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Speaker 1: Let's turn out to data centers.
Speaker 3: More of the political world and the news media is
Speaker 3: opening up to this live issue, and let's put this
Speaker 3: up here on the screen. Quote the new price of eggs,
Speaker 3: the political shocks of data centers and electric bills in
Speaker 3: New York Times starting to pay attention, actually doing a
Speaker 3: decent enough job of going over and actually, you know,
Speaker 3: interviewing some of the people who are most affected. So
Speaker 3: they actually open the story with cattle ranchers in Georgia.
Speaker 3: Quote they had one thing on their minds when they
Speaker 3: cast their ballots for the state's utility board to make
Speaker 3: a statement. They were irked by their escalating electric bills,
Speaker 3: not to mention extra fifty bucks a month levied by
Speaker 3: their local utility to cover a new power plant more
Speaker 3: than two hundred miles away, but after they heard a
Speaker 3: data center might be built next to their ranch sixty
Speaker 3: miles southwest of Atlanta, they had enough of Republicans who
Speaker 3: were far too receptive to the interests of the booming
Speaker 3: AI industry.
Speaker 1: First time I ever voted Democrat.
Speaker 3: Mister Peyton fifty eight says, So you can see in
Speaker 3: that anecdote the political price. Now as this has propelled
Speaker 3: two Democrats in the state of Georgia to upset you. Also,
Speaker 3: as I have said here before, there are opposition organic
Speaker 3: movements across the nation. Tucson, Arizona, here in Virginia, New Jersey.
Speaker 3: All the candidates here in Virginia basically were like against
Speaker 3: data centers, the power bills. Just what it demonstrates, I
Speaker 3: think is that because we have finite amounts of power
Speaker 3: for a variety of reasons, mostly corruption, but because of
Speaker 3: that reason, and we're all kind of competing against one
Speaker 3: another and at the same time the government is going
Speaker 3: all in based literally on the AI industry that this
Speaker 3: will offset and a lot of their costs, which are
Speaker 3: you know, a huge bet on AI which may not
Speaker 3: actually be a good bet, and then socialize it to
Speaker 3: the entire United States and the consumer who's already struggling
Speaker 3: with inflation. So I think it's one of those where
Speaker 3: as power prices, you know, look, I think they're going
Speaker 3: to continue to go up or broadly stay up because
Speaker 3: of this, and a lot of the industry has continues
Speaker 3: to pour all these billions of dollars, which is good
Speaker 3: for the stock market, not necessarily good for the quote
Speaker 3: real economy because it's the only thing really propping us
Speaker 3: all that up. It's a huge bet that's increasing costs
Speaker 3: on the way up, and it could also increase costs
Speaker 3: on the way down if it does cause a recession.
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the most dangerous points.
Speaker 2: No, and that Georgia election, so no Democrats had been
Speaker 2: elected to that board since two thousand and seven, okay,
Speaker 2: and you have two Democrats who won by like massive mark.
Speaker 2: They won by like twenty points. It was not close,
Speaker 2: and so you know, there were a variety of reasons
Speaker 2: when I saw that, I was like, you know, it
Speaker 2: fits my own view of the world a little too
Speaker 2: closely that this would be all driven by electricity prices
Speaker 2: and by data centers. So I was glad to see
Speaker 2: the New York Times go and actually interview voters and
Speaker 2: come to find out those voters were like, yes, I'm
Speaker 2: a lifelong Republican and I cast my ballot for two
Speaker 2: Democrats because I am disgusted with the rate hikes and
Speaker 2: the data center billdouns that are impacting my life directly.
Speaker 4: So I'm not saying that's one hundred percent of what
Speaker 4: was going on.
Speaker 2: Part of what was going on as a low turn
Speaker 2: on election, part of what was going on as there
Speaker 2: were some i think Atlanta municipal elections that drove more
Speaker 2: Democrats to the polls. Those were factors that well as
Speaker 2: well that led it to be such a blowout. But
Speaker 2: it certainly appears that the data center build out and
Speaker 2: the fact of consistent rate hikes and electricity bills skyrocketing
Speaker 2: led to the blowout victory of these two Democrats. Now
Speaker 2: you have, you know, other Democrats who are really picking
Speaker 2: up the message, realizing that this is an incredibly potent issue.
Speaker 2: As Soccer mentioned, you had a few trial runs in
Speaker 2: Virginia as well, where that messaging really seemed to pay off.
Speaker 2: Mikey Cheryl also ran on freezing any rate hikes on
Speaker 2: the utilities in New Jersey, so that seems to have,
Speaker 2: you know, helped to power her victory as well. Tomorrow,
Speaker 2: we're going to cover this Tennessee special election that is
Speaker 2: happening tomorrow in a Trump plus twenty two district where
Speaker 2: you have the Democrat Afton Bain, who is running aggressively
Speaker 2: also on overall affordability, specifically on electricity prices, and I
Speaker 2: don't know that she's going to be able to pull
Speaker 2: it off. It is a tough hill to climb, and
Speaker 2: again a Trump plus twenty two district. But they are
Speaker 2: nervous enough on the Republican side that they've sent in
Speaker 2: Jade Vance, They've sent in Mike Johnson, they're fundraising aggressively,
Speaker 2: they're running all sorts of very aggressive ads against her,
Speaker 2: like they are nervous that this could be an upset
Speaker 2: and the fact that she's even in the ballpark is
Speaker 2: completely insane. So you know, we've covered here how Steve
Speaker 2: Bannon and others real that this is an incredibly potent
Speaker 2: populist issue, and the Trump administration is driving the train
Speaker 2: in terms of the AI buildout. Republicans, of course, are
Speaker 2: always very close to corporate power. Many Democrats are as
Speaker 2: well too, by the way, but I think this is
Speaker 2: going to become a more and more salient issue as
Speaker 2: people connect the dots of these data centers that are
Speaker 2: going in and I'm not super happy about anyway, and
Speaker 2: my electricity price is going up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that we have to keep
Speaker 3: looking behind the scenes at is what about the money.
