaker 2: people unknown is at the very end. I don't know
Speaker 2: like that. That's like literally how the book listed it.
Speaker 2: So they just have a letter from someone who's presumably
Speaker 2: his friend but didn't put a name.
Speaker 14: I mean, it's it's a smart move if you're doing
Speaker 14: things which you have federal crimes.
Speaker 2: And then after that you've got the letters from scientists
Speaker 2: friends of his, which include people we brought up on
Speaker 2: my episode about a bioscience company who pretends that they're
Speaker 2: cloning dire wolves and Martin Noak are both on here,
Speaker 2: so that's great, oh good. And then after that, I
Speaker 2: just noted girlfriends is like the third group of people
Speaker 2: who had letters, and all those names were blacked out.
Speaker 2: But then under science there's another section that's girl dash
Speaker 2: friends that's longer, and all of those names are blacked out.
Speaker 2: No fucking idea what that is supposed to meet. But upsetting, Okay, it's.
Speaker 8: No good whatever it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, There's some more names on there, but they're
Speaker 2: not super relevant. Gilan Maxwell's prologue is handwritten, or at
Speaker 2: least the note in front of it is handwritten. I
Speaker 2: know you will enjoy looking through the book, and I
Speaker 2: hope you will derive as much pleasure looking through it
Speaker 2: as I did putting it together for you. Happy birthday, Love,
Speaker 2: Gilan Maxwell. So that's the prologue. One of the first pictures,
Speaker 2: I mean, the first picture in the book is Jeffrey
Speaker 2: Epstein's standing around with a bunch of soldiers. They look like,
Speaker 2: I mean, I would guess from some African country. They're
Speaker 2: all in a camo pattern that's not immediately familiar to me.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I can't fully read what it says down here.
Speaker 2: Some of the line say something about a president and
Speaker 2: the Secret Service to greet you. I don't know who
Speaker 2: these soldiers were that Jeffrey's standing around. I kind of
Speaker 2: want to know, but it's a weird photo to start.
Speaker 2: And then immediately after that is Jeffrey Epstein's cub scout
Speaker 2: graduation photo. They've got that in there. It's just a
Speaker 2: bunch of like pictures of Epstein throughout his life. Like
Speaker 2: that's kind of how this thing opens before we get
Speaker 2: down to the letters. Yeah, one thing I wanted to
Speaker 2: get at there. So there's on page fifty seven there's
Speaker 2: a photo of Jeffrey Epstein wearing a weird shirt with
Speaker 2: a bunch of handprints on it when he was younger.
Speaker 2: That's just titled girls on my Boat. We picked up
Speaker 2: girls on beach, went out on boat. I tell them
Speaker 2: with knife in my hand, to take suits off. But
Speaker 2: Warren tells me, don't worry. His name is Jahan. He's
Speaker 2: just joking. He lives at so and so I tell
Speaker 2: Mark to throw him into water. He did no idea
Speaker 2: what the fuck that's about. But like a lot of
Speaker 2: it's like that is like very upsetting stories that are
Speaker 2: handwritten crudely, I think, and often by Gillan. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's like pretty deeply upsetting stuff. Okay, I
Speaker 2: do kind of want to read this Bill Elks letter.
Speaker 2: It just starts with it's no secret that Jeffrey appreciates
Speaker 2: beautiful women that not many people know. He can create
Speaker 2: them at a thin ware air, as he did in
Speaker 2: Iowa in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 14: Good to give a place in times that are illegal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this guy says that he was managing the money
Speaker 2: of a family who lived in Fairfield, Iowa. Hog farming
Speaker 2: is a serious industry there, and many people feel there
Speaker 2: is more than a little truth in the saying that
Speaker 2: it's hard to tell the difference between the girls and
Speaker 2: the hogs in southeast Iowa. Jeffrey came to Fairfield to
Speaker 2: check in on their investigation on their investment opportunities. He
Speaker 2: asked about the nightlife and we could only laugh as
Speaker 2: we dropped him off at the local motel.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 2: The next morning, a group before of us picked up
Speaker 2: Jeffrey to give him a tour of the area. At
Speaker 2: our first stop, we parked in front of a bookstore.
