Speaker 1: Coolso media, Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted
Speaker 1: to let you know this is a compilation episode. So
Speaker 1: every episode of the week that just happened is here
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Speaker 1: you to listen to in a long stretch if you want.
Speaker 1: If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
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Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 3: Everyone, my name is Dan al Kurd and this is
Speaker 3: it could happen here. I'm an associate professor of political
Speaker 3: science and a researcher.
Speaker 4: Of Arab and Palestinian politics.
Speaker 3: Today on the podcast we have Danielle Kanter and she'll
Speaker 3: be talking to us about mutual aid work in Israel,
Speaker 3: leftist politics at Israel, and her personal journey.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for being on the show. Hi.
Speaker 3: So yeah, if you'd like to introduce us to yourself
Speaker 3: and your organization, Culture of Solidarity, that would be fantastic.
Speaker 4: Sure. Yeah, Hi, I'm Danielle.
Speaker 5: I run with a beautiful community, a mutual aid called
Speaker 5: Culture of Solidarity. I don't know if people here are
Speaker 5: familiar with mutual aid work or if I should give
Speaker 5: a little explanation about that.
Speaker 4: I mean, you can give a shpiel, yeah, spiel.
Speaker 5: Yeah, just basically kind of caring for your community through
Speaker 5: different like aid programs while resisting the systems that kind
Speaker 5: of preserve their poverty and their oppression. That's how I
Speaker 5: view what mutual aid work is. And yeah, so we
Speaker 5: run a mutual aid. It runs in many forms, but
Speaker 5: mostly it's we have a food security program that supports
Speaker 5: kind of the people that fall in between the cracks
Speaker 5: of the systems within Israeli and Palestine. Well obviously the
Speaker 5: systems within Israel and in Palestine. We work mainly in
Speaker 5: Area C in the West Bank, in Mesaphiliata. Yeah, so
Speaker 5: we do food security, like food packs that are truly
Speaker 5: appropriate for each community receiving them based off of what
Speaker 5: they are asking, whether it's diapers, baby formula.
Speaker 4: You know, fit to each holiday.
Speaker 5: Now we just finished or we're still in the midst
Speaker 5: of a Romandan annual campaign where they're all going to
Speaker 5: be boxes fit for the holiday and we host well,
Speaker 5: we had.
Speaker 4: A community center for the past five years.
Speaker 5: We've been a collective, I guess since March twenty twenty
Speaker 5: when COVID hit so Basically when that started, it was
Speaker 5: kind of like we saw that there was going to
Speaker 5: be a lot of food waste, like an obscene amount
Speaker 5: of food waste because all the restaurants, offices, hotels, la
Speaker 5: la la who would be closing, And we thought we'd
Speaker 5: kind of rescue that food and redistribute it to communities
Speaker 5: that were in need until the government kind of got
Speaker 5: on their feet and understood what their virus was. That
Speaker 5: was kind of the beginning of our deep, deep political
Speaker 5: awakening of this place, thinking that there would be a
Speaker 5: system that would come and serve the vulnerable communities around us.
Speaker 4: So that's when it started.
Speaker 5: And I think only like a few months into that
Speaker 5: when we thought we were kind of just like, yeah,
Speaker 5: good citizens doing the work and not understanding how politically
Speaker 5: charged it is to serve your community when they're actively
Speaker 5: being oppressed by the systems that are supposed to care
Speaker 5: for them. And I think in that moment we understood
Speaker 5: that we want to not only serve our neighbors or community,
Speaker 5: we also need to learn about these root causes of
Speaker 5: oppression and what brought them to this position in the
Speaker 5: first place. You know, people often say like, oh, you know,
Speaker 5: someone's poor they don't have food in their fridge like
Speaker 5: in their ways of trying to raise funds or whatever.
Speaker 5: And it's an atrocity almost to kind of depict it
Speaker 5: that way, because all of these communities are actively.
Speaker 4: Being abandoned, Yeah, being abandoned in a nice way.
Speaker 5: You know, they didn't wake up one morning and didn't
Speaker 5: have food in their fridge, right, they don't have food
Speaker 5: in their fridge because of a policy that preserves that status.
Speaker 4: And so that is the mutual aid that we run.
Speaker 5: We had a community center for five years where we
Speaker 5: hosted weekly events or daily events every evening. All the
Speaker 5: events would be under that umbrella of learning as a
Speaker 5: community about these injustices, and they could also be you know, shows,
Speaker 5: and they could be debates, and they could be lecturers
Speaker 5: or workshops, and all of the proceeds would go to
Speaker 5: our food security program. And in that way, we are
Speaker 5: one hundred percent community funded.
Speaker 4: No one has salaries.
Speaker 5: We made a conscious decision back in the beginning when
Speaker 5: we realized all the injustices around us, that we didn't
Speaker 5: want to institutionalize and become part of a system that
Speaker 5: is responsible for that. And that is not to say
Speaker 5: that NGOs aren't amazing. That is not to say that
Speaker 5: you know, there aren't angios doing God's work here.
Speaker 4: But they're constrained. Yeah, there's there's different constraints.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and this is our personal decision to act as
Speaker 5: a community. There's another reason we didn't want to institutionalize
Speaker 5: in this because we didn't want to make a business
Speaker 5: out of something that shouldn't be needed, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean when you get salaries and tacticy, like.
Speaker 4: It perpetuates the need to continue in.
Speaker 5: A way, and like there's all going to be needed, right,
Speaker 5: Like it's not We're gonna you know, oh and then
Speaker 5: they're not going to need anymore. But you know, I
Speaker 5: saw unhinge like a dating app. Yeah yeah, it said
Speaker 5: an app meant to be deleted, And I just thought
Speaker 5: about that, like, oh my god.
Speaker 2: That is the essence of it all.
Speaker 5: Like we're not supposed to be doing this, isn't Like
Speaker 5: I mean, we should be caring for our community and
Speaker 5: our neighbors.
Speaker 4: That should go without saying.
Speaker 5: But also our taxes should be directed to serving our
Speaker 5: name or that are in vulnerable states.
Speaker 3: So I will definitely link in the show notes to
Speaker 3: like the Instagram and things like that, and for people
Speaker 3: who are I mean, I'm sure for some people who
Speaker 3: have seen the documentary no Other Land, this is the
Speaker 3: same community that you all work with in Masafaietta. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: so I'm interested in a couple of different kind of directions.
Speaker 3: But would you say that a lot of the people
Speaker 3: who come to Culture of Solidarity and like volunteer and
Speaker 3: start to participate in your activities.
Speaker 4: Do you think.
Speaker 3: That that opens up the space to not only question
Speaker 3: injustices within the Israeli system, but how that's tied up
Speaker 3: with the occupation, Like is that kind of the path
Speaker 3: forward for people?
Speaker 5: I think that is the path or that we want
Speaker 5: from people. I think we are very forgiving in a
Speaker 5: sense in the way that like not forgiving, but just understanding,
Speaker 5: you know, the journey that it took us to unlearn
Speaker 5: what we know.
Speaker 4: Like that's a hard one and I'm going.
Speaker 5: To go pre October seventh, you know you're doing work
Speaker 5: to unlearn what you've been taught.
Speaker 4: Isn't your entire identity?
Speaker 5: And you know, post October seventh, you just see everything,
Speaker 5: like everything has become so much more pornographic, Like you know,
Speaker 5: it's the amount of death, murder, the genocide, the ethnic
Speaker 5: cleansing in the West Bank. You know, just this week
Speaker 5: six communities have been pushed out of their homes by
Speaker 5: the army, by settlers Paris, and it's become much more immediate.
Speaker 5: Whereas I think before October seventh, I mean, there didn't
Speaker 5: go a week in which we didn't have an.
Speaker 4: Event talking about the occupation and learning.
Speaker 5: But I think after October seventh, it became this like
Speaker 5: huge divide of like this kind of like protection.
Speaker 4: Over one's identity.
Speaker 5: So we did a lot of work to kind of
Speaker 5: mantle that notion that to empathize with another people comes
Speaker 5: on the expense of your own pain and trying to
Speaker 5: you know, mirror the power dynamic to people like yes,
Speaker 5: we all had family and friends and people that we
Speaker 5: knew that were murdered, that were taken, that were like abducted.
Speaker 5: And with that being said, Israel has been committing a
Speaker 5: genocide in Gaza for the past still it's ongoing two
Speaker 5: in something years.
Speaker 2: The other day I.
Speaker 5: Got a message on our Instagram basically being like I
Speaker 5: love the work you do. You do really important things,
Speaker 5: and you know there is racism and there is poverty,
Speaker 5: but from there to say that there's ethnic cleansing. Come on, like,
Speaker 5: I don't know if I can support your work anymore,
Speaker 5: and basically also meet that with love as well to
Speaker 5: be like I hear you. This is the policies that
Speaker 5: people in our government, our advanced sing this is who
Speaker 5: our army is protecting. This is what ethnic cleansing means.
Speaker 5: And in that situation, I can also turn to my
Speaker 5: community and my friends, Like I have a friend that
Speaker 5: what he does for work is kind of gathering all
Speaker 5: this information of articles and everything that's coming out to educate.
Speaker 5: So all right, cool, I can use those articles to
Speaker 5: help teach this person that yes, there is in fact
Speaker 5: ethnic cleansing happening in the West Bank, like.
Speaker 4: And you know it's not even like this like oh,
Speaker 4: how do I say?
Speaker 5: It's like no, actually, our like our government officials are
Speaker 5: saying this like smutly said it the other day, right,
Speaker 5: So yeah, but yeah, it is this.
Speaker 3: Kind of like open door. Yeah for Israeli is that
Speaker 3: maybe not? They're not there yet.
Speaker 5: Also, yeah, I think that it's like it's it's hard,
Speaker 5: it's like really hard because you're at this point where
Speaker 5: it's like very far from where those people are that
Speaker 5: are like beginning. And also you have sometimes resentment towards
Speaker 5: your society, and most of sometimes a lot of the
Speaker 5: time you have resented. I'm always as nothing with like
Speaker 5: in general, when someone wants to is asking a question,
Speaker 5: I think that is just like amazing and important and cool.
Speaker 5: Let's have a conversation about this. At least they're asking, yeah,
Speaker 5: and they're wanting to learn, they're questioning something. That's that's
Speaker 5: the way forward. And with that being said, you know,
Speaker 5: the past two enough years have also been excruciating living
Speaker 5: in this society, like you're living in a genocidal society
Speaker 5: and you're around people that could justify certain, you know, acts,
Speaker 5: certain war crimes. Yeah, you kind of find yourself not
Speaker 5: wanting to engage, not wanting to love, not wanting to teach,
Speaker 5: not wanting not that I'm the one teaching, like we're
Speaker 5: all learning together about this and hosting, but obviously not
Speaker 5: wanting to have conversations sometimes because you're just like, well,
Speaker 5: you see what's been happening online over the past two years,
Speaker 5: and you still can't comprehend what is going on. Then go,
Speaker 5: I don't know what I can do to help that.
Speaker 5: But then I have to remind myself that if I
Speaker 5: am here. If I'm living here, I have a responsibility
Speaker 5: and that is to, yeah, facilitate more meetings conversations in
Speaker 5: which people will be exposed to the injustice is being
Speaker 5: committed in our name. And that's a problem with liberal
Speaker 5: Zionism as well, because liberal Zionists will be like, oh
Speaker 5: my god, yeah, it's terrible what's happening in the West
Speaker 5: Bank settlers blah blah blah. But like those still send
Speaker 5: their you know, their boys to go be pilots in
Speaker 5: the army and you know, bomb children. And it's kind
Speaker 5: of like finding the way to kind of be like, no, no,
Speaker 5: you can't, like you can't be against that, and then
Speaker 5: before that.
Speaker 3: Right kind of demonstrate the cognitive dissonance to them. There's
Speaker 3: kind of a contradiction here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I think you've just a little no, no, not
Speaker 3: at all. This is extremely rich in thought provoking content.
Speaker 3: I want to ask what kind of organizations does Culture
Speaker 3: of Solidarity engage with, whether in Israel and in Palestine,
Speaker 3: and kind of related to that, what role do you
Speaker 3: see an organization such as this a mutual aid organization?
Speaker 3: What role do you envision for yourselves in Palestinian liberation,
Speaker 3: Like what role are you intending to pay? You kind
Speaker 3: of touched on it already in terms of like teaching
Speaker 3: and learning within your own society.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we work with a lot of different organizations because
Speaker 5: it is very important for us to you know, not
Speaker 5: reinvent the wheel and kind of learn with our other organizations,
Speaker 5: whether it's Gisha who talk about the actual words of
Speaker 5: Gisha's access and they talk about access in Gaza, the
Speaker 5: access to water, to electricity, the infrastructure and Gaza, and
Speaker 5: then we could host tours every.
Speaker 4: Time it's a different organization. This guy Money in our group.
Speaker 5: He runs these tours and he will do with Breaking
Speaker 5: the Silence and Masafetta, he'll do one with the Zoho,
Speaker 5: which I'm sure, Yeah, you can probably link all of
Speaker 5: these in.
Speaker 4: The definitely will. Yeah.
Speaker 5: It was Machia, which is the Charles Klora Muncia, which
Speaker 5: is literally down the street from where I'm at right now,
Speaker 5: and it's the beach of Yaffa and the village that
Speaker 5: once existed there, or even with a woman named Hilaharel
Speaker 5: to go through a tour within the half abandoned Israeli
Speaker 5: new bus station and they're all tied to injustices. They're
Speaker 5: all tied to something that was or was there and
Speaker 5: isn't anymore, or atrocities currently happening.
Speaker 4: Obviously, also when the in the negative, to.
Speaker 5: Learn about the different Vedouin communities and the injustices that
Speaker 5: they're experiencing. And then so that's yeah, it's called touring
Speaker 5: and solidarity. And then we'll have I mean, honestly, probably
Speaker 5: any left, radical left or organization that you could probably
Speaker 5: think of, we collaborate with them in some way or another.
Speaker 5: It's a pretty tight knit community and this has been
Speaker 5: a beautiful thing of like trying to you know, always
Speaker 5: there's always a knits and grits of blah blah blah,
Speaker 5: but I mean, uplifting each other and collaborating with each
Speaker 5: other is so important to not feel alone as Israelis
Speaker 5: against the occupation, Yeah, and for an actual true democracy
Speaker 5: in the land or liberation.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Do you work with Palestinian groups within Israel and in
Speaker 3: the occupied territories?
Speaker 4: Yes, we do.
Speaker 5: We worked with in organization in Gaza called Dignity for
Speaker 5: Palestine and we did a bit big flower fundraiser last year.
Speaker 5: And we've worked with organizations that are like you know,
Speaker 5: physicians for human rights that are both you know, Israeli
Speaker 5: and Palestinian lad and then we have our annual Ramandan
Speaker 5: campaign that I was telling you about now, and that's
Speaker 5: what rabbis for human rights who are not Palestinian, but
Speaker 5: we do work with different groups within Palestine. One of
Speaker 5: the people that was, you know, the main receiver and
Speaker 5: distributor of these boxes was Adadarin, who was murdered in
Speaker 5: July by settler you know, on Levy.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it's working directly with communities.
Speaker 5: Second question was what role do you left this Israelis
Speaker 5: have right now?
Speaker 4: Is that the question?
Speaker 3: Yeah, like, what role do you envision either for yourself
Speaker 3: as you you personally or for Israeli left in Palestinian liberation?
Speaker 4: I know it's a big question.
Speaker 5: That is a big question, and it's an important question,
Speaker 5: and I think as long as we are living on
Speaker 5: this land, it's our response. It's I mean, I mean,
Speaker 5: I think it's everyone's responsibility to free Palestine and for
Speaker 5: the Palestinian people to have equal rights, to have access
Speaker 5: to whatever they wish for under a government that sees
Speaker 5: both counterparts equally, and the obviously accountability and reparations that
Speaker 5: would need to happen in order to get there. I
Speaker 5: think that our responsibility as Israeli left is to keep
Speaker 5: fighting for that, is to keep fighting for that.
Speaker 4: Within Israel and within Palestine.
Speaker 5: So, whether it's protective presence in the West Bank, protective
Speaker 5: presence is a kind of program where you sleep at
Speaker 5: different Palestinian homes every night just in case settlers come
Speaker 5: in the middle of the night to attack or the
Speaker 5: army comes in the middle of the night to attack,
Speaker 5: and you're there serving a protective presence. You obviously have
Speaker 5: a privilege. You have an Israeli passport, you're Jewish. That
Speaker 5: is a privilege on this land. And to be there,
Speaker 5: you know, obviously you don't decide what goes down. You
Speaker 5: ask each family how they want to deal with this,
Speaker 5: and you serve that. So I think protective presence is
Speaker 5: one of the most important things Israeli's israel leftists can do,
Speaker 5: because yeah, like I said earlier, it's just getting worse
Speaker 5: and worse, and it's at a high. It's always been bad,
Speaker 5: but the past. Honestly, I think since no other land
Speaker 5: came out, I think it's like gotten a lot of
Speaker 5: attention on them. Essentially, well, there's always been attacked by
Speaker 5: settlers of course, yeah, but I think that, Yeah, in
Speaker 5: the past year it's gotten to an all time high.
Speaker 3: Well, there's also kind of like the general impunity that
Speaker 3: the Israeli government and the settler movement like exactly not yet,
Speaker 3: especially after Biden left, like not that he was holding
Speaker 3: them accountable, but at course certainly gloves were off after
Speaker 3: that for sure.
Speaker 4: No, no, exactly, that is very true.
Speaker 5: But basically in the last year two years, it's gotten
Speaker 5: much much worse. So I think Israeli left us have
Speaker 5: a responsibility to be serve as protective presence for one
Speaker 5: number one, I think number two, they have a responsibility
Speaker 5: to educate their society and to not only educate, but
Speaker 5: to constantly learn. I feel like so many people in
Speaker 5: Israel are in just like this constant victimhood of like
Speaker 5: the whole world is against us, like everyone's anti Semitic,
Speaker 5: blah blah blah blah blah, and like from that to
Speaker 5: what actually I mean, Obviously there's anti Semitism, obviously there
Speaker 5: are people not saying that there isn't of course, but
Speaker 5: without any accountability for what we have turned our backs
Speaker 5: to over the past two and a half years, Like
Speaker 5: there's so much work to be done, and I think,
Speaker 5: you know the easy way, whether it's a Western.
Speaker 4: Or abroad telling you like, well, why do you live.
Speaker 5: In Palestine You should leave blah blah blah, or whether
Speaker 5: it's a Palestinian in the West Bank being like you
Speaker 5: can't leave, like you have, we need you here. Obviously,
Speaker 5: it's an unnatural ecosystem to have, you know, leftist activist
Speaker 5: running through villages in the West I mean, but but
Speaker 5: that's the reality of things. So as long as I
Speaker 5: am here, living on this land and where I'm from,
Speaker 5: I'm going to do everything in my power to resist
Speaker 5: what is happening and to learn together with other people.
Speaker 5: It's it's hard because we're not we're a really tiny
Speaker 5: community like that. You know, there's people that again are
Speaker 5: against you know, all the war blah blah blah, like
Speaker 5: but yeah, but not seeing how that is like interconnected
Speaker 5: with the entire premise of this state. There's a lot
Speaker 5: of work to be done, and it's hard because you're
Speaker 5: also bitter, like you know, and you want to have
Speaker 5: compassion within you're bitter.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, ah, you're like you've made so much
Speaker 3: work for Yeah, I mean, also I get it.
Speaker 4: I've been there. I wasn't raised in a left home.
Speaker 5: I know what it is to be raised up conservative,
Speaker 5: right wing, you know, Zionists, and I'm obviously very far
Speaker 5: from that. But I know what it's like to have
Speaker 5: to leave everything you've been raised on. I know what
Speaker 5: it's like to have family not want to talk to you.
Speaker 5: I know what it's like to have friends not want
Speaker 5: to be friends with you anymore, to have so many
Speaker 5: people around you're telling you that you're wrong but you
Speaker 5: know that this is the right thing to do. And
Speaker 5: I get that, and I have compassion for that. But
Speaker 5: then there's also just like sometimes you're.
Speaker 3: Just like, yeah, no, I can't I can't imagine. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's a very difficult journey to travel through. I understand
Speaker 3: the sentiment that you've expressed that like the last two
Speaker 3: years should have been enough. Yeah, but also it's like
Speaker 3: this whole identity is fragile and people are human beings,
Speaker 3: and like it's difficult for them to like, yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: not saying anything new, just reiterating what you said about
Speaker 3: like unlearning, Like it's it's an extremely difficult thing to
Speaker 3: go through, I think.
Speaker 5: But do you understand like, you know, you're a Palestinian
Speaker 5: and like me complaining about this thing that we're doing.
Speaker 5: Like it just feels like people know what's been going on,
Speaker 5: but on Palestinians that have family friends that are subjected
Speaker 5: to this violence and that are themselves subjected to that
Speaker 5: violence abroad because of being Palestinian, and then what is
Speaker 5: happening here.
Speaker 4: It's like two different worlds.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And it's funny for me to even like be like,
Speaker 5: oh yeah, like to even try to explain that, because
Speaker 5: I'm sure people will be listening to this and be like, oh, like,
Speaker 5: you know, why are they complaining? Like, but then you
Speaker 5: know your society, and you know what they have or
Speaker 5: haven't been exposed to, and you know what they've chosen
Speaker 5: not to look at to not necessarily at this point
Speaker 5: what they have or haven't been exposed, because I think
Speaker 5: that's also a bit of a kind of forgiving card,
Speaker 5: because I think at this point you still call it Ai.
Speaker 5: If you still call it like, there's some deep reckoning
Speaker 5: to do there.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: But anyways, I just feel like it's such two different
Speaker 5: worlds and I think that I think as Israeli leftists
Speaker 5: that live here, you know, pay taxes in this land.
Speaker 5: We have a huge responsibility, if not the number one
Speaker 5: responsibility to posts any in liberation. And yeah, I think
Speaker 5: that's a very long answer to your questions.
Speaker 3: No, No, I mean I think it's yeah, it's a
Speaker 3: fair answer. I just you know, think to myself that,
Speaker 3: like it's not coincidence, and it's not to take away
Speaker 3: from the agency of like individuals. Obviously, everybody has choices
Speaker 3: to make, like Israelis have choices to make. They can
Speaker 3: choose to believe or not believe, or they can choose
Speaker 3: to turn their back. But at the same time, it's
Speaker 3: like systems have led them to point where they dehumanize
Speaker 3: to this extent that they can see the videos and
Speaker 3: either make excuses or pretend they're not real, you know.
Speaker 3: And so it's like the work is to to disrupt
Speaker 3: the systems, you know. I think in that way, I
Speaker 3: think about like structural constraints that is more worthwhile in
Speaker 3: my effort. If I wasn't israel leftist, I'm not, But
Speaker 3: if I was in your shoes, like, that's more worthwhile
Speaker 3: in my effort than to be like kind of demoralized
Speaker 3: by individuals. If you know, if you understand what I mean,
Speaker 3: I guess that kind of leads me to my next question.
Speaker 3: I mean, I know that October seventh was such kind
Speaker 3: of like a breaking point, but obviously the Israeli left
Speaker 3: like was in the minority before as well. But what
Speaker 3: would you say, kind of like in the last two
Speaker 3: years and kind of to think about moving forward, what
Speaker 3: are the biggest challenges that the Israeli left faces to
Speaker 3: continue in its effort, whether it's to educate or to
Speaker 3: be a type of protective presence, whether physically in the
Speaker 3: West Bank or in their presence in Israel.
Speaker 5: Well, obviously it's our you know, fascist government and fascist society,
Speaker 5: you know, anyone that is like actively oppressing every minority
Speaker 5: on this land and especially Palestinians. So I think our
Speaker 5: biggest threat is our government at the moment. But I
Speaker 5: think that our biggest, my biggest threat, if I could
Speaker 5: think of, like, what is the biggest threat is apathy.
Speaker 5: I think, like people not caring, people not getting up
Speaker 5: and leaving their houses and doing things and organizing and
Speaker 5: mobilizing just letting this happen.
Speaker 4: And I think on paper, the biggest obstacle.
Speaker 5: Would probably be our government that are you know, acting
Speaker 5: in such a fascist, fanatic, nazi manner, and I think, yeah,
Speaker 5: as an individual being a part of grassroots commun unities
Speaker 5: and seeing, you know, at the end of the day,
Speaker 5: there are people that are going out there and actively
Speaker 5: like murdering Palestinians, that are you know, pushing for policies
Speaker 5: to deport children Filipino children or children of migrant workers.
Speaker 5: There's so many injustices towards different people, and there are
Speaker 5: people that are like actively going out and like fighting
Speaker 5: for these like terrible, terrible, fanatic ideologies. And I think
Speaker 5: whenever we people don't. I said this in a podcast recently,
Speaker 5: and someone told me, like, wait, you have to take
Speaker 5: up that part, because it sounds like you're like voting,
Speaker 5: like you'rely grooting for the.