Speaker 1: How where's it going to come from?
Speaker 3: Because it's not just now, it's already fueling the data
Speaker 3: center boom, it's ten years in the future.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the next one.
Speaker 3: Please put this on the screen so they say open
Speaker 3: AI is quote a loss making machine. Estimates it has
Speaker 3: no road to profitability by twenty thirty and will need
Speaker 3: a further two hundred billion in funding even if it
Speaker 3: gets there.
Speaker 1: Quote, don't call it a bubble.
Speaker 3: Loss making monster is on the hook for one point
Speaker 3: for trillion with the in compute commitments as companies start
Speaker 3: turning to debt to fund the AI craze. I actually
Speaker 3: thought that They summarized it really well and showed even
Speaker 3: within their funding because even I didn't understand the extent
Speaker 3: to which not only are the losses the problem, how
Speaker 3: even with their hundreds of billions in capitalization, that they
Speaker 3: still don't have the money to even fulfill all of
Speaker 3: their commitments. This is why I said, you're going to
Speaker 3: pay on the way up in terms of power prices,
Speaker 3: and you can pay on the way down if we
Speaker 3: have a recession, that's going to affect everything, and everybody's
Speaker 3: going to get fired, no matter whether you work in
Speaker 3: AI or not, because that's what happened with the financial
Speaker 3: crisis too. That's what happens socks start to go down
Speaker 3: twenty five thirty percent. It's a disaster, right obviously, And
Speaker 3: so you can see in all of this that the
Speaker 3: signs are bubbling up. Let's go to the next one.
Speaker 3: But this is one of the most important ones. We
Speaker 3: didn't cover it unfortunately at the time. This happened about
Speaker 3: twelve fifteen days ago. But you'll remember I talked about
Speaker 3: a lot of those vendor finance deals where they announce
Speaker 3: a deal and then the stock goes up, effectively paying
Speaker 3: for it even though no money has yet change hands.
Speaker 3: This Oracle deal was really important. They say, Oracle is
Speaker 3: already underwater on its quote astonishing three hundred billion dollar
Speaker 3: open Ai deal, because what happened is that when Oracle
Speaker 3: announced the three hundred dollars deal with the chatbot, its
Speaker 3: stock shed some three hundred and fifteen billion in market value. Now,
Speaker 3: it's obviously market cap is not the only thing, you know.
Speaker 3: That's not exactly saying that they lost some three hundred billion,
Speaker 3: But the equivalents of quote Oracle shares I've little changed
Speaker 3: over twine. So the sixty billion dollar loss figure is
Speaker 3: not entirely wrong. And what it has done is this
Speaker 3: cost it nearly as much as one entire General Motors
Speaker 3: or two entire craft higns investor onion stems from the
Speaker 3: betting of a debt finance data farm on open Ai.
Speaker 1: We have nothing.
Speaker 3: What they show also is that the theory goes that
Speaker 3: open Ai is in a rush to quote discover agi
Speaker 3: and that Oracle is quote uniquely able to scale the
Speaker 3: compute capacity. They promise the lowest up from and the
Speaker 3: fastest path to income generation. But quote Oracle doesn't have
Speaker 3: as much operating profit to burn as its competitors, so
Speaker 3: throwing everything that it can, it's supporting this one customer
Speaker 3: in exchange for an IOU. Now the fact is, though,
Speaker 3: is that the fact that their market cap and their
Speaker 3: stock is not performing means that people are having less
Speaker 3: faith in that IOU for the view, and you should
Speaker 3: shouldn't you? It doesn't make any sense in the aggurant
Speaker 3: So I don't know. I just think I think that
Speaker 3: the problem remains the cost is going up for all
Speaker 3: of us, and if it works, the cost will then
Speaker 3: continue to go more. But as it goes down, it
Speaker 3: just increasingly looks like at some point something needs to
Speaker 3: pop that we will be left kind of like with
Speaker 3: the wreckage of all these data centers, and then it
Speaker 3: will be put to use for what we won't have
Speaker 3: agi we won't cure cancer.
Speaker 1: Well, i'll show you all what it's being used for
Speaker 1: right now. C four. Let's put this up here on
Speaker 1: the screen.
Speaker 3: This is new quote nano banana versus nano banana pro
Speaker 3: so on the left. This is the image generator, was
Speaker 3: a previous image generator of This is a girl who's
Speaker 3: at a bar. If you're just listening bartender in the back,
Speaker 3: you can just tell it doesn't pass.
Speaker 2: It has this sen to it where it looks a
Speaker 2: little it looks good, but it looks a little surreal.
Speaker 2: If you have a sophisticated eye, you could look at
Speaker 2: that one and go, I think that's AI.
Speaker 3: The one on the right for those who are watching,
Speaker 3: that's also AI generated.
Speaker 1: It looks on. There's nothing in.
Speaker 3: That photograph that I could be able to identify as fake,
Speaker 3: not one, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: The lighting is perfect.
Speaker 2: It looks whoever sitting across from her took a picture
Speaker 2: with their iPhone and posted, yes, it's indistinguishable from reality.
Speaker 3: Right, Not a single thing passes the test on that
Speaker 3: one for me to say that that is fake. And
Speaker 3: so yeah, I mean that's that's really what it all.
Speaker 3: And this is kind of remains my critique is that
Speaker 3: everything they're doing is slop. It's just slopifying the entire economy.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, image generation. I keep talking about the NFL,
Speaker 3: but it is important because nobody who's curing cancer is
Speaker 3: advertising on the NFL. They just they the results are
Speaker 3: the same. Instead they're like, hey, book a flight or whatever.
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, you want to replace Expedia, You basically
Speaker 3: want to replace Google, Chrome, that's what they did with
Speaker 3: the chat GPT browser. That is not worth all this
Speaker 3: money being poured and the power bills and everything. Image
Speaker 3: generation Like, I'm sorry, Yes, it's a better research tool.
