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: Hi, everyone, it's me James. I just wanted to do
Speaker 3: very quick introduction to the episode. We have split it
Speaker 3: into two parts because it went longer than we expected,
Speaker 3: so you hear the first part to date, and you
Speaker 3: will hear the second part tomorrow.
Speaker 4: Welcome everyone to It's going to happen here. My name
Speaker 4: is Mick, and I'm here with the lovely James Stouts
Speaker 4: and the lovely Molly Conger. How are you guys doing.
Speaker 3: I'm great, so excited. I just love violive France. I
Speaker 3: love all things French. I've had such great times in France.
Speaker 3: I just particularly lovely French identitarism. So I'm excited.
Speaker 4: You love French, No, it's love it with like like French.
Speaker 5: James out huge, I just love.
Speaker 3: Like like the the idea like of the themong nations,
Speaker 3: like France has chosen one. It's just like, I'm not
Speaker 3: particularly anti French, but it is quite funny to me.
Speaker 6: James travels to France every year to go to what
Speaker 6: do they still have generation identity?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Every and I uh and every year they say, oh, well,
Speaker 3: your accent is not correct. You've not used vo in
Speaker 3: the in the requisite time. Therefore you are no longer
Speaker 3: welcome here. I went to France once with some Quebec
Speaker 3: quir friends. This is a funny, like low key identity story.
Speaker 3: I've already derailed this.
Speaker 4: Don't worry, don't worry.
Speaker 3: I went with two Quebec quar friends and we like
Speaker 3: were doing something official and I did it, conducted my
Speaker 3: thing in French.
Speaker 4: It was fine.
Speaker 3: I speak French and this wasn't an issue for me.
Speaker 3: And then they went up at this woman just when
Speaker 3: you don't speak French, sir, and then begin and addressing
Speaker 3: them in English because she was unwilling to accept the
Speaker 3: coco quebecqua in France.
Speaker 5: They're so mean.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, I for one am excited to hear about
Speaker 6: I don't know a lot about this guy.
Speaker 4: No, he's a weird little guy, my favorite kind of guy. Yeah, exactly, notably,
Speaker 4: which is why I asked you. I'm also just recovering
Speaker 4: from like an English person here saying that they love France.
Speaker 4: But that must be like a historically first time that
Speaker 4: that happen.
Speaker 3: Good place to race bikes, It's a good place to
Speaker 3: if you like to hang out in the mountains and
Speaker 3: race bikes. Pretty much France, Spain. Maybe Italy is where
Speaker 3: it's at.
Speaker 6: I visited once and I didn't I don't know. People
Speaker 6: are always saying that you are so cruel to Americans.
Speaker 6: That wasn't my experience, but most people there long enough.
Speaker 6: Yeah it's and you know, I'll always treasure the week
Speaker 6: that I spent in Paris because it is the only
Speaker 6: reason I didn't get deported from Germany for visa violations.
Speaker 4: Okay, that that is a story I actually want to hear.
Speaker 4: I've ever done recording. So but yeah, we're talking about
Speaker 4: French identitarianism, French Nazis. But before you start, James, I
Speaker 4: wanted to ask you a very important question. First, you
Speaker 4: have a podcasting honorary degree, a PhD. I've heard that's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, me and Joe Rogan both.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, And I just must ask, how do you
Speaker 4: deal with the recurring trauma of having to hear your
Speaker 4: own voice on recording?
Speaker 3: I play it at one point five time speed, so
Speaker 3: it doesn't sound like me.
Speaker 4: I was very curious about that. I've also had a
Speaker 4: fair shoff having to hear my own voice, and it
Speaker 4: just doesn't get any easier. No.
Speaker 6: I thought I would struggle with it because I hate
Speaker 6: the sound of my own voice in casual context, but
Speaker 6: like listening to my own podcast.
Speaker 5: I guess because I talk like this on my podcast
Speaker 5: and it sounds a little different, right, So it's.
Speaker 4: Like, oh, you go into podcast mode.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I have observe at Terry gross thing cooking.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, yeah, I'll try that.
Speaker 4: I'll do my Molly voice next time. Well, see that
Speaker 4: this is the kind of information that I need to
Speaker 4: cope with.
Speaker 5: Now you have to form an alter ego, oh.
Speaker 3: Like a into your podcast self a podcast the Doctor
Speaker 3: Checkle and mister Hyde exactly. Yeah, podcasting is just the
Speaker 3: id of every man. Every every white guy in the
Speaker 3: world has a podcasting id.
Speaker 4: This is uh. Freud would have loved this era.
Speaker 3: He wouldn't you don't have to psychoanalyze anyone anymore because
Speaker 3: they just say shit.
Speaker 5: Just say it. They'll just say it.
Speaker 3: They put it on through social like it's not fun anymore.
Speaker 3: He'd be bored.
Speaker 4: Well, that would be counteracted by like the higher quality
Speaker 4: cocaine that we have right now compared to his era.
Speaker 4: You would also be prosecuted for feeding his children cocaine.
Speaker 4: So you know, you win some of you lose some.
Speaker 4: You never know.
Speaker 3: Jeffrey Epteen got away with a lot of shit, Like
Speaker 3: maybe maybe Freud could have joined the club.
Speaker 4: That's a horrifying mix of worlds.
Speaker 5: That's else about this French Nazis today.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, okay, I'm just I'm starting with a bit
Speaker 4: of an introduction because this story actually happens in my
Speaker 4: hometown of Utrecht. Oh no, shit, Yeah. Somewhere midway through February,
Speaker 4: a message started to circulate in far right circles in
Speaker 4: the Netherlands. It originated from a group called Defend Netherlands,
Speaker 4: who made a public call to visit the AKU on
Speaker 4: the night of Thursday twenty sixth to remember Quentin killed
Speaker 4: in a cowardly manner by Antifa in Lyon. Earlier that
Speaker 4: month small side notes. All these groups are so proud
Speaker 4: of the Netherlands but never used Dutch language, and it's huh,
Speaker 4: it's my personal pet peeve. Did you any English? Yeah,
Speaker 4: they call themsel like defend Netherlands.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's called defend it's not translated. It's it's not translated.
Speaker 6: That's so interesting I find with European Nazi groups used
Speaker 6: primarily English.
Speaker 5: It is because it is born American audience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're trying to communicate something.
Speaker 5: Because Americans only speaking yes, yeah, but.
Speaker 4: Anyway, that was the message that was circulated on Instagram
Speaker 4: and telegram. The top of the in which that was
Speaker 4: shared showed a Celtic cross, a symbol with a Christian
Speaker 4: and Pagan origins but politically often used by white supremacists
Speaker 4: and neo fascist groups. At the bottom is an Italian
Speaker 4: slogan in orange letters at the national color of the Netherlands,
Speaker 4: reading pertucti camarati caluti presente. The slogan originates from the
Speaker 4: Italian fascist movements and means for our fallen comrades present,
Speaker 4: signaling that the fallen comrades are present in spirit. I
Speaker 4: can hear you all thinking, what the fuck has the
Speaker 4: depth in France to do with the political community center
Speaker 4: in the Netherlands, because that is what accuus. It's a
Speaker 4: community center. There's concerts, there's a bar, sometimes there's fundraisers.
Speaker 4: There's nothing openness going on there, but lots of more
Speaker 4: left leaning people visit there, which is I think why
Speaker 4: it was the original target. So but to understand how
Speaker 4: it came to be that the death of a French
Speaker 4: Nazi caused threats to a Doutch bar, we'll have to
Speaker 4: explore the circumstances of the death of Quentin Drank Dan.
Speaker 5: You're asking the wrong crowd speaks French French.
Speaker 4: I guess it's der hunk like what d e I
Speaker 4: A n k e.
Speaker 7: U e.
Speaker 4: Q Okay, I will I will butcher dispronunciation. It's okay
Speaker 4: if it's a Nazzi, yeah, exactly, it's okay.
Speaker 3: If it's French that that Molly money's now going to
Speaker 3: get kicked out of Paris never again, a law of money.
Speaker 4: Okay, I'll help you circumvent Dutch fees. Don't worry. But
Speaker 4: Dan Dan was a far right activist who died on
Speaker 4: February fourteenth after a violent altercation between the far right
Speaker 4: and the far left. I also want to make like
Speaker 4: a broad disclaimer, regardless of where anyone who listening to
Speaker 4: this stance politically, I'm still going to say this was tragic.
Speaker 4: Quentin was only twenty three, barely an adult, and as
Speaker 4: much as his worldview and politics were vile, cruel, and
Speaker 4: pretty much everything I'm personally opposed to, it was still
Speaker 4: a son, a friend, and a family member. That that's
Speaker 4: not coming home.
Speaker 6: I think it's always a tragic thing for someone to
Speaker 6: get beaten to death in the street, or at least almost.
Speaker 4: Always, almost almost always.
Speaker 6: But you know, I'm not saying it's wrong to punch
Speaker 6: a Nazi in the face, but I think beating a
Speaker 6: young man to death is probably not necessary in this case, definitely.
Speaker 4: And I don't want to make it come off like
Speaker 4: this is a celebration of some sorts, because it's not.
Speaker 4: It's a tragedy. And as much as the world will
Speaker 4: be a better place without his politics, I still think
Speaker 4: it's within my own moral lines to say, like, fuck,
Speaker 4: this shouldn't have happened.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And I think that's important to acknowledge upfront, because
Speaker 6: I think me if I'm wrong, I don't know exactly
Speaker 6: where the conversation is going. But from what I have
Speaker 6: seen in you know, following a bunch of telegram chats
Speaker 6: from Nazis all over the world. And I haven't engaged
Speaker 6: really with this story. I don't know a lot about it,
Speaker 6: but I see his name a lot. So his death
Speaker 6: has become something that isn't really about him. It's not
Speaker 6: about the tragic death of a young man, even to
Speaker 6: the people who are celebrating his life and using his death.
Speaker 5: As a political tool.
Speaker 6: Right, It's like, it's not about the tragedy of his
Speaker 6: death for the people who would have been his friends.
Speaker 4: No, and I think we could add some asterisks later
Speaker 4: on with friends.
Speaker 5: Because he wasn't white, wasn't he he.
Speaker 4: Was half I think his mother was.
Speaker 6: Peruvian, half Peruvian exactly. Yeah, anyway, sorry, sorry to derail me.
Speaker 4: No, that's fine.
Speaker 6: His death is tragic, and I think that is a
Speaker 6: much more generous read of the situation than many of
Speaker 6: his comrades would actually have.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And also it's like, if I'm going to celebrate it,
Speaker 4: then I'm no better than they would would be other
Speaker 4: than being on the night different political aisle. So but
Speaker 4: those two things can exist at the same time. But
Speaker 4: to get back who was Quentin. He was a student
Speaker 4: at Leon University. I've read contradictory reports on what it
Speaker 4: exactly was that he studied, but it was in the
Speaker 4: general area of mathematics and data science. Around his late teens,
Speaker 4: he converted to Catholicism, and outside of his studies, he
Speaker 4: was passionate about philosophy and ethics, specifically Saint Thomas Aquinas
Speaker 4: and Saint Augustine. Those close to him who have spoken
Speaker 4: with the media and describe him as more of a
Speaker 4: bookworm than violent activist. Few quotes here to underline that
Speaker 4: he was a normal young man who had reconnected with
Speaker 4: his roots, who loved this country, his people, his civilization,
Speaker 4: his religion. Quentin belongs to the legend. He is already
Speaker 4: a hero and a barter.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, these are the things said by the people
Speaker 5: who loved him.
Speaker 4: This was a friend of his who spoke to the media.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, you always hear this about I mean,
Speaker 6: I don't know anything about Quentin specifically, but just because
Speaker 6: someone close to him said he was he was a
Speaker 6: nice boy. He was never violent. You heard that about
Speaker 6: mass shooters. Yeah, yeah, great, ass.
Speaker 4: All exactly and apparently he was so devout in his
Speaker 4: Catholicism that he managed to convince several family members to convert,
Speaker 4: which led to him becoming his own father's godfather. Oh wow,
Speaker 4: if you're.
Speaker 6: An adult convert, anyone can be your sponsor any other
Speaker 6: baptized Catholic adult.
Speaker 5: Every he can confirmed Catholic adult.
Speaker 4: But it still feels weird to me. It's like, who's
Speaker 4: going to give who presents in in that dynamic?
Speaker 3: Or yeah, what's the Christmas dynamic? Now does he do
Speaker 3: you get? Do you get too?
Speaker 8: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Otherwise they've just shorted you right like someone else could it.
Speaker 3: Any any adult Catholic could have done that, and his
Speaker 3: dad will be cashing in now exactly.
Speaker 4: And now now it's just an equal trait, uh sort
Speaker 4: of yeah, because they have to give each other presents.
Speaker 4: The image painted of Quentin in the early day of
Speaker 4: the coverage after his death overwhelmingly attempted to paint him
Speaker 4: as like this devout person, as a curious bystander who
Speaker 4: was either at the wrong place at the wrong time,
Speaker 4: or ominously targeted by left wing militants. This narrative seemed
Speaker 4: to dominate until his Twitter accounts were found. So you
Speaker 4: already know where this is going.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agreet.
Speaker 4: One of the first posts he bait was about his
Speaker 4: support for the repeal of the Plevin and Guisa laws,
Speaker 4: which are French laws that prohibit the Holocaust denial, among
Speaker 4: other things. Subsequent posts throughout the following years were frequently antisemitic, racist, Islamophobic, fascist,
Speaker 4: and homophobic. There will be some quotes later on. What
Speaker 4: stood out to me most is that he seemed to
Speaker 4: have like a very theoretical underpinning for his beliefs. This
Speaker 4: is also a recurring theme that he seemed much more
Speaker 4: ideologically constructed in his beliefs rather than your run of
Speaker 4: the mill or your proud boy who are just like
Speaker 4: straight dugs essentially.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, the French really do excel at sort
Speaker 6: of academic anti semitism. So he's really I mean, that's
Speaker 6: he's getting back to his French identity.
Speaker 4: Right, exactly, Yeah, exactly. Unlike most French academics, half of
Speaker 4: the things are completely impossible to understand. So another quote
Speaker 4: from Quentin here, a fascist is someone who supports fascism,
Speaker 4: someone who affirms the premacy of the state over the individual.
Speaker 4: He wants the state to be a regenerative force, of
Speaker 4: a moral order and to unite the nation. He opposes
Speaker 4: liberalism and Marxism.
Speaker 3: So if he hadn't had it that last caveat, it
Speaker 3: could be describing like a Stalinist, right.
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, I think that's why it was added. It
Speaker 4: just copy pasted it.
Speaker 5: And also, by the way, those commies, yeah all right.
Speaker 4: Yes, the anti Tanky brigade has arrived. So sometimes he
Speaker 4: would also correct others or less in formed right wing activists,
Speaker 4: and he said, fascists and anti fascists literally have two
Speaker 4: opposing visions of society. Political violence is not unique to fascists.
Speaker 4: It is intrinsic to politics when you have a bit
Speaker 4: of character, a.
Speaker 6: Bit of character that's oh well, well, yeah, that's I
Speaker 6: mean ironic. I suppose, yeah, that's one or a rather
Speaker 6: because it's not ironic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there is a broken clock moment in there in that. Like,
Speaker 4: political violence is not unique to fascists. But then but they.
Speaker 5: Tend to use it more.
Speaker 6: I would like, you know, I was racking my brain
Speaker 6: thinking about you know, sort of street deaths of this
Speaker 6: nature that that I'm familiar with in my work about
Speaker 6: you know, white supremacist violence.
Speaker 5: They're usually the ones doing the killing.
Speaker 6: Sure there's political violence not unique to fascism, but they
Speaker 6: sure do love it.
Speaker 4: If they have embraced it. Yeah, but when thinking about
Speaker 4: the state and the how the state itself is like
Speaker 4: a violence machine, absolutely sort of supports a status quo.
Speaker 4: That's where I'm seeing the broken Clow moments and yeah, good,
Speaker 4: did you notice a body that bit about you need
Speaker 4: to have a bit of character because that also comes
Speaker 4: back later On the twitters, he also commented about voting
Speaker 4: for Fortress Europe, a fringe French political party led by
Speaker 4: Pierre Marie Bono that made its campaign revolve around the
Speaker 4: repeal of same sex marriage, reproductive rights and the creation
Speaker 4: of a nationality codes and a new form of the
Speaker 4: country's population census with additional religious and ethnic related criteria.
Speaker 4: So like, already you know exactly what type of conservative
Speaker 4: this guy was. There were also a lot of its
Speaker 4: that sort of very racist terms against black and Muslim
Speaker 4: people involving heart are words, including explicit calls from murder.
Speaker 4: He used the acronym TND, which stands for Total Words Death.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, so I can kind of guess where he
Speaker 6: was hanging out online.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well, he's really in deep your Twitter should
Speaker 3: have been enough of the red flag for that to
Speaker 3: be honest. Yeah, it's true, it's probably you could get
Speaker 3: that whole world view just from eggs dot comly everything.
Speaker 6: But if he's reposting like T and D type content
Speaker 6: like this is this is not a guy who is
Speaker 6: just reading Thomas Aquinas.
Speaker 4: No, no, you get what I'm saying. But no one
Speaker 4: should read Thomas Aquinas to be honest. Neither Saint Augustine.
Speaker 4: I've read both some and nonstick. What I do find
Speaker 4: very interesting was a particular tweet in which he compared
Speaker 4: African migration to German occupation, where he expressed his preference
Speaker 4: for doughleco selethic blondes over blacks with large nostrils and
Speaker 4: disproportionate lips. Oh that's great, and that that's a very
Speaker 4: nice scrabble word for those of you that play. It's
Speaker 4: a facilating choice of words. It comes from nineteenth century anthropology,
Speaker 4: back when anthropology was the more problem than it is now.
Speaker 4: It's like scientific racism pretty much. It comes from cephalometry,
Speaker 4: the measuring of skulls and crania.
Speaker 3: Yes, I love a good caliper guy ology.
Speaker 4: No, this was like a branching off of phrenology. Okay,
Speaker 4: I dove into this because it was like the is
Speaker 4: he saying, yeah, But essentially it was used to make
Speaker 4: different races, and of course the Aryan race was the
Speaker 4: best one. Dooley's coocephalic refers specifically to the Aryan white race.
Speaker 4: What he essentially said is that I prefer to be
Speaker 4: occupied by white people. So great guy. And then this
Speaker 4: is also how I come back to like how well
Speaker 4: read he was in this garbage, because those are not
Speaker 4: terms that you typically find when you're you're researching Nazis
Speaker 4: or like the Nazi discourse. It almost is like an academic.
Speaker 5: Level of I mean, that's very French, very French.
Speaker 4: Well it it's reminded me of like creators of yours,
Speaker 4: Molly Richard Spencer, who I think wants I'm not sure
Speaker 4: if I can.
Speaker 5: Oh he does.
Speaker 6: He does love to let you know that he's read philosophy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: he's not a common gutter racist. He's read papers, he's
Speaker 6: read anthropology.
Speaker 4: Okay, well we can bleep the following word out because
Speaker 4: I'm not too into like American discourse to know if
Speaker 4: I can say this, But I think at some point
Speaker 4: he referred to like people of African ancestry as ork taroons.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that's an it's a.
Speaker 6: Very obscure, like old racial slur. Like it's something like
Speaker 6: my great great grandparents would have.
Speaker 4: Said, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a fascinating Yeah, they love to flag so
Speaker 3: they have read a book.
Speaker 6: The N word is for common racists, I know, old
Speaker 6: fashioned racials.
Speaker 3: They genuinely do see themselves above in the hierarchy of
Speaker 3: people who say that though like that.
Speaker 5: With well, James has half a PhD, right.
Speaker 6: PH he had, he had to drop out of this
Speaker 6: PhD program to pursue a career in professional racism.
Speaker 4: I see.
Speaker 3: To be fair, many people in the PhD academia world
Speaker 3: could have done that.
Speaker 5: Pursue a career in professional racism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, yeah, the thing I had observed in the academy,
Speaker 3: I believe that instantly. Yeah, you could argue in fact
Speaker 3: that in some disciplines having a PhD is pursuing a
Speaker 3: career in professional racism.
Speaker 4: Now I'm very curious as to what those disciplines are.
Speaker 3: In anthropology more than fifty years ago. Oh yes, oh,
Speaker 3: de definitely it would be the obvious one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's as an anthropologist. Yeah, very much, very much true.
Speaker 4: I could say it's it's less bad now nowadays that
Speaker 4: it was fifty or years ago, but still there definitely
Speaker 4: that there's still improvements to be made. And speaking of improvements,
Speaker 4: you are the products and services that support this spot, guests,
Speaker 4: And we're back. So we left off with Quentin being
Speaker 4: on the twitters and saying Twitter things there, and what
Speaker 4: you all gathered from this right now is that despite
Speaker 4: what his friends and family and fellow fascists said, he
Speaker 4: was definitely not as peaceful or as harmless as they
Speaker 4: tried to portray him. In the wake of his death,
Speaker 4: he was also getting increasingly involved with far right self
Speaker 4: defense groups, among possible others, Active Club France.
Speaker 5: Oh that's a Nazi group.
Speaker 4: Oh you don't say, my poor philosophy student. With those people,
Speaker 4: he had regular interactions with them, also with Odas Leon,
Speaker 4: who provided combat trainings in local park. Their slogans are
Speaker 4: nothing new or interesting. White people need to defend themselves
Speaker 4: against migration and the left. What was interesting was one
Speaker 4: of these training sessions was with toy knives, where they
Speaker 4: had the practice like dueling against each other, and to
Speaker 4: everyone's surprise, Quintin managed to defeat several people because he was.
Speaker 5: Very He's kind of a sprawny little guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: He studied the way of the blade to blade.
Speaker 4: Yeah, specifically. I have not found a bench Shapiro Ninja
Speaker 4: photo of him, but it would have been appropriate. At
Speaker 4: this point, I'm now quoting a little bit from media
Speaker 4: parts that also the ones who unearthed a lot of
Speaker 4: his tweets. In the spring of twenty twenty five, Quintin
Speaker 4: launched a small group in Bourgeois Jalieu. The ad sorry
Speaker 4: to the French speakers.
Speaker 5: Sounded good to me.
Speaker 4: Yeah. On May tenth in Paris, he was photographed wearing
Speaker 4: a partially covered by a neckwarmer and participated with a
Speaker 4: small group into a neo Nazi march that was organized
Speaker 4: annually in homage to a member of the Bitanist group,
Speaker 4: le'vre Francois, who died in nineteen ninety four. Aloes Bourgeois
Speaker 4: also paid tribute to Jean Marie la Perre one year
Speaker 4: after the death of the founder of the National Front.
Speaker 4: They now go by the Supplement and Nacional r N.
Speaker 4: I suppose it's a rebranding exercise, so at this point
Speaker 4: I think amongst ourselves we can agree that he was
Speaker 4: not a particularly innocent philosopher or good hearted, saintly person.
Speaker 4: It feels much more like he was someone who acted
Speaker 4: on his beliefs, a neo.
Speaker 6: Nazi and someone who is a member of several violent
Speaker 6: neo Nazi organizations.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that tends to be like a very strict causation
Speaker 4: between hanging out with those groups and being one.
Speaker 6: And I'd be very curious to know sort of what
Speaker 6: order these things happened in. Was his conversion to Catholicism
Speaker 6: part of his descent into these neo Nazi groups, because
Speaker 6: the sort of traditionalist Catholicism he was involved in, Because
Speaker 6: it looks like he was involved in Academia Christiania, which
Speaker 6: is not that's not normal, that's not church, that's a
Speaker 6: Nazi group.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, in so far as I can tell, I think
Speaker 4: his conversion happened earlier, so.
Speaker 6: Maybe a sincere conversion to Catholicism, but then he got
Speaker 6: involved in traditionalism, maybe as part of his entry into
Speaker 6: far right politics.
Speaker 5: I know these things are very intertwined. Given the like this.
Speaker 6: This Academia Christiana group was founded by one of the
Speaker 6: founders of Generation Identity these things are overlapped completely. He
Speaker 6: wasn't just going to Catholic Church. He was going to
Speaker 6: a very extreme right wing anti Semitic, identitarian traditionalist subgroup.
Speaker 4: Yeah, to the Westboro Baptist Church. Pretty much.
Speaker 5: French Catholicism.
Speaker 4: French Catholicism. I don't know how many groups we've insulted
Speaker 4: with that comparison.
Speaker 5: It's fine, we'll have to have Italian.
Speaker 4: Oh, okay, then that's good. But with that bit of
Speaker 4: context about like Quentin's background behind him, we're going to
Speaker 4: go to the faithful day of February twelve when he
Speaker 4: was beaten. He was not fatally beaten, I have to say.
Speaker 4: But more on that a tiny bit later. On the
Speaker 4: day of February twelve, a French eupolemeritarian, a Palestinian woman
Speaker 4: named Rima Hassan, was giving a speech at the Leon
Speaker 4: Institute of Political Studies. Hassan is a member of the
Speaker 4: French far left party Lace Sums French Unbowed. A counter
Speaker 4: protest was announced by the far right feminist group Nemesis,
Speaker 4: for which some fascist groups volunteer to do security at
Speaker 4: the protest.
Speaker 6: Yeah, James, I see the look on your face. Girls
Speaker 6: can do fascism too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm sorry on the train chains.
Speaker 6: Yeah, okay, women's rights and women's wrongs.
Speaker 4: This is the only women's wrongs I will ever support.
Speaker 6: I am curious what neo nazi feminism looks like, because
Speaker 6: they're not just like women's fascist group. Yeah, fascist feminist group.
