Speaker 1: Cool Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Birds and the Bees, a podcast where
Speaker 2: James Stout makes animal noises and also we talk about
Speaker 2: what's going on in the White House this week.
Speaker 3: That's right, This is that could happen here Executive Disorder,
Speaker 3: our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House,
Speaker 3: the crumbling of our world, and what this means for you.
Speaker 3: That is Robert talking Previously, James Stout is also here.
Speaker 3: I'm Garrison Davis. I'm also joined by Mia Wong. This episode,
Speaker 3: we're covering the week of February sixth to February twelfth. Currently,
Speaker 3: me and Mia are inside New Orleans, Louisiana, and I
Speaker 3: am proud to report that fascism has been defeated. The
Speaker 3: Philadelphia Eagles have beat the kk Kansas City Chiefs in
Speaker 3: Super Bowl. Drake has been executed live on stage. It's
Speaker 3: a great week.
Speaker 2: That would have been kinder than what actually happened to Drake.
Speaker 4: Look as someone, as someone in My Blueskin mentioned, says capitalism.
Speaker 4: Currently the rule of capitalism seems inescapable, but the divine,
Speaker 4: the divine rule of the Chiefs once seemed undefeatable too,
Speaker 4: And they were fucking humiliated.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, they lost so bad.
Speaker 4: I can't even I can't even say that they were
Speaker 4: beaten up and down the field, because I'd even fucking
Speaker 4: get down the field, obliterally generational beat down.
Speaker 3: And yeah, when I arrived here in New Orleans on Monday,
Speaker 3: this is the Monday after the Super Bowl, so a
Speaker 3: complete nightmare. But there was just an ocean of an
Speaker 3: ocean of out and proud Eagles fans. And the funniest
Speaker 3: thing I saw is that when I was waiting for
Speaker 3: me to fly in, there was this like half a
Speaker 3: full clothing rack of leftover Chiefs merche and all of
Speaker 3: the Eagles merch were gone.
Speaker 5: I will see that Chiefs Merch again somewhere in like
Speaker 5: a resource pause edging from now.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, that's going to be the uniform of a
Speaker 2: future civil war.
Speaker 3: Literally literally Taylor Swift themed Kansas City Chiefs merch.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, huge Alpha capital.
Speaker 2: It is so funny. Oh man, well, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The big losers this week, Drake and unfortunately the nation
Speaker 2: of Ukraine and most of the rest of Western Europe. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess We'll start with the big news today, which
Speaker 2: is that Trump just had a really great call with
Speaker 2: Vladimir Putin went super well. They're going to be meeting,
Speaker 2: maybe in Saudi Arabia. There's been some floating of the
Speaker 2: fact that they might meet at the White House, which
Speaker 2: I don't think it ends well for Putin if he
Speaker 2: visits the Uniteds. I don't think it ends well for
Speaker 2: anybody if he visits the United States. This country is
Speaker 2: too heavily armed and crazy right now. But they're doing
Speaker 2: this because Putin and Trump have evidently reached some sort
Speaker 2: of agreement about the end of the war in Ukraine.
Speaker 2: Zelenski was not really on this. He's made a couple
Speaker 2: of statements like yep, we're we're hoping that this is
Speaker 2: what pushes everything towards peace. But it's very clear that
Speaker 2: what's happening is Ukraine is going to be made to
Speaker 2: give up a decent chunk of their territory. Now they
Speaker 2: do have Russian territory still to bargain with somewhat, so
Speaker 2: it hopefully will not be a situation where Putin gets
Speaker 2: is entirely his own way. But that is kind of
Speaker 2: the what's happening, and the sea change that will accompany
Speaker 2: this is that new Secretary of Defense and alcoholic Pete
Speaker 2: Hegseth made a statement and a meeting in Brussels that
Speaker 2: the United States will no longer be the guarante of
Speaker 2: peace in Europe. Specifically, he stated that we're not going
Speaker 2: to tolerate of an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency. But
Speaker 2: this was an announcement that the post war sort of
Speaker 2: status quo is no longer something that we can rely
Speaker 2: on going forward, and that is a really significant admission
Speaker 2: from the sec deaff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's sick, it's pretty cool, and it's going to
Speaker 5: be great. It's going to be great. If you're in
Speaker 5: the German arms industry, it's going to be a banger
Speaker 5: year for you. You making similis, I.
Speaker 2: Think we could all agree the future is bright for
Speaker 2: German weaponry.
Speaker 5: Yeah, once again Germany will rise to its former glory. Hussah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you say that as kind of a joke, but
Speaker 4: like genuinely the fact that we are doing a bunch
Speaker 4: of stuff that is leading to the full re armament
Speaker 4: of the German army at the moment when the German
Speaker 4: fascist parties are like about to take power.
Speaker 2: When off Day is getting into power, Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 5: And the Luftwaffe hasn't even bought to change his slogo
Speaker 5: since the last time, so that's cool.
Speaker 2: Well, and what you bring up there me is probably
Speaker 2: worth discussing in concert with all of this, which is
Speaker 2: that AfD off Day, the Alternative for Deutschland, which is
Speaker 2: the new Nazi Party in Germany, is not the majoritarian party,
Speaker 2: but is taking enough seats that it is going to
Speaker 2: be included in the next governing coalition, which is something
Speaker 2: that has not happened in the post World War Two era.