Speaker 1: Cool. I think that's I actually think it's cool. I
Speaker 1: use it often.
Speaker 3: But that's not the promise of like this breakthrough, you
Speaker 3: know kind of thing. It could come potentially with all
Speaker 3: of that, but I'm not buying I'm not buying it.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Well, I hope you're right, because I think the actual
Speaker 2: promise being fulfilled, you know, I think is a much
Speaker 2: scarier prospect of them actually making good on their promise
Speaker 2: to eliminate all or most jobs. I don't think we're
Speaker 2: ready for that. I don't think we're ready for this.
Speaker 2: I don't think we're ready for a world where we
Speaker 2: can't tell back from fiction. I mean, you think we
Speaker 2: have responsible full of actors and an educated society to
Speaker 2: be able to parse things out. Do you think that
Speaker 2: our tech oligarchs that are running our information ecosystem, like
Speaker 2: Elon with Grock, do you think that they're going to
Speaker 2: responsibly use this technology. I think this is already where
Speaker 2: it's at incredibly disturbing and incredibly destabilizing. You know, for
Speaker 2: us to have a sort of shared project here, we
Speaker 2: have to at least have some metric of a shared reality,
Speaker 2: and that is under full scale assault by these AI tools,
Speaker 2: and there is nothing in place to protect us at
Speaker 2: this point. One last thing, going back to that Financial
Speaker 2: Times piece about Oracle and the deal with open Ai.
Speaker 2: You know, one of the reasons why this is so
Speaker 2: significant is because if you think about that infamous chart
Speaker 2: that showed all the lines going from Nvidia to open
Speaker 2: Ai and from open Ai back to Vida, you know,
Speaker 2: all these companies just doing deals with themselves. The way
Speaker 2: that the bubble has continued to be inflated is that
Speaker 2: every time one of those deals got done, even though
Speaker 2: no real new value value was being created, investors liked
Speaker 2: it and the stock price went up. So there was
Speaker 2: some sort of theoretical value that was created even though
Speaker 2: nothing real had happened in the economy.
Speaker 4: Because this deal.
Speaker 2: Which was a sizeable deal, didn't react, there wasn't a
Speaker 2: similar stock market reaction. It begs the question of whether
Speaker 2: this mechanism that they've used to inflate the bubble, inflate
Speaker 2: the bubble and keep the line going up, whether that
Speaker 2: has run its course, So one of the things that
Speaker 2: has inflated the bubble seems this is one indication that
Speaker 2: that particular mechanism may have run its course.
Speaker 4: The way they put it in the articles they say
Speaker 4: beyond the charts.
Speaker 2: A broader question relates to whether an open ai deal
Speaker 2: is still worth announcing. A few months ago, any kind
Speaker 2: of agreement with open ai could make a share price
Speaker 2: go up. Open Ai did very nicely out of its
Speaker 2: power to reflect glory, most notably in October when it
Speaker 2: took am D warrants as part of a chip deal
Speaker 2: that bumps share price by twenty four percent. But Oracle
Speaker 2: is not only the is not the only laggard. Broadcommon
Speaker 2: Amazon are both downfallowing open aideal news will Nvidia's barely
Speaker 2: changed since its investment agreement in September without a share
Speaker 2: price lift, what's the point? Combined trillion dollars of aikapex
Speaker 2: might look like commitment, but investment fashions are fickle. So
Speaker 2: another warning sign that possibly this thing could be running
Speaker 2: out of runway. Now my own opinion, not being an expert,
Speaker 2: and that any of this is that they are going
Speaker 2: to continue to inflate this bubble as long as they
Speaker 2: possibly can, because they have to, because a bunch of
Speaker 2: their fortunes are tied to it. The entire US economy
Speaker 2: is tied to it. I mean, these companies already are
Speaker 2: too big to fail simply from the fact that we
Speaker 2: have as you know that our leaders have decided to
Speaker 2: bet our entire economy on this stuff. So I think
Speaker 2: they will move heaven and earth to make sure line
Speaker 2: continue to go up. But at some point, either they're
Speaker 2: going to deliver on their promise slash threat to take
Speaker 2: all of our jobs, or you're going to have a
Speaker 2: tremendous financial calamity. And also perhaps both is also.
Speaker 4: On the table.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's exactly right.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's get to Afghans. We're going to skip our
Speaker 3: frauds or block just we've gone a little bit long.
Speaker 3: We want to make sure we have plenty of time
Speaker 3: with seth Harp to discuss. Let's get to it.
Speaker 2: So, as you guys probably know, over the holiday, two
Speaker 2: National guardsmen were shot here in Washington, d C. And
Speaker 2: one of them actually succumbed to their wounds. We're learning
Speaker 2: quite a bit about the suspected gunman, who was an
Speaker 2: Afghan National who was apparently part of our CIA backed
Speaker 2: death squads in Afghanistan before coming over and being granted
Speaker 2: refugee asylum status here in the US. So to dig
Speaker 2: into this background and what exactly the hell is going
Speaker 2: on with it, we have literally the perfect person, Seth Harp,
Speaker 2: who is an incredible investigative journalist and also the author
Speaker 2: of the also incredible book The Fort Bragg Cartel, which
Speaker 2: we learned as turned into a series by HBO. Seth,
Speaker 2: Great to have you, Good.
Speaker 1: To see you man, Good to be with you all.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, yeah, of course. So let's put
Speaker 2: you two up on the screen. This is some of
Speaker 2: your writing on Twitter about who this guy was. You
Speaker 2: say he was recruited at fifteen to kill for the CIA,
Speaker 2: assigned to a desk squad run by the top drug
Speaker 2: lord in Afghanistan, sol destroyed murdering innocence on behalf of
Speaker 2: a pedophile heroin cartel, then brought to live in the
Speaker 2: alienated hell world of late capitalist America with predictable results.