Speaker 6: What do you think those words mean, babe? Yeah, I'm
Speaker 6: gonna find out more about that on my own time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, this is going to be Money's Evening gets
Speaker 3: logged in now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I can give you some pointers.
Speaker 6: I'm familiar with women doing fascist organizing, but it's usually
Speaker 6: in sort of a convery, confined to a traditional female role.
Speaker 5: So what are fascist feminists?
Speaker 3: It was like the cession feminina of Francoist if if
Speaker 3: that's any indication, but maybe so.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he was just being a gentleman providing security for
Speaker 6: these girl boss Nazis.
Speaker 4: Pretty much. There is a very girl boss photo I found.
Speaker 4: I'll pull it up bit a bit, but yeah, they
Speaker 4: are identitarian air quotes. Feminists blame all sexual violence on
Speaker 4: people of color and Muslims. It is okay, great, Yeah,
Speaker 4: we knew this was coming.
Speaker 6: I bet there are white boyfriends never never missing.
Speaker 3: Never they respect to women no, depending on her race.
Speaker 4: And her politics, of course.
Speaker 6: And in the Beauty of the White Arian Woman, James Please.
Speaker 4: A founder and frequent guest on various French writing platforms,
Speaker 4: Alice Cordier was the one who founded this collective. They
Speaker 4: seem to have like a few hundred people in the collective,
Speaker 4: but like a very small inner circle of like twelve people.
Speaker 4: And Alice Cordier was already at the center of a controversy.
Speaker 4: On March tenth this year, journalist Ricardo Pereira posted a
Speaker 4: photo on Twitter of Alice mimicking an ASS symbol with
Speaker 4: her hands. And in this photosho, wow, she's together with
Speaker 4: former Lyon Populaire member who is allegedly now fighting with
Speaker 4: the ass of a battalion in Ukraine.
Speaker 5: Wow, it's all coming together.
Speaker 4: Yeah exactly. So this is Alice doing an AS symbol
Speaker 4: her hands.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, okay, look at her Okay, yeah, yeah, wow.
Speaker 5: That looks very intentional.
Speaker 4: This doesn't seem like a gesture you would make by accidents.
Speaker 5: Hm hmmm.
Speaker 3: Alice called a bas question, what does this sign mean?
Speaker 4: Yeah exactly, And just because we were talking about the
Speaker 4: Girl Boss, can you see it?
Speaker 5: Oh wow?
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh wow, Okay, well wow they are Wow what
Speaker 3: a vibe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, definite girl bosses m hm yeh. Pant suit fascism.
Speaker 6: Business casual fascism for the woman in the workplace.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the other pantsuit nation, yeah.
Speaker 5: An all white pantsuit nation.
Speaker 3: Yea yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6: Although two of those women don't actually look Anglo Saxon.
Speaker 5: It's so interesting to me.
Speaker 4: That's something for the French to figure out.
Speaker 3: French identity and national identity is different.
Speaker 5: It's more immigrants. Your grandparents were fine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, ladder up exactly. Now now it's starting to punch
Speaker 4: down on the other people who've had We don't have
Speaker 4: the opportunities my parents had. Yeah, not a phenomenon that's
Speaker 4: unique to France.
Speaker 5: Oh no, not at all.
Speaker 3: I mean settle a colonial country of the United States.
Speaker 4: French and colonialism, James, really no, they never would do that,
Speaker 4: not the French. All those places were parts of France.
Speaker 5: They're not still doing that.
Speaker 4: No. I think all cheers would like to have a
Speaker 4: word with you. Molly. That that was Alice from a
Speaker 4: like the Nemesis Collective.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a collection of my nemesies.
Speaker 4: Now, yeah, like that is the name I used when
Speaker 4: I was fourteen and I had to make up a
Speaker 4: character name when I was playing video games or something.
Speaker 3: It's like, it's not original. Yeah, it is extremely teenage.
Speaker 4: Like Angel of Darkness, levels of cringe, something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 4: But what I found most frightening about these people, though,
Speaker 4: is they seem to be incredibly media sevy and cunning
Speaker 4: as a group. And to give you an example, in
Speaker 4: June of twenty twenty four, several members of this group
Speaker 4: infiltrated an anti far right protest in Paris. They had
Speaker 4: brought slogans highlighting legal convictions or trials from several high
Speaker 4: profile far left French politicians. This includes Jean Lucam Malechon,
Speaker 4: who was convicted of inciting rebellion or revolution in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 4: That that's for the CV, right there, the thing for
Speaker 4: the French to make illegal.
Speaker 5: That one cool thing we did, we'll never do it again,
Speaker 5: never again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the best thing about France pulling the old
Speaker 3: ladder up behind them.
Speaker 4: Again exactly, there's no return to tradition if that's the
Speaker 4: thing you're going to make illegal. And I thought these
Speaker 4: guys were traditionalists exactly like same with the Dutch. We
Speaker 4: can't do it anymore. But I think back in the
Speaker 4: seventeen hundreds we literally clubbed some high functionary to death
Speaker 4: and ate him and his brother.
Speaker 3: We can't do it anymore, but we can't do it
Speaker 3: anywhere just because of woke, Because of woke exactly.
Speaker 4: This is the one Dutch tradition I foolheartedly support. If
Speaker 4: you're upset with your elected official now well elected air quotes,
Speaker 4: because I don't think they were elected, then now you know,
Speaker 4: some casual cannibalism might just do the trick. Yeah, well,
Speaker 4: if you.
Speaker 6: Guys bring back clubbing out of control elected officials, we
Speaker 6: could look the other way on some of your more
Speaker 6: questionable Christmas traditions.
Speaker 4: Oh, I know, if we could. That's not a Christmas tradition,
Speaker 4: but I know what you mean.
Speaker 3: I think I'm going to look the other way on
Speaker 3: that one. No, okay, the chimney sweep, guys, it's just
Speaker 3: the chimney sweep.
Speaker 4: It's fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's uh, that's what's called an Easter egg for listeners.
Speaker 3: You can google that in your own don't google it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you're going to see some racist ship.
Speaker 5: Back to this guy getting beaten to death.
Speaker 4: Not to death, just being beaten he did die. He
Speaker 4: did die, but apparently when everyone had flat he refused
Speaker 4: to go to the hospital despite several non activitist bystanders
Speaker 4: like emphasiagic, like, hey, you should go to the hospital,
Speaker 4: and he did not. He walked for at least one
Speaker 4: and a half kilometers like a little more than a
Speaker 4: mile for the Americans, thank you, and he he then
Speaker 4: collapsed and he was in a coma for two days
Speaker 4: in the hospital, and then on Valentine's Day he died.
Speaker 5: A real bummer.
Speaker 4: So yeah, and that's also why I'm going to say,
Speaker 4: like that he wasn't fatally beaten, because I don't know
Speaker 4: if well.
Speaker 6: So, I mean, at least in American law, he did
Speaker 6: die of injuries inflicted from that beating, So you would
Speaker 6: say the people who inflicted that beating on him did
Speaker 6: cause his death.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I mean under American law.
Speaker 6: Like, if you get shot today and you die from
Speaker 6: a disability from that shooting ten years from now, you
Speaker 6: were murdered.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I hate that. I'm surprised by this.
Speaker 6: Because you would not be dead but for those injuries.
Speaker 6: If he had not been hit in the head, yeah,
Speaker 6: he would not have died.
Speaker 3: Indeed, you can in fact not be the person doing
Speaker 3: the shooting and still be chied for murder in US
Speaker 3: as someone.
Speaker 6: That's a different problem. The felony murder problem is very
Speaker 6: serious here. But but no, I mean, he would not
Speaker 6: have died had he not been beaten.
Speaker 5: So he was beaten to death.
Speaker 6: It was just that it would It is perhaps possible
Speaker 6: that he could have survived.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he had, he attempted to survive.
Speaker 4: I don't know if he would have survived if he
Speaker 4: had called if hits, called an ambulance straight after.
Speaker 5: That's the other thing.
Speaker 6: That's the other thing is if he had that, if
Speaker 6: he had that much probably intracranial bleeding that he collapsed
Speaker 6: pretty soon afterwards.
Speaker 5: He may have died regardless.
Speaker 4: We'll never know, probably.
Speaker 6: Right, but I would say he was fatally beaten because
Speaker 6: he would not have died if the beating, at least
Speaker 6: under American under American law, that would be the case.
Speaker 5: I don't know about in France.
Speaker 3: It's probably worth noting that, like the American phenomenon of
Speaker 3: not wanting to go in an ambulance to hospital because you.
Speaker 4: Know that you will have life altering medical.
Speaker 3: Bills like this is believe me, as someone who did
Speaker 3: not grow up in the United States and now lives here.
Speaker 3: Is a unique and quite disturbing character trait of people
Speaker 3: living in the United States, like because.
Speaker 4: People are thinking like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like I personally have not gotten an ambulance when
Speaker 3: I should have done in the United States because I
Speaker 3: knew that I wouldn't be able to pay the bills.
Speaker 5: Oh, if I'm conscious and able to walk on my
Speaker 5: own two feet, I'm not getting an animalance.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: This is just just so people understand that this is
Speaker 3: not a thing that people tend to do as much,
Speaker 3: at least not for that reason in Europe.
Speaker 5: He just don't want to be a pussy.
Speaker 4: I guess, I don't know. I can also imagine that maybe,
Speaker 4: like after authorities were alerted, that maybe he would have
Speaker 4: been visited by police in the hospital due to the.
Speaker 5: Fight, right, because he was involved in a conflict.
Speaker 4: Yes, And I have some photos later on, like images
Speaker 4: taken by I think a journalist where you just see
Speaker 4: the black leads like fascists with like iron bars in
Speaker 4: their hands and everything. So I would say that the
Speaker 4: self defense motive is very indefensible. You know what, let's
Speaker 4: take an ad break, you know who who won't beat
Speaker 4: you to death with a bar, to death with a
Speaker 4: bar allegedly.
Speaker 6: I'm pretty sure none of our advertisers have ever beaten
Speaker 6: someone to death with a pipe.
Speaker 5: M Oh no, I can't guarantee that.
Speaker 4: A mining company who can say.
Speaker 5: They will not beat you the listener to death. Probably.
Speaker 4: I was about to plug the Washington Highway state patrol,
Speaker 4: but I'm not sure if I can do that. They
Speaker 4: can get to be in the Netherlands some safe Yeah.
Speaker 4: That and we're back unbeaten with iron bars. So when
Speaker 4: we left off, we were supposed to talk about more
Speaker 4: about nemesis, so we'll continue there. Yeah, they were carrying
Speaker 4: slogans with like accusations and trials of like left prominent
Speaker 4: left wing politicians, but they had them covered up with
Speaker 4: like regular slogans. So at some point they unfilled their
Speaker 4: actual slogans and they repeatedly chanted to the crowd of
Speaker 4: antifar right protesters, you're not feminists. This action only took
Speaker 4: about two minutes, a combination of chants being sped on
Speaker 4: and the general hostility that I imagine followed very quickly.
Speaker 5: I'm feeling general hostility and I'm not even there now.
Speaker 4: Now what you've seen the Girl Boss photo. Now, so
Speaker 4: you know why that's why you feel hostile. Maybe it's
Speaker 4: just the pantsuits. Those two minutes were enough though, because
Speaker 4: they had the content and the images that they were after.
Speaker 4: Also brought bodyguard to protect them, which again it's this
Speaker 4: this saviness and this this cunningness that I said earlier,
Speaker 4: like they know they're going to be provoked and possibly attacked,
Speaker 4: so they're already preemptively bringing bodyguards.
Speaker 5: Well, they're not going to be provoked. They were going
Speaker 5: there too.
Speaker 6: They went they went to someone else's rally to do
Speaker 6: a provocative stunt, and so they it makes sense, you'd
Speaker 6: if I was going to if I was going to
Speaker 6: cause problems on purpose, I'll bring your bodyguard.
Speaker 4: Okay, Okay, I'll make sure to watch out for you
Speaker 4: if you ever bring a bodyguard and I see you.
Speaker 4: But yeah, those two minutes they proved enough. They had
Speaker 4: the content and the images they were after, which were
Speaker 4: quickly published by far right magazines. Social media accounts for
Speaker 4: members of the collective were later interviewed by c News,
Speaker 4: and Cordier herself was hosted on europe One. Both of
Speaker 4: these stations are owned by Vincente Bolour, who is sort
Speaker 4: of rupert murdering portions of the French media ecosystem. So
Speaker 4: again not surprising to anyone, and in so far as
Speaker 4: I can tell, this is also nemesis preferred method of
Speaker 4: getting attention. There are modus operandi, the big high visibility
Speaker 4: locations or events where they provoke their opponents through their messaging,
Speaker 4: and when confronted by people opposing their racism and their views, they'll.
Speaker 5: Play the victim cards, classic maneuver.
Speaker 4: Yeah exactly, Yeah, and it's the.
Speaker 6: Best way to get positive attention while not actually having
Speaker 6: enough numbers to hold your own rally that anyone would notice.
Speaker 4: Exactly. But again we're coming back to this. This feels
Speaker 4: much more sevy and thought out than Oh.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, it's a clever strategy, but it's like the media
Speaker 6: keeps falling for it, Like you don't have to interview
Speaker 6: the head of this little Nazi group just because they
Speaker 6: put on a nice outfit.
Speaker 5: It's the Richard Spencer problem all over again.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just because they dress nice doesn't mean just.
Speaker 5: Because he owns a little suit jacket.
Speaker 4: Now, this is why I don't own any suits, just
Speaker 4: to avoid being associated. In November twenty nineteen, they infiltrated
Speaker 4: a Paris March against sexual and gender based violence, and
Speaker 4: then they brandish science referring to foreign rapists.
Speaker 5: I hate these women.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you'd have to have a woman on so that
Speaker 6: we could so someone can say, are dumb bitches?
Speaker 4: It's legal for me to say yes. In hindsight, I'm
Speaker 4: very glad that you're here to say those things of alli,
Speaker 4: because I won't talk about women's wrongs, but you can,
Speaker 4: which I mean.
Speaker 6: It's just it's so cynical and so nasty to show
Speaker 6: up to an anti rape march to displace the blame
Speaker 6: for sexual violence onto immigrants, to just like, yeah, ooh,
Speaker 6: gross gross.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that's like ninety percent of right wing politics
Speaker 4: the moment.
Speaker 6: Right, But for the women themselves to be doing because
Speaker 6: you see men do it all the time, but these
Speaker 6: women know better, because I guarantee you at least half
Speaker 6: of those women have been sexually assaulted and it probably
Speaker 6: wasn't by an immigrant, like you know better, you know better.
Speaker 4: Let's call it. Yeay says she she suffered from a
Speaker 4: sexual assault by immigrants, but there's no way to prove
Speaker 4: it because it was allegedly when she was thirteen or fourteen,
Speaker 4: So it's just this after defect justification that you can't
Speaker 4: prove or disproof either way. And even even if we
Speaker 4: were going to say, okay, you know what, we'll take
Speaker 4: that argumented face value.
Speaker 5: I won't.
Speaker 4: That is your prerogative.
Speaker 6: No, I just you see, it reminds me, It mains
Speaker 6: me so much of this. This funny little you Nazi
Speaker 6: con artist that was she testified in the Oklahoma City trials.
Speaker 5: She had this like her origin story was.
Speaker 6: Like, oh, like I became a racist because I was
Speaker 6: listening to racist radio shows while I was recovering. Because
Speaker 6: I was attacked by a gang of black teenagers and
Speaker 6: I broke my legs. She broke her legs because she
Speaker 6: got drunk at the park and she jumped off a
Speaker 6: giant Crucidex set up for a passion place.
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, so.
Speaker 6: This whole like, oh, my origin story is like I
Speaker 6: was assaulted by a gang of people of color, Like
Speaker 6: I believe you anyway.
Speaker 4: Completely valid. But what I meant to say is like,
Speaker 4: even if that were true, there's no argument to like
Speaker 4: generalize it to an entire population.
Speaker 5: No, or just show up to the anti rape march
Speaker 5: to cause a scene.
Speaker 3: Girl, go home, yeah, you'd think, Yeah, if you've been
Speaker 3: subject to sexual assault, you would want to be in
Speaker 3: solidarity with other people, maybe make sexual assaults stop happening,
Speaker 3: like period, not focus on a subset of human beings.
Speaker 4: But James, what you're forgetting there is that sexual violence
Speaker 4: is okay if it's done by white people. Okay according
Speaker 4: to Nemesis.
Speaker 5: And in a biblical way, you know, within the bounds
Speaker 5: of marriage.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in the holy bounds of matrimony. So yeah, what
Speaker 4: this group essentially does is they tie feminism or their
Speaker 4: brand of it. Yeah, thank you for the air quotes. Yeah,
Speaker 4: they tie it to their nationalism. But they focus solely
Speaker 4: on sexual violence, and even then only the violence that
Speaker 4: is connected to like migrants.
Speaker 5: So it's no feminism at all. It's just it's a lie.
Speaker 4: You won't be surprised that they're awfully silent about equal
Speaker 4: pay or abortion rights.
Speaker 5: Well, I imagine they're probably anti abortion.
Speaker 4: How did you.
Speaker 3: Guess that, boy, depends who's getting the abortion.
Speaker 4: I would assume I will send them like an email
Speaker 4: to ask for a verification, to specify I need more coverage.
Speaker 3: That's the way we should respond to this exactly.
Speaker 4: And I want to know which abortions are okay and
Speaker 4: which are not, so I can accurately make you know
Speaker 4: a herrowing story of it. Anyway, This exploitation of women's
Speaker 4: issues by far right groups to proliferate their bullshits worldview
Speaker 4: and pull people in is called femo nationalism. It was
Speaker 4: coined by the British sociologist Sarah R. Feris in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 4: which might be a broader topic worth exploring in the future.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm very interested you too.
Speaker 6: People have been complaining that I never talk about we're
Speaker 6: little girls.
Speaker 4: Well now you can, Ellis Cordier. For now. It is
Speaker 4: love to see this what they're doing as some sort
Speaker 4: of bucked up arranged marriage of feminism and ethnic nationalism
Speaker 4: that views gender issues explicitly through the lens of ethnicity. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and as I said before, they're notably very quiet on
Speaker 4: bodily autonomy, workplace equality, equal opportunity, abortion, and maternity care.
Speaker 6: So like actual sort of safety and well being and
Speaker 6: equality for women, the things that I think of as feminism.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Like the maternity care was like that sprung
Speaker 4: out to be because like in.
Speaker 5: My feminism, I don't die in childbirth.
Speaker 4: Because it's woke.
Speaker 3: They want to return to tradition and have it's eighty
Speaker 3: percent of job as result in one or other party dying.
Speaker 4: Ah, great stuff, it's beautiful. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I guess if you were trying to invent feminism, but
Speaker 5: the only text you had is the fourteen words, this
Speaker 5: is what you would get.
Speaker 3: You had a dictionary with the word feminism and the
Speaker 3: fourteen word, it's that's all he had to.
Speaker 5: Go David Lane, famous feminist.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guarantee you that Alice Cordier has said the
Speaker 4: fourteen words on probably multiple occasions. It's a garbage group
Speaker 4: of people, and I hope they have to hiccups the
Speaker 4: rest of their life.
Speaker 5: Oh that's hurtful. I like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a pretty good one.
Speaker 4: And with that, that is the end of part one.
Speaker 3: If you'd like to find out more about Quentin and
Speaker 3: various other French fascists, please join us again tomorrow.
Speaker 4: We're picking back up at the rally where Quentin was
Speaker 4: in the capacity of security for Nemesis. At some point
Speaker 4: a confrontation developed between anti fascists and brown shirts. Clearly
Speaker 4: the instigator depends on the political orientation of the media
Speaker 4: that reports on it.
Speaker 6: But we've all seen scuffles like this. It's just they
Speaker 6: don't usually divorce to a point where someone dies, like
Speaker 6: I can I can imagine. I don't know, I can
Speaker 6: imagine the outbreak of this scuffle because we've all seen it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm not going to like litigate on who started
Speaker 4: or who not that I'll never know and it doesn't.
Speaker 5: Matter because it doesn't matter.
Speaker 4: Yeah. But I found an independent while left fleaning a
Speaker 4: medio website, contre Attique. They published several pieces on the
Speaker 4: events with claims that the fascists started to roll. I
Speaker 4: find that one personally also more credible because they have
Speaker 4: multiple videos of photos of the far right being there
Speaker 4: with weapons, including iron bars, crutches, motorcycle helmets, and at
Speaker 4: least one smoker hagge.
Speaker 6: I mean, they showed up to someone else's event to
Speaker 6: disrupt it, to cause a problem. When they got in
Speaker 6: the middle of it, they brought weapons. It's hard to
Speaker 6: say who started the fight, but I can tell who
Speaker 6: wanted to exactly.
Speaker 4: Like. I've seen security at events and protests, but I've
Speaker 4: never okay, unless they were cops, I've never seen them
Speaker 4: carrying weapons. Oh I have.
Speaker 6: Well, that's more common in the idea states it's very
Speaker 6: common here. Oh wow, okay, oh is that a pipe
Speaker 6: in his hands? Yes, it is, so he's wearing a
Speaker 6: balaclava and carrying a pipe.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not a great look, kind of classic. You're
Speaker 3: a nuts, you fit skinny jeans.
Speaker 4: The sneakers always the sneakers.
Speaker 5: Always do one of those little unders.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, of course I got to pick a brand that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: since the beginning. Maybe some pumas in that.
Speaker 4: Of course, this pumas in there. Here's another pictures like
Speaker 4: you can also see the motorcycle helmet in here in
Speaker 4: disguise hands. Oh yeah, okay, yeah, most.
Speaker 6: Like a helmet's great because it's you put it on
Speaker 6: to protect your head, or you can hit somebody with
Speaker 6: it because he's holding it in his hand.
Speaker 5: He is not wearing it. That's a weapon.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but you have the plausible deniability of I rode
Speaker 6: my motorcycle here or this is for defense.
Speaker 4: That's what I also find. They often use like things
Speaker 4: that you could really have with Like they also use
Speaker 4: belts or sticks and stuff that you could carry with
Speaker 4: shack poles, slack poles, like stuff that you could carry
Speaker 4: with you with you without it being as immediately recognized
Speaker 4: as a weapon, Like if you were carrying night.
Speaker 6: After you use it as a weapon, it doesn't look
Speaker 6: like premeditation because I just had this, Yeah, the pipe.
Speaker 6: I don't know why you would just have a whole pipe.
Speaker 6: Now he was honest, way to do some plumbing Mario
Speaker 6: and Luigi.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe he found maybe he found it.
Speaker 4: I can imagine myself carrying a sledgehammer, be like, no, officer,
Speaker 4: this is my.
Speaker 5: I was on my way to break big rocks into
Speaker 5: small rocks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, I'm a fan. I don't think that would fly,
Speaker 4: to be honest, but those I wanted to share as well.
Speaker 5: So he did show up with a pipe.
Speaker 4: That wasn't him. I didn't think he wasn't pipe that.
Speaker 5: Was that was one of his friends.
Speaker 4: That was one of that was one of the far
Speaker 4: right activist that was present there. One media account sat
Speaker 4: he was wearing a blue hoodie Quentin and I haven't
Speaker 4: seen that in the pictures that I could find.
Speaker 6: Well, it looks like the only confirmed photograph of him
Speaker 6: is that one that was provided by his family's lawyer
Speaker 6: to the media, So we don't know if any of
Speaker 6: those other photos even are him right now.
Speaker 4: There's also not that much footage of it, to be honest.
Speaker 6: Right, but I guess there is the footage of him
Speaker 6: like lying on the ground, but I mean like, yeah,
Speaker 6: like the only picture of his face is that one
Speaker 6: that was provided to the media by his family and.
Speaker 4: So far as I found, Yes, Yeah, and then and
Speaker 4: one of the few of the articles, there's like one
Speaker 4: where he's like half ballacloth out up. But then that
Speaker 4: was at some Nazi rally in Lyon, So it still
Speaker 4: wasn't his first Nazi No, it was. It was not
Speaker 4: okay in any case, I think you would have a
Speaker 4: hard time defending that there was purely self defense on
Speaker 4: part of the security of that counter demonstration.
Speaker 6: Again, no one is saying that he deserved to be
Speaker 6: beaten to death. We're just trying to figure out what
Speaker 6: happened here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Concra Attik also published another article on
Speaker 4: February twentieth about acts of violence from fascist militants in
Speaker 4: just Lyon. There had been around one hundred and two
Speaker 4: acts of violence as of twenty ten. Yeah, that's one
Speaker 4: of the spots. From what I understand, there's lots of
Speaker 4: groups that formed in response to like the fascist threats
Speaker 4: that were there, and also a lot of the fascist
Speaker 4: violence is them just harassing brown people or like Muslim people,
Speaker 4: so it's hard to get a proper estimate. But I
Speaker 4: found this one very detailed. They mentioned like from the
Speaker 4: top of their head, like twenty five different instances. The
Speaker 4: article for that will be in the show notes so
Speaker 4: people can read it themselves. Okay, now I'll cite this
Speaker 4: from France info dot fr eye witness accounts from residents
Speaker 4: who saw the flight fighting take place. Christine also witnessed
Speaker 4: the violence. I saw a fight over there with lots
Speaker 4: of young people. They were hitting each other, hitting each other,
Speaker 4: hitting each other, and then I saw a young men fall,
Speaker 4: She recounts. Maxim also saw the attackers flee. They shouted
Speaker 4: disperse when they saw I think that they might have
Speaker 4: hit them hard. They went off into all the streets,
Speaker 4: got out of their cars. Some guys on scooters stopped.
