Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
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Speaker 2: But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody,
Speaker 2: Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 2: What do we have, Crystal.
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do a lot of very consequential news this morning,
Speaker 1: especially with regards to Israel. So yesterday they struck the
Speaker 1: Iranian embassy in Syria, killing a top commander and a
Speaker 1: number of other individuals. This has potentially catastrophic and frankly
Speaker 1: terrifying consequences the fallen of this, so we will take
Speaker 1: a look at that. Also, yesterday they struck and killed
Speaker 1: seven aid workers with Jose Andres organization in the World
Speaker 1: Central Kitchen. That organization has now paused all operations in
Speaker 1: Gaza Strip. One of the individuals who was killed is
Speaker 1: actually an American citizen, So break that down for you
Speaker 1: as well. We've got some Trump updates for you. He
Speaker 1: took a billion dollar hit to his net worth yesterday
Speaker 1: as a result of true social stock really suffering a
Speaker 1: bad blow, so we'll talk about that. We also have
Speaker 1: a really interesting report from the Wall Street Journal that
Speaker 1: we wanted to discuss gen Z increasingly choosing blue collar work.
Speaker 1: So what could that mean for the future. It is
Speaker 1: actually really fascinating to look at these numbers. Sixty Minutes
Speaker 1: dropped a supposed expose on Havana syndrome, so Soccer and
Speaker 1: I both took a.
Speaker 3: Close look at that.
Speaker 1: We will tell you what we make of their big
Speaker 1: blockbuster report on this. Richard Dawkins, famous atheist, is saying
Speaker 1: now he is a cultural Christian and also taking aim
Speaker 1: at Islam, so we will discuss that. I'm taking a
Speaker 1: look at what has been done to Al Shifa Hospital.
Speaker 1: That hospital, which is the largest in the Gaza Strip,
Speaker 1: or at least was the largest in the Gaza Strip,
Speaker 1: is now completely destroyed and as IDF soldiers after a
Speaker 1: two week raid, a massacre has been revealed. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to take you through everything we know about what
Speaker 1: happened there. And we have a fantastic guest in the
Speaker 1: show today. I'm really excited for you guys to get
Speaker 1: to see he has been every day on Capitol Hill
Speaker 1: stalking members of Congress, just trying to get basic answers
Speaker 1: from them. Some of his exchanges have gone viral. You
Speaker 1: may have seen a few, So we'll talk to him
Speaker 1: about what he's been up to there. But before we
Speaker 1: get into any of that, just want to thank all
Speaker 1: of you so much for your support.
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Speaker 1: So let's go ahead and jump into this big news
Speaker 1: with regards to Israel. Let's put this up on the screen. Yesterday,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, Israel struck the Iranian embassy in Syria.
Speaker 1: That strike on part of that embassy complex in Damascus
Speaker 1: killed three generals in irans Could's force and four other officers.
Speaker 1: One of those individuals is quite a high ranking commander.
Speaker 1: So this is extraordinarily significant, not only because who was
Speaker 1: taken out, and you can see the images on the
Speaker 1: screen there of that complex, you know, apparently smoke, smoldering
Speaker 1: and on fire. It's not only significant because of who
Speaker 1: was taken out, but also because of where this occurred.
Speaker 1: Let's put this map up on the screen so you
Speaker 1: all can see the Iranian embassy and this building that
Speaker 1: was part of the Iranian embassy. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: sandwiched right in between the embassy of Canada and the
Speaker 1: actual full embassy building of Iran. This is right in
Speaker 1: the center of Damascus, as you could see from these videos.
Speaker 1: I don't think I could possibly describe to you how
Speaker 1: extraordinary and how much of an outrageous breach of international law.
Speaker 3: This truly is.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's hard to think of a similar scenario
Speaker 1: unfolding and a similar targeting of an embassy building. As
Speaker 1: you can imagine, the response from the Iranians has been
Speaker 1: complete outrage at what has.
Speaker 3: Been done here.
Speaker 1: So they, you know, for one thing, are saying that
Speaker 1: there will be some sort of response. They also and
Speaker 1: doctor Parci has been doing quite a bit of analysis here,
Speaker 1: and I'm reading from one of his tweets. Aroun messaged
Speaker 1: Biden via the Swiss following that attack, and they appear
Speaker 1: to also hold the US responsible here. Because of our
Speaker 1: overwhelming unconditional support of Israel, Aron pressed Iraqi malicious previously
Speaker 1: to stop attack in the US.
Speaker 3: There have been zero attacks in six weeks.
Speaker 1: Israel may have just killed that ceasefire, put targets on
Speaker 1: US troops now, Sager, you know, the US is saying, oh,
Speaker 1: we had no idea in advance, We had nothing.
Speaker 3: To do with this. This was all Israel.
Speaker 1: Will Aron believe that what will the fallout here be
Speaker 1: of this extraordinary provocation from the Israelis who seem to
Speaker 1: be inviting and courting a much larger and much even
Speaker 1: more consequential war than what we've already seen.
Speaker 2: That's the terrifying part. So this is actually a breach
Speaker 2: of the Vienna Convention. Vienna Convention is what governs diplomatic
Speaker 2: relations effectively, is what keeps people inside of embassy safe. Now,
Speaker 2: before people who are like, hey, well it wasn't really
Speaker 2: being used for embassy consular purposes, let me cleane you
Speaker 2: in on something. All people, all nations, including US, use
Speaker 2: embassies as fronts for spying illicit activity CIA. You know,
Speaker 2: you can go and read the long history of our
Speaker 2: own use of that. We know that it's being done
Speaker 2: to us. That's why the embassies here in Washington are
Speaker 2: all heavily surveils. Ours are heavily surveiled across the world.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons that we don't generally attack them,
Speaker 2: even whenever people who are highly unseemly, including people who
Speaker 2: we would like to kill who are inside of them,
Speaker 2: is specifically to not breach the Vienna Convention and then
Speaker 2: invite similar attacks on our own diplomats and or spies
Speaker 2: all across the world. So that's a little bit of
Speaker 2: the background. Can we go and put the next element
Speaker 2: please up on the screen, because this is very important.
Speaker 2: What the Iranians say is that the strike on its
Speaker 2: compound killed two separate generals and that the envoy to
Speaker 2: Syria quote vows decisive response in their attack. Now, what's
Speaker 2: been frankly not discussed enough in this is that this
Speaker 2: is the continuation of the last couple of days of
Speaker 2: a major ramp up by Israel inside of Syria. And
Speaker 2: we can put that next one up there please on
Speaker 2: the screen. What this tells us is that the Israelis
Speaker 2: actually struck previously just days ago in Syria, killing quote
Speaker 2: dozens of militants, including Syrian soldiers and Hesbola militants. This explicitly,
Speaker 2: let's again repeat, has nothing to do with the current
Speaker 2: war on Gaza and instead was an expansion against Hezbolah
Speaker 2: militants and including the killing of Syrian soldiers. So let's
Speaker 2: just repeat here again that we have an attack both
Speaker 2: here on in Iranian IRGC general who was the major
Speaker 2: top general of the Iyatolas kind of personal revolutionary guard corps.
Speaker 2: We have the deaths of Syrian soldiers and we have
Speaker 2: the deaths of Hesbela militants. These are three very important
Speaker 2: constituencies that are in the region there's also Crystal. There
Speaker 2: is reports that are currently filtering out of an all
Speaker 2: ton of base in Syria. This is where the United
Speaker 2: States has several US service members who are stationed there
Speaker 2: who are special operators supposedly going against Isis. Anyway, these
Speaker 2: will recall that that mission and some of these bases
Speaker 2: have been previously attacked several weeks ago. We are now
Speaker 2: getting reports just as of this morning, that the US
Speaker 2: occupation that the US base in Altanov is now being
Speaker 2: attacked with suicide drones, very likely from the IRGC. So
Speaker 2: what the terrifying part of that is that it's not
Speaker 2: Israel these soldiers who are forward deployed in Iraq, Syria,
Speaker 2: Jordan and elsewhere. It is American soldiers who are now
Speaker 2: appearing to be attacked by these suicide drones after what
Speaker 2: appeared to be at least some sort of quasi ceasefire
Speaker 2: after a retaliatory strike on the IRGC previously.
Speaker 3: I want to make this as clear as possible.
Speaker 1: Israel's actions here and in the Gaza Strip and throughout
Speaker 1: the region, and our explicit support of that policy has
Speaker 1: gravely endangered our own service members. We're going to bring
Speaker 1: you another report in a bit about how those service
Speaker 1: members who are going to be sent to build this
Speaker 1: frikin peer outside the Gaza Strip or connecting the Gaza Strip,
Speaker 1: they are going to be put at significant risk because
Speaker 1: of course they're going to be right there in a
Speaker 1: war zone. And while we talk a lot here, of
Speaker 1: course about Israel's action, the truth of the matter is
Speaker 1: people throughout the region see us as just as complicit
Speaker 1: as they should. I mean, what did we talk about yesterday,
Speaker 1: How we continue to ship these two thousand pounds bunker
Speaker 1: buster bombs even as we go out and pretend to
Speaker 1: handring our concern.
Speaker 3: About civilian life.
Speaker 1: So the level of risk that our service members have
Speaker 1: been put at is extraordinary and it's indefensible. I mean,
Speaker 1: as you've discussed before soccer, even if you don't care
Speaker 1: a lick about Palestinian life, even if you don't care,
Speaker 1: how does this serve our interests as Americans? This is
Speaker 1: insanity and Biden, clearly, because of his ideological fervency, almost
Speaker 1: fundamentalist commitment to Zionism and the cause of Israel, has
Speaker 1: put us in an insane, outrageous, indefensible position. And a
Speaker 1: strike like this, God knows what the fallout is going
Speaker 1: to be. There are dire warnings coming from the Iranians.
Speaker 1: There was a statement released saying this attack will have
Speaker 1: our fierce response. There of course talking about how this
Speaker 1: is a violation of international law. And that's the other
Speaker 1: piece of this is there seems to be an intentional
Speaker 1: pattern of seeing what the Israelis can get away with.
Speaker 1: They have violated effectively every humanitarian international law, norm, guideline,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call them.
Speaker 3: You could possibly imagine.
Speaker 1: Just yesterday, you have IDF soldiers leaving Al Shifa Hospital,
Speaker 1: which I'm going to talk about in my monologue, revealing
Speaker 1: an atrocious massacre, potentially hundreds of individuals killed, many of
Speaker 1: whom proven to be civilians, including a number of doctors,
Speaker 1: medical staff who were killed, children, field executions at this
Speaker 1: hospital which is supposed.
Speaker 3: To be off limits.
Speaker 1: You have seven aid workers operating in a deconfliction zone
Speaker 1: in a clearly marked car. They're to try to feed
Speaker 1: a popular that israel Is starving to death, who are
Speaker 1: targeted and killed. And you have this strike on an embassy,
Speaker 1: killing a top commander and leading again to god knows
Speaker 1: what type of escalation here. It is absolute insanity. What
Speaker 1: we're seeing unfold.
Speaker 2: Well, it's really terrifying, as I said, because we're the
Speaker 2: ones who are forward deployed and we have effectively been
Speaker 2: guaranteeing their security. We've got hundreds, actually probably thousands of
Speaker 2: troops in the immediate vicinity, and ours are the ones
Speaker 2: who are sitting ducks and who would be and incur
Speaker 2: the cost of any major incursion. It is not in
Speaker 2: the United States interest to get dragged into a war
Speaker 2: with Iran, even with Syria. I mean, let's even play
Speaker 2: this out. Let's say even the Iranians don't get involved here,
Speaker 2: a war between Syria and Israel would be a disaster
Speaker 2: for us. We have thousands of troops who are nominally
Speaker 2: in Syria, also on the border there with Jordan, as
Speaker 2: we lost three already in this conflict. An explosion there
Speaker 2: would almost certainly draw in the tens of thousands of
Speaker 2: Hezbola militants that are currently inside of Syria, and then
Speaker 2: we could be a full blown conflagration. And that's exactly
Speaker 2: how you get Iran drawn into the conflict. This is
Speaker 2: also an upping of the ante, and this is kind
Speaker 2: of what we've been seeing as strike, a breach of
Speaker 2: the Vienna Convention in towntown Damascus. This doesn't just happen,
Speaker 2: you know, as we've just demonstrated, there had dozens of
Speaker 2: Syrians that were killed, militants and others that were just
Speaker 2: a couple of days ago. The Israelis have been wanton
Speaker 2: links striking and blowing up whoever they want inside of
Speaker 2: Syria basically for the last seven years. They learned that
Speaker 2: strategy from Us. And part of the problem is that
Speaker 2: when you erase any of these norms around war and
Speaker 2: about treating Syria as a sovereign state, we get to
Speaker 2: this point where people can just feel as if they
Speaker 2: can do what they want. I mean, this isn't Hamas,
Speaker 2: this isn't even technically a non state act. This is
Speaker 2: full blown sovereign nations with the capacity to destroy tens
Speaker 2: of millions. And that is where, you know, the gamble
Speaker 2: is really honestly terrifying. And that's what we see here
Speaker 2: with Biden. I haven't even seen, you know, some sort
Speaker 2: of reaction here from the Biden administration. And instead what
Speaker 2: we're basically doing is shipping them the weapons and selling
Speaker 2: them the planes that they are then carrying out such
Speaker 2: strikes with. Okay, but then should we not have some say,
Speaker 2: you know how these things are done and are used
Speaker 2: my only humble suggestion. But apparently that's too much.
Speaker 1: Well, and they're they're claiming, oh, we we had no idea.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's true. That's kind of a terrifying possibility in
Speaker 1: and of itself. If we did know and we're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're go ahead, that's also a terrifying possibility.
Speaker 3: But the bottom line is the Iranians.
Speaker 1: Clearly see US as complicit here, and you know how
Speaker 1: a media works here, and you know how the many
Speaker 1: hawkish members of Congress on both sides of the Aisle
Speaker 1: work as well. So far, the regional attacks have come
Speaker 1: from proxy groups, not directly from Iran. Is that trend
Speaker 1: going to hold or are the Iranians going to feel
Speaker 1: the need to now directly respond? What if US service
Speaker 1: members are killed by on what?
Speaker 3: Then?
Speaker 1: How many voices are going to be out there calling
Speaker 1: for a direct hot war with a run over Israel's
Speaker 1: bullshit and our support of Israel's bullshit. That's where we are,
Speaker 1: that's what we're on the precipice of. And that's why
Speaker 1: this development is so extraordinary and frankly, so incredibly terrifying.
Speaker 1: Let's move on to the other horrific news or some
Speaker 1: of the other horrific news that we learned yesterday as well,
Speaker 1: got and put this up on the screen. So as
Speaker 1: I alluded to before, we now know that seven aid
Speaker 1: workers for Jose Andre's organization called World Central Kitchen were killed.
Speaker 1: The Israeli military bombed three cars that belonged to these
Speaker 1: foreign nationals. We now know that one of the individuals
Speaker 1: who was killed is a dual American Canadian citizen, but
Speaker 1: a number of other foreign nationals involved here, as well
Speaker 1: as as one Palestinian. Jose Andres himself put on a
Speaker 1: statement saying, today World Central Kitchen lost several of our
Speaker 1: sisters and brothers in an IDF airstrike in Gaza. I'm heartbroken,
Speaker 1: greeming for their families and friends and our whole WCK family.
Speaker 1: These are people angels I served alongside in Ukraine, Gaza, Turkey, Morocco, Bahamas, Indonesia.
Speaker 1: They are not faceless, they are not nameless. The Israeli
Speaker 1: government needs to stop this indiscriminate of killing. It needs
Speaker 1: to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers,
Speaker 1: Stop using food as a weapon.
Speaker 3: No more innocent lives lost.
Speaker 1: Peace starts with our shared humanity and it needs to
Speaker 1: start now. You can see that message up on the
Speaker 1: screen from Jose Andres and of course the context here
Speaker 1: is number one, a policy of collective punishment and starvation
Speaker 1: which has been ongoing since post October seventh. You now
Speaker 1: have acute levels of food insecurity where people and especially
Speaker 1: children and babies are literally to death. You have anarchy
Speaker 1: breaking out because of the desperate circumstances, especially in northern Gaza,
Speaker 1: and now amidst that backdrop, you have seven aid workers
Speaker 1: who there specifically to try to feed hungry people who
Speaker 1: are targeted and killed by the IDF. Sober I know
Speaker 1: they're expressing their quote unquote sorrow over the incident, claiming
Speaker 1: they're going to investigate it. But let's be really clear here.
Speaker 1: These aid workers were in a deconflicted zone. They had
Speaker 1: done everything followed standard protocol to make sure they were
Speaker 1: not targeted, that they would be safe while they were
Speaker 1: conducting aid activities trying to feed starving people, and they
Speaker 1: were targeted and killed anyway in a marked car.
Speaker 3: There is no excuse for this, and it fits.
Speaker 1: A pattern of aid workers being killed and slaughtered in
Speaker 1: the Gaza strip by the IDF in the context of
Speaker 1: this conflict.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have a statement here this morning, just breaking
Speaker 2: from Benjamin Ntsenyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, saying that the
Speaker 2: killing of the AID workers quote was unintended and is
Speaker 2: a tragic incident. One of the things though, is that
Speaker 2: it definitely strains a little bit of credulity. Is for
Speaker 2: the pictures that are coming out of the strike. For
Speaker 2: those of us who covered the war on Terror, the
Speaker 2: image in front of us is not in any way surprising.
