Speaker 1: Col Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 2: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 2: of the week that just happened is here in one
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Speaker 2: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
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Speaker 3: This is it could happen here, I show about things
Speaker 3: falling apart. I'm Garrison Davis. I'm joined by Robert Evans
Speaker 3: to discuss the Prairie Land trial.
Speaker 2: Yay.
Speaker 3: This month, the Trump administration got their first conviction in
Speaker 3: an Antifa terrorism case. On Friday, March thirteenth, eight people
Speaker 3: were convicted by a federal jury on charges of riot,
Speaker 3: conspiracy to use and carry an explosive, and providing material
Speaker 3: support to terrorists. One of the defendants was convicted of
Speaker 3: attempted murder of a police officer, and another person was
Speaker 3: convicted on two counts of concealing documents, bringing the total
Speaker 3: number of federal defendants to nine. Originally, this federal case
Speaker 3: had way more defendants, but last year seven of them
Speaker 3: pleaded guilty to providing material support terrorists, four of whom
Speaker 3: were later called to testify for the prosecution during the trial.
Speaker 2: Have they gotten sentenced yet the folks who pled.
Speaker 3: Out, No, They are going to be sentenced later this summer,
Speaker 3: along with all of the defendants that were convicted.
Speaker 4: Gotcha, though their sentence will.
Speaker 3: Be a maximum of fifteen years, which is shorter than
Speaker 3: the defendants who were convicted.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, The Prairie Line Defendants Support Committee did ask me
Speaker 3: to read their names. The defendants are inns Soto, Liz Soto,
Speaker 3: Savannah Batten, meg and Morris, Autumn Hill, Mari Ruida, Benjamin
Speaker 3: Song or b Song, Zachary Evitz, and des Estrada. The
Speaker 3: prosecution tried to argue that this was a coordinated attack
Speaker 3: on an ice facility in Prairie Land, Texas, while the
Speaker 3: defense argued this was a noise demonstration protest outside of
Speaker 3: this detention facility last summer. On the night of July fourth,
Speaker 3: after protesters through fireworks and vandalized property, DJs personnel called
Speaker 3: local police for assistance. One officer arrived, drew his handgun
Speaker 3: and yelled stop at a person in all black clothes
Speaker 3: who was running away. One of the defendants, b Song,
Speaker 3: then yelled get to the rifles before firing toward the
Speaker 3: officer with an Air fifteen, hitting him in the neck.
Speaker 3: Song fired eleven times. The officer returned fire three times.
Speaker 3: Song then fled the scene. Most of the defendants were
Speaker 3: arrested in the days after the attacks, some that night
Speaker 3: near the facility, though Song camped out, hiding in the
Speaker 3: woods overnight and evaded care for eleven days with the
Speaker 3: help of others. Many of those who assisted Song of
Speaker 3: ad capture after the shooting pledg guilty to providing material
Speaker 3: support to terrorists. On the first day of this trial,
Speaker 3: the judge declared a mistrial because one of the defense
Speaker 3: attorneys wore a shirt featuring civil rights leaders. A week
Speaker 3: into the trial, US District Court Judge Mark Pittman ruled
Speaker 3: that defense attorneys could not argue that the defendants, including
Speaker 3: the accused shooter, were acting in self defense or the
Speaker 3: defense of others against unlawful force just because the officer
Speaker 3: had already drawn his handgun before Song fired. The prosecutors
Speaker 3: compared this to Waco, and Judge Pittman ruled that the
Speaker 3: officer drawing and pointing his handgun at a fleeing suspect
Speaker 3: does not qualify as quote excessive as a matter of
Speaker 3: law because the officer did not actually use deadly force
Speaker 3: or shoot first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense. Like if this were a civilian
Speaker 2: on civilian situation, the fact that he had drawn his gun,
Speaker 2: especially in Texas, would have been enough to at least
Speaker 2: argue self defense. But absolutely, police officers have the right
Speaker 2: to pull guns on whoever they want, whenever they want
Speaker 2: pretty much, so yeah, yep.
Speaker 5: Cool.
Speaker 3: In court, the government argued that, based on the situation
Speaker 3: at the protest, that it was reasonable for the officer
Speaker 3: to decide to draw his handgun because there was crimes
Speaker 3: being committed to property damage the fireworks, even if he
Speaker 3: did not witness fireworks as he pulled up to the scene. Now,
Speaker 3: headlines have framed this story as protesters being convicted of
Speaker 3: terrorism for wearing black clothes or possessing radical political writing
Speaker 3: also known as zines. There is like a kernel of
Speaker 3: truth to these statements, but they're designed to serve primarily
Speaker 3: as clickbait rather than useful information. So let's take a
Speaker 3: closer look at these claims. Sure, let's start by getting
Speaker 3: into the action planning so this action was originally planned
Speaker 3: on the encrypted messaging app Signal, primarily in a group
Speaker 3: chat called fourth of July Party Okay. The plan was
Speaker 3: also discussed during an in person meeting the day before
Speaker 3: the action, referred to during the trial as a gear check.
Speaker 3: Participense in the planning chat agreed to where black block
Speaker 3: and bring armor and rifles. Song advertised the action in
Speaker 3: a larger group chat of dozens of quote unquote trusted individuals.
Speaker 3: The event was characterized in this chat as a low
Speaker 3: risk noise demonstration involving fireworks. A flyer was sent to
Speaker 3: this larger chat, reading share with trusted folks only, do
Speaker 3: not post mask up, be loud on quote. According to
Speaker 3: cooperating witness Susan Kent, in the fourth of July Party
Speaker 3: Signal chat, when asked about bringing guns, Songs stated, I'm
Speaker 3: not going back to prison.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to jail. I'm bringing guns unquote.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's a terrible thing to have in writing, boy,
Speaker 2: okay great.
Speaker 3: This sentiment was also expressed at the gear check meeting
Speaker 3: on July third, where the Fundans discussed bringing guns, and
Speaker 3: Song repeatedly stated that they would be bringing guns because
Speaker 3: he would not be quote unquote going to jail. They
Speaker 3: talked about guns as a deterrent. Yeah, they talked about
Speaker 3: how in previous instances the presence of guns deterred police
Speaker 3: from engaging with protesters. And this is how the presence
Speaker 3: of guns at the protest was largely framed in these
Speaker 3: meetings and chats. It does not look good in writing
Speaker 3: in a court case though.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is what the Elm Fork John Brown
Speaker 2: Gun Club had done, like sweep defenses and stuff where
Speaker 2: they'd shown up armed.
Speaker 4: That incident was brought up. Yeah, that was specifically referenced.
Speaker 2: It had in fact worked that way more or less.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a number of things to drill into here,
Speaker 2: but one of the issues is just while that's a
Speaker 2: thing people have used firearms for and have done so
Speaker 2: in a way that worked in the past obviously, which
Speaker 2: is what they were referencing, the problem is that you
Speaker 2: can't ever lose sight of the fact that, like, a
Speaker 2: gun is a gun, and if you're bringing a gun
Speaker 2: into a situation.
Speaker 4: There's potential for that gun to be used.
Speaker 2: There's a potential for that gun to be used. And
Speaker 2: if you're bringing that gun into a situation around a
Speaker 2: police station. The odds that you will use that gun
Speaker 2: in a way that is not going to cause a
Speaker 2: life ruining legal nightmare for you and everyone else are
Speaker 2: a lot lower. That's a real issue.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Also at this gear check.
Speaker 3: On the third, song proposed to free detainees using quote
Speaker 3: unquote suppressive fire. Oh my god, this idea was shut
Speaker 3: down by other attendees, according to Susan Kent, who testified
Speaker 3: after entering a guy plea. Kent testified that after looking
Speaker 3: over photos of the facility, Song said, quote, this is
Speaker 3: as easy as it's going to get. We can take
Speaker 3: the place and free the people inside using quote unquote
Speaker 3: suppressive fire. This idea was meant with quote unquote general disagreement,
Speaker 3: according to Kent, Yeah, of course, also saying that it
Speaker 3: was not seriously planned for or discussed the support committee
Speaker 3: rights that. Kent also testified that the group quote discussed
Speaker 3: stealing U hauls to move free detainees, but this did
Speaker 3: not have popular support. Defendant Autumn Hill asked do we
Speaker 3: bring our guns? Song replied, yes, I'm not getting arrested unquote.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a lot of really horrible things to have
Speaker 2: read out in a courtroom. Just yep.
Speaker 3: Cool, okay on Signal, song shared a YouTube short about
Speaker 3: suppressive fire. Another defendant wrote that she didn't want to
Speaker 3: quote unquote fed post Yeah. Someone else wrote that rifles
Speaker 3: at the action may increase risk. Defendant Evitts sent a
Speaker 3: timeline for the actions that day, writing things heat up
Speaker 3: after sunset. Royeda wrote quote if people inside get rowdy,
Speaker 3: people in this chat would be charged for conspiracy question mark.
Speaker 3: And then after the fourth of July shooting, someone messaged, quote,
Speaker 3: please delete signal chats. Chats still on phone even if
Speaker 3: removed from groups unquote yeah. According to Support Committee notes,
Speaker 3: some Signal messages were recovered from phones using Apple's internal
Speaker 3: notification system, though even though Signal had been removed, incoming
Speaker 3: messages were preserved in the internal memory on the phone.
Speaker 3: Outgoing messages were not preserved because there's no notification system
Speaker 3: for outgoing messages, and you can set your settings on
Speaker 3: Signal to not display the message in notifications, and it
Speaker 3: seems like that was not the case for these messages
Speaker 3: that were taken from defendants phones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is a known I mean, just the
Speaker 2: fact that having notifications on with Signal as a privacy
Speaker 2: issue has been known for a while but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, two defendants, Liz Sojo and Savannah Batten, were neither
Speaker 3: in planning chats nor attended the gear check. But all
Speaker 3: the defendants who attended the protest did carpool together in
Speaker 3: two vehicles and brought a total of eleven firearms, body armor,
Speaker 3: individual first aid kits, and all these were presented as
Speaker 3: government exhibits. I'm going to quote the Department of Justice
Speaker 3: right up about this case.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 3: Evidence at trial revealed most of the ANTIFA cell involved
Speaker 3: in the Prairie Line attack looked to Song as a leader.