Speaker 2: Tell us what we know about him specifically and about
Speaker 2: the desk squads that he was involved with.
Speaker 5: Well, that statement that you just showed up there might
Speaker 5: sound hyperbolic, but unfortunately those are all accurate statements of
Speaker 5: reality around the sky and who he was and what
Speaker 5: the Zero Units did in Afghanistan. Raman Walla lock Con
Speaker 5: I'm sorry pronouncing his name. He apparently was recruited at
Speaker 5: fifteen to serve in what's called Zero Units. Zero Unit
Speaker 5: number three was the one, apparently that he was assigned to,
Speaker 5: also known as the Kandahar Strike Force, which was headed
Speaker 5: by a US ally warlord named Ahmad Wali Karzai, who
Speaker 5: the top drug lord in Afghanistan, as a fair way
Speaker 5: to describe him. He ran the Zero Units for basically
Speaker 5: US proxy forces that operated at the direction of the
Speaker 5: CIA and the Special Forces in Afghanistan, and they primarily
Speaker 5: did what's called night raids you've mystically known as knight
Speaker 5: They're more like assassination missions, and they were used extensively
Speaker 5: throughout the country to kill people that the US intelligence
Speaker 5: suspected of being Taliban. Whether or not they actually were
Speaker 5: Taliban is quite a different matter. And the reference to pedophilia.
Speaker 5: There is the fact that a lot of these proxy
Speaker 5: forces proxy militias in fact practice something called batscha basi,
Speaker 5: which was a really despicable cultural practice where underage boys
Speaker 5: were traffics and sold. All this ugliness is stuff that
Speaker 5: went on in the sort in the criminal client state
Speaker 5: that the US American national security objectives in Afghanistan. The
Speaker 5: Condahar Strike Force that he served in was was in
Speaker 5: the middle of all of it. There's more stuff to
Speaker 5: it than that, as well, land theft, all kinds of criminality.
Speaker 5: So it's really sad to see that stuff blowing back
Speaker 5: onto the to the United States.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so let's put the next one guys up there
Speaker 3: on the screen. This is E three. This talks about
Speaker 3: his dark isolation the community was raising concerns many of
Speaker 3: the people around him. Seth, I want to put my
Speaker 3: conspiracy hat on and I'll just have you kind of
Speaker 3: steal man. The official narrative is that this is somebody
Speaker 3: who was exposed to CIA death squad for years. He's
Speaker 3: brought over to the United States, suffered a mental isolation.
Speaker 3: At the same time, we've seen many cases that people
Speaker 3: come to the United States, they're in a dark they're
Speaker 3: in a fragile case, they have this killer background.
Speaker 1: Is it outside the realm of.
Speaker 3: Possibility that I'm not saying there's evidence or anything, just
Speaker 3: based on based on your interpretation, your experience of covering this.
Speaker 3: I mean, how was there is there any likelihood or
Speaker 3: possibility of being prodded or influenced by some organization or
Speaker 3: others around him. I think a lot of people are
Speaker 3: asking that question considering his background.
Speaker 5: I mean, it would be irresponsible for me to just
Speaker 5: speculate about that without evidence. I do hear what you're saying.
Speaker 5: You know what it was the Gusanos from Cuba of
Speaker 5: the nineteen sixties, all the Cubans that were brought to
Speaker 5: Florida to train to try to overthrow Fidel Castro in
Speaker 5: the failed Baya Pigs operation. Well after that operation failed
Speaker 5: for years and years in the nineteen sixties and seventies
Speaker 5: and eighties, those same veterans of the Bay of Pigs,
Speaker 5: those they were used to carry out all sorts of
Speaker 5: off the books, CIA and Jaysock objectives and all across
Speaker 5: Latin America. They did terrorism and drug trafficking at the
Speaker 5: behest of some of the shadiest actors in the American
Speaker 5: national security state. And so when you look at the
Speaker 5: idea that ten thousand of these the zero units, you know,
Speaker 5: doing assassination missions for ten fifteen years, that They've all
Speaker 5: been repatriated to the US and are dependent on their
Speaker 5: CIA handlers for their immigration status, for their special immigrant visas.
Speaker 5: You kind of wonder, you know, to what extent they're
Speaker 5: a malleable group of people. I'm used and directed for
Speaker 5: all kinds of nefarious inns, but I don't have any
Speaker 5: specific information about this, about this killer's motives. Lock On
Speaker 5: Wall is his last name.
Speaker 2: You have pointed output four up on the screen that
Speaker 2: there was another one of these Afghan mercenaries who you
Speaker 2: said was brought to the US after kabble Felt shot
Speaker 2: a cop in Virginia. You say, listened to the incredible
Speaker 2: rant he delivers before he snaps, and watch how smoothly
Speaker 2: he draws and racks his weapon. Obviously a professional killer
Speaker 2: at his wits end. And I believe that Denier say
Speaker 2: something like, you know, I should have worked for the Taliban. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I should have served with the fucking Taliban before he
Speaker 2: draws his weapon on the cops.