Speaker 4: They put him, I assume Quentin in the recovery position,
Speaker 4: The resident explains. Neighbors then came to aid the injured.
Speaker 4: Another neighbor, Willem, saw him get up after being beaten.
Speaker 4: I went outside. I saw someone with blood on his hands.
Speaker 4: He looked a bit dazed. He was just standing, but
Speaker 4: he refused to go to the hospital, even though they
Speaker 4: offered to. I just saw the people talking to him
Speaker 4: who told him to go to the hospital in any case,
Speaker 4: but the certaines iss that he refused.
Speaker 6: So this was a much large It wasn't like ten
Speaker 6: on one. It was like a group versus a group.
Speaker 4: It was a group versus a group.
Speaker 5: Year it was a melee.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Okay, I'm not sure which article exactly was, but
Speaker 4: said that the fighting went on for like five minutes.
Speaker 6: Which is a long. It doesn't sound like along, but
Speaker 6: for a fight, that's like a long. It's a lot
Speaker 6: of minutes to be fighting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fighting is normally brief fast, especially fighting of this
Speaker 3: level of violence.
Speaker 5: Especially if you're getting hit the head with a pie or.
Speaker 4: A motorcycle helmet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a little video of it, Like I've seen
Speaker 3: a couple of very small videos of the actual confrontation.
Speaker 3: It's not like it gives the impression like because of
Speaker 3: the big repercussions. This was like a huge set piece,
Speaker 3: but it's not. It's like what three people maybe at most.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it was just like in some streets it
Speaker 4: looks like street corner. Yeah, it wasn't a battle of
Speaker 4: thermopili or something. Yeah, I'm sponsored by not being able
Speaker 4: to pronounce foreign words outside of English.
Speaker 6: Well, you could just tell us that that's how it's
Speaker 6: said in Dutch and we would all have to believe you,
Speaker 6: because we're not going to find out.
Speaker 4: I'm conf use that as a caveat the next time.
Speaker 6: That's how we say it in the Netherlands, stupid Americans.
Speaker 4: Yes, I'll be saved by the fact that like Denmark
Speaker 4: and the Netherlands, nobody speaks to Dutch, or that they
Speaker 4: confused Danish with Dutch, which is also very funny.
Speaker 3: But also, yeah, I did see some kind of funny
Speaker 3: posts regarding Greenland with.
Speaker 4: Ah, okay, then we're at and entering a whole other discussion. Yeah.
Speaker 4: But anyway, after the fighting, about half an hour and
Speaker 4: a half later, in the full Chiron district on the
Speaker 4: banks of the San Quentin was evacuated in serious condition
Speaker 4: by firefighters. To get there, he had to walk more
Speaker 4: than a kilometer and a half, cross two bridges, and
Speaker 4: traverse the Lyon Peninsula. His route between the attack and
Speaker 4: his arrival at the hospital is unknown.
Speaker 6: Sound so sounds like he's just sort of staggered off disoriented?
Speaker 6: Is something like that because he was probably bleeding in
Speaker 6: his brain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he like he has a TVI, right, I would imagine.
Speaker 4: So I just find it incredibly sad. To be honest, it.
Speaker 6: Is sad, but also the like so like these bystanders
Speaker 6: are saying, hey, man, like, let's get you an ambulance
Speaker 6: to get to the hospital. Where were his friends that
Speaker 6: he walked off alone?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Where were the guys he came with? Were the guys
Speaker 6: that were fighting on his side? How did he manage
Speaker 6: to walk off alone? So these people want to make
Speaker 6: him a martyr, but like they're the ones, Yeah, let
Speaker 6: him die.
Speaker 4: This is also why I'm like, I'm not going to
Speaker 4: say he was it's Lee Beatson, because like, who knows.
Speaker 6: It sounds like a lot of people have some responsibility here.
Speaker 6: If you die, if you die after being hit in
Speaker 6: the head, the person who hit you in the head
Speaker 6: killed you, that's it works. But like, why did his
Speaker 6: friends let him walk away alone?
Speaker 4: Yeah, knowing he was injured.
Speaker 6: Right, No, even if you weren't injured, you never walk
Speaker 6: away from something like this alone because someone could follow
Speaker 6: you and keep beating you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if there are people who are trying to hurt you.
Speaker 3: The best time for them to do it is when
Speaker 3: you're on your own.
Speaker 5: Like you never leave an action alone.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the whole thing.
Speaker 3: Like I guess I should just say, like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: when you fucking hit people in the head, this is
Speaker 3: one of the consequences that is on the list of
Speaker 3: possible consequences. Like, I fucking hate people who can hit
Speaker 3: people in the head come from a place in the
Speaker 3: world where like that kind of violence is more common
Speaker 3: because guns are less accessible to people, and like, yeah,
Speaker 3: people are going to fucking die sometimes when you do that,
Speaker 3: Like it's serious.
Speaker 6: You don't have to inten to have killed them, Like
Speaker 6: you one get punch to the head in an otherwise
Speaker 6: very fair, normal fight, Yeah, someone could die.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people have died from a single punch to the
Speaker 3: head that started to fight and ended their life at
Speaker 3: the same time. I think people sometimes, you know, you
Speaker 3: watch boxing or wrestling or whatever. Then you see people
Speaker 3: fighting very hard and not dying. But like you find
Speaker 3: someone with your bare knuckles to their bare head, and
Speaker 3: they could die, even if it's only once, if he
Speaker 3: didn't mean to you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just one one small vein in one vein
Speaker 4: that gets nicked that can cause off a whole lot
Speaker 4: of trouble in the head. Yeah, and even if it's
Speaker 4: not death, then there's still.
Speaker 3: Like life altering consequences.
Speaker 5: Be careful with your brain, kids.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which is why you need to wear a helmet's
Speaker 4: on your head instead of in a hand.
Speaker 5: It's just using it as a bludgeon.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and only come back to light. I find
Speaker 4: it sad because it's a death that may may have
Speaker 4: been preventable with like proper medical intervention, also with like
Speaker 4: friends that should have backed him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty sad that this guy felt like he
Speaker 3: was part of something and those guys left him to
Speaker 3: die alone on the street like.
Speaker 6: It's another Now they're trying to take his death and
Speaker 6: profit from it politically.
Speaker 3: And then yeah, he's only useful to him when he's
Speaker 3: fucking dead.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, he's he's a little horse vessel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a nature of fascism.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it's almost exactly like Charlie Kirk, where he
Speaker 4: was more useful as a martyr than when he was
Speaker 4: just a propagandist.
Speaker 5: But then he turned out not to even be good
Speaker 5: at that.
Speaker 4: I don't think we can fault him for being about
Speaker 4: martyr for all the things. Of all the things we
Speaker 4: can criticize Charlie Kirk for, that is not one of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not on him.
Speaker 6: Right, But I think in order to have a successful
Speaker 6: martyrdom you have to have someone to blame, and there
Speaker 6: was just not enough publicity around the guy who actually
Speaker 6: killed Charlie Kirk, you know what I mean, Like, you know,
Speaker 6: horse Vessel was killed by communists, so we're mad at communists,
Speaker 6: but like.
Speaker 3: There was an attempt to pin that on the trans community, right,
Speaker 3: like it didn't see the landing and it didn't work.
Speaker 3: Should say that guy is accused of in Karli Church
Speaker 3: as well?
Speaker 6: Exactly I don't know, but that the right is constantly
Speaker 6: trying to create a horse Vessel and it just kind
Speaker 6: of never works.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean that's how the Spanish Civil War started
Speaker 3: as well, right, like they it was probably easier in
Speaker 3: an age with less information and like party propaganda.
Speaker 6: I mean, these days, these days, we would all be
Speaker 6: talking about like was horse vessel opinion?
Speaker 5: It kind of seems like maybe he.
Speaker 4: Would have had a Twitter account and we would.
Speaker 5: Have and we would have said, what was he doing?
Speaker 4: With all those girls, or we would have found his
Speaker 4: racist tweets. Oh well, that would have.
Speaker 6: It seems like a local the head of his local
Speaker 6: strum up ti Long. Of course he had racist tweets,
Speaker 6: but being a pimp is not conducive to traditional Aryan values.
Speaker 4: Please, okay, okay, okay, there goes my career change. I'm
Speaker 4: now going into the last section, which is about what
Speaker 4: happened here in your trekt. They attempted to martyr him
Speaker 4: and the fed Netherlands. It said, we're coming to the
Speaker 4: AKU to hold the vigil for him. The Netherlands is
Speaker 4: an umbrella terms not the perfect word. There's lots of
Speaker 4: local defense chapters, but they have like more where they organized.
Speaker 4: But they also have like a main telegram group. So
Speaker 4: these are people who explicitly came to U treckt to
Speaker 4: hold this visual. The reason why, I think is because
Speaker 4: they think aku ACU stands for Antifa Center you trecked.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, yes, it used to be. It used to
Speaker 4: be a former auto garage back in the eighties. I think,
Speaker 4: so it says for auto center. You tracked.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, yes.
Speaker 3: I'm at the auto shop. I'm at the Anti PA center.
Speaker 3: In a combination auto show at Center.
Speaker 6: I'm at the Four Seasons total landscape, that's.
Speaker 4: What it is. Yeah. Ah, but it was a pretty
Speaker 4: big deal because for reasons that I still can't understand,
Speaker 4: Like the mayor didn't like instantly ban this very obvious
Speaker 4: intimidation at ten ten threats hold official in your backyard
Speaker 4: or something. It's like, there's absolutely no reason to travel
Speaker 4: to U Trek to hold that visual other than the
Speaker 4: being threatening and intimidating.
Speaker 5: But I think that's part of why they love trying
Speaker 5: to make these martyrs is because.
Speaker 6: It again, it's this like being the victim, like they
Speaker 6: killed one of us. How can this isn't a politicism
Speaker 6: political you can't ban our event, right, this isn't a
Speaker 6: Nazi rally, it's a vigil. Yeah, it's this victimhood thing
Speaker 6: and it does make you harder to suppress.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I still find it unbelievable as the local authorities
Speaker 4: didn't do it.
Speaker 5: It's tacky.
Speaker 4: I was also there that evening because when I do
Speaker 4: activist stuff, I mostly do like if like first eight
Speaker 4: at events or protests.
Speaker 5: Very noble, nobody's got to do it.
Speaker 4: I'm not a confrontational person, so yeah, I'll give you
Speaker 4: a band aid later. That's that's that's where where I'm good.
Speaker 4: You're a non combatant exactly. And I actually came from
Speaker 4: the office that day, so I was also looking very inconspicuous,
Speaker 4: which was good because I ended up standing between my
Speaker 4: left all all the anti fascists that are my right,
Speaker 4: all the black lift fascists, and I was like and
Speaker 4: then two lines of.
Speaker 5: Like riot, I'm just a band aid.
Speaker 8: GI.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so like get in a narrow alley. So I left,
Speaker 4: I'm enclosed. On my right, I'm enclosed. And then this
Speaker 4: girl boss cop comes up to me like, do you
Speaker 4: want to get out of here? I was like, yes,
Speaker 4: it seems like it could go wrong, and then she
Speaker 4: guided me through the fucking fascists.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I like to I like to be a lot
Speaker 6: closer to an exit than nassively good are you?
Speaker 4: So it's it's even worse because I was I was
Speaker 4: with someone who was also doing first aids, and we
Speaker 4: tried to get back to the location and we accidentally
Speaker 4: went into an lead it at a dead end, and
Speaker 4: when we turned around not ceased walking there. I was like,
Speaker 4: oh fuck, no, yeah, but I think they just thought
Speaker 4: that it was a way around and had just followed
Speaker 4: also because they thought it was a way through. They
Speaker 4: didn't actually like control us or anything.
Speaker 5: That makes my tummy hurt maic. I don't like that.
Speaker 4: It was one of the most scary moments. I'm going
Speaker 4: to admit that. Anyway. The fan Netherlands mostly carried the
Speaker 4: picture I sent you with, like the bad AI sketch
Speaker 4: of a photo of Quincon.
Speaker 5: Okay, I'm sorry. If I ever get.
Speaker 6: Murdered and you're holding a rally for my memory, use
Speaker 6: a real fucking picture.
Speaker 4: Of Yeah, this is really okay they're.
Speaker 6: Using they're using a fake picture of a more handsome guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the other didn't flact that.
Speaker 6: You said yes, Like I'm saying, like, use a good
Speaker 6: picture of me, you know, like a cute picture, but
Speaker 6: like they're using a fake.
Speaker 5: Picture of a more handsome guy because this guy was
Speaker 5: weird looking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the person who is on the flag and the
Speaker 3: BBC I had to go, that's just straight up not him.
Speaker 3: It's not a it's not a guy who looks like him.
Speaker 4: It's not a.
Speaker 3: Rendering of him by AI.
Speaker 6: That is like old school German propaganda of like an Aryan. Yeah,
Speaker 6: they're like an Aryan specimen, where like this was like
Speaker 6: a skinny little guy who's half.
Speaker 4: A Hispanic Latino Latino.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Like it's just disrespectful to his memory to whitewash
Speaker 6: him and make him more handsome.
Speaker 5: You're not a good enough martyr.
Speaker 6: We had to find a better looking guy to pretend
Speaker 6: was you so we can profit politically from your murder.
Speaker 4: What pictures of you do we need to do you
Speaker 4: molly in the events?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I should, I should, I should pre yeah.
Speaker 4: Exactly, And then you can also select which which photo
Speaker 4: we're going to use, on which we're going to put
Speaker 4: on the banners.
Speaker 6: But it's like they don't actually care about this man.
Speaker 6: Most people holding those banners don't know that's not him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a very empty performance.
Speaker 6: I'm performing outrage over the like the theoretical death of
Speaker 6: a guy whose politics were similar to mine.
Speaker 4: Yeah. But defense Netherlands, they also carried what we call
Speaker 4: the princess flag in the Netherlands.
Speaker 6: Princess flag, yeah, the flag of the Prince, oh princess.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's a it's a variational on the flag
Speaker 4: that we have right now, but it was co opted
Speaker 4: by the Dutch National Socialist Party prior and during World
Speaker 4: War Two, so it's now heavily associated with those groups,
Speaker 4: and that is the flag they choose to carry.
Speaker 6: I'm just skeptical of all flags, Like, unless I'm one
Speaker 6: hundred percent sure what I'm looking at, I'm skeptical of
Speaker 6: a flag.
Speaker 5: Because usually a guy that like, I don't know what
Speaker 5: you're doing? What does that mean?
Speaker 3: It is always telling when people are like, oh, this
Speaker 3: nationalist flag is the flag of our nation. Is not
Speaker 3: nationalist enough? Let me let me find an obscure one
Speaker 3: from the past. It has only been revived by fascist Yeah.
Speaker 6: Like anyone in South Africa carrying something other than the
Speaker 6: current official South African flags.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because there's a lot of variations and they're all about.
Speaker 4: Oh, well, well we're getting to those variations. Baly, because
Speaker 4: like the flag flag was not only used by collaborators,
Speaker 4: but they've also added because just a alluding to like
Speaker 4: the collaborationists, it's not enough. They added a voc logo
Speaker 4: from the Dutch East is in the company onto the.
Speaker 3: What that honestly that came from fucking nowhere? God, just
Speaker 3: like these people fucking hated people who weren't white as well,
Speaker 3: Like just.
Speaker 4: Sorry, that is incredible or evil. Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can't believe we've opened that kind of went,
Speaker 3: because there's gonna be that's gonna happen in Britain now.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately I've put it in the chat like something like that.
Speaker 5: I mean it's just like comedically.
Speaker 3: Fuck, it's a ship logo as well. It looks like
Speaker 3: a ranch brand. It looks like somebody didn't want their
Speaker 3: cows to go missing and they did that.
Speaker 5: I would stamp that on a horse for sure.
Speaker 4: It probably was probably also on people. You're going to
Speaker 4: say that unfortunate.
Speaker 3: What the fuck though, Like, I can't believe they did that.
Speaker 3: Is that a thing on the Dutch right, like like
Speaker 3: make dutchy c India company great.
Speaker 5: And nostalgic for the dusty dident. My loyalty lies with
Speaker 5: the Duchies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's such a niche.
Speaker 3: This is what you get from the European ultra nationalism
Speaker 3: is these incredibly niche racism.
Speaker 5: I'm a monarchist for spice trading.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's this is something they actually do. I've
Speaker 4: seen it a multiple like far eyed rallies where they're
Speaker 4: just waving that shit and like that rocks. Yeah, it's
Speaker 4: like the poorest dog whistle that any normal human being
Speaker 4: can also hear. Like, okay, you you long back to
Speaker 4: the days of like killing hundreds of thousands of people
Speaker 4: for the spices that we don't use in our cuisine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, wow, that is so.
Speaker 5: Niche, it's so good. That's so I hope those guys
Speaker 5: get pressed into servius on a ship.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, they might be shipped iran soon. Who knows.
Speaker 5: Like enjoy sailing around the world. You love it so much, going.
Speaker 4: To bangal by sale.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you love fucking racism. Getting scurvy to own the lives.
Speaker 4: You know, they will get scirvy because they won't be
Speaker 4: eating fruit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because they're exclusively eating uh what what the Americans
Speaker 3: call French fries because of the erasure.
Speaker 4: Of Dutch cultural brilliant. That's true. They are more like
Speaker 4: fermented to meat or something, just exclusively Yeah. Because return
Speaker 4: But yeah, anyway, with the rally, in the end, nothing
Speaker 4: really happens. There were some chances going up, up and down.
Speaker 4: I think there were only two arrests for insulting police officers.
Speaker 4: I think one on either side.
Speaker 5: But that's illegal there, Yes, oh I can never go.
Speaker 3: You can also just avoid police that's that's the thing. Wow,
Speaker 3: they won't they won't immediately ch issue with a gun here.
Speaker 3: But I've never had any experience with American cops, so
Speaker 3: there's no comparison for me. I also hope that never happens,
Speaker 3: because I heard stories of what happens.
Speaker 4: Yeah, American cops. No good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's one of one of the founding principles this
Speaker 3: here podcast network.
Speaker 4: Well we have that there is one cop in your
Speaker 4: tractor was allegedly a member of like an openly Dutch
Speaker 4: Nazi group, but I think he's just since left it.
Speaker 5: That happens a lot here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's not an uncommon occurrence.
Speaker 4: No, what's a cops and clan go hand and haund.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, we say it for a reason.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well we can ad cops in in company bracket
Speaker 3: Dutch East India that those.
Speaker 4: Were not cops because it was a corporation. James. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's an enforced urs.
Speaker 3: You can't be a fascist for the Dutch East India
Speaker 3: company because it's something a little bit different.
Speaker 5: That's true. That's true. They were not a state.
Speaker 3: No, it's a non state entity. It's like an autonomous
Speaker 3: it's autonomous fascism of its.
Speaker 6: Own kind of cooked for a fascist to be nostalgic
Speaker 6: for a company.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but as long as it's a nationalist company then
Speaker 4: it's okay. This is great.
Speaker 3: I'm going to revive him like like like eighteenth century
Speaker 3: pirate ship, you know, when like the British were like
Speaker 3: attacking the Dutch East India company ships. I'm going to
Speaker 3: bring that back. Okay now because fuck these people. You
Speaker 3: have my personal permission to attack Dutch sailing ships.
Speaker 4: I have that authority.
Speaker 5: But to get back Quentin.
Speaker 4: Sorry, No, there was one other thing that happened because
Speaker 4: the day after the rally there was an unknown person
Speaker 4: who threw a smoke bomb inside the AKU. Shit. A
Speaker 4: person was never caught. I'm going to make a wild
Speaker 4: guest and say he was probably involved with Defend Netherlands
Speaker 4: or some other similar fascist groups. No one at AKU
Speaker 4: was hurt. It was mostly just an e convenients. And
Speaker 4: that is pretty much the story of how the depth
Speaker 4: of a French Nazi involved threats to a community center
Speaker 4: in the Netherlands.
Speaker 3: Wow, yeah, I think you mentioned Ntem when called him
Speaker 3: Francis Charlie Kirk. Yeah, but it's wild how like this
Speaker 3: one has been so seized upon right by people who, like,
Speaker 3: as we said, they did not give a shit about
Speaker 3: this guy when he was alive. Now, I think our
Speaker 3: national rally would be the English or like National Assembly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think national rally is how they do it
Speaker 5: in English.
Speaker 4: Okay, Yeah, those guys held like also like on a
Speaker 4: political level, it was like a national thing that happened
Speaker 4: where they were memorizing it, and they were blaming a
Speaker 4: French unbout for whatever happened. Because one of the people
Speaker 4: who was arrested for the violence was an aide I
Speaker 4: think to someone from French unbouts.
Speaker 5: That's not great.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's not great.
Speaker 5: I imagine their boss would have preferred that they had
Speaker 5: not done that.
Speaker 4: Probably probably, But it was a huge thing. And I mean, like.
Speaker 6: From my end, Like I mean, obviously I don't read
Speaker 6: a lot of French news, but I subscribe to a
Speaker 6: lot of Nazi telegram channels and I see his name
Speaker 6: a lot, like the Active club sort of networks, Like
Speaker 6: it's not always directly the Active clubs, sort of these
Speaker 6: sort of ancillary telegram groups that spen up around them,
Speaker 6: but in that milieu they're talking about him a lot.
Speaker 6: They're talking about like, you know, training in his honor,
Speaker 6: punching communists in his honor, you know what I mean,
Speaker 6: Like they're trying to make this a rallying point to
Speaker 6: inspire more violence.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't know if it will work long term.
Speaker 5: I've seen many such attempts that do not work long term.
Speaker 5: But it's been two months and they are still talking about,
Speaker 5: you know, hurting people in his name.
Speaker 4: Also if my doubts on whether that will.
Speaker 5: Work, because they try a lot, try a lot.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I particular a bunch of examples of attempted martyrs that
Speaker 6: led just like nobody remembers.
Speaker 4: I can't think if anyone exactly exactly besides the one
Speaker 4: we already talked about whose wife is now running the foundation.
Speaker 6: And for the most part it's I mean, at least
Speaker 6: in America, most of the right wing martyrs are people
Speaker 6: who died in prison or were killed by the police.
Speaker 6: We don't have a lot of sort of street deaths
Speaker 6: like this.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, although, like I do feel like the right wing
Speaker 3: martin is killed by the police, like if they like
Speaker 3: if the Weaver family were killed by the cops, to
Speaker 3: the members of the Weaver family who were killed by
Speaker 3: the FBI, Vicky Wheel yeah. Like if that happened today,
Speaker 3: I think half of the right would be like hell yeah,
Speaker 3: get them cops, like like the Bootleck attendance.
Speaker 6: See, I mean like they tried to make LaVoi Finicum
Speaker 6: was killed during the Bundy standoff in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 5: Did you remember LaVoi Finicum?
Speaker 4: No? Yeah, no one.
Speaker 6: I mean Ashley Babbitt. Ashley Babbitt should have been their martyr.
Speaker 6: They moved on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they've been doing some acshally Babbitt stuff like
Speaker 3: I think they it didn't work.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it still hasn't.
Speaker 3: What they're trying to bury her, I believe, with the
Speaker 3: military honors now and get her Air Force pension or something,
Speaker 3: and then she can sue Capitol Police now that it
Speaker 3: hasn't worked. Like in terms of popular culture, no one cares.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean the closest thing we have are when
Speaker 6: white women are killed by black men or immigrants.
Speaker 5: That sometimes will Yeah, that flash in the pan lasts.
Speaker 6: A little longer, but even still, like Kate Steinley, Molly
Speaker 6: Tibbet's like Arena Zarutska, like.
Speaker 4: Well, they stuck the landing with they can Riley.
Speaker 3: They had the Lake and Riley Act right, they managed
Speaker 3: to essentially create a system where immigrants are guilty until
Speaker 3: prement innocent, right now, Yeah, they have not spoken about
Speaker 3: her since, but like the legal version of the legal
Speaker 3: tendency on the right, right, the right Legislative movement kind
Speaker 3: of did with that.
Speaker 6: But they are they're like constantly scrounging around for a
Speaker 6: martyr and trying to make one happen. Like in twenty twenty,
Speaker 6: like right after George Floyd Kenan Hinnant, that five year
Speaker 6: old boy that was killed by his neighbor. Oh yeah,
Speaker 6: like this is our George Floyd. You never heard about
Speaker 6: it again?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they tried and try to try and stay at
Speaker 3: the union, right.
Speaker 6: And then what was it two weeks ago he posted
Speaker 6: that video of a one being beaten to death. Yeah,
Speaker 6: it just it doesn't work, like so that the sauce
Speaker 6: isn't there for them to create martyrs, but they love
Speaker 6: to try.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but in order to have a martyr, that that
Speaker 4: person needs to have had value in their eyes in
Speaker 4: the first place. And I think that's what missing.
Speaker 5: Right, because they don't care.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well they posthumously tried to kind of yeah stack
Speaker 3: it on old Quentin here, but.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I think that this person needs to have
Speaker 4: a reason.
Speaker 5: They needed to have really died for an actual cause, that.
Speaker 4: For an actual cause, but also someone who was like
Speaker 4: broadly known and looked up to.
Speaker 6: Well, not necessarily, I mean, you don't have to be
Speaker 6: somebody before your death to be an important martyr. I
Speaker 6: mean em at Till was not as civil rights activist,
Speaker 6: he was a little boy.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Fair.
Speaker 3: I think it's worked historically more on the left because
Speaker 3: it is people who are It tends to be people
Speaker 3: who are victimized for just for being themselves bless Yeah,
Speaker 3: people who are just existing in the world.
Speaker 6: Right, It's like if you got into a fight at
Speaker 6: a Nazi rally, Like I'm not going to blame the victim,
Speaker 6: but it's not a it's not a blameless death.