Speaker 3: Song acquired firearms that were distributed to co defendants and
Speaker 3: recruited members that gun ranges and combat sessions that conducted unquote.
Speaker 2: Yep I just as a general rule, like because the
Speaker 2: potential consequences of having firearms in a protest are so high.
Speaker 2: If you are showing up at a protest or organizing
Speaker 2: one and people are talking about bringing them, it behooves
Speaker 2: you to pay close attention to how they talk about them.
Speaker 2: And if someone is talking about, for example, suppress a fire,
Speaker 2: that's not something that is really relevant to a defensive
Speaker 2: shooting in a legal situation, that's like a combat thing,
Speaker 2: like very rarely do self defense shootings involve suppressing fire.
Speaker 2: I just you have to be very very careful. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And this is like a judgment thing. Like if you
Speaker 2: hear people talking about guns who are going to be
Speaker 2: bringing firearms to a protest or another event, and they
Speaker 2: are talking in a way that sounds as if they
Speaker 2: are like planning or eager to shoot it out with
Speaker 2: the police or right wing count with anyone, that's a
Speaker 2: thing to be very wary of. That's a real warning sign. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a real red flag. Yeah, that's a real red flag.
Speaker 3: The defense argued that when Song shot at the officer,
Speaker 3: Song was using suppressive fire, claiming that Song aimed for
Speaker 3: the ground and the officer was perhaps struck by a ricochet.
Speaker 4: We don't know if that is true.
Speaker 3: No, And there really is no legal precedent no arguing
Speaker 3: suppressive fire in this way.
Speaker 2: In a self defense shooting.
Speaker 3: No, if you're shooting the direction of someone, yeah, they
Speaker 3: absolutely can start shooting back, even if that absolute fire
Speaker 3: is intended as being quote unquote suppressive. Right, Like, there's
Speaker 3: there's really no legal precedent for arguing in this way.
Speaker 2: And from a legal standpoint, if you were saying I
Speaker 2: had to shoot at someone in immediate self defense. And
Speaker 2: then you said, but I wasn't actually aiming at them.
Speaker 2: I was just trying to suppress them that immediately. Like
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't think they were ever going to
Speaker 2: be able to argue self defense because this was a cop.
Speaker 2: But if this had not been, if this had been like,
Speaker 2: you know, a right wing counter protester or something, the
Speaker 2: fact that you're saying that you were like shooting to
Speaker 2: try not to hit them is something that can get
Speaker 2: you in trouble. That's an extremely dangerous thing from a
Speaker 2: legal standpoint to talk about.
Speaker 4: Especially if you're the one like initiating the use of
Speaker 4: deadly force.
Speaker 2: Yes, if you have now if they if a group
Speaker 2: of people start shooting at you and you are firing
Speaker 2: and you're just trying to keep it whatever that you're
Speaker 2: in a say it because they've started shooting at you.
Speaker 2: But like this person started shooting, Like just from a
Speaker 2: legal standpoint, this is a nightmare for the defense. Yeah,
Speaker 2: from the jump. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Some of the defendants attended a daytime protest outside of
Speaker 3: this facility earlier on July fourth, and after which they
Speaker 3: then reported back to fellow defendants details regarding the facility
Speaker 3: security prior to this nighttime action. I think it's time
Speaker 3: for a quick break and then we'll return to discuss
Speaker 3: the Antifa terrorism cell aspect of this case.
Speaker 2: Great, well, I hate all of it so far, Garrison,
Speaker 2: here's some ads. I guess we're back.
Speaker 4: So let's talk about quote unquote Antifa.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk about quote end quote Antifa.
Speaker 3: The government argued that the defendants were members of a
Speaker 3: quote unquote North Texas Antifa cell. The indictment describes Antifa
Speaker 3: as a quote militant enterprise made up of networks of
Speaker 3: individuals and small groups, primarily ascribing to a revolutionary, anarchist
Speaker 3: or autonomous Marxist ideology which explicitly calls for the overthrow
Speaker 3: of the United States government, law enforcement authorities, and the
Speaker 3: system of law unquote. So basically, they view Antifa as
Speaker 3: left wing anti authoritarians. Right, That's how we can kind
Speaker 3: of collapse the use of this term down into like
Speaker 3: a single sentence, it's left wing anti authoritarianism. Though the
Speaker 3: defendants never actually or organized altogether under the Antifa name,
Speaker 3: the prosecution argued that they were linked through a triple
Speaker 3: ven diagram of the Socialist Rifle Association the John Brown
Speaker 3: Gun Club and the Emma Goldman book Club, and it's
Speaker 3: all converged on quote unquote direct to militant action. I'm
Speaker 3: assuming people are familiar with the SRA or the John
Speaker 3: Brown Gun Club in some way.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The Emma Goldman Book Club was a local zene distributor
Speaker 3: and publisher that also put on community events from a radical,
Speaker 3: anti capitalist, usually anarchist friendly perspective, Emma Goldwyn obviously being
Speaker 3: an anarchist yep.
Speaker 2: And like the fact that obviously these three organizations aren't
Speaker 2: actually tied together in any sort of like like they're
Speaker 2: trying to frame it as like, you know, an al
Speaker 2: Qaeda and an al Qaida affiliate type deal, right, which
Speaker 2: is not sure accurate to how these organizations work or
Speaker 2: what's going on here. But I'm not surprised they went
Speaker 2: with this line of argument.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, the defendants had connections to these groups, right,
Speaker 3: And because these groups have an ideological underpinning that can
Speaker 3: be seen as being quite similar in some ways, they're
Speaker 3: viewing that as as part of the connection, right, that
Speaker 3: connects the individuals who were involved in these sorts of
Speaker 3: organizations or community events.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I'm not surprised. That's how they tried to
Speaker 2: argue it sure.
Speaker 3: A sticky notepad found at the Soto residence contained passwords
Speaker 3: for the Emma Goldman book Club Twitter account and an
Speaker 3: Antifa Dallas fort Worth Twitter account, which prosecution usedes evidence
Speaker 3: linking defendants to quote unquote Antifa. The government also called
Speaker 3: on David Kyle Shittler as an expert weitness to testify
Speaker 3: about Antifa. Shittler is a member of the Center for
Speaker 3: Security Policy and SBLC designeded hate group. He also helped
Speaker 3: draft the definition of en Tifa given in this case,
Speaker 3: and used that definition while testifying in front of the
Speaker 3: Senate last year. The defense missed a deadline to challenge
Speaker 3: the prosecutions and TIFA expert qualifications, which would have needed
Speaker 3: to be filed as a pre trial motion as opposed
Speaker 3: to an objection during the trial. Prosecutors also cited Trump's
Speaker 3: Antifa Executive Order, despite this order being signed months after
Speaker 3: the Prairie Land incident, and the prosecutors also claimed that
Speaker 3: the International Antifa Defense Fund contributed over five thousand dollars
Speaker 3: to the prairie Land defendants give Send Go crowd funding page.
Speaker 3: So much of this case was spent arguing over whether
Speaker 3: the defendants were in fact Antifa and what that even means, like,
Speaker 3: what does it mean to be antifa and if that's
Speaker 3: actually relevant to the charges that they were facing, And
Speaker 3: by the end of the trial it became more clear
Speaker 3: that the defendants weren't exactly being prosecuted for being members
Speaker 3: of Antifa. Rather, the government asserted that their proximity to
Speaker 3: this idea of Antifa provided evidence to their motive and
Speaker 3: preferred tactics. Quoting the Support Committee courtroom notes quote, the
Speaker 3: government's strategy was to display zines, stickers, pamphlets, flags, and
Speaker 3: other political materials anarchist, anti fascist, anti ice, animal liberation
Speaker 3: and argued that this shared ideology proves conspiracy and motive.
Speaker 3: FBI case agent Casey Bennett testified that the materials quote
Speaker 3: show a group of people sharing an ideology and that
Speaker 3: this quote might lead us to intent behind the attack
Speaker 3: and shows a conspiracy unquote. Towards the end of the trial,
Speaker 3: Judge Pittman asked the prosecution quote, is it necessary to
Speaker 3: prove this stuff about Antifa? The Support Committee courtroom notes
Speaker 3: say that the prosecution responded by saying that Antifa ideology,
Speaker 3: particularly black block was how the group operated. The judge pressed,
Speaker 3: quote whether it's Antifa or the Methodist Women's Auxiliary, why
Speaker 3: does it matter?
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 3: The prosecution argued that they took quote unquote direct action
Speaker 3: against the ICE facility, and argued Black Block and Antifa
Speaker 3: ideology were central to how the alleged attack was carried out.
Speaker 2: Unquote, Well, that's yeah, that's positive at least, I guess.
Speaker 3: The government described black Block for the purpose of this
Speaker 3: case as quote dark clothing with head and face coverings
Speaker 3: that concealed their identities, designed to hide each individual's identity,
Speaker 3: but also to aid and those members engaged in illegal
Speaker 3: acts by making members indistinguishable from one another to law
Speaker 3: enforcement unquote. The jury was shown clothing from all the
Speaker 3: defendants as evidence, as well as body armour and a
Speaker 3: quote unquote resist fascism flag. Now, all this does raise
Speaker 3: the question about whether this press acution is against the
Speaker 3: defendant's political ideology or the specific criminal acts of throwing
Speaker 3: fireworks or shooting at a police officer, rather than being
Speaker 3: convicted of being members of Antifa, the terrorist group, something
Speaker 3: that still doesn't really have legal precedent. The prosecutors argued
Speaker 3: that the Antifa ideology left wing anti authoritarianism played a
Speaker 3: role in inspiring the defendants formed the basis of political
Speaker 3: affinity that brought this collection of individuals together and relate
Speaker 3: to a collection of security practices, subcultural practices, and associated
Speaker 3: tactics which were employed before, during, and after the criminal
Speaker 3: acts related to the Noise demo quote unquote, opsec practices
Speaker 3: like you know, black Block are using signal were used
Speaker 3: as evidence, Yeah, that there was some sort of conspiracy
Speaker 3: at foot.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, I mean, yeah, that makes sense from a
Speaker 2: prosecutorial standpoint, right, these people are talking about like just
Speaker 2: the fact that there are zines talking about the purpose
Speaker 2: of black Block and people are having a planning meeting
Speaker 2: ahead of time where they're like checking their gear and
Speaker 2: talking about how they're going to come in block, Like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's uh, that's that's unfortunate. Yeah, I can see why
Speaker 2: the prosecution went with that line of argument.