Speaker 4: Bascies to active Like.
Speaker 5: No, no, no. The fact is that there are people that
Speaker 5: are doing these really really bad things, and when we're
Speaker 5: not countering them, when we are just letting them happen
Speaker 5: and be like, oh, yeah, that sucks, but not doing
Speaker 5: anything about it, not using our privilege or a voice
Speaker 5: or a microphone to resist that, then we're conforming with it.
Speaker 5: And I know that's not fun to think that. It's
Speaker 5: not fun. It's not fun. To like go or organize protests.
Speaker 5: It's not fun to do a lot, even though actually
Speaker 5: there's a lot of things that are really beautiful as well,
Speaker 5: being in the West Bank, being with people, playing with children,
Speaker 5: like these are beautiful, beautiful things.
Speaker 4: It's not like we're doing that.
Speaker 5: But I think when it's within Israeli society, when it's
Speaker 5: organizing protests, when it's joining a protest as a number,
Speaker 5: when it's you know, learning and doing un learning, it's
Speaker 5: not always easy and it's not always someone's first yeah
Speaker 5: decision to make.
Speaker 4: But I think that when you don't do that, I
Speaker 4: think that is the biggest threat.
Speaker 5: You know, in the Holocaust and many different atrocities over
Speaker 5: the years, the thing that like stood out most was
Speaker 5: people that were silent and people that yeah, didn't resist
Speaker 5: in one way or another.
Speaker 4: Like that movie Zone of Interest, Like oh my god,
Speaker 4: that movie.
Speaker 5: That movie just shaped these past two and a half years.
Speaker 5: Like I saw it a few months after October seventh,
Speaker 5: and I just every moment that life just existed in
Speaker 5: Israel and you saw warplanes flying above you, and you
Speaker 5: know what's going happen. You hear too, like you hear
Speaker 5: bombs falling you hear, and everyone's just like gotten used
Speaker 5: to it, and you're just like, we're living in zone
Speaker 5: of interest.
Speaker 4: Yeah that's wild.
Speaker 5: And yeah, I think it's like a constant question of
Speaker 5: do I want to be a part of the society
Speaker 5: do I want to fight?
Speaker 4: Life would be much easier.
Speaker 5: If I moved away and I was just like fuck
Speaker 5: this place, which is not a bad thing to do.
Speaker 5: I have many friends that have done this, and I
Speaker 5: understand it. It's really hard. You know, life would be
Speaker 5: easier if I just left. It's not the I don't
Speaker 5: want to say, it's not the sexy narrative to be
Speaker 5: like like, look we can both you know, Look, you know,
Speaker 5: let's learn. It's not fun to be talking and trying
Speaker 5: to reason with fascists like or people that are in deep.
Speaker 4: Denial of reality. You're really well intertwined with.
Speaker 5: But I think it's my moral responsibility as an Israeli
Speaker 5: to be here and as long as I can and
Speaker 5: help create platforms for our society to learn and resist.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, I think, like you said, there are different pathways,
Speaker 3: but I can definitely understand like the feeling you have
Speaker 3: that it's like an application of responsibility. Having been a
Speaker 3: part of the society to some degree to yeah, throw
Speaker 3: your hands essentially.
Speaker 4: One last question.
Speaker 3: I was watching the documentary Coexistence My Ass, which is
Speaker 3: an incredible documentary. I really encourage people to watch it
Speaker 3: if they can. And it's filmed and it incorporates that
Speaker 3: moment of October se and shows to I mean, I
Speaker 3: think implies though of course I don't know how widely
Speaker 3: this applies, but it shows and implies how parts of
Speaker 3: the left fell off, you know, after October seventh. Do
Speaker 3: you feel like, now we're twenty twenty six, we're recording
Speaker 3: February twenty second, twenty twenty six, do you feel like
Speaker 3: people are starting.
Speaker 4: To like come back.
Speaker 5: I don't know, or did just the left get smaller.
Speaker 5: I think the radical left has become just much more
Speaker 5: tight knit. And yeah, whoever's a part of it is
Speaker 5: kind of a part of it. People are always welcome
Speaker 5: to join and be a part, but it's kind of,
Speaker 5: you know, you kind of have your usual suspects at
Speaker 5: this point, and I think the broader like I don't know,
Speaker 5: liberal Zionists that will call themselves left, and Israel just
Speaker 5: like isn't really left because they're talking about a democracy
Speaker 5: within an apartheid state. They are, like I said earlier,
Speaker 5: sending their sons to or I'm not saying that's an
Speaker 5: easy thing, but at the same time opposing the war
Speaker 5: and not acknowledging Palestinian suffering. And I think there's become
Speaker 5: many people and this is from my personal experience, that
Speaker 5: just are like like I said, apathetic, kind of like
Speaker 5: looking forward with their hands on the sides of each
Speaker 5: of their eyes, trying not to see what's happening. You know,
Speaker 5: there are people thousands, tens of thousands in the streets protesting.
Speaker 5: You know, they'll be waving Israeli flags. That's hard for me.
Speaker 5: I don't feel like I'm in the group that would
Speaker 5: ever wave a flag. And I think they see themselves
Speaker 5: as left. Yeah again, like I said, like, you can't
Speaker 5: be fighting for human rights, liberal ideologies within an apartheid state.
Speaker 5: You can't fight for democracy in an apartheid state. Like
Speaker 5: we have to touch the root of this, all every
Speaker 5: injustice happening on this land or in Israel in forty eight, Like,
Speaker 5: in my opinion, the root of it is the occupation.
Speaker 5: We've planted roots on rotten soil, We've pushed people out
Speaker 5: of their homes and took them as our own, and
Speaker 5: we're not really willing to reconcile what we've become, what
Speaker 5: we've done. And I think only when that starts to
Speaker 5: happen there could be some sort of future here on
Speaker 5: this land for both people. But as long as we're
Speaker 5: not acknowledging the atrocities we are committing, and the atrocities
Speaker 5: are silence is allowing to perpetuate, then the left here
Speaker 5: is very very tiny.
Speaker 4: And I say that not to toot our own horn.
Speaker 5: You know, it's not in a way of like's not
Speaker 5: we're not on a moral high ground, Like maybe there
Speaker 5: was a moment where I did feel that way in a.
Speaker 4: Sense of like I know and you don't know.
Speaker 5: It's like, but then you know very quickly in order
Speaker 5: to turn your activism into something sustainable, you have to
Speaker 5: remind yourself this is what I believe in. This is love,
Speaker 5: and it's not from bitterness, and it's not from being
Speaker 5: on a moral high ground like I'm doing this because
Speaker 5: I believe in it as me as DD and I
Speaker 5: really hope other people join and other people also open
Speaker 5: their hearts to these injustices and realize that in order
Speaker 5: for everyone to have a just reality of just future,
Speaker 5: then you have to fight for everyone to have those
Speaker 5: rights as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you so much for that. I always say, like,
Speaker 3: I mean, I think this is applicable lots of places.
Speaker 3: I say it here in the United States, like when
Speaker 3: there was a crackdown on pro Palestine protesters and just
Speaker 3: the complete reversal of freedom of speech and everything like
Speaker 3: that because they happened to be pro Palestine. I said,
Speaker 3: you know, this is eroding the tenuous democracy you have.
Speaker 3: It's democracy for all of us or none of us.
Speaker 3: And in Israel it's like, you can be liberal or
Speaker 3: you can call yourself the left and advocate in this way.
Speaker 3: But unless, like you said, you realize what the construction
Speaker 3: of the state and its continuation kind of like this
Speaker 3: endless ethnic cleansing project that's happening in the territories, It's like,
Speaker 3: unless you address that, it will bleed into you.
Speaker 4: So it's you.
Speaker 3: Know, for a variety of reasons, moral reasons, of course,
Speaker 3: but also self interest. Dahlia Schenlin has an interesting article
Speaker 3: about this and an interesting argument about this that I'll
Speaker 3: link in the show notes. And I would say she's
Speaker 3: a believer in maybe a Confederation or something like that.
Speaker 3: But her analysis is the occupation ruined the potential of
Speaker 3: Israeli democracy.
Speaker 4: Like I said, she comes at it.
Speaker 3: From a very kind of different angle I think than
Speaker 3: you do, but still is a reasonable argument at the
Speaker 3: end of it.
Speaker 4: But yeah, thank you so much, Danielle.
Speaker 3: This has been a really rich conversation and I think
Speaker 3: that the listeners will benefit a lot from having this
Speaker 3: laid out. And of course I'll include everything in the
Speaker 3: show notes about the groups that we mentioned.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for inviting me. And yeah, I
Speaker 4: hope I didn't talk your head off, No, not at all.
Speaker 4: This is very thank you so much.
Speaker 7: This is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis reporting
Speaker 7: from the New York State Capitol. In the early early
Speaker 7: morning of Wednesday, February twenty fifth, I rode on a
Speaker 7: bus from the snowy streets of the Financial District in
Speaker 7: Lower Manhattan up to Albany, the New York State Capitol.
Speaker 7: The bus arrived at the Armory Arena shortly before ten am.
Speaker 7: Inside there was coffee and breakfast, signs and posters tax
Speaker 7: the rich embroidered beanies, and over a thousand New Yorkers
Speaker 7: gathered to tell Kathy Hochel and the New York State
Speaker 7: Legislature that it's time to tax the rich. After recovering
Speaker 7: from the morning bus ride, a rally was held in
Speaker 7: the Armory Arena, hosted by New York City Councilman Chosay,
Speaker 7: with speakers from local unions like the Nurses Association ten
Speaker 7: ninety nine SCIU, the Taxi Workers Alliance, immigrant justice organizations, childcare,
Speaker 7: housing and education advocates, as well as the co chair
Speaker 7: of the New York City DSA. Following the speeches, the
Speaker 7: crowd practiced chants and protest songs ahead of the march
Speaker 7: to the Capitol. The rally at the Armory just wrapped up.
Speaker 7: Now a thousand or so people are marching on Washington
Speaker 7: towards the State Capitol Building in Albany. The crowd is
Speaker 7: now in front of the Legislative building. There's some New
Speaker 7: York taxicabs honking outside. The New York d Essay marching
Speaker 7: band Why we Are.
Speaker 8: We Need? Why we are the workers?
Speaker 6: A little bit Matter we Need?
Speaker 7: Is twelve thirty and the crowd is now approaching the
Speaker 7: New York State Capitol Building. The crowd is stretching halfway
Speaker 7: around the square in front of all these government buildings,
Speaker 7: and still marching forward. I'm about to enter the State
Speaker 7: Capitol building. After about a twenty five to thirty minute
Speaker 7: march and some chanting outside, a steady stream of people
Speaker 7: are now flowing into the Capitol.
Speaker 6: You guys gotta have to exit. We cannot take any more.
Speaker 9: Okay.
Speaker 7: I have made it inside the Capitol building barely. The
Speaker 7: last person omitted in the top security section by the
Speaker 7: main entrance. But now I'm down at the lower level,
Speaker 7: the concourse, and as you can hear, a massive crowd
Speaker 7: is approaching the security gate in the lower concourse, taking
Speaker 7: up the entirety of that corridor, and just now have
Speaker 7: entered the security gate area of the Capitol. We'll return
Speaker 7: to Socialist January sixth later this episode, but first some
Speaker 7: context on why this protest is happening and what it's
Speaker 7: hoping to achieve. On January first, Democratic Socialist a Zoron
Speaker 7: Mumdani was sworn in as mayor of New York City.
Speaker 7: But you don't magically get your social democracy paradise once
Speaker 7: a new mayor is sworn in. Getting elected and taking
Speaker 7: power is just the first step. Governor Hokel has been
Speaker 7: resistant to raising taxes, and Zoron has said he's open
Speaker 7: to other funding avenues, but that a small tax increase
Speaker 7: on the wealthiest New Yorkers and corporations would be the
Speaker 7: fairest method of funding his agenda. Since taking office, Mayor
Speaker 7: Mamdani has decided to focus on governing and fostering a
Speaker 7: working relationship with Kathy Hokeel, rather than directing energy towards
Speaker 7: another uphill electoral battle that would create a purely adversarial
Speaker 7: relationship between the Mayor and the governor, making any concessions
Speaker 7: much more difficult in the interim. But extra pressure still
Speaker 7: must be applied to Governor Hockel in order to secure
Speaker 7: the funding for the Mamdani mandate that voters delivered in
Speaker 7: the twenty twenty five election. So, rather than discarding the
Speaker 7: grassroots organizing apparatus that got Mamdani elected, after the election,
Speaker 7: that apparatus and its network of volunteers spun off into
Speaker 7: a new organization called Our Time, which, in coordination with
Speaker 7: the New York City DSA, organizes door to door canvassing,
Speaker 7: phone banking, community events, and rallies to win an affordable
Speaker 7: New York City and help enact Mamdani's policy agenda. Achieving
Speaker 7: Mamdani's campaign promises was already going to be a tall task,
Speaker 7: But then early into the new administration, the Mayor's office
Speaker 7: and comptroller discovered the city was facing an unexpected financial
Speaker 7: crisis in the form of a twelve billion dollar deficit
Speaker 7: left by former Mayor Eric Adams. This budget crisis was
Speaker 7: due to years of financial mismanagement and the under budgeting
Speaker 7: of essential services like rental and cash assistance, shelters, health insurance,
Speaker 7: and special education. While in office, Eric Adams covered up
Speaker 7: this massive budget deficit, leaving the gaps grossly understated, gaps
Speaker 7: that were made worse by divestment in New York City
Speaker 7: by the state under former Governor Andrew Cuomo. Since the
Speaker 7: financial crisis of the seventies, the New York City mayor
Speaker 7: has been required by law to have a balanced budget.
Speaker 7: So rather than sweeping this under the rug by continuing
Speaker 7: to cook the city's books like his predecessor, Zoron chose
Speaker 7: complete transparency about the crisis he has inherited and how
Speaker 7: his administration will attempt to solve it. Zoron signed an
Speaker 7: executive order to designate chief Savings Officers in every city
Speaker 7: agency to quote, streamlined processes and eliminate waste. Through his
Speaker 7: relationship with Governor Kathy Hochel, the mayor secured one point
Speaker 7: five billion dollars in state aid last month. That money,
Speaker 7: combined with higher than expected Wall Street revenues, new savings measures,
Speaker 7: and eliminating inefficiencies and bureaucratic waste, have shrunk the deficit
Speaker 7: to five point five billion, still a painful gap to fill.
Speaker 7: In the preliminary budget, unveiled February seventeenth, the mayor laid
Speaker 7: out two paths to close this gap. The first is
Speaker 7: a two percent income tax increase on New Yorker's making
Speaker 7: over a million dollars a year, as well as a
Speaker 7: tax on the most profitable corporations. If that doesn't happen,
Speaker 7: the city will be forced to use the limited tools
Speaker 7: at its disposal by rating the Rainy Day Fund and
Speaker 7: raising city property tax by nine point five percent. Mayor
Speaker 7: Mamdani says this second option is one of last resort,
Speaker 7: as the property tax is the only mechanism for revenue
Speaker 7: the city has complete control of. The preliminary budget has
Speaker 7: face criticism for falling short of promises to increase funding
Speaker 7: to parks and libraries. The library budget is zero point
Speaker 7: one point one percent less than Mamdani campaigned on, and
Speaker 7: the park budget remains flat rather than boosting it to
Speaker 7: one percent of the total budget as hoped. Though this
Speaker 7: is still preliminary and subject to change. This budget does
Speaker 7: contain five hundred million dollars for new programmatic spending, including
Speaker 7: new funding for shelter services, mental health care, and the
Speaker 7: Emergency Food Program, and cancels in Eric Adams's plan to
Speaker 7: add five thousand more NYPD officers, Though as promised, their
Speaker 7: budget remains effectively the same. Mayor Mamdani says that funding
Speaker 7: for his proposed Department of Community Safety will be covered
Speaker 7: in the executive budget later this April. A number of
Speaker 7: Mamdani's key policies don't relate to the city budget. For example,
Speaker 7: making buses free will require deals with the state the MTA,
Speaker 7: but Mamdanie just appointed six new people to the Rent
Speaker 7: Guidelines Board, making a rent freeze more likely. In his
Speaker 7: second week in office, mcdonnie announced a partnership with the
Speaker 7: governor to provide universal childcare for kids under five in
Speaker 7: New York State and in New York City, expand pre
Speaker 7: K the free three K program and free childcare for
Speaker 7: two year olds, which the state will fully fund for
Speaker 7: the first two years on top of the city budget crisis.
Speaker 7: The tax the Rich protests are also in the backdrop
Speaker 7: of Trump's tax cuts and the dismantling of the social
Speaker 7: safety net, calls to tax the richer, calls to fund
Speaker 7: local services, and whether the massive cuts to snap food
Speaker 7: stamps and medicaid in Trump's One Big, Beautiful Bill. The
Speaker 7: Tax the Rich campaign writes, quote, if we don't tax
Speaker 7: the ritch, millions of New Yorkers will lose healthcare or
Speaker 7: go hungry. New York can afford to stand up to
Speaker 7: Trump's agenda unquote. At the Albany rally, City Councilman chi
Speaker 7: Osa spoke about how New York State has over one
Speaker 7: hundred billionaires and New York actually gained thirteen thousand millionaires
Speaker 7: in twenty twenty four alone. This fight to tax the
Speaker 7: rich is a fight that the unions are united on,
Speaker 7: as demonstrated by the attendees and representatives present at the
Speaker 7: Albany rally.
Speaker 10: Everyone needs to feel the low United Auto Orders Region.
Speaker 5: Nine a.
Speaker 6: National stand Christian.
Speaker 10: We gotta give this one a shout out because they
Speaker 10: just came off a historic strike and a huge, huge Contractman.
Speaker 1: You you are saying Nurses.
Speaker 11: Association, Media Patres.
Speaker 10: And President Sciu. Not the union is network, the Doctor's Council,
Speaker 10: the New York Taxi Workers signs, New.
Speaker 2: Yorker's United for Child's Care.
Speaker 1: What lot is quality education?
Speaker 5: That we are burning family is mard.
Speaker 8: But we really appreciate your here.
Speaker 10: And when the coalition this strong made no mistake.
Speaker 1: We are going to overcome the political power of the
Speaker 1: billionaire class.
Speaker 2: But we aren't going to sap.
Speaker 3: The rich or I really are we can inform.
Speaker 7: This coalition went up to albody pushing for a handful
Speaker 7: of bills currently under consideration. The first is a progressive
Speaker 7: state income tax bill, which will create new tax brackets
Speaker 7: starting at one million dollars, so that as people earn
Speaker 7: millions more dollars in income, they pay a slightly higher
Speaker 7: share in taxes. This would raise an estimated twenty one
Speaker 7: billion dollars annually. The second bill is called the Fair
Speaker 7: Share Act, which seeks to address how New York City
Speaker 7: essentially charges a flat income tax if you earn fifty
Speaker 7: thousand dollars or five million dollars, where you pay practically
Speaker 7: the same rate of roughly three point nine percent. The
Speaker 7: Fair Share Act seeks to add a two percent surcharge
Speaker 7: to those with incomes of over one million dollars per year,
Speaker 7: which would raise about four billion dollars annually. The third
Speaker 7: bill is a tax on the most profitable corporations, a
Speaker 7: corporate tax bill ensuring companies doing business in New York
Speaker 7: State with over two point five million in profits pay
Speaker 7: what they owe in taxes. This proposal would raise seven
Speaker 7: billion dollars annually. And finally, a bill which could be
Speaker 7: funded by some of the former tax bills is the
Speaker 7: Universal Childcare Act, which would ensure free, year round, full
Speaker 7: day childcare without means testing, and guarantee that all childcare
Speaker 7: workers are paid a genuine living wage. As of now,
Speaker 7: twenty two New York City council people have signed on
Speaker 7: to tax the rich by supporting the Fair Share Act.
Speaker 7: Only four more council people are needed to reach a majority.
Speaker 7: So with that context, let's return to the Albany protest,
Speaker 7: both outside and inside the New York Capitol Building.
Speaker 8: Why oday billionaires make them pay.
Speaker 4: We pay taxes?
Speaker 5: Why don't pay billionaires make them pay we pay taxes?
Speaker 2: Whid ot day billionaires.
Speaker 7: I was the asked person to be allowed into the
Speaker 7: Capitol building. There is hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of people
Speaker 7: outside now trying to get in to tell the politicians,
Speaker 7: representatives and the governor that they want to tax the rich.
Speaker 7: I am in the lower concourse of the Capitol building,
Speaker 7: barely getting through security on the top floor because there's
Speaker 7: so many people, not because I was inherently dangerous, but
Speaker 7: now a large, large group of people are coming in
Speaker 7: via the lower concourse, about to reach the main security
Speaker 7: gate at the lower level. Looks like a few hundred
Speaker 7: down this corridor about to enter the Capitol holding signs
Speaker 7: taking up the entire passageway.
Speaker 2: It's the Coney group.
Speaker 7: It is the Public University Union that has appeared. Later
Speaker 7: that day, I interviewed someone with PSC, the Cooney staff Union.
Speaker 12: I'm Liz Stevenson. I am an academic advisor at City Tech,
Speaker 12: which means I'm a member of the psc Quny Union.
Speaker 7: Why is a PC here at Albany today?
Speaker 4: So PSC.
Speaker 12: I'm on the Legislative Committee of the PSC, and many
Speaker 12: folks from our committee as well as other PSC members,
Speaker 12: have come to Albany because we really want to see
Speaker 12: fair taxation in New York State. You know, right now
Speaker 12: a lot of millionaires and billionaires are not paying their
Speaker 12: fair share, especially as a result of Trump's tax cuts,
Speaker 12: and that means that we're not seeing the services we need,
Speaker 12: and certainly at CuNi, we're not seeing the funding that
Speaker 12: we need to make our schools quality schools with safe
Speaker 12: and healthy facilities. Students are not getting.
Speaker 5: The services that they need.
Speaker 12: Class sizes are large, so we want to see more
Speaker 12: full time faculty, We want to see more academic advisors,
Speaker 12: we want to see more mental health counselors, and generally
Speaker 12: we want to see better facilities for CuNi. And we
Speaker 12: know that the only way that we can get the
Speaker 12: funding that we need for many services, including CuNi, is
Speaker 12: by taxing the rich. We really need to raise revenue
Speaker 12: in the state.
Speaker 7: So there's the three tax bills, the income, the corporate,
Speaker 7: and the New York City specific one. But on the
Speaker 7: on the PC flyers, it's also another bill or act
Speaker 7: that is being pushed for specifically to help CUNEY get
Speaker 7: more funding. Can you talk about that aspect of the
Speaker 7: fight here?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 12: A little known former state legislator named Zoron Mamdani wrote
Speaker 12: this bill called the Repair Act, And what the Repair
Speaker 12: Act would do is allow the state to collect property
Speaker 12: taxes from NYU and Colombia and then use that money
Speaker 12: to fund public higher education like CuNi. So right now,
Speaker 12: you know, as technically as nonprofits, NYU and Colombia do
Speaker 12: not pay any property tax. In many places around the country,
Speaker 12: there are similar institutions that still make what we call pilots,
Speaker 12: so payments in lieu of taxes, and YUM in Columbia
Speaker 12: don't even do that. So it would take a constitutional
Speaker 12: amendment at the state level to require them to pay
Speaker 12: property taxes, and that's what the Repair Act would allow
Speaker 12: us to do. It would have to go through multiple
Speaker 12: legislatures in order to get a constitutional amendment that would
Speaker 12: require them to pay property taxes. That's another way to
Speaker 12: raise revenue for CuNi.
Speaker 7: Liz also told me that PSC is fighting for a
Speaker 7: quote unquote new deal for Cooney because for the past
Speaker 7: few decades there's been divestment in public higher education across
Speaker 7: the country and especially in New York. Under Cuomo, Cooney
Speaker 7: suffered from defunding and is now currently suffering from chronic
Speaker 7: understaffing and facilities in decay. All While student enrollment has increased,
Speaker 7: teachers have resigned or retired and not been replaced. So
Speaker 7: PSC is fighting for a renewed in vestment to hire
Speaker 7: more full time staff and repair and maintain facilities to
Speaker 7: improve not just their working conditions but their students' learning conditions.
Speaker 7: A part of the new deal for Cooney is also
Speaker 7: fighting for the first sixty credits to be free for
Speaker 7: all students. Once the crowd outside managed to find a
Speaker 7: way to enter the Capitol through the alternative entrances, groups
Speaker 7: split off to march around the interior perimeter while others
Speaker 7: lobbied legislators. Lunch was set up on the third floor.