Speaker 4: No, Like more like Renee Goot I think what's her name,
Speaker 4: where she was just yeah, you know, looking out for
Speaker 4: her or for her neighbors, but then it was murdered.
Speaker 5: You've been a good person in the first place.
Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe that's where the ride goes wrong.
Speaker 5: That's where it really.
Speaker 3: Goes right, that's the root cause yes, yeah, the.
Speaker 6: Only ones I can think of that really stick are
Speaker 6: older and maybe that is like you're saying James because
Speaker 6: it was like a lower information environment. But like they
Speaker 6: still do Martyr's Day for Robert Matthews and that was
Speaker 6: forty years ago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like it was easier, right, like for them to
Speaker 3: do it back then.
Speaker 6: And like Matthews got sort of enshrined into this this
Speaker 6: Martyr's pantheon.
Speaker 5: Yeah, at a very important time in the movement.
Speaker 6: I just don't know that his death would be that
Speaker 6: important if it happened today.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think a lot about the Vickiy Weaver thing because
Speaker 3: we had a Bill Gore, who was a sheriff in
Speaker 3: San Diego, had been an FBI agent who was part
Speaker 3: of the operation at Ruby Ridge. It was very interesting
Speaker 3: in San Diego because initially when Gore became sheriff, you
Speaker 3: had all these people on the right Lake, specifically posting
Speaker 3: on the Sheriff's department lost a lawsuit for deleting comments
Speaker 3: on its Facebook page regarding this. They can't delete comments, rightly,
Speaker 3: they're a public agency.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: Then twenty twenty happened and that same tendency, those same groups,
Speaker 3: not the individual who bought the suit, but like those
Speaker 3: folks were showing up with their Blue Lives Matter flags.
Speaker 3: But then like also struggling to line that up with like, oh,
Speaker 3: we should bring guns. Oh, but that would be illegal California. Oh,
Speaker 3: but we have a right under the Second Amendment. Well,
Speaker 3: who would be the person who enforced the law that
Speaker 3: you think contravenes the Second Amendment? It's a cops, right,
Speaker 3: and you're also here.
Speaker 5: Just they're so stuck. They're so stuck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they just kind of backed themselves into a corner
Speaker 3: there where like they're in a way more ideologically consistent
Speaker 3: back in the day at least, like they're like loving
Speaker 3: the cops thing that they made part of their identity
Speaker 3: largely in the George Floyd moment, right, and the yutual
Speaker 3: leut riding has really fucked them when it comes to
Speaker 3: people who get killed by the cops.
Speaker 5: So hopefully this one fades away like all their other martyrs.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I mean I don't like know where his
Speaker 3: family are at either, Like if family may not have
Speaker 3: been bigots.
Speaker 6: Right, Like have they come out and tried to capitalize
Speaker 6: on this, Like does he have a crying mother on
Speaker 6: the news talking about evil Antifa?
Speaker 4: They don't have a crying mother on the news, So
Speaker 4: I do know they have a lawyer, and I think
Speaker 4: there is some form of legal action being taken.
Speaker 6: And that makes sense because like there were people arrested
Speaker 6: who were responsible for the.
Speaker 3: Death, like somebody hit him in that be a legal.
Speaker 5: Process to move forward.
Speaker 6: But I mean, like, they's not like a member of
Speaker 6: his family out there doing propaganda against like anti fascists.
Speaker 4: Not that I'm aware of, but they were very quiet
Speaker 4: and so far as I've could see, Yeah, like I've
Speaker 4: written this over the space of like two months, so
Speaker 4: may have missed something somewhere, sure, but they were pretty
Speaker 4: quiet on his activist activities. So I'm not sure how.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure if it's something they didn't know, or
Speaker 4: if it was something that.
Speaker 5: Maybe they didn't know how bad it was, how.
Speaker 4: Bad it could also have been kept quiet in order
Speaker 4: to like they're doing a lawsuit.
Speaker 6: Yeah, right, they should say less if they're pursuiting litigation.
Speaker 5: That makes perfect sense.
Speaker 6: So it seems like most of the propaganda around his
Speaker 6: death is being produced by the groups he was in.
Speaker 5: Right, you said he was in an active club.
Speaker 6: I'm mostly seeing this from active clubs, so it makes
Speaker 6: sense that they would be doing that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just if they're not, like if it happens that,
Speaker 3: like at least someone in his family is, you said,
Speaker 3: like a migrant to France themselves. Like it would really
Speaker 3: fucking suck to know, first of all, to find out
Speaker 3: that this kid in your family had these reprehensible views,
Speaker 3: and then to see their face everywhere.
Speaker 5: Well, luckily it's not his face.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's true. That's true.
Speaker 3: You see someone else's face in his name.
Speaker 4: It's just vague resemblance. Yeah. So yeah, before we close
Speaker 4: it out, though, I do want to plug something because
Speaker 4: I do know when the ACU they shut down, they
Speaker 4: had concerts and the entire venue was closed the day
Speaker 4: of the vigil, so they did miss a lot of income.
Speaker 4: And I also personally know a few people who spend
Speaker 4: quite some money on just barricading that or getting iron
Speaker 4: grades for the windows, or steal grades.
Speaker 5: That's dark.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, so there is a donate link for the
Speaker 4: ACU because it's also entirely volunteer run, like there's no
Speaker 4: paid employees there. Everyone's just doing that in their spare time.
Speaker 4: So if there are people who have some money to
Speaker 4: spare anything that's a worthy calls, then in the show
Speaker 4: notes you can find the donate link to support the
Speaker 4: local community center.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it'd be nice if people did that.
Speaker 5: That's beautiful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was very hard wark to see. I think
Speaker 4: at the demonstration it self, I think that the Nazis
Speaker 4: were outnumbered like three to one, maybe more usually are
Speaker 4: usually are, but it's still very heartwarming to see such
Speaker 4: a a quick and rapid response with people just being like, hey,
Speaker 4: we don't want them here, go back to your backyard.
Speaker 4: All the vigil there and it was a thing that happens.
Speaker 4: But after we've spoken so much about weird Nazis, Molly,
Speaker 4: I've been told you do also something with weird little Nazis.
Speaker 6: Oh, I love a weird little guy. I'm going to
Speaker 6: talk about them every week on my show We're Little Guys.
Speaker 6: You can find it anywhere you get your podcasts. Great,
Speaker 6: And now I'm I'm actually so curious about these weird
Speaker 6: little girls. I might have to check this out.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's new fascination unlogged.
Speaker 4: I'll share some of the links with you than you
Speaker 4: can have a starting point, although I think you're a
Speaker 4: much better researcher this than I am.
Speaker 5: So unfortunately it's all going to be in French. That's
Speaker 5: what I'm married.
Speaker 4: Just auto translate. That's true because I also don't speak
Speaker 4: French and also translate. Safety made a powerful enemy. Okay,
Speaker 4: the Francophone world.
Speaker 6: They're so uptight about their silly little language.
Speaker 3: I love to speak French. French speaking people, please don't as.
Speaker 4: Next time I read French articles, James will send the
Speaker 4: link to you and ask you to translate them for me.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I'm really worried that I'm going to have to translate
Speaker 3: some heenous ship.
Speaker 4: Here's like the French version of my comp Could you
Speaker 4: please translate it for me.
Speaker 5: I do have some holocaust and dial texts.
Speaker 4: Translation perfect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just make sure I'm not in France when I
Speaker 3: receive them. NBA crime, you.
Speaker 4: Might have visa problems as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm not going okay.
Speaker 3: I'm no longer a EU citizen, so I now have
Speaker 3: to get visas for places too.
Speaker 4: Bad and you have to be not to be declared
Speaker 4: for no grata. Yeah okay, then, yeah, I think we
Speaker 4: can wrap this up. Thank you guys for being here
Speaker 4: and making is a lovely time talking about Nazis.
Speaker 6: Yes, thank you for introducing me to some terrible new concepts.
Speaker 5: I'm very excited.
Speaker 4: You're welcome.
Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and this is it could happen here. My
Speaker 1: name is Daniel Kurd.
Speaker 9: I'm a researcher and analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics.
Speaker 1: Today I'm joined by.
Speaker 9: Justin Salhani, who is a non resident fellow at the
Speaker 9: Titate Institute for Middle East Policy and a writer and
Speaker 9: journalist based in Beirut. He has worked with Al Jazira
Speaker 9: Digital and has contributed to a number of different outlets
Speaker 9: in the past, and has been reporting on the region
Speaker 9: since twenty eleven. Justin, thank you so much for coming
Speaker 9: on the show. Thanks for having me so since you are,
Speaker 9: you know, based invite with them, so intimately knowledgeable of
Speaker 9: what's been going on, I thought we could start by
Speaker 9: just kind of laying out what conditions are like in
Speaker 9: Lebanon right now.
Speaker 7: So right now, as we speak, we're in the midst
Speaker 7: of kind of a tenuous, fragile incomplete we can call
Speaker 7: it ceasefire in beitoot proper. There still is occasionally, you know,
Speaker 7: a drone overhead, this kind of infamous drone that buzzes
Speaker 7: incessantly and keeps everyone constantly on their toes. But there's
Speaker 7: been almost two weeks or a little maybe a little
Speaker 7: bit more now without an attack on Beaitoo. Basically, we
Speaker 7: had that day April eighth, which is being called locally
Speaker 7: Black Wednesday, where around the country I think the numbers
Speaker 7: are now over three hundred and fifty people were killed,
Speaker 7: and many of those were in bed roots in areas
Speaker 7: that came without warning. You know, there is this kind
Speaker 7: of dynamic now where the Israeli military will at times
Speaker 7: announce warnings for certain areas, though many attacks come with
Speaker 7: no warning, and they brought down buildings without warning in
Speaker 7: some cases as well in central Bayoot. So the conditions
Speaker 7: right now are you know, relatively, I guess we can
Speaker 7: call it quiet here. Of course, that's vastly different in
Speaker 7: the south, where there was an intensification, particularly yesterday, there
Speaker 7: wasn't really any cessation of hostilities. We can talk about
Speaker 7: how the minutes leading up to April sixteen, when the
Speaker 7: ceasefire went into effect, you know, throughout the country in Lebanon,
Speaker 7: the Israelis were attacking around the country, not Bayedoot, but
Speaker 7: in other parts of the country, particularly in the south
Speaker 7: and in the city of Sworde bombs. You know, I
Speaker 7: was down there the other day and people were talking
Speaker 7: about what time the Israelis dropped their last bomb, whether
Speaker 7: it was twelve on the dot or eleven fifty nine
Speaker 7: pm or eleven fifty seven pm. And so these are
Speaker 7: the conditions that essentially journalists media workers are forced to
Speaker 7: live with on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's wild how conscientious they are.
Speaker 9: You know, they have to take every single minute to
Speaker 9: bomb their neighbors. So yeah, maybe tell us what the
Speaker 9: situation has been like for journalists in particular. I imagine different
Speaker 9: parts of the country are struggling with maybe different challenges.
Speaker 7: Yeah, this exists on a sliding scale, obviously since twenty
Speaker 7: twenty three, the first week post October seven, there was
Speaker 7: a Lebanese journalist by the name of Isam Abdala who
Speaker 7: was killed. He was a Reuters photographer, and that was
Speaker 7: a strike that wounded other journalists, including journalists from AFP
Speaker 7: and Al Jazeera. So, I mean it's been over two
Speaker 7: and a half years now that there has been a
Speaker 7: danger and that first strike that killed Isam changed the
Speaker 7: way that media assesses risk in this country. Since then
Speaker 7: a number of other journalists have also been killed. So
Speaker 7: in that sense, there still is a fear that targeting,
Speaker 7: much like in Gaza, is a thing that happens.
Speaker 4: Of course, in Gaza was way worse.
Speaker 7: There was a way higher threat level, and I think
Speaker 7: part of that is because there were no foreign journalists
Speaker 7: in Gaza during that period of Palestinians. Until now there
Speaker 7: has been at least a one foreign journalist who was
Speaker 7: wounded in that initial attack. Since then, most of the
Speaker 7: attacks have targeted Lebanese journalists, and particularly Lebanese journalists working
Speaker 7: with outlets who have some sort of we can call
Speaker 7: it line that supports or is differential to Hezbala. I mean,
Speaker 7: of course, this is not an excuse, right, They're still journalists,
Speaker 7: They're still working in the media, regardless of what their
Speaker 7: political affiliation is. These are people who are there to
Speaker 7: assess information. Recently, in this latest intensification, there have been
Speaker 7: more killings of journalists, of course, and these are typically
Speaker 7: journalists who are working on the front lines and in
Speaker 7: the south. You know, we can't know what's in the
Speaker 7: minds of the Israeli military, but based on my conversations
Speaker 7: with media professionals and media watchdogs in the recent years,
Speaker 7: I wrote a piece for Al Jazeera back in twenty
Speaker 7: twenty four. I believe it was about the killing of
Speaker 7: journalists in Gaza, and you know, people at outlets like
Speaker 7: Reporters Without Borders, we're telling me that at that point
Speaker 7: we're talking, you know, a year and a half ago,
Speaker 7: it was already systematic. There was a systematic means of
Speaker 7: trying to control the narrative through the killing of journalists.
Speaker 7: And this is a big thing for these groups that
Speaker 7: are you know, work really hard to share.
Speaker 4: Only things that they've backed up with data.
Speaker 7: They're not bombastic spokespeople who have some sort of political
Speaker 7: lean you can say, these are people who really have
Speaker 7: to own organizations, that really have to be careful with
Speaker 7: the language that they pick and choose. So I thought
Speaker 7: that was like a really interesting framing. So what they
Speaker 7: had told me at the time, and I think this
Speaker 7: is inevitably still true if you subscribe to this idea,
Speaker 7: is that the goal was to prevent the information from
Speaker 7: getting out from the front lines, to stop people from
Speaker 7: knowing what was happening. And this has been clear as
Speaker 7: lately we've seen journalists targeted. And you know, this isn't
Speaker 7: a case whereby journalists were killed, and I'm speaking specifically
Speaker 7: in Lebanon, this also happened in Gaza, but specifically in Lebanon,
Speaker 7: and the last few weeks we've seen cases where there
Speaker 7: were double tap strikes on journalists that had targeted journalists,
Speaker 7: and then the Israeli military came out, particularly with an
Speaker 7: incident that happened I think just a little over a
Speaker 7: month ago now. They came out and photoshopped journalists from
Speaker 7: the TV station Almonard in Hasbala Fatigues and claimed that
Speaker 7: he was part of this elite fighting force that awed
Speaker 7: one forces. They offered no proof for this, the Israeli
Speaker 7: military as spokesperson. I believe it was later admitted that
Speaker 7: this was a doctored or an AI created photo that
Speaker 7: they that they released. But these are the conditions that
Speaker 7: journalists are working with. Unfortunately, Lebanon is not signatory to
Speaker 7: the ICC or the ICJ, and so these cases though
Speaker 7: there's been pressure by media watchdogs and other bodies to
Speaker 7: get Lebanon to sign up to join the ICC and
Speaker 7: ICJ so that they can put forward cases against Israel
Speaker 7: for specifically the targeting of journalists, as well as many
Speaker 7: other actions the Israelis have taken in Lebanon, particularly South
Speaker 7: Lebanon over the last two and a half years. These
Speaker 7: are essentially the conditions that Lebaniz journalists are working under
Speaker 7: where their lives are at risk.
Speaker 4: I might point out one other.
Speaker 7: Incident where a journalist from RT was reporting on a
Speaker 7: bridge in South Lebanon. It was one of the last
Speaker 7: bridges to not yet have been bombed that would connect
Speaker 7: South Lebanon to the rest of the country. He was
Speaker 7: reporting when it was caught on video that a strike
Speaker 7: had happened. I think there are legitimate criticisms about this
Speaker 7: journalist's conduct in terms of placing himself.
Speaker 4: He wasn't wearing a helmet at the time.
Speaker 7: Those are legitimate criticisms for you know, kind of here's
Speaker 7: how you can do better sort of thing. That still
Speaker 7: does not excuse the fact that the attack happened while
Speaker 7: the journalist was there covering. And again, regardless of the
Speaker 7: outlets lean, regardless of what their agenda is, etc.
Speaker 4: Etc.
Speaker 7: These are still media professionals working. I believe that a
Speaker 7: warning had happened at that time, so again questions over
Speaker 7: maybe decisions that were made. Still that does not excuse
Speaker 7: the Israeli military action. And I've heard people say, you
Speaker 7: know that if you work through this logic, if we
Speaker 7: go back to the logic of what happened in Gaza,
Speaker 7: for example, with the first attack on a hospital, and
Speaker 7: I know, you know, this was in the first few
Speaker 7: weeks after October seven. You may remember at the time
Speaker 7: there was this whole kind of debate between analysts and
Speaker 7: pundits and talking heads and what have you. You know,
Speaker 7: Israel would never do that, they would never attack a hospital.
Speaker 7: And then months later, here we are and every hospital
Speaker 7: in Gaza. You know, at one point multiple hospitals in
Speaker 7: Gaza were completely unoperational. Attacks that happened around hospitals at
Speaker 7: hospitals claiming hospitals were militant centers or centers that were
Speaker 7: hosting militants and all these other sort of things. Forensic
Speaker 7: Architecture has done fantastic work on the Gaza example of
Speaker 7: how the Israelis had structurally gone in and dismantled Gaza
Speaker 7: and healthcare at Palestinian Healthcare in Gaza. And I think
Speaker 7: it might be fair to say that there's a similar
Speaker 7: logic that is working here in Lebanon. Is that, you know,
Speaker 7: because after the murder of Isam Abdallah, essentially there was
Speaker 7: a period where journalists were not killed for at least
Speaker 7: a short period of time. Then two journalists from the
Speaker 7: outlet Al Mayodine were killed, and then since then we've
Speaker 7: had others from Mayodine, from Monar, etc.
Speaker 4: That have been killed by the Israelis.
Speaker 7: So you see kind of a pattern that, Okay, we
Speaker 7: can get away with killing these journalists that are ostensibly
Speaker 7: working with outlets who have some sort of affiliation or
Speaker 7: lean towards the Hesbala narrative. That's also the case for Alahabart,
Speaker 7: with the newspaper that Ama Radil worked with. She was
Speaker 7: killed in a really horrific targeted strike just a few
Speaker 7: days ago.
Speaker 4: Where her and a colleague were in the South.
Speaker 7: An attack happened, they fled into a building, then the
Speaker 7: Israelis attacked that building. She was stuck under the rubble,
Speaker 7: and the Israelis prevented Red Cross medics and first responders
Speaker 7: from getting to her for a series of hours. I
Speaker 7: think it was around seven hours, the official reporting says,
Speaker 7: and she died. There's no way to frame this other
Speaker 7: than that Israel attacked her and then prevented her from
Speaker 7: receiving the treatment that she needed to be able to
Speaker 7: continue to live. And I'm always somebody who I didn't
Speaker 7: know personally, so I can't speak to her character in
Speaker 7: my sense, but from the reports people reported her as
Speaker 7: a person that was incredibly generous with their time, was
Speaker 7: incredibly helpful, was very kind to animals. She was somebody
Speaker 7: who was in the South for years and years, was
Speaker 7: often in the South, was constantly in the South, was
Speaker 7: always on the front lines, felt it was her duty
Speaker 7: to report from the front lines as much as possible.
Speaker 7: You know, these are the people that the Israelis have
Speaker 7: targeted until now. Without maybe going too much into, you know,
Speaker 7: an attempt to draw some sort of pattern, I think
Speaker 7: that what seems clear is that those people are targets.
Speaker 7: But we have to ask are the Israelis maybe trying
Speaker 7: to expand that a bit because this is the first
Speaker 7: journalist they've killed from Allahabad, right, if they've killed Manar before,
Speaker 7: they've gone onto Myodine, or they've killed Myodine, and and
Speaker 7: you know Manard and Myodine in one way gone on
Speaker 7: to about are they widening the scope? Are they challenging
Speaker 7: more people, are more people at risk? So I think
Speaker 7: what this does is inevitably now journalists will think twice
Speaker 7: about going south, They'll think twice about going to the
Speaker 7: front lines. Security advisors will put more caution into allowing
Speaker 7: their journalists to go south.
Speaker 4: People will take less risks.
Speaker 7: Obviously, people who will see themselves who work as targets,
Speaker 7: maybe with outlets that the Israelis are openly in opposition to,
Speaker 7: might take different decisions, you know. So I think this
Speaker 7: is where we end up at basically after such killings
Speaker 7: and such actions.
Speaker 9: Referring back to the killing of the Amatil, we're recording
Speaker 9: this April twenty seventh. As far as I'm aware, no
Speaker 9: other journalist has been killed since she was the last
Speaker 9: person who was killed. But we'll see what happens. But
Speaker 9: Amos was not only double tapped, they had been threatening
Speaker 9: her over text message.
Speaker 7: Right, Yeah, So this is a phenomenon that has happened.
Speaker 7: Obviously it's not just journalists, but it's others as well
Speaker 7: that have gotten threatening messages. There have been cases reporting
Speaker 7: cases of people receiving text.
Speaker 4: Saying we're going to attack you.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: You can die by yourself or you can die with
Speaker 4: your family.
Speaker 7: And I want to be clearly until now that's not
Speaker 7: a journalist that this has happened to. Ama did receive
Speaker 7: threatening text messages. Other reporters have followed up and messaged
Speaker 7: the number that messaged her. It's really hard to deduct
Speaker 7: if this is an actual campaign, if this is somebody
Speaker 7: within state capacity, or if these are individuals that found
Speaker 7: her phone number and did that. However, there is a
Speaker 7: psychological effect that takes place here right. There has been
Speaker 7: a phenomenon of different municipalities around Lebanon receiving phone calls
Speaker 7: from Israeli officials or Israeli military officials warning them of
Speaker 7: hosting displaced people. You know, this has been reported and outlets,
Speaker 7: including in the New York Times and others. So essentially
Speaker 7: a psychological effect has begun to take hold with that
Speaker 7: as well. There have been a number of calls that
Speaker 7: are essentially fake calls. So you know, for example, weeks ago,
Speaker 7: a neighbor of mine, or a neighboring building just a
Speaker 7: couple streets over, reportedly received a warning, a threatening call,
Speaker 7: threatening them that there might be attack on their building.
Speaker 7: Now that attack never manifested and never developed, at least
Speaker 7: not at that precise building. That there have been other
Speaker 7: attacks within a walking distance of my house in the
Speaker 7: last few weeks. That being said, you know, that has
Speaker 7: a psychological effect because many people will not take the
Speaker 7: risk they'll leave. Other times, you'll find cases where people
Speaker 7: will get some sort of caller, people in the building
Speaker 7: will get some sort of call, they'll write it off
Speaker 7: as fake, and they won't leave their house. And so
Speaker 7: there have been people who have seen warnings coming one
Speaker 7: way or another. You know, I'm not saying it's directly
Speaker 7: through a phone call, but through one way or another,
Speaker 7: and thought, you know, whatever the case, we're not.
Speaker 4: Going to leave our homes. And they end up dying
Speaker 4: in strikes. So there is absolutely a psychological effect.
Speaker 7: And we have no way of knowing if these fake
Speaker 7: calls are coming from the Israeli military or officials or
Speaker 7: individuals or just other people playing pranks. All those things
Speaker 7: can be true to varying levels. A neighbor who lives
Speaker 7: above me got a call from ostensibly a Cuban number
Speaker 7: that was like an automated recording of sorts, and through
Speaker 7: her mind she started thinking, you know, what are the
Speaker 7: different possibilities of these calls? What sort of chances do
Speaker 7: I want to take. Incidentally, a day or two later,
Speaker 7: I got a call from a Cuban number as well,
Speaker 7: and I just chose not to pick it up because
Speaker 7: at that point we had figured out it was very
Speaker 7: likely to be fake. But this has a psychological effect,
Speaker 7: and this is one of the many things that Lebanese
Speaker 7: people are dealing with when we talk about these sort
Speaker 7: of psychological warfare through the things like you know, calls,
Speaker 7: warnings of your neighborhood or of your entire village at times,
Speaker 7: or maybe even of your building, sonic booms, distribution of leaflets,
Speaker 7: all these things are happening simultaneously when we talk about
Speaker 7: the things that I'm unreceived again, this is the targeting
Speaker 7: of media workers and journalists, and you will see kind
Speaker 7: of this international indifference. Luckily, now there's been kind of
Speaker 7: more voices, i think, picking up on the fact that
Speaker 7: journalists are a threat. And it is a case where
Speaker 7: it seems like yesterday it was Palestinians and today it's
Speaker 7: Lebanese and tomorrow who could be next? And maybe this
Speaker 7: is starting to ruminate a bit with journalists and the
Speaker 7: international community. But you know, these are the things that
Speaker 7: you know, we've seen happen with Lebanese journalists, that they
Speaker 7: are directly attacked.
Speaker 4: There's been huge in difference.
Speaker 7: There is always kind of this you might call it
Speaker 7: not an indifference, but maybe kind of a hedging of
Speaker 7: sorts of like, yeah, of course we don't condone the
Speaker 7: attack of media workers, you know, but the affiliation with
Speaker 7: hesbela right because this thing exists on a sliding scale
Speaker 7: of sorts. International humanitarian law is not a super cut
Speaker 7: and dry thing all the time. So our nuances and
Speaker 7: exceptions and whatever have you under international humanitary laws, I
Speaker 7: understand it. I mean, media workers absolutely are off the table.