Speaker 2: It's the exact tailtale sign of a precision guided munition
Speaker 2: that's been going through is fired easily by a drone
Speaker 2: in some cases, actually, there's been seen some speculation by
Speaker 2: munitions and military experts it may have even been the
Speaker 2: tailtale the bladed hell fire missile. I know that that's
Speaker 2: one that the US has used in the past because
Speaker 2: it's one that can carry directly through a car and
Speaker 2: create the whole just exactly like what you see, which
Speaker 2: kills everybody inside but limits the amount of collateral damage
Speaker 2: then on the outside. So then there's a question of
Speaker 2: where do they get such munition? Why are we using
Speaker 2: this on an AID convoy and presumably you know, given
Speaker 2: the fact that the top of the car literally has
Speaker 2: the picture of food that's on top of it clearly
Speaker 2: branded with the name, then why was it targeted in
Speaker 2: the first place? And I mean, I think it does
Speaker 2: also tell you a lot that these Reelis themselves have
Speaker 2: basically givered no explanation as to how something like this
Speaker 2: can happen. They just say it's an unintended strike and
Speaker 2: that they express their condolences for the dead.
Speaker 1: This is just another number added to the hundreds of
Speaker 1: eight workers who have already been killed by the IDF,
Speaker 1: And so you can't look at the numbers and just assume, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this is all an accent, and let's think about the
Speaker 1: fallout here, because now World Central Kitchen they've suspended operations
Speaker 1: in the Gaza strip. They've been actually one of the
Speaker 1: more effective operations on the ground. This is their first
Speaker 1: time working in Gaza, but they've worked in many other
Speaker 1: difficult regions around the world. They had been quite bold
Speaker 1: in their approach and cowardedly pretty effective. So this is
Speaker 1: the worst thing that could possibly happen in terms of
Speaker 1: starving Palestinians. Yet another aid organization cut off at the knees,
Speaker 1: just like Anra has been as well. So the consequences
Speaker 1: here are incredibly dire, and it's so it is so indescribable,
Speaker 1: the number of atrocities that have been committed day after day.
Speaker 1: And you just look at this and you say, well,
Speaker 1: how are they so brazen killing an American aid worker,
Speaker 1: potentially dragging us.
Speaker 3: Into World War three with Iran?
Speaker 1: It was massacre at the hospital, the flower massacre, the
Speaker 1: targeting of hospitals and mosques and churches and refugee camps
Speaker 1: with two thousand pound bunk or buster bombs, and you
Speaker 1: look at it and it's very clear it's because they've
Speaker 1: gotten away with all of it. Is there any expectation
Speaker 1: that even though they just bombed one of our citizens,
Speaker 1: that there will be any consequences for that?
Speaker 3: No? Absolutely not.
Speaker 1: Do you think that even as they just struck the
Speaker 1: Iranian embassy in Damascus, potentially dragging us into a much
Speaker 1: broader and even more dangerous conflict, do you think there
Speaker 1: will be any consequences for that?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: So, when you want, well, why do they do these
Speaker 1: things and how do they Well, it's because they can,
Speaker 1: because they've been testing and tribal and What can we
Speaker 1: get away with? What can we get Can we get
Speaker 1: away with targeting starving civilians who are trying to obtain
Speaker 1: AID off a truck?
Speaker 3: Yes we can.
Speaker 1: Can we get away with targeting a hospital, Yes we can. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to target basically every hospital in the entire
Speaker 1: Gaza strip and destroy the entire health infrastructure. Can we
Speaker 1: get away with targeting an embassy in a foreign country?
Speaker 3: Yes we can't.
Speaker 1: Can we get away with targeting foreign nationals who are
Speaker 1: aid workers?
Speaker 3: And we already all.
Speaker 1: Know the answer. I also don't want to lose sight
Speaker 1: of the fact that these were extraordinary human beings who
Speaker 1: decided who signed up to be in this dangerous, brutal
Speaker 1: conflict zone. We wanted to share with you a portion
Speaker 1: of a video of two of the individuals who were
Speaker 1: killed by the Israelis in this strike and the work
Speaker 1: that they were doing there on the ground.
Speaker 3: Let's take a look.
Speaker 4: Hey, this is on and we're at the Java La kitchen,
Speaker 4: and we've put the leason plus tell us a little
Speaker 4: bit about the.
Speaker 5: Past to make the book the rice we have on
Speaker 5: the species or boil the water or.
Speaker 6: The boiling water inside.
Speaker 5: This is the step language put oil.
Speaker 2: We have the spices and.
Speaker 5: After we have trying the rice, not the water. The
Speaker 5: water is aramatized with this these mixed spices. There is
Speaker 5: a black lemons. There is some chili, seven mixed spices, ballets, salt, pepper,
Speaker 5: and at the base jay.
Speaker 4: So this is the beautiful, fragrant aromatic rice. So we'll
Speaker 4: be served today from kitchen.
Speaker 1: Thank you some of humanity's finess. Right there, Zomi and Shefali.
Speaker 1: That was the final video that they produced. There you
Speaker 1: can see, you know, preparing food for starving gosins. And
Speaker 1: now Sager, they're gone.
Speaker 2: Tragic, I mean beyond tragic, honestly, just aid workers. Look,
Speaker 2: we'll see what the what the official reaction is from
Speaker 2: their governments. But I'm not going to hold my breath,
Speaker 2: especially I mean with the American you know, especially for me.
Speaker 2: I'm like, you kill one of our own citizens in
Speaker 2: a strike that you say is unintended. You got to
Speaker 2: release a lot of data here on exactly how exactly
Speaker 2: this went down. But the thing is, Chrystal, we know
Speaker 2: they won't do that because that would expose the same
Speaker 2: level of anger and internal I mean, at a certain
Speaker 2: point we already know in terms of the indiscriminate, the
Speaker 2: lack of tactics you've covered it to in the past,
Speaker 2: the AI use in some cases, the way that people
Speaker 2: are just killed Willy Neil. That's another interesting question. Did
Speaker 2: human even make a decision here or do they just
Speaker 2: program something in here and says if it's a moving
Speaker 2: car in X, Y and z area, just blow the
Speaker 2: shit out of that's right, and you know that, and
Speaker 2: if so, you better answer a lot of questions as
Speaker 2: to why I don't feel in any way confident that
Speaker 2: our consulor you know, officials or state department will in
Speaker 2: any way do something like that. It takes me really upset.
Speaker 1: We know what their response is going to be. Matt
Speaker 1: Miller and these other people, Oh well, it Israel says
Speaker 1: they're investigating, wait for the results of that investigation. And
Speaker 1: guess what, you never hear the results of that investigation.
Speaker 1: You never hear about it again unless you know somebody
Speaker 1: like Ryan or another journalist ask about it, to which
Speaker 1: they just point to, you know, well, we're upset about that,
Speaker 1: and they're investigating, and we'll wait to see so we
Speaker 1: know exactly where this is ultimately going to go. And
Speaker 1: you know, the Israeli military, the IDF. They're famously very
Speaker 1: technically advanced, right, they have all the technology in the world,
Speaker 1: and yet we have consistently seen AID workers, medical workers, ambulances.
Speaker 1: The little girl who was trapped in a car with
Speaker 1: her dead family members begging for help, the Red Crescent
Speaker 1: sends out medics in an ambulance deconflicted with the Israelis
Speaker 1: in an attempt to save her, and everyone involved targeted
Speaker 1: and killed.
Speaker 3: Like at a certain point.
Speaker 1: We can't be so naive as to think these are
Speaker 1: all just unfortunate accidents that the Israelis are truly, really
Speaker 1: profoundly sorry about, because again, this helps to further their
Speaker 1: goal of inflicting pain and suffering on the palestinating people,
Speaker 1: specifically through the tool of starvation as a weapon of war.
Speaker 1: So the fact that this aid organization has now had
Speaker 1: to pause their operations and are no longer feeding the
Speaker 1: people of Gaza who are starving to death is a devastating,
Speaker 1: devastating Below, let's move on to some additional risks for
Speaker 1: our service members that are President Joe Biden is willingly
Speaker 1: putting them into. Let's put this up on the screen, Soccer.
Speaker 1: You found this, I mean, this is it's obvious in
Speaker 1: a way by the Washington posts. You made a good
Speaker 1: job writing up here. Biden's plan for Gaza Peer endangers
Speaker 1: US troops, experts warn Skeptics fear the humanitarian operation will
Speaker 1: be an enticing target for Hamas or other militants. They
Speaker 1: write in this piece, the Biden administration's plan to install
Speaker 1: a floating peer as part of the broad international initiative
Speaker 1: feed starving Palas names will endanger the US service members
Speaker 1: who must build, operate, and defend the structure from attack.
Speaker 1: According to military experts, they say there is a risk
Speaker 1: of enormous political consequences for the president. I love how
Speaker 1: the political consequences for the president our top of mind
Speaker 1: here versus the lives of the service members who are
Speaker 1: being put at risk. The Americans fixed proximity to the
Speaker 1: fighting and the intense anger at the US for support
Speaker 1: of Israel will render the peer an enticing target for
Speaker 1: Hamas or another militant group, many of whom receive arms
Speaker 1: military guidance from Iran. Skeptics of the operation worn rocket fire,
Speaker 1: attack druns and divers, are boats hauling explosives. All will
Speaker 1: pose a threat. Paul Kennedy, who's a retired Marine Corps
Speaker 1: general who led major humanitarian operations after natural disasters into
Speaker 1: Paul in the Philippines, said, quote, if a bomb went
Speaker 1: off in that location, the American public will ask what
Speaker 1: the hell were they doing there in the first place,
Speaker 1: which seems like something that the American people are frankly
Speaker 1: already asking.
Speaker 2: Well, they should ask that, because actually the more that
Speaker 2: we learn about this, the more terrifying it becomes. It
Speaker 2: says currently the amount that you that one thousand four
Speaker 2: Army ships deployed from Southeast Virginia March twelve. After an
Speaker 2: estimated thirty day transit, the vessels will pull in offshore.
Speaker 2: The soldiers will then began building a floating steel structure
Speaker 2: in eighteen hundred foot two lane causeway stretching from the
Speaker 2: edd of the Mediterranean Sea to a beachhead. All deliveries
Speaker 2: will then be staged and inspected in Cyprus before being
Speaker 2: loaded onto vessels that carry them to the pier. US
Speaker 2: personnel will have to move supplies to that causeway. They
Speaker 2: say then that officials will not leave it. Now here's
Speaker 2: where it gets even crazier is that the Israel government
Speaker 2: has said that is really forces will only ensure that
Speaker 2: aid reaches those that it should. Now they're taking over,
Speaker 2: So who exactly is this aid, you know, being turned
Speaker 2: over to? The other question here about troops and being
Speaker 2: top of mind is they list the evacuation of Afghanistan
Speaker 2: and the Bay Route bombings from nineteen eighty three as
Speaker 2: to consequences of what it looks like whenever you just
Speaker 2: have troops in a very uncertain environment. And that really
Speaker 2: what makes me nervous about this, and I think rightfully
Speaker 2: so is a way these are only a thousand, you know,
Speaker 2: source of sailors. Let's not forget you know, incidents like Beyrout,
Speaker 2: like the USS coal bombing in two thousand. All it
Speaker 2: took was a pittily little speedboat and they killed a
Speaker 2: lot of American sailors and they blew, you know, some
Speaker 2: two hundred million dollar ship a massive hole in the
Speaker 2: middle of the side of it. So it just highlights
Speaker 2: the immense danger that these guys are in. I mean,
Speaker 2: not to mention it's in the middle of a freaking
Speaker 2: war zone. The Israelis just bombed AID workers. How do
Speaker 2: we know that our troops and personnel won't come into content?
Speaker 2: How do we know that a hamas rocket's not going
Speaker 2: to missfire or intentionally be fired at them, and it
Speaker 2: just takes one and then what do we know, We're
Speaker 2: all in the middle of something else. Again, not to
Speaker 2: mention even accidents. I mean, remember in the Obama administration
Speaker 2: when the Navy speedboat what was it like, drifted into
Speaker 2: Iranian waters and it was a hostage crisis. These are
Speaker 2: all things that we need to avoid absolute you know
Speaker 2: that we should not even consider putting our people in
Speaker 2: harms way, and instead we're actually sending more people into
Speaker 2: harms way, specifically to protect Israel's reputation. I guess which
Speaker 2: is what's even more ridiculous.
Speaker 3: I don't even know.
Speaker 1: I mean, the logic of it is insane and preposterous.
Speaker 1: There there are plenty of AID crossings, there are plenty
Speaker 1: of AID trucks. The thing that's lacking is really will
Speaker 1: to actually feed the people in Gaza and not start
Speaker 1: them to death. That's what's lacking. So that's why this
Speaker 1: whole pure idea has always been preposterous. By the way,
Speaker 1: after it was announced in Biden's State of the Union,
Speaker 1: like it was some great humanitarian gesture that he came
Speaker 1: up with, it later was revealed through reporting that actually
Speaker 1: Netanyahu was the one who suggested it.
Speaker 3: It was his idea.
Speaker 1: And then netanyahuo floated to the Kanesset, to a group
Speaker 1: in the Kannesset that hey, perhaps this peer could ultimately
Speaker 1: be used to allow Palestinians, allow quote unquote Palestinians to
Speaker 1: leave the Gaza Strip, in other words, to help further
Speaker 1: our aims of ethnic cleansing and demographically thinning this area.
Speaker 1: So that's what's I think really going on here, because
Speaker 1: the idea that this is the best way to get
Speaker 1: aid into the Gaza Strip is insane. All we need
Speaker 1: to do is actually pressure Israel to let in the
Speaker 1: aid that is sitting amassed at the border, but we
Speaker 1: won't do that. Instead, we would rather put our service
Speaker 1: members at risk on some nonsense boondoggle that's going to
Speaker 1: take months to even come into effect anyway. And then,
Speaker 1: by the way, every time the Panagamon of the State
Speaker 1: Department gets asked about hey, you know, okay, so once
Speaker 1: this peer is built, what is even your plan for
Speaker 1: a distribution because you have effectively anarchy at least.
Speaker 3: In northern Gaza. And they're, oh, we'll get back to
Speaker 3: you on that.
Speaker 1: We don't really know that seems like a pretty frickin
Speaker 1: key piece of the puzzle here, doesn't it. Because one
Speaker 1: of the problems is even when an AID truck does
Speaker 1: get in, Israel has targeted the civil society workers and
Speaker 1: the other groups on the ground that have been trying
Speaker 1: to be responsible for safely delivering.
Speaker 3: This aid and not just having chaos.
Speaker 1: And you know, or the massacres that have occurred, like
Speaker 1: the Flower massacre where the IDF directly fires on starving
Speaker 1: gossens who are trying to seek out this food for
Speaker 1: themselves and their families. So just another layer of irresponsibility
Speaker 1: and insanity that you know, I think everyone clearly sees through.
Speaker 1: Let's also talk a little bit about, you know, some
Speaker 1: of the other events that have been occurring that fell
Speaker 1: a little bit under the radars.
Speaker 3: Put this up on the screen. So an Iraqi militia
Speaker 3: was actually.
Speaker 1: Able to strike inside of Israel in their Red Sea
Speaker 1: port city of a Lot came under an aerial attack
Speaker 1: on Monday.
Speaker 3: Caused no casualties, the.
Speaker 1: Military said, but was able to get through their air
Speaker 1: defense systems. So that is significant and also just a
Speaker 1: reminder the Houthis are still out there doing their thing,
Speaker 1: and we are still out there, you know, shooting down
Speaker 1: their drones and attacking inside of Yemen. In another potentially
Speaker 1: you know, escalatory scenario. Can put this up on the
Speaker 1: screen the Houthis have. The US military says it destroyed
Speaker 1: Houthy drones over the Red Sea and in Yemen. So
Speaker 1: you know, how many months at this point have we
Speaker 1: had this policy of striking the Thies. Hasn't slowed them down,
Speaker 1: haven't changed the dynamics, not that they even expected that
Speaker 1: it would. But this remains another potential point of escalation.
Speaker 1: So a dangerous and horrifying situation all the way around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's scary, especially considering those attacks on the Altoni
Speaker 2: base and others that could have broken at least what
Speaker 2: was supposedly some sort of six week you know, temporary
Speaker 2: ceasefire that we saw in the region. All signs point
Speaker 2: to more US soldiers, more US blood, and more US
Speaker 2: involvement in the Middle East. That's something I fought against
Speaker 2: for my entire professional life. So makes sense that this
Speaker 2: is exactly where we end up, even though I would
Speaker 2: contend the super majority of the American public has learned
Speaker 2: our lessons from our adventures in that region, and yet
Speaker 2: you know, Washington, Israel, everybody else can't just keep dragging
Speaker 2: us into it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, all right.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about Donald Trump and
Speaker 1: his somewhat all over the police comments that he made
Speaker 1: to an Israeli news doundlet. The reaction to those comments
Speaker 1: from the two right wing Israeli journalists who were interviewing
Speaker 1: him is now being reported in the New York Times.