Speaker 3: But how does this relate to like terrorism, right, because right,
Speaker 3: conspiracy and terrorism are different things. Yes, So to get
Speaker 3: an idea of the government's own preferred language regarding antifa
Speaker 3: terrorism all quote from the guilty plea drafted by the
Speaker 3: government for a former defendant turned government witness.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 3: The terrorism was calculated to influence and affect the conduct
Speaker 3: of government by intimidation or coercion. Co conspirators adhered to
Speaker 3: an Antifa anarchist ideology and organized cells or affinity groups.
Speaker 3: Co conspirators began planning direct action at Prairie Land. Co
Speaker 3: conspirators agreed to address in black bloc to provide cover
Speaker 3: for each other to commit crimes, including concealing the escape
Speaker 3: of those who committed destruction of govern property unquote. So
Speaker 3: this is how it relates to the actual legal definition
Speaker 3: of terrorism, right, which is certain criminal acts intending to
Speaker 3: change or influence government policy by intimidation or coercion. Right.
Speaker 3: That's how the government uses the term terrorism. And this
Speaker 3: section of the plea written by the government shows how
Speaker 3: the government is self asserting the terrorism that happened at
Speaker 3: Prairie Land.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: There's been a lot of headlines talking about the role
Speaker 3: of zines at this trial, and zines did play a
Speaker 3: two part role. Prosecution did argue that the presence of
Speaker 3: insurrectionary zines is indicative of some alignment with Antifa, even
Speaker 3: if the possession of these zines itself is not a crime.
Speaker 3: The government's Antifa expert testified that owning political texts does
Speaker 3: not necessarily indicate group membership or personal allegiance to an ideology.
Speaker 3: Quote just because I own a copy of mind KOMF
Speaker 3: does that make make me a Nazi? If I own
Speaker 3: the Capital, does that make me a Marxist?
Speaker 4: Unquote?
Speaker 5: Sure?
Speaker 4: Stunning? Stunning A first example given here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, interesting call, but base, I mean, but also like
Speaker 2: a valid argument. Yeah, but this is true, right, Yes,
Speaker 2: and this is I've seen people framing the verdict as
Speaker 2: having zines or whatever, like it's an act of terrorism.
Speaker 2: That's not what it was decided here.
Speaker 3: No, what's happening here is a bit more complicated and
Speaker 3: harder to explain.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 3: The other relevancy of zines to this case relates to
Speaker 3: the concealing documents charges against des Estrata and his wife,
Speaker 3: Mari Rayuda, based on transporting a box of political zines
Speaker 3: from his wife's house to a friend's house in Denton, Texas.
Speaker 3: The government claims that Roda called des from jail on
Speaker 3: July sixth, instructing him to conceal evidence. Now, we don't
Speaker 3: have access to a full transcript of this call. The
Speaker 3: full call was into the jury, but sections of it
Speaker 3: were read or listened to in court. The most detailed
Speaker 3: account of the call segments played in court come from
Speaker 3: notes taken by the Prairie Land Defense Support Committee. The
Speaker 3: actual evidence exhibit is not yet available to be purchased
Speaker 3: on PACER. Not sure if it will be or if
Speaker 3: that'll just be after sentencing. But I tried to actually
Speaker 3: get the transcript with the call and it was not available.
Speaker 3: Des told his wife that he already talked with her mom,
Speaker 3: who she had previously called the day before. Rita talked
Speaker 3: about fed's confiscating property. FBI Special Agent Whitworth said in
Speaker 3: his opinion, Rieda was concerned about the evidence. Rieda then
Speaker 3: voiced concern for her car parked at the twenty four
Speaker 3: hundred block of fifty sixth Street, which had her phone
Speaker 3: stored inside. This was the staging site before she went
Speaker 3: to the action. She then instructed Dez to quote unquote,
Speaker 3: toe it. My phone is in the back. Do what
Speaker 3: you got to do, Just tow it unquote. The Support
Speaker 3: Committee wrote that quote. Prosecution replayed this section, characterizing it
Speaker 3: as Rida trying to get rid of evidence. Rada says
Speaker 3: to quote unquote retrieve her items from the vehicle, does
Speaker 3: not refer to her items using the word evidence, and
Speaker 3: does not say hide, destroy, or conceal. Des never actually
Speaker 3: got to this car or the phone. He explained that
Speaker 3: the vehicle would be repoed. But Rayeda also said in
Speaker 3: this call, quote move whatever you need to move in
Speaker 3: the house. The support committee wrote that quote. Prosecution argued
Speaker 3: this meant moving evidence. Defense noted she was talking about
Speaker 3: pets at the time. On the call, Des mentioned that
Speaker 3: he had already been at the house and replied, quote unquote,
Speaker 3: were good in reference to moving stuff from the house.
Speaker 3: The defense questioned how they could have conspired out of
Speaker 3: order right because the government claims there was a conspiracy
Speaker 3: to conceal documents, but Des here said that he moved
Speaker 3: things before he actually got on this phone call with
Speaker 3: his wife. The FBI answered that Des just had already
Speaker 3: acquired the necessary information to act, just not directly from
Speaker 3: his wife. Now, Des was found guilty of quote corruptly
Speaker 3: concealing a document or record by transporting a box containing
Speaker 3: numerous Antifa materials such as insurrection planning, anti law enforcement,
Speaker 3: anti government, and anti immigration enforcement documents and propaganda, intending
Speaker 3: to conceal the box's contents and impair its availability for
Speaker 3: use in a federal grand jury and federal criminal proceedings unquote,
Speaker 3: that's from the DOJ.
Speaker 4: He and his wife Rida.
Speaker 3: Were found guilty of conspiracy to conceal documents and other
Speaker 3: objects that would implicate Raeda in the riot and shooting
Speaker 3: at the Prairie Land facility also according to the Department
Speaker 3: of Justice. So basically this was an evidence tampering charge
Speaker 3: of concealing evidence charge. The actual presence of the zines
Speaker 3: was not the crime, but the government argued that the
Speaker 3: zines themselves were evidence, or that des suspected they could
Speaker 3: be evidence, and that's why he moved them from his
Speaker 3: wife's house to this other location. We're gonna go and
Speaker 3: rumber break and then return to discuss two more charges.
Speaker 4: Okay, we're back.
Speaker 3: Nine of the counts, count one, two, four, and five
Speaker 3: through ten cited Pinkerton versus United States nineteen forty six.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 3: The judge explained this to the jury by saying that
Speaker 3: a defendant can be criminally liable for the offenses committed
Speaker 3: by another co conspirator if the offense was quote reasonably
Speaker 3: foreseeable and committed and in furtherance of the conspiracy, with
Speaker 3: the judge writing in jury instructions.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 3: A defendant can be found guilty and held criminally liable
Speaker 3: for an offense under Pinkerton co conspirator liability, even if
Speaker 3: the defendant was not charged with conspiracy. It is not
Speaker 3: required that the conspiracy agrees to commit or facilitate each
Speaker 3: and every part of a substantive offense that is in
Speaker 3: furtherance of the conspiracy. A defendant must merely reach an
Speaker 3: agreement with the specific intent that the underlying criminal objective
Speaker 3: be achieved by the conspiracy unquote. Early in the trial,
Speaker 3: prosecution argued that song firing on the officers was quote
Speaker 3: unquote reasonably foreseeable based on the planning of the action
Speaker 3: and previous statements made by Song, But this Pickerton liability
Speaker 3: also applied to the other charges, including riot materials, port terrorism,
Speaker 3: and the explosive charge. The jury found all defendants that
Speaker 3: were charged guilty of counts one, two, three, and four
Speaker 3: that's riot material support and to explosive charges, but did
Speaker 3: not find the other defendants besides the Song, guilty of
Speaker 3: attempted murder or discharging a firearm. Using the Pinkerton co
Speaker 3: conspirator liability the prosecution wanted the other individuals at the
Speaker 3: protest to be found guilty of the charges of attempted
Speaker 3: murder using the liability, and the jury did not do that.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about two of the charges that now carry
Speaker 3: some worrying potential to be used against protesters in the
Speaker 3: future based on the precedent that this case sets. First,
Speaker 3: the conspiracy to use and carry in explosive and using
Speaker 3: uncarry in explosive during a riot. The only quote unquote
Speaker 3: explosives at this noise demonstration protest were fireworks, and the
Speaker 3: judge even confirmed that it was established that the fireworks
Speaker 3: caused no damage to the ice facility. Yet Steven Brennemann,
Speaker 3: ats Explosives Special Agent testified that fireworks meet the statutory
Speaker 3: definition of explosives under eighteen USC. Section eight four four
Speaker 3: IJ because the fireworks contain gunpowder as defined in the statute.
Speaker 3: This could have some pretty wide reaching implications. A lot
Speaker 3: of protests use fireworks. This was a protest on fourth
Speaker 3: of July, a day full of the use of fireworks.