Speaker 7: After a quick bite, even more people dispersed through the
Speaker 7: capital complex to hand out flyers to legislators and their staff,
Speaker 7: while small groups lobbied door to door in the Legislative
Speaker 7: Office building and organizers attended private meetings. The action was
Speaker 7: timed to catch politicians and capital staff while they were
Speaker 7: on their own lunch break as they walked around the
Speaker 7: Empire State Plaza and eventually back to the chambers. By
Speaker 7: early afternoon, as a grand finale, hundreds of people packed
Speaker 7: the corridor from the Legislative offices to the Assembly and Senate,
Speaker 7: lining both sides of the hallway with chanting union members
Speaker 7: and organizers handing flyers to politicians and staff who hurried
Speaker 7: through the corridor. Supportive Assembly members cheered on the protest
Speaker 7: as they walked through the tunnel. That is the current
Speaker 7: state of the tax the Rich corridor.
Speaker 11: Inside wit side?
Speaker 7: Are you on.
Speaker 5: Side?
Speaker 12: Side?
Speaker 8: Are you?
Speaker 7: Around three pm, the crowd left the corridor, boarded buses
Speaker 7: outside the Capital Complex and rode back to New York City,
Speaker 7: just in time to catch the sunset. Meanwhile, at a
Speaker 7: press conference on pre K and three K enrollment, Mayor
Speaker 7: Zoron Mamdani was asked about his absence from the Albany
Speaker 7: Tax the Rich Rally.
Speaker 9: Hey, Mayor, how are you doing?
Speaker 6: Jay?
Speaker 9: There's a Tax the Rich rally today in Albany. You're
Speaker 9: not there, obviously, even though taxing the rich has been
Speaker 9: one of your consistent calls to.
Speaker 10: Raise revenue for the city.
Speaker 9: So I wondering if you could talk a little bit
Speaker 9: about why you decided not to be there. Were you
Speaker 9: worried about irking the governor on this issue? And secondly,
Speaker 9: do you think it disappoints people in this movement that
Speaker 9: you've called for that, but you're you're not necessarily at
Speaker 9: this rally.
Speaker 13: So I make it clear time and time again that
Speaker 13: I believe in the importance of taxing the wealthiest New
Speaker 13: Yorkers that little bit more, as well as the most
Speaker 13: profitable corporations, and doing so while also ending the drain
Speaker 13: that has long characterized our city's fiscal relationship with the state.
Speaker 13: And I've said this both because it's important to create
Speaker 13: a fair at tax system and also because of the
Speaker 13: fact that we're facing a five point four billion dollar
Speaker 13: fiscal deficit at this time, the likes of which we
Speaker 13: haven't seen since the Great Recession, and my not attending
Speaker 13: one event does not change in any way the strength
Speaker 13: with which I believe this, the urgency with which I
Speaker 13: believe we have to respond to it. And I'm thankful
Speaker 13: for New Yorkers who continue to make it clear that
Speaker 13: they too want to build a city that everyone who
Speaker 13: calls it home can afford. The Governor and I are
Speaker 13: in constant communication, and we are always looking to build
Speaker 13: a healthier, stronger city. I'm appreciative of our partnership in that,
Speaker 13: and I know we have a long budget process to
Speaker 13: go through, and I'm encouraged by the beginnings of it.
Speaker 7: Rally, attendance was lower than organizers hoped. The early morning
Speaker 7: start and blizzer a few days prior likely effect and turnout,
Speaker 7: though as already discussed, many unions did sign on to
Speaker 7: the action and send representative members. Organizing on a grand
Speaker 7: scale right after what's perceived as a huge victory like
Speaker 7: winning an election can actually be difficult, even for a
Speaker 7: group like Our Time that's working to use the organizing
Speaker 7: apparatus that got Mamdani elected to help enact his policy agenda.
Speaker 7: Not as many people will be keen on canvassing right
Speaker 7: after spending six months canvassing for an election, even if
Speaker 7: the election was a victory. Our Time aimed to send
Speaker 7: twenty five thousand Tax the Rich letters to state legislators
Speaker 7: by the end of January, but as of now the
Speaker 7: website lists under seven thousand letters sent. But the Albany
Speaker 7: takeover protest was just the opening act. The state budget
Speaker 7: is set to be finalized by March thirty first, and
Speaker 7: there will be Tax the Rich events across the state
Speaker 7: leading up to the end of the month. This next
Speaker 7: week and a half, New York City DSA and Our
Speaker 7: Time will host a Week of Action or a week
Speaker 7: of tax shin to increase pressure on the legislature and
Speaker 7: the governor as they head into budget negotiations, proving the
Speaker 7: diversity of this coalition. Confusingly, there are two different time
Speaker 7: spans listed for the Week of Action across the social
Speaker 7: media and org websites March fifth through the tenth or
Speaker 7: March seventh through the fourteenth.
Speaker 2: But regardless.
Speaker 7: Between the fifth and the fourteenth, there are organized actions
Speaker 7: happening across the five boroughs and statewide in Buffalo, Hudson Valley, Ithaca, Rochester, Syracuse,
Speaker 7: and Westchester. There'll be door knocking, phone banking, collecting petition signatures,
Speaker 7: and a kickoff happy hour social at Solus in the
Speaker 7: East Village on Thursday, March fifth. To quote from our
Speaker 7: time quote, what happens in Albany this winter will shape
Speaker 7: Zorn's first year in office and determine whether working families
Speaker 7: get the relief they need. We have until March to
Speaker 7: build enough pressure to win a state budget that funds
Speaker 7: free childcare, backfills the cuts, and secures resources to do
Speaker 7: so much more unquote, beyond running the biggest city in
Speaker 7: the country. As a secondary goal, Momdani seeks to provide
Speaker 7: an example that left wing politicians can responsibly govern and
Speaker 7: that left wing policies can make people's lives better and
Speaker 7: more affordable, and New Yorkers are organizing to make that
Speaker 7: example as strong as it can be.
Speaker 10: Where you are, Hi, everyone, and welcome to the show.
Speaker 10: I'm joined today by Gordayen, who's a journalist from Kurdistan
Speaker 10: who's based in Germany, and we're going to discuss the
Speaker 10: bombing of Iran. How are you got in?
Speaker 2: Hello?
Speaker 11: Thank you again for inviting me, and yeah, I'm ready
Speaker 11: to talk about what's happening in Iran right now.
Speaker 10: Yeah, Yeah, it's a lot, a lot is happening. I
Speaker 10: mean we should begin, I suppose by if someone happens
Speaker 10: to have been avoiding the news and has somehow managed
Speaker 10: to avoid learning what is happening, can we give like
Speaker 10: a small summary of the event sort of happened since
Speaker 10: Friday night US time.
Speaker 11: So yeah, it was early morning, around eight nine in
Speaker 11: the morning in Iran time, that the Israeli army attacked
Speaker 11: the center of Tehran where Ali Khameni's house, which is
Speaker 11: known as Bete Aberti, the Leader's house, was located. And
Speaker 11: apparently the Iranian officials were having a very important meeting there,
Speaker 11: and following that there were more attacks across Tehran and
Speaker 11: other cities. And by night, as the attacks were going on,
Speaker 11: As the strikes were going on, bennam and Antonio came
Speaker 11: on TV and he said that I have some news.
Speaker 11: I have some information that confirms that Alikamani is dead,
Speaker 11: which caused a lot of panic and excitement among the people,
Speaker 11: and everybody was really excited and they were waiting for
Speaker 11: this to be confirmed. And then some people came out
Speaker 11: and said, no, it's not true. But after some hours,
Speaker 11: the Iranian state media, the TV channels all started confirming that.
Speaker 11: So following that the attacks did not stop. They were
Speaker 11: still going on. And then the American Army also joined.
Speaker 11: This is a completely coordinated cooperation between US and Israel.
Speaker 11: So as they were attacking different IRGC bases and the
Speaker 11: facilities belonging to the government, the Iranian government started attacking
Speaker 11: the neighboring countries. They attacked Uaa, they attacked Katar, they
Speaker 11: attacked Bahrain, they attacked Iraq, and they attacked also Iraqi
Speaker 11: Curtistan region, and they were just mainly targeting the US
Speaker 11: basis or facilities belonging to the US, but soon after
Speaker 11: they started attacking civilian buildings like hotels, like just randomly
Speaker 11: attacking different directions, And at the same time they also
Speaker 11: started sending missiles and drones towards Israel, which majority of
Speaker 11: them were intercepted. So they've been attacking these neighboring countries
Speaker 11: since the beginning of this war, and they have been
Speaker 11: specifically targeting Iraqi Kurdistan because first, the US has a
Speaker 11: lot of big military bases there in Iraq and Iraqi
Speaker 11: Kuddhistan region, and at the same time they are the
Speaker 11: Kurdish parties from Iran who are based there and the
Speaker 11: regime has been seeing them as one of the major
Speaker 11: threats since decades. So since the beginning of this whole war,
Speaker 11: they have been targeting these Kurdish parties a lot, and
Speaker 11: they also attacked there is a refugee base that the
Speaker 11: families of the Kurdish forces basically lived there. They also
Speaker 11: attacked there, but luckily nobody was killed or injured, but
Speaker 11: some leagues were damaged. And they attacked Erbil with drones
Speaker 11: and missiles several times, which were all mainly intercepted by
Speaker 11: the US. Air defense systems because of the remainings of
Speaker 11: the missiles and the drones that were falling down from
Speaker 11: the sguise. Some people were lightly injured or some buildings
Speaker 11: were damaged. But yeah, still it's a crazy thing to
Speaker 11: see because previously in the past years, Iran had attacked
Speaker 11: or built several times and also other regions, but the
Speaker 11: US or the other countries that were there, they didn't
Speaker 11: really intercept the drones or the missiles. There's also something
Speaker 11: new that we're seeing. It's also important to know that
Speaker 11: Iran has also attacked Cypress, like British military bases were
Speaker 11: targeted there, but the drones or the missiles were sent
Speaker 11: from Lebanon. What's going on right now is the full
Speaker 11: scare war, and I think when you look at it,
Speaker 11: it's nothing like what we've seen before. If you want
Speaker 11: to compare it to what happened in Iraq the US invasion,
Speaker 11: this is completely different. I think it's it's even larger
Speaker 11: than that because Iran is a very big country and
Speaker 11: there are hundreds or maybe thousands of points across the
Speaker 11: country that have been targeted with heavy bombings inside Tehran,
Speaker 11: around Tehran. It's also really incredible to know, because the
Speaker 11: amount of intel that you need for this is also
Speaker 11: really a lot. I've seen videos, I've seen footage, I've
Speaker 11: seen reports that some random checkpoints on some remote places,
Speaker 11: especially in Curtison, we're targeted. So this is also something
Speaker 11: that shows that how really coordinated and well planned this
Speaker 11: attack and this war is. I want to jump into
Speaker 11: something else. A lot of people areally focused on these
Speaker 11: major attacks, major developments like yeah, they're attacking Dubai, they're
Speaker 11: attacking Doh. These are all happening, and of course the
Speaker 11: civilians they are also in danger. I think somebody in
Speaker 11: Doha was killed in the first day. It was just
Speaker 11: a civilian that was killed by the remainings of a
Speaker 11: massol or a drone. And this has made things really
Speaker 11: hard for the people on the ground. Many people are
Speaker 11: trapped in the airports on the borders. So this is
Speaker 11: something that's happening to the people outside of I round,
Speaker 11: but inside Iran there is massive bombings everywhere wherever the
Speaker 11: iergy or the intelligence service has a facility. And at
Speaker 11: the same time, the regime has cut off the internet,
Speaker 11: even though the normal phone lines barely work, and it's
Speaker 11: just so hard and almost impossible to get really precise
Speaker 11: information about what's happening in the cities and the towns around,
Speaker 11: just like what happened in the in the early January,
Speaker 11: like during the process. Only a few people have access
Speaker 11: to the internet, and it's very limited. Yeah, they share
Speaker 11: some videos with channels and like with news agencies, but
Speaker 11: it's very limited. For example, in my hometown today, some
Speaker 11: of the major I ergency bases and intelligence facilities that
Speaker 11: were some of the most important ones in western side
Speaker 11: of Iran, or as we call it, Iranian critisonal Rochalot,
Speaker 11: they were all bombed and I've been trying to contact
Speaker 11: people to see what happened exactly. I'm sure that there
Speaker 11: are civilians killed because the regime also has put all
Speaker 11: these bases inside the cities, near parks, near hospitals, near schools,
Speaker 11: near just random houses in the city. So a lot
Speaker 11: of people are possibly killed, but we don't know how
Speaker 11: many who are they. So this is also like not
Speaker 11: just in my city, in other cities to it's the same.
Speaker 11: This is also something that a lot of people are
Speaker 11: not talking about. But again, this is war and the
Speaker 11: bombings are so heavy and they're all being carried out
Speaker 11: with really advanced weapons, and it's just so hard. And
Speaker 11: when I talk to the people outside of Iran, the
Speaker 11: people in Europe, like some of my friends relatives, everybody's
Speaker 11: worried that what if one of my relatives, what if
Speaker 11: one of my one of my friends gets get killed
Speaker 11: randomly on the street. But because of this that people
Speaker 11: are seeing this also on the news. At least I
Speaker 11: know this from my family because I was able to
Speaker 11: talk to them two nights ago. Everybody's staying home, they
Speaker 11: have enough food for a few weeks, and they're just
Speaker 11: watching the news. They don't go out, ye, they're just
Speaker 11: trying to stay safe. But at the same time, in
Speaker 11: major cities like for me, for example, the people who
Speaker 11: have a house outside of the city or in a village,
Speaker 11: or if they have relatives outside of the city, they
Speaker 11: have moved out because it's it's it's generally safer. There
Speaker 11: are not many IRGC bases or like government government buildings
Speaker 11: or whatever in the villages and smaller towns, so this
Speaker 11: is also happening and people are trying to stay safe
Speaker 11: as much as possible. And yeah, this is this is
Speaker 11: something that's going on. And at the same time, when
Speaker 11: I talk to the people. I mean, I haven't been
Speaker 11: able to properly talk to anyone because the internet is
Speaker 11: really bad. But like I talked to my family and
Speaker 11: they told me that the food prices are really, really
Speaker 11: really high, and it's really hard to buy food now
Speaker 11: because everybody's panicking and there are shortages, Like there's some
Speaker 11: items cannot be found, some like essential items like I
Speaker 11: don't know, oil, meat and rice and things like that.
Speaker 11: It's it's it's too hard to find in the market. Yeah,
Speaker 11: and a lot of people are going to the to
Speaker 11: the gas stations to get some gas and to be
Speaker 11: prepared if something happens. But yeah, so this is also
Speaker 11: something that's going on, and people are worried about that
Speaker 11: what if it's it's going to get bigger, if it's
Speaker 11: going to scale it, so, like how are they going
Speaker 11: to deal with all these shortages. There is one more
Speaker 11: topic that I want to talk about. I also wrote
Speaker 11: about it a little bit earlier. I published some texts.
Speaker 11: It's the topic of ordinary soldiers. Yeah, explain that to people,
Speaker 11: the civilians who are forced into the military service. This
Speaker 11: is also like a very sensitive topic because there are
Speaker 11: probably thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of young men
Speaker 11: who are about eighteen years old that are forced into
Speaker 11: the military service because it's mandatory in Iran, and they
Speaker 11: are forced into this service. And there are also in
Speaker 11: these military bases, and the military bases are being targeted NonStop,
Speaker 11: and there is a possibility, I mean not the possibility,
Speaker 11: of course, it's surreal. Today one person, a young man
Speaker 11: from Curtison, was confirmed that he was killed, but I'm
Speaker 11: sure that there are more because we don't have a
Speaker 11: proper internet connection so we cannot like get all the information.
Speaker 11: But these military bases are being also targeted, and of
Speaker 11: course I think a lot of them might get killed
Speaker 11: or injured. And just from my own family, one of
Speaker 11: my cousins who is twenty four, he was also forced
Speaker 11: into this because he wanted to open a business. And
Speaker 11: like in Iran, a lot of people also, maybe I
Speaker 11: should give a little bit of context, like in Iran,
Speaker 11: if you want to open a business, if you want
Speaker 11: to have a passport or things like that, you have
Speaker 11: to serve in the army and we'll give you that.
Speaker 11: So yeah, he just he was listed, like I don't know,
Speaker 11: about five months ago or so, and then he wasn't
Speaker 11: in a military base between Tabriz and Urmia and their
Speaker 11: base was targeted. Luckily, the slipping quarters were not targeted.
Speaker 11: It was just where the commanders were I think staying.
Speaker 11: And yeah, I mean I couldn't talk to him, but
Speaker 11: he told my cousin who I called like a few
Speaker 11: days ago. He said that the moment that was bombed,
Speaker 11: everybody just ran out, and then everybody went back in
Speaker 11: and they took all their belongings and backpacks and they
Speaker 11: just left the military base and they went home without
Speaker 11: telling the wiser or something, and they were not there.
Speaker 11: They're not going to go back there anyways. So this
Speaker 11: is also something that I am personally worried about, all
Speaker 11: those young men who are forced to be in the
Speaker 11: military basis and they are absolutely not a part of
Speaker 11: the regime. There are just civilians who are forced into this.
Speaker 11: So that that's also something that I think. It's it's
Speaker 11: not really discussed because the whole focus right now is
Speaker 11: just on the major attacks. Which place was targeted or
Speaker 11: like which I don't know commander was killed or things
Speaker 11: like that.
Speaker 10: M Yeah, let's take it'll break for advertisements and we'll
Speaker 10: come back, because I'd like to discuss more of that,
Speaker 10: like the structure of the Iranian state and who is
Speaker 10: and it's not like part of it. Okay, we are back,
Speaker 10: So I think that will be a really good place
Speaker 10: for us to do some deep dives. Would be people
Speaker 10: understand this part of the world through the lens of states,
Speaker 10: because they understand the world through the lens of states
Speaker 10: because they have been raised in a state system. But
Speaker 10: I don't think that it's a particularly it's not useful
Speaker 10: to see everybody who lives in the Iranian state as
Speaker 10: part of the Iranian state. It doesn't actually give us
Speaker 10: a good grasp on reality. So perhaps you could explain
Speaker 10: first of all, perhaps explaining the structures of the Iranian state.
Speaker 10: When it comes to like there are pro regime militias, right,
Speaker 10: there are the IRGC, and then we have like the leadership,
Speaker 10: many of whom are now dead, some of whom we know,
Speaker 10: some of whom we think are dead. But then we
Speaker 10: also have and I know you and I have spoken
Speaker 10: about this before, but it's worth explaining again, right, Like
Speaker 10: Iran is the ethnically diverse country, so we have people
Speaker 10: who are ethnically excluded from power. We also have people
Speaker 10: within the majority ethnicity Persian people who are not pro ratime.
Speaker 10: So could you perhaps explain like those structures that exist
Speaker 10: And then you and I spoke about this a little
Speaker 10: bit before we were recording. But many of the facilities
Speaker 10: of the regimes, armed forces and repressive forces are right
Speaker 10: in the middle of town, right right next to civilian building.
Speaker 10: So perhaps we could explain the consequences of that for
Speaker 10: civilians as bombs are falling on these facilities.
Speaker 11: Yeah, so if I want to explain how the Iranian
Speaker 11: state system is, I would simply compare it to a
Speaker 11: full monarchy, but with a different label. Yeah, there's kink
Speaker 11: who owns all of the power, and there are the
Speaker 11: people who are around him that also share some bits
Speaker 11: of power with him. And there is the army that
Speaker 11: is in full amount of the leader or the people
Speaker 11: around him. So this is simply something like that if
Speaker 11: I want to make it very very simple. But the
Speaker 11: Iranian state structure is actually quite complicated.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 11: They follow some sort of religious hierarchy that the Supreme
Speaker 11: Leader is the representative of God on earth and he
Speaker 11: is leading the Muslim nation until the Ima Mahti, the
Speaker 11: savior of the world, comes from the skies and saves
Speaker 11: the world and brings peace. So this is what they
Speaker 11: actually believe. So the Supreme Leader is actually the person
Speaker 11: who approves everything. Yeah, there is normal parliament with the
Speaker 11: representative of the people, but at the same time, there
Speaker 11: is another type of religious parliament that the sides on
Speaker 11: the interests of the regime, which consists of some high
Speaker 11: level clerics or the molas, who are on a higher
Speaker 11: social level. And at the same time there is also
Speaker 11: a council of twelve people, six of them are molas,
Speaker 11: six of them are like lawyers and jurists that they
Speaker 11: are monitoring the let's say, the whole political process in
Speaker 11: the government. But whatever happens when you see that, Yeah,
Speaker 11: this is on paper in theory, this is a system
Speaker 11: that could possibly work. But all of these organizations or
Speaker 11: these parts of the regions or layers of the regime
Speaker 11: that I mentioned, all of them they follow the Supreme
Speaker 11: Leader and whatever they do has to be approved by him.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 11: I mean, I'm not talking about like I don't know,
Speaker 11: the things that are decided in the city council or
Speaker 11: like very lolol. I'm talking about the national interests or
Speaker 11: things like that, or who's going to be the next president,
Speaker 11: for example. But basically that parliamentary system or those counselings
Speaker 11: are basically non functional. They're just there for a show.
Speaker 11: And at the same time, especially in the past decades,
Speaker 11: the iergy see it's not only a military force that
Speaker 11: it's not a militia that follows the leader. It's a
Speaker 11: whole organized and complicated structure that owns the economy, owns
Speaker 11: all the institutions in Iran and controls all of them.
Speaker 11: We're talking about the oil sector, we're talking about industry,
Speaker 11: we're talking about agriculture. I mean almost everything is owned
Speaker 11: by them. And i ergy C is a network of
Speaker 11: countless high level commanders or even let's say non military
Speaker 11: person that are that are all working together and they
Speaker 11: are running the country somehow, and of course even if
Speaker 11: the leader is dead, they still have some structures to
Speaker 11: continue to carry carry on. And this is how how
Speaker 11: this structure is in Iran, and I think this is
Speaker 11: what makes Iran very very different from other states and
Speaker 11: in the Middle East. And it's something that makes Iran
Speaker 11: also very different from what for example, if you want
Speaker 11: to compare it to Suda Mhussein system or in in
Speaker 11: Libya or in Syria, it's it's very different because the
Speaker 11: IRGC has put its hands and roots everywhere in every institution.
Speaker 11: We're talking about schools, we're talking about universities, we're talking
Speaker 11: about hospitals, We're talking about anything that you can imagine,
Speaker 11: even in a post office, like we were talking about
Speaker 11: this earlier, so that there is like in every governmental institution,
Speaker 11: from universities to schools and hospitals. Bi ERGC always has
Speaker 11: a specific office in every facility. It's supposed to recruit
Speaker 11: people to join the resistance, but in fact it's just
Speaker 11: a it's just an office to observe the people who
Speaker 11: are working there or the people who are going there
Speaker 11: for their daily matters. So they have control over everything,
Speaker 11: and that's what makes this regime very very structured and
Speaker 11: very hard to just topple in two nights. So that's
Speaker 11: why they are still resisting. There are still fighting back.
Speaker 11: There are still even though Israel and America have destroyed
Speaker 11: the majority of their military basis and facilities, but they
Speaker 11: are still fighting back. This is also important to understand,
Speaker 11: I think, yeah.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and like with it being a little bit unclearly,
Speaker 10: like who is still alive, especially in that top end
Speaker 10: of the pyramid, right, Like we know Hamad I is
Speaker 10: dead or we're pretty sure he's dead. Ran has announced
Speaker 10: he's dead. We know that other people within that religious
Speaker 10: leadership and political leadership structure are dead. We know that
Speaker 10: they struck the Assembly of Experts today, which could have
Speaker 10: removed a good number more of those religious leaders. What
Speaker 10: they did in Venezuela was that they found somebody who
Speaker 10: was no less repressive, but was amenable to doing what
Speaker 10: they wanted right specifically with resources, specifically with oil. You know,
Speaker 10: we run the risk of a similar thing happening in Iran,
Speaker 10: right of like someone within the IRGC being like, we
Speaker 10: will do what you need us to do with oil
Speaker 10: as long as you allow us to continue murdering the
Speaker 10: Iranian people as much as we wish. Like, that's a
Speaker 10: real worry. They will find someone who they think they
Speaker 10: can do business with. That's what they wanted in Venezuela, right,
Speaker 10: run in Venezuela are different, they are both allied, but
Speaker 10: they're there very different countries. But that's a real worry
Speaker 10: for people.
Speaker 11: I think it's also like with Venezuela, it's it's it's
Speaker 11: completely different right now, because with Venezuela, America had like
Speaker 11: a clear person as you said that, yeah, he or
Speaker 11: she is going to be the next leader or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 11: but with Iran, it's not really clear yet. You know,
Speaker 11: the so called Prince Pahlavi, he is he is always
Speaker 11: on TV, always on his social media saying that I'm
Speaker 11: going to come back, I'm going to do this and that.
Speaker 11: But it's not really clear if USA and America have
Speaker 11: made a deal with him because he doesn't really have
Speaker 11: that social base that he claims to have. Yeah, and
Speaker 11: on the other side, there are the ethnic groups, especially Kurts,
Speaker 11: Balucci's and Ahuasi Arabs. They're like better organized compared to
Speaker 11: other ethnic groups. And then today we just saw that
Speaker 11: Trump has made phone calls with the kurt leaders of
Speaker 11: these parties and uh, the other parties in Iraqi, Curtisan.