Speaker 2: In the immediate aftermath of World War Two, every Western
Speaker 2: European nation basically came to a tacit agreement referred to
Speaker 2: as the cordon sanitaire, which is when a right wing
Speaker 2: party starts to gain power, you do not coalition with
Speaker 2: them under any circumstances. Germany is actually like the last
Speaker 2: of the European countries to give up this idea. But
Speaker 2: the fact that the Cordon sanitaire has fallen in Germany
Speaker 2: is real bad news.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And the ADF, like it's worth mentioning, right, Like
Speaker 4: the ADF is so right wing and so nazi that,
Speaker 4: like the the Italian fascists to our empower right now
Speaker 4: will not work with them, Like, Yeah, yeah, a bunch
Speaker 4: of stuff leaked a little while ago about these people
Speaker 4: at beatings openly talking about deporting every single Jew and
Speaker 4: every single immigrant from the country. Like these people are
Speaker 4: you know, I mean, they're just Nazis And yeah, so
Speaker 4: now we're fucking handing them the fucking justification to fucking
Speaker 4: rebuild their entire arms industry. So yep, great stuff.
Speaker 2: It is dark, I mean. And again when we say
Speaker 2: the Italian fascists, this is literally Mussolini's party, as in
Speaker 2: his granddaughter it's a member.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, that's bad. I think that's probably most
Speaker 2: of what we can say about what's going on in
Speaker 2: Europe and with Ukraine right now. But it's not good.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it's not good. It doesn't point to a
Speaker 5: great future. And this is the multi polar world that
Speaker 5: like Russia has wanted for some time, like coming to fruition, right,
Speaker 5: and I didn't want to talk about. So there was
Speaker 5: a time when Vladimir Putin some as you remember, was
Speaker 5: sanctioned by the International Criminal Court for his war crimes
Speaker 5: in Ukraine. The United States, however, the United States has
Speaker 5: not been a signatory to the Rome Statute, so it
Speaker 5: wouldn't necessarily have enforced that arrest warrant anyway. But this
Speaker 5: week Trump signed a little executive order titled in block capitals,
Speaker 5: as we've come to expect, imposing sanctions on the International
Speaker 5: Criminal Court, and in doing so, he followed the example
Speaker 5: of Putin, who in twenty twenty three put out arrest
Speaker 5: warrants for ICC prosecutors after they put out a warrant
Speaker 5: for his arrest. Trump didn't cite the Putin example. He
Speaker 5: called the ICC's actions against Israel illegitimate and baseless. That's
Speaker 5: a quote. He specifically called the warrants against UF Gallant
Speaker 5: and Benjamin Etting Yahoo baseless. He then went on to claim, quote,
Speaker 5: both nations are thriving democracies with militaries strictly adhered to
Speaker 5: the laws of war. This is a thing that is
Speaker 5: not true. His order then goes on to outline what
Speaker 5: it calls protected persons, people who aren't familiar at United
Speaker 5: States person is distinguished from the United States citizen. It
Speaker 5: also includes any permanent residents. It also includes US Armed
Speaker 5: Forces government officials and contractors working on behalf of US
Speaker 5: Armed Forces contractors. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the people who can
Speaker 5: do no wrong. It then goes on to include US allies,
Speaker 5: including all of NATO and sometimes contractors working on their behalf.
Speaker 5: It says that if the International Criminal Court investigates any
Speaker 5: of these people, Trump called the Clara National Emergency. It
Speaker 5: also imposes material sanctions and travel bands on both ICC
Speaker 5: prosecutors and people acting on their warrants, as well of
Speaker 5: the families of those people. Interesting, Yeah, this is an
Speaker 5: unprecedented American politics, and sometimes it gets reported like it is.
Speaker 5: I want to like throw back to what they called
Speaker 5: the Hague Invasion Act. That wasn't its real name, but
Speaker 5: that was George Bush's. Like it authorized the President to
Speaker 5: use any means necessary to release United States people held
Speaker 5: by the ICC or at its request. So people started
Speaker 5: calling it the Hague Invasion Act.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: Trump did also sanction ICC prosecutors and their families in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty for looking into US war crimes in Afghanistan.
Speaker 5: I think that happened in June of twenty twenty, So
Speaker 5: you can be forgiven for having missed up because some
Speaker 5: stuff was happening at that time.
Speaker 2: Oh was it?
Speaker 5: Yeah, things were going down. I'm sure Philadelphia Eagles were,
Speaker 5: you know, beginning their rise to glory again. That was
Speaker 5: a big thing. Kansas City chiefs were doing some racist shit, shockingly, shockingly.
Speaker 5: I'm sure Taylor Swift was doing something too, But yeah,
Speaker 5: this is like Israel has for nearly a decade been
Speaker 5: trying to hack samea surveil and threaten the Court. In
Speaker 5: the show notes, I'll include a link to a Guardian
Speaker 5: article that came out last year about Israel's attacks and
Speaker 5: attempts to undermine the International Criminal Court. And just if
Speaker 5: I've been talking about something and you're like, what is
Speaker 5: the International Criminal Court? Very briefly, it's based at the Hague.
Speaker 5: So if you've heard, you know you will stand trial
Speaker 5: at the Hague. That's what they're talking about. It has
Speaker 5: its most immediate routes in the tribunals investigated perpetrations of
Speaker 5: genocides in Rwanda and Yugoslavia. The US and Israel are
Speaker 5: lot members of the court. They never signed the Roman Statute.
Speaker 5: Russia withdrew in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: Curious time to withdraw?