Speaker 3: Robert and I have been to a protest covered a
Speaker 3: protest in twenty twenty outside of a federal government building
Speaker 3: that also had a lot of fireworks and fireworks shot
Speaker 3: towards the building. Yep, if that happened, now it's possible
Speaker 3: that people at this protest could be charged with this
Speaker 3: conspiracy to use and carry an explosive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I mean they've clearly been wanting arguing
Speaker 2: for this ever since twenty twenty, right, like, yeah, fire Well,
Speaker 2: because it wasn't just Portland, wasn't the only place where
Speaker 2: people were using fireworks. Generally, people were using fireworks as
Speaker 2: kind of a response to the police using flash flashbacks,
Speaker 2: right like it, it was a force equalizer. Both were
Speaker 2: used quite often. But you know, like I had so
Speaker 2: many of those fucking things blow up in my face
Speaker 2: and then every day, Like these are not bombs, These
Speaker 2: are not pipe bombs. Like it's not fun to have
Speaker 2: them blow up right next to you, but it's these
Speaker 2: are not like deadly explosives.
Speaker 4: Yes, agreed.
Speaker 3: And even the agents investigating this case mailed materials from
Speaker 3: these fireworks for testing using regular FedEx, not labeling them
Speaker 3: as possibly dangerous or explosive, and the government argued that
Speaker 3: it was because the amount in the FedEx package was
Speaker 3: just so small that they didn't need to label it
Speaker 3: as being dangerous.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, lastly, I need to discuss count two. It's providing
Speaker 3: material support to terrorists. This is eighteen us C.
Speaker 4: Two three three nine.
Speaker 3: This is the charge that a lot of people are
Speaker 3: talking about when they're mentioning someone has been convicted of
Speaker 3: terrorism for XYZ, for using signal, for wearing black block,
Speaker 3: for possessing zines. They're referring to this charge. Now, this
Speaker 3: statute has two sections. Section B refers to knowingly attempting to,
Speaker 3: conspiring to, or actually providing material support or resources to
Speaker 3: a designated foreign terrorist organization. This is not how the
Speaker 3: government used this statute, right, They're not considering Antifa a
Speaker 3: foreign terrorist organization for the purposes of this case.
Speaker 4: That's not how are using this.
Speaker 3: The defendants were charged with Section A alleging that they
Speaker 3: provided and attempted to provide material support and resources, and
Speaker 3: did conceal and disguise the nature of their material support
Speaker 3: and resources, including property, services, training, communications, equipment, weapons, explosives, personnel,
Speaker 3: including themselves, and transportation, and intending that they were to
Speaker 3: be used in preparation for, and in carrying out an
Speaker 3: offense identified as a federal crime of terrorism, or carrying
Speaker 3: out the concealment of an escape from an offense identified
Speaker 3: as a federal crime of terrorism.
Speaker 4: That's a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a long sentence. This is certainly a very
Speaker 3: confusing charge.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, this statute lists at least twenty eight possible terrorism offenses.
Speaker 3: Now relevant to this case are three eighteen Usc. Eight
Speaker 3: four four f, which is maliciously attempting to damage government
Speaker 3: property by means of fire or an explosive. For the
Speaker 3: purpose of this case, that is throwing fireworks at a building.
Speaker 4: Eighteen USC. One three sixty one.
Speaker 3: That's wilful depredation against any property of the United States
Speaker 3: exceeding one thousand dollars. For the purposes of this case,
Speaker 3: this would be damage a government property in other ways
Speaker 3: like slashing tires, graffiti, that sort of thing, right. And finally,
Speaker 3: eighteen USC one one four killing or attempting to kill
Speaker 3: an officer or employee of the United States.
Speaker 4: That's pretty self explanatory.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the government accused the defendants of providing material
Speaker 3: support in furtherance of committing these three crimes of terrorism,
Speaker 3: even if each individual defendant themselves did not actually commit
Speaker 3: one of these three crimes. To quote the jury instructions,
Speaker 3: quote the government does not have to prove all of
Speaker 3: these to you for you to return a guilty verdict
Speaker 3: on this charge. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt on one
Speaker 3: is enough, unquote. So the jury does not need to
Speaker 3: find proof that all of these three terrorism offenses were committed,
Speaker 3: that the explosives charge, the destruction government property charge, or
Speaker 3: the attempt at killing charge. They just need to find
Speaker 3: proof beyond a reasonable doubt that material support was provided
Speaker 3: for one of these. Part of what makes this charge
Speaker 3: kind of dangerous is that we don't I don't know
Speaker 3: which terroristic crime or crimes the jury found sufficient evidence for,
Speaker 3: or if they used different offenses for different defendants, Nor
Speaker 3: do we explicitly know what the jury thought qualified as
Speaker 3: material support. It could have been driving people to an action,
Speaker 3: mere presence at an action, wearing black clothes, providing money
Speaker 3: to buy fireworks, all those could be considered material support.
Speaker 3: But because of how the jury just writes guilty on
Speaker 3: this charge, we don't actually know what the specific justification
Speaker 3: they used to find this.
Speaker 4: To be true.
Speaker 3: Because the discharges so is so broad and can contain
Speaker 3: a lot of things that qualify as material support, including
Speaker 3: just being merely present at an action. Like personnel can
Speaker 3: be material support in furtherance of a federal crime of terrorism.
Speaker 3: So wearing black block at an action where no crime
Speaker 3: happens would not constitute terrorism, but wearing black clothes at
Speaker 3: a protest where someone does ideologically motivated crime of terrorism
Speaker 3: could be seen as materially supporting that crime or concealing
Speaker 3: the escape of the person who committed that crime. I
Speaker 3: want to quote from the judge's instructions to the jury
Speaker 3: regarding the First Amendment.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 3: Constitutionally protected speech can be properly used as evidence to
Speaker 3: prove a defendant's motive, intent, and knowledge to commit the
Speaker 3: offense or further the unlawful purpose of any jointly undertaken
Speaker 3: criminal activity. Stated another way, if a defendant's speech, expression,
Speaker 3: or associations were made with the intent to knowingly provide
Speaker 3: material support or resources to be used to prepare for
Speaker 3: or carry out a violation of federal law, or to
Speaker 3: carry out the concealment of an escape from such a violation,
Speaker 3: then the First Amendment would not provide a defense to
Speaker 3: that conduct.
Speaker 4: Unquote.
Speaker 3: So it is possible now using this case as precedent,
Speaker 3: if you're present at a protest before someone commits a
Speaker 3: serious crime and you have a tangential link to that person,
Speaker 3: you could also face similar charges. Yeah, if you're in
Speaker 3: a group chat with someone and then they commit a crime,
Speaker 3: you could face similar charges. This is not the first
Speaker 3: time the government has tried to use this sort of
Speaker 3: like conspiracy against a large group of protesters. Notably, they
Speaker 3: tried to do this in Atlanta unsuccessfully. But I think
Speaker 3: it's worth noting they were only unsuccessful on their rico
Speaker 3: charges because of procedural error, not because of actual evidence
Speaker 3: argued in court. It's that the prosecutor in that case
Speaker 3: did not actually have justification or the legal justification to
Speaker 3: bring this charge. So we never actually saw this get
Speaker 3: argued out in front of a jury and find the
Speaker 3: jury's verdict. But this is a part of an ongoing
Speaker 3: strategy the prosecution has done against protesters the past few years,
Speaker 3: and in this case successfully.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's also like as bleak as this is, and
Speaker 2: this is very bleak, This is not the final say
Speaker 2: on how any case like this will be a ge
Speaker 2: dicated everywhere. This is a case in Texas, right, Like,
Speaker 2: this is not Yes, this isn't the fucking US Supreme Court.
Speaker 2: It's not even the Texas Supreme Court, Right, Yeah, not
Speaker 2: to minimize how fucking awful this is. But this does
Speaker 2: not mean this is how cases like this will be
Speaker 2: adjudicated every time they come to court everywhere in the US.
Speaker 3: Yes, And the vagueness of the material support charge is
Speaker 3: like a double edged sword, right one. It can be
Speaker 3: used in cases like this, and we don't actually know
Speaker 3: how they were exactly able to successfully argue that, because
Speaker 3: we don't know which specific federal offense of terrorism the
Speaker 3: jury found material support was provided for, or if it
Speaker 3: was multiple offenses. Nor do we know exactly which things
Speaker 3: the jury found constituted material support. But because we don't
Speaker 3: know these things, that means when prosecutors try to argue
Speaker 3: this charge again in the future, they kind of have
Speaker 3: to start from the ground floor all over again. It's
Speaker 3: harder to apply this exact precedent because the specific things
Speaker 3: that constituted material support and the specific crime that material
Speaker 3: support was provided for are sort of ambiguous. But the
Speaker 3: vagueness of this charge certainly leads to a lot of confusion.
Speaker 3: And you can now look at this case and see
Speaker 3: that legal possession of firearms or firearms training and possession
Speaker 3: of political paraphernalia could bolster ideological links between you and defendants,
Speaker 3: which could be used as evidence for a charge like this,
Speaker 3: right yep, or for conspiracy charges, and that obviously is worrying.
Speaker 3: Now a Song faces a minimum penalty of twenty years
Speaker 3: a maximum of life in prison. Other defendants of Prairie
Speaker 3: Land face sentences ranging from a minimum of ten years
Speaker 3: to up to sixty The husband convicted of concealing documents
Speaker 3: faces up to forty years in prison, and those who
Speaker 3: pled guilty face the sentences of up to fifteen years
Speaker 3: in federal prison.
Speaker 4: Though their cooperation may lower that.
Speaker 3: Another man faces charges for evidence tempering because he allegedly
Speaker 3: removed Prairie Land defendants from discord chats last year. But
Speaker 3: this is a state charge which will be going to
Speaker 3: trial later in April.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that'll be interesting to watch, I guess. Yeah, this
Speaker 2: is bleak. This is extremely worrying. That's part of the
Speaker 2: point is to scare people, to make people feel like
Speaker 2: they can't trust other activists, to make people scared to organize,
Speaker 2: to make them scared to be in group chats. And yeah,
Speaker 2: there's very real reason to be concerned as a result
Speaker 2: of this. However, none of this should be seen as
Speaker 2: like the final word on all of this stuff. And
Speaker 2: this certainly is not as simple as just having a
Speaker 2: zine or wearing black is terrorism. Now, that's not what
Speaker 2: was adjudicated here.