Speaker 11: This means something. And so yeah, it's it's not really
Speaker 11: clear that they're going to have a similar plan like
Speaker 11: Venezuela or they're going to have something completely different for
Speaker 11: for Iran. We're just waiting to see what's going to
Speaker 11: happen in the in the upcoming weeks, because it's just
Speaker 11: a few days that the war is going on. The
Speaker 11: entire region is.
Speaker 2: In a shock.
Speaker 11: It's it's it's still not clear that how people are
Speaker 11: going to decide on on their future now because the
Speaker 11: war is still going on and it's a very very
Speaker 11: high level, So of course it's It's also like even
Speaker 11: when I when I was talking to my family the
Speaker 11: other day, they were telling me, I mean most people
Speaker 11: in Kurdistan, I would say, majority of the people in Kurdistan,
Speaker 11: they don't want monarchy back of course, they don't want
Speaker 11: another form of dictatorship. And they would say, yeah, we
Speaker 11: want anyone to be installed, but not this Sky, not
Speaker 11: this Pala. We don't want him. Anyone is better than him. Yeah,
Speaker 11: so this is also something and I think, yeah, probably
Speaker 11: if they want to install Raza Palavi, the ethnic groups
Speaker 11: will not accept it and there's going to be more
Speaker 11: resistance and therefore more wars.
Speaker 10: Yeah, let's take another break and we'll talk a little
Speaker 10: bit about that, maybe specifically the Curdish situation, as I
Speaker 10: know it's of interest in both of us. All right,
Speaker 10: we're back. So, yeah, you mentioned this piece, right, There
Speaker 10: was an article. It was a very poorly written article.
Speaker 10: I will say. For instance, it seemed to think that
Speaker 10: Talabani and Barzani were Iranian, but Nonetheless, the central thrust
Speaker 10: of it was correct that that Trump has communicated with
Speaker 10: the KDP and the p UK. I understand, this is
Speaker 10: like a lot of acronym coming at people, And so
Speaker 10: maybe we can just say like political parties in Iraqi, Kurdistan,
Speaker 10: Southern Kordistan. But that doesn't necessarily tell us anything. I
Speaker 10: think it's very easy. Again, Like there's this American media
Speaker 10: frame of analysis which sees groups in the Middle East
Speaker 10: as monolithic, right, the Kurds, as if they're like an
Speaker 10: entirely homogeneous entity with one political interest, which is not
Speaker 10: the case. But like for America to fully remove this
Speaker 10: regime and it's Rael, it needs either a partner for
Speaker 10: uce or to be willing to commit thousands of its
Speaker 10: own soldiers to fight and know that hundreds of them
Speaker 10: will die, right like like did in a rack, I guess,
Speaker 10: like knowing what we know and knowing that there are
Speaker 10: these groups, right, and maybe it would be good to
Speaker 10: give people a primer on the Eastern Kurdistan resistance groups
Speaker 10: and the alliance that they've recently formed, Like where are
Speaker 10: they standing right now? They released a statement yesterday, but
Speaker 10: can you explain that to a little bit to people?
Speaker 11: There are several parties across eastern Kurdistan or as they say,
Speaker 11: irenely in Kurdistan, and of course they're very diverse and
Speaker 11: each of them have a different ideology. That's very normal. Yes,
Speaker 11: what happened in the past few months was that it's
Speaker 11: also a very great development for our people at least
Speaker 11: because they have been also calling for a form of
Speaker 11: cooperation between these parties and they finally announced that. Of course,
Speaker 11: two parties like the Komala and another branch, they did
Speaker 11: not join it because they had some disagreements, but that
Speaker 11: is also normal. So the thing is that these parties
Speaker 11: would definitely work together if the things are going to
Speaker 11: escalate more. For example, if I want to say about
Speaker 11: a week ago, the Riza Palavi, he published a statement
Speaker 11: and he threatened Kurdish people that if they think about
Speaker 11: autonomy or I don't know, thinking about taking quote unquote
Speaker 11: parts of Iran's soil, we're going to use the army
Speaker 11: against them in the future. It's incredible that the first
Speaker 11: Kurdish official who answered to that statement was Abdullah Martai
Speaker 11: from the Komala, who was not a part of the coalition.
Speaker 11: So that means that even though they have disagreements, but
Speaker 11: they are still trying to work together and help each other.
Speaker 11: I have talked to some people in the Kurdish parties.
Speaker 11: They are fully prepared for anything that could happen in
Speaker 11: the upcoming weeks or days or even months. I don't know,
Speaker 11: they're fully prepared. And what I know is that they
Speaker 11: are telling me that they are prepared that the Israeli
Speaker 11: army and also the American army would bomb or destroy
Speaker 11: the military bases on the border and also the checkpoints
Speaker 11: so that it would be easier for them to enter.
Speaker 11: And probably if it's going to be bigger than that,
Speaker 11: then maybe they could take over the controls of the cities.
Speaker 11: And what's really interesting is that they yesterday, these five parties,
Speaker 11: the coalition, published a statement and there were several points,
Speaker 11: but one of the points was that was really interesting
Speaker 11: for me was that they were calling on people to
Speaker 11: not damage any public buildings like banks, goals, I don't know, offices,
Speaker 11: and that means that probably there is a movement that
Speaker 11: they want to come back and take over all these
Speaker 11: buildings and try to control the cities better. So this
Speaker 11: is also something and there is a lot of discussion
Speaker 11: on social media and people are all saying that, yeah,
Speaker 11: we are ready that if something happens, we will go in.
Speaker 11: And I think right now the situation is really complicated
Speaker 11: and like we don't know how people can actually enter yet.
Speaker 11: And you said that, yeah, if there is going to
Speaker 11: be a force that's ready to sacrifice of its members,
Speaker 11: I think there are. The Kurts are ready to fight.
Speaker 11: They have been ready to fight for forever, for decades.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 11: So this is also like something that the Courtish people
Speaker 11: already know that if we want to get rid of
Speaker 11: this regime, we have to sacrifice more. For me, it's
Speaker 11: very painful to say this, but I think our people
Speaker 11: have to sacrifice a little bit more more than that.
Speaker 11: They have been sacrificing for over one hundred fifty years,
Speaker 11: and I think maybe they have to sacrifice more. But
Speaker 11: one point here is that when I see what's happening,
Speaker 11: when I see that what is being said, that Trump
Speaker 11: is talking to the Kurdish parties, to the Kurdish organizations
Speaker 11: about the situation, one thing that I think about is
Speaker 11: that given the history of at least fifteen sixteen years
Speaker 11: of cooperation between America and the Kurts in Rajava, in
Speaker 11: in Syria and the fight again isis which was which
Speaker 11: was a great opportunity for Kurdish people, but at the
Speaker 11: end Trump just let Kurts down and and didn't really
Speaker 11: support them against Turkey, against all these Jadist groups that
Speaker 11: are supporting Syria. So the question is that what if
Speaker 11: we fight against this regime, we we destroy the regime.
Speaker 11: I mean, it's not just us. I have to mention
Speaker 11: that the other ethnic groups are also ready. But what
Speaker 11: if all these ethnic groups fight this regime, they destroy
Speaker 11: this regime? And what if Trump just brings someone really
Speaker 11: bad and some someone really useless, like Rizopalavi or other
Speaker 11: Iranian figures that of course are not after Kurdish people's interests.
Speaker 11: What if somebody likes that comes in power and then
Speaker 11: the same situation goes on and then we have to
Speaker 11: fight that system over and over again. So this is
Speaker 11: also something that I that I also think about it.
Speaker 11: But we still don't know what will happen is America's
Speaker 11: exact plan. It could be something like Iraqi Curtistan, which
Speaker 11: could benefit the ethnic groups a lot. Of course, there's
Speaker 11: still gonna be civil war, probably there's gonna be instability,
Speaker 11: but at least the ethnic groups might be able to
Speaker 11: self determine, you know, like might be able to control
Speaker 11: their areas and get rid of that Iranian control to
Speaker 11: some extent, maybe not fully, but that is also something
Speaker 11: that could be possible. And of course there's going to
Speaker 11: be killing. There's going to be a lot of civilians killed,
Speaker 11: and we know that already during all these bombings, many
Speaker 11: civilians are killed. We don't know how many exactly because
Speaker 11: there is no internet connection to make sure about the
Speaker 11: numbers or to investigate that. But of course all these
Speaker 11: Iranian government buildings are orgc bases, intelligence offices, or facilities
Speaker 11: that are all located in civilian areas, in in the cities,
Speaker 11: in the city centers all over Iran and also Curtistan.
Speaker 11: So there's always going to be some civilians who are
Speaker 11: living there, who are walking around there and they get killed.
Speaker 11: So this is also something that's that's really painful. But
Speaker 11: I think our people really had have had enough and
Speaker 11: they were ready for this, and they were they knew
Speaker 11: that this is this was this was going to happen,
Speaker 11: and yeah.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, it's it's such a difficult thing. It's like
Speaker 10: it's what four or five weeks ago that we saw
Speaker 10: the STG and groups affiliatory and transitional government and groups
Speaker 10: affiliated with it, like live streaming them killing and mutilating
Speaker 10: the remains of captured Kurdish at men and women in Derrisol, right,
Speaker 10: like a place where maybe it wasn't a desire to
Speaker 10: liberate Kurdish people that took the SDF there. It was
Speaker 10: the battle against Isis and this idea of brotherhood of
Speaker 10: peoples right that they would liberate the Arab people who
Speaker 10: live there. Obviously that has resulted in these horrible things
Speaker 10: that we've seen over the last month. And then the
Speaker 10: thought of like, oh, well on, you just sent ten
Speaker 10: thousand more of your children to die so you can
Speaker 10: liberate people in Tehran and then we'll leave you again.
Speaker 10: I was just thinking about, like a couple of years ago,
Speaker 10: I was in Solomonia and I went to the museum.
Speaker 10: You know that they have the Red Security building and
Speaker 10: they have like a very good history of the Anfhle
Speaker 10: the genocide against Kurdish people committed by the Bathist state,
Speaker 10: and then they have the nineteen ninety one uprising, and
Speaker 10: then they have a lot of commemoration of the battle
Speaker 10: against the Islamic State, and like for my entire life,
Speaker 10: like the Americans have been leaving Kurdish people to die
Speaker 10: and then urging them to rise up again. And it's
Speaker 10: just I know, it's an incredible like revolutionary capacity and
Speaker 10: capacity for sacrifice, but it's also just very sad that
Speaker 10: Americans constantly expect Kurdish people to continue to sacrifice and
Speaker 10: then never for that bare end of the bargain.
Speaker 11: Yeah, that's that's unfortunately true. And yeah, this has been
Speaker 11: evident in the past few years as well, like in
Speaker 11: in Syria when when when America gave the the green
Speaker 11: light to Turkey to invade Rajava, and also recently that
Speaker 11: how they just abandoned Kurts. Of course they are still saying, no,
Speaker 11: we didn't abandon curs but but but they did, and
Speaker 11: we basically lost almost everything that we had gained in
Speaker 11: in Rajova. And there is also like a threat against
Speaker 11: the Iraqi Curtism region right now from Turkey and also
Speaker 11: from Iraq. And it's it's just the bitter truth that, yeah,
Speaker 11: apparently Curts are not considered as a long term partner
Speaker 11: for the us R and also the other Western countries.
Speaker 11: But like all these horrible things that are that have
Speaker 11: been happening to our people in the past one hundred years.
Speaker 11: I mean a part of it is, of course the
Speaker 11: result of the Western countries and colonization from the European
Speaker 11: countries Great Britain, Russia and also America. But at the
Speaker 11: same time it's it's it's really important to not forget
Speaker 11: that majority of this tragedy that our people are are
Speaker 11: living in is also caused by by by Turks, Arabs
Speaker 11: and Persians. And by that I just don't mean the state.
Speaker 11: I also mean the whole structure in the Middle East
Speaker 11: that has been prosecuting the Kurts. It's it's been centuries
Speaker 11: that are our people are trapped between these powers, the Turks,
Speaker 11: Prisians and Arabs that are also fighting each other, but
Speaker 11: then they bring all of their wars inside our homeland
Speaker 11: and then our people get killed and display and face
Speaker 11: all the tragedies. So yeah, this is also our situation
Speaker 11: right now, and I don't know if it's going to
Speaker 11: be changed to a better situation because it's just so
Speaker 11: unclear that how the superpowers, how the major powers, the
Speaker 11: original powers are are planning for these things, and how
Speaker 11: their interests actually matter. Like we talked about if if America,
Speaker 11: if Turkey or NATO and other Arab countries, we're not
Speaker 11: backing the new Syrian government, I would call it Syrian
Speaker 11: Arab government because that's how they identify themselves.
Speaker 10: Yeah, they's still the Syrian Arab Republic even a year
Speaker 10: and a bit later.
Speaker 11: Yeah, if it was only Kertish forces and the new government,
Speaker 11: trust me, they would not be able to enter all
Speaker 11: the territories controlled by SDF because SDF is way more
Speaker 11: advanced and more powerful than them, like military wise. But
Speaker 11: STF was le alone and there was so much pressure
Speaker 11: on STF from all the Arab countries, Turkey and also
Speaker 11: Western countries and America. So this whole thing like maybe
Speaker 11: this is a little bit unrealistic, but a lot of
Speaker 11: people ask me that what's going to be next. I
Speaker 11: think the next is going to be what America and
Speaker 11: Europe want. Like I'm sure that they don't care about
Speaker 11: what the people in Kurdistan or the people in Iran want.
Speaker 11: They just want to do whatever they want, whatever that
Speaker 11: benefits them. And of course the neighboring countries will also follow.
Speaker 11: From the Arab countries and definitely Turkey, they will follow
Speaker 11: the plan that benefits them. So the people are trapped
Speaker 11: between these decisions. If the Iranian structure also remains, probably
Speaker 11: they would also change course and then cooperate with America
Speaker 11: or Israel or NATO or Arab countries only to remain
Speaker 11: in power and maintain their interests.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's a really difficult time if people are looking
Speaker 10: to stay informed on this right. Coverage in the US
Speaker 10: has been poor in the English language. Where would you
Speaker 10: suggest where could people follow your work and where would
Speaker 10: you suggest people people look to stay informed of what's happening.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I personally don't post a lot. I'm just trying
Speaker 11: to gather information and like be updated and then share
Speaker 11: it with other media that are asking me about and
Speaker 11: other journalists. But there are several pages that I can suggest.
Speaker 11: One of them is definitely our organization hang Out and
Speaker 11: the Organization for Human Rights. I would also suggest to
Speaker 11: follow news channels like Rudolph, which they have been working
Speaker 11: really good on this war. It's a Kurdish TV channel
Speaker 11: based in Iraqi, Kurtistan. I would also suggest to follow
Speaker 11: the social media pages belonging to the Kurdish parties like
Speaker 11: KDPI or Omala, just like their official pages on Twitter
Speaker 11: or It's for example, they post a lot of really
Speaker 11: good information. I would also suggest I think I also
Speaker 11: suggested in our last talk, there is this person called
Speaker 11: Vahit Online. He is an independent journalist and he has
Speaker 11: like some really big platforms and he posts a lot
Speaker 11: of reliable information and videos about the locations and the
Speaker 11: things that are happening. And I would also suggest to
Speaker 11: follow some other journalists like Ali Jawan Mahdi. He is
Speaker 11: the manager and supervisor of the Voice of America. He
Speaker 11: also like he has several platforms and they post He
Speaker 11: posts a lot of updated information about what's happening. But
Speaker 11: here's also something that I want to warn about. I
Speaker 11: would suggest people to not really believe in what they
Speaker 11: see on TV channels or media like Iran International, Manoto, TV,
Speaker 11: BBC version, because all these media have turned into a
Speaker 11: platform to do the propaganda for the monarchists, and they
Speaker 11: have been posting a lot of fake news, a lot
Speaker 11: of AI generated content, and it's been really damaging the
Speaker 11: whole course of the if I want to call it
Speaker 11: the revolution or the war or whatever like that's happening
Speaker 11: inside Iron and Curtiston. So, yeah, these are the things
Speaker 11: that I can suggest so far.
Speaker 10: Yeah, that's a great suggestion. Thank you well, thank you
Speaker 10: very much for joining us today. We'll get this out
Speaker 10: as soon as possible because I know people very interested
Speaker 10: to know more about it.
Speaker 11: Thanks Cordy, thanks for inviting me the next time.
Speaker 2: Welcome to you, Back and Hear a podcast about the
Speaker 2: consolidation of capital into increasingly centralized forms and how it's
Speaker 2: ruining your life. I am your host, Mia Long and
Speaker 2: with b today to talk about how the consolidation of
Speaker 2: media monopolies has ruined many, many, many things for many years.
Speaker 2: Is Vicky Osterweil, friend of the show, author of Forthcoming
Speaker 2: April fourteenth, twenty twenty sixth, The Extended Universe, How Disney
Speaker 2: killed the movies and took over the world. Vicky, Welcome
Speaker 2: to the show.
Speaker 6: Thanks, it's so great to be back. Thank you.
Speaker 7: Miah.
Speaker 6: I'm excited to talk about something a little less depressing
Speaker 6: than the things we could be.
Speaker 2: Talking about it. You know, like, this is a story, obviously,
Speaker 2: the story that we're talking about here foremost is Paramount's
Speaker 2: acquisition of Warner Bros. Or forthcoming acquisition. Since Netflix has
Speaker 2: backed out, it technically still could fail, but seems very
Speaker 2: very unlikely to. And you know, you could tell things
Speaker 2: are going rate in the news where this is the
Speaker 2: fun one and the fun one is us before we
Speaker 2: started recording, talking about who we think the sort of
Speaker 2: Nazi commis are they're going to put in charge of
Speaker 2: CNN is going to be. They're very wise. So things
Speaker 2: going very good.
Speaker 6: You can tell, Oh my god, but you you.
Speaker 2: Had the most cursed name that I've heard so far.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, Tim, Yeah, Tim Poole, I think is probably
Speaker 6: the most cursed. Yeah, that would be the most it's
Speaker 6: a dark horse candidate. I don't know whether where the
Speaker 6: numbers on poly market should we look? Who's should pull
Speaker 6: it up?
Speaker 2: They've probably that's probably up now. Yeah, I hate I
Speaker 2: refuse to track polling market. Even if I couldn't know
Speaker 2: facts ahead of time, I simply will not. They can't
Speaker 2: make me.
Speaker 6: God, but we're not talking about insider trading war crimes.
Speaker 6: We're talking about insider trading intellectual property. So that's that's
Speaker 6: pretty good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay, So to start, let's go back a
Speaker 2: ways and do you want to talk about I guess
Speaker 2: sort of the beginning of the history of what we're
Speaker 2: talking about here, which is the consolidation of all media
Speaker 2: into a handful of increasingly large conglomerates.
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely so in a way like consolidation is the
Speaker 6: entire history of the movie business. So obviously, what's happening
Speaker 6: here with Paramount, which is one of the oldest, one
Speaker 6: of the old five studios merging with Warner Brothers. That
Speaker 6: leaves Disney at Paramount, Warner Brothers as Sony as the
Speaker 6: three companies that released movies.
Speaker 8: Is this good?
Speaker 2: A twenty four is gonna get bobs? Of course three
Speaker 2: weeks from now, yeah, God.
Speaker 6: And that's Flix on Amazon. Are are the news of
Speaker 6: other studios? And Netflix was in competition for this and
Speaker 6: with True as you said anyways, but like one of
Speaker 6: the things that the very beginning of the Hollywood system,
Speaker 6: Hollywood starts because Thomas Edison. So now we're going way
Speaker 6: back right the eighteen nineties.
Speaker 2: Oh god, yeah, yeah, speaking of it, speaking a dude
Speaker 2: to ruthlessly consolidated their power.
Speaker 6: He's like that prop precisely, dear God. So Thomas Edison
Speaker 6: is credited in the US with inventing the movie camera.
Speaker 6: He is one of five or six people in the
Speaker 6: world who came up with technology around the same time.
Speaker 6: It's just not linearly possible to name any of them
Speaker 6: as the inventor of the movie camera. But he gets
Speaker 6: that credit because he sued the shit out of everyone
Speaker 6: who tried to make a movie for fifteen years. Jesus right, right,
Speaker 6: So he puts patents on the movie camera, He puts
Speaker 6: patents on his stuff. And then and this is in
Speaker 6: New York. He's in New Jersey. Menlo Park famously is
Speaker 6: where his lab is. And what he starts doing other
Speaker 6: than making really really boring movies, he's a mid film producer.
Speaker 6: His movies are not that exciting, and at this point
Speaker 6: a movie is fifteen seconds to about a minute, often
Speaker 6: seen in a nickelodeon, like in a really small screen,
Speaker 6: or like in a small room. These are short films.
Speaker 6: Ninety nine percent of them are loss of time. Can't
Speaker 6: we can't even watch these movies, right. But one of
Speaker 6: the things that he would do is he, because he
Speaker 6: had the patent on movie cameras, anyone who tried to
Speaker 6: film a movie, he would sue them, right. So it's
Speaker 6: eventually too hard to maintain this. So what he did
Speaker 6: is he teamed up with the other large Independence and
Speaker 6: Eastman Kodak, and they formed a thing. I think it's
Speaker 6: called the Motion Picture Company, which is unreferred to as
Speaker 6: the Trust, quote unquote, and the Trust just did this
Speaker 6: at scale. So now instead of it just being him
Speaker 6: fighting against his competitors, it's all the leading movie filmmakers,
Speaker 6: all the leading filmmakers, and the literal film company will
Speaker 6: come down sue you sometimes even beat you up and
Speaker 6: like and shatter your cameras if you if you try
Speaker 6: to make a movie without their permission, without a license
Speaker 6: from them, and without their equipment.
Speaker 2: Right, this is such a good system, by the way,
Speaker 2: Like I just like like the system of property rights,
Speaker 2: so good, no problems.
Speaker 6: He that exactly.
Speaker 2: So what happened?
Speaker 6: So what happens? A bunch of filmmakers move to this
Speaker 6: new land development out in California called Hollywood. You know,
Speaker 6: it's nineteen oh seven. They're really far away from New
Speaker 6: Jersey lawyers at Edison goons, Right, they're as far as possible.
Speaker 6: So Hollywood is founded by a bunch of movie pirates, basically, right.
Speaker 2: That's incredible.
Speaker 6: We're violating, you know, Edison's copyright because they're sick of
Speaker 6: the of his of his legal harassment.
Speaker 2: So it's some real mountains are high in the Emperor's
Speaker 2: far away shift.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I mean exactly literally, how far can we
Speaker 6: get away while still being on the continent, Like that's
Speaker 6: you know, let's do it from New Jersey, which, like
Speaker 6: many such cases, many people yeah, yeah, I can get
Speaker 6: that far away from New Jersey before. But you know,
Speaker 6: so jumping forward into the classical Hollywood period are more
Speaker 6: familiar with, there are sort of five major studioos and
Speaker 6: one of the ways that the major studios worked is
Speaker 6: that they had something called vertical integration, which is something
Speaker 6: we should all know about as we are living through
Speaker 6: times monopolies. Amazon is a classic example of vertical integration,
Speaker 6: as is Google. What vertical integration means is that you
Speaker 6: own everything in the pipeline for movies. You have the
Speaker 6: offices where the producers work, You own the sound stage,
Speaker 6: you employ all the people who work on it, You
Speaker 6: employee the actors. You also then own the film that
Speaker 6: gets made. You own the cameras, You own the company
Speaker 6: that produces the film. Sometimes although tho's a instances, they
Speaker 6: didn't always own those companies, those chemical companies. It's an
Speaker 6: on board, but you know, and then you own the
Speaker 6: movie theater where it showed, right, So like movie theaters
Speaker 6: before the forties, you would go to a RKO Pictures House.
Speaker 6: Arko is one of the early big ones, or a
Speaker 6: United Artists theater, and they would only show United Artists movies, right,
Speaker 6: So they would be an active competition with one another.
Speaker 6: So your neighborhood would have you know, there'd be an MGM,
Speaker 6: there'd be an RKO, and you would go based on
Speaker 6: what movie was where. Then there's anti trust action done
Speaker 6: in the forties that breaks up these studios. The studio
Speaker 6: system sort of slowly collapses. They also then loses a
Speaker 6: lot of market share to television. This is a really
Speaker 6: pod ended history, but trying to do it as much
Speaker 6: as possible. So basically, so by the sixties or seventies,
Speaker 6: what you have is a lot of independent producers. So
Speaker 6: the studios just become a brand and a sort of
Speaker 6: pot of money and often a sound stage. They keep
Speaker 6: the sound stages right. But then like distribution, becomes independent
Speaker 6: actors and like directors, they all are independent. They all
Speaker 6: have agents, right. It used to be that they would
Speaker 6: be hired by a company and they would just work
Speaker 6: for that company. That's why you know classical Hollywood directors
Speaker 6: would make like sixty movies because they would just churn
Speaker 6: them out. They would just be like directing them show up,
Speaker 6: do it for two weeks, show up on the next one,
Speaker 6: do for two weeks, et cetera. Just the studio system.