Speaker 1: I can put this up on the screen. So the
Speaker 1: headline here is Trump's call for Israel to quote finish
Speaker 1: up war. Alarm some on the right recent remarks he
Speaker 1: made urging an end to the Gaza conflict and no
Speaker 1: insistence on freeing Israeli hostages. First, we're another departure from
Speaker 1: conservative support for net and Yahoo. So they right here.
Speaker 1: Two Israeli journalists traveled to Palm Beach, Florida a little
Speaker 1: over a week ago, hoping to elicit from Donald J.
Speaker 1: Trump a powerful expression of support for their country's war
Speaker 1: in Gaza. Instead, one of them wrote that what they
Speaker 1: heard from mister Trump at mar A Lago quote shocked
Speaker 1: us to the core. Both US presidential cannie Biden and
Speaker 1: Trump are turning their rhetorical backs on Israel. This is
Speaker 1: so delusional by the way, on every level, both about
Speaker 1: Biden and about Trump. But anyway, concluded Ariel Kahana, right
Speaker 1: wing settler who is the senior diplomatic correspondent for Israel
Speaker 1: Higham the newspapers owned by the billionaire Republican donor at
Speaker 1: Miriam Maddilson. Miss Addilson has arranged the interview with mister
Speaker 1: Trump personally, Accordingyshaw, person with direct knowledge of the planning,
Speaker 1: and just as a little reminder of a bit of
Speaker 1: what he said in that interview, let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: listen to Donald Trump.
Speaker 7: They would have.
Speaker 8: Never done that because they knew there would have been
Speaker 8: very big consequences.
Speaker 7: All right, that.
Speaker 8: Being said, you have to finish up your war. You
Speaker 8: have to finish it up. You got to get it done,
Speaker 8: and I'm sure you'll do that. And we got to
Speaker 8: get to peace. You can't have this going on. And
Speaker 8: I will say, Israel has to be very careful because
Speaker 8: you're losing a lot of the world, You're losing a
Speaker 8: lot of support. You have to finish up, you have
Speaker 8: to get the job done, and you have to get
Speaker 8: onto peace. You have to get onto a normal life
Speaker 8: for Israel. And for everybody else here they say, if
Speaker 8: I ran for if I ran for office in Israel,
Speaker 8: I get ninety eight percent of the vote. I'm not Jewish,
Speaker 8: and yet Israel to me is very important.
Speaker 1: He goes on to say, that's why I did gol
Speaker 1: on Heights, a reminder of the fact that he was
Speaker 1: staunchly pro Israel when he was president in the United
Speaker 1: States the last time around. But one of those journalists
Speaker 1: reacting saying Trump effectively bypassed Biden from the left when
Speaker 1: he expressed willingness to stop this war and get back
Speaker 1: to being the great country you once were. There's no
Speaker 1: way to beautify, minimize, or cover up that problematic message.
Speaker 1: So a bit of a freak ount there on those comments.
Speaker 3: I found it, amuzing I.
Speaker 2: Found it really funny, but actually really worth reading this piece.
Speaker 2: Jonathan Swan always a very good reporter and astute, and
Speaker 2: he had an interesting thing. I definitely wanted to get
Speaker 2: your reaction to Crystal is. John Poteerrits. He's the editor
Speaker 2: of Commentary. People who don't know we call him JPod Online,
Speaker 2: probably one of the most unhinged Israel supporters, has attacked
Speaker 2: the Show Me and You Times previously only known because
Speaker 2: his father was a respected intellectual, but many such cases
Speaker 2: here in Washington, DC. Anyway, here's what he says, quote,
Speaker 2: the only difference between Trump and Biden, and I say
Speaker 2: this as somebody who is not a supporter of Biden,
Speaker 2: is that Biden has put his money where his mouth is.
Speaker 2: He's been sending arms. Mister Pudhert said so that he
Speaker 2: seems to suggest, operationally, the problem with Biden is rhetoric
Speaker 2: and not policy. Trump is rhetoric and he's not laying
Speaker 2: out any policy that should make anybody feel good. And
Speaker 2: now I found that very noteworthy because as you can
Speaker 2: see there, the actual diehards for Israel are very much
Speaker 2: appreciative of Joe Biden. They are annoyed that he won't
Speaker 2: rhetorically back him, but they're like, hey, he's been sending
Speaker 2: in the arms. That's what we actually want the weapons.
Speaker 2: Trump is a genuine wildcard. You have no idea. And
Speaker 2: the irony is is that Trump doesn't care. He doesn't
Speaker 2: care about anything. And in fact what comes through is
Speaker 2: that he has quote never forgiven Benjamin Nettunnahoo for congratulating
Speaker 2: Joe Biden as the winner of the twenty twenty election,
Speaker 2: and it may Hey, listen, take what you can get
Speaker 2: right with Trump. That may be the one thing that
Speaker 2: will undercut his previous love affair with Netauna Who. For example,
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty one, mister Trump told Axios journalist Brock
Speaker 2: Ravid he concluded Nettuna Who never wanted peace with the Palestinians,
Speaker 2: and his first reaction after October seventh was to criticize
Speaker 2: Bibie and the intelligence services. His advisors then privately pleaded
Speaker 2: with him to clean up his comments, and then he
Speaker 2: eventually turned to standard lines of support before returning to
Speaker 2: the ambiguity of you gotta wrap this thing up now
Speaker 2: as much as possible. I mean, look, I've always put
Speaker 2: some at least some faith in Trump's complete indifference on
Speaker 2: these issues, because with Trump it's better rather than by Biden.
Speaker 2: Is ideological in some way, sometimes good Afghanistan, sometimes horrible,
Speaker 2: like in Many, Ukraine, for example, Israel. With Trump, he'll
Speaker 2: just go where over the wind blows. And what struck
Speaker 2: out to me was with Trump throughout the whole thing,
Speaker 2: he's like, it's becoming a real problem. You know, you
Speaker 2: look all over the world, people are really starting to
Speaker 2: abandon you. You got to wrap things up. He's like an
Speaker 2: outside observer and with that, now we don't know what
Speaker 2: policy will happen, you know, if he were to assume
Speaker 2: the presidency. But at the very least he is a
Speaker 2: genius in one respect, which is public relations and with
Speaker 2: how things are shifting politically and where to stake out
Speaker 2: a position. And that's why it was extraordinary to hear
Speaker 2: him say like, oh, you got to wrap it up
Speaker 2: as soon as possible.
Speaker 1: The safest assumption with Trump is obviously that he's going
Speaker 1: to connect himself the same way he read last time,
Speaker 1: which is overwhelming pro Israel support. And one thing that
Speaker 1: was noteworthy in that interview that didn't get as enough
Speaker 1: attention is the interviewers asked specifically about this proposal from
Speaker 1: Trump's ambassador to Israel when he was president of the
Speaker 1: United States, where his proposal asked for Israel to fully
Speaker 1: assert sovereignty over the West Bank, what he of course
Speaker 1: calls today in Samaria. And they asked Trump about it,
Speaker 1: and he basically indicated he was open to it. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the thing, is you're right that he he doesn't
Speaker 1: have the same ideological, fervent commitment to Israel that Joe
Speaker 1: Biden clearly does. He is a purely transactional character. However,
Speaker 1: always up to this point in the modern you know,
Speaker 1: in the past thirty years or whatever, that transactional math always,
Speaker 1: especially on the Republican side, at this point, adds up
Speaker 1: to fervent, unconditional support of whatever the hell Israel wants
Speaker 1: to do. Because remember, the actually the strongest, most lockstep
Speaker 1: diehard supporters not just of Israel, but of Nan Yahoo
Speaker 1: and Moriss and Ben Giveren, whatever insanity and psychosis they
Speaker 1: want to unleash, is not actually Jewish Americans. It's the
Speaker 1: white evangelical Christians who make up the most important part
Speaker 1: and the most fervent supporters of Donald Trump. You also have,
Speaker 1: you know, part of why last time around he was
Speaker 1: so pro Israel. It is not just because of Kushner,
Speaker 1: but because of the close relationship and the money that
Speaker 1: came from Sheldon Addelson. So it's not clear to me
Speaker 1: that any of that fundamental transactional math has really shifted
Speaker 1: from him. So I can't have any like hope or
Speaker 1: expectation that the fact that he made these like sort
Speaker 1: of vague comments saying you got to wrap it up,
Speaker 1: which can also be construed as you need to sort
Speaker 1: of like, you know, the guy who said you need
Speaker 1: to knew Gaza and finish it off the Republican congressman.
Speaker 1: I mean, Trump obviously didn't say that, but that finished
Speaker 1: the job. Rhetoric is similar to what that Congresszan cleaned
Speaker 1: up his nuke Gaza comments to mean. So anyway, I
Speaker 1: think the freak ount over where Trump would be from
Speaker 1: the Israeli perspective and from the right wing we got
Speaker 1: to support Israel no matter what perspective is misplaced. Although
Speaker 1: I do acknowledge that he does not have the ideological
Speaker 1: furquency around this issue that certainly Joe Biden does.
Speaker 2: I have no idea what he's gonna do. That's always
Speaker 2: kind of the fun thing with Trump, and we have
Speaker 2: a relative idea. But I still found it noteworthy, and
Speaker 2: I did find it especially interesting that the Netanyahu personal angle,
Speaker 2: and also the fact that, I mean, look, let's not
Speaker 2: pretend Miriam will Aidelson is one of the most powerful
Speaker 2: people in the entire GOP. Her late husband Sheldon Addleston,
Speaker 2: the multi billionaire Las Vegas Las Vegas stands. I mean,
Speaker 2: he is the funder of birthright, probably single handedly responsible
Speaker 2: for a huge portion of the GOP electorate's actual positioning
Speaker 2: on Israel. For him to still say that to a
Speaker 2: Miriam Adelson interviewee is actually pretty crazy. Now, you know,
Speaker 2: you could take whatever you want from that. You have
Speaker 2: no idea which way it will go. But noteworthy to
Speaker 2: me nonetheless, that at least in Israel they were like,
Speaker 2: oh wow, like at least he is really right. They're
Speaker 2: starting to understand that things are a little bit different.
Speaker 1: Here's what is important is even though like I said,
Speaker 1: I don't think that there could concern over whether Trump
Speaker 1: is going to be pro Israel or not is particularly
Speaker 1: well founded, the fact that there's a bit of a
Speaker 1: freak out over it is actually positive because one of
Speaker 1: the things that you might expect is that you know,
Speaker 1: Bbe would prefer Trump to be in office and thinks
Speaker 1: he can basically like you know, Thombas knows that Joe
Speaker 1: Biden and wait it out, weigh out these little, you know,
Speaker 1: handbringing recriminations that are coming from the Biden administration with
Speaker 1: the expectation that he's going to have Trump his buddy
Speaker 1: to deal with next time around. And so this at
Speaker 1: least scrambles that calculus a little bit, and that way
Speaker 1: is a positive thing.
Speaker 3: Not to mention.
Speaker 1: It's just the comments are amusing in and of themselves.
Speaker 1: They were shocked to their core, all right, So let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and get to the business news with regards
Speaker 1: to Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up on the screen. So we just learned.
Speaker 1: That Truth Social lost fifty eight million dollars last year
Speaker 1: and as a result, their stock absolutely tanked. It slid
Speaker 1: ultimately at the end of the day twenty one percent.
Speaker 1: At one point during the day it was down. That
Speaker 1: is a direct hit obviously to Donald Trump and his
Speaker 1: wealth because he owns a fifty seven percent stake in
Speaker 1: that company. So as a result of this massive drop,
Speaker 1: his personal net worth dropped one billion dollars in a day.
Speaker 1: We can put up the chart showing the trajectory of
Speaker 1: the Trump Media and Technology Group stock price. You know,
Speaker 1: this is over a long period of time when it
Speaker 1: was the Spack and whatever. So we can see in
Speaker 1: the recent era there at the end of this chart,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: Kind of up and down movement.
Speaker 1: Then you have this huge spike just before they you know,
Speaker 1: officially become this Trump Median Technology stock. And then yesterday
Speaker 1: you see this precipitous fall in the stock price, which
Speaker 1: you know, it's a big deal for Trump because he
Speaker 1: has a cash crunch right now because of his legal issues.
Speaker 1: He did get catch a bit of a break in
Speaker 1: New York in terms of what he's going to have
Speaker 1: to put down upfront, but it's still a lot of
Speaker 1: money that he's on the.
Speaker 3: Hook for here.
Speaker 1: So the fact that the stock price took such a
Speaker 1: hit is significant. And also, you know, as we discussed before,
Speaker 1: so Trump Media and Technology Group True Social they generated
Speaker 1: just four point one million dollars in revenue last year
Speaker 1: and lost fifty eight million dollars.
Speaker 3: So the idea that this is some.
Speaker 1: Multi billion dollar company is just like the most preposterous
Speaker 1: thing ever.
Speaker 3: But it's basically a meme stock.
Speaker 1: His supporters liked the stock, They wanted to help Trump.
Speaker 1: They wanted to see if they can make some money
Speaker 1: off of it too, So they've been bidding an up
Speaker 1: and up and up, and a significant portion of that,
Speaker 1: although not all of it came crashing down yesterday.
Speaker 2: Yeah. What's interesting is that especially highlight some issues with
Speaker 2: SPACs and with the shell companies and the way that
Speaker 2: they go public, in that the filing was made after
Speaker 2: actually the offering. Now as I understand that this is
Speaker 2: something unique in particular to when SPACs can are allowed
Speaker 2: to go public before then they are allowed to report
Speaker 2: their financials and is a little bit different than a
Speaker 2: traditional IPO. I was reading a little bit in the business press,
Speaker 2: but the filing at the end of the day shocked
Speaker 2: all of Wall Street, not just because of the where
Speaker 2: the price was, because it showed that the company generated
Speaker 2: Crystal just seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in revenue
Speaker 2: in just the fourth quarter of last year. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think people need to understand this too. Fourth quarter,
Speaker 2: especially if you're doing advertising, that's that's like the best
Speaker 2: time because that's when a huge portion of ad spend
Speaker 2: is actually recorded and is actually deployed because that's when
Speaker 2: all of us are shopping for Christmas presents or Black Friday.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's usually it's like for us, for example
Speaker 2: here on YouTube, that's when we're going to make the
Speaker 2: most amount of money because that is when our ad
Speaker 2: rates you're not going to go up. And then Q
Speaker 2: one January through March is usually the worst time because
Speaker 2: that's like the lowest ad spend period, so for them
Speaker 2: to bring in just some three quarters of a million
Speaker 2: dollars in revenue is honestly stunning, you know, given like
Speaker 2: it's like, how are you even signing up any clients?
Speaker 2: And then then you give their top line figures and
Speaker 2: then you have to wonder about what that growth is
Speaker 2: and about the burn rate for some sixty million dollars.
Speaker 2: That's another question I have. I'm like, what the hell
Speaker 2: are you even spending sixty million dollars on?
Speaker 5: Is?
Speaker 2: It's just I mean, what is it? Servers? Like, it
Speaker 2: can't take that many engineers to run this. It's very
Speaker 2: basic technology. Look at Elon he fired ninety percent of
Speaker 2: the people on Twitter in this site mostly still works.
Speaker 2: It's like, what are you doing over there?
Speaker 3: Apparently a lot of.
Speaker 1: It was an interest expense. I'm not really clear interest
Speaker 1: on what, but I guess must have some sort of
Speaker 1: loan massive set that they Yeah. So anyway, which, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is a problem because that means that's going to
Speaker 1: continue potentially and definitely right the thing was true social
Speaker 1: I mean, just to get to pretend like this is
Speaker 1: a serious business model for a moment. We were always
Speaker 1: skeptical of these like Twitter alternatives back when you know,
Speaker 1: Trump was kicked off of Twitter, and before it was
Speaker 1: in the Elon Musk era and whatever.
Speaker 3: But at that point, at.
Speaker 1: Least there was some sort of a business logic to
Speaker 1: a Twitter alternative of like, you've got all these conservatives
Speaker 1: who are upset about the way this company is being managed.
Speaker 1: You feel like it doesn't represent there are values who
Speaker 1: want to be able to go somewhere else. And so
Speaker 1: if you've got Donald Trump on this other platform that's
Speaker 1: basically Twitter, but it's run by someone that you feel
Speaker 1: more ideologically aligned with, that at least has some logic
Speaker 1: to it. But now that you have the elon Twitter
Speaker 1: era and it's much more of a sympathetic place to
Speaker 1: conservatives and it's you know, sort of coded right wing. Now,
Speaker 1: whether the reality of that is true or not, the
Speaker 1: business case really doesn't make any sense. I mean, at
Speaker 1: this point, true Social is just relevant only because Trump
Speaker 1: is on it, and I can't say that I have
Speaker 1: personally spent a lot of time on truth Social. But
Speaker 1: apparently because there's no liberals there to like, you know,
Speaker 1: to sneer at and mock, it's also kind of destructive
Speaker 1: to the conservative movement because it's just them arguing with
Speaker 1: each other and like tearing each.
Speaker 2: Other apart to yeah, I don't know enough.