Speaker 3: No, these things do all relate to, or they're trying
Speaker 3: to be connected to, you know, actual crimes which did occur.
Speaker 2: And that's certainly the goal by the way that the
Speaker 2: right has, but that's not what they've achieved quite yet.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's definitely a way to try to scare
Speaker 3: people out of organizing in the sense that you know,
Speaker 3: you cannot be found a terrorist just by calling yourself
Speaker 3: like Antifa, just just by being Antifa alone by yourself,
Speaker 3: you're not going to be a terrorist. The same way
Speaker 3: you can't be put in jail just for being a Nazi. Right,
Speaker 3: But if you are part of a Nazi group chat
Speaker 3: where you're planning an action and then a Nazi does
Speaker 3: something at the at the action, like shooting a power substation,
Speaker 3: then that Nazi and the other Nazis that he's organizing with,
Speaker 3: you know, could face terrorism charges. That That is how
Speaker 3: those sorts of like cases work, and a very similar
Speaker 3: thing is being done here.
Speaker 4: It's it's not the.
Speaker 3: Actual like political ideology necessarily at trial, but organizing with
Speaker 3: other people in furtherance of a political ideology is what
Speaker 3: the government is trying to suppress.
Speaker 6: Yep.
Speaker 2: Cool, Well, I don't have anything else to add at
Speaker 2: this point.
Speaker 3: You know, no way will certainly cover this. One's sentencing
Speaker 3: happens later this year in June.
Speaker 2: Be careful. And if you're in a group chat with
Speaker 2: somebody who keeps writing shit that you're like, wow, that
Speaker 2: would be a terrible thing to hear read back in court,
Speaker 2: really reconsider, say, in a group chat with that person.
Speaker 2: Just be wary about what you say and what other
Speaker 2: people say to you online, not just because of court stuff,
Speaker 2: because like, if somebody is being incredibly reckless with the
Speaker 2: things that they are putting down and writing, they're probably
Speaker 2: being reckless in other areas. Just be careful, you know, folks,
Speaker 2: Be careful.
Speaker 7: I'm Michael Phillips, an historian and the author of a
Speaker 7: book about racism in Dallas called White Metropolis, and the
Speaker 7: co author with longtime journalists Betsy Freeoff, of the history
Speaker 7: of eugenics in Texas called The Purifying Knife.
Speaker 8: I'm Stephen Monchelli. I'm a journalist who specializes in covering
Speaker 8: political extremism and far right internet culture for The Texas Observer,
Speaker 8: The Barbed Wire, and other publications. Today we'll be talking
Speaker 8: about the Fifth Circuit, and we'll start with a man
Speaker 8: named James Hoe, who, on what might have been the
Speaker 8: biggest day of his judicial career so far, couldn't have
Speaker 8: picked a creepier setting.
Speaker 7: The fifty two year old's legal career has rocketed forward
Speaker 7: at light speed. Born in Taiwan and a graduate of Stanford,
Speaker 7: he signed up as an attorney for the white shoe
Speaker 7: law firm Gibson Dunn in California in two thousand. At
Speaker 7: age twenty seven, he joined a high powered legal team
Speaker 7: that forever shaped the history of the United States.
Speaker 4: From NBC News in Washington, this is Meet the Press
Speaker 4: with Tim Russer Our Issues.
Speaker 8: This Sunday, thirty six days after the election.
Speaker 2: Al Gore ends his campaign. For the sake of our
Speaker 2: unity as a people and the strength of our democracy,
Speaker 2: I offer my concession.
Speaker 4: George W.
Speaker 9: Bush will be the forty third President of the United States.
Speaker 1: I'm thankful to the American people for the great privilege
Speaker 1: of being able to serve as your next president.
Speaker 8: Young and almost entirely unknown outside of legal circles. James
Speaker 8: Hoe joined some of the most famous conservative lawyers in
Speaker 8: the country in the year two thousand to convince the
Speaker 8: United States Supreme Court to stop the hotly contested presidential
Speaker 8: vote count in Florida. That move elevated President George W.
Speaker 8: Bush to the White House. In this effort, James Hoe
Speaker 8: rubbed shoulders with right wing luminaries like the man who
Speaker 8: in five years would be the Chief Justice of the
Speaker 8: Supreme Court, John Roberts.
Speaker 7: Ho rocketed to judicial superstardom. He clerked for Supreme Court
Speaker 7: Justice Clarence Thomas for a couple of years, then from
Speaker 7: two thousand and eight to two th and ten, he
Speaker 7: succeeded Ted Cruz as Solicitor General of Texas. There he
Speaker 7: handled appeals filed by the state in cases heard by
Speaker 7: the state Supreme Court and the U. S Supreme Court.
Speaker 7: On January four, twenty eighteen, Hose celebrated his next rapid
Speaker 7: climb up the judicial ladder when he has sworn as
Speaker 7: the newest judge on the United States Fifth Circuit Court
Speaker 7: of Appeals, which oversees federal cases that are originating Texas, Mississippi,
Speaker 7: and Louisiana.
Speaker 8: Hooe'se swearing in ceremony took place at the mansion of
Speaker 8: Dallas real estate billionaire Harlan Crowe. You've probably heard that
Speaker 8: name before because Crow has made news with the revelation
Speaker 8: that he lavished hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts
Speaker 8: and favors on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, including cruises
Speaker 8: to Indonesian islands on the businessman's one hundred and sixty
Speaker 8: two foot superyacht and a one hundred and nineteen thousand
Speaker 8: dollars bible that once belonged to leading abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
Speaker 8: Crowe flew Thomas to Dallas on his private jet so
Speaker 8: the Justice could swear in his former clerk. The surroundings
Speaker 8: included Crowe's unnerving souvenirs, once described on the program Inside Edition.
Speaker 9: Questions are being raised today about Supreme Court Justice Clarence
Speaker 9: Thomas's friendship with a billionaire who collects Nazi memorabilia. Published
Speaker 9: reports say Dallas tycoon Harlan Crowe's controversial collection includes Hitler's
Speaker 9: notorious autobiography Mind Komfe, signed by Hitler, oil paintings by Hitler,
Speaker 9: and Lennon Napkins embroidered with the Nazi swastika. The collection
Speaker 9: is housed at Crowe's mansion in Dallas. I can't get
Speaker 9: over the collection of Nazi memorabilia, said one guest who
Speaker 9: saw the Nazi treasure trove. You sort of just gasp
Speaker 9: when you walk into the room.
Speaker 7: The estate also includes what Crow has called the Garden
Speaker 7: of Evil, a collection of imposing statues of past authoritarian
Speaker 7: leaders like Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mauzedung, Nikolai Chacchescu, the
Speaker 7: eccentric Romaine and tyrant violently deposed in nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 7: as well as a bust of Gavrilla Prinsep, the Bosnian
Speaker 7: Serb nationalist who triggered World War One with his assassination
Speaker 7: of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Crow claims that his clutch
Speaker 7: is somehow a statement of his hatred for both communism
Speaker 7: and fascism.
Speaker 8: The creepy artwork perhaps foreshadowed Hoe's ominous career in the
Speaker 8: Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. On that bench, he has
Speaker 8: become infamous for weirdly written and extreme opinions in which
Speaker 8: he has suggested that the children of migrants might not
Speaker 8: be eligible for birthright citizenship because the country is being
Speaker 8: quote invaded, and that abortion actually somehow injures doctors because
Speaker 8: they are denied the intense pleasure of delivering babies. Those
Speaker 8: antics might lead him to one day occupy a seat
Speaker 8: on the United States Supreme Court, potentially succeeding Thomas or
Speaker 8: Samuel Alito, the two oldest justices on the nation's highest bench.
Speaker 7: In this episode, we'll look at the career of Judge
Speaker 7: James hoe, is alarming right way judicial activism, and the
Speaker 7: strange history of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which
Speaker 7: since the Reagan administration has transformed for one of the
Speaker 7: most liberal judicial bodies in the country too, perhaps the
Speaker 7: scariest court in America.
Speaker 8: Given its current reactionary reputation, it's a bit ironic. The
Speaker 8: Fifth Circuit Court convenes in a New Orleans courthouse named
Speaker 8: after John Minor Wisdom, a New Orleans native who formed
Speaker 8: a critical part of a quartet of liberal judges known
Speaker 8: simply as the Four who in the nineteen fifties and
Speaker 8: nineteen sixties issued a series of revolutionary rulings that advanced
Speaker 8: the civil rights movement. President Dwight Eisenhower appointed Wisdom to
Speaker 8: the bench in nineteen fifty seven. He quickly formed an
Speaker 8: alliance with three other liberal judges on the Fifth Circuit,
Speaker 8: Albert P. Tuttle of Georgia, John R. Brown of Texas,
Speaker 8: and Richard T. Rivis of Alabama. Rivers was the only
Speaker 8: Democrat on the squad that came to be known as
Speaker 8: the Fifth Fore, these liberals typically prevailed over the conservatives
Speaker 8: serving on the Fifth Circuit, and at that point, the
Speaker 8: Fifth Circuit heard cases from states that spread across the
Speaker 8: core of the one time Confederacy, including Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas,
Speaker 8: and Georgia. This placed the Fifth boar on the front
Speaker 8: lines of the civil rights struggle. In nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 8: the Fifth Circuit began shipping away at Jim Crow. The
Speaker 8: court heard the case of Joe Dorsey Junior of New Orleans,
Speaker 8: challenging the Louisiana law that outlawed matches between black and
Speaker 8: white boxers. Wisdom wrote the majority opinion, which declared such
Speaker 8: legislation made a mockery of the equal protection clause of
Speaker 8: the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. That opinion
Speaker 8: like many, Wisdom wrote, would be upheld the following year
Speaker 8: by the Supreme Court that was presided over by Chief
Speaker 8: Justice Earl Warren. Louisiana integrated boxing matches, but for years
Speaker 8: outside the ring, the arenas divided into black and white seating.