Speaker 6: So then by the sixties and seventies, it's starting to
Speaker 6: look more like what you have now, which is the
Speaker 6: studios are basically they're the homes of all the producers,
Speaker 6: the producers of people who connect the money and the talent,
Speaker 6: you know, and put it all together and package and
Speaker 6: deal the market it right, and that process. It seems
Speaker 6: like it's sort of a losing proposition. The business isn't
Speaker 6: doing super well until the emergence of the blockbuster with
Speaker 6: Star Wars, right so, Star Wars and Jaws and a
Speaker 6: bunch of other movies in the seventies. We're going so
Speaker 6: fast right now and trying my best, but I'm sorry,
Speaker 6: this is.
Speaker 2: No this is like I was like, here, let's talk
Speaker 2: about like one hundred and fifty years of history.
Speaker 6: So anyways, with the emergence of the blockbusters, one of
Speaker 6: the other things that happens is that the way blockbusters
Speaker 6: work is that they are released everywhere in the country
Speaker 6: at once. Film comes on used to come on literal
Speaker 6: physical objects, and you can only have so many and
Speaker 6: they can only be so many places at once. Right.
Speaker 6: So the way film used to work is they would
Speaker 6: make a certain number of film reels if they thought
Speaker 6: it was going to be big. There was a star,
Speaker 6: but the studio was always gambling on how many how
Speaker 6: big it would be, how many people would pick it up,
Speaker 6: and then they had to sell it to the movie theaters, right,
Speaker 6: and then the films would circulate when they did well,
Speaker 6: they're print more. So movies would circulate for like a year, right,
Speaker 6: two years sometimes even. But with Star Wars and the
Speaker 6: day and date system that we have now, what they
Speaker 6: started doing was just putting it in every movie theater
Speaker 6: in the country. You also get the emergence of multiplexes,
Speaker 6: white flight in the suburbs. I'm really going faster up trying.
Speaker 6: But the result is that movies get both more potentially valuable,
Speaker 6: but that value gets more and more concentrated in the
Speaker 6: early period of the of the release right in the
Speaker 6: early window. Opening weekend was not very meaningful until the eighties. Really,
Speaker 6: you know, late seventies, early eighties. As that happens, do
Speaker 6: you suddenly need more financing and you can make more
Speaker 6: money off of bigger gambles. Simultaneously, the rest of the
Speaker 6: economy is going through financialization, right, which is a process
Speaker 6: that you've talked about on the show before.
Speaker 2: I can't get into that, but yeah we can't.
Speaker 6: And then Reagan deregulates everything, right, Reagan rifts apart of
Speaker 6: the SCC in many ways, deregulates media ownership stuff. This
Speaker 6: is a big move. Then across the eighties, the home
Speaker 6: market opens, so you start getting VCRs and this completely
Speaker 6: transforms the business another time, because movies can flop in
Speaker 6: the theater, but you can guarantee rentals, right, So for
Speaker 6: like the eighties and the nineties, the big studios kind
Speaker 6: of could print money because it was pretty hard to
Speaker 6: lose money on a movie. Now the people who lost
Speaker 6: money on movies were like, you know, dentists from the
Speaker 6: Midwest who THEYD get to invest them. They'd be like,
Speaker 6: oh yeah, sorry, Like Threo's arcane deals. People still got rinsed.
Speaker 6: Obviously it was Hollywood. It was shady as well, but
Speaker 6: as so with the deregulation and with all this money
Speaker 6: flowing and with the integration of the home market, suddenly
Speaker 6: technology companies like Sony, and the emergence of of like
Speaker 6: Lucasfilms that they also get really into computers. Lucas Turgocus
Speaker 6: famously is into the computer side of the business. All
Speaker 6: these different technologies get brought into the cinema at the
Speaker 6: same time as he gets see regulated. So companies starts
Speaker 6: snatching up these other film studios, right and so where
Speaker 6: once there were five studios, and then the sixties and
Speaker 6: seventies were actually got a ton of independent studios, a
Speaker 6: lot of really small ones, and they started getting gobbled
Speaker 6: up by these bigger conglomerates. You know, Sony is the
Speaker 6: one that was also a mega corp in the eighties
Speaker 6: already that that would eventually go on to own to
Speaker 6: buy out a bunch of movie companies. The same thing
Speaker 6: is happening though with radio. With TV. The main thing
Speaker 6: that happens under the SEC regulation stuff is that they
Speaker 6: loosen up whether a movie studio can own a TV studio.
Speaker 6: They used to be fully separate, and then and and
Speaker 6: broadcast rule changed. Broadcast rules changed, so studios could own
Speaker 6: a movie theater or you could own a movie company,
Speaker 6: a radio station and a TV station.
Speaker 2: Ah O, good God.
Speaker 6: And as you can imagine that is how things started
Speaker 6: to alerate. You get like the ABC Disney merger and
Speaker 6: the late eighties NBC universal mergers acqusitions become the big thing.
Speaker 6: You know, the stock market is booming. Then you get
Speaker 6: other big corps buying them out, and then we're just
Speaker 6: in the classic phase of consolidation where bigger and bigger
Speaker 6: fish eat up the smaller ones.
Speaker 2: And this is not how I guess importantly for this story. Suddenly,
Speaker 2: like all of the television news media is owned by
Speaker 2: these giant ass movie companies. Exactly, surely nothing will go wrong.
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, we and we come to you here from
Speaker 6: iHeart Radio, which you know is a lovely new.
Speaker 2: Brand of kind of things making. We are iHeart Media. Okay,
Speaker 2: excuse me, a technically distinct company, I think. Actually, don't
Speaker 2: ask me to explain exactly how that whole right I
Speaker 2: heard media I Heart Radio split works.
Speaker 6: But exactly, you know, so media consolidation, this is you know,
Speaker 6: consolidation is the story of capitalism, famously right like that,
Speaker 6: Like you know, an industry builds lots of new entrepreneurs
Speaker 6: coming into the space. People figure out what's possible with
Speaker 6: the industry has more and more money flows in, a
Speaker 6: few winners come and consolidated. We've seen it happen in
Speaker 6: tech as well. But yeah, it has particularly perverse effects
Speaker 6: when we're talking about the visual culture, the audio culture,
Speaker 6: and the news media the way information is spread. Although
Speaker 6: I wouldn't you know, I would argue that the effects
Speaker 6: are still pretty perverse from the way social media and
Speaker 6: tech giants have control things. I think that's pretty pretty obvious.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, is extremely bad, I would say.
Speaker 6: You might say it's extremely bad. You know, a lot
Speaker 6: of people are very upset about the news that David Ellison,
Speaker 6: who is the NEPO baby to end all netpo babies,
Speaker 6: because he's not a Hollywood netbo baby. He's not the
Speaker 6: son of a previous He's just the son of a
Speaker 6: rich guy who wanted to be in movies. So he
Speaker 6: bought his way into like acting roles, and then he
Speaker 6: like just threw money around until he got sky Danced Global,
Speaker 6: which is this company that you know, he's been in
Speaker 6: Hollywood for ten years. Technically he's like an experienced producer.
Speaker 6: This man is forty three years old, which for like,
Speaker 6: you know, the CEO of a billion you know, he
Speaker 6: started with a generous loan from Daddy Larry. Let's just
Speaker 6: say and yeah, you know, I think people are very
Speaker 6: upset obviously because he's a Trump ally, right the Allisons
Speaker 6: or Trump allies. He has literally said, I'm gonna make
Speaker 6: more right wing movies, you know, like you know, the
Speaker 6: Daily Daily Wire. You know, they were all washing out,
Speaker 6: but now they'll probably have contracts or whatever. You know,
Speaker 6: who knows. Like it's going to be money. But a
Speaker 6: lot of people are also saying that this is just
Speaker 6: for CNN, and that's actually not true. So a thing
Speaker 6: that is important to know is that the cable part
Speaker 6: of this deal Netflix was going to spin off the cable.
Speaker 6: The Discovery channel at CNN was going to spin off
Speaker 6: all the cable. So if he just wanted CNN and
Speaker 6: he could have waited for the Netflix deal to go through,
Speaker 6: and he could have just bought it on the market
Speaker 6: for a steal. Because the thing about cable is it's
Speaker 6: losing money. If you look at Okay, this isn't really
Speaker 6: dark fact, and I apologies everyone, but if you look
Speaker 6: at the rate of cable subscription costs, if you look
Speaker 6: at a meta aggregate data of it, the price of
Speaker 6: the annual subscription to cable goes up by the distributed
Speaker 6: amount of the previous year's subscription costs that were lost.
Speaker 2: By boomers dying Jesus Christ.
Speaker 6: So basically it is a literally dying It is a
Speaker 6: literally dying market. The only people who still pay for
Speaker 6: cable other than institutional forces are like people above sixty,
Speaker 6: and they're just literally dying, and the price goes up
Speaker 6: as more and more of them dying.
Speaker 5: It is.
Speaker 6: It is over as a business. Cable even ESPN, Disney
Speaker 6: is trying to get rid of ESPN. Even sports are
Speaker 6: valueless now not valueless, I mean, it's still billions of
Speaker 6: dollars obviously, but these.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, if you look at what ESPN's
Speaker 2: like trying to do about this, they're like just turning
Speaker 2: into an influencer factory, yeah, with just like rich eyes
Speaker 2: and then like all these fucking unhinged dipshits exactly.
Speaker 6: So anyway, so people are pretty like despairing about it
Speaker 6: because I think it's about CNN. But if it was
Speaker 6: just about CNN, like I said, they could have just
Speaker 6: waited and gotten it for a song. David Ellison really
Speaker 6: thinks he's a he's cosplaying as a movie producer but
Speaker 6: because he has so much money, he's succeeding. Yeah, of
Speaker 6: the movies he's produced that you might like, although I
Speaker 6: didn't like it, but a lot of people like Top
Speaker 6: Gun Maverick like it's fun. I guess like fun.
Speaker 2: Everything about that movie suddenly just like clicks into focus.
Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, oh oh.
Speaker 6: I just want you to know that Tapka Maverick is
Speaker 6: the greatest work of art that he produced by some
Speaker 6: extreme margin. This guy's responsible for Terminators five and six
Speaker 6: that would be a dark fight and Genesis.
Speaker 2: Oh no.
Speaker 6: He produced on Geostorm, which you may remember came too
Speaker 6: late to capitalize on the disaster thing. In twenty seventeen,
Speaker 6: he made the Gemini Man movie, which is what Will
Speaker 6: Smith fought Will Smith with weird yet aging technology.
Speaker 2: Oh. I basically remember seeing TV correction.
Speaker 6: It kind of killed Will Smith's marketability as a star.
Speaker 6: Like that was kind of the film like after Earth Chaalan,
Speaker 6: But he's responsible for ending Will Smith. He did this
Speaker 6: the Spy Kids reboot which I kids Armageddon from twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: No, this guy Jesus.
Speaker 6: Has made just really bad movies.
Speaker 2: All of these weird right wing people are all like
Speaker 2: the thing they want to do is make movies. This
Speaker 2: is like, what's like killing the Daily Wire?
Speaker 7: Is it?
Speaker 2: They decided to be a movie company and it turns
Speaker 2: out they can't make movies. But it's like this guy
Speaker 2: is like, what if you had that but backed by
Speaker 2: like the entire tech capital apparatus and your dad was
Speaker 2: fucking Larry Ellison, the Oracle guy, like one of the
Speaker 2: richest test fascists who's ever lived.
Speaker 6: Then you can do it. Then you can just buy
Speaker 6: yourself a movie studio, and you can do it because
Speaker 6: the thing movies need is money.
Speaker 2: And then you can keep buying all their movie studios.
Speaker 6: But and this is a bit contrarian. I'm not sure
Speaker 6: that this is worse for movies than Netflix getting it,
Speaker 6: because Netflix would have likely sabotaged what was remaining of
Speaker 6: WB's theatrical business model, right, Like Netflix doesn't like the theater.
Speaker 6: Now they've been trying to get into theatrical because that's like,
Speaker 6: you know, it's cash on the table, you know, it's
Speaker 6: how you build. It's the greatest marketing on Earth, right,
Speaker 6: And you when you have a big hit film, then
Speaker 6: that's a franchise. You get TV shows, you get theme parks,
Speaker 6: you get you know, lunchboxes, toys, t shirts, you get resales,
Speaker 6: you get a reboot ten years down the line, right,
Speaker 6: you get licensing, so they want that. But but Netflix
Speaker 6: is really I mean, they hate movies. Netflix literally has
Speaker 6: a production design, a design philosophy of making movies that
Speaker 6: are designed for people who aren't looking at them, so
Speaker 6: that the characters say what they're doing. I mean, there's
Speaker 6: a big article that came out about this a few
Speaker 6: weeks ago, like, yeah, Netflix is a nightmare company. So
Speaker 6: it's a real it's a real Cilly and carib this
Speaker 6: kind of situation. Yeah, right, Like you've got this fascist creep.
Speaker 6: But at least he like really thinks he likes movies,
Speaker 6: you know, Like I don't know anyway, the play being.
Speaker 6: People are very upset about this news because it's happened
Speaker 6: to you because he's a Trump ally, there's this political
Speaker 6: angle they were making all this noise, they were begging
Speaker 6: Trump to do it. Y'all are thirty years late to
Speaker 6: this being a problem. Like I'm not trying to be like,
Speaker 6: I'm not trying to be like that whatever.
Speaker 2: Like Noah, like, but like.
Speaker 6: We are well, but like having three movie studios instead
Speaker 6: of two, like you're already doing pretty bad. Like in
Speaker 6: the thirties, as I gave you in that little pot
Speaker 6: of history, in the thirties, Hollywood was so brutally integrated
Speaker 6: that they literally, the federal government literally broke it apart
Speaker 6: at the height. At the height of the studio system.
Speaker 6: The biggest company at the time, which I believe with
Speaker 6: MGM was the big studio, controlled eighteen percent of the
Speaker 6: market of the film market, which is massive. I mean
Speaker 6: the market of anything. Eighteen percent the market is obscene hideous. Yeah,
Speaker 6: Disney in a bunch of the past years has run
Speaker 6: forty percent of the market world wide, world wide, not messic,
Speaker 6: So like we are already at this level of concentration,
Speaker 6: like the fact that it keeps going, Like, yes, it
Speaker 6: does mean there will be fewer and fewer movies. It
Speaker 6: does mean more layoffs. It means things are getting worse.
Speaker 6: But you know, we've been here. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 6: I think thirty seven. I think it's actually only thirty
Speaker 6: seven percent.
Speaker 2: Of thirty seven Oh wow, wow, yeah, three percent.
Speaker 6: Sorry, round up, I'm sorry about that.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, And this is something I think gets back
Speaker 2: to one of the sort of political answers that I've
Speaker 2: been seeing to this is like, you know, this return
Speaker 2: from kind of like the left of the Democratic Party
Speaker 2: to being like, oh, we should talk about like anti
Speaker 2: monopoly and we should do like trust busting again. And
Speaker 2: it's like probably, yeah, but we did this right, Like,
Speaker 2: we did this, we got rid of the monopolies, and
Speaker 2: then they came back, and it's like this is you know,
Speaker 2: this is this is the problem is that this is
Speaker 2: this is basically a structural problem of capital is this
Speaker 2: kind of resolidation and you can break up the monopolies,
Speaker 2: but they'll just reform. It requires you to win the
Speaker 2: battle forever. And all the monopolies have to do is
Speaker 2: get like one fascist elected or get like like all
Speaker 2: they need is one Ronald Reagan and you just lose everything. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And it's like okay, like this this is a problem
Speaker 2: that can't be solved just by tinkering on the edges
Speaker 2: of the system. You have to actually destroy the conditions
Speaker 2: that make it possible. And those are regulatory conditions. Those
Speaker 2: are hold on why are people allowed to own this shit?
Speaker 6: Yeah? And I think that's exactly right. And I think
Speaker 6: you know, one of the things about monopoli the station,
Speaker 6: which is famous. One of the things that even capitalists
Speaker 6: don't like about monopolies is that the quality goes down famous, yeah, right,
Speaker 6: because you don't you don't know, you don't have to
Speaker 6: compete whatever, there's literally no reason to try and make
Speaker 6: the product good. But like one of the things about
Speaker 6: the concentration of IP, and like one of the things
Speaker 6: that's like sort of scary about it's consolidation in general.
Speaker 6: And this is a fact that's really important to understand.
Speaker 6: When you own a bucket of intellectual property. Let's say
Speaker 6: you own Sesame Street, right, which is one that's not owned.
Speaker 6: So it's a good example to use because it's weird
Speaker 6: when you own sesame Street, and if you start to
Speaker 6: make products of Sesame Street, it means that every idea
Speaker 6: that isn't Sesame Street but threatens to become more popular
Speaker 6: than Sesame Street is a threat. So it is if
Speaker 6: you own, if you own enough IP, is in your
Speaker 6: logical material interest to stop new ideas from being made,
Speaker 6: because every new idea is competition. If you own the
Speaker 6: back catalog of Bob Dylan, for as like some of
Speaker 6: these investment firms, do you I think he's I think
Speaker 6: he has sold to Hypnosis or one of these big
Speaker 6: There are these big music investment firms that own the
Speaker 6: rights to all of these old songs. If you guys,
Speaker 6: If y'all remember, in twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, all movie
Speaker 6: trailers suddenly started having weird sad girl covers of like
Speaker 6: sixties and seventies pop songs. Do you remember this era?
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, yeah, the sad guitargra and I was just
Speaker 6: like what happened in like Hollywood? Was there like some
Speaker 6: weird trend. No, what happened was these investment firms got
Speaker 6: hold of it, and if they can release a new
Speaker 6: cover version of a song, they hit the property rights twice,
Speaker 6: so they get it on the new they get it
Speaker 6: on the new play, and then people go back to
Speaker 6: the old ones they're reminded of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's worse too, because the new ones are all.
Speaker 6: God and And this is only possible because of the
Speaker 6: way that the streaming services got consolidated and that they
Speaker 6: pay per play. Because pay per play, as everyone knows,
Speaker 6: completely screws artists. There's just no way to make any
Speaker 6: money off that. But if you own a massive library
Speaker 6: like the UM, like the BMG or sony universal. If
Speaker 6: you own a library like that, you do nothing and
Speaker 6: you make billions a year, right, so it becomes this permanent,
Speaker 6: perfect rent that you never have to worry about. So
Speaker 6: all you have to do is buy enough musical IP
Speaker 6: and then try and get new artists who are hot
Speaker 6: to cover your old ip. So this is like this
Speaker 6: really weird esoteric seeming. You know, it's bailed on the
Speaker 6: division between particular recording copyrights and the copyrights of like
Speaker 6: individual of the songwriting. It's like built on this sort
Speaker 6: of weird esoteric structure of intellectual property law, which like
Speaker 6: when you start talking about it, people's eyes literally roll
Speaker 6: in the back of their head, right, like they like
Speaker 6: fall over in a daisy pops up the cartoon. They're
Speaker 6: just dead. That's not interesting. But like because of that,
Speaker 6: for five years, when you went to the grocery store,
Speaker 6: you would be in a weird, uncanny valley where you
Speaker 6: were hearing a song that you thought you recognized but
Speaker 6: was like slightly different.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Right, So the entire material structure of the world, like
Speaker 6: the psychic structure of the world, gets transformed by these
Speaker 6: weird exploits over like financial loopholes by the worst people
Speaker 6: on earth whose goal is to never let you hear
Speaker 6: a new song, right, Like, they'd never want you to
Speaker 6: hear new music again. They just want the boomer tracks
Speaker 6: to play forever with like new versions by you know.
Speaker 6: They just want Charlie XCX to record fucking Jefferson Airplane.
Speaker 6: Like that's there. That's their wettest dream, you know. And
Speaker 6: all that shit is going on in the backgrounde of
Speaker 6: your life, right like, I mean it's not it's it's
Speaker 6: but it's affecting the psychic atmosphere. It's producing nostalgia, it's
Speaker 6: producing all these affects that are rife for fascism. It
Speaker 6: makes people want to go back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like, okay, what happened the last time we
Speaker 2: saw like the completely unhinged like concentration of all capitals
Speaker 2: a monopolies, It was like, well, all that capital was
Speaker 2: liquidated by World War Two. There was World War One
Speaker 2: as well, too, right, these were both to a larger stent.
Speaker 2: And this is something that you know, if you go
Speaker 2: back and read anyone who's doing any political analysis about
Speaker 2: World War One in the lead up to it and
Speaker 2: as it's happening, the thing everyone is talking about is
Speaker 2: is the consolidation monopoly capital, and I think you can
Speaker 2: argue maybe that the early eighteen hundreds had like a
Speaker 2: larger consolidation, just in the sense of, like I'm questionable
Speaker 2: as to whether this is just because it's too expensive
Speaker 2: to literally run a country, but like we haven't quite
Speaker 2: returned to like the East India company has an army
Speaker 2: and they conquer countries periodically, but like I think it's
Speaker 2: just because that's too expensive and you'd rather just outsource
Speaker 2: that to the state.
Speaker 6: But it's less farther than your thing, because oh yeah,
Speaker 6: the part of the way that it outsourced us to
Speaker 6: the state. And this isn't this, this is all suffered
Speaker 6: my upcoming book which you can pre order. Now, that's
Speaker 6: true the World Trade Organization. One of the things that
Speaker 6: it did when you joined the WTO, and this was
Speaker 6: done by lobbyists, mostly film and pharma and chemical lobbyists
Speaker 6: from the US sense, if you join the WTO, you
Speaker 6: have to accept you don't not only have to accept
Speaker 6: their copyright and piracy law, you have to agree to
Speaker 6: build copyright courts and copyright police in your country Jesus Christ,
Speaker 6: so that if say Apple sees you making a fake iPhone,
Speaker 6: they have a liberal legal procedure domestic to your country
Speaker 6: to force you to stop to smash those prices. Major
Speaker 6: corporations can get police in Vietnam to go in and
Speaker 6: light a warehouse on fire because it's full of faked goods,
Speaker 6: like without ever leaving the US, right, So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: the company's more dintributed through these world trade organizations.
Speaker 2: Well, they did the order liberal thing of where we're
Speaker 2: using the super rested apparatus to negate the sovereignty of
Speaker 2: the state by creating the super state which we run.
Speaker 6: Yes, so I mean I'm obviously interested in the IP
Speaker 6: and the cultural angle. This is the only law like
Speaker 6: this in any of these agreements. All the rest of
Speaker 6: the trade agreements, like they can negotiate. But like, part
Speaker 6: of what's so obscene about Trump's tariffs is that the
Speaker 6: US already had this. It was called the Priority watch List.
Speaker 6: They just had this list in the White House where
Speaker 6: they could just say you're not doing a good job
Speaker 6: enough stopping piracy. And it gives the White House unilateral
Speaker 6: capacity to create trade embargoes on people without going to Congress.
Speaker 6: Like this was all the tariffs, which also hurt your
Speaker 6: economy obviously, but even if they worked the way Trump
Speaker 6: imagines they do, like he already had that power and
Speaker 6: like other presidents have been using it for decades. Big
Speaker 6: visible sanctions like what they put on Iran or Venezuela
Speaker 6: are a much more dramatic upscale. But the priority watch list,
Speaker 6: they can just threaten to upgrade you from on the
Speaker 6: watch list to a priority on that and you will
Speaker 6: watch countries fold entirely on trade policy, Like it's crazy. So, like,
Speaker 6: one of the things that's interesting about this moment and
Speaker 6: about the Trump this moment is that they're ripping apart
Speaker 6: their own infrastructure. Yeah, because they literally just don't understand
Speaker 6: how it works.
Speaker 2: No, It's like it's like that you had it to
Speaker 2: an aircraft carrier and they're ripping out the copper wires,
Speaker 2: just trying to tell it and it's like, you have
Speaker 2: an aircraft carrier, what are we doing?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 2: God, exactly.
Speaker 6: You know. So again, like I think there is this
Speaker 6: talk about the consolidation of culture, and I think, like
Speaker 6: you know, people like the Ellison's are just they're just
Speaker 6: vulgar at it. Like the thing is like Mike Eisner
Speaker 6: was better at it, like Bob iger is, who is
Speaker 6: the CEO of Disney currently other he's about to step down.