Speaker 7: They're not somebody you can attack unless they're actually caring
Speaker 7: and taking part in battles. Even combatants who are not
Speaker 7: actively on the field of battle are not legitimate targets. However,
Speaker 7: Israel does not play by those rules. Israel will target
Speaker 7: people who are ostensibly in Hamas or Pezbala or there's
Speaker 7: such groups, even if they're at home with their families. Well, now,
Speaker 7: nobody has held them accountable for this right. This is
Speaker 7: why they've been able to attack betutat will, to attack
Speaker 7: the be suburbs at will. This is why they can
Speaker 7: bring down buildings in the capital or in the south
Speaker 7: and say that you know, there were Hasbala figures in
Speaker 7: the building, even if they were not carrying weapons, even
Speaker 7: if they were not active combatants, and the burden of
Speaker 7: proof has not been on them though it should be.
Speaker 7: So this is a sliding scale. So it starts with
Speaker 7: these kind of militants and they get away with with
Speaker 7: you know, attacking maybe somebody who is a former militant
Speaker 7: who's no longer carrying weapon, or somebody who's not an
Speaker 7: active combatant, and it goes all the way to media
Speaker 7: workers who have the sort of you know what we
Speaker 7: might call kind of this not clear cut affiliation or whatever.
Speaker 7: We should be clear that it doesn't matter what their
Speaker 7: affiliation is as a media worker, as a journalist, they
Speaker 7: should be protected, but because of these affiliations they're not.
Speaker 4: Again and Gaza.
Speaker 7: It started with such media workers, it ended up with
Speaker 7: more recently seeing for example, a Palacitian journalists who worked
Speaker 7: with the Associated Press being killed on a live stream.
Speaker 7: So this is kind of the sliding scale that we're
Speaker 7: seeing happening now.
Speaker 1: Like you said, it's widening. It's a testing of the limits.
Speaker 9: Some outlets will get no outrage, but then they widen
Speaker 9: the scope of it. The entire landscape and dynamic that
Speaker 9: you're describing it can only be described as terrorizing. And
Speaker 9: we've seen this in the past of course, like in Gaza,
Speaker 9: they drop leaflets to terrorize people and they send those
Speaker 9: text messages to Gazan's I mean, I don't encourage anybody
Speaker 9: to look for these, but there have been videos of
Speaker 9: people fleeing their cars because they're about to be droned
Speaker 9: after receiving a threat saying leave.
Speaker 1: Or your family will get droned with you. Like it's unbelievable.
Speaker 9: And of course, as you said, we're talk about journals now,
Speaker 9: but we've seen a targeting of like medical professionals, Like
Speaker 9: we've seen quadruple taps at this point of medical professionals
Speaker 9: to prevent people from helping those under the rubble, to
Speaker 9: prevent helping those who have now then been targeted for
Speaker 9: being in an ambulance. I mean, it's a really outrageous
Speaker 9: state of affairs. Has there been an exodus a foreign journalist?
Speaker 9: What's the situation like for those who are in Lebanon.
Speaker 4: No, there's not been an exodus.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 7: I think that many foreign journalists still feel that they're protected.
Speaker 7: It's an interesting dynamic, you know, because I think, as
Speaker 7: you'll know very well, right like whenever there are active
Speaker 7: hostilities or things like this, we have this flock of
Speaker 7: journalists who come in and then once it kind of
Speaker 7: calms down, they leave. And I always find that bizarre
Speaker 7: because I feel like so much of the work to
Speaker 7: be done happens when ces fires go into effect, because
Speaker 7: that's when you can see the extent of damages. That's
Speaker 7: when you can actually investigate and see, you know, Okay,
Speaker 7: now that the firing has stopped, you have better access
Speaker 7: to places, you can spend more time in places, you
Speaker 7: can get deeper stories. I mean, unfortunately, the way that
Speaker 7: media works today, there's not the luxury of time. Oftentimes,
Speaker 7: you know, media outlets are under staffed and under funded,
Speaker 7: and so it's a difficult prospect. There's still actually quite
Speaker 7: a lot of foreign journalists here. Luckily, some of them
Speaker 7: even covered Amalhai's funeral, they covered her memorial, they covered
Speaker 7: what happened to her because it was such an egregious example.
Speaker 7: And you know, at the same time, I think that
Speaker 7: there is this sort of dynamic the Israelis are aware
Speaker 7: of that if they kill a foreign journalist right like,
Speaker 7: they can kill They have killed a Lebanese journalist who
Speaker 7: worked for a major international outlet, and that led to
Speaker 7: some troubles for them. Because Reuters and others collaborated to
Speaker 7: do an investigation. Human rights organizations are reporting on this killing.
Speaker 7: Other Lebanese journalists that worked for less prominent outlets still
Speaker 7: led to certain condemnations, certain reports were written. But I
Speaker 7: think that, you know, it's kind of this effect. It's
Speaker 7: like an avalanche effect. It's that the more sort of
Speaker 7: attention goes towards these sort of incidents, the more of
Speaker 7: a more problem it becomes for Israel with their international
Speaker 7: partners or or their international relations, right, And so I
Speaker 7: think there's an acute awareness about that from the Israeli side.
Speaker 7: They know kind of how how far they can get
Speaker 7: away with things to a certain extent, you know, I
Speaker 7: think a lot of journalists are aware of that as well,
Speaker 7: and so they feel that for until now, they can
Speaker 7: still go into these places. But like you said, it's
Speaker 7: a widening effect, right, It's trying to see how far
Speaker 7: you can expand and how much you can get away with. Now,
Speaker 7: Let's say that you know, for example, this RT journalist,
Speaker 7: if they had killed him, he's a British citizen, you know,
Speaker 7: does that suddenly change the calculus or the fact that
Speaker 7: he worked for art does that count against him. How
Speaker 7: many politicians, let's say in Europe, will come out and say,
Speaker 7: you know, this is wrong the fact that it was
Speaker 7: an RT journalist. Hopefully they still would, but it creates
Speaker 7: this kind of you know, indecision, if you will.
Speaker 9: It seems to me from your answer that like they
Speaker 9: still expect that the current effect of their foreignness.
Speaker 7: Essentially, yeah, I think so they still carry that, and
Speaker 7: I think they have an awareness of that.
Speaker 4: You know, I wouldn't want to speak on their behalf.
Speaker 7: And there's always layers, right, There's the ones who parachute
Speaker 7: in who may be a good basis in the region.
Speaker 7: There are those who are based here and have been
Speaker 7: here a long time. There are those who speak the
Speaker 7: language and understand the culture. There are those who don't.
Speaker 7: And I mean, like this is not to single out
Speaker 7: foreign journalists. There are local journalists for amazing and their
Speaker 7: local journalists for horrible obviously, right, but I think that
Speaker 7: there is kind of a thought process that, yeah, carrying
Speaker 7: you know, a foreign passport, working for a major organization
Speaker 7: still comes with some sort of protection. So but I mean,
Speaker 7: at the same time, this also means that the israelis
Speaker 7: killing the journalists that they have killed it's it's not
Speaker 7: a mistake, right. I can think off the top of
Speaker 7: my head of at least two journalists who are killed
Speaker 7: in their homes and so you know, again this is
Speaker 7: attacking civilian infrastructure, attacking buildings, and that comes with a
Speaker 7: different sort of criticisms. But if we're talking just about
Speaker 7: the operation of journalists while they're doing their jobs, you know,
Speaker 7: while they're driving in cars, while they're covering sometimes conflicts,
Speaker 7: sometimes you know, maybe just moving from one place to
Speaker 7: the other, it becomes very clear that you know, if
Speaker 7: you feel protected by the fact that you have a
Speaker 7: foreign passport, that also means that the Israelis are aware
Speaker 7: of who they're.
Speaker 4: Attacking and when they're attacking aids.
Speaker 7: You know, we've seen things, for example, like you know,
Speaker 7: compared to the killing of people, this might be a
Speaker 7: minor example, but we saw this thing that got a
Speaker 7: lot of international attention of an Israeli soldier destroying a
Speaker 7: statue of Jesus in a Catholic town in the south
Speaker 7: of Lebanon. And then more recently there was the destruction
Speaker 7: of solar panels in another Christian town in South Lebanon,
Speaker 7: and the Israeli military will come out and say things like,
Speaker 7: you know, this does not represent the values of the
Speaker 7: Israeli military. So okay, then there's the targeting and killing
Speaker 7: of journalists. Does that represent the you know? And then
Speaker 7: and then additionally, I think it's important to say that
Speaker 7: with the level of data, with the level of precision
Speaker 7: that the Israelis have, that they've killed at times. You know,
Speaker 7: I visited a scene in a Christian town just east
Speaker 7: of Bayout, in a place called Aasade, where our you know,
Speaker 7: mutual friend Eli Ayub grew up and we saw the attack,
Speaker 7: the side of the attack, and I went to a
Speaker 7: building behind the building that attack that had, you know,
Speaker 7: we had the view from up top and you could
Speaker 7: see that two holes were in the rooftop of the
Speaker 7: building that was struck. And it's because the shells went
Speaker 7: through or the rockets went through the top of the
Speaker 7: building through the roof, went down a floor below and
Speaker 7: then exploded and killed women.
Speaker 4: Ended up killing a local.
Speaker 7: Christian official, and that was according to Israeli, is not
Speaker 7: the target of who they wanted to kill. But the
Speaker 7: point being is that they have this technology that they
Speaker 7: can attack precisely certain areas they can attack to the
Speaker 7: apartment they can blow out the walls of one apartment
Speaker 7: and leave the one a floor below or two floors
Speaker 7: below intact.
Speaker 4: And they've done this.
Speaker 7: They did this at a hotel just five minutes away.
Speaker 7: Some ostensible Iranian officials were staying in a hotel.
Speaker 4: They destroyed that room.
Speaker 7: It doesn't mean that at times there aren't other people
Speaker 7: nearby that are hurt. But if you're able to attack,
Speaker 7: and you know the figures that you are going after,
Speaker 7: and it is this precise, then what is the need
Speaker 7: to take down entire buildings or what is your excuse
Speaker 7: when you're going after media workers? Now they say it
Speaker 7: in a sense of, you know, like they did with
Speaker 7: this Minar correspondent that he was a member of the
Speaker 7: broad one forces, but again they've provided no information to
Speaker 7: do that. You know, these are people who who have
Speaker 7: very public face social media accounts. These are people who
Speaker 7: are in the public eye, who are on TV, who
Speaker 7: are doing all these sort of things. So you know,
Speaker 7: it really begs to ask many, many questions of the Israelis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, statues are off limits.
Speaker 4: But people are okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a fair game. So there's a cease fire.
Speaker 9: Now, what are people expecting for baut and what does
Speaker 9: that ceasar look like.
Speaker 1: As you said, the attacks are.
Speaker 9: Still going on in the south, but what are people
Speaker 9: expecting for these different parts of Lebanon.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the South is still very active and yesterday was
Speaker 7: a particularly brutal day with attacks across the area. There
Speaker 7: was a forced evacuation orders for areas above the Leetani River,
Speaker 7: which for anyone following, you know, there's been this whole
Speaker 7: kind of dynamic about disarming Hazabella below the lee Tani River,
Speaker 7: which runs across South Lebanon. The Israelis have previously issued
Speaker 7: evacuation orders for above the Laitani as well, reaching up
Speaker 7: to another river called the Zaharani. According to Human Rights
Speaker 7: someone at Human Rights Watch choice to these evacuation demands
Speaker 7: to comply with international humanitarian law, they need to be precise,
Speaker 7: they need to be exact, and they need to be temporary.
Speaker 7: You know, you need to leave your home now because
Speaker 7: we're attacking a target. But you know, they can't be
Speaker 7: open ended the way that they've been with the Israelis,
Speaker 7: and they cannot be indiscriminate the way that they've been
Speaker 7: of demanding the entirety of South Lebanon to move north
Speaker 7: or the entirety of the Southern suburbs. So attacks on
Speaker 7: Bedut after Black Wednesday have come to a halt. And
Speaker 7: it's also true for the Southern suburbs, which you know,
Speaker 7: have been an area whereby they've suffered many, many attacks,
Speaker 7: and so it's a bit of a stranger despite at
Speaker 7: the same time, I think people have gone home to
Speaker 7: check on their houses. Some people have gone home to
Speaker 7: just stay in their houses for a variety of reasons,
Speaker 7: either because they might feel that it's safe for this moment,
Speaker 7: or you know, they're hedging their beds. But still a
Speaker 7: lot of people have not returned home.
Speaker 4: Many of them cannot.
Speaker 7: These are obviously people at the South, or you cannot
Speaker 7: if you've had your home destroyed in the South or
Speaker 7: in the Southern suburbs or parts of the eastern Bacau Valley.
Speaker 7: You know, I've got a school by my house which
Speaker 7: is hosting displaced people, and it's still filled with the displaced,
Speaker 7: either because they cannot go home or because, as many
Speaker 7: have told me, they don't trust that this ceasefire will hold. Obviously,
Speaker 7: in places like the South it has not held, and
Speaker 7: it's still ongoing with attacks coming from both sides.
Speaker 4: In Bedut.
Speaker 7: You know, it's calm in a sense for this moment.
Speaker 7: Like I mentioned, there's still a drone overhead. At times,
Speaker 7: there have been reports of warplanes flying over different parts
Speaker 7: of the country. So you know, there's still this doubt
Speaker 7: if this ceasefire, this truce will hold. So we're kind
Speaker 7: of expecting or waiting any moment. But I should say
Speaker 7: that this was also true of the twenty twenty four
Speaker 7: Seas fire to an extent. Now, in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 7: immediately the next day, people went home.
Speaker 4: They drove home, they drove south, they went ahead with it.
Speaker 7: Of course, the attacks from the Israelis did not stop
Speaker 7: in the south, in Beirut and the southern suburbs predominantly.
Speaker 7: There were a few attacks in the southern suburbs, but
Speaker 7: not regular attacks. You know, a kind of normalcy returned
Speaker 7: a bit. However, there was still kind of this attitude
Speaker 7: of waiting and seeing what would happen, because very few
Speaker 7: people trust the Israelis to stop the attacks. Very few
Speaker 7: people trust that the Israelis want to stop the war.
Speaker 7: At this point in time, they're stronger, they're the hegemon
Speaker 7: in the region. They control the skies to a large
Speaker 7: extent they control disease, and now in southern Lebanon they also,
Speaker 7: you know, to an extent, control parts of the land.
Speaker 7: And so I think that the attitude here is very
Speaker 7: much one of this truce is tenuous. We're living day
Speaker 7: by day, We're waiting to see if tomorrow, you know,
Speaker 7: we have to return to kind of a pre April
Speaker 7: sixteen reality where we're checking our shoulders, we're deciding in
Speaker 7: which streets to go down. You know, those of us
Speaker 7: who are lucky enough to maybe have relatives or friends
Speaker 7: in other parts of the country that we feel we
Speaker 7: can go to be a bit safer, are.
Speaker 4: You know, waiting to do that again.
Speaker 7: Maybe initially there was something of an exhale kind of okay,
Speaker 7: we know that we're going to be okay for or
Speaker 7: we hope will be okay for at least a few days.
Speaker 7: But as the days go on, and as there's been
Speaker 7: no conclusion to this issue, and of course know that
Speaker 7: these are connected to the Iran US discussions, which are
Speaker 7: in a whole other place themselves, I think everyone's just
Speaker 7: kind of waiting to see what develops, and there is
Speaker 7: the sort of bated breath.
Speaker 9: And of course the reality I mean, even if the
Speaker 9: ceasefire holds for a bit, like, the reality is that
Speaker 9: the situation on the ground has changed. Whether it's how
Speaker 9: much land they've taken there's like a new yellow line
Speaker 9: and Lebanon in the same way that they've constricted Gaza,
Speaker 9: and also the damage that's been left behind, not just
Speaker 9: of the infrastructure, but of the herbicides that they're spraying
Speaker 9: and the environmental destruction. So there's just so much to
Speaker 9: think about. Thank you so much for coming on and
Speaker 9: making time to talk about this, and please stay safe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you so much.
Speaker 9: Donner.
Speaker 8: Welcome, take it up and here podcast about things falling
Speaker 8: apart and although not today putting them back together again.
Speaker 8: Today we are going to be talking about some of
Speaker 8: the ways in which the world is falling apart and
Speaker 8: the ways that they've been invisibilized. Now there are obviously
Speaker 8: a wide and broad variety of ways in which the
Speaker 8: world is coming to pieces, but one of them is
Speaker 8: the impact of the continued dual blockade now of the
Speaker 8: strait up Wamus. The sense you get reading the papers,
Speaker 8: if you are looking at the economic reality of the
Speaker 8: situation is that everything is broadly fine. The economic impacts
Speaker 8: have been less bad than expected. The economy is proving
Speaker 8: more resilient. Economies, particularly in East Asia, are hanging on
Speaker 8: better than predicted. China has been resilient, America has been resilient.
Speaker 8: Trump will eventually back down, which will head off the
Speaker 8: worst case scenario long range forecasting of materials. Now, the
Speaker 8: rest of you, I'm assuming, if you're listening to this podcast,
Speaker 8: you live in reality and not the distorted mirror world
Speaker 8: of the stock market. Stock market, as I think everyone
Speaker 8: has been able to see by this point, is increasingly unmoored,
Speaker 8: if it ever was moored to begin with, from the
Speaker 8: reality of how the global economy is actually functioning. And
Speaker 8: Trump has been able to play a game by which
Speaker 8: she makes the appearance of backing down in every time
Speaker 8: the stock market seems to be actually tanking, and the
Speaker 8: markets have simply come to believe as an axiom, that
Speaker 8: if they simply bet that Trump will eventually back down,
Speaker 8: it will simply happen.
Speaker 4: Now it hasn't.
Speaker 8: The wars continuing apace, and it seems to have no
Speaker 8: signs of slowing down, but the markets are behaving as
Speaker 8: if they know that it's going to happen, and this
Speaker 8: has created a kind of paradox where on the one
Speaker 8: hand there is us living in this world, and on
Speaker 8: the other hand there are the markets living in a
Speaker 8: world where everything is going to be fine, and in
Speaker 8: the world that we live in, things are not good,
Speaker 8: but they are breaking, I think more slowly than people
Speaker 8: tended to expect. Now. Part of this, and we will
Speaker 8: go over this in this episode, is that the impacts
Speaker 8: of this have been worst felt obviously innro on itself,
Speaker 8: and then across South and East Asia, which are the
Speaker 8: markets that are incredibly in economies that are incredibly reliant
Speaker 8: on not just oil but things like naphtha and also
Speaker 8: fertilizers that pass through the strato fromuz. But if the
Speaker 8: markets are wily e coyote hovering in the air thro
Speaker 8: this year power of not looking down the rest of
Speaker 8: the economy is a kind of slow moving train wreck.
Speaker 8: It isn't collapsing all at once. But the more you
Speaker 8: poke through, and the more you go past the first
Speaker 8: page of the newspaper and start looking at the later ones,
Speaker 8: and the more that you look at the press in
Speaker 8: other countries, the more you begin to realize that things
Speaker 8: are going quite quite badly. Now in the West. The
Speaker 8: sign of this has been five dollars a gallon gasoline
Speaker 8: in vast portions of the United States. We are quite
Speaker 8: frankly seeing the better side of it. There have been
Speaker 8: widespread shutdowns of transportation across South and East Asia. Buses
Speaker 8: simply aren't running, both public and private. There have been
Speaker 8: strikes and protests over high gas prices by people who
Speaker 8: normally drive buses.
Speaker 4: Even in the US, you can.
Speaker 8: Talk to people who try to do Uber deliveries, and
Speaker 8: it's becoming effectively impossible even to do that simply because
Speaker 8: gas prices are so high. But they are simply nowhere
Speaker 8: near as bad here as they are in places like
Speaker 8: the Philippines. Now, the interconnected nature of the global economy
Speaker 8: means that there are things that are being broken right
Speaker 8: now that are going to break more things later down
Speaker 8: the line, and are continuing to break things down and
Speaker 8: across the supply chain, but the ripples are moving slowly.
Speaker 8: Transportation costs are something that we tend to think about
Speaker 8: in terms of moving people around, right We try to
Speaker 8: think about it in terms of buses, in terms of cars. However,
Speaker 8: one of the very significant issues that we are running
Speaker 8: into across particularly Southeast Asian also Southeast Asia to I'm
Speaker 8: combining all sorts of don't know three of the regions.
Speaker 8: A bunch of the island nations in the Pacific are
Speaker 8: dealing with this two to various extent. Sri Lanka has
Speaker 8: been one of the worst hits to the extent that
Speaker 8: we're seeing a bunch of these countries are doing kind
Speaker 8: of like miniature government shutdowns. And obviously there's a bunch
Speaker 8: of different versions of this. Pakistan, for example, is going
Speaker 8: into more debt in an attempt to sort of keep
Speaker 8: the economy running. But returning to transformation costs for a moment,
Speaker 8: it is important that we also understand that goods are transported,
Speaker 8: and increases in the price of gasoline to the point
Speaker 8: where it's simply impossible to afford also affects shipping and
Speaker 8: in particular effects things that are delivered on trucks. I'm
Speaker 8: going to read this quote about Vietnam and rice production
Speaker 8: in Vietnam quote. In today's abnormal times, rice buyers are hesitating.
Speaker 8: Shipping delays of ten to fifteen days have become common
Speaker 8: as carriers slow steam to conserve fuel. Osmadi rice from
Speaker 8: India bound for the Middle East has been unable to
Speaker 8: get through this trade of romuz in the Philippines, wholesalers
Speaker 8: are not sure when there might be enough diesel to
Speaker 8: move imports around the country. That means rice has been
Speaker 8: piling up across Asia, creating a short term paradox. Wholesale
Speaker 8: price is declining as production costs rise after a year
Speaker 8: of healthy harvests. Traders are paying farmers less right now
Speaker 8: to hedge against future risk. So this is a really
Speaker 8: complicated fucking mess.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 8: What the New York Times is saying here is that
Speaker 8: buyers aren't buying the massive amount of rice that has
Speaker 8: already been planted, right. But on the other hand, there's
Speaker 8: also now we're running into fertilizer shortages because of a
Speaker 8: bunch of elements for fertilizers that is used in a lot.
Speaker 8: I mean, this is also affecting the United States too,
Speaker 8: but it's significantly worse in places like the Philippines and
Speaker 8: places like Vietnam. Some of the important elements needed to
Speaker 8: create fertilizer pass these trader farm news they're not getting through.
Speaker 8: And this means that on the one hand, farmers are
Speaker 8: facing enormous rising production prices, but production is a process
Speaker 8: that takes place over and through time, right, And this
Speaker 8: is something that very importantly most economic models are really
Speaker 8: really bad at dealing with. Conventional macroeconomic models assume time
Speaker 8: and space don't exist to a large extent like this
Speaker 8: is like a real issue for a lot of large
Speaker 8: scale economic models. Unfortunately they exist here. And so what
Speaker 8: we're dealing with, right, is that there has been production
Speaker 8: that's already happened because there's already have been harvests. But
Speaker 8: now farmers can't sell the stuff that they've harvested because
Speaker 8: the transportation costs are so high that the buyers don't.
Speaker 4: Want to buy it.
Speaker 8: But that means also on the other hand, food is
Speaker 8: still getting more expensive on your end, because even though
Speaker 8: the people making the food can't get enough money for
Speaker 8: the food they are selling because again the buyers won't
Speaker 8: buy it because it's too expensive, you're now also paying
Speaker 8: like people in the region are now paying increased rice
Speaker 8: prices because they have to pay the shipping cost. So
Speaker 8: even though on the one hand, right the actual price
Speaker 8: that consumers are paying is going up, right, and the
Speaker 8: cost to produce the rice is also going up, the
Speaker 8: actual price at which these people can sell the rice
Speaker 8: is going down. And this is a fucking nightmare, and
Speaker 8: it means that crops aren't getting planted. It means that
Speaker 8: crops are also just rotting in the fields because there's
Speaker 8: no way to sell and move them. This is causing really,
Speaker 8: really significant concerns that we're going to be, you know,
Speaker 8: like we are looking over the coming months at a
Speaker 8: kind of agricultural catastrophe where you're starting to see sort
Speaker 8: of projections of people going, oh God, like, hey, what
Speaker 8: if people simply stop exporting food. There's a great quote
Speaker 8: in this New York Times article from a guy who's
Speaker 8: a senior fellow in food security at Singapore's ISS where
Speaker 8: he says, quote, complex systems have the habit of creating
Speaker 8: wicked problems. The way that like capitalist markets interact with
Speaker 8: food shortages is a complete fucking nightmare. And this is
Speaker 8: something that we have seen that has caused famines all
Speaker 8: over the world. Is that once you get into the
Speaker 8: point where food genuinely becomes scarce, which is not quite
Speaker 8: the point where we're at now, we're in the beginning
Speaker 8: of the process by which this could happen. Right The
Speaker 8: part of the process we're in right now is these
Speaker 8: farmers who also, by the way, and this is also
Speaker 8: very important, these rice farmers are not operating on particularly
Speaker 8: high margins, right. They are not very wealthy when I
Speaker 8: say low margins, right, they are not making all that
Speaker 8: much money. And so you know, being unable to sell
Speaker 8: your rice or being forced to sell it at an
Speaker 8: extremely low price and then having your production cost rise
Speaker 8: because you're cost of fertilizer of skyrocketing, is how these
Speaker 8: things effectively go under. If this stuff continues, This is
Speaker 8: how you get waves of people being forced off their
Speaker 8: land because they simply can't afford to do the farming anymore.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 8: But then you know, you also have sort of in
Speaker 8: some sense, you have the reverse of this in other
Speaker 8: places where if you look at what's happening in India
Speaker 8: we talked about this on an executive disorder a few
Speaker 8: weeks back. You know, like a bunch of the ceramics
Speaker 8: industry it's just like shut down, Like four hundred thousand
Speaker 8: people are out of work from this, and this is
Speaker 8: causing those people to, Okay, like what do you do
Speaker 8: when you can't get work in sort of urban industrial centers.