Speaker 1: But it's this, you know, it's this tiny silo where
Speaker 1: the only thing that really matters on it is whatever
Speaker 1: Donald Trump says, which gets picked up and also put
Speaker 1: on Twitter, and which is where we usually see it
Speaker 1: or also polished, you know, by media outlets when it's
Speaker 1: something worthy, like his various Easter deranged truths. So it
Speaker 1: really doesn't have a logical business case at this point.
Speaker 1: So on the one hand, it's like, oh, I can't
Speaker 1: believe they only they only got in seven hour, fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in revenue last quarter. But it's also like,
Speaker 1: who is even advertising on this platform at all? And
Speaker 1: what yeah, what business would say, Oh, the place I
Speaker 1: really want to be is true Social. It's going to
Speaker 1: be definitionally, it's going to be very niche organizations who
Speaker 1: are really just trying to target this specific ideological group.
Speaker 1: And you know, I was trying to look up how
Speaker 1: many daily active users True Social has. That information's not
Speaker 1: out there, but it obviously is dwarfed by other, you know,
Speaker 1: mainstream social media platforms. So in any case, I think
Speaker 1: it was only a matter of time before there was
Speaker 1: a significant cratch, and I would expect that there's more
Speaker 1: to come. And again it is one more illustration of
Speaker 1: just how incredibly fake our economy is. Because I do this,
Speaker 1: even after the crash, it still has like a six
Speaker 1: point six billion dollars valuation.
Speaker 3: Crazy.
Speaker 2: No, it's been an e Yeah, And that's the other
Speaker 2: view is that they haven't yet had to tell us
Speaker 2: what their number of monthly users is. There is an
Speaker 2: estimate that there are approximately one million monthly active users,
Speaker 2: but not daily active users. I mean, for context, I
Speaker 2: think Twitter has two hundred and seventeen million. I believe
Speaker 2: like actual daily active users. I'm pretty sure i'd have
Speaker 2: to go back. Yeah, daily user base of two hundred
Speaker 2: and seventeen million as of April of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: Don't know what it is under Elon. According to Elon,
Speaker 2: it's actually up, so you know. Anyway, So we're talking
Speaker 2: at two to three hundred times, And just so everybody knows,
Speaker 2: trude social is what worth six billion. Fidelity has marked
Speaker 2: down their investment in Elon's Twitter by some seventy percent.
Speaker 2: So let's do the math here. Let's doo point three times.
Speaker 2: What did Elon pay for a forty four billion, so
Speaker 2: their fidelity is valuing Twitter under Elon around thirteen billion,
Speaker 2: so there's no way yeah double, So it's like that
Speaker 2: actually sounds reasonable to me, thirteen billion dollars for the
Speaker 2: current Twitter, but yeah, six billion is wildly outrageous.
Speaker 3: I mean, think about that.
Speaker 1: Okay, obviously it's not exactly apples to apples because we're
Speaker 1: a very different business here, but only a million monthly
Speaker 1: active users. That means way more people watch our show
Speaker 1: in a month, oh than are active on truth social I.
Speaker 2: Don't even know.
Speaker 1: I go to show you what a tiny niche sliver
Speaker 1: of the market is and how completely irrelevant it is
Speaker 1: the moment that Donald Trump stops posting there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not to brag, but you know, might as well
Speaker 2: problem it would be, you know, twenty million something like that.
Speaker 2: That sounds pretty good in terms of how we're doing.
Speaker 2: But yeah, we're not idiots, and we don't think that
Speaker 2: our business is worth six billion dollars.
Speaker 9: There.
Speaker 2: At the same time, we wanted to put some good
Speaker 2: news actually in the show. There's been an astounding development
Speaker 2: amongst gen z. Even though a lot of people are
Speaker 2: very concerned about their political views and maybe their online
Speaker 2: phone usage. It seems that they are a lot more
Speaker 2: sensible than my millennial generation whenever it comes to employment.
Speaker 2: Let's go and put this out there on the screen
Speaker 2: quote from the Wall Street Journal, how gen Z is
Speaker 2: becoming the tool belt generation. More young workers are going
Speaker 2: into trades at disenchantment with the college treck continues, rising pay,
Speaker 2: and new technologies shine up plumbing and electrical jobs. Let's
Speaker 2: actually go to the next part because this is a
Speaker 2: really interesting chart that people can see. It shows that
Speaker 2: enrollment growth in four year college degree in vocational community
Speaker 2: focused community college has gone up by some fifteen percent
Speaker 2: from the twenty twenty one baseline, whereas there has been
Speaker 2: maybe a single digit increase if you look at other
Speaker 2: four year institutions and even community college that are not
Speaker 2: vocational focus. What that tells us is that the spike,
Speaker 2: the overall fifteen or percent spike, is one of the
Speaker 2: most extraordinary that we've seen in modern American history for
Speaker 2: younger people who are explicitly choosing to go in to
Speaker 2: trades based educations with set wages that are much higher
Speaker 2: than they ever were before than at any time previously
Speaker 2: when they were choosing for more service based economies, we
Speaker 2: can go to the next one too, because this is
Speaker 2: really really fascinating is you can watch there how the
Speaker 2: precipitous decline has happened in the average age of select
Speaker 2: trades electrician, heating, air conditioning, carpenter, and I think every
Speaker 2: trade except for welding has seen a precipitous drop just
Speaker 2: since twenty twenty, and especially since twenty seventeen in the
Speaker 2: median age of the people who are engaged in the trades. Crystal.
Speaker 2: And the main thing that comes through in this piece
Speaker 2: over and over again on top of the data is
Speaker 2: that people believe a couple of things. Number one is
Speaker 2: that the wage premium for college is no longer worth it.
Speaker 2: That is absolutely one hundred percent true. But two, and
Speaker 2: even more interesting to me, young people are sitting there
Speaker 2: eighteen years old. They're looking at AI. They're looking at
Speaker 2: the productivity gains that are being rolled up up into
Speaker 2: the stock prices these big tech companies, and they're saying, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know what, the one thing you can't AI is plumbing, welding,
Speaker 2: Having a job as an auto mechanic, having a job
Speaker 2: as an EV technician, having his job as an electrician.
Speaker 2: They're always going to need that, if anything, that's what's
Speaker 2: going to build the backbone of the future economy. And
Speaker 2: they're choosing to make that choice. And I think they're
Speaker 2: setting themselves up for a much easier and previously trodden
Speaker 2: path to middle class and frankly to prosperity and not
Speaker 2: taking out a lot of debt. They're setting themselves up
Speaker 2: for very very well. They're going to start airning a
Speaker 2: lot more money than they would have previously. It's a
Speaker 2: very very sensible direction for a lot of people who
Speaker 2: are out there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's incredibly rational.
Speaker 1: Yeah, college is insanely expensive and debt loads are skyrocketing
Speaker 1: with no real relief in sight. So you've got that
Speaker 1: on one side of the ledger, you have a bunch
Speaker 1: of young people who may have watched their are parents,
Speaker 1: you know, white collar professions, and seeing how their life
Speaker 1: is consisted of staring at a computer screen all day
Speaker 1: and thought, you know what, this isn't really what I
Speaker 1: want for myself, And so I think there's a reaction
Speaker 1: in the other direction there. There's also tremendous demand in
Speaker 1: some of these trades where there'd been previously a crisis
Speaker 1: of a lot of older journeymen who were retiring and
Speaker 1: there wasn't a clear pipeline of new young talent to
Speaker 1: replace them. Well, that is now reversing, and you pointed
Speaker 1: to the pay, So in this piece they point out
Speaker 1: that the median pay for new construction hires actually rose
Speaker 1: a five point one percent to forty eight thousand dollars
Speaker 1: roughly last year. By contrast, new hires and professional services.
Speaker 1: So like your sort of traditional white collar job out
Speaker 1: of college earned an annual thirty nine thousand and experienced
Speaker 1: a two point seven percent, so a lower increase from
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. This is according to ADP, so at
Speaker 1: least in terms of where you start out, you may
Speaker 1: start at a higher salary if you go into one
Speaker 1: of these trades versus if you go and spend all
Speaker 1: the money on a four year college degree. Now, still
Speaker 1: over the lifetime of these different careers blue collar versus
Speaker 1: white collar, right now, the median for white collar work
Speaker 1: once you're into your career continues to outpace blue collar work.
Speaker 1: But you know, does that remain the case? Is it
Speaker 1: worth it given the extraordinary expense that you have to
Speaker 1: incur on the front end, the fact that there's been
Speaker 1: a shift away from this idea that everyone has to
Speaker 1: go to college and if you're going to succeed in life,
Speaker 1: you have to go to college, and that's the only
Speaker 1: path forward. I think it's a really positive thing because
Speaker 1: you know, there's also a lot of people who find
Speaker 1: tremendous fulfillment in the trades and like being able to
Speaker 1: build things and work with their hands and don't want
Speaker 1: to just sit in an office all day. So I
Speaker 1: think this is a really incredibly positive and hopeful development.
Speaker 2: Honestly, the other very important thing with this is we're
Speaker 2: talking about the part of the problem. What we talk
Speaker 2: about with wages is that we look at the average. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's true if you're in the white collar work, if
Speaker 2: you're college educated, you are probably on average, your lifetime
Speaker 2: earnings are going to be higher. But where do you live?
Speaker 2: What are you netting out? One of the nice things
Speaker 2: about trades is you can live wherever you want. You
Speaker 2: don't necessarily have to live in a city if you
Speaker 2: don't want to, and one hundred k a year in
Speaker 2: a smaller town where they need HVAC just as much
Speaker 2: as HVAC as we live here in Washington, DC. In
Speaker 2: some cases, your cost of living can be especially on
Speaker 2: housing can be like one fifth the amount in a
Speaker 2: major metropolitan area. You have a lot more flexibility. I
Speaker 2: see this all the time with people who are skilled,
Speaker 2: especially like nurses. Nurses they can just decide to move
Speaker 2: whenever they want, and they're in demand literally everywhere for
Speaker 2: small town, big town they want to make more money,
Speaker 2: they can travel to. It's an incredible career field. I
Speaker 2: see this too with people who are electricians and plumbers.
Speaker 2: When you have such a valuable skill, you can effectively
Speaker 2: transplant anywhere in the entire United States. You have more
Speaker 2: job security, and you also make it so they don't
Speaker 2: necessarily have to live in a major metropolitan area if
Speaker 2: you don't want to. It just gives you a ton
Speaker 2: of optionality. And the other thing, and this is what
Speaker 2: I really hope for, is that the colleges finally have
Speaker 2: to compete, because if their revenues start to go down,
Speaker 2: they're going to have to start mark getting themselves as
Speaker 2: to why they are actually worth it, and not just
Speaker 2: so mom and dad can feel good that you went
Speaker 2: to a four year college degree. They actually got to
Speaker 2: be like, no, no, no, if you come here, we're going
Speaker 2: to get you a job. So I actually invest some
Speaker 2: of that money that they're basically stealing from people and
Speaker 2: from the government into actually getting you a job on
Speaker 2: the other side, or maybe the lower their admissions rates,
Speaker 2: or maybe you know, we can change up our policy.
Speaker 2: That's probably the most fundamentally important thing, is a shake
Speaker 2: up to higher education.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that that is correct.
Speaker 1: I also think there's something really important happening in terms
Speaker 1: of cultural views of college educated white collar work versus
Speaker 1: blue collar skilled trade work, which this was really you know,
Speaker 1: for a lot of years, especially in sort of like
Speaker 1: the peak of the neoliberal era, college was viewed as
Speaker 1: the pinnacle and trades were considered sort of like the fallback, right,
Speaker 1: the lesser choice.
Speaker 3: It was like the stepchild. You know.
Speaker 1: They talk about in this article, they talk about a
Speaker 1: high school where it used to be, you know, the
Speaker 1: trade building was sort of pushed off to the side
Speaker 1: and people sneered at it and looked down their nose
Speaker 1: at it. And now it's got a nice new equipment,
Speaker 1: it's at the front of.
Speaker 3: The school, it's featured. People actively seek.
Speaker 1: This out, you know, it doesn't have that same sort
Speaker 1: of like stigma around it that unfortunately it has for
Speaker 1: far too long.
Speaker 3: So I think that's a.
Speaker 1: Really positive direction as well, and also could lead to
Speaker 1: you know, blue collar people, average working people having more
Speaker 1: say and more political power in terms of our politics
Speaker 1: as well. So I think that's really important. I also
Speaker 1: think there's something soccer to the fact that, just like
Speaker 1: the mystique and the fantasy of college is really worn off.
Speaker 1: How many people go and you know, they do the
Speaker 1: thing they're supposed to do, and they get their four
Speaker 1: year degree and then end up, you know, Barista's Starbucks,
Speaker 1: are working in a field or an industry where they
Speaker 1: don't even need a four year college degree, or they're
Speaker 1: certainly not working in mess I mean, perhaps a majority
Speaker 1: of people end up not even working in the thing
Speaker 1: that they studied in college.
Speaker 3: So it's like, what are we really doing here?
Speaker 1: We just here for some sort of a life experience,
Speaker 1: or is this actually leading us to where we want
Speaker 1: to be in terms of our life and career trajectories.
Speaker 1: So the fact that stigma's being removed, the fact that
Speaker 1: wages are going up, the fact that this is being
Speaker 1: seen as a viable, positive affirmative choice by more people
Speaker 1: in gen Z, I genuinely think this is such a.
Speaker 2: Positive thing absolutely you can. Let's spend some more time
Speaker 2: on this. Thirty nine percent of eighteen to twenty four
Speaker 2: year olds are enrolled in a post secondary program. That's
Speaker 2: way too high, way too high. The vast majority of
Speaker 2: those people are enrolled in quote unquote knowledge based service
Speaker 2: programs and previously were not engaged in vocational programs. The
Speaker 2: previous percent of people who went to college. I think
Speaker 2: the right amount was referent around nineteen percent. It should
Speaker 2: be a luxury good. It should be something where, yes,
Speaker 2: you have to take out a tremendous amount of debt
Speaker 2: or you come from a family that can afford it,
Speaker 2: and then you can use that wage premium in the
Speaker 2: service based economy. But the vast majority of people don't
Speaker 2: need to attend. It's not a good trade. So twenty
Speaker 2: percent or so of people who attended exactly into that bucket.
Speaker 2: Now I'm not saying it's fair. I don't think it
Speaker 2: is fair. But what I do think is that watching
Speaker 2: people go into hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt,
Speaker 2: the average college what is the average student loan that's
Speaker 2: out there, something like twenty five something thirty thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: especially on these variable interest rates with some of these
Speaker 2: private loan programs is usury. I mean, it's insane, and
Speaker 2: thanks to our current president, by the way, you can't
Speaker 2: even discharge it through bankruptcy. So it makes it that
Speaker 2: it's just an incredible news around people's neck. In this
Speaker 2: country right now, we have a huge problem where the
Speaker 2: average woman wants to have two point two kids and
Speaker 2: is having one point eight. The number one reason that
Speaker 2: families cite as to why is money and debt. Specifically,
Speaker 2: a huge portion of this is student debt. The other
Speaker 2: issue is I just was talking about if you want
Speaker 2: to have a job and you want to work with
Speaker 2: your college degree, the likelihood is, like us, you need
Speaker 2: to move to a major metropolitan area which has a
Speaker 2: very high cost of living and is where the major
Speaker 2: concentration of these things are. And so over and over
Speaker 2: you're getting on the wheel where very few people are
Speaker 2: actually winning. The people who won are the boomers in
Speaker 2: the past, and like I said, traditionally some twenty percent
Speaker 2: or so of the population, which does really justify that
Speaker 2: college premium highly concentrated in STEM in particular, for what
Speaker 2: is actually worth it. But we never thought about it
Speaker 2: as a trade. We just thought of it as an
Speaker 2: intrinsic good, and that's really how we ended up here.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just in favor of more choices, right.
Speaker 1: I think we should have debt forgiveness. I think we
Speaker 1: should have free public collers, so people who want to
Speaker 1: pursue that path, who want to go into STEM, want
Speaker 1: to go into a white collar career. For them, that's
Speaker 1: the thing, and it makes sense for them that they
Speaker 1: have that opportunity, and that's fantastic. I think it should
Speaker 1: be you know, like I said, I think public college
Speaker 1: should be free. It should certainly be way more affordable
Speaker 1: than it is right now. And we take it for
Speaker 1: granted because of the era that we grew up in
Speaker 1: that it should be this incredible burdensome load, when not
Speaker 1: that long ago, the University of California system was free
Speaker 1: and many other schools were extremely affordable where you could
Speaker 1: work and actually afford to pay your way through school.
Speaker 1: Like the idea of being able to do that is
Speaker 1: preposterous now, So people even at state schools leave with
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of dollars in debt to start their life.
Speaker 1: That has ripple effects throughout their entire life. As you're
Speaker 1: pointing out not only with family creation, also really stifles
Speaker 1: entrepreneurship because you know, you've got this thing you got
Speaker 1: to pay every month, and that's hanging over you, and
Speaker 1: so you just feel.
Speaker 3: Like, all right, I got to get to work.
Speaker 1: I got to get whatever is the highest paying job
Speaker 1: that I possibly can. Forget about potential entrepreneurship, forget about
Speaker 1: whatever the dream job might be that potentially is lower paying.