Speaker 5: Yes, that video is very distressing and impressive to hearing
Speaker 5: all the things that that Afghan man says. You know,
Speaker 5: he's another guy who apparently served in a zero unit
Speaker 5: or served with the Special Forces in the CIA. By
Speaker 5: the way, when we say these people served with the CIA,
Speaker 5: I should point out that that's you know, these are
Speaker 5: substantially military operations. This is what they call sheet dipping,
Speaker 5: is where they say, Okay, nominally the CIA is in
Speaker 5: charge of this mission, but we're going to attach like
Speaker 5: thirty jst guys at thirty Green berets to this raid
Speaker 5: or whatever, and that way that they're they're exempt from
Speaker 5: a lot of the rules that normally apply to military
Speaker 5: operation in certain things like lining people up against the
Speaker 5: wall and just shooting them, which is the sort of
Speaker 5: stuff that the zero units did. But in any event,
Speaker 5: this guy, Jamal Wally apparently also served in the same
Speaker 5: sort of capacity. And in the video, which is really
Speaker 5: incredible eight minute long video, when he gets pulled over
Speaker 5: in Virginia, you can the sort of frustrations that he
Speaker 5: faces coming to the United States, and it's hard not
Speaker 5: to sympathize with the guy, because, you know, imagine being
Speaker 5: an Afghan who only knows the world of death and
Speaker 5: drug dealing that characterized occupied Afghanistan to come over to
Speaker 5: the United States and try to try to make a
Speaker 5: life in a place like suburban Virginia and try to
Speaker 5: figure out things like getting a job and car insurance,
Speaker 5: and like he's complaining that he can't get a job,
Speaker 5: that he can't get disability, and that he can't get
Speaker 5: a driver's license because he doesn't have insurance, which is
Speaker 5: the reason why the cop pulled him over. And you
Speaker 5: can just see that the guy is really, you know,
Speaker 5: completely at his wits end. More police are arriving on
Speaker 5: the scene, and the tension is building, and the guy
Speaker 5: is armed for some reason. He appears to be wearing
Speaker 5: his side arm and ammunition like externally on a belt,
Speaker 5: which you know that's legal in Texas, I don't know Virginia.
Speaker 5: But when he finally makes the decision, he's going to
Speaker 5: escalate and turn this into a confrontation with the cop.
Speaker 5: I mean the way he draws his weapon and racks
Speaker 5: it so quickly and immediately is able to turn around
Speaker 5: and fire a couple of shots, like underhanded, across his
Speaker 5: body at the police officer saying in his window so
Speaker 5: smoothly shows you know, I just watching it, you can
Speaker 5: tell this is the guy who's been in fights, probably,
Speaker 5: But you know, there was a cop at his other
Speaker 5: window who just really quickly put him down. But it's
Speaker 5: another really disturbing example of you know, violence blowing back
Speaker 5: or emanating from these guys that were brought to the US.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's about the clearest example of imperial blowback
Speaker 2: you could possibly imagine.
Speaker 5: I think that's fair to say.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And I think one of the things that's been
Speaker 3: crazy about this, Chris, is that, you know, we were
Speaker 3: reading the news and it comes out CIA at age fifteen,
Speaker 3: Everyone's like, oh, it's ciat and I'm like, hold say
Speaker 3: that again, teenager working for a CIA death squad in Afghanistan.
Speaker 3: And we're just like all supposed to just accept that
Speaker 3: this is apparently normal. I mean I didn't even know,
Speaker 3: you know, based on your work and others later on,
Speaker 3: but at that time, nobody was going around telling the
Speaker 3: American people that this is exactly, you know, what they're
Speaker 3: up to in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: Combined.
Speaker 3: I think with your book, what we're watching is an
Speaker 3: organized kind of effort for all of us to deal with.
Speaker 3: Like you said in the in your book about the
Speaker 3: blowback of what all the special operations, the mental toll
Speaker 3: in others, that this twenty year campaign failed campaign ultimately accomplished,
Speaker 3: and what it brought to our soil.
Speaker 1: That's the way I was looking at this.
Speaker 5: Well, the idea that they would recruit fifteen is perfectly
Speaker 5: consistent with the type of logic that the US military
Speaker 5: and intelligence agencies bring to bear with these conflicts, because
Speaker 5: they certainly won't hesitate to kill somebody who's fifteen. They
Speaker 5: treat that as a military age male. So there's no
Speaker 5: internal inconsistency there. But back now, I think reflects the
Speaker 5: brutality and ruthlessness with which the United States wage war
Speaker 5: in Afghanistan for twenty years.
Speaker 2: Christy Nome was asked about the killer's background. This is
Speaker 2: E one, guys, Let's go ahead and take a listen
Speaker 2: to that.
Speaker 5: Why did he do this? Why did he drive across
Speaker 5: the country and carry out this brazen attack in Washington.
Speaker 6: Well, the investigation is still ongoing, and we're allowing our
Speaker 6: partnership with the FBI and DOJ to continue to reveal
Speaker 6: all of the sources of motivation. But we do believe
Speaker 6: this individual when they came into the country, we know
Speaker 6: he was unvetted. He was brought into the country by
Speaker 6: the Biden administration through Operation Allies Welcome and then maybe
Speaker 6: vetted after that, but not done well. Based on what
Speaker 6: the guidelines were put forward by President Biden, and now
Speaker 6: since he's been here, we believe he could have been
Speaker 6: radicalized in his home community and in his home states.
Speaker 6: So as we continue to talk to his family and
Speaker 6: his contexts, more details will be revealed and will release
Speaker 6: those when it's appropriate. But this is something that for
Speaker 6: these individuals when they're brought into our country, it's a
Speaker 6: dangerous situation if you don't know who they are, if
Speaker 6: they're coming from a country that's not stable and doesn't
Speaker 6: have a government that can help you vet them, that
Speaker 6: we shouldn't allow it.
Speaker 2: And she indicates that he could have been radicalized in
Speaker 2: the United States, which you know, I would say probably
Speaker 2: the radicalization came from being on the CIA desk squad
Speaker 2: at the age of fifteen. But you know, they want
Speaker 2: they have an interest in making it sound like a
Speaker 2: scary Islam thing versus a scary deep state CIA.
Speaker 4: Imperial blowback thing.
Speaker 2: And then obviously like her thing about he wasn't vetted.
Speaker 2: I mean in the context of part of the death
Speaker 2: squads and being broad here, et cetera, he was quote
Speaker 2: unquote vetted. They knew who this guy was, they knew
Speaker 2: what he was up to, and also worth clarifying that
Speaker 2: he was actually granted asylum under the Trump administration. So
Speaker 2: they want to make it a partisan thing. They want
Speaker 2: to make it a scary Islam thing because that serves
Speaker 2: their interest in using this for a more aggressive crackdown
Speaker 2: on immigration from all sorts of countries. Trump has been
Speaker 2: talking a lot about Somalians lately too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't know what they mean when they say
Speaker 5: vetted for what I mean for I guess for connections
Speaker 5: to the Taliban, right, But it can't be for like
Speaker 5: terrorism crime. I mean, the people that the US worked
Speaker 5: with were the drug traffickers and the terrorists in Afghanistan, right.