Speaker 6: Bob Iger saw them through the acquisition of Marvel and
Speaker 6: Star Wars and all that. He is an incredible I mean,
Speaker 6: you know, ever, whatever his team, he himself is a
Speaker 6: pretty unimpressive guy. But like, you know, like other than
Speaker 6: internal politics, which is what all CEOs are good at anyway,
Speaker 6: you know, like these these these companies were already good
Speaker 6: at this, and like what has happened is that a
Speaker 6: wing of the capitalists who are really bad at it
Speaker 6: and really resentful because they're all sort of like the
Speaker 6: David Allison's in the world. They're all the resentful fail
Speaker 6: sons of wealth who you know, they want more power
Speaker 6: and more respect and they don't appreciate how much their
Speaker 6: shit is already built on the very thing they claim
Speaker 6: to want to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and I guess it is to some extent
Speaker 2: a kind of funny like the election of Trump. And
Speaker 2: also just sort of Ellison just like devouring this is
Speaker 2: what it was like third Studio that he's eaten in
Speaker 2: like five years, and like all all these forces being
Speaker 2: devoured by this. This is like well, yeah, like this
Speaker 2: is what happens when you set up a system like this,
Speaker 2: Eventually there's going to be a bigger fish who's just
Speaker 2: going to devour you because they have, for example, Oracle
Speaker 2: behind them, which is just an amount of capital that
Speaker 2: like outside of like Disney, you can't have that kind
Speaker 2: of capital, right, And like with Trump, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you finally created a monster that is large enough to
Speaker 2: shatter the extremely della kit and complicated system that you did.
Speaker 2: And it's also just doesn't understand it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly. And I think like if you want to
Speaker 6: see at the future of Hollywood looks like, I mean,
Speaker 6: you know, you can go worse than to look at China. Right,
Speaker 6: China is the most dynamic film market. It overtook the
Speaker 6: US as the number one value of the box office
Speaker 6: in twenty twenty two, I think I think it did
Speaker 6: in twenty twenty one, but that was still COVID shutdown affected.
Speaker 6: Twenty twenty two or twenty twenty three, China became an
Speaker 6: actual of the actual plurality of ticket sales in the
Speaker 6: world by dollar, if not by number. By number, they've
Speaker 6: already long surpassed the US. Yeah, but the way that
Speaker 6: Chinese film companies work is like they're all pretty nakedly
Speaker 6: financial companies like ten Cent and Ali Baba, right, and
Speaker 6: like the like these are companies, they're just already from
Speaker 6: other sectors, and they're just like we have cash, we
Speaker 6: use the cash to make a movie, yeah, which is
Speaker 6: what the studios always did too, Right. I want to
Speaker 6: be really clear, like I don't want to romanticize, but
Speaker 6: like you know, that's where it always was, right, And
Speaker 6: it's just that like in the turn of the century
Speaker 6: when Hollywood was being made, industries were just more divided.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 6: The reason to talk about all of this business stuff
Speaker 6: on some level, I mean, it's interesting on its own
Speaker 6: as history, it's interesting as a critique of capitalism, but
Speaker 6: I think it's also interesting because it affects the aesthetics,
Speaker 6: like of what the movies that get made. Right. And
Speaker 6: I think when we think about when people think about
Speaker 6: fascist propaganda, you know, we think about the Nazis, right, obviously,
Speaker 6: because the Nazis had the longest running fascist propaganda machine
Speaker 6: in the world. They had the Ministry of Culture under Gerbels, Right.
Speaker 6: And I think when we talk about Nazi propaganda, we
Speaker 6: think about triumph for the will, and we think about
Speaker 6: stuff like Juden Zeus, right, like extremely horrifying anti Semitic bullshit. Yeah,
Speaker 6: extremely horrifying anti Semitic movies. There were two of them
Speaker 6: in the ten years that Gerbels ran the un which
Speaker 6: is the film company that made movies for Germany. The
Speaker 6: vast majority, the vast majority of films under the Life
Speaker 6: were frothy comedies and musicals and adventure stories. Because the
Speaker 6: principle that Girbels operating on was called the orchestra principle,
Speaker 6: and he believed that you should just actually art should
Speaker 6: just be reduced to creating feelings. It should be totally
Speaker 6: de intellectualized, and then very little of that art remains.
Speaker 6: Those movies are mid. You know, the movies made by
Speaker 6: Utha are not good, like even the ones that are
Speaker 6: not offensive, they're just mid. But they all do the
Speaker 6: same thing. They all work together around a principle of
Speaker 6: certain principles around family and romantic love and domestic life,
Speaker 6: most of it inoffensive in and of itself. And so
Speaker 6: I think when we think about Ellison taking over, I
Speaker 6: think we imagine, you know, as we were joking about
Speaker 6: at the beginning, shit like the Daily Wire, anti woke,
Speaker 6: Cinderella or whatever the fuck. Yeah, and I allowed to cuss,
Speaker 6: I'm doing so much of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all the time. Okay, thank god we are not
Speaker 2: regulated by the FCC.
Speaker 6: Let's go, No one is these days.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess we technically are, but we're not
Speaker 2: under the radio regulation, so we can say whatever we want.
Speaker 6: Perfect love that. But like, fascist filmmaking has not looked
Speaker 6: like that for the most part in the history of it.
Speaker 6: Fascist filmmaking looks like family adventure fair often, and I
Speaker 6: think we have been so blinded to the way that
Speaker 6: this happens that we imagine that Ellison taking over is
Speaker 6: suddenly going to mean that now there's going to be
Speaker 6: fascist movies in theaters. But like, have y'all been to
Speaker 6: the movies? Yes, Like have y'all seen what Ward of
Speaker 6: Mothers did with like the Snyder verse?
Speaker 2: Like yeah, like did you did you watch The Beekeeper?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: Speaking of Netflix? Like that was the most fascist movie
Speaker 2: I've ever seen exactly. It is literally it is a
Speaker 2: movie that is just a guy shooting a bunch of people,
Speaker 2: and then the background superstructure is an explanation of what
Speaker 2: the furory is, which is like the course that is
Speaker 2: outside of the order, that is able to violate the
Speaker 2: rules of the order in order to in order to
Speaker 2: create the order itself, except it's a guy called the
Speaker 2: bee Keeper and he just shoots people like.
Speaker 6: It's it's that's pretty bad.
Speaker 1: That's like that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I did not watch that one, and I like state, it's.
Speaker 2: Really unhan, I want to it with my family. Nightmare.
Speaker 2: Holy shit, it's going insane. Yeah, things are so bad that.
Speaker 6: Like there was a movie, Nobody with Bob Odenkirk that
Speaker 6: came out in twenty nineteen, and it was basically a
Speaker 6: parody of those like Liam Neeson, you know, the John
Speaker 6: Wick movies and like Liam Neeson like Dad then taken
Speaker 6: stuff right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was a parody.
Speaker 6: Maybe you could be clued in by the fact that
Speaker 6: it was Bob Odenkirk and it was filmed with comedians.
Speaker 6: Maybe you could be cluted by the fact that he's
Speaker 6: fighting because they took his daughter's Hello Kitty bracelet. Like
Speaker 6: there's a pretty like a dry but it's a dry
Speaker 6: plays a very dry.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Every single professional film critic reviewed it like it was
Speaker 6: dead serious, like Bob was to become the next Liam Neeson.
Speaker 6: And part of that is because they shot good action sequences,
Speaker 6: Like he did a good job with this satire. But
Speaker 6: then what happens, what happened next is that now there's
Speaker 6: a nobody too, and it's completely forgotten the joke and
Speaker 6: it's not good either.
Speaker 2: So like Jesus fucking Christ, yeah.
Speaker 6: And Bob when and Kirk just like he had this
Speaker 6: one window where he could really sell that he couldn't
Speaker 6: sell it in the sequel. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: It's it's the jort Head sequels right exactly.
Speaker 6: But like we're just in a time of extreme literalism,
Speaker 6: where like everything is really really like script driven. It's
Speaker 6: really on its face, it's really textual. Everything is just
Speaker 6: selling something else. Everything can possibly be sequel. Nothing really changes,
Speaker 6: politics only exists as bureaucracy. These are all deeply fascist concepts.
Speaker 6: They're just more subtle than goose stepping SS uniforms. You know.
Speaker 6: Part of what's so funny about the Daily Wire is
Speaker 6: it's like like they come for Disney, like you can't
Speaker 6: do anything to make a more fascist pot Like Disney
Speaker 6: entertains people and makes the flash as populous, like they're
Speaker 6: just bad filmmakers and that kind of matters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there is a chance that like I
Speaker 2: don't know, Ellison is such a dumb ass that he
Speaker 2: just tries to do it anyways, like he just tries
Speaker 2: to be like fuck it. Well, but even then, like
Speaker 2: he hasn't really made like a stereotype of Nazi movies.
Speaker 2: He's made like actual Nazi movies. Just to say, the
Speaker 2: fucking Top gunn Baverick.
Speaker 6: And people loved Top Mavericks. People were like, yeah, I
Speaker 6: guess it's maybe kind of problematic, like but we love
Speaker 6: you know. It's like that movie is like literally propaganda
Speaker 6: for the Air Force. Like I thought it was fun. Yeah,
Speaker 6: don't get me wrong, but like people are have been
Speaker 6: really trained to not see that stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's like we're like now fighting the war
Speaker 2: at that movie was propaganda for yes, exactly, like we're
Speaker 2: literally we literally are fighting. We made it a road
Speaker 2: like were we've bolved a ride at all.
Speaker 6: That fifteens went down so the first on the Gulf War.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because they got shut down by Allies air defenses.
Speaker 6: You know why we didn't have Maverick, We didn't have
Speaker 6: Tom Cruise training them. And that's what Allison's gonna do.
Speaker 6: That's why I'm happy he's merging it. Because our our
Speaker 6: brave boys and the skies are going to be safer.
Speaker 2: God.
Speaker 6: So yeah, anyways, I don't know where I'm going with this,
Speaker 6: because obviously things are bad, and anyone betting against things
Speaker 6: getting worse over the last ten years has lost their pants, right,
Speaker 6: But things can get worse. But like, also there is
Speaker 6: the actual object, the actual film object exists, and like
Speaker 6: part of what has been hard about Hollywood, the reason
Speaker 6: they've built these monopoly structus, the reason they've built these
Speaker 6: pease structures is because because audiences are fickle, and that's annoying,
Speaker 6: and you can't just like force stuff down their throats
Speaker 6: and they're not going to just like buy something for
Speaker 6: sure every time, and you have to sort of seduce them,
Speaker 6: right like, it's it's you have to you have to
Speaker 6: make something they want to see. Right The MCU was
Speaker 6: unstoppable until it stopped, and now no one likes it
Speaker 6: and it's really annoying, right like, and they still make
Speaker 6: their money back on the MCU, Like they're doing fine. No,
Speaker 6: do not play a violin for Kevin Feige. He's doing fine.
Speaker 6: You know, he's crying on his third jot, you know.
Speaker 6: But like, but so I guess what I'm saying is
Speaker 6: that like, is that, like, as we enter into more
Speaker 6: and more naked versions of this, what it should help
Speaker 6: us do you, rather than think, oh my god, all
Speaker 6: is lost? Is to reflect on how we got here already,
Speaker 6: How often we were already here under liberalism, under Biden,
Speaker 6: under just regular capitalist conditions, how often we've already been here,
Speaker 6: reevaluate the way we think about what good culture could
Speaker 6: look like, and then start to move.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I want to come back to something I said a
Speaker 2: few years ago when we did a show with Gare
Speaker 2: about the People's Joker, and.
Speaker 6: I saw the TV glow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw the TV glob. I was about to
Speaker 2: say the one about the age who has the bad
Speaker 2: ending and never transitions.
Speaker 6: Yes, the horror of you about not transitioning yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I think there is extent to which, you know,
Speaker 2: there was a really brief attempt to sort of sublimate
Speaker 2: transness into film for like one year. But you know,
Speaker 2: like we're the people who've been spat out of this,
Speaker 2: but also trans people are making movies at a rate
Speaker 2: that has never happened before. Ever, There's never been anything
Speaker 2: like it. And you know, like the wachowskis like have
Speaker 2: a studio now where they're pumping out a bunch of
Speaker 2: trans movies, and like, you know, we're getting like Manhunter,
Speaker 2: and we're getting like a whole bunch of other stuff.
Speaker 2: And you know, the thing I said a few years
Speaker 2: ago I think is even more desperate and true now
Speaker 2: is that like transfilm is one of the last things
Speaker 2: fighting for the existence of film as a medium and
Speaker 2: not as a way to sell you toys and like
Speaker 2: fifteen dollars popcorn.
Speaker 6: Hey, they also tell you all expenses paid vacations. You
Speaker 6: have to go into debt for it. Okay, me that
Speaker 6: support trans film, support local film. And the thing about
Speaker 6: movies is that movies are bad. But the other thing
Speaker 6: is that movies are good. So it's hard.
Speaker 2: The dialectic InMotion, yeah, yeah, Look, I will say this,
Speaker 2: there has been for many thousands of years a second
Speaker 2: dialectic operating, and then it's a dialectic labor and capital.
Speaker 2: That's probably I probably backdated capital too far, but you know,
Speaker 2: fuck it, I don't know. We could resolve We could
Speaker 2: resolve movies good in movies bad by resolving the other
Speaker 2: dialectic of capital and labor, by simply destroying the categories
Speaker 2: and ending the class system. I believe in us we
Speaker 2: can make a movie good again. Movie has never been good.
Speaker 2: There can be a new future. We're movie good.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right exactly. Yeah, yeah, I believe.
Speaker 2: One final thing, VICKI where where can people find your book?
Speaker 6: Yes, it's being put up by Haymarket, so you can
Speaker 6: go to their website. I also have a link to
Speaker 6: my bookshop page via a Blue Sky. I'm Vicky Acab
Speaker 6: on Blue Sky. So if you want to watch me
Speaker 6: posting through it, you know, come hang out, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Talk to libraries about it. Ask a local if you
Speaker 6: have a local bookshop, asking them that stuff really helps
Speaker 6: make a huge difference. And yeah, I would really appreciate
Speaker 6: any of that. If you're if you're interested in how
Speaker 6: Disney destroyed the world and in the ways that we've
Speaker 6: been talking about here today, can read way more about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I don't know, Vicky. Vicky's book's good? Can
Speaker 2: confirm have read they are?
Speaker 1: They're good?
Speaker 8: Oh?
Speaker 6: Thanks man.
Speaker 1: We should have kept working on that bomb that they
Speaker 1: thought would turn the entire enemy army gay, which was
Speaker 1: the thing they really put money into.
Speaker 2: This is it could happen here.
Speaker 7: Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the
Speaker 7: White House, the Crumpling world, and what it means for you.
Speaker 7: I'm Garrison Davis today. I'm joined by Miawong, James Stout,
Speaker 7: and Robert Evans. This episode, we are covering the week
Speaker 7: of February twenty fifth to March fourth. A House committee
Speaker 7: just today on Wednesday, as subpoenaed ag pambonid to testify
Speaker 7: on her handling of the Epstein investigation, with five Republicans
Speaker 7: joining all Democrats in the vote. Hillary Clinton was asked
Speaker 7: about Pizzagate and UFOs during her congressional testimony on Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 7: More on that next week, in a special episode, God
Speaker 7: and Netflix declined to raise their offer to buy Warner Brothers,
Speaker 7: resulting in Paramount winning the bidding war. FCC chairman Brendan
Speaker 7: Carr held CNBC that the Paramount deal would be approved
Speaker 7: quote unquote pretty quickly and that Netflix quote would have
Speaker 7: had a very difficult path saying the Paramount deal is
Speaker 7: quote a lot cleaner, does not raise all the same
Speaker 7: types of concerns unquote. More on that in the episode
Speaker 7: before this one insane, he just said that outline and yeah,
Speaker 7: on Thursday, February twenty sixth, almost a year after Mahmoud
Speaker 7: Khalil was first attained, ICE agents arrested another Columbia student
Speaker 7: in the early hours of the morning. Shortly after six am,
Speaker 7: five playing clothes agents from the Department of Homeland Security
Speaker 7: showed up outside a Columbia apartment building without a warrant,
Speaker 7: demanding to be let inside. The agents gained entry by
Speaker 7: falsely telling the building's superintendent that they were police searching
Speaker 7: for a missing child, even bringing pictures of this fake kid.
Speaker 7: The agents used this lie to enter into the apartment
Speaker 7: of twenty nine year old student Ellie Agaheva, where she
Speaker 7: was then arrested and taken off campus. After being detained,
Speaker 7: Agaheva posted on Instagram quote, dhs illegally arrested me. Please help.
Speaker 7: This same day, Mayormamdanni happened to be meeting with President
Speaker 7: Trump in the White House regarding federal funding for the
Speaker 7: Sunnyside Yards housing project. During this meeting, the mayor voiced
Speaker 7: opposition to ICE raids and concerned about the detention of
Speaker 7: the Columbia student. Earlier that morning.
Speaker 13: I shared my concern with the President about IS's detention
Speaker 13: of Columbia student Elmina Agayeva yesterday morning, as well as
Speaker 13: the detention of four additional New Yorkers in relation to
Speaker 13: the university, Mahmud Khalil, Masen, Mahdawi, jinse O Chung, and
Speaker 13: the Kakordia. I asked that their cases be dropped. I'm
Speaker 13: grateful that shortly after our meeting, the President called me
Speaker 13: to inform me that Elmina would be imminently released, and
Speaker 13: indeed she was.
Speaker 7: The mayor also discussed the release of Akajeva in a
Speaker 7: question during this press conference.
Speaker 8: During your advocacy with President Trump, what do you think
Speaker 8: the winning argument was and did.
Speaker 4: They reverse course?
Speaker 13: All I can tell you is what happened, which is
Speaker 13: that I shared directly with the President and a list
Speaker 13: of names of Columbia students and those who've also been
Speaker 13: detained because of their activity on Columbia campus, and that
Speaker 13: these actions do nothing to advance the cause of public safety,
Speaker 13: and I asked that these cases be dropped, and the
Speaker 13: President said that he would look into it. Soon after
Speaker 13: the meeting, I received a phone call from the President
Speaker 13: saying that he was going to eminently release her.
Speaker 7: At three forty five pm, Agaheva posted on Instagram that
Speaker 7: she'd been released and was quote unquote safe and okay.
Speaker 7: On Thursday night, a dhspookesperson told a reporter that Akaheva's
Speaker 7: student visa was terminated in twenty sixteen for failing to
Speaker 7: attend classes and that quote ICE placed her in removal
Speaker 7: proceedings and she's been released while she waits for her
Speaker 7: hearing unquote. The current state of her case is unknown,
Speaker 7: with neither her lawyers nor DHS providing any follow up statements.
Speaker 10: That last part is very confusing to me, right, because
Speaker 10: if she had lost her student visa for non attendant
Speaker 10: that can happen, that would have shown up in SEBZ, right,
Speaker 10: and that was a decade ago. That part confused me.
Speaker 10: I just so I was scanning it right before we started,
Speaker 10: and I figured i'd just ask you in the episode.
Speaker 7: But yeah, I mean, she has no pending cases with
Speaker 7: DHS in their system, or no pending appeals. It's very
Speaker 7: unclear what happened here or the exact cause of why
Speaker 7: she was arrested and the state of whatever visa she
Speaker 7: is on.
Speaker 10: Right, Yeah, she could have been on a completely different visa.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's very unclear.
Speaker 10: There's a lot here that I'd like to know many
Speaker 10: such cases, I guess, so to start with a couple
Speaker 10: of immigration things, do you want to send it? Hearing yesterday,
Speaker 10: that's Tuesday, Christine Nome doubled down on the claim she's
Speaker 10: previously made about Alex Pretty, which are as far as
Speaker 10: we can tell, false, right, saying his action to a
Speaker 10: quote the definition of domestic terrorism. She's in the House
Speaker 10: testifying today, So I will try and summarize both those
Speaker 10: testimonies in next week's ED just just so we don't
Speaker 10: end up covering this twice. And we've got a lot
Speaker 10: to address today. This is breaking news right before we
Speaker 10: released the podcast. Christine Noam, the Secretary of Homeland Security,
Speaker 10: is going to be leaving that job at the end
Speaker 10: of March, and she will be replaced by current United
Speaker 10: States Senator for Oklahoma Mark Wayne Mullin. Nom will be
Speaker 10: moving into another job where she will be the Special
Speaker 10: Envoy for the Shield of the Americas, which is a
Speaker 10: security initiative for the Western hemisphere that Trump is planning
Speaker 10: on telling us more about this weekend. Mullin, for those
Speaker 10: aren't familiar, is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He
Speaker 10: has been in the House of Representatives for ten years
Speaker 10: before he was in the Senate for the last three years,
Speaker 10: and he used to be a professional mma fighter. Secondly,
Speaker 10: Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty has announced an investigation into
Speaker 10: potential misconduct by federal officers in the state, and response
Speaker 10: DHS has claimed that quote federal officials acting in the
Speaker 10: course of their ties are immune from liability under state law.
Speaker 10: This isn't true in legal terms, right, Federal officials can
Speaker 10: be prosecuted if their actions weren't necessary or proper, or
Speaker 10: were not in the course of their duties. So this
Speaker 10: pertains to the supremacy clause of the Constitution. Right, and
Speaker 10: there's a two part test for supremacy clause immunity aid
Speaker 10: the federal officials actions authorized under federal law and be
Speaker 10: that they are quote necessary, improper in the execution of
Speaker 10: their duties as a federal officer. I will link in
Speaker 10: the sources of our document to a tenth Circuit case
Speaker 10: on this. The case was about some Federal Wildlife officers
Speaker 10: who had crossed on to private land during a wolf
Speaker 10: coloring operation in Wyoming, and then Wyoming A tempted to
Speaker 10: prosecute them for trespassing, right, so we can see like
Speaker 10: a previous example of this, but it's not true that
Speaker 10: they have complete immunity from state laws, which is what's
Speaker 10: important here. I want to move on to Iran, just
Speaker 10: like most of the US military has done. But thank you,
Speaker 10: it works so hard on these Yeah. So we made
Speaker 10: a whole episode about this, which came out on Wednesday
Speaker 10: of this week, and I don't want to recap what
Speaker 10: we said there. That is why we make lots of
Speaker 10: episodes so you can go into depth on things. So
Speaker 10: I will for the most part be picking up on
Speaker 10: that by updating people and things that have happened in the
Speaker 10: twenty four hours since we recorded that. Firstly, it seems
Speaker 10: that the attacks, or E said timing was heavily driven
Speaker 10: by Israel, who were likely acting on intelligence about the
Speaker 10: whereabouts of Harmoni. The attacks occurred in the daytime, which
Speaker 10: is pretty unusual, like normally they want to time these
Speaker 10: things with moon phase. They want to do them at
Speaker 10: night just to make them safer for any of the
Speaker 10: piloted aircraft that they're using. Right. I also wanted to
Speaker 10: point out so that the source of this Israel claim,
Speaker 10: let's start there, comes from the bid response forty seven account.
Speaker 10: I guess I described that as like a White House
Speaker 10: affiliated Twitter account. I can't think of the Yeah, it's
Speaker 10: one of the accounts at the It's not White House,
Speaker 10: but it's one of the accounts that the Trump administration runs, one.
Speaker 7: Of the accounts the administration users to disseminate information.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's quotation here from Marco Rubio quote. The President
Speaker 10: made the very wise decision. We knew that there was
Speaker 10: going to be an Israeli action, We knew that that
Speaker 10: would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew
Speaker 10: that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they
Speaker 10: launched over the attacks, we would suffer higher casualties. It
Speaker 10: seems like the initial push came from Israel, right. I'd
Speaker 10: also like to add that Tafran is getting bombed very
Speaker 10: heavily as we record this, something I think is missing
Speaker 10: in that discourse. We were actually going to have an
Speaker 10: episode about the water crisis in Iran this week. For
Speaker 10: obvious reasons, we made another Iran based episode. But Iran
Speaker 10: is critically low on water. Lake Umir, which was the
Speaker 10: largest lake in Asia, actually gone now from damning from
Speaker 10: draining of aquifers, and Tehran is sitting on top of
Speaker 10: an empty aquifer, which leads to greater potential for damage,
Speaker 10: I guess with some of these large bombs that we're
Speaker 10: seeing drop there, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, it also means that absent even any of
Speaker 1: this military aggression from the US that we're seeing right now,
Speaker 1: Iran was in realistic danger of becoming a failed state. Yes,
Speaker 1: because of the sheer lack of water. That is an
Speaker 1: existential threat when your capital city is running out of water, like,
Speaker 1: there's no other way to look at that kind scale
Speaker 1: of problem. And the fact that now they're dealing with
Speaker 1: this massacre of the people who had been running things,
Speaker 1: as well as mass destruction via the air of a
Speaker 1: lot of civil infrastructure. This is just so much more
Speaker 1: of a problem, and it makes the odds of the
Speaker 1: end result of all this being a failed state in
Speaker 1: the region that leads to a humanitarian crisis on scale
Speaker 1: of the refugee crisis we saw during the early stages
Speaker 1: of the Syrians of a war much likelier.