Speaker 5: Interesting, fascinating. Yeah, they just decided that it wasn't for them,
Speaker 5: and off they went to do some war crimes. The
Speaker 5: ICC has been criticized, probably recent for the vast majority
Speaker 5: of the people who have actually been prosecuted for the
Speaker 5: ICC being outside of the core neoliberal states, right, It's
Speaker 5: prosecuted a lot of people in Africa. That doesn't mean
Speaker 5: that like African people can't do war crimes in Africa,
Speaker 5: of course they can, but it means that they're held
Speaker 5: accountable more often than when countries in the global North
Speaker 5: do war crimes, which they can do too. Okay, So Trump,
Speaker 5: that's like everything else he does, was condemned internationally for this, right,
Speaker 5: including by several NATO allies, in so much as they
Speaker 5: really are NATO allies anymore given everything we've just talked about. However,
Speaker 5: it's also worth noting that some of the countries like France,
Speaker 5: who condemned Trump's sanctioning of ICC prosecutors, also allowed someone
Speaker 5: with an ICC warrant I Benjamin that's in Yahoo to
Speaker 5: transit their airspace. So like, therefore, commitment to the ICC
Speaker 5: perhaps can be questioned. This is a problem with the ICC, right,
Speaker 5: it doesn't have an integral enforcement mechanism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean like Canada previously promised quote unquote
Speaker 3: promised yeah to arrest net Yahoo if they were ever
Speaker 3: like able to, and like, yeah, I'm very curious to
Speaker 3: see how this is going to shake down with the
Speaker 3: US taking like an extremely firmer stance at least than
Speaker 3: we previously had. We already like you know, quote unquote
Speaker 3: like condemnic Canada. But like I'm interested to see Trump
Speaker 3: like be more interested in actually pushing this further than
Speaker 3: it has been.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I guess we'll see how it goes for people
Speaker 5: who are unfamiliar. I do want to like really quickly
Speaker 5: mention that like Palestine is a signatory and therefore war
Speaker 5: crimes to happen within Palestine and covered by the CORE.
Speaker 5: Even if states such as Israel are not signatories, right,
Speaker 5: therefore they're still under the court to jurisdiction. So that's
Speaker 5: how in this case this is happening.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 5: It could also make the ICC's life very difficult in
Speaker 5: terms of using technology, right that the tech back end
Speaker 5: of everything that ICC does. Try to remove that from
Speaker 5: any United States involvement would be very hard.
Speaker 3: Well, let's go on a quick out of break in
Speaker 3: return to talk about I don't know what the treasury or.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk about the treasury.
Speaker 3: All right, all right, we are back. But before we
Speaker 3: talk about the Treasury, I first wanted to do some
Speaker 3: do some breaking news while kind of breaking. So when
Speaker 3: I was flying to New Orleans, I was able to
Speaker 3: fly past the brand new Gulf of America. It was
Speaker 3: a life changing experience. It really warmed my heart. And then, luckily,
Speaker 3: a few days ago, Georgia Representative Buddy Carter announced legislation
Speaker 3: to empower Trump to enter into negotiations to quote unquote
Speaker 3: purchase or otherwise acquire Greenland and importantly to rename it red,
Speaker 3: white and blue. Lind God, let's get some quick reactions
Speaker 3: from the panel.
Speaker 5: Sorry, As a person born in Europe, the idea of
Speaker 5: Buddy Carter authorizing the formation of Red, White, Blue Land,
Speaker 5: it's simply just like the fact that this is not
Speaker 5: a parody, it's just fucking too much for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, well, what it is is purposefully ridiculous.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a flex, it's a statement of the
Speaker 2: power that they have over their own party and the country.
Speaker 2: It is purposefully absurd, and everyone is going to go
Speaker 2: along with it because the Chief, the King supports it, right,
Speaker 2: Like that's the point in my opinion.
Speaker 5: Yeah, see empress new clothes of invading places.
Speaker 2: Like it doesn't matter. We can be as silly as
Speaker 2: we want.
Speaker 5: Genuinely interested in hearing from people in Greenland.
Speaker 3: Yes, honestly, I'm kind of surprised, because I would I
Speaker 3: would assume it. Maybe maybe this is still in the works.
Speaker 3: If Elon Musk can find a way to call this
Speaker 3: thing excellent, is really my concern.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but I'm really interested in
Speaker 5: hearing from Greenland. Is genuinely You can contact us at
Speaker 5: cool Zone, tips at proton dot me, which is an
Speaker 5: encrypted email address that you can send emails to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, let's let's let's talk about Trump potentially
Speaker 4: crashing the entire world economy. He's taking more shots to
Speaker 4: just literally blow this all up. Yeah, okay, So let's
Speaker 4: talk about the treasuries thing and him potentially talking about
Speaker 4: not paying out our fucking treasury bonds. Okay, so many
Speaker 4: reason quotes from Reuters. So this is Trump. We're even
Speaker 4: looking at treasuries. Trump said there could be a problem.
Speaker 4: You've been reading about that with treasuries, and that could
Speaker 4: be an interesting problem. Now treasuries again, our course, US
Speaker 4: treasury bonds. We will get to what those are in
Speaker 4: a second, but I need to read the rest of
Speaker 4: this quote. It could be that a lot of those
Speaker 4: things don't count. In other words, that some of the
Speaker 4: stuff that we're finding is very fraudulent. Therefore, maybe we
Speaker 4: have less debt than we thought. Now, that's a very
Speaker 4: scary thing to say here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Treasury bills are the primary underpinning of like economic
Speaker 2: stability in this country. T bells are what large corporate
Speaker 2: institutions when they have a lot of cash with like
Speaker 2: very wealthy people. It's where you park your money, and
Speaker 2: it's where foreign governments park a lot of their money,
Speaker 2: like yeah, and it's how our government gets a lot
Speaker 2: of its money because it's a good, reliable investment. So
Speaker 2: saying maybe we're going to declare some of these T
Speaker 2: bill investments bullshit is very dangerous.
Speaker 5: Yeah, for the global economy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I want to read this next line because one
Speaker 4: of the things that's happening here, right is that people
Speaker 4: just simply and this has been a real problem for
Speaker 4: this entire administrations, people simply do not believe that he
Speaker 4: means to do the thing he says he's going to do. Right.