Speaker 2: As we were getting out of the car, a spectacular, tall,
Speaker 2: blonde woman suddenly came out of the store, walked directly
Speaker 2: up to Jeffrey and announced, I am new to this area.
Speaker 2: What's going on? It turns out she was a sales
Speaker 2: representative for a firm solling academic brand and athletic clothing.
Speaker 2: She was literally driving through Iowa visiting local campuses. Jeffrey
Speaker 2: invited her to join us and did his magic. Within
Speaker 2: a few hours, he had invited her to return to
Speaker 2: New York with him for the weekend. Yeah, a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff like that. We should probably read Dershowitz's letter.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, what seck, Yeah, you can do that.
Speaker 2: Okay, here's Dershowitz's Who was that Man with Epstein? Is
Speaker 2: the title of the letter. Inquiring minds are asking who
Speaker 2: is that man with Epstein? Jeffrey Epstein is, of course
Speaker 2: one of the world's most famous men, a household name
Speaker 2: throughout the planet. His picture has appeared on the cover
Speaker 2: of every magazine in the world. Everyone knows his story,
Speaker 2: from his humble roots on Coney Island to his rise
Speaker 2: to one of the most envied public figures in the
Speaker 2: Western world. But what is he doing flying to Africa
Speaker 2: with an obscure former politician from Hope, Arkansas. Who is
Speaker 2: that politician? And why would Epstein have picked him for
Speaker 2: the coveted seat on his private jet. Vanity Unfair was
Speaker 2: determined to get to the bottom of this mystery man
Speaker 2: and to reveal the story behind the story. Normally, we
Speaker 2: would not pry into the private life of an obscure
Speaker 2: Arkansas politician, particularly one who has tried so hard up
Speaker 2: to now so successfully to keep his private life to himself.
Speaker 2: But the moment this obscure man stepped under the Epstein jet,
Speaker 2: he became fair game for probing inquiry. Why would a
Speaker 2: man like Epstein, who can pick and choose his companions
Speaker 2: from princes to professors, select a flying companion from the
Speaker 2: Ozark Mountains. To be sure, he was a Rhodes scholar,
Speaker 2: but we all know how easy it is to get
Speaker 2: a roads if you're from Arkansas. There must be something else.
Speaker 2: Vanity Unfair decided to snoop around this obscure politician reluctantly
Speaker 2: agreed to be to an interview on the express condition
Speaker 2: that it was completely off the record. This is what
Speaker 2: he told us, and then it's blank. The letter ends.
Speaker 7: It comes with a note yes, reading Dear Jeffrey, As
Speaker 7: a birthday gift to you, I managed to obtain an
Speaker 7: early version of the Vanity Unfair article. I talked them
Speaker 7: into changing the focus from you to Bill Clinton. As
Speaker 7: you will see from the enclosed excerpt, Happy birthday in
Speaker 7: best regards.
Speaker 2: And then there's a fake Vanity Unfair article. Yeah or cover?
Speaker 5: Yeah? That who is Jack the Ripper?
Speaker 14: Was it?
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein? Al Qaeda in South America? Financed by Epstein
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein stole my heart in another courtroom dispatches. It's
Speaker 2: like really crudely animated, but yeah, yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 2: it's what do you even say? Oh, there is a
Speaker 2: quote the fat on the Vanity Fair cover attributed to
Speaker 2: Epstein that says life is a pure flame and we
Speaker 2: live by an invisible sun within us. So I guess
Speaker 2: that's a Jeffrey Epstein original.
Speaker 8: Wow, how profound.