Speaker 10: Yeah, especially when you consider that there are millions of
Speaker 10: refugees already living in Iran right from Afghanistan right Ran
Speaker 10: it has been deporting them on a massive level. But like, yes,
Speaker 10: the chances of this being an absolute humanitarian disaster are
Speaker 10: worryingly high. Tehran received one millimeter of rain. Yeah, last
Speaker 10: year according to some Guardian reporting. I read like they
Speaker 10: were already, as you said, very close to people turning
Speaker 10: on the taps and nothing coming out. Yeah, they say,
Speaker 10: is not helping that. I want to move on to
Speaker 10: these claims that we have seen in the past twenty
Speaker 10: four hours about a Kurdish partner force in eastern Kurdistan, right,
Speaker 10: And in Kurdish that would be called Roja Lat that
Speaker 10: would be Western Iran, right.
Speaker 1: Right, Like Kurdistan. The broader region is western Iran, northern Iraq,
Speaker 1: northeast Syria, southern Turkey. Right. You can draw kind of
Speaker 1: a big glob around all those parts of the world
Speaker 1: that's Kurdistan.
Speaker 10: Yeah, exactly, if you can like draw up blot encompasses
Speaker 10: all of those things. Yeah. Obviously Kurdistan is not a state,
Speaker 10: it's an area.
Speaker 2: It's not at all.
Speaker 10: That is part of the issue at stake here, kind
Speaker 10: of a big deal kind of the thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 10: So Axios has reported that Trump called Buffal Talabani and
Speaker 10: Masud Barzani, who are the leaders of the two biggest
Speaker 10: factions in Iraqi Kurdistan. Yeah at Southern Kadistan North in Iraq.
Speaker 10: The piece was written by Barak Ravine. This is not
Speaker 10: Barak's first time joining us on executive disorder. Friend of
Speaker 10: the Bad Yeah yeah, regular guest biography. People remember last
Speaker 10: time that we talked about Barak. It was in the
Speaker 10: context of a leaked proposal for peace between Russia and
Speaker 10: Ukraine that appeared to be essentially a list of Russian
Speaker 10: demands but was not present was presented as a US proposal.
Speaker 10: I will try and remember what week we talked about
Speaker 10: that and the so that link in case people want
Speaker 10: to go back, right like, I've spent a lot of
Speaker 10: time appointing out on various websites how bad this piece was.
Speaker 10: It was atrocious in its understanding of Kurdish movements. For instance,
Speaker 10: it it listed Talabani and Bazani as leaders of Iranian
Speaker 10: Kurdish factions. What yeah, Like. I think it's important to
Speaker 10: note at this point that like media perceptions of the
Speaker 10: Middle East are often formed by people whose understanding is
Speaker 10: eclipsed by the introductory part of the Wikipedia article on
Speaker 10: a given topic. Vastly like that's not an exaggeration.
Speaker 2: Like this, this is this is this is like saying
Speaker 2: Macron is the leader of like the Quebecy separatists. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like that kind of ship.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and I see that.
Speaker 1: I do believe Actually that's a separate episode. I will
Speaker 1: be actually doing that in partnership with Info Wars France.
Speaker 1: Very excited to see that. Get off the ground.
Speaker 10: Info wor France. It's a frightening concept.
Speaker 1: Like genuinely, hey baby, they're turning the frogs. Gay, we
Speaker 1: gotta do something about that. That was a French.
Speaker 10: French very any excellent. Sorry. They also kind of didn't
Speaker 10: understand that SDF and Peshmerga were distinct entities.
Speaker 1: That appears Jesus Christ wildly different in the yes and
Speaker 1: combat efficacy too.
Speaker 10: Yes, yeah, yeah, very just like unless they're talking about
Speaker 10: the Peshmega Raja I guess, which like exists largely telegram
Speaker 10: rumors these days. The piece does line up with the
Speaker 10: strategies that we are seeing though. Right there has been
Speaker 10: significant bombing of IERGC and police facilities along the border
Speaker 10: with a ruck. There have been and continue to be
Speaker 10: many Eastern Kurdish groups who are based in a rack
Speaker 10: right now. Right there has been significant bombing along the
Speaker 10: road from Halabd to Kamanche right, which would be like
Speaker 10: a road that you would use if you're planning to
Speaker 10: move some people in that way. In theory, the KDP
Speaker 10: and the p UK, so they are the two major
Speaker 10: Kurdish factions in a rack, have unified their Peshmerger. Peshmerger
Speaker 10: means those who face death. They are the armed forces
Speaker 10: that are affiliated to the two Kurdish political parties. This
Speaker 10: is really kind of a rhetorical construct because they have
Speaker 10: regional commands which effectively mirror the areas where the KDP
Speaker 10: and p UK and control anyway, but they have unified payroll,
Speaker 10: which is interesting. It is also worth noting that pro
Speaker 10: Iran groups inside Iraq have been targeting Peshmerger with drone attacks.
Speaker 10: Both sides in its conflict are bombing Iraq cration now,
Speaker 10: which really does suck for people in Iraq.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean like this conflict has been ever present. Obviously.
Speaker 1: After the Iraq War, Iran exerted a significant amount of influence.
Speaker 1: They brought explosively formed penetrators to the Shia militias in
Speaker 1: the region. Thea cleric Mattadal Sada, who was probably the
Speaker 1: most successful political figure of the war years and was
Speaker 1: very heavily involved with Iran. During the fighting in Mosul,
Speaker 1: you had Peshmurger, you had Iraqi Army soldiers generally from Baghdad,
Speaker 1: and then you had the PMFS, the Popular Mobilization Forces,
Speaker 1: and these were all Iran back militias and traveling, especially
Speaker 1: as I was with Puriage, you had always be really
Speaker 1: careful in the PMF positions because you never knew what
Speaker 1: would happen, because again they are enemies. They were tied
Speaker 1: together fighting ISIS, but they are not allied forces and
Speaker 1: they have a history of fighting each other.
Speaker 10: Yeah, that was a wild time ket a lot of
Speaker 10: people who had a lot of beef on the same
Speaker 10: side of that particular contract. It's also probably worth noting
Speaker 10: at this point that like it was the Department of Defense,
Speaker 10: not the CIA that was really driving the boat. Yes,
Speaker 10: when it came to like supporting the Kurds in Syria, Yeah,
Speaker 10: the CIA went with the TFSA right, that Turkish Free
Speaker 10: Syrian Army, which does not have a great record as
Speaker 10: far as not doing war crimes goes. I also received
Speaker 10: confirmation today that Barzani and Talibani spoke with Iran's foreign minister,
Speaker 10: so they've spoken with both Trump and the Iranian foreign minister.
Speaker 10: Kubad Talibani, who's a deputy Prime minister of Kurdistan, not
Speaker 10: the same person. It's Baffel Talabani, the leader of the PUK,
Speaker 10: made a statement to say that the Kurdistan region was
Speaker 10: not involved in the conflict. I think it's very unlikely
Speaker 10: that we will see large Peshmrger groups from northern Iraq
Speaker 10: southern Kurdistan entering Iran in the near future. I do
Speaker 10: think it's interesting that Reviede got this piece leaked to
Speaker 10: him because things don't generally get leaked because one person
Speaker 10: has a crisis of conscience. It does happen sometimes, but
Speaker 10: in events like this, it is normally a choice. And
Speaker 10: this particular story leaves the Kurdish people in a very
Speaker 10: difficult position because it puts a target directly on them
Speaker 10: for the Iranian regime, right, and they can fight or
Speaker 10: not fight, but they have been singled out as a
Speaker 10: group that is going to be the ground forces of
Speaker 10: this Israeli and US aggression, and what that means is
Speaker 10: they will be singled out for oppression at home, whether
Speaker 10: or not they fight. That leaves them in a place
Speaker 10: where they might have to chose to fight right or
Speaker 10: they might fight but not through their own choosing. There
Speaker 10: has been for some time an alliance for some time.
Speaker 10: I think twenty second of February is when it was
Speaker 10: made of five Kurdish groups, five Iranian Kurdish groups. These
Speaker 10: are Rather than saying them like phonetically, I had to
Speaker 10: read out the initials. People want to look them up
Speaker 10: pjak Pak, KDPI, and then these two groups have names
Speaker 10: not initials. There are two of the three parts of
Speaker 10: Kamala and Hubbat. It is more likely that these groups,
Speaker 10: specifically KDPI, will be willing to engage. We do know
Speaker 10: that Trump spoke to Mustafa Hidri that he's a KDPI leader.
Speaker 10: I have had sources that suggest that some Kurdish and
Speaker 10: some non Kurdish groups have at least the intention or
Speaker 10: desire to enter Iran and fight. I'm not really comfortable naming,
Speaker 10: particularly which ones I'd want DEADA sourcing on that. Yeah,
Speaker 10: what they plan to do is are unclear right. None
Speaker 10: of these Roja La groups are massive, like numerically, they
Speaker 10: don't have the manpower. However, ITV reported that weapons have
Speaker 10: been stuck piled in eastern Kurdistan for a while, and
Speaker 10: as we saw in in rajavers as we saw in
Speaker 10: southern Kokistan and the Islamic State times like, their ability
Speaker 10: to scale up their forces pretty rapidly is something that
Speaker 10: the Kurds have retained for a long time.
Speaker 1: Yet an advantage they have over so obviously, it is
Speaker 1: act true that in the months preceding this there were
Speaker 1: uprisings in Iran and tens of thousands were killed by
Speaker 1: the government, and that represents the people who in normal
Speaker 1: Iranian civil society would have been kind of best positioned
Speaker 1: to be active and a part of any sort of
Speaker 1: like government that were to follow. If the current government
Speaker 1: collapses under the onslaught being directed against it, a lot
Speaker 1: of those people are dead. That's not really the same
Speaker 1: case with the Kurdish movement, because at any given time,
Speaker 1: three quarters of the Kurdish movement is not you know.
Speaker 10: More or less is outside of a physically present.
Speaker 1: And this is what happened in Syria too. When you
Speaker 1: had other parts of the country massively depleted by the
Speaker 1: slaughter fighting asad in northeast Syria, you were able to
Speaker 1: have Kurds from southern Turkey and from northern Iraq come
Speaker 1: in and provide a lot of the backbone of what
Speaker 1: became these large and effective fighting units that were able
Speaker 1: to defeat. Isis when you're talking about, like, well, what's
Speaker 1: going to happen if the government of Iran starts to crumble.
Speaker 1: There's a pretty good odds that you wind up with
Speaker 1: a sizeable Kurdish force, and it would very likely be
Speaker 1: supported by Western at least initially by Western munitions in
Speaker 1: that chunk of Iran. Like, that's a very possible outcome.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I think it's probably if we do see like
Speaker 10: continued as strikes for the Iranian state to disappear in
Speaker 10: its current form, that needs to be a ground element, right, yes,
Speaker 10: And these are among the most likely people. It is
Speaker 10: of course important to include the context that the US
Speaker 10: is less than a month of abandoning its Kurdish allies
Speaker 10: in Syria, right Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you should never if you're if you're listening to
Speaker 1: this and a member of like a foreign militant group
Speaker 1: that the US is talking to, don't ever trust us?
Speaker 10: Yeah yeah. Bad friends, yeah yeah, bad friends indeed. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 10: not friends.
Speaker 1: At all, bad allies, not friends at all guys that
Speaker 1: will fuck you the second we can like the second
Speaker 1: we can.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I will say that the Americans in Syria was
Speaker 10: specifically there to fight. Isis they want there to aid
Speaker 10: in the curty freedom struggled, right, right, and they have
Speaker 10: been very consistent about not aiding.
Speaker 1: The other thing about Rojava was it was very explicitly
Speaker 1: not a state and not an attempt to carve out
Speaker 1: a separate state, and they were always extremely emphatic about that.
Speaker 1: So it's a very different situation than anything you're seeing
Speaker 1: with the regime change the Trump administration is working on.
Speaker 10: Yeah. Yeah, let's take a break here and then we're
Speaker 10: going to talk about boats.
Speaker 2: Huzzah.
Speaker 10: All right, we are back and it's boat time.
Speaker 1: It boat time, jam stout PhD.
Speaker 10: Yeah you can't see it, but I'm wearing my little
Speaker 10: boat hat right now. I've got one of those stripey
Speaker 10: shirts on. So the United States has sunk a submarine
Speaker 10: and a total of seventeen Iranian ships, it's claiming. In
Speaker 10: a briefing, Saint Com said they were going after the
Speaker 10: entire Iranian navy at the current time. They claimed there
Speaker 10: are no Iranian ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the
Speaker 10: Arabian golf, or the Gulf of a Man. This briefing
Speaker 10: was interesting because they explicitly made the comparison to the
Speaker 10: invasion of Iraq, not an invasion, not a war that
Speaker 10: has the greatest rep in recent months and years.
Speaker 7: Even among conservatives.
Speaker 10: At this point, Trump has made a thing of well,
Speaker 10: I mean, Trump wasn't strongly opposed to the war in
Speaker 10: Iraq right that, I think he has acknowledged that it
Speaker 10: was a mistake or the way it was conducted was
Speaker 10: poor at least. What they said here was that the
Speaker 10: scale of this bombing campaign was twice that of the
Speaker 10: shock and or bombing campaign that we saw in Iraq.
Speaker 10: They have so far used cruise missiles, air strikes B two,
Speaker 10: B one, and BE fifty two bombers, long range precision
Speaker 10: of strike missiles for the first time. They call them
Speaker 10: prisms and something called Lucas strones, which are kind of
Speaker 10: interesting to me. They are the result of the United
Speaker 10: States capturing and reverse engineering an Iranian Shaheed drone. The
Speaker 10: Shaheed is like a it sounds like a lawn mower,
Speaker 10: very distinctive, sound like I've heard them flying over and yeah,
Speaker 10: but they are one way attract drone. They're essentially a
Speaker 10: sort of guided munition. They're very cheap, and they've been
Speaker 10: very effective for Iran and for Russia, who now makes
Speaker 10: has licensed production of these drones. So it's interesting that
Speaker 10: the US is openly just saying, yeah, we saw that
Speaker 10: and we copied it.
Speaker 1: It's one of the best ideas in warfare of the
Speaker 1: laste hundred years. It's an incredibly effective platform that seals
Speaker 1: up an enormous number of holes that have always existed
Speaker 1: in modern militaries, like the capacity gap that it allows,
Speaker 1: particularly a country like Aron to seal, right, because with
Speaker 1: enough shaheeds you effectively can mimic not just the assassination
Speaker 1: capabilities of like bigger drones, but something like close air
Speaker 1: support in a way that's very hard to interdect with
Speaker 1: traditional air power.
Speaker 10: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a real sea change, and they seem to
Speaker 1: be being used effectively right now.
Speaker 10: Yep, that's cheap. There's tons of them. Ukraine they've used
Speaker 10: like intercept to drones to intercept them, right, but that
Speaker 10: requires a lot of time, technology, and human effort.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I think this is probably a good time, James,
Speaker 1: for me to talk about munitions, because as you noted,
Speaker 1: we're using a significant amount of high precision projectiles. We're
Speaker 1: using like advanced weapons systems that are made to allow
Speaker 1: us to hit targets very precisely that could not be
Speaker 1: hit with dumb musicians or with less intelligent munitions. The
Speaker 1: downside of this is that it's hard to make enough
Speaker 1: munitions to maintain on a war footing in peacetime because
Speaker 1: in peacetime it's kind of a waste of money as
Speaker 1: an industry, and so capitalism doesn't tend to unless there's
Speaker 1: a war on reward companies for producing the kind of
Speaker 1: like munitions and number in the kind of number you
Speaker 1: would need to fight a modern war, and so whenever
Speaker 1: one does start up, you wind up with this situation.
Speaker 1: We're seeing this that we saw this with Russia and Ukraine.
Speaker 1: We're still seeing it in Russia and Ukraine. And we
Speaker 1: saw it in World War One two where very suddenly
Speaker 1: everyone runs out of ammunition, right and prior to the
Speaker 1: United States going to I'm going to say, going to
Speaker 1: war with Iran again, like literally about a week before,
Speaker 1: there was an article that dropped in the i think
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal about how Trump's top generals were
Speaker 1: really worried that the United States did not have enough
Speaker 1: munitions to sustain conflict with Iran for any significant period
Speaker 1: of time. And there's immediately in reports as soon as
Speaker 1: this started that that is, in fact exactly what's fucking happening.
Speaker 1: There's a good piece on CNN Politics written by Sean Lynngas,
Speaker 1: Kylie Atwood and Isabelle Khrushudian, and it describes, or at
Speaker 1: least it talks to conversations with someone at the Pentagon
Speaker 1: saying that the United States is burning through long range
Speaker 1: precision guided missiles at an unsustainable rate, and this is
Speaker 1: not just to attack Iranian positions, but also to stop
Speaker 1: Iranian ballistic missiles. Quote from that source, Each intercepts represents
Speaker 1: hundreds of hours of training, readiness, and technology all coming
Speaker 1: together to work. Is designed so that means you don't
Speaker 1: have an infinite number of these, whereas Iran is capable
Speaker 1: of producing a significant number of the ballistic missiles and
Speaker 1: the drones that these precision munitions are needed to shoot down.
Speaker 1: Iran's producing something like one hundred ballistic missiles a month,
Speaker 1: and had a stockpile going into this, we can build
Speaker 1: six or seven interceptor missiles in a month, right, So
Speaker 1: obviously we're going into this with stockpiles, and Trump has
Speaker 1: claimed that US munition stockpiles have never been higher or better,
Speaker 1: and that the war could go on forever very successfully
Speaker 1: just using these supplies, but he didn't specify what munitions
Speaker 1: he was referring to, and all of the information coming
Speaker 1: out suggests that we are, like the seventh Fleet has
Speaker 1: basically burned through its supply of advanced munitions. There's been
Speaker 1: confirmation because the IERGC claims they took out two THAD batteries,
Speaker 1: and I don't take the IERGC at their word, but
Speaker 1: we did get local confirmation in at least one case
Speaker 1: that one of those batteries was disabled, and it seems
Speaker 1: very likely based on some satellite imagery that both were damaged.
Speaker 1: How damaged they are is very hard to say. We're
Speaker 1: talking generally the radar array that you use for the
Speaker 1: missiles has been hit, but we've only got like eight
Speaker 1: of these things. These batteries are like not just our
Speaker 1: most best protection we would have from like submarine based
Speaker 1: nuclear missiles, but our best anti missile systems period. And
Speaker 1: we're in the process of peeling away the fat batteries
Speaker 1: that we've got in Korea to bring into the Middle
Speaker 1: East to continue to protect Israel and to protect our forces,
Speaker 1: and the fact that any of them may have been
Speaker 1: seriously damaged or lost is a serious problem for the
Speaker 1: United States. I want to continue from that CNN piece
Speaker 1: here they're interviewing Colonel Mark Gunzinger, who's a retired military
Speaker 1: colonel and the director of Future Concepts and Capability Assessments
Speaker 1: at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. He basically made
Speaker 1: this claim that, like, since the United States has established
Speaker 1: air superiority early on in this conflict, quote, there's not
Speaker 1: such a need for the higher end, very long range
Speaker 1: standoff weapons. I don't know that I agree with him
Speaker 1: on this because it seems like we're using some of
Speaker 1: those munitions now, but he's primarily talking about we don't
Speaker 1: need to use as discriminating of weapons systems now. Instead
Speaker 1: of using our super advanced precision guided munitions, we can
Speaker 1: use stuff like jadams, which we have a lot more.
Speaker 1: We have a huge stockpile of jade m's of various
Speaker 1: sizes and small diameter bombs. The problem is that these
Speaker 1: are not nearly as advanced in terms of their guidance capabilities,
Speaker 1: and the civilian casualties related from using these are much
Speaker 1: much higher. So we're hitting a point where we're running
Speaker 1: out of precision munitions, and it seems very clear that,
Speaker 1: at least among military thinkers, the attitude is that's fine,
Speaker 1: because we'll just use these bigger weapons that kill more civilians,
Speaker 1: and yeah, that's what you should look forward to in
Speaker 1: the next stages of this conflict.
Speaker 10: Yeah, talking of I guess the next stages of this conflict.
Speaker 10: The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, it's supporting that it's been
Speaker 10: flooded with complaints from troops whose officers believe the operation
Speaker 10: will bring about the end of days as we're told
Speaker 10: in the Bible.
Speaker 1: Well there you go.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah. Here's a quotation from one of their non
Speaker 10: commissioned officer clients. Quote, this morning, our commander opened up
Speaker 10: the combat Redness status briefing by urging us not to
Speaker 10: be a afraid as to what is happening with our
Speaker 10: combat operations in Iran right now. He urged us to
Speaker 10: tell our troops this was all part of God's define plan,
Speaker 10: and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book
Speaker 10: of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of
Speaker 10: Jesus Christ. He said that quote President Trump has been
Speaker 10: anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran,
Speaker 10: to cause armageddon and mark his return to Earth. I
Speaker 10: am not a big Bible understander, but Garretton Davis, a
Speaker 10: regular resident Bible person, please comment if you want to.
Speaker 10: I don't think this is good, is my take on that.
Speaker 10: I think it's a great way to be going around
Speaker 10: foreign policy.
Speaker 7: No, it's not a good foreign policy blueprint.
Speaker 1: It might be kind of made biblically accurate, though, I mean.
Speaker 7: That's the thing, is that the blueprint it is, it is,
Speaker 7: it is accurate, though I was Trump.
Speaker 1: Does in fact match a number of descriptions of the Antichrist,
Speaker 1: and it is possible that what we're doing in Iran
Speaker 1: ends in the apocalypse.
Speaker 10: So you know, my understanding is this hinges on a
Speaker 10: certain color of cat.
Speaker 2: The red hypher. This is the whole thing. We had
Speaker 2: a baling we.
Speaker 10: Made it in texas'er. Yes, yes, this is this is
Speaker 10: one of the first, the first like American like subculture
Speaker 10: things I ever engaged with it from like when I
Speaker 10: got the Internet at school and you could go into
Speaker 10: the computer lab and look at stuff I learned about
Speaker 10: if people trying to make a red heifer, right, like, yeah,
Speaker 10: that will bring about the apocalypse is cow. Yeah, fascinating stuff.
Speaker 1: Very normal, very normal.
Speaker 10: That's all I've got. Hopefully send us pictures of your
Speaker 10: cataly I you've got one of the appropriate color, and
Speaker 10: that will be a sign that it's all over.
Speaker 7: I mean, things in Iran do not seem to be
Speaker 7: winding down. If anything, they holding or ramping up.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: On Tuesday, Mark Rubio said, quote, in the next few
Speaker 7: hours and days, you're going to really begin to perceive
Speaker 7: a change in the scope and the intensity of these attacks,
Speaker 7: as frankly, the two most powerful air forces in the
Speaker 7: world take apart this terroristic regime and defang it.
Speaker 2: Quote that, by the way, was also proceeded immediately by
Speaker 2: him saying We're going to unleash Chang which is a
Speaker 2: completely unhinged thing from the old old like anti communists
Speaker 2: far right where they're like, we're gonna unleash Shanghai shack
Speaker 2: and he's going to retake China and kill everyone. So
Speaker 2: that's that's great, that's that's fun, extremely normal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a that's a John Bircher right there.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, wow.
Speaker 7: And after a closed door Senate hearing briefing the Senate
Speaker 7: on actions in Iran, Senator Bluementhal said, quote, I am
Speaker 7: more fearful than ever after this briefing that we may
Speaker 7: be putting boots on the ground.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have to. You can't actually stop the regime
Speaker 1: without doing that.
Speaker 10: Yeah, even that like Trump model, which is a Syria model,
Speaker 10: right of a relatively limited footprint with a partner for US. Yeah,
Speaker 10: it's still like American people died in Syria.
Speaker 1: Well, and unfortunately, I think they're also looking to Libya. Right.
Speaker 1: Initially we're hoping it would be something like that, But
Speaker 1: the thing is in Libya, you already had a situation
Speaker 1: where there was a massive army a raid against the
Speaker 1: dictator who was holding them back via air power. So
Speaker 1: being able to stop the air power was able to
Speaker 1: was enough to sign the regime's death warrant. And obviously
Speaker 1: the failure of NATO to do anything to help Libya
Speaker 1: in the wake of that has been awful. But it's
Speaker 1: totally different in Iran. Like it's the Iranian people, the
Speaker 1: Ranian like resistance. The Iranian protests had not taken territory.
Speaker 1: They had not swung large chunks of the Iranian military.