Speaker 4: Quote this is from Broiders. Again, it could be treasury payments,
Speaker 4: which is not linked the treasury bonds. Said for shop Bihani,
Speaker 4: investment chief for Asia at BNP Power Boss Wealth Management.
Speaker 4: I would be very surprised if they ever stopped a
Speaker 4: payment of treasury bonds to a holder. It would be
Speaker 4: like shooting yourself in the foot, he said. Now, this
Speaker 4: is something where these these institutional investors, like they still
Speaker 4: have not quite wrapped their head around the fact that no,
Speaker 4: he really will do this shit because he doesn't understand
Speaker 4: at all. He thinks that American debt works the same
Speaker 4: way as like his own personal debt, and no it doesn't.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's worth saying some bits. So, I mean,
Speaker 4: just a very very basic shit about how national debt works. Right,
Speaker 4: Like all of our money, literally every single dollar that
Speaker 4: is in circulation, every dollar that is in a bank account,
Speaker 4: that is literally government debt, right like that that's what
Speaker 4: money is, right, And these treasury bonds are as we
Speaker 4: were talking about earlier, right, this is like the investment
Speaker 4: asset for literally the entire world, and there's trillions of
Speaker 4: dollars of these. Actually, Japan is the largest holder of
Speaker 4: treasury bonds. China's sort of been selling some of theirs,
Speaker 4: but they have a lot of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably good to be doing that, Yeah.
Speaker 4: And it's also you know, like the fact that he's
Speaker 4: saying he's not gonna pay these yet, like this can
Speaker 4: start a massive crisis in which I've been talking for
Speaker 4: a bit about, you know, every day we sort of
Speaker 4: get closer to credit rating agencies like downgrading the quality
Speaker 4: of US debt, which is a real problem for US
Speaker 4: trying to like get money from people. And and you know,
Speaker 4: even if you listen to what that what the sort
Speaker 4: of bond analyst is saying, right, he's like, well, it's fine,
Speaker 4: they'll just stop paying like US debt to other things,
Speaker 4: which is like unbelievably unhinged. Would also in and of itself,
Speaker 4: like destroying the full faith and credit of the United
Speaker 4: States would absolutely just fucking annihilate the world economy. And
Speaker 4: it's also another example of Trump not understanding how the
Speaker 4: empire he's inherited works, because like the one of the
Speaker 4: ways the US funds is government is by getting its
Speaker 4: client states to buy like trillions of dollars of assets.
Speaker 4: Like that's partially why feelief. Look at who's who buys
Speaker 4: US assets, like it's China and US tributary states like Japan,
Speaker 4: for example, which is just purely in American military Protectorate. Right,
Speaker 4: it's a sort of incredible system for the US. Right,
Speaker 4: you get a bunch of people and you, you know,
Speaker 4: you just you just sort of perpetually keep borrowing money
Speaker 4: from them. And it's this thing where they don't understand
Speaker 4: who actually holds the power in the relationship, which is
Speaker 4: that the US having all this is the one with
Speaker 4: the power and is the one that's getting everyone else's
Speaker 4: money for this sort of secure asset. So, you know,
Speaker 4: who knows what's going to happen with this If this
Speaker 4: actually starts happening, like, yeah, this is the world rending
Speaker 4: economic crisis levels of stuff. Well, we'll see if he
Speaker 4: moves on it, he may simply forget about it, or
Speaker 4: we're going to wake up one day and like the
Speaker 4: US's credit's going to be downgraded to like junk bond
Speaker 4: status and everything's going to be chaos. So, speaking of
Speaker 4: Trump trying to sort of like take shots at pillars
Speaker 4: of the global economy, starting in March, he's trying to
Speaker 4: implement a twenty five percent tariff on all imported steel
Speaker 4: and aluminum. Most of that's actually from Canada and Mexico.
Speaker 4: I think in their minds is the thing about Chinese steel,
Speaker 4: but it's mostly from Canada and Mexico. This is also
Speaker 4: a fucking shit show because the US manufacturing capacity that
Speaker 4: we still have and we still actually do have a
Speaker 4: decent amount of like a very high tech manufacturing right
Speaker 4: relies on this stuff, and this is going to make
Speaker 4: it more expensive, gets bad. It will do nothing to
Speaker 4: deal with the fact that US doesn't produce steel anymore,
Speaker 4: which is the product of that. One day I'll do
Speaker 4: my structural Chinese steel over capacity episode. But you know,
Speaker 4: it's it's the product of like half a century of
Speaker 4: the global manufacturing economy, you know, becoming zero sum, and
Speaker 4: they're simply not being a large enough consumer market for
Speaker 4: all of industrial goods, which means the production becomes increasingly
Speaker 4: you know, it becomes impossible to expand production to one
Speaker 4: place without you know, getting ready production another place. In
Speaker 4: Trump things you can solve those with tariffs.
Speaker 2: You can't.
Speaker 4: Mostly it's just another like throw things at the economy shit. Now,
Speaker 4: you know, Trump is sort of throwing bombs at the
Speaker 4: economic system. One of the largest ones that he's thrown
Speaker 4: is he just straight up stole eighty million dollars in
Speaker 4: FEMA funding that they had already paid out, like just
Speaker 4: straight up stole it from like a New York City
Speaker 4: bank account. They like, so I've been paid to the
Speaker 4: government in New York.
Speaker 3: Right, this happened earlier today.
Speaker 4: Right. This is yeah, literally literally this this is breaking news,
Speaker 4: breaking news on Wednesday. This is coming out Friday. This
Speaker 4: episode is being recorded on Wednesday. Everything that you hear
Speaker 4: if shit has happened in the US a few days,
Speaker 4: that's from the future. We didn't know. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: he literally, like they have taken eighty million dollars just
Speaker 4: from this bank account. They just stole it. The hostitial
Speaker 4: government is just straight up robbing banks.