Speaker 7: Before we talk about the Trump letter, there's this one
Speaker 7: other image I didn't like to discuss this what I
Speaker 7: can only described as a grooming themed drawing Oh God
Speaker 7: yeah to him as part of its birthday card, depicting
Speaker 7: Jeffrey Epstein in nineteen eighty three giving balloons in a
Speaker 7: lolly pomp to three young children girls like children, children.
Speaker 2: And importantly, his pockets are turned out out and the
Speaker 2: pants he's wearing are like patched and old. He's clearly
Speaker 2: poor in this. In nineteen eighty three, by the way,
Speaker 2: he was working as a tutor and a teacher, like
Speaker 2: he was teaching kids at private schools like, So that's
Speaker 2: what's represented here.
Speaker 7: The other section of the drawing is in two thousand
Speaker 7: and three and has Jeffrey Epstein sitting on the beach
Speaker 7: with four women touching his body.
Speaker 2: One woman is very clearly touching his genitals and has
Speaker 2: JE tattooed on her ass.
Speaker 7: Jeffrey Epstein's jet is flying above.
Speaker 2: You know it's his jet because the actual in number
Speaker 2: of his real jet is written on the side of
Speaker 2: the jet.
Speaker 7: And on the beach he is on a lawn chair
Speaker 7: outside of what sort of resembles Trump's Marlago resort in
Speaker 7: terms of the architectural style, the arched doorways, the tiered
Speaker 7: structure and lay out of the palm trees, and the beach.
Speaker 7: This building does not match his house in Florida, or
Speaker 7: his house in the Southwest, or his house on the island,
Speaker 7: which appears very different with blue roofing. I'm not saying
Speaker 7: this necessarily is mar A Lago, but if I were
Speaker 7: to try to draw mar A Lago from memory, it
Speaker 7: might look something like this. There's certainly a resemblance which
Speaker 7: is notable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we should talk about literally. The next photo from
Speaker 2: this is a picture of Jeffrey Epstein holding a check
Speaker 2: for twenty two thousand dollars to him from Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: There's three people posing next to him. One of them
Speaker 2: is a woman whose face is blacked out. There's also
Speaker 2: another woman with her face blacked out behind them. But
Speaker 2: the man who's sitting next to the woman at what
Speaker 2: looks like a dinner table does not have his face
Speaker 2: blacked out.
Speaker 5: I don't know why.
Speaker 2: And it says on this Jeffrey is showing early talents
Speaker 2: with money and women cells fully depreciated. And then the
Speaker 2: name of the woman who is being sold is blacked
Speaker 2: out to Donald Trump for twenty two five hundred dollars.
Speaker 2: Shoot early people skills too. Even though I handled the deal,
Speaker 2: I didn't get any of the money for the girl.
Speaker 7: So pretty sickening.
Speaker 14: Joke, Yeah, yeah, genuinely like nauseating literally, yeah, like him
Speaker 14: holding up a check Donald Trump gave him for a girl.
Speaker 7: Like a fake novelty check signed by someone who's not Trump,
Speaker 7: just someone signing Donald Trump, not Donald Trump's signat JEM.
Speaker 7: But people joking. It's a bit about Jeffrey selling a
Speaker 7: woman to Trump four twenty two five hundred dollars?
Speaker 14: Was this a fully depreciated Is that the phrasing used,
Speaker 14: That is the phraseated? Yes, yes, yeah, it's fucking disgusting.
Speaker 2: And then we get down to the original Trump letter,
Speaker 2: which we've talked about on the show.
Speaker 5: We've read it to you.
Speaker 2: This is the one where's Donald says it's framed as
Speaker 2: a conversation between them, and Donald says, enigma's never age.
Speaker 2: Have you noticed that anyway? The only thing noteworthy about
Speaker 2: this is now we have the drawing of the woman.
Speaker 2: It's drawn around the script, and it's I would say,
Speaker 2: pretty clear a pubescent girl. Like there's breasts drawn on.
Speaker 7: Their breasts do not look fully developed, and they do
Speaker 7: not look they're not large like no, and the position
Speaker 7: of them is higher. They look like underdeveloped breasts.