Speaker 1: The military and the regime were still in control of
Speaker 1: the country and nothing has changed in that regard. So
Speaker 1: if you're going to knock out the regime, you have
Speaker 1: to send in the fucking marines. That's the only way,
Speaker 1: and that's I think what's going to happen at some point.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's going to be uh the next few days,
Speaker 10: probably by the time you're hearing this. By the way,
Speaker 10: just as we're recording this, hopefully this has left the
Speaker 10: news cycle. Several news outlets have published the Kurdish paramilitary
Speaker 10: forces are streaming across the border into a ruck. That's
Speaker 10: not true. Each of those groups who are claiming are
Speaker 10: doing that have denied it. There is going to be
Speaker 10: a lot of misinformation, yeah, in the next few weeks,
Speaker 10: and you should be very careful about where you are
Speaker 10: sourcing your news. Yeah. I just wanted to make that
Speaker 10: very clear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the first war, potentially major war that
Speaker 1: started while already in place, was an entire system that
Speaker 1: monetized people getting disinformation about that war to go viral.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, obviously that has impacted things in Ukraine. Later in
Speaker 1: Palestine and Palestine too, but when the invasion started, those
Speaker 1: were not like it. Really it came into being over
Speaker 1: what happened in Palestine. You're right, Garrison, Yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: now in complete form at the start of the conflict.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, there's a whole like industry, you know, across many
Speaker 7: different countries, so misinformation to win money via the blue
Speaker 7: check system on Twitter, which is still used for you know,
Speaker 7: news sourcing across the world in the case of breaking events.
Speaker 2: So speaking of industry, so one of the other consequences
Speaker 2: of this war has been effectively the end of trade
Speaker 2: and passage to the straight offour Moose, which is extremely
Speaker 2: critical lifeline for the world economy. I'm going to quote
Speaker 2: here from Al Jazeera quote a commander in Iran's Revolutionary
Speaker 2: Guard course set on Monday, but the strait was quote
Speaker 2: closed and that any vessel attempting to pass through the
Speaker 2: water way would be set quote a blaze. Now, for CNBC,
Speaker 2: there's about thirteen million barrels of oil a day that
Speaker 2: flows through the strade of four Moose's thirty one percent
Speaker 2: of all sea worn crude flowed. The total like impacted
Speaker 2: oil production and distribution from this is about it's about
Speaker 2: a fifth of the world's oil supply total that is
Speaker 2: being impacted by this. Liquefied natural gas is also being
Speaker 2: massively impacted because of yeah, the places where a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of natural gas and oil are produced. This is
Speaker 2: a very, very significant blow to the world's energy supply
Speaker 2: and one of the reasons why, even if you don't
Speaker 2: care like the US does and about, you know, obliterating
Speaker 2: Ibronian schoolgirls with bombs, this war is a terrible idea
Speaker 2: because you're suddenly losing access to a fifth of the
Speaker 2: world's oil supply. Now, Trump has repeatedly said that this
Speaker 2: strait is not open. The RGC has repeatedly said that
Speaker 2: it is closed. Trump also yesterday that we're recording this
Speaker 2: on Wednesday, said that the US will escort tankers if
Speaker 2: necessary through the straight with US Navy ships. The other
Speaker 2: major issue here is that no insurance company will ensure
Speaker 2: any ship going through this, because why on earth would
Speaker 2: you do that. And Trump has also ordered the government
Speaker 2: to ensure these tankers. And this has stopped the massive
Speaker 2: rise in oil prices a little bit that was happening
Speaker 2: at the beginning of at the beginning of the conflict. However,
Speaker 2: I don't know why it stopped the rise in oil prices,
Speaker 2: because this won't work. You can't just escort oil tankers
Speaker 2: through the Strait with American battleships and have them not Like,
Speaker 2: do you know how big an oil tanker is and
Speaker 2: how slow they are? Like, there's no way militarily that
Speaker 2: you can actually move oil tankers through here. You just can't.
Speaker 2: It's too easy to hit with literally any munition. So
Speaker 2: the sort of American markets don't seem to have figured
Speaker 2: out that you obviously cannot escort oil tankers through the
Speaker 2: trade of permus. Where people have figured this out are
Speaker 2: the Asian markets, particularly South Korea and Thailand, where both
Speaker 2: of their stock index has had their circuit breakers triggered,
Speaker 2: which is the emergency system may have in place when
Speaker 2: the market is collapsing too fast all trading halts. South
Speaker 2: Korea's index lost twelve point zero six percent yesterday, which
Speaker 2: is the single largest drop that the market has ever experienced. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's it's really bad. The Chinese indexes have
Speaker 2: been okay, but both Japan and Taiwan we're down between
Speaker 2: three and four percent, which is still also quite bad.
Speaker 2: Now South Korea and Thailand specifically, the reason that these
Speaker 2: two countries are having just sort of apocalyptic market collapses
Speaker 2: is that these two countries are extremely reliant on imported oil.
Speaker 2: And you know, there's this tendency to think about oil
Speaker 2: as just liquid money, and it's not. You do actually
Speaker 2: have to use it to power things, and a stificant
Speaker 2: portion of the of both the Thai and the South
Speaker 2: Korean economy are sort of heavy industrial things that require
Speaker 2: this oil. These countries are now in very dire straits.
Speaker 2: And the only way that this could stop is if
Speaker 2: somehow Trump wins the war very very quickly and be
Speaker 2: able to reopen the Straight, which I don't think is
Speaker 2: particularly likely. So this is probably just going to intensify. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you could call it a dire straight.
Speaker 1: Ah Garrison, you've you've brought up my favorite band, of
Speaker 1: which I am aware of one of their songs, great band,
Speaker 1: heard the one song of theirs, and I know one.
Speaker 10: Of the songs that has a slur in it. There
Speaker 10: are better songs, hey.
Speaker 1: No, but they stopped using the slur and more and more, okay, Andre,
Speaker 1: But also the slur was never it was never a
Speaker 1: slur directed at the audience. They were talking from the
Speaker 1: perspective of a bigot insulting them. Yeah, yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: I think anyway.
Speaker 10: Yeah, in terms of songs, were slurs not the worst
Speaker 10: speaking of dire straights, I'm cutting the white people off,
Speaker 10: talking about.
Speaker 2: Are cutting it off? Speak speaking of being in dire
Speaker 2: strait Spain in a well. When I wrote this script,
Speaker 2: I said, a rare moment of bravery. I should give
Speaker 2: them slightly more credit than that, but in a moment
Speaker 2: of genuine bravery and principle. The Spanish government has refused
Speaker 2: to allow the US to use its air bases to
Speaker 2: conduct the war in Iran. Yeah, these are American air
Speaker 2: bases in Spain. This has led to a bunch of
Speaker 2: assets being moved out of Spain. Trump has responded to
Speaker 2: this by I was going to quote out to Zerra,
Speaker 2: quote round the Zeerra. He said he had told his
Speaker 2: he had told his Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bestet,
Speaker 2: to quote cut off all dealings with Spain. We're going
Speaker 2: to cut off all trade with Spain. We don't want
Speaker 2: anything to do with Spain, the president said.
Speaker 1: The Trump is taking away your your mona Berrico like
Speaker 1: you have to. We have to stop this, there will
Speaker 1: be no top.
Speaker 2: Most of them.
Speaker 1: Where else are we going to get the highest quality
Speaker 1: smoked meats?
Speaker 10: Yeah? So will that forever be worse. It's not really
Speaker 10: possible to do this, right because Spain is in the EU. Yeah,
Speaker 10: don't have internal boards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it shouldn't be possible to do this.
Speaker 1: I knows.
Speaker 2: I think it's like probably, I'm leaning towards about ninety
Speaker 2: five to five that Trump just forgets about this. So
Speaker 2: there's a five percent chance there's some completely hitherto unused,
Speaker 2: unhinged national security like power that was passed by John
Speaker 2: wu specifically. But I don't know. We're back to Calvin
Speaker 2: ball trade policy. He's just saying stuff I was wrong
Speaker 2: last week. They're just making shit up.
Speaker 1: Well, here's the thing like that this shows that's may
Speaker 1: be optimistic, is how different the climate is like this,
Speaker 1: the social climate is in the United States as opposed
Speaker 1: during the Iraq War, where Like, if this has happened
Speaker 1: during the Iraq War, you would have had people like
Speaker 1: renaming Spanish dishes freedom fucking.
Speaker 6: Die or whatever.
Speaker 1: You would have had, there would have been like a
Speaker 1: social there's not There's been no cultural backlash against Spain
Speaker 1: in the United States that I that I've seen that
Speaker 1: as any kind.
Speaker 2: Of juice, and you know, and just to say like
Speaker 2: one serious than before we wrap this up, Like the
Speaker 2: approval rating for this war is sub fifty percent right now. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's only going to get worse because worl approof of
Speaker 2: ratings are always the highest when they first start. It's
Speaker 2: already sub fifty Everyone hates this. I want to wrap
Speaker 2: this up before we go to ads by saying the
Speaker 2: administration had also claimed that Spain had, because of the
Speaker 2: threat of economic pressure whatever, had agreed to cooperate, and
Speaker 2: the Spanish government immediately said, no, we didn't. What are
Speaker 2: you talking about. Yeah, so they're just lying about stuff again.
Speaker 2: It's great.
Speaker 10: Yeah, whoo ooh fantastic.
Speaker 7: You know what else is great?
Speaker 10: What's that? Garrison America?
Speaker 12: Again?
Speaker 7: This brief ad break before we return for even more news.
Speaker 7: All right, we are back. Two final story used to
Speaker 7: cover this episode. Last week, the Kansas State Legislature passed
Speaker 7: new law, overriding Governor Laura Kelly's veto, invalidating state issued
Speaker 7: driver's license with updated gender markers, requiring quote Kansas issued
Speaker 7: driver's license and identification cards reflect the credential holders sex
Speaker 7: at birth unquote. After this law was passed, the state
Speaker 7: sent letters to trans people informing them their license was
Speaker 7: now invalid, effective immediately, including to at least one transperson
Speaker 7: who did not change their gender marker but recently changed
Speaker 7: her legal name. State officials say about one thousand and
Speaker 7: seven hundred license holders were affected. The law also invalidates
Speaker 7: updated birth certificates and prohibits anyone born in Kansas from
Speaker 7: updating the gender marker on state issued per certificates and
Speaker 7: driver's license in the future. This same law also prohibits
Speaker 7: trans people from using the public restrooms on government property
Speaker 7: that alignce with their gender, and allows private citizens to
Speaker 7: sue someone suspected of being trans in the quote unquote
Speaker 7: wrong restroom in a government building for damages totaling one
Speaker 7: thousand dollars. Two trans Kensons and the a Solu have
Speaker 7: filed a lawsuit claiming the new law SB two four
Speaker 7: four violates the Kansas Constitutions protections for personal autonomy, privacy,
Speaker 7: the quality under the law, due process, and freedom of speech.
Speaker 1: Yep, no, great, No, it's obviously is a violation of
Speaker 1: all those things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think it's also just word, noting
Speaker 2: that this is part of a trend we've been seeing
Speaker 2: of just this is basically what used to be a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of different bills like compiled into one. Right,
Speaker 2: this is like a bounty bill, this is like a ban.
Speaker 2: This is instead of having legislative fights O for all
Speaker 2: the different elements, they're just pushing them all through in
Speaker 2: one package, which has been working for them.
Speaker 7: Very like clear like egregious violation of rights. And now
Speaker 7: there's a Now you have people in a situation where
Speaker 7: they could have their passport being invalid, their birth certificate
Speaker 7: being invalid, and their state driveralisms being invalid.
Speaker 2: Yep, it's a.
Speaker 7: Very precarious situation. Yeah, that we will watch to see
Speaker 7: the followut of in the next few weeks to months. Finally,
Speaker 7: the Texas primary election that happened on Tuesday, some big
Speaker 7: news coming out of that the Republican Senate primary was
Speaker 7: going to advance to a runoff election between incumbent John
Speaker 7: Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton. Though this runoff could
Speaker 7: be disrupted because Trump just signaled that he will endorse Coronin,
Speaker 7: leading many to suspect that Paxton may drop out of
Speaker 7: the race. This is still unclear, but it was a
Speaker 7: very close race between those two and one other person
Speaker 7: that was going to go to a runoff due to redistricting.
Speaker 7: Two Democratic incumbents House Representatives Al Green and Christian Menefee
Speaker 7: battled over a new district and a close race that
Speaker 7: will now also go to a runof off sim Goo's
Speaker 7: representative Julie Johnson, and former Representative Colin Alred, who dropped
Speaker 7: out of the Senate race to run for this newly
Speaker 7: redrawn district. Neither of these two were able to reach
Speaker 7: a majority, so that race will also head to a
Speaker 7: run off. Incumbent Dan Crenshaw lost the primary, yeah, to
Speaker 7: the Republican challenger Steve Toath, who was backed by the
Speaker 7: party's far right an Tucker Carlson is significantly to the
Speaker 7: right of Dan Crenshaw. Yeah, he's as fun as it
Speaker 7: is to see Crenshaw go down. He's getting replaced by
Speaker 7: someone that is actually worse.
Speaker 1: It's not good, it's just kind of funny.
Speaker 2: We replaced Hitler with Hitler too. Yeah, great things happening.
Speaker 10: Because he specifically had spoken out about some Trump policies, right, like.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he had gone more independent on some issues rather
Speaker 7: than like keytoeing to the to the current Republican line,
Speaker 7: and that opened him up to attacks from the right. Yeah,
Speaker 7: but the big story of the night is the Democratic
Speaker 7: Senate I'm Mary, in which Texas State House Rep. James
Speaker 7: Tallerco is projected to be us A presentative for Texas
Speaker 7: Jasmin Crockett, who previously told tall Rico that she would
Speaker 7: not run for the Senate before entering the race late
Speaker 7: in December. Crockett did not concede the night of the election.
Speaker 7: Has since conceded, but did not concede election night, citing
Speaker 7: issues at voting precincts and dueling court orders that sowed
Speaker 7: confusion come election day. Republicans in Dallas County and Williamson
Speaker 7: County switched the rules from county wide centralized polling locations
Speaker 7: to an assigned precinct system where voters can only cast
Speaker 7: their ballots at one specific location. After reports of people
Speaker 7: being turned away from their regular polling locations on election
Speaker 7: day and being told they had to travel to their
Speaker 7: assigned precinct to cast their ballot, both Crockett and tall
Speaker 7: Rico advocated to expand voting hours in these counties to
Speaker 7: compensate for the confusion and ensure all the votes intended
Speaker 7: to be cast on election day would be counted. Judges
Speaker 7: in Dallas and Williamson County extended voting hours to nine
Speaker 7: and ten pm, respectively, but later that night, in a
Speaker 7: ruling just before eight thirty pm, the Texas Supreme Court
Speaker 7: blocked the lower court's order and instructed Dallas and Williamsman
Speaker 7: County to separate any ballots cast by voters who entered
Speaker 7: the line after seven pm and marked them as provisional ballots.
Speaker 7: After a request by Turn General Ken Paxton, who claimed
Speaker 7: his office was not properly notified of the extended voting hours,
Speaker 7: Paul Adams, the Dallas County election administrator, confirmed that these
Speaker 7: separated ballots would not be counted, pending further legal challenges.
Speaker 7: At her election night watch party, Crockett said that she
Speaker 7: had quote no idea how it is that clerks are
Speaker 7: going to know who was in line by what time.
Speaker 7: I can tell you now that people have been disenfranchised quote.
Speaker 7: On Wednesday morning, Crockett did concede the race, but told
Speaker 7: The New York Times quote the Democratic Party should absolutely
Speaker 7: prepare for the worst and get some things litigated right now.
Speaker 7: People will not turn out because of what's happened. In
Speaker 7: my opinion, especially if no one fights for their votes
Speaker 7: to be counted unquote.
Speaker 10: It does feel a lot like the first decade of
Speaker 10: the century. Again, like we go wars in the Middle East.
Speaker 10: We've got people arguing about votes that should be counted
Speaker 10: and not counted. It's great.
Speaker 7: So the total number of votes cast in the Republican
Speaker 7: primary that are tallied so far at ninety five percent
Speaker 7: of the votes in is two million, one hundred and
Speaker 7: forty two thousand, two hundred and eleven versus the Democratic primary.
Speaker 7: That's two million, three hundred and eight thousand, eight hundred
Speaker 7: and thirty six, slightly more Democratic votes counted in the primary.
Speaker 10: Texas has open primaries.
Speaker 7: Apparently Texas has open primaries.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 7: Tallerico will up nine points among white voters, up twenty
Speaker 7: two points among Hispanic while Crockett was up twenty three
Speaker 7: points among Black voters. Crockett was up eight points with
Speaker 7: Biden voters and tall Rico up thirty two points with
Speaker 7: Sanders voters. If you look at the twenty twenty presidential primary,
Speaker 7: and that gives you a little bit of a peak
Speaker 7: into kind of what these two candidates are presented with
Speaker 7: Crockett serving on the Kamala Harris campaign definitely more of
Speaker 7: a k Hive esque candidate, and Tall Rico a little
Speaker 7: bit running off of the kind of Bernie Sanders progressive
Speaker 7: coat tails, a little bit not coat tails, but like
Speaker 7: using that sort of playbook as more of like a
Speaker 7: relatable working class guy, less of like an established mid
Speaker 7: Democrat like Crockett sort of branded herself as Tall. Rico
Speaker 7: is a former school teacher who served in the state
Speaker 7: House since twenty eighteen. Fought against Christian nationalism and a
Speaker 7: bill mandating the Ten Commandments be displayed in classrooms, calling
Speaker 7: the bill unconstitutional, Unamerican, and deeply un Christian. In his
Speaker 7: past legislation lowering the cost of prescription drugs, He's like
Speaker 7: a progressive Christian. That's kind of I guess the best
Speaker 7: way to describe him as he Yeah, frequently went viral
Speaker 7: the past three years for clips of him, you know,
Speaker 7: arguing in the Texas State House, you know, arguing for
Speaker 7: progressive points of view while like quoting Bible versus that
Speaker 7: sort of thing. For this campaign of his, he was
Speaker 7: running on affordability and cost of living. That was the
Speaker 7: real focus of this campaign of targeting the richest one
Speaker 7: percent and giant corporations, making billionaires and corporations quote unquote
Speaker 7: pay their fair share of taxes, raising federal minimum wage
Speaker 7: to fifteen dollars, expanding child and earned income tax credits.
Speaker 7: He's opposed state legislation restricting gender a firming healthcare, including
Speaker 7: for people under eighteen. In September, right after he announced
Speaker 7: his candidacy, Tellerico, who's a member of the LGBTQ Caucus,
Speaker 7: responded to a question about trans athletes like this.
Speaker 2: I think it's interesting.
Speaker 14: I've been in this race for five days and I've
Speaker 14: had a lot of interviews with national meetia. No one's
Speaker 14: ever asked me about the cost of housing. No one's
Speaker 14: asked me about the cost of prescription drugs, no one's
Speaker 14: asking me about the cost of childcare. The only thing
Speaker 14: the media wants to ask me about are trans athletes.
Speaker 14: And so what I would say is that the only
Speaker 14: minority destroying this country is the billionaires. Trans People are
Speaker 14: one percent of the population, Undocumented people are one percent
Speaker 14: of the population, Muslims are one percent of the population.
Speaker 14: We are all focused on the wrong one percent. Trans
Speaker 14: People aren't taking away our healthcare. Undocumented people aren't defunding
Speaker 14: our schools. Muslims aren't cutting taxes for themselves and their
Speaker 14: rich friends. It's the billionaires and their puppet politicians. And
Speaker 14: so we need not only the media but all of
Speaker 14: us to focus on the real problem at hand.
Speaker 7: Hey, it appear like this was effective messaging.
Speaker 1: It's a good response. Yeah.
Speaker 10: Yeah, The only dangerous minority is to rich. It has
Speaker 10: consistently actually been a popular yeah messaging. The Democrats have
Speaker 10: nonetheless shied away from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because that's who it donates money to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because they like that. It's the only minority they liked.
Speaker 10: Because many of them are ragel Yeah, and others wish to.
Speaker 7: Be Tallarico supports regulating AI universal health care, term limits
Speaker 7: for Congress and its threem court justices, halting Israel's illegal settlements,
Speaker 7: restoring the talking only filibuster, and banning gerrymandering, and establishing
Speaker 7: independent redistricting. Talary participated in the Texas Democrats protests against redistricting,
Speaker 7: both in like twenty twenty one and last year in
Speaker 7: twenty twenty five, where they fled Texas.
Speaker 10: Yeah, they went on the holiday for a while.
Speaker 7: On his campaign website, he talks about advocating reform to
Speaker 7: make legal immigration easier, in creating pathways to legalization for
Speaker 7: undocumented immigrants already long present, as well as spouses and dreamers.
Speaker 7: Part of his immigration policy reads, quote, prioritize the deportation
Speaker 7: of criminals, gang members, and human traffickers, not our neighbors
Speaker 7: who contribute to our communities, pay taxes, impose no threat
Speaker 7: to our safety unquote. Part of where this sort of
Speaker 7: language I think falls apart is that when the Trump
Speaker 7: administration claims that it's deporting gang members and criminals like
Speaker 7: what we saw with people sent to Seacott, that also
Speaker 7: includes regular people. That also includes our neighbors. And I
Speaker 7: think that is one slight fault in this messaging. It's
Speaker 7: going to be interesting with him running in the general now,
Speaker 7: you know in Texas where the border is a big
Speaker 7: issue there, and a lot of his immigration stuff definitely
Speaker 7: is not going to at least currently is not as
Speaker 7: far to the left as as some other progressive Democrats,
Speaker 7: and this is something that he is currently being pushed on,
Speaker 7: especially after winning. Progressive advocates are pushing him on Ice specifically,
Speaker 7: as well as some stuff on Israel. And Gaza. Telleryco
Speaker 7: Is advocated to stop the sale of quote unquote offensive
Speaker 7: weapons to Israel while still funding the I Dome and
Speaker 7: defensive weapons. Talked about trying to find a way to
Speaker 7: make sure that defense weapons cannot be used offensively. But
Speaker 7: he does recognize that Gaza is an extremely important issue
Speaker 7: and said in an interview quote one of the primary
Speaker 7: reasons the Democratic Party lost young voters in particular last
Speaker 7: election was our party's failure to recognize the moral disaster
Speaker 7: in Gaza. And I hope that we have leaders who
Speaker 7: recognize that mistake. I think that's all I need to
Speaker 7: say of regarding that the generals not until November, and
Speaker 7: if it is a Cornyn, that will be a much
Speaker 7: much harder race considering he's an incumbent versus Paxton, who
Speaker 7: has a lot of avenues for attack. For someone like
Speaker 7: tall Rico, who can lean on his like a Christian
Speaker 7: charm to it attract voters both in rural areas as
Speaker 7: well as lean on his support among Hispanic voters as
Speaker 7: demonstrated in the primary. Mia, you have one final thing
Speaker 7: to add based on the primary elections in North Carolina.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, there were a bunch of primary elections in
Speaker 2: North Carolina. And I'm mentioning this because there was a
Speaker 2: series of North Carolina Democrats who voted with Republicans to
Speaker 2: pass anti trans legislation over a veto from the governor,
Speaker 2: and also voted with them on really horrifying like pro
Speaker 2: ice legislation, and those people lost by cartoon margins. We
Speaker 2: are talking margins that start at thirty percent go to
Speaker 2: forty percent, and one of these people lost their race
Speaker 2: by fifty percent.
Speaker 10: Jeez.
Speaker 2: So the anti trans candidates and the like I am
Speaker 2: pro ice racist candidates lost by like bath party numbers,
Speaker 2: which which I think is actually very encouraging because I
Speaker 2: think it's a sign of where people are right now,
Speaker 2: where people are going. Even as the state is trying
Speaker 2: to do anti transppression, this has become a thing that
Speaker 2: is enough where if you are willing to vote for
Speaker 2: this shit and make a bunch of trans people suffer,
Speaker 2: you will lose by You will lose by forty in
Speaker 2: a primary. Unbelievable.
Speaker 10: Primaries tend to include more informed, politically engaged voters, and
Speaker 10: that it's one of the things that engages people most
Speaker 10: right now, specifically the ice stuff.
Speaker 1: It's also more ideologically motivated voters, and the right has
Speaker 1: made the far right has made use of this for
Speaker 1: decades to push the more moderate actual politicians stuff for
Speaker 1: the Republican Party further right, because you can't win primaries
Speaker 1: without getting like appealing to the most extreme of them,
Speaker 1: and there has not up until very recently been that
Speaker 1: kind of success with like far left positions. Not that
Speaker 1: I think basic respect for trans people ought to be
Speaker 1: far left, but it's clearly not a centrist dim position.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, yeah, apparently, And.
Speaker 1: I think that this is good. I think it's a
Speaker 1: smart way to influence the direction of the party.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. I want to close with there's a slogan
Speaker 2: from Chile that gets used in social movements constantly that
Speaker 2: goes roughly like, Chile is where neiliberalism was born, and
Speaker 2: we're going to kill it here. And I think this
Speaker 2: is sort of the start of potentially that in North Carolina,
Speaker 2: where well, this isn't the start, but hopefully we're seeing
Speaker 2: like the culmination of a whole bunch of ways of
Speaker 2: activism and organizing amobialization that can kill this kind of
Speaker 2: anti trans politics in the place where it was born.
Speaker 2: The first bathroom.
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