Speaker 1: I just got to get on that grind and try
Speaker 1: to pay the sucker off. So it really does constrain
Speaker 1: from the jump your life choices, which is a disaster.
Speaker 3: So the fact that you.
Speaker 1: Have, you know, other pathways that are being seen as attractive,
Speaker 1: that people are pursuing, that you know, have that the
Speaker 1: stigma around them is going away, and that lead can lead,
Speaker 1: you know, very clearly and like on a direct path
Speaker 1: to this sort of you know, state middle class life.
Speaker 3: It's it's a really it's a really.
Speaker 1: Good thing, really encouraging, and I think we'll potentially have
Speaker 1: some impact on college affordability as well, because you are
Speaker 1: already seeing actually enrollment declines in four year institutions as
Speaker 1: things are shifting.
Speaker 3: So I do think it's a good direction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I hope that these private colleges in particular,
Speaker 2: I hope they get crushed from the wave of this
Speaker 2: because it is criminal how much they've been jacked.
Speaker 1: Yeah to show true a freaking mediocre school and you're
Speaker 1: paying those insane amounts.
Speaker 3: It's crazy.
Speaker 2: Did you see that in the Northeast some of these
Speaker 2: premium like liberal arts colleges are now charging some ninety
Speaker 2: thousand dollars a year. Look Yale maybe, and maybe I
Speaker 2: want to say again big maybe the rest of them,
Speaker 2: Sarah Lawrence or something like that. You are an idiot.
Speaker 2: If you're paying ninety thousand dollars for something like that,
Speaker 2: it ain't worth it. It ain't worth it.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's wild.
Speaker 2: Let's move on to Havana syndrome. This is it's the
Speaker 2: syndrome which simply just won't die for those the fakes
Speaker 2: has wont killed more people in frustration at its coverage,
Speaker 2: then it actually has allegedly killed. And Havana syndrome just
Speaker 2: a return for those who have not heard of it.
Speaker 2: It has been now alleged for some five six odd
Speaker 2: years from the Cuban embassy in Havana, where it gets
Speaker 2: its name, where allegedly US workers embassy workers were being
Speaker 2: targeted with some new directed energy weapon and experiencing a
Speaker 2: bizarre array of symptoms. This was then accepted as fact
Speaker 2: published by the media ascribed then even though it occurred
Speaker 2: supposedly in Havana to the Russian government and became a
Speaker 2: full on Russia Gate craze throughout the two thousands, to
Speaker 2: the extent that the United States Congress passed money to
Speaker 2: help them with their health bills. Where the US intelligence
Speaker 2: community at first was treating it as real, the media
Speaker 2: has an entire panic about whether US diplomats are being
Speaker 2: attacked with this newfangled weapon. It was eventually killed and
Speaker 2: said that it was totally fake and by the US
Speaker 2: intelligence community itself. And yet sixty minutes has decided to
Speaker 2: resurrect Havana syndrome and say no even though the people
Speaker 2: who have every incentive to lie and say that it
Speaker 2: is real, even though they even say that it's not real,
Speaker 2: they are actually orchestrating a cover up. Here's what they
Speaker 2: had to say.
Speaker 10: If it is Russia. Investigative reporter Kristo Grozev believes he
Speaker 10: knows who's involved. In twenty eighteen, Grozev was the first
Speaker 10: to discover the existence of a top secret Russian intelligence
Speaker 10: unit which goes by a number two nine one five five.
Speaker 6: These are people who are trained to be versatile assassins
Speaker 6: and sabotage of raiters. They're trained in comp savellas, they're
Speaker 6: trained and exposess. They're trained at using poison and technology equipment,
Speaker 6: actually in thick pain or damage to the targets.
Speaker 10: And Grozev says he found one that may link two
Speaker 10: nine one five five to a directed energy weapon.
Speaker 6: And when I saw it, I literally had tears in
Speaker 6: my eyes because it was spelling out what they had
Speaker 6: been doing.
Speaker 10: It's a piece of accounting. An officer of two nine
Speaker 10: one five five received for work on quote potential capabilities
Speaker 10: of non lethal acoustic weapons.
Speaker 2: So he uh, supposedly this is clearly reads like a
Speaker 2: Tom Clancy novel, Crystal Unit two nine one five of
Speaker 2: the GRU. By the way, who is this man? He's
Speaker 2: a Bulgarian journalist who previously worked for Belling Cat, which
Speaker 2: has been funded by the CIA, and head of the
Speaker 2: investigations at quote. The Insider, which is an online newspaper
Speaker 2: supposedly Russia, founded by a Russian journalist and as obviously
Speaker 2: hostile to the Russian government. Now I'm not I don't
Speaker 2: know very much about this man. What I do know
Speaker 2: is that if you just look, it's very basic in
Speaker 2: terms of the you know, the Midon, the Belling Cat
Speaker 2: connections and all that, with all the incentive in the
Speaker 2: world to play up some grand conspiracy and all of
Speaker 2: this just taking at the word, frankly, a bunch of
Speaker 2: diplomats and other people who could be suffering from any
Speaker 2: kinds of health maladies from for whatever reason, hypochondriacs and
Speaker 2: others who are just being totally believed with frankly no
Speaker 2: skepticism by the media here and in parroting a crazy accusation,
Speaker 2: which is that somebody is firing a secret microwave energy
Speaker 2: weapon through the walls at your head to I mean,
Speaker 2: for what purpose, to immobilize you? And just keep coming
Speaker 2: back to why, for what reason, what purpose would this
Speaker 2: entire thing exists?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So this was really sold as you know, blockbuster story.
Speaker 1: It was a partnership between sixty minutes German newspaper Der
Speaker 1: Spiegel and Insider, which, as Zager is just saying, is
Speaker 1: this outlet of Russian dissidents. So clearly, you know they
Speaker 1: have a perspective that's fine, but you have to take
Speaker 1: that perspective into account when you're considering the quote unquote
Speaker 1: reporting here.
Speaker 3: And they even have to admit.
Speaker 1: In the piece that the quote unquote evidence that they're
Speaker 1: able to produce is circumstantial. So the big smoking gun
Speaker 1: is the piece that we just showed you this translated,
Speaker 1: you know, memo of accounting referring to some ambiguous directed
Speaker 1: energy acoustic weapon, right that has no specifics. We have
Speaker 1: no tie in to what's happening here. We don't even
Speaker 1: know if this is a real thing, right, so it's
Speaker 1: very speculative.
Speaker 3: Okay, there's another piece.
Speaker 1: There was an incident that unfolded in the country of Georgia,
Speaker 1: and they have some potential indications that maybe this one
Speaker 1: guy who may be affiliated with this unit could have
Speaker 1: been in the area when one of these attacks happen.
Speaker 1: And then they also have one of these attacks, I'll
Speaker 1: use the quotes happen. And then they also have some
Speaker 1: sort of a brief intercepted communication in Russian where someone
Speaker 1: says is the green light supposed to be flashing?
Speaker 3: And should it stay on all night?
Speaker 1: Now, again, this is very speculative, Okay to connect these
Speaker 1: pieces and say aha, that must be what's happening. The
Speaker 1: evidence is just not there to justify to justify that conclusion,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to be a diplomatic asponsible.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, the green light thing.
Speaker 3: That could be anything.
Speaker 2: That's something, you know, for those of you who are
Speaker 2: Whoop gang, that's what I say when I plug in
Speaker 2: my whoop charger because it's green and it shines in
Speaker 2: the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: I want to guess there's like a fair number of
Speaker 1: Russian speakers in the country of Georgia and Toblisi at
Speaker 1: a given moment. So, you know, the idea intercepted this call,
Speaker 1: they painted as again like this kind of smoking gun
Speaker 1: when it really really isn't. But to me, perhaps the
Speaker 1: most revealing part of the sixty minutes you know segment
Speaker 1: on this expose on this came at the very end
Speaker 1: where one of the primary people that they're relying on
Speaker 1: for this analysis, they mentioned in passing that now he's
Speaker 1: left the Pentagon and he wants to get government contracts
Speaker 1: to deal with Havana syndrome suffers, so he has a
Speaker 1: direct monetary incentive to you know, spin this story and
Speaker 1: paint this picture, et cetera. One of the other key
Speaker 1: individuals that they interview as part of this is a
Speaker 1: lawyer who's representing a bunch of Havana syndrome quote unquote sufferers.
Speaker 1: So you also have, you know, a monetary and personal
Speaker 1: incentive to paint this picture, so you know, when you
Speaker 1: put the pieces together, of what they actually were able
Speaker 1: to produce here versus you know, what we know and
Speaker 1: what the government has even had to admit at this point.
Speaker 1: And I don't think that they were excited to admit this,
Speaker 1: by the way, because they seem very gung ho about
Speaker 1: the whole syndrome situation. It doesn't really add up.
Speaker 2: No, it's certainly And there's also a hilarious part of
Speaker 2: the interview where they attempt to disguise a woman by
Speaker 2: just putting her in a wig, hoping that if she
Speaker 2: looks a little bit like Lady Gaga, nobody will be
Speaker 2: able to guess who she is. So if you're watching
Speaker 2: in particular, you're gonna want to see this. Let's take
Speaker 2: a listen.
Speaker 10: One of them is Carrie. We're discuss and not using
Speaker 10: her last name because she's still an FBI agent working
Speaker 10: in counterintelligence. She says in twenty twenty one she was
Speaker 10: home in Florida when she was hit by a crippling
Speaker 10: force and bam, and.
Speaker 11: So in my right ear, it was like a dentist
Speaker 11: drilling on steroids, that feeling when.
Speaker 10: It gets too close to your eardron.
Speaker 7: It's like that, you know, times ten.
Speaker 10: It was like a high pitch metallic drilling noise, and
Speaker 10: it knocked me forward at like a forty five degree
Speaker 10: angle this way.
Speaker 2: As you can see, she's talking about some bizarre symptoms.
Speaker 2: But frankly, just from watching that Crystal, look, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to look into who she is close. You shouldn't
Speaker 2: want her identity revealed. But it's like, how is that
Speaker 2: possibly going to shield you from any public scrutiny? Just ridiculous.
Speaker 2: You're actually trying to protect somebody's protect somebody's actual, you know,
Speaker 2: their identity. Let's also go and put this up there
Speaker 2: on the screen. As we mentioned, the intelligence community itself
Speaker 2: says that this is vake. They say that Havana syndrome
Speaker 2: was not caused by an energy weapon or a foreign
Speaker 2: adversary according to them, and the basic sixty minutes theory
Speaker 2: is that all of this is being covered up to
Speaker 2: avoid some sort of war with Russia or some sort
Speaker 2: of accusation. Just think about this very clearly. Our government
Speaker 2: has every incentive in the world to whip up conspiracy
Speaker 2: theories about Russia to keep the American population against them
Speaker 2: so that we can continue to buy into their Ukraine
Speaker 2: funding hoax, which they are dramatically unpopular and underwater with.
Speaker 2: There's no reason that they would want to cover this up.
Speaker 2: If it was even two percent true, they would say
Speaker 2: it was true. Think about the other crap that they've
Speaker 2: pushed on us, the Russian bounty story in Afghanistan. I mean,
Speaker 2: I can go on forever, but for some reason, this
Speaker 2: one in particular. Yeah, that one they're covering up. We're
Speaker 2: not even talking about debts, you know, we're talking about
Speaker 2: alleged attacks. Another very clear sign about who are the
Speaker 2: people who are very I guess rejoicing around this. Here
Speaker 2: you have John Bolton saying that it's real and that
Speaker 2: we need to get very serious about it. Let's take
Speaker 2: a listen.
Speaker 12: When I was a National security by I was briefed
Speaker 12: on this.
Speaker 2: I was very concerned about it.
Speaker 12: I did then and do now think that there's very
Speaker 12: likely some hostile adversary behavior here, whether it's Russia, China,
Speaker 12: maybe somebody else, more than likely Russia. I don't think
Speaker 12: the government, frankly, when I was there took it seriously enough.
Speaker 12: I don't think they've taken it seriously enough since then.
Speaker 12: I commend CBS for going after it. I think you
Speaker 12: should continue to go after it too, because the danger
Speaker 12: that the Russians or any adversary could actually perfect this
Speaker 12: kind of weapon, the damage it could do to our troops,
Speaker 12: to high level government officials in a time of crisis
Speaker 12: is very very concerning, and I just think people swept.
Speaker 10: It aside too quickly.
Speaker 12: Some of the people who were affected actually were National
Speaker 12: Security Council staff when I was there, and the idea
Speaker 12: that these people had some kind of psychosomatic experience was
Speaker 12: not credible to me. But we know that the Russians
Speaker 12: have used directed energy efforts against our embassy in Moscow
Speaker 12: out in years past. The speculation this time on sixty
Speaker 12: minutes was it was acoustical devices. I think directored energy
Speaker 12: is probably more likely.
Speaker 2: So there you go, Crystal, If directed energy this is
Speaker 2: the likely reason, it's definitely the Russians. Anytime I see
Speaker 2: something like this, you just have to be deeply skeptical,
Speaker 2: And I think the broader point to all of this
Speaker 2: why do we even care is because certain siops that
Speaker 2: the media deems credible of, you know, airing here basically
Speaker 2: with very little shreds of evidence again on sixty minutes,
Speaker 2: our premier television investigative review program for some reason. As
Speaker 2: long as it's Russia, then you know, we can roll
Speaker 2: it out there. We can even allege that the US government,
Speaker 2: which has cooked up the most insane Russian conspiracies of
Speaker 2: the last seven years, that they itself are in on
Speaker 2: some grand Russian conspiracy. Yeah, it doesn't pass the smell test.
Speaker 1: Joe Biden called Vladimir Putin a war criminals administration's official
Speaker 1: positions that they're committing genocide in Ukraine, thank you, but
Speaker 1: he's going to be afraid to say that are using
Speaker 1: some sort of directed energy or acoustic weapon or whatever
Speaker 1: against our diplomats. It just doesn't really make sense. And
Speaker 1: as I said, I genuinely listen to this thing with
Speaker 1: an open mind. Okay, I am perfectly willing to be wrong,
Speaker 1: and as someone who you know, I trust in respect
Speaker 1: took it seriously and was like, really give it a
Speaker 1: genuine listen. But the scraps of quote unquote evidence that
Speaker 1: they offered just do not justify this really extraordinary conclusion.
Speaker 1: And it is an extraordinary conclusion. I mean, as you said,
Speaker 1: it sounds like something out of a spy novel. So
Speaker 1: if you're going to assert something that is really extraordinary
Speaker 1: and also potentially, you know, leads to escalation and provocation
Speaker 1: and all of these sorts of things, you may have
Speaker 1: some real stuff to back it up.
Speaker 3: And they definitely did not in this instance.
Speaker 1: And also they relied on the credibility of a number
Speaker 1: of people who have direct financial interests or personal interests
Speaker 1: in Havana syndrome being real and being you know, from
Speaker 1: a foreign advert National Institutes of Health. In addition to
Speaker 1: that Intel assessment that said, you know, we really don't
Speaker 1: think that this came from a foreign adversary, there were
Speaker 1: new studies that were just conducted by National Institutes of
Speaker 1: Health NIH which failed to find any evidence of brain
Speaker 1: injury in scans or blood markers of the diplomats and
Speaker 1: spies who said they suffered symptoms of Heavna syndrome.
Speaker 3: Now, this did contrast with.
Speaker 1: There was a previous, earlier study done by University of
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania that did claim to find some differences in the
Speaker 1: brain scans. What NIH says is that they were able
Speaker 1: to do a more comprehensive study, both in terms of
Speaker 1: the brain scans that they had, but also in terms
Speaker 1: of the control group more closely matched the demographic characteristics
Speaker 1: of the people who were the sufferers. So they felt
Speaker 1: more strongly about their conclusions. So, you know, the very
Speaker 1: latest studies from the NIH, for what it's worth, say
Speaker 1: we don't actually even see signs of injury in these individuals.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say like that they didn't suffer
Speaker 1: something real, because even if it is stress induced psychosomatic,
Speaker 1: that can still be experienced as a very real and
Speaker 1: potentially debilitating event. So this is not to dismiss them
Speaker 1: or say they're lying and they didn't really suffer anything whatsoever,
Speaker 1: but to put all these instances together and to allege
Speaker 1: one culprit and to craft this narrative which really, you know,
Speaker 1: beggars belief is just it's just a way too many.
Speaker 3: Bridges, too far, multiple bridges too far.
Speaker 2: You are very you're a lot more charitable than I am.
Speaker 2: Let's just say that. And yeah, I guess look you
Speaker 2: if you have suffered from havana syndrome, and you can
Speaker 2: prove it. You're welcome on the show anytime. You know,
Speaker 2: we'll talk to you for sure. All right, let's move
Speaker 2: on to the next part. This was brought about by
Speaker 2: a side at the end of our last year.
Speaker 3: He yeah, we weren't really well to cover this.
Speaker 2: We're not planning it to cover it at all. No. Usually,
Speaker 2: Richard Dawkins, who some of you may know, probably when
Speaker 2: most famous atheists in the entire world, gave a very
Speaker 2: interesting interview to the LBC, the London Broadcasting Corporation, which
Speaker 2: has caused a lot of discussion about atheism, cultural Christianity, Islamophobia.