Speaker 2: Yes, it looks like a drawing of a young girl,
Speaker 2: like of a child.
Speaker 7: It's so much more creepy than anyone who like tried
Speaker 7: to draw what this might have looked like, has like
Speaker 7: previously imagined like they were all drawing you know, like
Speaker 7: conventionally attractive like adult female bodies. This is much more creepy.
Speaker 2: Now I will say, it doesn't look like his signature
Speaker 2: is meant to be pubic care here.
Speaker 7: It's in a similar position. But you know this is
Speaker 7: this is a very abstract drawing. Yes, his signature is
Speaker 7: just his first name, Donald, which he signs a lot
Speaker 7: of personal notes with not his full Donald Trump's signature.
Speaker 7: Trump is maintaining that he did not sign this, that
Speaker 7: this is a forgery. He is unaware of this letter,
Speaker 7: even though the signature matches other signatures from him around
Speaker 7: this time. And this just feels like a very Donald
Speaker 7: Trump thing to do. Yeah, and is worded similarly to
Speaker 7: how he talked about women in this era. He now
Speaker 7: makes statements being like I don't talk this way all
Speaker 7: my everyone who knows me knows I don't talk this way.
Speaker 7: And if you watch like clips from Donald Trump in
Speaker 7: the early two thousands talking about women, it is this
Speaker 7: type of language. It is. It is very gross. Yeah,
Speaker 7: Like everyone remembers the Howard Stern clip, like come on.
Speaker 5: Right, oh yeah, No.
Speaker 2: It's also worth noting one of the last things in
Speaker 2: the book is recipe for like chocolate chip chip cookies.
Speaker 2: I try to figure out who put the recipe in there,
Speaker 2: but their name is blacked out. They're right under Henry
Speaker 2: Rossofsky and read above Les Wexner. I don't know who
Speaker 2: put that chocolate chip cookie recipe in here, but I
Speaker 2: might try to make those cookies.
Speaker 8: The epsteine biscuit I wouldn't eat those.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 7: A few other things before we close this episode related
Speaker 7: to Epstein. On September, fifth House Speaker Mike Johnson told
Speaker 7: reporters that Trump was actually a secret FBI informant tasked
Speaker 7: with taking down Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 8: I hadn't heard it did a great job. Yeah, Well, I'm.
Speaker 17: Saying that when Epstein did as a hoax, it's a terrible,
Speaker 17: unspeakable evil. He believes that himself when he first heard
Speaker 17: the room where kicked Hm out of Mildago, who was
Speaker 17: an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down.
Speaker 17: The President knows and has great sympathy for the women
Speaker 17: who suffered these unspeakable arms. It's detestable to him, and
Speaker 17: I've spoken about this as recently as twenty hours ago.
Speaker 8: This should be documents that could that could corroborate that. Onment,
Speaker 8: imagine what think.
Speaker 7: The temver eighth Mike Johnson walked back his FBI informant comments,
Speaker 7: telling reporters he was referring to what epstein victims attorneys
Speaker 7: has said that Trump was quote willing to help law
Speaker 7: enforcement to go after the guy who was a disgusting
Speaker 7: child abuser as at trafficker. All the allegations. That's what
Speaker 7: they heard. I don't know if I used the right terminology,
Speaker 7: but that's common knowledge, and everybody knows that I was
Speaker 7: repeating what has been common knowledge for a long time.
Speaker 7: The President was helpful in trying to get Epstein for
Speaker 7: the law enforcement to go after Epstein unquote great stuff
Speaker 7: from Mike Johnson share. A day later, Whitehouse Press Secretary
Speaker 7: Carolyn Levitt confirmed that Trump was not, in fact an
Speaker 7: FBI informant. One other weird Epstein story from this week
Speaker 7: is how the DOJ has been beefing with James O'Keeffe's
Speaker 7: Project Veritas.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Project Veritas did a operation against a DOJ employee in
Speaker 7: which they recorded him saying this. Those files do exist.