Speaker 8: In the coming years, the Fifth Circuit Forest and parish
Speaker 8: in Louisiana to reopen their schools. After that school board
Speaker 8: voted to close all campuses to prevent integration. The Fifth
Speaker 8: Circuit Court ordered the University of Mississippi to admit an
Speaker 8: African American student, James Meredith. In his opinion, Wisdom wrote
Speaker 8: that Ole miss as it's known had engaged in a
Speaker 8: carefully calculated campaign of delay, harassment, and masterly inactivity. Riots
Speaker 8: broke out as federal troops had to enforce the order.
Speaker 10: James H. Meredith is formally enrolled at the University of Mississippi,
Speaker 10: ending one chapter in the federal government's efforts to desegregate
Speaker 10: the university. The town of Oxford is an armed camp
Speaker 10: following riots that accompanied the registration of the first Negro
Speaker 10: in the university's one hundred and eighteen year history. Much
Speaker 10: of this film record was destroyed when our cameraman Gordon
Speaker 10: Yoder was attacked, but he did salvage. Pictures of Governor
Speaker 10: Ross Barnett at the scene. The governor thought the court
Speaker 10: order long and bitterly before modifying his stad saying Mississippi
Speaker 10: was overpowered by the federal government. President Kennedy appealed to
Speaker 10: the students and to the people of the state to
Speaker 10: comply peacefully with the law and bring the crisis to
Speaker 10: an end. Even as he talked, riots were breaking out
Speaker 10: in Oxford. Americans are free, in sure to disagree with
Speaker 10: the law, but not to disobey it.
Speaker 1: For any government of laws and not of man.
Speaker 10: No man, however prominent or powerful, and no mob, however
Speaker 10: unruly or boisterous, is entitled to defy a.
Speaker 2: Court of law.
Speaker 7: In nineteen sixty three, the Fifth Circuit ordered the desegregation
Speaker 7: of community centers, cultural centers, playgrounds, and public parks. The
Speaker 7: next year, the Court ruled that jury selection system in
Speaker 7: Orleans Paris, where as Wisdom noted, no black had ever
Speaker 7: sit on his grand jury or trial jury panel, violated
Speaker 7: the Constitution. Two years after that, the Fifth Circuit overturned
Speaker 7: Louisiana's photo registration literacy tests, which required a citizen to
Speaker 7: pass in the judgment of white officials a written test
Speaker 7: on the Constitution. Such laws had long disenfranchised impoverished African
Speaker 7: Americans and whites.
Speaker 8: Perhaps Wisdom's most significant opinion came with the nineteen sixty
Speaker 8: eight United States v. Jefferson case, which blocked states from
Speaker 8: avoiding compliance with the Brown v. Board of Education decision
Speaker 8: by setting up so called quote school choice plans in
Speaker 8: which parents allegedly freely chose to send their children to
Speaker 8: segregated schools.
Speaker 1: Wisdom wrote, the Constitution is both color blind and color
Speaker 1: conscious to avoid conflict with the equal Protection clause, a
Speaker 1: classification that denies a benefit, causes harm, or imposes a
Speaker 1: burden must not be based on race. In that sense,
Speaker 1: the Constitution is color blind, but the Constitution is color conscious.
Speaker 1: To prevent discrimination from being perpetuated and to undo the
Speaker 1: effects of past discrimination.
Speaker 7: Quitting a phrase that would later ignite fierce white backlash
Speaker 7: against civil rights North and South, Wisdom said school systems
Speaker 7: needed to move beyond ostensibly not discriminating and to take
Speaker 7: quote affirmative action to bring about a unitary, non racial system.
Speaker 7: That phrase would provide a legal foundation for school bussing
Speaker 7: as a means of genuinely integrating schools, and also introduced
Speaker 7: the concept of affirmative action hiring practices in other stubborn
Speaker 7: aspects of racial exclusion.
Speaker 8: The Fifth circuits record of judicial progressivism continued through the
Speaker 8: nineteen seventies. A nineteen seventy six decision by the Fifth Circuit,
Speaker 8: for instance, required public colleges and universities in Texas to
Speaker 8: recognize gay student organizations. Meanwhile, moderate Republicans tried to persuade
Speaker 8: Richard Nixon to nominate Wisdom for the United States Supreme Court. However,
Speaker 8: Attorney General John Mitchell, who later went to prison for
Speaker 8: his role in the Watergates scandal, squashed the idea. He
Speaker 8: complained that the judge was a damn left winger who
Speaker 8: would specially be as bad as the famously liberal Chief
Speaker 8: Justice Warren. President Clinton would give Wisdom the Presidential Medal
Speaker 8: of Freedom in nineteen ninety three. Wisdom died six years later.
Speaker 8: If he miraculously returned, Wisdom would not recognize the Appeals
Speaker 8: Court that he spent so much of his life serving.
Speaker 8: We'll talk about the transformation of the Fifth Circuit of Appeals,
Speaker 8: the extreme and disturbing decisions that has made since the
Speaker 8: start of the Trump era and the career of one
Speaker 8: of that court's most infamous judges, when we come back
Speaker 8: from our hopefully less infamous sponsors. In nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 8: the federal judiciary was reorganized. The Fifth Circuit Court now
Speaker 8: heard appeals only from Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. A new
Speaker 8: eleventh Circuit Court. Now here's cases from Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.
Speaker 8: We should provide a hopefully brief civics lesson here. The
Speaker 8: Fifth Court consists of seventeen active judges and nine senior judges.
Speaker 8: When a side loses a case in a federal district court,
Speaker 8: they can appeal to a circuit court, where the case
Speaker 8: is heard by a three judge panel. In some cases,
Speaker 8: if one side disagrees with the judgment of the panel,
Speaker 8: they may appeal the decision to the full judicial court.
Speaker 7: Among the act of judges, those appointed by Republican presidents
Speaker 7: outnumber those appointed by Democrats by a margin of twelve
Speaker 7: to five. Donald Trump appointed more than a third of
Speaker 7: these judges, six in all, each of course, could serve
Speaker 7: on the court for the rest.
Speaker 2: Of their life.
Speaker 7: The Fifth Circuit also has eight senior judges who are
Speaker 7: semi retired but preside over a limited number of cases.
Speaker 7: Six of them were also appointed by Republican presidents, stretching
Speaker 7: back to Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 8: Even in that hyper conservative company, James Hoe has stood out.
Speaker 8: Mike Davis, the president of the Pro Trump Article three Project,
Speaker 8: a group dedicated to pushing federal courts further right, has said,
Speaker 8: quote on every crucial but controversial legal issue, Jim Hoe
Speaker 8: is constantly the tip of the spear.
Speaker 7: It has been a cliche among the American right wingers
Speaker 7: that liberal judges fin the time of Franklin Roosevelt Laan
Speaker 7: had become judicial activists for abusing their positions on the
Speaker 7: bench to advance their political agendas rather than impartially ruling
Speaker 7: on the law. Calling balls and strikes. Hoe's open political advocacy, however,
Speaker 7: has raised no alarms for those saying presume advocates for
Speaker 7: judicial neutrality.
Speaker 8: While he served as Texas's Solicitor General, Hoe did pro
Speaker 8: bono work for the First Liberty Institute, a Christian right
Speaker 8: organization headquartered in Plano, Texas, just north of Dallas, that
Speaker 8: won a case for a Washington State high school football
Speaker 8: coach who was fired because he violated school policy by
Speaker 8: leading his team in prayer after each game. The group
Speaker 8: has also represented bakers who refused to make wedding cakes
Speaker 8: for same sex couples.
Speaker 7: As a judge, Hoe led a boycott of legal clerks
Speaker 7: who graduated from Yale Law School to punish that institution
Speaker 7: for its supposed leftists, cancel culture and intolerance and conservative views.
Speaker 7: During his speech to the far right Heritage Foundation, the
Speaker 7: authors of Project twenty twenty five, Hoe ridiculed lawyers with
Speaker 7: fancy credentials, fancy law schools, fancy clerkships, fancy law firms,
Speaker 7: and government jobs. He claimed that issued liberal opinions for
Speaker 7: no other purpose than winning popularity.
Speaker 2: He arged young.
Speaker 7: Conservatives to assert themselves against the supposed popularity of political correctness.
Speaker 8: In addition to serving on the bench, Ho could be
Speaker 8: considered an activist, particularly on culture war issues like abortion.
Speaker 8: He's condemned abortion as the quote immoral, tragic, and violent
Speaker 8: taking of innocent human life. In twenty eighteen, he upheld
Speaker 8: a Texas law that required the cremation or burial of
Speaker 8: fetal remains, a potentially costly burden for women receiving medical treatment,
Speaker 8: and the state of Texas argued that any potential financial
Speaker 8: burdens to women or clinics were irrelevant, since the Texas
Speaker 8: Conference of Catholic Bishops made a pledge to bury the
Speaker 8: remains for low cost or even for free. Such a promise,
Speaker 8: of course, was not legally binding.
Speaker 7: A district court overturned the law, but Hoe in the
Speaker 7: Fifths Circuit reinstated it, arguing that coarse burial protected religious
Speaker 7: freedom of the Catholic Bishops. Quote the First Amendment expressly
Speaker 7: guarantees the free exercise of religion, including the right of
Speaker 7: bishops to express their profound objection to the moral tragedy
Speaker 7: of abortion, Hoe wrote, Texas still requires that fetal remains
Speaker 7: receive burial or cremation. As we'll explain later, it's not
Speaker 7: only on the issue of abortion that Hoe has staked
Speaker 7: out in extreme position. In Man's first secessions, the Fifth
Speaker 7: Circuit Court, by an eight to seven vote, narrowly avoided
Speaker 7: overturning a federal gun law that prohibited interstate gun sales.