Speaker 2: It's okay. That came out today and said that don't
Speaker 2: worry your bank accounts are still safe everybody.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is like appropriated funds like for FEMA
Speaker 3: being sayly secured in banks that have like literally been
Speaker 3: funds are approved.
Speaker 4: By Congress for a specific purpose, right, Yeah, And what's
Speaker 4: actually going to happen with this, right, because you would
Speaker 4: expect a even like a normal shitty mayor of New
Speaker 4: York to like go sicker mode. However, well man, however, Comma,
Speaker 4: here's from Yahoo News quote Eric Adams said, he will
Speaker 4: not publicly criticize Trump or his administration. Instead, they'll take
Speaker 4: his concerns to Trump in private. On Monday, Adams convened
Speaker 4: a meeting with his own top officials to urge them
Speaker 4: not to speak badly about the president in public, saying
Speaker 4: if they were to do so, it could risk federal
Speaker 4: funding later that day. That same day, Trump's Justice Department
Speaker 4: ordered the prosecutors in Adam's criminal case to drop the
Speaker 4: charges against him, in part, arguing Adams must be free
Speaker 4: of the burden of his corruption indictment to help carry
Speaker 4: out Trump's immigration agenda in the city.
Speaker 5: Great.
Speaker 3: Cool, This is the most like quid pro quote thing
Speaker 3: I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: It is the single most corrupt thing I've seen out
Speaker 2: of US politics. Yeah, like blatantly, it's staggering.
Speaker 5: I mean it would come from Trump plus Adams, right like, Yeah,
Speaker 5: we're going to see it. That's what we're gonna say.
Speaker 2: We've hit a singularity of corruption.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, it's stumbled as always the first stop. Yeah.
Speaker 4: The only way they can go further than this is
Speaker 4: that Eric Adams is going to point Rob Lagoyevitch's head
Speaker 4: of like bank robbery or something.
Speaker 3: One can dream Mia one can dream.
Speaker 5: There are a few other ways they can go further
Speaker 5: with yo. I'm afraid to inform you, miya, but we'll
Speaker 5: be hoping those don't happen.
Speaker 4: Well on the eruption index, on the corruption index.
Speaker 3: Okay, speaking of corruption, let's pivot to ads. All Right,
Speaker 3: we are back, and I'm going to close by talking
Speaker 3: about the war on Woke, my new favorite news beat
Speaker 3: that I'm forced to attention to every week. There was
Speaker 3: a transports band that that that Trump did an executive
Speaker 3: order about using a whole bunch of children as a
Speaker 3: prop very clearly trying to steal steal the charisma from
Speaker 3: whatever that governor who lost the election did with his
Speaker 3: free school lunch there anyway, Instead now it's you just
Speaker 3: you know, hurt other children in the school by not
Speaker 3: making them be allowed to play sports. So that happened,
Speaker 3: and then a few other things have happened the past
Speaker 3: few weeks, and I'm kind of just like catching up
Speaker 3: on because I've been really focused on like reporting on
Speaker 3: like Muscus specifically, and there's been a lot of other
Speaker 3: stuff the past few weeks. So I'm going to kind
Speaker 3: of get to that now. The State Department's travel website
Speaker 3: change the acronym LGBT to LGB on a web page
Speaker 3: like warning about like how dangerous it might be to
Speaker 3: like travel to like other countries with like worse legal protections,
Speaker 3: say LGB travelers can face special challenges abroad. Laws and
Speaker 3: attitudes in some countries may affect safety and ease of travel.
Speaker 3: Many countries do not recognize the same sex marriage. Many
Speaker 3: countries don't recognize the ex gender marker in passports and
Speaker 3: do not have it systems at ports of entry that
Speaker 3: can accept sex markers other than female and male.
Speaker 5: So they've only changed the title pot. Yeah, they haven't
Speaker 5: even bothered to edit the text.
Speaker 3: No, because because they also have another info page where
Speaker 3: they have just like control ft LGBT two LGB as well.
Speaker 3: So this is this is like one of like many
Speaker 3: changes we're seeing across a whole bunch of federal websites
Speaker 3: in relation to Trump's order to like remove wokeness and
Speaker 3: gender ideology. Previously, the CDC removed like HIV and trans
Speaker 3: related like health info pages from their website, and as
Speaker 3: of yesterday, February eleventh, the web pages for the FDA,
Speaker 3: Health and Human Services and the CDC were allegedly brought
Speaker 3: back online, restoring their January thirtieth status. They did this
Speaker 3: like right before a court mandated deadline to restore these pages,
Speaker 3: like I can I can now go back on to
Speaker 3: the CDC's HIV page. Verge was first reported on this,
Speaker 3: and they said that, you know, they've been unable to
Speaker 3: verify that all of the pages have been restored exactly
Speaker 3: to how they were before. This is something that we're
Speaker 3: still working on because it's literally happened, like you know, yesterday.
Speaker 3: This is this is like a small, a small part
Speaker 3: of their of their current war on wokeness. Another aspect
Speaker 3: of this is there's been a whole bunch of orders
Speaker 3: from federal agencies to ban specific woke keyword words across
Speaker 3: like their databases, their websites, training information, including from agencies
Speaker 3: like noah SO just like the Weather and the National
Speaker 3: Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They released a memo of banning
Speaker 3: specific words across the agency, including words like ability, acceptance, access, affirmation, aggression, allyeship,
Speaker 3: androgyne a, sexual belonging, bias, binary, bisexual, black culture, DEI, discrimination, diversity, empathy, empowerment, equity, ethnicity, fairness, gay,
Speaker 3: gender genitus, foria, handicap, homosexual, LGBTQ, intersex, pan sexual, queer, transgender, transvestite,
Speaker 3: as well as words like impartial inclusion, indigenous, intersectionality, justice,
Speaker 3: the word white has been banned, They space, social justice,
Speaker 3: underserved communities, race privilege, powerdynamics, Native American, multiculturalism, all of
Speaker 3: these Like again, this is like the Party of Free
Speaker 3: Speech has banned all of these words, and it's not
Speaker 3: it's it's it's it's not just Noah. Also, the National
Speaker 3: Science Foundation has has released my most saying that they
Speaker 3: cannot have these words included in their documents because it
Speaker 3: could cause them to lose grant funding.