Speaker 8: As you go back to a lot of the rural places,
Speaker 8: where these people are from. But you know, the thing
Speaker 8: about oil, right, is that oil price increase is something
Speaker 8: that hits people across the board. It hits both rural
Speaker 8: and urban economies because they both are heavily oil dependent.
Speaker 8: This is something that New York Times mentions when you're
Speaker 8: talking about like rice problems in Vietnam.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 8: Part of the other thing that's been making rice like
Speaker 8: harder to farm is that their irrigation system is powered
Speaker 8: by like diesel engines, it's punctures and diesel stuff, and
Speaker 8: so because of that, you know, there's sort of like
Speaker 8: broad scale shortages in Vietnam, and you have to choose
Speaker 8: whether you're you know, using the limited amount of diesel
Speaker 8: that you have in cities or in rural areas. And
Speaker 8: so these things are just kind of rapidly becoming a nightmare.
Speaker 8: Now you know what isn't a nightmare, it's it's the
Speaker 8: products and services that support this podcast. And we are back,
Speaker 8: so I want to talk a bit about why the
Speaker 8: system is structured like this and why you know, on
Speaker 8: the one hand, like we are starting to see things
Speaker 8: that are very incredibly alarming in East and Southeast Asia
Speaker 8: on varying levels that and I guess I because I
Speaker 8: should be really clear about this, right, The actual economics
Speaker 8: impacts of this are really dispersed. It depends a lot
Speaker 8: on how wealthy of a country you are in and
Speaker 8: then also like how reliant on oil your economy is.
Speaker 8: So the Chinese economy, for example, is not been that
Speaker 8: badly affected because they have large oil supplies. The Taiwanese economy,
Speaker 8: you know, like there's kind of plastic bag shortages, and
Speaker 8: that's been another element of all of this is like
Speaker 8: people panicking about are there going to be enough trash
Speaker 8: backs because for reasons that I will get into in
Speaker 8: a seconds, like plastic is made of oil, right, Everything
Speaker 8: around you that is plastic is just oil. And it
Speaker 8: does turn out that you do need crude oil in
Speaker 8: order to produce plastics, and this has been causing lots
Speaker 8: of production issues across like a whole variety of sectors
Speaker 8: that use plastics. Now, the bottom hasn't just completely fallen
Speaker 8: out yet, and it's worth taking a little bit of
Speaker 8: time to examine why. And the reason why it hasn't
Speaker 8: immediately collapsed is actually, strangely the same reason why we're
Speaker 8: in this mess from the first place, which is that
Speaker 8: in a lot of ways. The way that our system
Speaker 8: of production works, the way that we produce things in
Speaker 8: the world, and the way that we move things around
Speaker 8: is made in the image of oil. So what do
Speaker 8: I mean by that? What I mean is that the
Speaker 8: system of production is very nodal right. It operates on
Speaker 8: a whole bunch of these nodes. And you know, you
Speaker 8: have a node where a part of a production is happening,
Speaker 8: and then that node moves an item from one thing
Speaker 8: to another where it goes another stage of production process,
Speaker 8: and inputs and outputs come in in these nodes. And
Speaker 8: the thing about these nodes, right, is that in theory,
Speaker 8: you know, the way the system is supposed to be designed,
Speaker 8: right in the way that it's been sort of they
Speaker 8: call it like flexibilization to some extent, the way this's
Speaker 8: to work is that like okay, So, like if you
Speaker 8: are a company that needs to get like I don't know,
Speaker 8: you're like a Ramen company, to take an example that's
Speaker 8: been in the news at least in these in like
Speaker 8: in East Asia's like there's been disruption to like robin
Speaker 8: making companies, right, and you need plastic, you have like
Speaker 8: one plastic supplier you're normally going to, but there are
Speaker 8: a bunch of other ones, right and so you know,
Speaker 8: or maybe maybe maybe a better way to explain this
Speaker 8: would be using the example of like the way that
Speaker 8: like fast fashion works and the way that like drop
Speaker 8: shipping works right where they're like there are all of
Speaker 8: these different, like small sort of factories around China or
Speaker 8: like these small like sort of garment production places where
Speaker 8: you can like very very quickly crank out the same
Speaker 8: like drass or whatever, and if you're doing the drop shipping,
Speaker 8: you can like source your drop ship stuff from one
Speaker 8: of like a hundred of these places right now. This
Speaker 8: is what I mean when I say that it's noble,
Speaker 8: is that it's designed in such a way that's a
Speaker 8: blockage in one part of the system isn't supposed to
Speaker 8: be that bad, because the system isn't designed in a
Speaker 8: way where you know, there's like one railway from one
Speaker 8: place to another, and you have to move all of
Speaker 8: your goods along this one railway, and you can only
Speaker 8: get it from like one buyer who produces the thing
Speaker 8: to preeces anovery thing prius and everything. You're supposed to
Speaker 8: be able to get it from like a broad distributed
Speaker 8: network of people, and if one node of the network
Speaker 8: goes out, you're supposed to be able to pivot to
Speaker 8: another one. And this is the way that the economics
Speaker 8: of oil works.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 8: There are a shit tot of different oil producers, and
Speaker 8: in theory, you're supposed to be able to pivot around
Speaker 8: between different oil wells in a way that's different from,
Speaker 8: for example, the way that coal worked.
Speaker 4: Right. With coal, and a lot of this.
Speaker 8: I'm sourcing from Timothy Mitchell's book Carbon Democracy, which is
Speaker 8: very very good. You know, with coal, right, you're usually
Speaker 8: not moving it by ship, which is this is like
Speaker 8: another thing that we're going to get to in a second,
Speaker 8: but with it's very easy. The way that coal is
Speaker 8: mined and the way that you have to move it, right,
Speaker 8: It goes from one place to another to another to
Speaker 8: another in a line. And if one part of that
Speaker 8: process shuts down, there isn't like another coal thing you
Speaker 8: can get your coal from, right, You're just fucked Like,
Speaker 8: there's not like another mind that feeds into your factory.
Speaker 8: This is this sort of the way the coal production worked,
Speaker 8: and sort of the eighteen and early nineteen hundreds. Oil
Speaker 8: works in basically the opposite way, right, where there's just
Speaker 8: like a shit ton of things, and because you're mostly
Speaker 8: moving it by water at some except by pipeline, the
Speaker 8: way the production process works and the way that it's
Speaker 8: sort of easier to move and just like the way
Speaker 8: that it flows, means that it's harder to block off
Speaker 8: the entire supply of oil in the same way that
Speaker 8: it was actually kind of easy to just like completely
Speaker 8: stop up huge swas of the economy by just blocking
Speaker 8: off their access to coal and capital has like long
Speaker 8: realized the danger of choke points. This is called four shadowing.
Speaker 8: This is a literary device, et cetera, et cetera. You know,
Speaker 8: the choke point used to be coal mines and the
Speaker 8: railways on which like coal was moved, right. And one
Speaker 8: of the things that Timothy Mitchell argues is that a
Speaker 8: lot of the militancy of the nineteenth and twentieth century
Speaker 8: labor movement is a direct product of the ways in
Speaker 8: which these coal miners were both extremely militant and also
Speaker 8: very very easily able to shut down production in a
Speaker 8: line by mobilizing a force that was greater than their numbers. Right,
Speaker 8: a relatively small portion of of you know, like hyperbiligant
Speaker 8: coal miners can shut down like the rest of the
Speaker 8: economy because everyone else is relying on their being coal.
Speaker 8: But oil has the opposite problem. Well, Like the problem
Speaker 8: with coal is that there's not enough of it, so
Speaker 8: you have to constantly extract it. The problem with oil
Speaker 8: is that there's too much of it. Right. If you
Speaker 8: shut down coal production, it's a nightmare for the companies
Speaker 8: that produce coal because they can't make any money because
Speaker 8: there's like a fixed number of mines and it takes
Speaker 8: like large scale capital investment to like get them out.
Speaker 8: And it's also true that like it's expensive to attract oil.
Speaker 8: But the thing about oil is again like there were
Speaker 8: just there are too many refineries, right, This is sort
Speaker 8: of why OPIC was formed. If you shut down production,
Speaker 8: if you restrict the amount of oil, it comes down
Speaker 8: to the market. That's actually how you make money versus
Speaker 8: if you shut down coal production, suddenly nobody's making any
Speaker 8: money versus oil, where it's like if you shut down
Speaker 8: oil production, usually it just means that like the oil
Speaker 8: companies make more money because the price of oil goes up.
Speaker 8: And the specifics of why this is true, I would
Speaker 8: encourage people to go with your carbon democracy. I could
Speaker 8: spend another like two hours talking about the materiality of
Speaker 8: oil and why it specifically works like this differently. But yeah,
Speaker 8: oil has the other opposite problem of coal, like there's
Speaker 8: too much of it. And so this goes to a
Speaker 8: point where Mitchell talks about how in the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 8: companies are deliberately setting off oil stripes right because it'll
Speaker 8: raise their production prices because shutting down their own production
Speaker 8: and having an excuse to shut down their own production,
Speaker 8: like we'll let them just knock off oil refinery so
Speaker 8: they can reduce the amount of oil in the market.
Speaker 8: The system of oil is designed to get around these blockades, right.
Speaker 8: This is a big part of the reason for the
Speaker 8: transition from cold oil was specifically it was it was
Speaker 8: like the US and the Marshall Plan was trying to
Speaker 8: defeat these extremely militants like French unions after World War Two,
Speaker 8: and these unions were largely coal mining based, and they
Speaker 8: were like, oh shit, we can you know, we can
Speaker 8: do like a pivot to Saudi Arabia to move to oil,
Speaker 8: and this can be like this can be our solution
Speaker 8: to like crush these coal mining unions because oil is
Speaker 8: extremely hard to unionize. It has like a highly divided workforce,
Speaker 8: you know, And so they tried to design the system
Speaker 8: that doesn't have choke points. But the problem is there's
Speaker 8: one fucking big one, and that one big one is
Speaker 8: the straight over mouse. And at this point, the sort
Speaker 8: of advantage of the system, right, which is that it's
Speaker 8: all these different nodes that are like bound together in
Speaker 8: this like extremely convoluted weave. The strength of the system
Speaker 8: is also its weakness. It means that we're all getting
Speaker 8: dragged down together with the system when it stopped working
Speaker 8: because we all rely on stuff from all over the world.
Speaker 8: The way that the system has a bout us altogether
Speaker 8: means that we're all reliant on every other part of
Speaker 8: the economy, and we're all reliant on oil. And this
Speaker 8: is sort of the root of the catastrophe and also
Speaker 8: the reason why this crash is operating in slow motion.
Speaker 8: In order to stop the international labor movement, right, this
Speaker 8: system was set up in a specific way where it
Speaker 8: works along nose and it is supposed to be designed
Speaker 8: to deal with a crisis like this, so instead of
Speaker 8: collapsing immediately, it collapses in slow motion. But it is
Speaker 8: still collapsing because capital and I guess like the presidents
Speaker 8: of the United States, has taken the action that the
Speaker 8: system was designed to avoid, which is like, you know,
Speaker 8: like a large scale blockade of production, and the consequences
Speaker 8: of this are both die and expanding as we speak. Yeah,
Speaker 8: this has been It could happen here. Things are only
Speaker 8: going to get worse before they get better.
Speaker 2: I enjoyed the new Devil War's Brata movie. It was
Speaker 2: weirdly relevant. I did not expect Meryl Streep to deliver
Speaker 2: like a monologue about how AI is destroying independent internet
Speaker 2: writers or comedy writers or whatnot, any kind of independent
Speaker 2: internet writer. But I guess that's what we got.
Speaker 5: So that's good and thinly veiled Jeff Bezos villain.
Speaker 2: Then the veiled Jeff Bezos villain.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well this isn't our movie review podcast, because we don't
Speaker 2: have one of those, because I would be bad at it.
Speaker 2: This is Electile Disorder.
Speaker 5: Function Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in
Speaker 5: the White House. Now it's fine, the crumbling world and
Speaker 5: what it means for you. Embarrassed Davis today, joined by
Speaker 5: Robert Evans, James stout me along and maybe Sophie Lichterman.
Speaker 5: This episode, we are covering the week of April thirtieth
Speaker 5: to May sixth. I want to roll things back to
Speaker 5: just before we recorded, because Sophie brought up the California
Speaker 5: gubernatorial debate that happened Tuesday.
Speaker 2: Night, Ubernatorial Garrison, you gotta make it sound so please.
Speaker 5: Which I tried watching as that kind of is my job,
Speaker 5: only to discover it was not streaming anywhere online and
Speaker 5: only available feel the CNN channel on television like you know,
Speaker 5: like actual TV channels, which prompted Sophie to ask the
Speaker 5: good question who is this for?
Speaker 3: Why?
Speaker 5: Why? Why does this even exist?
Speaker 10: Then?
Speaker 5: If only people watching cable can watch it? And then
Speaker 5: I realized the real reason this exists is to generate
Speaker 5: short video clips for social media. And that's I guess
Speaker 5: how most people are actually engaging with this debate in
Speaker 5: contextless fifty second that's generous chunks of time in which
Speaker 5: Stier came off the best, did not come off great,
Speaker 5: but came off okay, Okay, he came off fine. He
Speaker 5: had this weird tick where he would be he would
Speaker 5: ask a question and when he would respond, it would
Speaker 5: sound like he was deflecting the question even when he wasn't.
Speaker 5: But the sort of like defensiveness of his framing sounded
Speaker 5: like he was deflecting a lot of questions that actually
Speaker 5: he was giving kind of good answers to Porter. Was
Speaker 5: I don't know Sophie. Can you speak about Porter?
Speaker 2: I don't Porter, I hardly know her.
Speaker 11: I don't have a mic, so I'll be really quick.
Speaker 4: That was pretty good.
Speaker 11: Porter kind of overcoppensati snarky remarks. But she's only pulling
Speaker 11: like eight or ten percent, where Sultan and Styr are
Speaker 11: both pulling closer to twenty. Also, Steve Hilton ew.
Speaker 3: Yeah, short video content has not been kind to Katie
Speaker 3: Porter in the in the last couple of years.
Speaker 5: It was interesting earlier that morning, Katie Porter released an
Speaker 5: ad that ended with a joke about her abuse of
Speaker 5: her staff. Ended with like a reference to a line
Speaker 5: that she said that was in those articles and like
Speaker 5: she had all these background extras laugh at the joke
Speaker 5: referencing the abuse allegations against her to her staff. Interesting choice,
Speaker 5: crazy move. Who is that for? Who is that for?
Speaker 2: I mean, you know what it is. Actually it's her
Speaker 2: trying to be like Trump, like One of the lessons
Speaker 2: that Trump has taught the political class is that if
Speaker 2: people come at you for like being corrupt or fucked
Speaker 2: up or evil or irresponsible, you just kind of barrel
Speaker 2: right through that. You don't acknowledge it, you don't like
Speaker 2: acknowledging any validity in it, and like you, you kind
Speaker 2: of make fun of it. You try to like make
Speaker 2: it a selling point for yourself. And I'm not saying
Speaker 2: she's doing a good job of it, but I think
Speaker 2: that's what is she's trying to do.
Speaker 5: I think that's she's like tough, no nonsense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the amount of money being spent on anti Staya
Speaker 3: attack ads is judging by the amount of them that
Speaker 3: get beamed into my home every night.
Speaker 4: Now, it's pretty significant.
Speaker 3: As the resident Californian, I didn't watch the debate because
Speaker 3: the choices we have make me very angry and upset,
Speaker 3: and I didn't want to think about that.
Speaker 5: That's politics. Yeah, James, do you want to start with
Speaker 5: a few of yours I see are at the top
Speaker 5: of the dock here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, let's begin with the biggest news of the week,
Speaker 3: which is that the White House Twitter account has shared.
Speaker 4: The new crest for nice.
Speaker 5: I gotta see this.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, click on that. Oh good, thank god she
Speaker 4: had that screen.
Speaker 3: Garrison garaging you can't have a treat and must share
Speaker 3: with everybody.
Speaker 5: I've get I've got it. I'm good, I've got to
Speaker 5: get there.
Speaker 4: We go.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, yeah, that looks like shit. It looks like
Speaker 2: lazily AI generated garbage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you asked, AI is generated crest for a
Speaker 3: US law enforcement see.
Speaker 2: The most basic that could possibly be?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, sure, Oh well.
Speaker 3: National Immigration and Customs Enforcement nice.
Speaker 5: Always good. When you throw national in front of any
Speaker 5: any acronym, that's never it's never turned out bad.
Speaker 3: As many people have shared with me, several television shows
Speaker 3: had already come up with the idea for rebranding ICE
Speaker 3: as nice. I don't think this is going to stop
Speaker 3: them moving on. The DOJ said that it is suing
Speaker 3: Denver for infringing the Second Amendment. This potains to their
Speaker 3: assault weapon ban, which bans a lot of semi automatic rifles,
Speaker 3: including A Fifteen's interesting kind of precedent for DOJ behavior
Speaker 3: in that obviously, like lots of states have a so
Speaker 3: weapons bans, and previously we have not seen the DOJ
Speaker 3: intervene against those and there are a few no cases
Speaker 3: about them on their way to Supreme Court, with Supreme
Speaker 3: courts showing any particular desire to get to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this has been an interesting thing for a while,
Speaker 2: is that even as the Republican the right has had
Speaker 2: control of the Supreme Court for years now, they have
Speaker 2: shown a distinct unwillingness to visit the matter of like
Speaker 2: assault weapons and like magazine capacity bands. Yeah, as well
Speaker 2: as because there's definitely been some some folks this is
Speaker 2: less popular, but some some folks on the pro gun
Speaker 2: side who want them to look at like state level
Speaker 2: restrictions on like you have to like waiting periods and stuff.
Speaker 2: And it's just kind of been this detent that's existed,
Speaker 2: where like they have not pushed too far in a
Speaker 2: certain direction to like limit what Blue states can do
Speaker 2: with their gun control and if if they are, that's
Speaker 2: an interesting ship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting that this has gone after it's a
Speaker 3: civil rights to it's through the Civil rights Division, right,
Speaker 3: I guess they're using the Hella precedent, right, which was
Speaker 3: the last time and it was Hell, it wasn't the
Speaker 3: last time.
Speaker 4: The previous one was.
Speaker 3: Bruin yeah, yeah, sir, Yeah, yeah, bruin the Brewant decision,
Speaker 3: which was the last time that the Supreme Court really
Speaker 3: made it made to change to national firearms rules. Right,
Speaker 3: It's interesting they're going off to Denver and not like,
Speaker 3: for instance, California.
Speaker 2: Well, Denver has a specific there's specifically banned VAR fifteen
Speaker 2: as opposed to California doesn't ban any specific guns. They
Speaker 2: banned features on firearms. So I suspect that would be
Speaker 2: why is that Denver is going Colorado's going after this
Speaker 2: specific firearm that and the argument that's going to be
Speaker 2: made is that the Air fifteen is the common most
Speaker 2: commonly available like rifle. Like it's absolutely the equivalent of
Speaker 2: a musket in its day, is the argument that they
Speaker 2: will be making because I Clarence Thomas has made that
Speaker 2: argument before. Yeah, so California never tried to ban air fifteens.
Speaker 2: They just made it a giant pain and they ask
Speaker 2: to own them. And that's a lot I think safer
Speaker 2: from this sort of attack, although I guess we'll see.
Speaker 3: You know, Denver's assault weapons ban is not the same
Speaker 3: as California's, but nor does it ban.
Speaker 4: AAR fifteen's by name.
Speaker 3: I'm just reading from the Denver Municipal Code, Section thirty
Speaker 3: eight one thirty the categories or the way it defines
Speaker 3: an assault weapon is a semi automatic centerfire rifle with a
Speaker 3: detachable magazine capacity at for twenty one rounds or higher.
Speaker 3: That's subsequent legislation arter that which further limits magazine capacity
Speaker 3: in Colorado all semi automatic shotguns that can take more
Speaker 3: than six cartridges and or have a folding stock, or
Speaker 3: a weapon which can be converted into one of those things.
Speaker 3: So that's actually a pretty it's not the same as
Speaker 3: a California ban. It's interesting to see them picking this one.
Speaker 3: It's also pretty old. It Denver started. It's a sort
Speaker 3: weapons ban story. It's been through the courts quite a
Speaker 3: few times, but it begins in nineteen eighty nine. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it's an interesting sort of area that will keep tabs on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll keep because there's a couple of big gun
Speaker 2: things going in front of the Supreme Court this year.
Speaker 2: Right like earlier in March, the Court heard arguments on
Speaker 2: the United States versus HARMANI, which was a case about
Speaker 2: the legality of basically, if you're using a drug that
Speaker 2: is illegal, even if it's like a drug, even if
Speaker 2: it's marijuana and it's legal at the state level, if
Speaker 2: it's like federally illegal, you cannot possess own that you
Speaker 2: do anything with guns, right, And that's not really constitutional
Speaker 2: because the Second Amendment, like it or not, is like
Speaker 2: a civil right, and the idea that like, you lose
Speaker 2: a civil right because you're like ingested a substance at
Speaker 2: some point is like a wildly dangerous and anyway whatever.
Speaker 2: It's the kind of thing that just again, courts have
Speaker 2: refused to sort of take seriously, even though everyone's known
Speaker 2: there's very thin precedents. So the fact that the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court is finally hearing arguments on this is really interesting.
Speaker 2: This is a case of a guy who had both
Speaker 2: marijuana and cocaine on him when he got busted, and yeah,
Speaker 2: so we'll also cover that case. But there's a lot
Speaker 2: of going to be a lot of interesting gun stuff
Speaker 2: happening this year, not all of it bad, because honestly,
Speaker 2: if the Supreme Court were to rule that, like, no,
Speaker 2: you can't say someone can't own a gun just because
Speaker 2: they smoked pot, I would say that's a net win.
Speaker 2: But obviously there's a lot of you know, violations of
Speaker 2: States rights and whatnot. That's that's going to be I'm
Speaker 2: sure a part of this too. It'll be a messy
Speaker 2: summer for that, but this is going to be some
Speaker 2: major stories this year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's yeah. I think we'll certainly see some
Speaker 3: movement here. Bortal Wool construction crews have destroyed an intaglio
Speaker 3: sacred to the Autumn people. The son Old Last playas
Speaker 3: Intagli sacred site is irreparably damaged, despite the ing gray
Speaker 3: world recorded and having been identified to construction crews by
Speaker 3: cultural monitors. Ton Oudam chairman Verlin Jose said, quote, this
Speaker 3: was a devastating and entirely avoidable loss. There is nothing
Speaker 3: more important than our history, which is what makes us
Speaker 3: who we are. As oddum, the site was also an
Speaker 3: irreparable piece of the United States history, one none of
Speaker 3: us can ever get back. The nation's leaders have and
Speaker 3: will continue to meet with senior Department of Homeland Security
Speaker 3: officials to obtain more information and to communicate the nation's
Speaker 3: absolute insistance so this cannot happen again. And then, finally
Speaker 3: for me, the United States State Department has approved the
Speaker 3: sale of Jadam's to Ukraine, which is a significant increase
Speaker 3: in their capacity. Right jam if people an't familiar, stands
Speaker 3: to a joint director attack comlicition, think big bomb, Like
Speaker 3: it's a guided bomb. It can either be bomb that
Speaker 3: comes guided or you can you can change a different
Speaker 3: munition to make it become guided.
Speaker 2: These are packages, right, Like, these are kits that you
Speaker 2: take so you have like a bomb of a various
Speaker 2: sizes because they can range, and you like basically apply
Speaker 2: this kit to them and it makes it into a
Speaker 2: guided munition. Right. So it's a you can have whatever
Speaker 2: kind of explosive package you want and you can convert
Speaker 2: it into a guided munition that you then you know,
Speaker 2: drop or throw or whatever via you know, whichever.
Speaker 8: Platform you have it to be using. Yeah, these are
Speaker 8: like aircraft fired right.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, And in these case they're extended range tail kits.
Speaker 3: It's not the bomb itself, but the thing that allows
Speaker 3: the bomb to be delivered to a target.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Again, this is a package. You have a bomb that's
Speaker 2: a dumb explosive and this is the thing that you
Speaker 2: put onto it that allows it to be like a
Speaker 2: smart munition that's targeted. Like it's it's an air to
Speaker 2: surface munition. Generally they're like one thousand two thousand pound
Speaker 2: warheads I think for the most part.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess in this case it would depend on
Speaker 3: whatever the warhead is, right.
Speaker 2: But like there's there's five hundred pound ones, Like there's
Speaker 2: a variety of sizes.
Speaker 3: Obviously, the Ukrainians have used many of their long range
Speaker 3: assets right to attack Russia inside Russia. Previously, this has
Speaker 3: been something the United States had kind of drawn a
Speaker 3: line at.
Speaker 4: That seems to no longer be the case. This will
Speaker 4: obviously also be a massive contract right there.
Speaker 3: The principal contractor he's going to be Boeing, who are
Speaker 3: located in Saint Louis, and the estimated total cost is
Speaker 3: about a third of a billion dollars, so three hundred
Speaker 3: and seventy.
Speaker 4: Three million to be exact.
Speaker 2: There's been like a big push in a couple of
Speaker 2: different states to increase munition production, and it has been
Speaker 2: very uneven in terms of how it's worked so far.