Speaker 7: Hoe offered a bitter descent, quoting his mentor Clarence Thomas,
Speaker 7: complaining that in spite of the wide open access to
Speaker 7: firearms in this country, the Second Amendment had become quote
Speaker 7: a second class right. In his opinion, how ridiculed advocates
Speaker 7: of gun control is suffering from hoplophobia the irrational fear
Speaker 7: of guns.
Speaker 8: Hoe in the entire Fifth Circuit achieved national infamy after
Speaker 8: the Supreme Court raised almost half a century of abortion
Speaker 8: rights when it overturned the Roe Vwaid decision in the
Speaker 8: Dobbs Vwomen's Health Organization case on June twenty fourth, twenty
Speaker 8: twenty two. A little more than a year after that
Speaker 8: landmark case, on August sixteenth, twenty twenty three, the Fifth
Speaker 8: Circuit upheld tightened access for women to mifipristone, the so
Speaker 8: called abortion pill, which accounts from more than half of
Speaker 8: all terminated pregnancies in the United States. Originally approved by
Speaker 8: the Food and Drug Administration in two thousand but only
Speaker 8: for prescription by hospitals and other medical facilities, the FDA
Speaker 8: expanded access to the medication in twenty sixteen and gave
Speaker 8: doctors the right to directly prescribe mifipriston in response to
Speaker 8: the COVID nineteen pandemic. Starting in twenty twenty one, women
Speaker 8: could receive it through the mail.
Speaker 7: In twenty twenty for an anti abortion organization, the Alliance
Speaker 7: or Hippocratic Medicine intentionally incorporated in twenty twenty two and Amarillo,
Speaker 7: which placed it in the jurisdiction of the famously anti
Speaker 7: abortion Federal District Judge Matthew J. Kasmeric. Like Judge Hoe,
Speaker 7: Cosmeric belonged to the First Liberty Institute. While being considered
Speaker 7: for the federal bench, he unsuccessfully tried to conceal his
Speaker 7: authorship of legal articles on gay rights he thought might
Speaker 7: jeopardize approval of his domination by the US Senate. Cosmeric
Speaker 7: has described gay and trans people as mentally disordered. The
Speaker 7: Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine filed student Caasmerics Court seeking to
Speaker 7: overturn the FDA's approval of mythi press Stone, even though
Speaker 7: decades of research had demonstrated its safety and its effectiveness
Speaker 7: for treating Cushing syndrome, a severe endocrine disorder.
Speaker 8: None of the doctors in the Alliance had ever been
Speaker 8: involved in a medical case in which the use of
Speaker 8: mifiprestone had been considered. In his opinion, Kasmiric showed his
Speaker 8: disdain for medical personnel providing women reproductive care, referring to
Speaker 8: them as quote abortionists and called terminating pregnancy through medication quote,
Speaker 8: starving the unborn human until death.
Speaker 7: Courts require that parties have what just is called standing
Speaker 7: in order to file a lawsuit. That means, for instance,
Speaker 7: that one party has been in some way directly injured
Speaker 7: by the other party. President Joe Biden's Food and Drug
Speaker 7: Administra I should question how the doctors in the Alliance
Speaker 7: for Hippocratic Medicine had in any way been directly harmed
Speaker 7: Because women have access to abortion medications, Chasmeric found a
Speaker 7: fans full way to grant the alliance a right to sue.
Speaker 7: He claimed that treating the rare complications from Mytha pristone
Speaker 7: overwhelmed hospitals in placed quote enormous pressure and stress on
Speaker 7: the doctors during emergencies and complications. After granting the alliance standing,
Speaker 7: Chasmeric issued a preliminary injunction suspending the FDA's approval of
Speaker 7: the drug. The decision would go into effect in seven
Speaker 7: days in order to give the federal government a chance
Speaker 7: to file an appeal. In his decision, Cosmeric cited two
Speaker 7: studies that claimed the drug was harmful, but both had
Speaker 7: been retracted by a medical journal. In effect, Chasmeric had
Speaker 7: banned MiFi pristone nationwide. The United States Justice Department and
Speaker 7: dan CO Laboratories mif for pristone's manufacturer appealed, and the
Speaker 7: case went to the Fifth Circuit. Judicial chaos surrounding the
Speaker 7: status of Mytha pristone reigned within hours, as ABC seven
Speaker 7: in Los Angeles reported.
Speaker 11: In a judicial bombshell involving abortion that could have an
Speaker 11: impact in all fifty states, a Texas federal judge revoking
Speaker 11: FDA approval of an abortion pill that's been used for
Speaker 11: more than twenty years, but another federal judge in Washington
Speaker 11: State then issuing a contradictory ruling, setting up another major
Speaker 11: battle over.
Speaker 5: A woman's right to choose.
Speaker 11: I went aso's reporter Amy Powell, joining us live in
Speaker 11: studio with more tonight, Amy and Michelle.
Speaker 4: This is causing a lot of concern.
Speaker 12: The reversal of Roe versus Weighed by the Supreme Court
Speaker 12: was supposed to mean that abortion laws would be left
Speaker 12: up to individual states, but today a Texas federal judge
Speaker 12: issued a ruling that could end access to an abortion
Speaker 12: pill in all fifty states. Shortly after the Texas judge
Speaker 12: issued his decision, a judge in Washington State issued a
Speaker 12: ruling ordering the FDA to make no changes to the
Speaker 12: availability of MiFi pristone. Those conflicting orders mean this case
Speaker 12: is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.
Speaker 8: The mifipristone case went to the Fifth Circuit, where Judge
Speaker 8: Ho would write an opinion critics characterized as disturbing, baffling,
Speaker 8: and bizarre. We'll talk about what happened in the Miffi
Speaker 8: pristone case and how Judge Hoe, an immigrant himself, has
Speaker 8: suggested that the children of migrants might not be eligible
Speaker 8: for birthright citizenship because of the United States is, in
Speaker 8: his words, being invaded. But first we'll hear some, hopefully
Speaker 8: not two bizarre messages from our sponsors.
Speaker 7: When the Fifth Circuit heard the appeal of Kasmeric's ruling,
Speaker 7: Hoe didn't recuse himself from the case, even though his wife, Allison,
Speaker 7: a lawyer, has repeatedly appeared at events sponsored by the
Speaker 7: Alliance Defending Freedom, one of the litigants, and even received
Speaker 7: speaking fees from the organization. Hoe brushed off this obvious.
Speaker 8: Conflict of interest on August sixteenth, twenty twenty three. That
Speaker 8: court didn't completely uphold Chismeric's ruling, but it did impose
Speaker 8: numerous restrictions on the abortion pill called MiFi pristone, claiming
Speaker 8: that the FDA didn't fully consider its potential health risks.
Speaker 8: If the Supreme Court had upheld the Fifth Circuit's opinion,
Speaker 8: women would not have been allowed to receive a prescription
Speaker 8: through the mail after online medical appointments. They would have
Speaker 8: been able to receive the prescription only after a direct
Speaker 8: visit with the doctor and after three in person follow
Speaker 8: up appointments. The window in which women would have been
Speaker 8: allowed to take mif for pristown would have been cut
Speaker 8: from seventy days of pregnancy to about forty nine.
Speaker 7: Hoe wanted to go much further than the Fifth Circuit's majority.
Speaker 7: He wanted to rescind the FDA's approval a myth for
Speaker 7: press though, which would have removed the drug from the
Speaker 7: market entirely. When judges agree with a majority on a panel,
Speaker 7: they can write a concurring opinion that gives them a
Speaker 7: chance to grandstand about a case. This is what Hoe
Speaker 7: did in his concurrence when he bitterly complained that some
Speaker 7: believed that quote no one should ever question the FDA.
Speaker 8: Hoe then asked the public to pity the obstetricians, he
Speaker 8: claimed suffer because of women's abortion rights. Pe drew on
Speaker 8: environmental case law, which acknowledges that a member of the
Speaker 8: public might believe that they've suffered a loss when, for instance,
Speaker 8: a park is destroyed because it is the location of
Speaker 8: a new mining operation, and then they can sue on
Speaker 8: that basis. Hoe argued that doctors could suffer the same
Speaker 8: sort of damages when a pregnancy is medically ended. In
Speaker 8: his concurrence on MIFH Pristowe, Hoe wrote the following.
Speaker 1: Unborn babies are a source of profound joy for those
Speaker 1: who view them. Expectant parents eagerly share ultrasound photos with
Speaker 1: loved ones, friends and family cheer at the sight of
Speaker 1: an unborn child, and doctors delight in working with their
Speaker 1: unborn patients and experience an esthetic injury when they are aborted.
Speaker 7: Leo Yu is an assistant professor of law at the
Speaker 7: University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. It specializes in civil rights law.
Speaker 7: You actually receive law degrees in two countries. Is Native
Speaker 7: China and in the United States at Southern Messogist University
Speaker 7: in Dallas. While he lived in Texas, he lived under
Speaker 7: the jurisdiction of the Fifth Circuit and saw close hand
Speaker 7: the legal chaos. The Fifth Circuit is created in the
Speaker 7: states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi. In twenty twenty one, he
Speaker 7: created a podcast, Plead the Fifth Professor. You believes that
Speaker 7: when Hoe writes extreme opinions, such as in the Mesaprostone case,
Speaker 7: he's desperately trying to get one man's attention.
Speaker 13: He is auditioning all the time to the Supreme Court,
Speaker 13: and he went so far to create something that is
Speaker 13: quite honestly just not even sensible. It's like, you know,
Speaker 13: Peopaul wants to see cute little, you know, ultrasounds of babies,
Speaker 13: and that makes important, you know, of them having the
Speaker 13: standing to challenge abortion pills, that they wouldn't be able
Speaker 13: to see those cute little alta sounds anymore. And it
Speaker 13: just that part of rationale is quite just insane.
Speaker 4: I think that part.