Speaker 18: Yeah, thousands and thousands of Page five still redactor every
Speaker 18: Republican or conservative person in those files.
Speaker 3: Leave all the liberal democratic people in those files.
Speaker 7: I mean they visited that Maxwell person.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and also involved got.
Speaker 17: Transferred to a minimum security Quiston series, which is against
Speaker 17: BOP positive because it's just a so he's a committed
Speaker 17: sex minter.
Speaker 6: The offer or something to keep about.
Speaker 18: Yet, that was the acting Deputy Chief of the Office
Speaker 18: of Enforcement operations Joseph Schnitt telling a stranger about the
Speaker 18: FBI and DOJ's handling of the Epstein files.
Speaker 7: The DOJ responded to O'Keefe saying, quote, Joseph schnid had
Speaker 7: no role in the department's internal review of Epstein materials.
Speaker 7: He has confirmed as much to leadership, and we plan
Speaker 7: on publishing his written statement to that effect when we
Speaker 7: have it. In his words, the comments he made were
Speaker 7: based on quote what he learned in the media, and
Speaker 7: he has quote no knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Miss
Speaker 7: Maxwell other than what was reported in the news unquote.
Speaker 7: And then Schnitt used the Department of Justice X account
Speaker 7: to post a what it could be described as like
Speaker 7: an Apple Notes apology statement with thirty percent battery displayed
Speaker 7: on his phone. When he talks about he talks about
Speaker 7: meeting a quote woman named Skyler on Hinge a dating
Speaker 7: gap in July twenty twenty five. Her profiles no longer findable.
Speaker 7: We had two dates. She gave no clues that she
Speaker 7: was a reporter or recording car dates. Had I clue,
Speaker 7: the first date would have ended immediately and there would
Speaker 7: have never been a second one. My profile indicated I
Speaker 7: did quote unquote government work, but did not specify for
Speaker 7: which agency. I never discussed what I do at DOJ.
Speaker 7: The comments I made were my own personal comments on
Speaker 7: what I've learned in the media and not from anything
Speaker 7: I've done or learned via work. Incredible the United States government, everybody.
Speaker 14: Yeah, and James O'Keeffe out there with the journalism first trap.
Speaker 14: I guess I wonder if it's is it a one
Speaker 14: party consent? This is in DC, right, I don't believe
Speaker 14: DC is one party consent.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that I would be shocked. I'm not sure how
Speaker 7: O'Keefe pulls all this stuff off legally.
Speaker 5: He could get in trouble for this one. Yeah.
Speaker 14: My understanding would be just to be clear for people
Speaker 14: who want in on the jog, and like in most
Speaker 14: states of the Union, I think you need both people's
Speaker 14: consent to record a conversation. You could argue, I guess
Speaker 14: he didn't have a reasonable expectation of privacy sitting out there,
Speaker 14: but I think this is very clearly a clandestine recording.
Speaker 2: Oh wait, no, no, no, sorry, d d C is
Speaker 2: a one party consents area. Dam Okay, well there you go. Wow, Okay,
Speaker 2: I did yet I did not know that.
Speaker 6: Yep.
Speaker 5: So well he's safe.
Speaker 14: Yeah, I guess if that date was in DC. You
Speaker 14: got to look if the date was in DC. A
Speaker 14: lot of jurisdictions around there bumping up. But yeah, that's surprising.
Speaker 8: No, he's good.
Speaker 7: All right. Well, I think that's all we have for
Speaker 7: this week, which is a lot. This was a massive
Speaker 7: news week. This is an extra long episode, but sometimes
Speaker 7: that happens.
Speaker 8: Congratulations on making it this far.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and may every day be a new wonderful secret
Speaker 2: as no. Donald Trump told Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 8: Stop him to turn it off.
Speaker 7: We reported the news, We reported the news.
Speaker 2: Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
Speaker 2: from now until the heat death of the universe.
Speaker 15: It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 7: Thanks for listening.