Speaker 2: They've encountered a lot of issues scaling up production to
Speaker 2: the level they need. I'm not convinced in our ability
Speaker 2: to actually like meet this at the time frame being proposed,
Speaker 2: but we'll see. That's what we I've caught. I've been
Speaker 2: reporting on that a couple of times so far. This Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: the munition shortage and our issues and scaling up product production.
Speaker 2: I'll probably do something later this year, like a more
Speaker 2: detailed look at like what the pitfalls have been. But
Speaker 2: it's actually surprisingly hard just because they say we're putting
Speaker 2: this much money into, you know, creating these facilities or
Speaker 2: encouraging the production to scale up, it's not necessarily that
Speaker 2: easy to actually do that.
Speaker 3: A close to State Department says there will be no
Speaker 3: adverse impact on US defense readiness as a result of
Speaker 3: this for post sale.
Speaker 2: I don't see why there would.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what they're going to say.
Speaker 2: These are standoff munitions. The US military is not show
Speaker 2: on them for our purposes. But like the shit that
Speaker 2: we're getting cleaned out on primarily is not Like this
Speaker 2: is not the main thing. I mean, we're definitely being stretched,
Speaker 2: but this is not the main thing. It's it's sidewinders.
Speaker 2: It's like our cruise missiles and it's our our interceptor
Speaker 2: missiles are like the big things that we're st right
Speaker 2: now speaking of.
Speaker 5: On May one, Resident Trump quote unquote joked that's some
Speaker 5: most people are referring to this joke that we will
Speaker 5: be sure quote unquote taking over Cuba almost immediately great
Speaker 5: after finishing.
Speaker 2: With Iran sounds real.
Speaker 5: He has made previous comments to this effect the past
Speaker 5: few months.
Speaker 3: Yeah, his joke was that Abraham Lincoln would stop on
Speaker 3: the way back from Iran right and park off one
Speaker 3: hundred yards off the coast of Cuba and they would
Speaker 3: immediately surrender.
Speaker 2: Just kind of knock that out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, we're going to get onto this, but
Speaker 3: this is not the only thing pointing towards Cuba right now.
Speaker 2: I have trouble knowing how this is going to go
Speaker 2: because obviously, like Venezuela was the best case scenario for them,
Speaker 2: Like Maduro was not personally popular, and he had us,
Speaker 2: he had like the apparatus below him, was more than
Speaker 2: happy to just kind of like everyone move up a
Speaker 2: step and be nicer to the US on paper, like,
Speaker 2: whereas Iran, that's certainly not how anything has worked out,
Speaker 2: because you had this whole state has been built for
Speaker 2: the last sixty years to endure casualties without like losing
Speaker 2: operational capacity or its ability to resist. Cuba's not really
Speaker 2: quite like either government and I don't know what's going
Speaker 2: to happen. You know, on one hand, it is a
Speaker 2: country that's exhausted by decades of sanctions and exhausted by
Speaker 2: you know what has become after Venezuela since they're no
Speaker 2: longer sending fuel cube, but like their fuel crisis is
Speaker 2: just devastating. I don't know. Maybe it is a case
Speaker 2: where the government would capitulate fairly quickly, and then you
Speaker 2: just kind of have the okay, what happens now question,
Speaker 2: like the humanitarian issue, which I'm sure would be very
Speaker 2: I'm sure you'd get a lot of like grifters get
Speaker 2: flowed in there by the Trump administration. It would not
Speaker 2: be a positive situation. Or you know, is this a
Speaker 2: thing where there would be even as exhausted as people are,
Speaker 2: immediate and like vicious resistance to any attempt by the
Speaker 2: US to assert its will politically over there.
Speaker 4: I have no idea. And the other thing is that military.
Speaker 3: It's more when it's why it's he's at than where
Speaker 3: around he's at, Right they get out, sure, and the funded.
Speaker 2: It was the Cuban military that we were fighting in
Speaker 2: Venezuela to an extent. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: That said like, it's also at the point at which
Speaker 2: those carrier groups are trying to do that in Cuba,
Speaker 2: they'll have been on almost twice as long as they're
Speaker 2: normally supposed to be out, and who knows, Like what
Speaker 2: is done in Iran? Look like what's that going to mean?
Speaker 8: Yeah, like there that war is not ending anytime soon.
Speaker 8: So like I mean, maybe he just tries to do
Speaker 8: it at the same time, but like it's yeah, I
Speaker 8: don't know. We're stuck in the mutual blockade right now,
Speaker 8: so impossible to know what he's gonna do or what
Speaker 8: will what will happen as a result of it, other
Speaker 8: than I don't expect any of it's going to go
Speaker 8: very well. Nope, it's gonna be a nightmare.
Speaker 5: In some sad news, on Sunday, America's mayor Rudy Giuliani
Speaker 5: was sent to the hospital in critical condition. Giuliani is
Speaker 5: obviously a friend of the POD. We had him on
Speaker 5: a few years ago to discuss sending weapons to Ukraine.
Speaker 5: We would love to have him back to discuss this
Speaker 5: this recent sale, but unfortunately, Giuliani developed pneumonia after coming
Speaker 5: back from a trip to Paris and was put on
Speaker 5: a ventilator this weekend. Now, thankfully he's been since we've
Speaker 5: taken off the ventilator, and skokesman Ted Goodman, who I
Speaker 5: do not like very much, announced that Giuliani's condition is
Speaker 5: stabilized and he is now breathing on his own. Last
Speaker 5: time we interacted with Goodman, it was specifically him pulling
Speaker 5: Giuliani away from us after speaking with him for about
Speaker 5: twenty minutes. So I really don't care for Goodman personally,
Speaker 5: But I mean, if if Giuliani ever wants to discuss
Speaker 5: weapons sales to Ukraine on the show again, I'm sure
Speaker 5: we would love to have him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, Garret, I saved a little vial of
Speaker 2: the spittle that that flew off of his mouth when
Speaker 2: when he and I were discussing UH weapons sales to
Speaker 2: Ukraine back at the r n C, and I keep
Speaker 2: it on me every day, and I'm i'm holding it now,
Speaker 2: and I'm I'm just thinking to you, Rudy. I'm just
Speaker 2: I'm just pulling for you, man, I'm pulling for you.
Speaker 5: We'll probably go on and had a break now, Okay,
Speaker 5: we are back. Robert has just failed to execute a
Speaker 5: Simpson's themed audio bit.
Speaker 2: I know I wanted to play you crusty the clowns
Speaker 2: saying the hantavirus, because we're talking about the haunt virus.
Speaker 5: Well, that's good enough.
Speaker 4: There, you're your impression. I think services does that? Does
Speaker 4: that work? It's beautiful.
Speaker 5: I'm still saying eight people I suspected, at least people are.
Speaker 5: They're suspected to be infected with a haunt of virus
Speaker 5: restrain that I've confirmed capable of human to human transmission.
Speaker 5: This is stemming from an outbreak on a cruise ship.
Speaker 5: We got to do something about the cruise ships.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Now they're disease factories. First off, like everyone knows,
Speaker 2: this happens in cruise ships, which is why we shouldn't
Speaker 2: have them. We don't know exactly how this went down.
Speaker 2: We know there at least five people are confirmed who
Speaker 2: have gotten the haunt of virus like they've done, and
Speaker 2: another three are suspect from testing. Three people are dead, yes,
Speaker 2: and I think another couple are in serious conditions.
Speaker 4: Still.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's not known how they got it. It's possible
Speaker 2: that some of them were human to human transmission.
Speaker 5: Argentine officials believe that a Dutch couple contracted the virus
Speaker 5: about bird watching at a landfill where they may have
Speaker 5: been exposed to rat poop before boarding the cruise ship.
Speaker 5: What a series auntavirus has been has been a problem
Speaker 5: in Argentina for the past year. This has been a
Speaker 5: known problem. Oh yeah, some human to human cases. There's
Speaker 5: multiple strains there now. So far, three people are suspected
Speaker 5: to have died from the virus, while three others have
Speaker 5: been evacuated to Europe from the cruise ship for treatment.
Speaker 2: To be clear, it's not because because this is what
Speaker 2: I'd read, it's a strain that can be transmitted human
Speaker 2: to human. Ok they don't know how everyone who got
Speaker 2: it got it, Like, they don't know that everyone who
Speaker 2: got it was human to human or that they were
Speaker 2: didn't all just get exposed to the same droppings. But
Speaker 2: it's the Andean strain that can transfer humanity. Okay, it's
Speaker 2: a problem, but probably it'll be fine, right, Garrison Well,
Speaker 2: the World.
Speaker 5: Health Organization's top epidemic expert Maria van Kirkhov, has cautioned, quote,
Speaker 5: this is not the next COVID, but it is a
Speaker 5: serious infectious disease. Most people will never be exposed to
Speaker 5: this unquote, and Reuters included a statement from the World
Speaker 5: Health Organization and they're reporting. They say that the risk
Speaker 5: to the public remains low and that the variant detected
Speaker 5: among passengers can be spread between humans only through close
Speaker 5: prolonged contact unquote. Now, there is contact tracing currently in
Speaker 5: effect by officials in South Africa and Switzerland specifically, who
Speaker 5: are tracking a few people that departed the ship. Many
Speaker 5: others are still on the ship, which is set to
Speaker 5: land either at Spain or some of the Canary Islands
Speaker 5: around Spain in a few days. That's what that's what
Speaker 5: we know. That's what we know. So sure, yeah, it's
Speaker 5: it's this is changing like literally by the hour, so
Speaker 5: it's possible by the time you listen to this there'll
Speaker 5: be a whole bunch of more information about what's happened.
Speaker 5: But that is the current, the current situation as of
Speaker 5: Wednesday afternoon.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and I think we can also say definitively that
Speaker 8: if you want to avoid the haunt of virus, like
Speaker 8: the number one step you can take is not getting
Speaker 8: on a plague ship.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and.
Speaker 3: Land landfill to cruise ships. It's a series.
Speaker 8: Yeah, we can. We have the technology to avoid this.
Speaker 5: Speaking of rat poop, on Wednesday, ms NOW my favorite
Speaker 5: outlet reported that the FBI is investigating leaks to the
Speaker 5: Atlantic Journalists to publish that story about Cash Betel's drinking
Speaker 5: habits and absences from his job, a story that the
Speaker 5: FBI is previously called false but now is launching a
Speaker 5: criminal leak investigation into. These investigations typically focus on leaking
Speaker 5: classhid information, which does not appear to be a factor
Speaker 5: in this Atlantic article. Betel is also suing The Atlantic
Speaker 5: for defamation for like two hundred and fifty million dollars,
Speaker 5: and now through this investigation, the FBI may be able
Speaker 5: to seize the journalist's digital records. The FBI is denied, though,
Speaker 5: that this investigation exists, and a few hours ago the
Speaker 5: Atlantic Journalists published a follow up story which we should
Speaker 5: mention that Cash Hotel has been giving away customized whiskey
Speaker 5: flask bottles, like bottles full full.
Speaker 4: Full of rate. It's reserve. It's what it is. It's
Speaker 4: a bottle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's got his own bottle of Woodford reserve. Yeah
Speaker 3: he's getting he's getting what Costco has.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's getting like a thoroughly mediocre, like middling bourbon
Speaker 2: with his name on it, which is definitely something an
Speaker 2: alcoholic doesn't have. Definitely a normal non alcoholic thing to
Speaker 2: do is to have like a thirty dollars bottle of
Speaker 2: bourbon with your name on it that you hand out
Speaker 2: to strangers at work.
Speaker 4: Alcoholics still do. Yeah, it's not great. This is not
Speaker 4: a great revelation.
Speaker 5: This, this investigation, if real, very very dangerous, right, It's
Speaker 5: a really really bad shit to happen. To have this
Speaker 5: clearly like personally motivated weaponization of the FBI against a
Speaker 5: journalist going through social media records, data bases, digital records,
Speaker 5: very worrying. But also cash Ptel funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, Cashptel is this fascinating? Like, well, this
Speaker 2: is should certainly a legal, incredibly dangerous thing to have
Speaker 2: the FBI director doing, And like what a ridiculous man?
Speaker 2: What It's just a fundamentally ridiculous guy.
Speaker 4: I don't know what else to say.
Speaker 8: Meanwhile, in the broad world of things falling apart, Spirit
Speaker 8: Airlines has fallen. It is effectively no.
Speaker 3: More all right, p pouring one out, specifically, a personalized
Speaker 3: bottle of Woodford Reserve is what I'm pulling out for
Speaker 3: Spirit Airlines.
Speaker 8: So Spirit Airlines, I mean, has been in financial trouble
Speaker 8: for a bit, but it has now filed for bankruptcy.
Speaker 8: It has grounded all of its planes and fired everyone.
Speaker 8: So it is gone, and it is gone very very suddenly.
Speaker 8: This is not something that was you know, like the
Speaker 8: there had been long gooing negotiation, not long going, but
Speaker 8: there have been negotiations with the Trump administration to try
Speaker 8: to arrange a bailout. But they just kind of woke
Speaker 8: up one morning and sent everyone a letter of that
Speaker 8: said you're fired and canceled all the planes, which left
Speaker 8: a whole bunch of people stranded.
Speaker 4: Not ideal. Yeah, and this is a.
Speaker 8: Real catastrophe for a lot of people because there are
Speaker 8: a bunch of routes that Spirit was doing that there
Speaker 8: just isn't really coverage of for anything else. And it's
Speaker 8: also one of the few of these bunch of airlines
Speaker 8: are getting just hammered by the increase in fuel prices
Speaker 8: for people who don't know aviation stuff. As much as
Speaker 8: airplane companies complained about like the cost of labor as
Speaker 8: they like horrifically exploit flight attendants, the actual most expensive
Speaker 8: part of flying is fuel, and as fuel prices have skyrocketed,
Speaker 8: specifically jet fuel prices have skyrocketed, that is taking an
Speaker 8: absolutely enormous hit out of the bottom line of these companies,
Speaker 8: and companies that were sort of just barely getting along
Speaker 8: and operated on the low margins are getting hit really badly.
Speaker 8: And this is something that's not just a Spirit Airlines thing.
Speaker 8: This is happening to airlines across the world. It's particularly
Speaker 8: intense in South and East Asia right now, where a
Speaker 8: huge number of their airlines are operating in this kind
Speaker 8: of like they call it like emergency management, where they've
Speaker 8: like significantly reduced the amount of flights that they're doing.
Speaker 8: In cases like Korean Air, there routes from you know,
Speaker 8: for example, like sold in New York, like or operating
Speaker 8: on two hundred percent price increases. This has been going
Speaker 8: on for a while. Spirit is the first big American one.
Speaker 4: To just go out completely.
Speaker 8: There are reports that Trump personally really wanted to save
Speaker 8: Spirit Airlines for kind of weird personal reasons.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I can see that, Yeah, but I mean it's Spirit.
Speaker 4: Also.
Speaker 2: A part of like why it has fallen apart is
Speaker 2: that it's been a victim of its own success. Like
Speaker 2: Spirit introduced to the airline industry, the idea of like, no,
Speaker 2: everyone should be paying for a bag and for a
Speaker 2: drink for every single thing. We should financialize every single
Speaker 2: aspect of the of the airline, of the flying process
Speaker 2: that we can. And as a result, like they stopped
Speaker 2: being particularly cheap and they stopped working any different from
Speaker 2: any of the other airlines. So there was not really
Speaker 2: much of a reason to go with Spirit as opposed
Speaker 2: to any of the slightly nicer airlines anymore, you know,
Speaker 2: Like I mean, I'm not surprised that they are falling, definitely,
Speaker 2: Like the fuel strike is what has been the death
Speaker 2: blow to them, but they've been they've been in trouble
Speaker 2: for a little while.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And because like we've known that they've been in
Speaker 8: trouble the Trump administration negotiations, apparently the stumbling block was
Speaker 8: that the US plan was to give them like five
Speaker 8: hundred million dollars, but it would involve buying most of
Speaker 8: their stock, and the rest of the airline industry was
Speaker 8: like absolutely not, We're not We're not doing a bailout
Speaker 8: for just one company if like, instead of an industry
Speaker 8: wide one. And so they started putting pressure and then
Speaker 8: Trump was apparently looking at like using the Defense Production
Speaker 8: Act for this, but the Department of Defense finally found
Speaker 8: a defense Production Act thing that Trump wants to do.
Speaker 8: That they were like, absolutely not, Like we are simply
Speaker 8: not doing Like we finally found I've been talking about
Speaker 8: this in tariff episodes for a long time, where we've
Speaker 8: been looking for the limit of the president's ability to
Speaker 8: go this is the national security concern, and apparent limit
Speaker 8: is buying Speri Airlines.
Speaker 3: That's funny because it is a time when the US
Speaker 3: is flying a lot of stuff around the world, like
Speaker 3: the airlift to Iran has been bonkers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it would have been fun to see Spirit.
Speaker 8: The one kind of final that I want to talk
Speaker 8: about is that there's been a lot of blaming of
Speaker 8: the from the administration. And you know, there's even been
Speaker 8: some of this in places like Salon, where there's been
Speaker 8: a lot of blame on the Biden administration's antitrust unit
Speaker 8: because in twenty twenty two, there had been an attempt
Speaker 8: by Spirit Airlines to like merge with Jet Blue, which
Speaker 8: is like a slightly nicer airline, and there's a lot
Speaker 8: of people going, oh, well, they wouldn't have gone out
Speaker 8: of business if they've been allowed to you the merger.
Speaker 8: But the Biden administration national trust people were like this
Speaker 8: is obviously a competition issue, and that's maybe kind of true,
Speaker 8: but it's also like it's not clear to me that
Speaker 8: like a Jet Blue Spirit airline wouldn't also be in
Speaker 8: really bad shape right now, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I think the thing about competition, right is that sometimes
Speaker 8: you go out of business. And I know this is
Speaker 8: something that like business people absolutely despise, and like pro
Speaker 8: minocally people absolutely despise. But like in theory, if you
Speaker 8: are a supporter of the free market, that means sometimes
Speaker 8: the firms go under. Yeah, and they're all very mad
Speaker 8: about this.
Speaker 2: We especially airlines. Lots of airlines die out. That's why
Speaker 2: mad men, you know, like you look at all the
Speaker 2: dead airlines and madmen, like it's not an unheard of thing.
Speaker 2: It's a difficult business.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 8: And it's like and that's like why you've gotten the
Speaker 8: degree of monopoly you already have in the airline industries,
Speaker 8: that these companies sort of bought up the carcasses and
Speaker 8: like you know, did all of these very monopolistic mergers.
Speaker 8: So there now you just have this thing where like, yeah,
Speaker 8: flying absolutely sucks because it's all just these like oh god,
Speaker 8: there's some economics term for it. That I'm forgetting right now.
Speaker 8: But it's it's all of these types of monopolies that
Speaker 8: have like divided up the country into their rome basically
Speaker 8: personal fiefdoms, and yeah, that sucks, and it's why, it's
Speaker 8: why being on an airplane sucks. Shit and opposing monopolies
Speaker 8: is not the reason that we're here. It's the main
Speaker 8: reason that we are here right now with Spear Airlines
Speaker 8: dead is that the President of the United States unilaterally
Speaker 8: decided he was going to fight a war against Iran.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I guess technically bilaterally because God BB decided to Israelis,
Speaker 8: but like you know, the President United like the the
Speaker 8: the US is mad dictator, decided to fight a war.
Speaker 8: And that's why this airline is gone. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 8: that's the main thing. That's why it's gone. Like now
Speaker 8: in this way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, somebody needs to photoshop like Spirit Airlines in heaven
Speaker 2: with uh the ayatola hameni uh.
Speaker 5: Just like.
Speaker 2: Holding hands together. Two beautiful souls lost too.
Speaker 8: He's getting on one final final flight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, see later, space Cowboy.
Speaker 4: God.
Speaker 8: In other wonderful news, we're pivoting from spirits to ghosts,
Speaker 8: and we are pivoting to a very a very interesting
Speaker 8: piece of reporting from CNN, who has obtained polling data
Speaker 8: that suggests that the President's new Ballroom, which has expanded
Speaker 8: significant political capital from an assassination attempt to attempt to
Speaker 8: get built, is in terms of quote, Americans who support
Speaker 8: or believe in new White House Ballroom is pulling at
Speaker 8: twenty eight percent, which is lower than the percentage of
Speaker 8: Americans who believe in ghosts and one percent lower than
Speaker 8: the percentage of Americans who believe in telepathy.
Speaker 5: Americans love believing in ghosts, h we.
Speaker 4: Do, we do love to believe in ghosts. Well, ghosts
Speaker 4: thing at thirty nine percent.
Speaker 5: I was I was expecting to let usually it's higher
Speaker 5: than that.
Speaker 8: I I it could also be support ghosts, right like.
Speaker 3: Unted, Yeah, I'm gonna take believe in the ballroom, like
Speaker 3: do they believe it exists? Like like this is an odd.
Speaker 2: I have a lot of questions of the methodology.
Speaker 4: I'm a White House denia.
Speaker 5: Part of the frustration here is, I think because this
Speaker 5: this presentation is coming from noted enemy of the podcast
Speaker 5: Harry Eaton CNN's discount version of Steve Kornacki, who is
Speaker 5: a is a noted noted Calshi supporter. Yeah, I do
Speaker 5: not like this man, and I think he manipulates data
Speaker 5: for entertainment. Yeah, no, he is, He's not good.
Speaker 8: It is also also worth noting so that like the
Speaker 8: opposition to the ballroom, Oh he is also like yeah,
Speaker 8: it's about twenty eight percent, like everyone hates it. It's
Speaker 8: it's somehow it's lower than his approval reading, which the
Speaker 8: stars reading is like getting lower through the thirties and
Speaker 8: threatening to go below thirty percent, and somehow the ballroom
Speaker 8: beating is worse, which just astonishing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do want to talk to the people who
Speaker 2: still like him, but the ballroom.
Speaker 5: They really the people that support the people that support
Speaker 5: the war on Iran, but draw the line at the
Speaker 5: ballroom is a really disturbing character today.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's like, well, no, it's it's it's the converted
Speaker 8: never Trump Republican.
Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe.
Speaker 5: If I agree with that, but yeah, speaking of that ballroom,
Speaker 5: the Senate GOP has released a seventy two billion reconciliation
Speaker 5: package to fund ice and border patrol after their funding
Speaker 5: was removed from the long fought after DHS funding package,
Speaker 5: which finally passed last week.
Speaker 3: Yay.
Speaker 5: The Judiciary Committee and the Homeland Security Committee each released
Speaker 5: proposed bills, and this package can pass the sent out
Speaker 5: with a simple majority rather than sixty votes. There's also
Speaker 5: a small provision here for the ballroom, which I'll get
Speaker 5: to you. But let's start with talking about the other funding.
Speaker 5: These bills appropriate over twenty two point five billion dollars
Speaker 5: for US Customs and Border Protection until September thirtieth, twenty
Speaker 5: twenty nine, for hiring, paying, training, equipping agents, and necessary
Speaker 5: support staff, plus other necessary expenses for mission support, operations
Speaker 5: and maintenance. I'll draw atension to an extra three point
Speaker 5: five billion allotted for quote, procurement and integration of a
Speaker 5: new non intrusive inspection equipment unquote, which they specify as
Speaker 5: AI tools to combat drug smuggling at ports of entry.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they've been on that one for a while.
Speaker 3: I'm guessing it will be their continued facial recognition or
Speaker 3: pattern recognition stuff.
Speaker 5: That's listed also in addition to this AI drug detection
Speaker 5: inspection tool. Because they also have this three point five
Speaker 5: billion going towards quote, upgrades and procurement of border surveillance
Speaker 5: technologies and the deployment of technology relating to the biometric
Speaker 5: entry and exit system.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 5: Thirty eight billion dollars is appropriated for ICE for quote hiring, paying, training,
Speaker 5: and equipping personnel including officers, agents, investigators, attorneys, and support
Speaker 5: staff to carry out immigration enforcement activities. Quote. This funding
Speaker 5: also covers transportation costs, information technology, facility and fleet maintenance
Speaker 5: and expand in coordination with local and state officials. Both
Speaker 5: the DHS and the DOJ each get a few extra
Speaker 5: billion for various uses in these bills, but at the
Speaker 5: end of the Judiciary bill, it allocates one billion dollars
Speaker 5: of tax pair dollars for security enhancements to the new
Speaker 5: White House Ballroom. This money would go to Secret Service
Speaker 5: quote for the purposes of security adjustments and upgrades, including
Speaker 5: within the perimeter fence of the White House compound, including
Speaker 5: above ground and below ground security features unquote. Trump has
Speaker 5: touted the ballroom as being entirely funded by private donors,
Speaker 5: originally costing two hundred million but ballooning to four hundred
Speaker 5: million this year, which means that these security funds are
Speaker 5: greater than the total previously estimated cost of construction. What
Speaker 5: one billion dollars versus four hundred million dollars. Now, these
Speaker 5: security funds do have a stated limitation quote. None of
Speaker 5: the funds made available under this section may be used
Speaker 5: for non security elements of the East Wing modernization project,
Speaker 5: which is what they call the ballroom. But what qualifies
Speaker 5: as security or non security elements is not clear. Is
Speaker 5: bulletproof glass or reinforced walls a security element? Does paying
Speaker 5: contractors to make adjustments or enhancements to the building count
Speaker 5: as security elements? We don't know, because this is this
Speaker 5: is a lot of money. And this again comes after
Speaker 5: the Trump administration's deployment of the attempted assassination at the
Speaker 5: White House dinner to further the development of the ballroom,
Speaker 5: and now this bill includes extra funding for it in
Speaker 5: the wake of that, and it's unclear how exactly that
Speaker 5: money would be used if passed it.