Speaker 10: More.
Speaker 2: Let's take a listen to what mister Dawkins had to say.
Speaker 13: Church attendance is plummeting. But the building the erection of
Speaker 13: mosques across Europe, I think six thousand are under construction,
Speaker 13: and there are many more, I mean are being planned.
Speaker 13: So do you think you regard that as a problem.
Speaker 13: Do you think that matters?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 9: I do, really, I mean I might choose my words carefully.
Speaker 9: I mean, if I had to choose between Christianity and Islam,
Speaker 9: I choose Christianity every single time. I mean, it seems
Speaker 9: to me to be a fundamentally decent religion in a
Speaker 9: way that I think Islam is not.
Speaker 13: I think you're going to have to explain why you
Speaker 13: say that, Professor Dawkins. Why is Islam profundtion? Well, the
Speaker 13: way fundamentally not decent like Christianity.
Speaker 9: Yes, I mean the way women refuted. I mean Christianity
Speaker 9: is not great about that. He's had its problem as
Speaker 9: female becas and female bishops and things. But there's an
Speaker 9: active hostility to women which is promoted I think by
Speaker 9: the holy books of Islam. I'm not talking about individual Muslims,
Speaker 9: who of course are quite quite different, but the doctrines
Speaker 9: of Islam, the Hadith and and the Quran. It's fundamentally
Speaker 9: hostile to women, hostile to gaze. And I find that
Speaker 9: I like to live in a culturally Christian country, although
Speaker 9: I do not believe a single word of the Christian faith.
Speaker 2: Okay, So that last part that is what sit the
Speaker 2: Internet on fire. What was interesting is that because we
Speaker 2: live in parallel universes. On my timeline, I follow this
Speaker 2: is on Twitter. Okay, it's just very reveal my own bias.
Speaker 2: I follow a lot of right wing Christians in particular,
Speaker 2: just to keep my tabs, like what exactly is going on?
Speaker 2: And a lot of them were attacking Dawkins. They're like, oh,
Speaker 2: he tore down Christianity and he advocated for secularism, and
Speaker 2: now he's coming back and calling himself a cultural Christian.
Speaker 2: And I'll just say this, like I followed Richard Dawkins
Speaker 2: for a long time, was personal inspiration. I had my
Speaker 2: cringe atheist phase like anybody else. He was a young
Speaker 2: man on YouTube, had copies of The God Delusion and
Speaker 2: gave him out to people. Read every book that the
Speaker 2: man has literally ever written. At least they stopped ten
Speaker 2: years ago. I don't know if he's written.
Speaker 1: Anything saying science books two before God. Yeah, they were great, phenomenal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's I think it's controversial. He I
Speaker 2: think he created the word mimetic, like the word meme,
Speaker 2: which eventually became meme online. That's again controversial in terms
Speaker 2: of the attribution. Yeah, the attribution of the term. Let's
Speaker 2: return to this. The reason I was annoyed by that
Speaker 2: is because having read and listened to a lot of Dawkins,
Speaker 2: even attended one of his lectures, we could put this
Speaker 2: up there here on the screen, which I went back
Speaker 2: and found is he's been calling himself a cultural Christian
Speaker 2: here for quite a long time. And why I was
Speaker 2: annoyed in terms of the Christian reaction to Dawkins is
Speaker 2: that Dawkins has always said that he ascribes, as he
Speaker 2: points out here, a celebration of Judeo Christian type values,
Speaker 2: but not in the actual text of the Bible and
Speaker 2: of the religion of Christianity himself. Egalitarianism, equality, just the
Speaker 2: general like the general respect of English common law, which
Speaker 2: of course, you know, even atheists and secular people like
Speaker 2: me can acknowledge comes from a Christian tradition. That's what
Speaker 2: he meant by the term. So anyway, for me, watching
Speaker 2: a lot of the Christian right attack Dawkins as somehow
Speaker 2: being hypocritical, I mean, frankly, he's been saying stuff like
Speaker 2: this for twenty somethings, probably before I was even born,
Speaker 2: but at least in my adult lifetime, nothing that he
Speaker 2: said was new anyway, I'm curious.
Speaker 1: So the reaction from the left, I mean, there was
Speaker 1: a little bit of commentary on the cultural Christian thing,
Speaker 1: because it I mean, I understand why people are like
Speaker 1: your whole thing is being an atheist. But now you're like, well, no,
Speaker 1: actually this is my tribe. There is something about that.
Speaker 1: They're like all right, dude, like you're just making a
Speaker 1: full right turn now. But the part that I saw
Speaker 1: more reaction to, and which I personally reacted more to,
Speaker 1: were the comments about Islam, which again are actually not new.
Speaker 2: They're not new at all from Dawkins.
Speaker 1: Who has been smearing Islam and by extension, all followers
Speaker 1: of that faith for quite a while. And you know,
Speaker 1: I personally think it's outrageous and actually, to me, if
Speaker 1: you're a serious intellectual and you know that you're you
Speaker 1: consider yourself a cultural Christian whatever, that actually means you
Speaker 1: should interrogate your own potential bias towards this ecosystem that
Speaker 1: you grew up in and the you know, belief system
Speaker 1: that has been sort of like humanized and made normal
Speaker 1: to you. Because he clearly has a huge blind spot.
Speaker 1: The problem is not any particular faith. The problem is
Speaker 1: extremist in any faith. I think we can look throughout
Speaker 1: history and see that, I mean Christianity. It was used
Speaker 1: to justify slavery, it was used to justify Jim Crow. Right,
Speaker 1: do I think those are true and faithful readings of Christianity. No,
Speaker 1: But I mean I'm also not a religious believer at all,
Speaker 1: so I'm not really the person to determine that, right.
Speaker 1: But even if you look just right now, what's unfolding
Speaker 1: in Gods, which I think is particularly why there was,
Speaker 1: you know, a heightened sensitivity to the smearing of Islam
Speaker 1: in this context, is you have Muslims who committed a
Speaker 1: terror attack on October seventh, committed atrocities, no doubt about that.
Speaker 3: You have a response from.
Speaker 1: A Jewish state, and a lot of you know, led
Speaker 1: by Jewish extremists who claimed to be doing this in
Speaker 1: the name of you know, basically their religion, and who
Speaker 1: have used and perverted and tortured that religious doctrine to
Speaker 1: justify a genocide. And then if you go back one
Speaker 1: step further, well, why do we have the creation of
Speaker 1: these really? Straight to start with, it's because of the Holocaust,
Speaker 1: and before that, because of pagrums throughout Europe, which were
Speaker 1: by and large committed by Christians. So to think that
Speaker 1: any religious faith has a monopoly on truth and justice,
Speaker 1: or to think that any religious faith has a monopoly
Speaker 1: on violence and hatred, is just I think incredibly ahistorical
Speaker 1: and inaccurate. So, you know, a lot of what I
Speaker 1: saw in my timeline, which is again, you know, I
Speaker 1: think to give us some credit. Part of what makes
Speaker 1: the show interesting is that we, you know, have to
Speaker 1: expose each other to these different conversations that are happening
Speaker 1: in different corners of the world, and the Internet was
Speaker 1: a lot of like, actually, thank you Richard Dowkins for
Speaker 1: confirming what we suspected about your actually ideological worldview based
Speaker 1: on your previous comments, and by extension, what others who
Speaker 1: were sort of in this fervent new atheist camp were
Speaker 1: really about at the time.
Speaker 2: See this is where look, I guess it's time to
Speaker 2: piss off some of the Palestinian viewers here. I gotta say.
Speaker 2: What I think Dawkins is trying to talk about is
Speaker 2: that if we look at majority Islamic countries and particularly
Speaker 2: ones ruled by Islamic deocracy, I mean, look, I've lived
Speaker 2: under Islamic deocracy in the state of Qatar. I wouldn't
Speaker 2: recommend it. I don't think it's a good way of living.
Speaker 2: Some of that is rooted in the faith of Islam.
Speaker 2: How do I think that individual Muslims, as Dawkins was saying,
Speaker 2: are bad. No, absolutely, I don't believe that in for
Speaker 2: any individual person. I do believe that the application of
Speaker 2: said theocratic like law on people is very counter to
Speaker 2: a lot of the things that we value here in
Speaker 2: the West, So for example, egalitarianism, equality, the treatment of women.
Speaker 2: I mean personally, I'm repulsed by it. Like whenever I'm
Speaker 2: in the Middle East and I see for women shrouded
Speaker 2: in a burka walking ten paces behind their husband, I
Speaker 2: think it's disgusting. I know that they have no rights.
Speaker 2: In India, for example, where my family's from. This has
Speaker 2: been a huge tension where India has effectively an English
Speaker 2: common law system. But then you have two hundred million
Speaker 2: or some Muslims who want to or at least some
Speaker 2: want to live with their ability. This was a huge
Speaker 2: controversy about the ability to divorce their wives by saying
Speaker 2: that they divorced them as that required in Sharia law.
Speaker 2: And it comes into major tension because then they're saying
Speaker 2: that it's discrimination if you don't allow that. Whenever you're
Speaker 2: trying to have equal application and protection of the law.
Speaker 2: So I'm not saying individual Muslims are bad. I would
Speaker 2: never say that about anybody. I think that extreme interpretations,
Speaker 2: or I would more put it this way. I would
Speaker 2: never want to live under Christian theocracy. Got a taste
Speaker 2: of it growing up in college station. I definitely wouldn't
Speaker 2: want to live in Muslim theocracy. Got a taste of
Speaker 2: that as well. And I in general, you know, like
Speaker 2: and respect places places like Thailand, I think, India, to
Speaker 2: some extent, Japan and others which have non Western interpretations
Speaker 2: and or worldviews in their governance that when you combined
Speaker 2: with English common law and some Judeo Christian values and influence,
Speaker 2: you come to more of an equal application and understanding
Speaker 2: of the laws.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: That's where I will defend him a little bit.
Speaker 1: Okay, but what you're saying is different than what he
Speaker 1: said because he so secularism. As you're laying out the
Speaker 1: you know, ideal of the American model of you know,
Speaker 1: freedom of religion and we're not going.
Speaker 3: To have a theocracy.
Speaker 1: That very clearly to me is the way to go,
Speaker 1: because yeah, I mean, if we were ruled by the
Speaker 1: UH and we had an actual Christian theocracy with you know,
Speaker 1: the minority of real Christian fundamentalists in charge, how do.
Speaker 3: They feel about gay people?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: What would that life look like for them? How do
Speaker 1: they feel about women and women's rights? What would life
Speaker 1: look like for women? Here we can see with you know,
Speaker 1: we had a conversation yesterday about ultra Orthodox Jews within Israel,
Speaker 1: and you know, Israel is moving more and more to
Speaker 1: being this overt pretty extreme religious theocrime government. That's a
Speaker 1: real divide that is unfolding right now in real time
Speaker 1: in Israel. I wouldn't want to live under that either,
Speaker 1: And you're absolutely right, I don't want to live under
Speaker 1: a Muslim theocracy either. But to you know, point to
Speaker 1: this one faith and say, oh, this is the bad
Speaker 1: one and Christianity is the good one. I just like
Speaker 1: I said, I think if you take any even take
Speaker 1: your religion out of it, if you take any fervently
Speaker 1: held ideological belief system, someone is going to pervert it
Speaker 1: to do horrific things. We've seen this throughout history. But
Speaker 1: religion is a particularly potent one. And perhaps my view
Speaker 1: of this is part of why originally I like Twkins,
Speaker 1: and you know, I like the way that he laid
Speaker 1: out these arguments. Religion is so potent because the minute
Speaker 1: that you see Okay, number one, these people who share
Speaker 1: my belief these are the tribe, These are the people
Speaker 1: who really count, really matter, and God is on our side.
Speaker 1: The things that can be used to justify are horrifying.
Speaker 1: And you know, I keep bringing up the example of
Speaker 1: Israel Gaza because obviously this is you know, top of
Speaker 1: mind for me and many people around the world right now.
Speaker 1: But just think about you have these settlers in the
Speaker 1: West Bank who truly believe that the righteous and holy
Speaker 1: thing to do is to steal the land of Palestinians,
Speaker 1: potentially by force and if necessary, murder them. They believe
Speaker 1: that they are righteously doing God's will when they do.
Speaker 1: Just listen to that, Daniella Weiss, that settler activists. Sure
Speaker 1: she thinks she is righteous and absolutely moral. Again, no
Speaker 1: one faith has a monopoly on being twisted and perverted
Speaker 1: to justify things that in any other sort of moral
Speaker 1: context you could see clearly that this is wrong, period,
Speaker 1: end of story.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's my problem with you.
Speaker 2: The problem is that what he's really referring to, and
Speaker 2: this is true if we look at the data, is
Speaker 2: that most Muslims are far more observant at least and
Speaker 2: also in a Western context when we're talking about the mixing,
Speaker 2: especially in Europe, than they are let's say, secular Christians
Speaker 2: in the West. And so when you have fundamentalists as
Speaker 2: Islam brush up against Western democratic values, it leads to
Speaker 2: a lot of tension. I totally agree in terms of
Speaker 2: extremist interpretations of all of that. But it is a
Speaker 2: legitimate question as to wire should this be tolerable and acceptable?
Speaker 2: But I have a Western style democracy.
Speaker 1: Even that I want to dig into a little bit
Speaker 1: because why is it that you have such you know,
Speaker 1: fervently held beliefs, Because part of that story is us
Speaker 1: meddling in the region that went against any sort of
Speaker 1: you know, secular nationalism, had any sort of tie into
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union or communism or socialism we crushed. I mean,
Speaker 1: how many fundamentalists Islamic movements did we back inside with.
Speaker 3: Throughout the region.
Speaker 1: But of course, think about how we prop up the
Speaker 1: Saudi regime. I mean, so much of what is unfolding
Speaker 1: in the Middle East right now is a result of
Speaker 1: you know, our meddling and our policy over years and
Speaker 1: years and years. So I think to you know, remove
Speaker 1: us from the situation. That's where this gets to me,
Speaker 1: and I'm not putting this on you, but you know,
Speaker 1: I listen to comments from Sam Harris or J. Dawkins
Speaker 1: and others. It gets to this place of basically insinuating,
Speaker 1: if not outright saying.
Speaker 3: Well, these people are just barbarians. They're just uncivilized.
Speaker 1: That's part of the justification that's being used right now
Speaker 1: to justify this genocide of Palestinians that's unfolding in Gaza.
Speaker 1: Netnyahu's saying we are the children of the light and
Speaker 1: they are the Sun's children of the darkness. This is
Speaker 1: a war for civilization, et cetera. It ends up resulting
Speaker 1: in this argument that they are just inherently inferior barbaric people,
Speaker 1: and I think that is absolutely repulsible.
Speaker 2: I don't support that, but I don't think it's America's
Speaker 2: fault that Saudi Arabians cut people's head off in the street.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's their regime. That's not our I mean,
Speaker 2: if anything, actually it's their own people that want something
Speaker 2: like that. I don't want to live there, and I
Speaker 2: definitely don't want any of that that's over here. And look,
Speaker 2: it's not America's fault that Muslims in India have, for example,
Speaker 2: have become way more observant as a kind of basically
Speaker 2: as you've had Hindu nationalism on the rise. These are natural,
Speaker 2: you know, inherent tensions when they run up against each
Speaker 2: other for real. Frankly, it's just a battle of values.
Speaker 2: It's like, what do we actually want? What do we
Speaker 2: have evilack application of the law? Should we not like
Speaker 2: should we allow people to marry three people because their
Speaker 2: religion says though I think no, but they say yes.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's one of those where I don't think
Speaker 2: that's on America. And if you look, why does Saudi
Speaker 2: have the regime they have? Okay, but why does the
Speaker 2: run how the regime they have?
Speaker 1: Why does the Taliban have power in Afghanistan?
Speaker 3: We have nothing to do with that.
Speaker 2: Nothing.
Speaker 3: We have just allowed.
Speaker 1: Free and fair elections and self determination throughout the region.
Speaker 2: Come on, if they had free and fair elections, I
Speaker 2: guarantee you as the lists would still win in the
Speaker 2: entire And by the way, I don't care if they
Speaker 2: want to be Muslim and they want to rule under
Speaker 2: theocratic rule, be my guest. I'm talking about how we
Speaker 2: govern ourselves. I don't give a shit what they do
Speaker 2: over there at the end of the day. But really
Speaker 2: what it is is that what I think Dawkins is
Speaker 2: talking about, and what is a fair conversation is about
Speaker 2: here what we tolerate, what we think is acceptable. And
Speaker 2: I would stand what I think what Dawkins is trying
Speaker 2: to say. For a Judeo Christian influence, English common law egalitarianism,
Speaker 2: which is what I believe in, that is absolutely counter
Speaker 2: to Christian theocracy. Luckily that is mostly on the decline
Speaker 2: here in this country. Luckily we don't have the same
Speaker 2: Jewish level. I guess here in the US in terms
Speaker 2: of Orthodox Judaism is taking over the entire culture. But
Speaker 2: that is not necessarily the case of majority Muslim countries
Speaker 2: that are all across the world, Indonesia, for example, Malaysia,
Speaker 2: any of these places, there's high levels of diversity and others,
Speaker 2: but there are what I think are troubling ways that
Speaker 2: they do. He's right, I mean, which they treat women
Speaker 2: or in terms of how they have different views of
Speaker 2: what homosexuality or any of this. I think it's abhorn
Speaker 2: and I think it's bad WHI and I don't think
Speaker 2: we should have it here.