Speaker 5: So I don't know what kind of connections they're looking
Speaker 5: for or looking to rule out. But yes, like you said, Crystal,
Speaker 5: in any event, you know, participating in death squad activities
Speaker 5: when you're still a teenage that's sufficient to radicalize anybody.
Speaker 5: You don't have to look too much farther for an
Speaker 5: next explanation, even though you know the precise, perhaps mentally
Speaker 5: ill reasoning that led him, you know, to that street
Speaker 5: corner in Washington, d C. We may never know, but
Speaker 5: it's not really necessary to grasp at the idea that
Speaker 5: he might have been what radicalized in suburban Virginia. Yeah, don't.
Speaker 5: I don't think so. I really doubt that radical Islam
Speaker 5: had anything to do with the shooter's motivation. I mean,
Speaker 5: that's why he was attacking national guards. But it looks
Speaker 5: like he's lashing out at the people who shaped his
Speaker 5: life with military operations and brought him to the United
Speaker 5: States and basically set him up to fail and community
Speaker 5: where you know, a person from Afghanistan just has a
Speaker 5: little chance, especially if they're dealing with all the accumulated
Speaker 5: trauma of having participated in violence and having killed people
Speaker 5: and having seen innocent people killed and have probably having
Speaker 5: friends killed as well. So yeah, Christinum's statements can safely
Speaker 5: be dismissed in that regard.
Speaker 1: All right, well, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 3: Man. We appreciate you your book and everything, and the work
Speaker 3: you do is just so important. I remember the first
Speaker 3: time we had you on the show for that drug
Speaker 3: trafficking story. From the very beginning, I was like, man,
Speaker 3: this guy. It's one of those where you just bring
Speaker 3: together so much information which I think a lot of
Speaker 3: us knew, but you put the facts the words and
Speaker 3: some of the work behind it.
Speaker 1: So thank you. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: The balls by the way, yeah, really end up appreciate respect, Seth,
Speaker 2: thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Great to see you.
Speaker 5: Thank you guys so much. I'm a big fan of
Speaker 5: the show. Watch every day.
Speaker 4: Thanks. I appreciate that.
Speaker 2: So we have some significant developments coming out of Israel,
Speaker 2: in particular Prime Minister Benjamin Netna, who is officially requesting
Speaker 2: a pardon. As you guys probably know, he has been
Speaker 2: mired in corruption allegations and a corruption trial for years
Speaker 2: that he has been pushing off again and again into
Speaker 2: the future by you know, bombing various places and starting
Speaker 2: various wars. Let's put this up on the screen. This
Speaker 2: is from the ap Netna who requests the pardon to
Speaker 2: end his ongoing corruption trial in Israel. I'll read you
Speaker 2: a little bit of this. On Sunday, he asked the
Speaker 2: country's president to grant him a pardon from corruption charges,
Speaker 2: seeking to end a long running trial that has bitterly
Speaker 2: divided the nation. Net Yahoo has been at war against
Speaker 2: Israel's legal system over the charges. Said the request would
Speaker 2: help unify the country at a time of momentous change
Speaker 2: in the region, but It immediately triggered denunciations from opponents,
Speaker 2: who said a pardon would weaken democratic institutions and send
Speaker 2: a dangerous message that he is above the rule of law.
Speaker 2: Net Naho had submitted a request for a pardon to
Speaker 2: the Legal Department of the Office of the President, the
Speaker 2: Prime Minister's office said in a statement. The President's office
Speaker 2: called it an extraordinary request carrying with its significant implications.
Speaker 2: Net now Who's the only sitting prime minister in Israeli
Speaker 2: history to stand trial after being charged with fraud, breach
Speaker 2: of trust, and accepting bribes in three separate cases accusing
Speaker 2: him of exchanging favors with wealthy political supporters. He has
Speaker 2: not been convicted of anything. Net Yahoo rejects the allegations,
Speaker 2: has described the case as what a witch hunt orchestrated
Speaker 2: by the media, police and judiciary. And we can put
Speaker 2: next one up on the screen. So one of his
Speaker 2: rivals supports pardening net Nyah, who if it's conditioned on
Speaker 2: his leaving politics, which I do not think that netna
Speaker 2: Who would agree to. You know, For those who have
Speaker 2: followed this closely, Prior to October seventh, net Yaho was
Speaker 2: extremely unpopular. The country was riven with mass protests demanding
Speaker 2: his ouster and people you know who were outraged over
Speaker 2: this corruption and also the changes that he tried to
Speaker 2: make to basically co opt the judiciary in order to
Speaker 2: undercut the corruption charges against him. And our own president
Speaker 2: of course has gotten involved here as well. It can
Speaker 2: put F three up on the screen. So Trump called
Speaker 2: for bb to be pardoned when he gave that you
Speaker 2: know what was basically like looked like a victory speech
Speaker 2: at the Kanesset after the Gaza deal was struck. But
Speaker 2: he had also put out this truth social saying it's
Speaker 2: terrible what they're doing in Israel. To bb Net Nyaho,
Speaker 2: he is a war hero and a prime minister who
Speaker 2: did a fabulous job working with us to bring great
Speaker 2: success and getting rid of the dangerous nuclear threat. And
Speaker 2: iron importantly is right now in the process of negotiating
Speaker 2: deal with Hamasis was back from a while ago, which
Speaker 2: will include getting the hostages back. How is it possible
Speaker 2: that the Prime Minister of Israel can be forced to
Speaker 2: sit in a courtroom all day long over nothing? And
Speaker 2: then he says cigars, bugs, bunny doll, et cetera. It
Speaker 2: is a political witch hunt. Very similar to the witch hunt.