Speaker 5: Well, it's the end for race science. Then they can't
Speaker 5: do race science anymore.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of similar words flagged in the National
Speaker 3: Science Foundation list of banned words, like activism and activists, advocacy,
Speaker 3: a barrier, a bias black LATINX community, uh diversity, equity,
Speaker 3: cultural differences, cultural heritage, culturally responsive, diverse, you know, diverse, community, divice, groups, diversified, diversifying,
Speaker 3: all this kind of stuff, ethnicity, equality, inclusion, inequality, LGBT
Speaker 3: institutional marginalize, trauma, underappreciated, stereotypes, systemic under presentation, undervalued victim.
Speaker 2: I love that you can no longer do scientific papers
Speaker 2: about systemic infections.
Speaker 6: Yeah, organs, Like yeah, no, there's anything that has a barrier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: There's so many words that are just like used in
Speaker 3: like how like studies function that they cannot use because
Speaker 3: the word is too woke, and then they're gonna lose
Speaker 3: their funding. Like yeah, you can't, like you can't like
Speaker 3: look at like things being equal. You can't look at
Speaker 3: any kind of like scientific bias, Like you can't like
Speaker 3: this very basic stuff. It may just result in like
Speaker 3: the tiktokification of us, like trying to spell these words
Speaker 3: with like a different letter.
Speaker 5: Talking about cute little boots what it is.
Speaker 3: And like I'm laughing because it's all like absurd and
Speaker 3: it's kind of like kind of like a coping mechanism.
Speaker 3: But like this is all like very bad.
Speaker 4: Well, but like this something else, just something else we
Speaker 4: need to talk about you, which is like like you
Speaker 4: are required by law as part of your grand proposal
Speaker 4: like have things that talk about like how this is
Speaker 4: going to different communities, et cetera, et cetera. Is a
Speaker 4: legal requirement for you to put that in your thing.
Speaker 4: So like if you were to like strictly enforce this,
Speaker 4: this kills every fucking grant. And this is this is
Speaker 4: one of these things where it's like you're literally just
Speaker 4: running straight into the federal law tells you must do
Speaker 4: this thing, and the Trow administration says these words are banned,
Speaker 4: so like, yeah, who knows.
Speaker 3: It's a really weird situation.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you can't do IRB right now. Like most guards
Speaker 5: will go through an institutional review board that will determine
Speaker 5: like if there are human subjects, they're like there ethical boundaries,
Speaker 5: and like what you're doing is okay. I can't see
Speaker 5: it being possible to do an IRB and not say
Speaker 5: these words.
Speaker 3: Yeah no, And like we have to do scientific studies
Speaker 3: on like how how various disabilities affect people's lives, like
Speaker 3: very basic stuff like this, all of these types of things.
Speaker 3: It's really bad and these things like are going into effect.
Speaker 3: I know, like this is this stuff is still happening.
Speaker 3: Columnists to doctor Lucky Tran reported quote the CDC has
Speaker 3: instructed its scientists to retract or pause the publication of
Speaker 3: any research manuscript being considered by any medical or scientific
Speaker 3: journal the move aims to ensure that quote unquote, no
Speaker 3: forbidden terms appear in the work band. Terms must be scrubbed. Great,
Speaker 3: it's all really bad, yep. And we're seeing this this
Speaker 3: sort of like lists being formed increasingly, including this DEI
Speaker 3: watch list put together by a conservative oppositional research group
Speaker 3: called the American Accountability Foundation PRICE, who released a DEI
Speaker 3: watch list which publishes the names, photos, occupation, and personal
Speaker 3: information of mostly black employees who work under the Department
Speaker 3: of Health and Human Services. When the website was first discovered,
Speaker 3: the employee profiles were labeled under targets. This has since
Speaker 3: been changed to dossier's like very very frightening, like very
Speaker 3: bad stuff, like very obvious intimidation for each target. The
Speaker 3: website lists a collection of alleged DEI offenses, which includes
Speaker 3: donations to Democrats and social media posts having pronouns in
Speaker 3: their bio or previous work on since deleted diversity, equity
Speaker 3: and inclusion initiatives. Columnist Jamal Bowie says, quote, they are
Speaker 3: mostly targeting black employees, so this is quite literally just
Speaker 3: a repeat of Rigrow Wilson's segregationist purge of the federal government.
Speaker 3: And like yes, like all of this, all of this
Speaker 3: like push against quote unquote DEEI is like very clearly
Speaker 3: just like white supremacists segregation in action. Like this is
Speaker 3: the whole point is that if any employee is a
Speaker 3: person of color, that means that they that they must
Speaker 3: be unqualified because they were hired only due to DEI.
Speaker 3: And to avoid doing that, you could only hire white people.