Speaker 1: Doesn't just come from Islam. I mean again, if you
Speaker 1: look at what Christians, like evangelical fundamentalists, Christians believe, it
Speaker 1: would not be good life for gay people to live
Speaker 1: under that sort of regime. Which is why to me,
Speaker 1: you're you're wanting to see give Dawkins the most.
Speaker 3: Charitable interpretation, and that's not fair.
Speaker 2: I like it.
Speaker 1: That's fine, that's fair, you know, to give him the
Speaker 1: best faith reading. But you're also reading into his comments
Speaker 1: a lot of things that he didn't say, because he
Speaker 1: didn't talk about, you know, a secularism and universalism, he
Speaker 1: didn't talk about common law or any of these things.
Speaker 3: Well, he's just saying he said.
Speaker 1: Very blatantly that you know, new mass are a problem,
Speaker 1: but new churches aren't. He said that Christianity is a
Speaker 1: fundamentally decent religion and Islam is not. I think that
Speaker 1: is total bullshit. I think it's xenophobic. I think it's islamophobic.
Speaker 1: I think that it is you know, completely at odds
Speaker 1: with the ideas. But really that the best thing is
Speaker 1: to have actual universal values, not the sort of like
Speaker 1: moral equivalents. Universal values and secularism where yes, people's religions
Speaker 1: are respected and they have a right and you know,
Speaker 1: freedom to religion, but also within the confines of respecting
Speaker 1: and acknowledging basic human rights.
Speaker 3: And you know, as I.
Speaker 1: Said before, any religion taken to an extreme place, yes,
Speaker 1: and in ugliness can end. In ugliness can be easily perverted.
Speaker 1: And you know, to give any one of these fates
Speaker 1: the past for that, I think is I just.
Speaker 3: Think is wrong.
Speaker 2: What I'm drawing from is just his look. Nobody can
Speaker 2: express themselves properly in a two and a half minute
Speaker 2: clip from LBC. I'm drawing from his books what he
Speaker 2: has put out there in longer interpretations. In general, if
Speaker 2: you are going to see atheists and others people who
Speaker 2: talk and debate some of these subjects, they're going to
Speaker 2: bring up a lot of what I am now. I
Speaker 2: mean a lot of Christians would be very upset. They
Speaker 2: would say, is that you're you owe galitarianism, you know,
Speaker 2: to Judaeo Christianity, And I would say, that's bullshit. You
Speaker 2: can look at countries like India or Japan or Korea
Speaker 2: anywhere else that don't have majority Christian populations. A Thailand
Speaker 2: actually is a country that I truly love deeply. Buddhist culture,
Speaker 2: lots of egalitarianism, no Christian influence, so I can give
Speaker 2: the counter two. I'm only bringing in what I think
Speaker 2: he is best trying to say, and I'm giving him
Speaker 2: charity because I also think that he's done a lot
Speaker 2: of good in this world. So it opened up a
Speaker 2: lot of people's eyes.
Speaker 1: I will steal from a medi Hassan's commentary on this,
Speaker 1: where he said, you know, if you just swap in
Speaker 1: Judaism for Islam in these comments, imagine the reaction if
Speaker 1: he said that Judaism is not a fundamentally decent religion.
Speaker 3: There would be a massive and.
Speaker 1: Correct reaction against those comments because they would correctly be seen,
Speaker 1: I think as anti Semitic. But Islamophobia is much more accepted, frankly,
Speaker 1: and is much more more commonplace worldview in the West,
Speaker 1: which again is part of how this genocide in Gaza
Speaker 1: has been justifying. And you see it very nakedly, that
Speaker 1: case made very nakedly in certain instances, certainly from the
Speaker 1: net Yahoo government, but also from many Americans who see
Speaker 1: things through that lens.
Speaker 2: I think it may be true, certainly that nine to
Speaker 2: eleven and the lasting impacts have colored and have changed.
Speaker 2: I guess I just don't want to get away from
Speaker 2: legitimate conversations about, you know, about rubbing up against Western
Speaker 2: democratic values and what we think is acceptable or not
Speaker 2: in our own cultures, because ultimately that's what I care
Speaker 2: about it. I don't really care what these people do in
Speaker 2: their own time and in their own lands, but I
Speaker 2: do really care whenever it brushes up here, and I
Speaker 2: do see often a very like permissive nature. Unfortunately, but
Speaker 2: I think elements of the American left when they don't
Speaker 2: really grapple with some of the actual tenets of let's say,
Speaker 2: you know, of like widespread, like deeply fundamentalist Islamic values,
Speaker 2: especially when we're talking about immigration. Which is why I
Speaker 2: guess I'm standing for Dawkins in this entire purpose is
Speaker 2: like I believe very much in being able to scrutinize,
Speaker 2: anti debate what is acceptable in US, specifically in the
Speaker 2: US and also in the West, what we want and
Speaker 2: what we don't want to encourage, and what we think
Speaker 2: should be acceptable or not, as opposed to let's say,
Speaker 2: trying to litigate how people should be treated in Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: that's Afghanistan's problem. Does that make sense in terms of
Speaker 2: what I'm.
Speaker 3: Saying would be Afghanistan's problem? If we hadn't.
Speaker 2: Okay, but we're not there now. Now they can do
Speaker 2: whatever they want, and apparently.
Speaker 1: We're like, okay, no harm, no fow, You're good to go,
Speaker 1: and we had no impact.
Speaker 3: There is.
Speaker 2: Value the power. We're in the nineties too, they were
Speaker 2: a popular government, Let's be honest, and nobody wants to
Speaker 2: admit this. It's not just America's fault. They liked it.
Speaker 2: They like in many cases, the Taliban was enforcing their
Speaker 2: own beliefs, at least in some of these regions. I mean,
Speaker 2: at a certain point, what are we supposed to do
Speaker 2: about that?
Speaker 1: Listen, Yeah, I don't want to relitigate the entire history
Speaker 1: of US involvement in the Middle East, but I think
Speaker 1: suffice it to say that, you know, we certainly played
Speaker 1: a significant role in creating some of the backlash and
Speaker 1: actively supporting some of these extremist movements that have come
Speaker 1: to power in various parts of the region.
Speaker 2: So, in any truths get elected there in Egypt.
Speaker 1: Let's acknowledge that the ideal situation that I think we
Speaker 1: and I wish Professor Dawkins there was speaking to was secularism,
Speaker 1: universal human rights, and values of the type that we
Speaker 1: see being trampled right now, certainly with Muslims in the Middle.
Speaker 2: East, you know, I'm going to reach out to them.
Speaker 7: I want to talk to them.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, good luck with that.
Speaker 1: Journalists have now been able to access Alshifa Hospital following
Speaker 1: Israel's latest assault on that complex, and the scenes of
Speaker 1: devastation and carnage are that wrenching. This was Israel's second
Speaker 1: major raid on Shifa. This time they claimed it was
Speaker 1: necessary because Hamas was reconstituting itself in the north and
Speaker 1: hiding in the already damaged hospital complex. This is frankly
Speaker 1: embarrassing for Israel if it was true, and speaks to
Speaker 1: the failure of their alleged war goals. They destroyed Gaza
Speaker 1: mascer tens of thousands of civilians, but Hamas is still
Speaker 1: able to regroup in northern Gaza. But is anything the
Speaker 1: Israeli government is claiming about Shifa even true given their
Speaker 1: history a brazen lies in general, and specifically a history
Speaker 1: of lying about this particular hospital. I'm gonna break down
Speaker 1: for you everything we know about what appears to have
Speaker 1: been a massacre on a historic scale in one of
Speaker 1: the most sensitive places you can possibly imagine a hospital
Speaker 1: meant to care for the sick has instead been transformed
Speaker 1: into a slaughterhouse. So first a little bit of background.
Speaker 1: One of the fiercest early propaganda wars in Israel's war
Speaker 1: on Gaza came in the early weeks when they launched
Speaker 1: an all out pr blitz to justify the storming of
Speaker 1: Al Shifa Hospital complex. Net Yahoo led a multi media
Speaker 1: presentation asserting that Hamasa build a doctor Evil style layer
Speaker 1: underneath of this hospital, a command and control node or
Speaker 1: even now, he claimed they were operating and where they
Speaker 1: expected to be able to locate hostages once they went in.
Speaker 1: The US government provided a major propaganda assist in this operations,
Speaker 1: being reporters aboard Air Force One. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby
Speaker 1: said quote, I can confirm for you that we have
Speaker 1: information that Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jahad used some
Speaker 1: hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including Al Shifah, and tunnels
Speaker 1: underneath them, to conceal and to support their military operations
Speaker 1: and to hold hostages. Hamas and the Palestinian Palestinian Islamic
Speaker 1: judhad pig members operate a command and control node from Al.
Speaker 3: Shifa in Gaza. City.
Speaker 1: They have stored weapons there, and they're prepared to respond
Speaker 1: to an Israeli military operation against that facility. Kirby went
Speaker 1: on to clarify this was not just based courting him
Speaker 1: on Israeli intelligence, but was also based on our own
Speaker 1: US intelligence. Within hours of this green light from their
Speaker 1: American benefactors, the IDF stormed the complex. When they did,
Speaker 1: there was no firefight with embedded Hamas fighters, as we
Speaker 1: were led to believe. There were no hostages held under
Speaker 1: the complexes, was also claimed, and the Israelis never came
Speaker 1: cold loose to proving their wild claims about a Hamas
Speaker 1: command and control node, as illustrated by their fanciful computer animations.
Speaker 1: What's more, we've now learned from Democratic Senator Chris Van
Speaker 1: Holland that Kirby and Biden they were lying about what
Speaker 1: our own intel actually showed. In recent comments the Washington Post,
Speaker 1: the Senator, who is a key Biden ally, by the way,
Speaker 1: delicately said there was a quote disconnect between the administration's
Speaker 1: public statements and the classified findings, noting important and subtle differences.
Speaker 3: Oh, you don't say.
Speaker 1: At least forty patients died in that raid, including the
Speaker 1: most helpless and innocent people imaginable for premature babies, died
Speaker 1: in that raid. Was no accident that Shifa was chosen
Speaker 1: for this propaganda blitz and raid, as it was vital
Speaker 1: to Israel for a number of reasons. First because it's
Speaker 1: the largest hospital in the entire Gaza strip. If Shifa
Speaker 1: could be violated, then any other medical complex would be
Speaker 1: fair game. And second because Shifa was a center of
Speaker 1: civilian life in Gaza City, a city that was being
Speaker 1: systematically sacked by the IDF. Attack Shifa and no part
Speaker 1: of civilian life is untouchable. Attack Shifa and there will
Speaker 1: be nothing left for Palestinians to return to in northern Gaza.
Speaker 1: Sure enough, after Shifa, other hospital raids, attacks on ambulances,
Speaker 1: medical clinics, and the like, they were barely remarked upon
Speaker 1: in the media. Once Israel got away with this raid
Speaker 1: on the most important medical complex in all of Gaza,
Speaker 1: they then operated with impunity with regards to the rest.
Speaker 1: According to Euromed Monitor, Israel is now attacked two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty six health care facilities, including twenty eight hospitals.
Speaker 1: They've killed hundreds of doctors, injured hundreds more. I'll remind
Speaker 1: you that hospitals are supposed to be completely off limits
Speaker 1: in war, except in very rare circumstances. That, of course,
Speaker 1: has served as no barrier for Israel, or for the
Speaker 1: Biden administration for that matter. So that's the background here.
Speaker 1: Let's turn now to what we know about this latest
Speaker 1: two week raid on Shifa.
Speaker 3: Complex.
Speaker 1: Reports that trickled down during the onslaught were harrowing journalists
Speaker 1: who were seeking to cover the operation. They were arrested,
Speaker 1: they were stripped naked, they were blindfolded, interrogated and assaulted.
Speaker 1: I'll leave it up to you to divine the reason
Speaker 1: why journalists seeking to cover idea of actions at Chifa
Speaker 1: were targeted. In particular, doctors and other medical professionals received
Speaker 1: very similar treatment. In fact, the Gods of Health Ministry
Speaker 1: reports that five doctors were ultimately killed by Israel over
Speaker 1: the course of this rate. Journalists were able to confirm
Speaker 1: multiple instances of Palestinians attempting to flee the area, waving
Speaker 1: white flags and still fired on by Israeli tanks Israeli guns.
Speaker 1: But during the raid, as we all feared the worst,
Speaker 1: we had little insight into what was actually unfolding on
Speaker 1: the hospital grounds. Once Israeli forces withdrew, the government issued
Speaker 1: celebratory declarations claiming that Israel had killed the bad guys
Speaker 1: and save the innocence. Here's how former Israeli Prime Minister
Speaker 1: of Tully Bennett described the operation, quote amazing battlefield achievement.
Speaker 1: The IDF is just completed a two week operation on
Speaker 1: a Hamas command center that Hamas embedded within the Shifa
Speaker 1: Medical Center. Hamas use staff and patients as human shields
Speaker 1: in order to cause maximum civilian casualties as to create
Speaker 1: more criticism and pressure on Israel. The results are remarkable.
Speaker 1: Six thousand civilians were evacuated by the IDF to keep
Speaker 1: them safe. Two hundred Hamas terrorists were killed. Five hundred
Speaker 1: Hamas terrorists have been captured. No civilian was killed, not one,
Speaker 1: he says. It goes on to finish, I'm proud to
Speaker 1: be Israeli and proud of the IDF. A beacon of light,
Speaker 1: an amazing battlefield achievement. No civilians killed, beacon of light.
Speaker 1: Oh really, Let's see the results of these IDF beacons
Speaker 1: of light, shall we. Here is what Al Shifa, the
Speaker 1: largest hospital in all of Gaza, looks like now as
Speaker 1: you can see it is utterly destroyed. It no longer
Speaker 1: exists as a medical facility. Now I know, Gaza can
Speaker 1: feel foreign, it can feel far away. Imagine this was
Speaker 1: the hospital in your town, maybe where you were born,
Speaker 1: or maybe where your children were born. Imagine it was
Speaker 1: the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins. It's actually
Speaker 1: so much more central than those famous hospitals because it
Speaker 1: comprise a full thirty percent of all of the healthcare
Speaker 1: delivery in Gaza. Now it is burned out, gutted, reduced
Speaker 1: to rubble. Before and after satellite images show you the
Speaker 1: absolute scale and totality of the destruction, both of Alshifa
Speaker 1: and of everything around it. On the left, you can
Speaker 1: see Alshifa from two years ago, looks like the overhead
Speaker 1: in American city streets with bustling traffic. Large medical complex
Speaker 1: are outed by smaller, likely residential apartment looking buildings. On
Speaker 1: the right, you see Shifa now gone, or the highways, courtyards,
Speaker 1: parking lots, and sidewalks replaced with dirt that was turned
Speaker 1: up everywhere after armored bulldozers plowed up the ground. What
Speaker 1: few trees remain appear charred or dead. Many of the
Speaker 1: surrounding buildings are just gone. They're flattened. Reportedly, more than
Speaker 1: a thousand houses in the area were demolished, and Shifa
Speaker 1: itself is damaged, unrecognizable, not salvagable. Al Jazeera's Ismael al
Speaker 1: Ghoul attempted to capture the feeling on the ground. He said, quote,
Speaker 1: there is no life here. The complex is in ruins
Speaker 1: and cannot be revived. That alone should shock us. But
Speaker 1: the destruction of this physical place, formerly a place of
Speaker 1: healing and center of life, is nothing compared to what
Speaker 1: we're learning now about the human carnage. According a human
Speaker 1: rights organization EUROMED monitor, the Israeli Army carried out a massive,
Speaker 1: shockingly horrific military operation in Al Chifa Medical Complex in
Speaker 1: Gaza City over the course of the past two weeks.
Speaker 1: According to them, indiscriminately targeting and attacking Palestinians regardless of
Speaker 1: their civilian status, professional standing, gender, age, or health condition.
Speaker 3: They continue quote.
Speaker 1: Though the exact number of casualties from the atrocity is
Speaker 1: still unknown, preliminary reports suggests that over fifteen hundred Palestinians
Speaker 1: have been killed, injured, or are reted missing as a
Speaker 1: result of the massacre at Alshifa, with women and children
Speaker 1: making up half of the casualties that go on to say,
Speaker 1: euromed Monitor is able to confirm from its initial investigation
Speaker 1: and testimonies that hundreds of dead bodies, including some burden
Speaker 1: others with their heads and limbs severed, have been discovered
Speaker 1: both inside Al Chifa Medical complex and in the hospitals
Speaker 1: surrounding area end quote. This is an almost unimaginable toll. Additionally,
Speaker 1: according to the World Health Organization, twenty one patients died
Speaker 1: during this latest siege of Al Shifa. Gruesome videos from
Speaker 1: the scene, which I've chosen not to show you, are
Speaker 1: consistent with this horrific assessment. The videos show burned, zip tied, decomposing,
Speaker 1: crushed bodies strewn about the hospital courtyard. Some of the
Speaker 1: bodies are clearly those of children, though they are destroyed
Speaker 1: beyond any recognition. Journalists on the ground report stray dogs
Speaker 1: showing on the remains in an overpowering scent of death.