Speaker 2: I was forced to endure. This travesty of justice will
Speaker 2: interfere with both Iron and AMAS negotiations. In other words,
Speaker 2: it is insanity doing what the out of control prosecutors
Speaker 2: are doing to bb Neatnyahu. The US of A spends
Speaker 2: billions of dollars a year, far more than any other
Speaker 2: nation protecting and supporting Israel. Well, that part at least
Speaker 2: is true. We're not going to stand for this. We
Speaker 2: just had a great victory with bidb net Nyahu at
Speaker 2: the Helm, and this greatly tarnishes our victory.
Speaker 4: Let bb go. He's got a big job.
Speaker 2: To do, so, you know, pretty extraordinary, I guess. For
Speaker 2: one of the things they're saying is typically you like
Speaker 2: go through the trial and find out whether or not
Speaker 2: the person is found guilty before you grant the pardon.
Speaker 2: So that is one part of this that would be extraordinary.
Speaker 2: But you know, net Yahu has pushed this thing off,
Speaker 2: pushed this thing off, push this thing off, pushed your
Speaker 2: reckoning over the security failures too of October seventh, off
Speaker 2: and off and off into the future, and really has
Speaker 2: consolidated a lot of political power, control and popularity within
Speaker 2: Israel over his conduct of this genocide.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think, but I think that the irony of
Speaker 3: it is that he still has to admit guilt if
Speaker 3: he wants his pardon within the Israeli legal system, and
Speaker 3: so I don't know. I mean, it's one of those
Speaker 3: where the mere part in. One of the things that
Speaker 3: is fascinating about Trump is that the United States, when
Speaker 3: it intervenes in other countries, usually does so under much
Speaker 3: more of the veneer of respectability. But as we talked
Speaker 3: about earlier with Honduras, he's straight up like, I want
Speaker 3: this government to win, and so I'm going to pardon
Speaker 3: this guy, and you guys should vote for or in
Speaker 3: with Milay, he's like, your aid.
Speaker 1: Is contingent on who you elect.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's as open and shut as like there's
Speaker 3: no Midon conspiracy or yes.
Speaker 4: It is Braizen in the area, right, It's just.
Speaker 1: Out in the open.
Speaker 3: And so I ask what this admits though, is that, yeah,
Speaker 3: Israel is a client. Like one of the things that
Speaker 3: Bibie often does is he'll be like, well, we're an
Speaker 3: independent nation, right, But that's not what this is about.
Speaker 3: Trump straight up was like, you guys need to pardon him.
Speaker 3: His contingent relationship is on this leader and making sure
Speaker 3: that he can continue to serve. Also to all Minish bullshit.
Speaker 3: Did we hear about how throughout the war is We'll
Speaker 3: talk about October seventh, after the war. Now, obviously the
Speaker 3: war is still continuing because there's these fire violations happening
Speaker 3: from the Israelis all the time. But in Israel, what
Speaker 3: happened to that? Does anybody want to?
Speaker 1: You know? It's it was.
Speaker 3: It's obvious that his entire strategy, it worked two years,
Speaker 3: led Israel through the war. Okay, And now he's gonna
Speaker 3: get his pardon. I don't know if he'll win reelection
Speaker 3: or not, but they're currently feuding with Ahud Barack over
Speaker 3: whether Epstein was a mos Odd asset and intervening in
Speaker 3: their elections, over which Israeli government he was working on
Speaker 3: behalf Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just it's so crazy.
Speaker 3: You know, this entire so the pardon, I mean again,
Speaker 3: the funny part about it all for the whole Qatar
Speaker 3: thing is it all involves Qatar like in terms of
Speaker 3: not just in his own case, but I'm saying the
Speaker 3: corruption within the Lukud party so much of it revolves
Speaker 3: around Katari money and bribery, and yet of course that's
Speaker 3: skated over by the Zionist people here in the US, So,
Speaker 3: I don't know, you learn a lot from it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 2: At the same time, we also wanted to highlight this
Speaker 2: horrifying video that is forcing at least some sort of
Speaker 2: a response from Israel. You know, I mean, it's seldom
Speaker 2: that their war crimes actually rise to the level of
Speaker 2: them even pretending that this one rose the level of
Speaker 2: we're going to pretend to do an investigation. That's what
Speaker 2: this one rose to. This video is very disturbing. Before
Speaker 2: I play it, just a warning, this is deeply disturbing
Speaker 2: and put this up on the screen. This was in
Speaker 2: the West Bank. You can see these two suspects who
Speaker 2: are exiting what appears to be a warehouse and they
Speaker 2: lift up their shirts to sh so that they are
Speaker 2: unarmed and they don't have any explosives. Then they are
Speaker 2: instructed to go back into the warehouse and they are
Speaker 2: executed and then the you know, this heavy machinery sort
Speaker 2: of drops this door on top of them. But you know,
Speaker 2: you have two individuals hands up, unarmed, and whoever they
Speaker 2: were Palestinian Islamic jihad is claiming them as their own,
Speaker 2: whoever they were.
Speaker 4: You are not.
Speaker 2: Supposed to execute people who are surrendering and who are unarmed,
Speaker 2: and yet that's exactly exactly what happened in this video.
Speaker 2: And again this happened in the West Bank. But you know,
Speaker 2: so there are some some in you know, recriminations, some like, oh,
Speaker 2: we'll look into it, we'll investigate what happened here, but
Speaker 2: not everyone is even going along with that. You've got
Speaker 2: Ben Gavier, who took it upon himself. We can put
Speaker 2: this next piece up on the screen to promote the
Speaker 2: officer in particular who sort of took charge of the
Speaker 2: scene and had his soldiers shoot dead these surrendered Palestinians.
Speaker 2: So the you know, the people who committed these brazen
Speaker 2: crimes on camera, not only are they not being punished,
Speaker 2: but Ben Gavier has promoted this officer, and you know, job,
Speaker 2: well done, great work on this.