Speaker 3: And Trump's Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sent out a memo
Speaker 3: directing staff on where to direct like grant funds, and
Speaker 3: he said, quote give preference to communities with marriage and
Speaker 3: birth rates higher than the national average unquote, which is
Speaker 3: a very clear dog whistle to just like only hire
Speaker 3: like white Christians, hire Christians with big families, you know,
Speaker 3: parenthesis like white people. This is like very very obviously
Speaker 3: what they're doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're I mean, this is extending to the
Speaker 2: military now under Hegseth, west Point has just announced effectively
Speaker 2: the banning of a number of clubs, including the Society
Speaker 2: of Black Engineers, which is like three quarters of a
Speaker 2: century old something like that, also ending programs that are
Speaker 2: focused on like recruiting into the military black soldiers but
Speaker 2: have like pivoted to recruiting from NRA gatherings, even though
Speaker 2: there's internal agreement that that brings in a lower quality.
Speaker 5: Type of saying I've seen CEMENTRA members.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I've seen a few NRA members, right, and
Speaker 2: I yeah. And it's just one of these things, Like
Speaker 2: there's a very good book that I think people need
Speaker 2: to read if you want to know kind of the
Speaker 2: operational impact this is going to have, both on the
Speaker 2: US military and probably to an extent, law enforcement. We
Speaker 2: look at agencies like the FBI. There's a book called
Speaker 2: The Dictator's Army that heavily focuses on how changes like
Speaker 2: this impact operational if efficiency, And the gist of it
Speaker 2: is that the goal, and clearly what Hegseth's job is,
Speaker 2: is to make the military into something that can't pose
Speaker 2: opposition to the new regime. Right, that's the goal here,
Speaker 2: because there's a very realistic understanding that the military was
Speaker 2: one of things that stopped him from maintaining power in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, right, both because the military was not willing
Speaker 2: to be used to crack down directly on protests and
Speaker 2: because General Milly acted as a barrier to Trump's attempt
Speaker 2: to do a coup. The last time, right, So you
Speaker 2: have an understanding which is very common when regimes like
Speaker 2: this takeover in democratic societies. In the early days of
Speaker 2: the Third Reich, the military was the primary concern Hitler
Speaker 2: had because they were not Nazis, right, they were conservative,
Speaker 2: but they were not in the tank for the Nazi Party,
Speaker 2: and there was a lot that he wanted to do
Speaker 2: that the military establishment at the time the Third Rich
Speaker 2: came to power wouldn't let him do. And that was
Speaker 2: one of the first things and this took several years,
Speaker 2: but that was one of the first goals of the
Speaker 2: Nazi regime and power was reforming the military as much
Speaker 2: as possible in their own image.
Speaker 3: And like so much of like what Heggs is doing
Speaker 3: here specifically with like the West Point like club banning.
Speaker 3: It's like like these things are not like DEI. These
Speaker 3: things are like very old. These are like pretty like
Speaker 3: standard standard things that have been like roped into like
Speaker 3: what it means to like be in America. And we're
Speaker 3: now just seeing this like crusade against DEI being used
Speaker 3: to just reverse affirmative action and specifically select for white
Speaker 3: Christian applicants. Yeah, and like that's the entirety of this
Speaker 3: point here, like they're they're using dei as like a
Speaker 3: like as this like magical wand to frame things that
Speaker 3: are like pretty standard and like accepted parts of like
Speaker 3: how you do like hiring practices, how you don't do
Speaker 3: discrimination to just specifically only only like uplift white Christians.
Speaker 3: And that's part of this like very basic like Christian
Speaker 3: nationalist project that people like Heritage have been trying to
Speaker 3: do for a long time.
Speaker 4: I think it's also worth noting too that like the
Speaker 4: other thing that this mirrors, you know and the like
Speaker 4: specifically in the way that this target's queer people is
Speaker 4: the Lavender Scare, which is a thing from like the
Speaker 4: sort of late forties through the sixties where the US
Speaker 4: is part of this like giant anti communist herge. It
Speaker 4: was on basically went through and found every gay government
Speaker 4: official and fucking ran them out. That's like another aspect
Speaker 4: of this whole thing, right, like the way these people
Speaker 4: understand the world. In order to sort of like purify
Speaker 4: their like white state, right like you have to get
Speaker 4: rid of the non white people, and you have to
Speaker 4: get rid of the queers and you know, and people
Speaker 4: especially people who are fucking both and so this is
Speaker 4: this sort of transformational project of changing this this sort
Speaker 4: of like just changing the composition of what the US
Speaker 4: is into like and how its state functions, and how
Speaker 4: they can to what like what level of violence they
Speaker 4: can bring about on people.
Speaker 3: And they've wrote these things together so closely now, like
Speaker 3: the anti trans like school executive order, only the first
Speaker 3: half the executive order was actually about the gender ideology stuff.
Speaker 3: The second half was aimed at curbing what they called
Speaker 3: discriminatory equity ideology d DEI. Basically it was proposing a
Speaker 3: program for quote unquote patriotic education across the country, basically
Speaker 3: trying to rewrite history to make like the United States
Speaker 3: like this like noble historical project.
Speaker 4: HU.
Speaker 3: It's like stuff that they've tried to do before with that,
Speaker 3: like a with that like seventeen seventy six project that
Speaker 3: The New York Times reported on. Part of Trump's order
Speaker 3: called for quote an accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, an ennobling
Speaker 3: characterization of America's founding and foundational principles, a clear examination
Speaker 3: of how the United States has admirably grown closer to
Speaker 3: its noble principles throughout history. The concept of that commitment
Speaker 3: to America's aspirations is beneficial and justified the concept that
Speaker 3: celebration of America's greatness and history is proper. And then
Speaker 3: the order goes on to try to ban the concept
Speaker 3: of white guilt, saying that, like, teachers can get in
Speaker 3: trouble if any of their students and feel guilty about
Speaker 3: things that people of like that same race have done
Speaker 3: in the past, and like making sure that teachers do
Speaker 3: not teach things in a way that could possibly make
Speaker 3: us students feel quote unquote guilt.