Speaker 8: Garrison, my dear friend, you are thinking way too small
Speaker 8: in terms of what the president just tried to use.
Speaker 8: Just try to use Defense Production Act buy an airline
Speaker 8: so he could like run it right, Like they're gonna
Speaker 8: be like, yeah, I had to I had to like
Speaker 8: put this this gold lace on, Like this column is
Speaker 8: actually bullet reflecting.
Speaker 5: It's gonna be like that kind of shit. That's just
Speaker 5: like the.
Speaker 8: Way this entire administration has operated.
Speaker 5: A lot of the construction could have security elements.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, this is already something that's been discussed at
Speaker 3: length in the National Trust for Historical Preservation lawsuit against
Speaker 3: the construction right. And essentially, the Trump administration has argued
Speaker 3: that the project in and of itself is an indivisible thing. That,
Speaker 3: let the project is a security project, and you can't
Speaker 3: break out the security from the ball have a yes,
Speaker 3: And the judge has so found not agreed to that.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: But the Trump administration has argued that like the below
Speaker 3: ground hospital room, security infrastructure, bomb shelter, et cetera, and
Speaker 3: the above ground party having room are like all one
Speaker 3: big security project.
Speaker 5: It should be one secured zone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And and that like you cannot be because the
Speaker 3: in this case, the discussion is about the injunction, right,
Speaker 3: which paused construction. Yeah, so they're saying we can't do
Speaker 3: the security construction only, we have to do all the
Speaker 3: construction because it's a contiguous whole.
Speaker 4: So like that seems like it's relevant to this. Yeah.
Speaker 5: We will keep keep keep checking in on these reconciliation
Speaker 5: bills as they as they move through Congress. But first
Speaker 5: we will go on this ad break and then discuss
Speaker 5: Ran and some of the Tuesday elections.
Speaker 3: We are back back in the Strait of hor Moves,
Speaker 3: a place where we spend a lot of time these
Speaker 3: last few weeks.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 3: So's I guess just trying to take this in kind
Speaker 3: of chronological order, because it's probably the.
Speaker 4: Best way to explain it.
Speaker 3: Iran has launched cruise, missiles and drones at United States
Speaker 3: ships in the Strait of horn Moves. For a while there,
Speaker 3: Iranian news sources were claiming that they had it hit
Speaker 3: or turned around US vessels.
Speaker 4: This does not appear to be true.
Speaker 3: Saint Con certainly denied it, although some news networks did
Speaker 3: run with this, apparently based on what the Iranian government aligned.
Speaker 4: Media were claiming.
Speaker 3: It seems that two United States the stories did transit
Speaker 3: the straight and they did receive various types of incoming
Speaker 3: fire from small boats, from missiles, and from drones. Following that,
Speaker 3: a mask vessel sailed through the strait. The Alliance Fairfax
Speaker 3: is United States flagged vessel, and it received assistance from
Speaker 3: the US military, and then the motor Tanka Anthem of
Speaker 3: Crowley Maritime also sailed through. Trump has called this assistance
Speaker 3: quote Project Freedom truthing for the good of Iran, the
Speaker 3: Middle East, and the United States. We have told these
Speaker 3: countries that we will guide their ships safely out of
Speaker 3: these restricted waterways so that they can freely and ably
Speaker 3: get on with their business. Again, these are ships from
Speaker 3: areas of the world that are not in any way
Speaker 3: involved with that which is currently taking place in the
Speaker 3: Middle East. I have told my representative to inform them
Speaker 3: that we will use best effort to get their ships
Speaker 3: and crews safely out straight. Exactly what this meant was
Speaker 3: unclear when the President first truthed it, but what it
Speaker 3: seems what I've seen reported now is that the United
Speaker 3: States a provides them on safe routes and then provided
Speaker 3: in at least two cases security detachment to go on
Speaker 3: board the ships. Despite this, the UK MTO still has
Speaker 3: the reports of attacks, and on Tuesday night it reported
Speaker 3: that one vessel had been hit, and so it does
Speaker 3: not seem that there's been like a universal ability to
Speaker 3: allow vessels to move through the Strait. The United States
Speaker 3: also claims to have sunk seven small Iranian vessels in
Speaker 3: the strate Let's hear from Marca Rubio where he's explaining
Speaker 3: a little bit about why the US is doing.
Speaker 4: This, and we're going to do it as a favor
Speaker 4: to the world.
Speaker 12: Understand this, This is a favor to the world because
Speaker 12: it's their ships that are stranded, it's their fuel supplies
Speaker 12: that are stranded. By the way, it's their humanitarian there's
Speaker 12: humanitarian aid destined for different countries in the world that
Speaker 12: stranded in the Persian Gulf right now. It's the fertilizer
Speaker 12: that they need for their food and crops that stranded
Speaker 12: in the person not our fertilizer.
Speaker 4: Their fertilizer.
Speaker 12: So we want to be helpful, and that's why the
Speaker 12: presidents stepped forward because we're the only ones that can. Frankly,
Speaker 12: we're the only ones that can.
Speaker 3: So the United States there wanting to be helpful help
Speaker 3: the world with their humanitarian aid. On Tuesday, the President
Speaker 3: then truth based on the request of Pakistan and other countries.
Speaker 3: It's a tremendous military success that we have had during
Speaker 3: the campaign against the country of the run, and additionally
Speaker 3: the fact that great progress has been made toward a
Speaker 3: complete and final agreement with representatives of Iran. We have
Speaker 3: mutually agreed that while the blockade will remain in place
Speaker 3: and will remain in full force and effect Project Freedom.
Speaker 3: The movement of ships with straightforward moves will be paused
Speaker 3: for a short period of time to see whether or
Speaker 3: not the agreement can be finalized and signed. So that
Speaker 3: was the twenty four hour duration of Project Freedom Rest
Speaker 3: in Peace. Then this morning, the President truth to quote,
Speaker 3: assuming Iran agrees to give what has been agreed to,
Speaker 3: which is perhaps a big assumption, the already legendary epic
Speaker 3: fury will be at an end. If they don't agree,
Speaker 3: the bombing starts, and it will be, sadly, at a
Speaker 3: much higher level and intensity than it was before.
Speaker 4: President Jerald J. Trump.
Speaker 3: The parties, according to Axios, not an outlet known for
Speaker 3: its accurate reporting, appear to be closing in on a
Speaker 3: fourteen point deal. The reporting suggests that Iran has committed
Speaker 3: to a moratorium of fifteen to twenty years on uranium enrichment.
Speaker 3: The United States would then lift sanctions and release frozen
Speaker 3: Iranian funds, which is a massive concession, and both sides
Speaker 3: would lift restrictions on passage through the straight andform moves. However,
Speaker 3: hours after this was reported, a United States aircraft shut
Speaker 3: the rudder out of an Iranian motor tanker called the Hasna.
Speaker 3: They say they warned the ship which was headed towards
Speaker 3: Iranian ports. It was empty at the time it was
Speaker 3: heading towards Iranian ports. Right then we saw reporting from
Speaker 3: algia's zero reporter Ali Hashem that instructions have been sent
Speaker 3: to boats crossing the street. These instructions include quote priority
Speaker 3: of payment in Iran's national currency, issuance of guarantees in
Speaker 3: Iranian banks. Three of a country caused damage to Iran
Speaker 3: in the recent war, it must first pay the damages
Speaker 3: before obtaining a passage permit. Countries that have sanctioned Iran
Speaker 3: or blocked Around's money and not allowed passage for the
Speaker 3: correct title Persian gol must have written in all documents.
Speaker 3: Five non compliance with the above result and seizure and
Speaker 3: a fine of twenty percent of the cargo value.
Speaker 4: So it is chaos in.
Speaker 3: The strait of horror moves right like we have at
Speaker 3: once Trump saying the us WL eschortship through and then
Speaker 3: pausing the escorting of ship through, and then the Iranians
Speaker 3: shooting at a commercial ship, and then the United States
Speaker 3: shooting at an Iranian ship. The Iranians asking for money
Speaker 3: this time not in cryptocurrency and the United States saying
Speaker 3: that we are about to reach a peace agreement. This
Speaker 3: of course provides a lot of certainty, which markets love,
Speaker 3: and I'm sure this will result in the gas price
Speaker 3: not being nearly seven dollars a gallon here pretty soon.
Speaker 3: I also want to briefly talk about suicide dolphins. In
Speaker 3: a press conference, Iranian suicide dolphins were raised.
Speaker 4: Here's the question being asked.
Speaker 7: Can you kind of clarify these reports of kamakazi dolphins
Speaker 7: that we've heard about.
Speaker 4: I haven't heard the kamakazi dolphins thing. It's like sharks
Speaker 4: with laser beams. And then if you could play heg
Speaker 4: sass response as well, and.
Speaker 8: I can't confirm or deny whether we have kamakazi dolphins,
Speaker 8: but I can confirm they don't.
Speaker 5: Ultimately, well, it's good, we're ultimate on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so heccess pretty definity of Ryan having kamakazi dolphins.
Speaker 3: It did seem kind of where the people reporting on
Speaker 3: this one ware the United States has had a marine mammal.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, like you can see them in San Diego. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they are not, to my knowledge, like used in a
Speaker 3: kamikazi capacity, mainly.
Speaker 4: Because it's just chea but to do that with drones.
Speaker 8: The US military did briefly experiment with bats, which turned
Speaker 8: out to be a terrible idea because the bats which
Speaker 8: just fly back to you the boomerang man, this this,
Speaker 8: this nearly wiped out a huge portion of you as
Speaker 8: such a command in that. Yeah, great stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah it doesn't.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm pretty sure that Ryan doesn't have suicide
Speaker 3: dolphins either. People are asking that again, it is just.
Speaker 5: Cheaper, unliving dolphins, Dolph.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, one way. Dolphins how we refer to them
Speaker 3: if they were munitions, But it just doesn't.
Speaker 8: Isn't a suicide dolphin if you're pressing the buttons though, Like,
Speaker 8: are you just blowing up a dolphin?
Speaker 4: No, it's not. It's a murdered dolphin.
Speaker 5: It's really it's really unfair to the dolphins.
Speaker 4: It's not a dolphin. It hasn't made that commitment. It's
Speaker 4: just a dolphin.
Speaker 2: It's a homicide dolphin.
Speaker 5: I can't believe that those reporters would mess up such
Speaker 5: a basic fact.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well yeah, yeah. The people on the suicide dolphin
Speaker 3: really need to get back to journalism. One O one shut,
Speaker 3: all right, we're talking about the Ocean. Marco Rubio has
Speaker 3: visited South coom and Post for a photo with General
Speaker 3: Francis Eldonovan in front of what is very obviously a
Speaker 3: large map of Cuba.
Speaker 5: Hell yeah, I think what you meant to say is
Speaker 5: d J Mark Rubio. But continue, Yeah, I said. The
Speaker 5: map is titled Cuba Reference Map. That's not good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in terms of like a subtle signaling, that's not good.
Speaker 3: Ribo also claimed to a press conference the Operation Epic
Speaker 3: Fury was over.
Speaker 12: The Operation Epic Fury is concluded. We achieve the objectives
Speaker 12: of that operation. I'm not going to you know, we're
Speaker 12: not cheering for an additional situation to occur. We would
Speaker 12: prefer the path of peace. What the President would prefer
Speaker 12: is a deal. He would prefer to sit down, work
Speaker 12: out a memorandum of understanding for future negotiations that touches
Speaker 12: on all the key topics that have to be addressed.
Speaker 12: A full opening of the straits so the world can
Speaker 12: get back to normal. That he and he preferred to
Speaker 12: that being negotiated through the route that Steve and Jarrett
Speaker 12: have been working and that all of us have been supporting.
Speaker 4: That's the route he prefers. That is so far not
Speaker 4: the route that Iron has chosen.
Speaker 12: And so the result has been that the United States
Speaker 12: has to do something about the fact that we're the
Speaker 12: only nation on earth that can do anything to open
Speaker 12: up a lane within the Straits of Hormuz to get
Speaker 12: product and to rescue these people that are trapped in there.
Speaker 12: And that's what we're undergoing now.
Speaker 3: So let's see the end of operation of Epic Fury
Speaker 3: and the beginning of the United Dates doing something to
Speaker 3: open up a lane in the straight up hoole moods.
Speaker 2: Great operation unclear.
Speaker 3: The goals of which are unclear the but apparently the
Speaker 3: first one succeeded.
Speaker 4: So congrats to all the Epic Fury people listening.
Speaker 2: Operation is going great. Things are really good. Uh, and
Speaker 2: we're we're just minutes away from figuring out what we're
Speaker 2: doing next.
Speaker 5: Really thrilled for winby invade Cuba. And it's like aporation
Speaker 5: bacon awesome sauce.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, right, like epic bacon. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Before we close, there's a few a few shorter things
Speaker 5: that we should mention. That's first by turning to as
Speaker 5: Ramaswami has said, not the best state in the nation, Ohio.
Speaker 4: Which.
Speaker 2: Not the best state in the nation.
Speaker 5: Which for some reason but is the GOP and late
Speaker 5: for governor. I has some juice. He has the.
Speaker 2: Connections to Ohio where he's lived for how long Garrison, sure,
Speaker 2: just long enough to be on the ballot, like a
Speaker 2: few days we could two.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a good state. I can't say it's the
Speaker 5: best state. Incredible stuff, high praise, high accurate praise. We
Speaker 5: will be following this because if Vivek loses to the Democrat,
Speaker 5: that would be an interesting indicator not just of support
Speaker 5: for Trump and Mega, but also how annoying the vechro
Speaker 5: Oswami is. But Robert, there's someone that you would like
Speaker 5: to briefly mention as well.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 2: So, in addition to Vivek doing so well last night,
Speaker 2: another candidate who did pretty well is Brian Poindexter. Brian
Speaker 2: is running for Well was running and won the Democratic
Speaker 2: primary for the Ohio seventh district seat, and he will
Speaker 2: be running against the Republican incumbent and that district, a
Speaker 2: guy named Max Miller, who initially ran for and won
Speaker 2: his way into Congress in twenty twenty two. He was
Speaker 2: a former aid of President Trump and a bit of
Speaker 2: a sleeve back. If I'm going to be honest with
Speaker 2: you if I'm going to talk about this guy. I mean,
Speaker 2: first off, he's like definitely a NEPO baby. His grandfather
Speaker 2: was Samuel H. Miller, who was the former coachair emeritus
Speaker 2: of Forest City Realty Trust, which was acquired in this
Speaker 2: big real estate deal in twenty eighteen for six point
Speaker 2: eight billion dollars. So he is like a kid who
Speaker 2: came from a family with a shitload of real estate
Speaker 2: money and wound up working in the Trump White House
Speaker 2: and then got into Congress, where he has a fourteen
Speaker 2: percent lifetime voting score from the AFLCIO. When he was
Speaker 2: initially running for Congress, and he was asked because I
Speaker 2: found a fun interview with him where he was asked
Speaker 2: to give like his elevator pitch, and I just have
Speaker 2: to read this was Max Miller's elevator pitch for why
Speaker 2: he should be in Congress. So with my background in
Speaker 2: the Marine Corps in the infantry and six years on
Speaker 2: the reserve side, and the work and working for Senator
Speaker 2: Rubio and my time in the White House, I've been
Speaker 2: in these meetings with the presidents and other cabinet secretaries,
Speaker 2: and the reason why I'm running for office is because
Speaker 2: of what I saw when I was there. We send
Speaker 2: people to Washington, d C. To represent our values, and
Speaker 2: for the most part what we see is regular Americans
Speaker 2: as they don't they're so out of touch with reality.
Speaker 2: And for the most part, these individuals only go there
Speaker 2: to befit their own way of life, and they lose
Speaker 2: sight of everyone that they were sent there to protect.
Speaker 2: And I saw that through throughout the four years that
Speaker 2: I was in Washington, d C. In the White House,
Speaker 2: and it was extremely eye open.
Speaker 5: And that's why I'm running to be the Republican representation.
Speaker 2: You are asked, okay, what's your elevator pitch? Why should
Speaker 2: you be in office? That's an amazingly incoherent bit of Babbel.
Speaker 2: So he was asked like, what do you think you're
Speaker 2: the right guy? And he was like, well, I've been
Speaker 2: in North Korea, I've been in Iraq bouncing between a
Speaker 2: La Sad and Arabil. I was in Fghanistan negotiating with
Speaker 2: foreign delegations on behalf of the president, and I've been
Speaker 2: in the pressure cooker. And again he was like a
Speaker 2: Trump ad like he's he's like followed around and meetings
Speaker 2: where more important people were making decisions.
Speaker 5: Like that was he was like a coffee boy.
Speaker 2: Yeah and no cooker again, walking around with the president
Speaker 2: not making any decisions. He was like a diet coke
Speaker 2: boy more than anything. Negotiations, yes, negotiation. This interview firing
Speaker 2: gets them to pin down and like what is the
Speaker 2: issue you most want to deal with? He's like, my
Speaker 2: top issue, hands down is inflation in the economy, and
Speaker 2: like he talks about how like there's seventy or sixty
Speaker 2: seven billion dollars worth a credit card debt that Americans
Speaker 2: are and that's his top issue. So what does he
Speaker 2: do once he's in power? First off, none of the
Speaker 2: bills that he co sponsored in his first year in
Speaker 2: Congress had anything to do all I made it through
Speaker 2: was like the first year and a half, But none
Speaker 2: of those had anything to do with credit card bills, inflation,
Speaker 2: or the economy. And the main bill that he is
Speaker 2: like can attach his name to that he co authored
Speaker 2: was the Full House Act and Unfair Taxation of Gambling losses.
Speaker 4: So not a great guy.
Speaker 2: So anyway, while when I'm while I'm going through this interview,
Speaker 2: there's a moment here where the interviewer's like, hey, so
Speaker 2: your girlfriend recently made some allegations against you.
Speaker 4: Do we see that one colling? So here's what.
Speaker 2: Here's what, Taylor Poplars, that's the journalist. Here says your
Speaker 2: ex girlfriend, Stephanie Grisham, who also worked in the Trump
Speaker 2: White House with you, she has a legen some pretty
Speaker 2: serious things related to you, that you've slapped her, pushed her,
Speaker 2: threw a dog toy at her, cheated on her. And
Speaker 2: I know you've denied all that.
Speaker 4: You fought a lossuit at one point.
Speaker 2: Do you still deny all that? His response was, to
Speaker 2: be clear, we're handling this in litigation. In her motion
Speaker 2: to dismiss was denied, so the case will be heard now.
Speaker 2: We're so, we've already won our first battle in that hurdle.
Speaker 2: And to be clear, she herself has never articulated the allegations.
Speaker 2: It was all hearsayd by second and third sources. Anyway,
Speaker 2: that's not the only scandalous guy has on his record.
Speaker 2: I just briefly looked into him, and I found not
Speaker 2: only those allegations from this former staffer, that he had
Speaker 2: become violent in the White House and that the president
Speaker 2: was aware of that and was like that's kind of
Speaker 2: fucked up, like the President on Malania where both saw
Speaker 2: him become violent and we're like, oh god, oh wow,
Speaker 2: that's kind of fucked up. Yeah, but didn't actually do
Speaker 2: anything like it's really messed up, Like the allegations here
Speaker 2: at least really messed up. That's not the only person
Speaker 2: who has made allegations against him. He in his like
Speaker 2: messy divorce, his ex wife has alleged that he has
Speaker 2: gotten violent with her. He has countered and said that
Speaker 2: she got violent with him, But then his representatives had
Speaker 2: to admit that their client fabricated testimony in court documents
Speaker 2: soon order to obtain a protection order against his ex wife.
Speaker 2: So this dude is a real piece of shit, Like
Speaker 2: Max Miller bona fide trash person. And currently he's up
Speaker 2: by about five points in this election in Ohio seven
Speaker 2: against Poindexter, So it's very unclear how are things gonna
Speaker 2: actually go. But I I just looking at how sleazy
Speaker 2: this guy is and how how soft his actual base
Speaker 2: of organic support seems to be. This is one where
Speaker 2: I kind of suspect maybe once you actually get a
Speaker 2: decent candidate, and Poindexter really seems to be like He's
Speaker 2: a guy who spent his pretty much his entire year
Speaker 2: as like a union metal worker and is a reasonably
Speaker 2: good campaigner. He's been a five term councilman in brook Park, Ohio.
Speaker 2: Like he's he's someone who like this isn't a dilettante
Speaker 2: in politics, but also has like a real life I
Speaker 2: don't know, I could see this being something that, like,
Speaker 2: maybe the Democrats are actually able to flip here if
Speaker 2: Poindexter proves to be as good at campaigning in like
Speaker 2: an open election as he was in the primary. I'm
Speaker 2: kind of bullish about him anyway. It's something to watch.
Speaker 5: Yeah, last big story. As part of the ongoing lawsuit
Speaker 5: Louisiana v. FDA, on May one, the Fifth Circuit Court
Speaker 5: of Appeals granted a temporary ban on the remote prescription
Speaker 5: and mailed delivery of the abortion pill mith pristone. Last October,
Speaker 5: Louisiana brought this case against the FDA for a Biden
Speaker 5: era regulation allowing telehealth prescription and mail order access to
Speaker 5: the drug, which Louisiana claimed was unsafe and facilitated illegal
Speaker 5: abortions in the state. A district court had previously agreed
Speaker 5: that Louisiana was likely to win its challenge, but it
Speaker 5: did not grant the state's requested stay on the regulation.
Speaker 5: In fact, the lower court put the entire case on
Speaker 5: hold because last year RFK Junior announced an FDA review
Speaker 5: of mith pristone and its quote unquote reported adverse effects,
Speaker 5: with RFKA Junior specifically mentioning in his announcement that quote
Speaker 5: the Biden administration removed with the pristone's in person dispensing
Speaker 5: rule without studying the safety risks. Despite the case being
Speaker 5: put on hold due to the FDA's review, Louisiana appealed
Speaker 5: the lower court's decision to decline a stay on mail
Speaker 5: order with the pristone, and last week the Fifth Circuit
Speaker 5: ruled in the state's favor, temporarily reinstating this in person
Speaker 5: dispensing requirement while the case continues. But then on May fourth,
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court restored remote prescription and mail order access
Speaker 5: to with a pristone by blocking the Fifth Circuit Court
Speaker 5: of Appeals ruling. But this stay by the Supreme Court
Speaker 5: is only in effect until Monday, May eleventh. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 5: Supreme Court will consider responses from both parties and then
Speaker 5: issue a subsequent ruling. The majority of abortions in the
Speaker 5: United States are now administered through abortion medication like with
Speaker 5: a pristone, and according to a study publish in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty five, to one quarter of abortions are now done
Speaker 5: through telehealth services, double the rate from before the overturning
Speaker 5: of Dobbs. Other Republican states like Texas and Missouri are
Speaker 5: also engaged in other efforts to restrict access to with
Speaker 5: the prostone nationwide. Yeah, we'll keep up on this as
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court issues more definitive ruling in the near future.
Speaker 5: The last thing I want to mention very ever so briefly,
Speaker 5: a big news in marx Land, biggest update in Marxism
Speaker 5: in a while.
Speaker 4: Oh boy, oh good.
Speaker 2: New Marxism just dract.
Speaker 5: On Monday, the Secret Service shot a forty five year
Speaker 5: old man from Texas named Michael Marx spelt the same way,
Speaker 5: who was allegedly concealed carrying a sig p P sixty five.
Speaker 2: P three sixty five, Okay, P three sixty.
Speaker 5: Five well between the White House and Washington Monument. Secret
Speaker 5: Service say they tried to approach the man after noticing
Speaker 5: the imprint of a gun. The man then fled and
Speaker 5: allegedly fired towards the agents, who were turned fire, wounding
Speaker 5: mister Marx. While in the ambulance, he allegedly said, quote,
Speaker 5: fuck the White House and kill me, kill me, kill
Speaker 5: me unquote, oh dear. A fifteen year old was also
Speaker 5: shot during this incident, and at first Secret Service claimed
Speaker 5: that the armed man shot the kid, but they later
Speaker 5: renegged that claim, though after Marx was charged, US attorney
Speaker 5: Janine Piro repeated this claim, saying that he quote shot
Speaker 5: an innocent bystander who was simply crossing the street with
Speaker 5: his family unquote. After the shooting, Chris McDonald, a Congressional
Speaker 5: affairs official with Secret Service, told Congress that there was
Speaker 5: no indication that the man was targeting anyone inside the
Speaker 5: Executive complex, writing quote President Trump was not in any danger,
Speaker 5: So we.
Speaker 2: Don't actually know what happened here. Was this just some
Speaker 2: weirdo concealed carrying us presumably.
Speaker 4: Illegally right illegally? Yes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, just because he's just does that? Or was
Speaker 2: he did he have something? Was he trying to commit?
Speaker 2: Doesn't it? That doesn't make much sense right now?
Speaker 5: Yeah, No, it's it's unclear what his intention was at
Speaker 5: this point. But then after being shot, by Secret Service.
Speaker 5: That's when he expressed, fuck the White House, kill me,
Speaker 5: kill me, kill me. But there's no indication he was
Speaker 5: targeting any elected official. Sure, but did allegedly shoot at
Speaker 5: Secret Service as they tried to approach and chase him.
Speaker 4: Interesting.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, anyway, cool, I mean it's bad, but you know,
Speaker 5: yeah that that's it for us here and it could
Speaker 5: happen here. Yeah, we reported the news.
Speaker 8: Great, put a transcrol on your couch.
Speaker 3: If you want to send us an email specifically pretending
Speaker 3: to tits about news, you can do so.
Speaker 4: Cool Zone tips at proton on me. 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.
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