Speaker 4: This is exactly what you should be doing.
Speaker 2: So I want people to understand, like every time some
Speaker 2: Zionists or liberals and I whoever tries to tell you like,
Speaker 2: oh he's been Ben Gavier is a he's a fringe character.
Speaker 2: He doesn't represent all of Israel. Blah, blah blah. This
Speaker 2: guy has real power. He is a part of this administration.
Speaker 2: He has real and significant power, and he is able
Speaker 2: to take actions such as this. There was another video
Speaker 2: I decided not to keep it in the show because
Speaker 2: it included like young children in it of Smoschurch, who
Speaker 2: is another complete and total psycho, going in to what
Speaker 2: appears to be a classroom, and these young girls going
Speaker 2: like he's you know, like he's the Beatles in the sixties,
Speaker 2: like going wild for him. You know, this society has
Speaker 2: just is just captured by this not everyone, but captured
Speaker 2: by this genocidal media. You can see it in the polls,
Speaker 2: you can see it in the response to actions like this.
Speaker 2: You can see it in the way that they like
Speaker 2: lionize and revere Smochrist. And this is something we talked
Speaker 2: about towards the beginning soccer. Wheneverone's like, why are these
Speaker 2: IDF soldiers filming their atrocities, it's because they were celebrated
Speaker 2: and treated like heroes, oftentimes for recording the cruelty the
Speaker 2: barbers and the war crimes that they were committing against
Speaker 2: Palestinian So there was a domestic reward for them from
Speaker 2: those videos.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it shows up in policy, and I think
Speaker 3: that's one of the parts where you know, in the
Speaker 3: US everyone.
Speaker 1: Just whitewater like that video.
Speaker 3: If yeah, you'll see it here, you're not going to
Speaker 3: see it most places in the mainstream media or others.
Speaker 3: Even with the West Bank in the way that we
Speaker 3: approach coach like our ambassador. It's just amazing to me,
Speaker 3: the shit they get away. I'm still not over Jonathan Pollard,
Speaker 3: are you no, I'm still so I well, I'm so
Speaker 3: angry about it.
Speaker 4: The hypocrisy.
Speaker 2: They tell us, oh, these they share our Westerns, they're
Speaker 2: a light of a beacon of democracy, and that's why
Speaker 2: we should support them endlessly. And then you see a
Speaker 2: video like this and you're like, well, tell me about that,
Speaker 2: and the officer involved gets a promotion. How is this
Speaker 2: anything approximating the values that we're supposed to stand for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I exactly same with the west Man. And that's why.
Speaker 3: Here's the reason is because if you take this in
Speaker 3: then when they start talking about Qatar or Saudi, they're like, oh, goose,
Speaker 3: Saudi's they chop people's heads off.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, that's pretty bad.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like shooting people who are unarmed or
Speaker 3: murdering innocent women and children. That's all bad, right, But
Speaker 3: the point is is that then we start to view
Speaker 3: everybody on the same terms. That's a nightmare for them.
Speaker 3: They need their special exception and they just have to
Speaker 3: maintain this insane image. You know, here in the US
Speaker 3: a lot of this, like again, everything they accuse, a
Speaker 3: lot of the things that they accuse others, and specifically
Speaker 3: Islamic nations, they do the same shit like in their
Speaker 3: own society, and so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're just the same.
Speaker 3: If anything. I think it's a nightmare actually for their
Speaker 3: relations with the US. And you know, look us neutral
Speaker 3: observers and others. You can see that, like you actually can.
Speaker 3: And this is genuinely dispassionate just to look at it
Speaker 3: and be like, okay, this is apparently how this nation,
Speaker 3: it's people want to conduct themselves. All right, fine, but
Speaker 3: you know that doesn't mean you get a blank check
Speaker 3: from me or the you know, full force of my
Speaker 3: empire to backstop your insane dreams of greater Israel. But
Speaker 3: that's what they need to maintain. Yeah, and that's why
Speaker 3: they keep up their efforts here in the West.
Speaker 2: I did want to share one piece of significant good news,
Speaker 2: which is that a Palstan American teenager, sixteen year old
Speaker 2: who was being held in Israeli detention for nine months,
Speaker 2: who was in the West Bank visiting from Flora, visiting
Speaker 2: some relatives. The Israelis claimed that he had thrown rocks,
Speaker 2: which he had denied, and they held him in this
Speaker 2: prison system as known for torture and abuse, again an
Speaker 2: American citizen, and he was finally finally released. And I
Speaker 2: want to shout out Jasper Nathaniel, and I want to
Speaker 2: set shout on his mom who'd been relentless in calling
Speaker 2: attention to this case and demanding that American politicians act
Speaker 2: on his behalf to get him released from this unjust imprisonment.
Speaker 2: And I also want to shout out Chris van Holland
Speaker 2: Senator Maryland. I mean, this isn't even this guy's from Florida,
Speaker 2: this isn't even one of his constituents, but he was
Speaker 2: apparently very aggressive pushing for Mohammed Ibrahim's release here. He
Speaker 2: was fifteen, by the way, when they originally detained him.
Speaker 2: He was taken to a hospital afterwards. He was pale, underweight,
Speaker 2: suffering from various conditions that he contracted in captivity.
Speaker 4: But he's back with his family.
Speaker 2: And so that's at least one small piece of good
Speaker 2: news that this particular American hostage which is being held
Speaker 2: by the Israelis, a child has been freed and returned
Speaker 2: to his family where he belongs.
Speaker 1: Yep, that's at the very least it's good.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, it's not like there's any outrage
Speaker 3: or campaign, barely any coverage even.
Speaker 1: Of something like this. Yeah, it's sick. I don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on with this relationship. But anyways, thank you
Speaker 1: guys so much for watching. We appreciate it. We're going
Speaker 1: to get to our Ama now and so we'll see
Speaker 1: you all tomorrow