Speaker 5: They use the word children actually not students, which like
Speaker 5: is fundamentally something we don't do in education.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: We refer to our students as students because we respect
Speaker 5: them as people. We don't think of them as like
Speaker 5: lesser than, especially when we're getting to the points where
Speaker 5: we're discussing things like race and equity, Like these are
Speaker 5: high school students, right, maybe totally we know we certainly
Speaker 5: do discuss these things in university, and like, it's fundamentally
Speaker 5: shows a complete lack of understanding of how education works
Speaker 5: to call them children.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think it gets to what this is
Speaker 4: actually about. And this is something that I would argue
Speaker 4: both Trump administrations were about right, if you look at
Speaker 4: when Trump like comes down the fucking elevator for the
Speaker 4: first time. So I think people may remember, like after
Speaker 4: Ferguson in twenty fifteen, there was Baltimore where there was
Speaker 4: you know, huge riots, massive confrontations with police, like massive educations,
Speaker 4: and that's the that's like the thing that really truly
Speaker 4: tipped like a bunch of the Republican Party even further
Speaker 4: right from where they'd been with the Tea Party into
Speaker 4: into this into sort of trump Ism. It was, you know,
Speaker 4: it was a reaction to that, and then this entire
Speaker 4: campaign right like all of the stuff that he's talking
Speaker 4: about here, you know, this is about twenty twenty, right,
Speaker 4: this is about reversing the gains that had beened, you know,
Speaker 4: and like obviously they were incomplete gains. One of the
Speaker 4: things that did happen was that a bunch of teachers
Speaker 4: were trying to change the way the US history is
Speaker 4: taught to reflect that this country was like again a
Speaker 4: settler colonial empire built by slave labor, and you know
Speaker 4: that that expanded its territory through genocide, which is just
Speaker 4: this is just objectively true about how the US started.
Speaker 4: But the thing is, like that's not good for you know,
Speaker 4: these people's projects, right, Like saying that out loud is
Speaker 4: a fucking issue for them. And so you know, their
Speaker 4: their attempt to roll back everything that was gained from
Speaker 4: sort of the Black uprisings is culminating all of this
Speaker 4: shit with like the purge of black workers for the
Speaker 4: federal government, with all of these things ordering you to
Speaker 4: and like that's why they're talking about all these weird
Speaker 4: all they keep banning all these weird like terms that
Speaker 4: don't make any sense, Like we were talking about like empathy, right,
Speaker 4: So like okay, so why the fuck are they talking
Speaker 4: about banning empathy? Yeah, because specifically these things come from
Speaker 4: the purges they've been trying to do in the education system,
Speaker 4: where they have a bunch of very specific grievances about
Speaker 4: like kinds of education stuff that teachers, the teachers were implementing,
Speaker 4: particularly in sort of like middle and high schools.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm going to close here with two pieces of
Speaker 3: breaking news. One, Like, earlier today we learned that the
Speaker 3: NAH has finally has finally acknowledged that the grant funding
Speaker 3: freeze is illegal. And this is probably like due to
Speaker 3: pressure from like news coverage about all of the temporary
Speaker 3: restraining order violations through the continued freezing of funds, and
Speaker 3: now the NIH is saying because of these orders, we
Speaker 3: will resume funding. The first tro was like two weeks ago,
Speaker 3: on February first, So it's not like like they just
Speaker 3: learned about this. It's that they have in some ways
Speaker 3: like perhaps caved to pressure. Again, like these executive orders
Speaker 3: do not enforce themselves, These are enforced by people at agencies.
Speaker 3: These things do do not do not become automatically enforced.
Speaker 3: So this is this is like one one step. Now
Speaker 3: you can go to a popular dot info who has
Speaker 3: been breaking the news on this specifically, and then some
Speaker 3: some breaking news that I have here on drop site
Speaker 3: quote unquote armored Tesla forecast estimated to win four hundred
Speaker 3: million dollars of State Department contract funds. What So, this
Speaker 3: could go one of two ways. This could either go
Speaker 3: a really funny way, Yeah it's gonna shay, or it
Speaker 3: could go a really sad way.
Speaker 2: Yeah I do. I do like the idea of a
Speaker 2: lot of Trump appointees being in Tesla's that are armored.
Speaker 2: When the batteries catch and maybe the jaws of life
Speaker 2: can't cut through those, You know yep, yep.
Speaker 5: Yeah it was. This is very funny because Trump went
Speaker 5: off on a on a contangent about electric tank horrible
Speaker 5: idea campaign trail a couple of times.
Speaker 2: Horrible idea.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well he's had he's had to come to Jesus
Speaker 5: moment and he has changed his mind and he wants
Speaker 5: a more sustainable sure beast as they call it.
Speaker 2: What everyone always says, the problem with tanks is is
Speaker 2: that they don't explode enough when hit by munitions.
Speaker 6: Or by themselves when not hit by being by themselves,
Speaker 6: just because batteries do that sometimes. Yes, yeah, you never
Speaker 6: know what you're going to get.
Speaker 2: I'm excited. This is going to make everything a lot
Speaker 2: safer for our our our men and women in Greenland.
Speaker 5: I'm guessing. Yeah, batteries.
Speaker 3: Batteries thrive in the cold, red, white and blue lip.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I do love the new m one a whatever seven
Speaker 2: abrams that gets four miles on a chart. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: then again, detonates wait six months to use a solar
Speaker 2: panel to field recharge place where it doesn't get light
Speaker 2: for six months. Yea magnificent upwards of ten miles a year.
Speaker 3: Yes, yep, all right, Well that is it for us
Speaker 3: today on Uh, it could Happen Here? James Things. Do
Speaker 3: you want to talk about the tip line again?
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