Speaker 1: Some eyewitnesses and journalists have suggested that some of the
Speaker 1: visible human remains may also be from previous temper graves
Speaker 1: that were duga and desecrated as part of this operation.
Speaker 1: A CNN journalist on the ground described the scene as
Speaker 1: a quote horror movie. Bulldozers, they say, crushed bodies and
Speaker 1: people everywhere around and in the yard of the hospital.
Speaker 1: The surrounding area was not spared either. According to this
Speaker 1: journalist quote, we found entire families dead and their bodies
Speaker 1: are decomposed in houses around the hospital. Entire families killed
Speaker 1: by Israel. According to CNN, a doctor affiliated with Doctors
Speaker 1: Bound Borders who had previously volunteered in Gaza, had this
Speaker 1: to say of the toll on civilians and on medical
Speaker 1: personnel in particular.
Speaker 11: Doctor, I look that the picture plane is one of devastation.
Speaker 11: You'll know that the Israeli militaries say that they have
Speaker 11: killed and detained hundreds of militants within the Alshifa complex.
Speaker 11: Do you know if Hamas were there and were fighting
Speaker 11: with the Israelers.
Speaker 14: I am just shocked that we're still having this conversation.
Speaker 14: They executed tens of people point blank, including one of
Speaker 14: our colleagues, doctor Ahmad Lerati, who's a very experienced plastic surgeon.
Speaker 14: Him and his mother, who's also a physician. They executed
Speaker 14: people point blank, and including many of our colleagues who've
Speaker 14: been detained. Now we haven't heard back from them.
Speaker 2: Previous students of.
Speaker 14: Mine detained, young doctors detained. We don't know if they're
Speaker 14: dead or alive. They have been gone for over one
Speaker 14: hundred days.
Speaker 3: So to say that this is a.
Speaker 14: Strategic targeting of Hamas is an insult to our intellect
Speaker 14: and our humanity. This is this is a destruction of
Speaker 14: people who heal. This is a direct targeting of healthcare workers.
Speaker 14: I just want to paint a very brief picture of
Speaker 14: what healthcare workers are telling me there.
Speaker 3: They're saying that when they leave the.
Speaker 14: Hospital, civilians, give them civilian clothing because wearing scrubs is
Speaker 14: sticking a target sticker.
Speaker 3: On their back.
Speaker 14: That is how systematically healthcare has being targeted. And frankly,
Speaker 14: you know in the last twenty four hours, what we've
Speaker 14: seen from at Schiffel Hospital, what we've seen from at
Speaker 14: Axa Hospital, and what I worry is coming to the
Speaker 14: remaining hospitals of the Gaza strip because it has been
Speaker 14: the pattern and we will not ignore it is a
Speaker 14: direct and systematic targeting of healthcare that is unjustifiable.
Speaker 1: So Shifa is destroyed, hundreds are reportedly dead, and what
Speaker 1: few patients remain at the destroyed complex are in desperate circumstances,
Speaker 1: suffering malnutrition and dehydration, with some reports indicating that six
Speaker 1: people are sharing a single.
Speaker 3: Bottle of water per day. It will take.
Speaker 1: Weeks to know the scale and specifics of the slaughter.
Speaker 1: If we ever do, we already know more than enough
Speaker 1: to say that this intentional destruction of the Gaza health
Speaker 1: system is a war crime, That if American politicians saw
Speaker 1: Russia conducting themselves in the exact same manner, they would
Speaker 1: say it was a war crime. That thestruction of the
Speaker 1: health system is consistent with the commission of a genocide,
Speaker 1: That innocence, including doctors, women and children were slaughtered. And
Speaker 1: we know that the bidaministration's decision to back the initial
Speaker 1: propaganda campaign and to lie about our own intelligence in
Speaker 1: order to support the raid itself has paved the way
Speaker 1: to this fresh wore for Joe Biden regards to Israel,
Speaker 1: there are no red lines, only green lights.
Speaker 2: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 2: become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 1: So have you been following Israel's assault on Gaza. You
Speaker 1: may have seen some viral clips of some activists on
Speaker 1: Capitol Hill demanding answers from members of Congress.
Speaker 3: Let's take a look at what I'm talking about.
Speaker 7: Support Israel forever, stay your ally even though they commit.
Speaker 4: Explain.
Speaker 8: Let me tell you a statistic Israel will exist, the
Speaker 8: Jewish state will exist.
Speaker 3: That's not a statistation, and that is for.
Speaker 12: To do what.
Speaker 2: I will always murder Israel children.
Speaker 10: And you can tell the Palestinians and I will.
Speaker 7: Tell you never support you.
Speaker 2: I will tell you to your.
Speaker 7: Good we will support Israel forever. You know you are comfortable.
Speaker 7: This guy just said, goode Israel.
Speaker 2: What are your thoughts on? Get out of my way?
Speaker 2: Are you afraid?
Speaker 3: Why are your mom.
Speaker 2: You we're trying.
Speaker 7: To kill You're killing Palestinians.
Speaker 15: A lot of fun.
Speaker 1: So the gentleman that you saw there in those clips
Speaker 1: demanding some answers, having some fierce interactions, there is Motaz Salem.
Speaker 1: He is a pulsing American activist and he is our
Speaker 1: guest today. Great to have you, Motas welcome.
Speaker 7: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, talk to us about just what have
Speaker 1: you been up to, what has led you to, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of hang out in the halls of Capitol Hill
Speaker 1: and confront whoever comes across your radar.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 15: So I'm Palestinian American myself. I'm from Graza. I have
Speaker 15: a lot of family in Grazza. And so since October seventh,
Speaker 15: you know, I on the show, you cover a lot
Speaker 15: how Israel's response has been. It's been unconsidable, unprecedented, and
Speaker 15: you know, there's genocide, weaponized starvation, and I personally have
Speaker 15: lost over one hundred family members in my extended family,
Speaker 15: some of my favorite cousins in the world, such as
Speaker 15: you know Iman for example, She's my cousin who her
Speaker 15: her husband, and her four kids in one air strike.
Speaker 7: They were martyred. And so that's just one example of it.
Speaker 15: And I think just dealing with all of that while
Speaker 15: all so being in DC and being like in grad
Speaker 15: school or just in in the spaces here and seeing just.
Speaker 7: I felt at first powerless.
Speaker 15: But then after seeing Code Pink and seeing media Benjamin
Speaker 15: as well, going every day to confront these people head on,
Speaker 15: I was really interested in doing it, and so I
Speaker 15: joined them one day and it's literally like you can
Speaker 15: join us ten am every day at Rayburn Cafeteria.
Speaker 7: And I at first was very shocked.
Speaker 15: To you that that's a possibility, even like I remember
Speaker 15: going the first day we met actually in the in
Speaker 15: the Rustle building and I'm I'm Arab, So going into
Speaker 15: any government building with like security and stuff is super
Speaker 15: nerve wracking, not.
Speaker 3: A comfortable experience, right, No.
Speaker 7: No it's not. It's not where I'd like to be.
Speaker 15: But you just walk in, which was very shocking to
Speaker 15: me that you literally just like walk in and you're
Speaker 15: just there. And we from that day, like we visited
Speaker 15: a whole bunch of offices, and yeah, I just I
Speaker 15: wanted to do.
Speaker 7: Something about it.
Speaker 15: I have the privilege of being in DC here, you know,
Speaker 15: just fifteen twenty minutes away from Congress at all times,
Speaker 15: and so I said, you know enough just like looking
Speaker 15: at the screen, listening to podcasts and just being so
Speaker 15: upset about it, like, let's actually try to do something
Speaker 15: with what we have.
Speaker 1: Motell's I'm profoundly sorry for your loss, which is incalculable.
Speaker 3: Do you find that.
Speaker 1: I know, you know a lot of other Pelstonian Americans
Speaker 1: here in DC and probably around the country, is your
Speaker 1: loss commesarate? Are they suffering similar losses of family members
Speaker 1: who've been killed by the IDF in Gaza.
Speaker 15: Yeah, I would say my story is very very common actually,
Speaker 15: because most people you talk to will tell you that
Speaker 15: they've lost numerous humor family members and the the the
Speaker 15: way that Israel has conducted this genocide. Like anyone you
Speaker 15: ask in Palestine, even if they're from the West Bank,
Speaker 15: like they'll know someone who's from Razza who has lost someone.
Speaker 7: Everyone's lost someone and Guzza everyone.
Speaker 15: I mean, if if for me personally, like when I
Speaker 15: first got a list of like my dad literally sent
Speaker 15: me a list of every name of my cousins who
Speaker 15: died or aunts, uncles, and it's you know, you don't
Speaker 15: even know how to process it because it's just like
Speaker 15: names on a page, and there's so many of them,
Speaker 15: and you know some of them as close to some
Speaker 15: of them.
Speaker 7: I didn't really know that well. But I would say
Speaker 7: it's very common.
Speaker 15: Actually, this has pretty much been a universal experience, especially
Speaker 15: if you're from Guzza.
Speaker 1: Have you been able to track all of the loved
Speaker 1: ones that you have lost or are there some family
Speaker 1: members that you aren't sure of their status at this point?
Speaker 15: For I mean, whenever I tell people that, will I
Speaker 15: always say so far, like I've lost over one hundreds
Speaker 15: so far, because you know, there's still people under the
Speaker 15: rubble that we don't know, We don't necessarily have a
Speaker 15: record of their death. And I actually found out last
Speaker 15: week about forty more members that had been murdered by
Speaker 15: the Israeli state because we at first were not able
Speaker 15: to track down the names and the documents. And it's
Speaker 15: actually like a very rigorous process too that the Health
Speaker 15: Ministry and as goes through in order to sort of
Speaker 15: verify the individual verify their files. But a lot of
Speaker 15: the files are missing too because they've targeted all these
Speaker 15: sort of government institutions. Entire families wiped off the registry
Speaker 15: like they're like legal documentation of their existence. So this
Speaker 15: is what I know so far, but it's very difficult
Speaker 15: to track the deaths.
Speaker 1: Over the course of the time period when you've been
Speaker 1: going to Capitol Hill office buildings and trying to get
Speaker 1: answers from members of Congress, have you noticed any sort
Speaker 1: of tone shift, because you have seen, especially among the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party, you've seen this rhetorical shift that seems to
Speaker 1: have been the direct result of activist pressure from people
Speaker 1: such as yourself. So have you noticed any of that
Speaker 1: in your interactions.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I would definitely say so.
Speaker 15: I mean one example I can point two would be
Speaker 15: Senator Van Holland I remember, I mean his rhetoric has
Speaker 15: always like it's sort of shifted very significantly, and I
Speaker 15: think he's one of the senators at the forefront of
Speaker 15: I wouldn't say he's like staunchly pro Palestine, but he
Speaker 15: you know, recognizes just how devastating this genocide has been.
Speaker 15: And we met with his staffers, and I've gotten really
Speaker 15: good at sort of gauging people's reactions and like because
Speaker 15: I look them straight in the eye and I tell
Speaker 15: them my story and about my family, and we do
Speaker 15: get some very robotic answers, which yeah, I'm thinking exactly,
Speaker 15: we'll relate it to the congressman or the senator. We'll
Speaker 15: you know, we'll get here's my email, get in touch
Speaker 15: with us, and we can have a longer conversation than
Speaker 15: then we email them, and like we never get a response, obviously,
Speaker 15: but there have been like with with Van Hollins Uh.
Speaker 15: I think it was his chief of staff and maybe
Speaker 15: Legislative director. They I could tell after the meeting they
Speaker 15: were shaken up because you know, there was the whole
Speaker 15: group of us, and we really like we sort of
Speaker 15: just stopped any sort of like political talk and we're
Speaker 15: just like, you guys need to understand, like, this is
Speaker 15: what's happening. This is like a human issue more than
Speaker 15: just a policy issue. And I think they actually hurt
Speaker 15: us and since then and so part of what we
Speaker 15: in that meeting was we were disappointed because he gave
Speaker 15: that whole speech before voting to send the bill to
Speaker 15: the House from the Senate.
Speaker 7: So he like gave this whole big speech which.
Speaker 15: Went viral and I was like, oh, great, we have
Speaker 15: a senator actually speaking up for us. Then he still
Speaker 15: voted for it, and so we went and we told him, like,
Speaker 15: we love this speech. He actually went viral for this speech,
Speaker 15: and like he has this opportunity to sort of be
Speaker 15: this almost hero in terms of his context for the
Speaker 15: Palestinian cause. But then he goes and votes, and it's like,
Speaker 15: why doesn't the policy sort of match the rhetoric. And
Speaker 15: we really pressured them on that, and I think that's
Speaker 15: caused him to go even more in that direction towards
Speaker 15: speaking up for Palestinians.
Speaker 1: I know there are a lot of people out there
Speaker 1: who feel, you know, they feel disgusted, They feel heartbroken,
Speaker 1: and they feel that sense of impotence and powerlessness because
Speaker 1: even as you know, we had this large uncommitted vote
Speaker 1: and protests every day and Green Jean Pierre and Joe
Speaker 1: Bid they can't go anywhere without having to face protests
Speaker 1: in the eye. What would your message be to those
Speaker 1: people who are feeling disheartened about the possibility of having
Speaker 1: any sort of voice in our quote unquote democracy.
Speaker 15: I would tell them that I was there where they
Speaker 15: are right now. I thought I couldn't do anything about it.
Speaker 15: I felt very hopeless, especially hearing about my own family
Speaker 15: as well as others families. And I will say, if
Speaker 15: you have the chance to go to an action, whether
Speaker 15: it's to join us, whether it's somewhere something local to you,
Speaker 15: where you know there's some pro Israel congressman, I don't
Speaker 15: know why I'm thinking Richie Torres right now, White, I'm
Speaker 15: not going to get into that, but I would say
Speaker 15: go and just it's it's very uncomfortable. It is very uncomfortable,
Speaker 15: and you you do need to sort of like let
Speaker 15: go of that discomfort and just go for it. And
Speaker 15: I would say, don't underestimate the effect of that because
Speaker 15: we've heard from staffers as well in the offices, like
Speaker 15: sometimes they'll like chase after us after we've left and
Speaker 15: say like thank you so much for doing that, Please
Speaker 15: keep doing it, Like they get so embarrassed, especially when
Speaker 15: we bird dog them, they get so embarrassed.
Speaker 7: Like I think, like Brad Sherman.
Speaker 15: Was really pissed off about like you know that that
Speaker 15: that that whole thing, and it went pretty viral too,
Speaker 15: and so I think, don't underestimate the effect that it has.
Speaker 15: It's not you know, immediate, of course you do it,
Speaker 15: and then oh they vote first, he's fired. Then day
Speaker 15: it's a lot of pressure, a lot of like not
Speaker 15: letting them go about their normal life and holding them accountable.
Speaker 1: We were both at an event the other night at
Speaker 1: bus Voice and Poets where we reconnected, and Professor Finkelstein
Speaker 1: was there, and I thought he had a good answer
Speaker 1: to this question as well, which is, listen, if we
Speaker 1: all do nothing, we know one hundred percent nothing.
Speaker 7: Changes exactly, at least exactly.
Speaker 3: We have a chance. So motes, thank you so much
Speaker 3: for joining us today. More importantly, for the work that
Speaker 3: you're doing.
Speaker 1: Is there somewhere where you would want people to follow
Speaker 1: you online, follow what you're up to.
Speaker 15: Sure, Yeah, mainly my Instagram it's at taz s d
Speaker 15: C t a z s DC. I do a lot
Speaker 15: of work with Coke Pink. We do a lot of
Speaker 15: like bird dogging and visiting offices. We just did a
Speaker 15: die in yesterday at W. Wasserman Schultz's office. Also not
Speaker 15: going to get into that, but I also like I
Speaker 15: give a lot of speech and try to like just
Speaker 15: share content to really humanize, uh, the people on the
Speaker 15: ground in Palestine, because I feel like that's something that's
Speaker 15: really missing. People see a lot of numbers and like
Speaker 15: stats and like data about just how awful it is
Speaker 15: and unprecedented, But even in looking at all of that,
Speaker 15: it numbs.
Speaker 7: You out a little bit.
Speaker 15: And so I'm trying to give sort of use my
Speaker 15: platform to give a voice of like these were real people,
Speaker 15: real human beings with real lives.
Speaker 7: This was some mundane day to day live the dreams
Speaker 7: that they had for them.
Speaker 15: Yeah, Like my cousin eman like graduated somewhat recently with
Speaker 15: a with like an MBA, and like she had these
Speaker 15: lovely kids and and it's all done. They took it
Speaker 15: all away. They took it all away. And it's it's unconsctable.
Speaker 3: Motez, thank you so much for being with us in Crystal.
Speaker 7: We're have very.
Speaker 1: Grateful Thank you guys for watching and we will see
Speaker 1: you on Thursday.
Speaker 12: The end, PA