Speaker 13: I don't know if that is something that he truly believed,
Speaker 13: And I would say that it's hard to imagine for
Speaker 13: anybody who truly believed that sort of analysis. So I
Speaker 13: put that part of analysis as another way from justice
Speaker 13: hold trying to audition for the Supreme Court like, Hey,
Speaker 13: you think you found a concern to the judge somewhere
Speaker 13: in DC, Look at me.
Speaker 5: I'm even more. And that's what it is.
Speaker 8: No one would accuse the United States Supreme Court under
Speaker 8: John Roberts of being moderate, but repeatedly Roberts and the
Speaker 8: other justices have taken the Fifth Circuit to task for
Speaker 8: going to extremes in its ruling. As Texas Tribune writer
Speaker 8: Eleanor Klibanoff put it, quote, if the Fifth US Circuit
Speaker 8: Court of Appeals was a boxer, you'd bet on the
Speaker 8: other guy.
Speaker 7: Writing a Supreme Court's reaction of Fifth Circuit rulings in
Speaker 7: July twenty twenty four, Clibanoff noted that only three of
Speaker 7: the tribunal's decisions had been upheld, while eight had been overturned,
Speaker 7: a one lost record that ranked amongst the worst among
Speaker 7: circuit courts in the country. In a meth of pristone case,
Speaker 7: just as Brett Kavanaugh, hardly a Bolshevik, expressed dismay that
Speaker 7: the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine had been granted standing.
Speaker 8: Kavanaugh wrote this quote for a plaintiff to get in
Speaker 8: the federal courthouse door and obtain a judicial determination of
Speaker 8: what the governing law is. The plaintiff cannot be a
Speaker 8: mere bystander, but instead must have a personal stake in
Speaker 8: the dispute end quote. If the standard set by Judge
Speaker 8: hon his peers in New Orleans remained in place, Kavanaugh warned, quote,
Speaker 8: virtually every citizen would have standing to challenge virtually every
Speaker 8: government action that they do not like. Governing, he suggested,
Speaker 8: would become impossible.
Speaker 7: It wasn't just on the issue of legal standing that
Speaker 7: the Supreme Court found the Fifth Circuit Court's judgment lacking.
Speaker 7: In the case of Rahemi versus the United States, the
Speaker 7: Fifth Circuit overturned a federal law that prohibited domestic abusers
Speaker 7: from buying firearms. The Highest Court on June twenty first,
Speaker 7: twenty twenty four, overturned that decision by an eight to
Speaker 7: one margin. Chief Justice John Roberts, who generally supports a
Speaker 7: very broad view of gun right, said that history quote
Speaker 7: confirms what common sense suggests. When an individual poses a
Speaker 7: clear threat of physical violence to another, the threatening individual
Speaker 7: may be disarmed. Roberts also suggested that the Fifth Circuit
Speaker 7: misunderstood the Supreme Court's view of the Second Amendment. Fusser,
Speaker 7: you told us that as conservative as Supreme Court majority
Speaker 7: might be, outside of Clarence Thomas, they have found the
Speaker 7: Fifth Circuit's rulings to be an embarrassment conservative judicial philosophy.
Speaker 13: On that again, I think that was the a to
Speaker 13: one opinion, and Clarence Thomas was the only person who
Speaker 13: would agree was the Fifth Circus. So in general, I
Speaker 13: think the Supreme Court is definitely conservative. But the Supreme
Speaker 13: Court appreciate a certain type of conservativeness that they can shounon,
Speaker 13: and it is something that it can lays with some
Speaker 13: academic legitimacy and knowledges, some sort of attention seeking paragraphed
Speaker 13: that would make people hold feel some sort of feeling.
Speaker 8: On the last day of its twenty twenty four session,
Speaker 8: the Supreme Court sent back to the Fifth Circuit a
Speaker 8: case involving a twenty twenty one Texas law that limited
Speaker 8: the ability of social media companies to suspend user accounts
Speaker 8: for extremist or violence inciting content. The law was inspired
Speaker 8: by the decision of what was then called Twitter and
Speaker 8: now x, as well as other social media companies to
Speaker 8: deplatform Donald Trump after the president encouraged his supporters to
Speaker 8: ransack the Capital and stop the counting of electoral college boats.
Speaker 8: On January sixth, twenty twenty one, the Fifth Circuit previously
Speaker 8: upheld the law, claiming that it rejected quote the idea
Speaker 8: that corporations have a free, willing, First Amendment right to
Speaker 8: censor what people say.
Speaker 7: Ho and his allies on the Fifth Circuit, however, our
Speaker 7: find was censoring free expression by members of the LGBTQ community.
Speaker 7: In March twenty twenty three, Walter Wendler, the president of
Speaker 7: West Texas A and M University, a public institution, cancel
Speaker 7: at drag shows schedule at Legacy Hall, a campus building.
Speaker 7: Organizers plan to use proceeds from the performance to raise
Speaker 7: money for the Trevor Project, a nonprofit group that seeks
Speaker 7: to prevent suicides in the LGBTQ plus community. In a
Speaker 7: statement canceling the show, Wendler explicitly said that his private
Speaker 7: religious beliefs guided his decision.
Speaker 1: West Texas A and M University will not host a
Speaker 1: drag show on campus. I believe every human being is
Speaker 1: created in the image of God, and therefore a person
Speaker 1: of dignity. Does a drag show reserve a single thread
Speaker 1: of human dignity? I think not. As a performance exaggerating
Speaker 1: aspects of womanhood, sexuality, femininity, gender. Drag shows stereotype women
Speaker 1: in cartoon like extremes for the amusement of others, and
Speaker 1: discriminate against womanhood. Drag shows are derisive, divisive, and demoralizing misogyny.
Speaker 1: No matter what the stated intent, such conduct runs counter
Speaker 1: to the purpose of West Texas A and M. A
Speaker 1: person or group should not attempt to elevate itself or
Speaker 1: a cause by mocking another person or group. As a
Speaker 1: university president, I would not support blackface performances on our campus,
Speaker 1: even if told the performance is a form of free
Speaker 1: speech or intended as humor, it is wrong.
Speaker 8: Spectrum WT, a pro LGBTQ student organization, file a suit
Speaker 8: challenging the band and requested an injunction blocking Wendler's action.
Speaker 8: Judge Kasmirick, the same jurist who initially blocked access to
Speaker 8: MiFi pristone, sided with West Texas A and M and
Speaker 8: issued a preliminary ruling preventing the drag show from taking
Speaker 8: place pending a trial. He said the performance supposed sexual
Speaker 8: content lacked free speech protections quote the First Amendment does
Speaker 8: not prevent school officials from restricting vulgar and lewd conduct
Speaker 8: that would undermine the school's basic educational mission, particularly in
Speaker 8: settings where children are physically present, Cosmeric wrote in his
Speaker 8: September twenty two to twenty twenty three opinion.
Speaker 7: Spectrum w T appealed. The case went to the Fifth Circuit,
Speaker 7: where three judge panel heard arguments on whether the fundraiser
Speaker 7: could proceed. On August eighteenth, twenty twenty five, by two
Speaker 7: to one vote, the panel reversed Kasmeric's ruling. Judge Leslie Southwick,
Speaker 7: a George W. Bush appointee, and a Bill Clinton appointed
Speaker 7: US Circuit Judge James Dennis ruled that West Texas A
Speaker 7: and M had violated the gay student organization's expressive right.
Speaker 8: Predictably, Hoe dissented. He simply echoed the arguments used by
Speaker 8: the university president, insisting that banning drag shows somehow advanced inclusivity.
Speaker 1: University officials have determined that drag shows are sexists for
Speaker 1: the same reason that blackface performances are racist, and Supreme
Speaker 1: Court precedent demands that we respect university officials when it
Speaker 1: comes to regulating student activities to ensure an inclusive educational
Speaker 1: environment for all.
Speaker 8: Spectrum wt's victory proved temporary. The panel's decision would not
Speaker 8: go into effect until the case was heard by the
Speaker 8: entire Fifth Circuit Court. Meanwhile, a full trial unfolded in
Speaker 8: Kasmirics Court in January. Not surprisingly, he ruled in favor
Speaker 8: of West Texas A and M. He said that the
Speaker 8: student group had not proven that the show was meant
Speaker 8: to convey a message that might be protected by the
Speaker 8: First Amendment, and that by their nature, drag shows have
Speaker 8: sexualized content and the university had the right to regulate
Speaker 8: on campus grounds. The hearing before the full Fifth Circuit
Speaker 8: was canceled, although Spectrum's legal team at the Foundation for
Speaker 8: Individual Rights and Expression plans a different appeal. On twenty fifth,
Speaker 8: a panel of the Fifth Circuit also upheld a new
Speaker 8: state ban on certain types of drag performances. Judge Kurt Engelhardt,
Speaker 8: appointed to the Fifth Circuit by President Donald Trump, expressed
Speaker 8: doubt that such shows were protected by the Constitution, especially
Speaker 8: said quote in the presence of miners.
Speaker 7: While the Fifth Circuit chipped away at free speech rights
Speaker 7: or the LGBTQ plus community, the advanced the rights of
Speaker 7: states to impose speech on public school teachers. The full
Speaker 7: court by a twelve to sixth margin, lifted a district
Speaker 7: court's hold on a Louisiana state law requiring teachers to
Speaker 7: display post or size copies of the Ten Commandments in
Speaker 7: public school classrooms in spite of the First Amendments prohibition
Speaker 7: establishing a state religion or requiring religious practice in the
Speaker 7: efforts of the founders of the American Republic, liked time Ms.
Speaker 7: Jefferson direct a wall of separation between church and state.
Speaker 7: James Host celebrated the decision. The Louisiana law was the
Speaker 7: only constitutional Host said it quote affirms our nation's highest
Speaker 7: and most noble traditions. That claim left Professor u baffled.
Speaker 13: The question is is he a historian when he said
Speaker 13: that the founding members of this country would like that?
Speaker 5: What historical record is he relying on?
Speaker 13: But isn't that even anti common knowledge that our founders
Speaker 13: would really resent that To push our newly establed republic
Speaker 13: to a situation where we push our citizens to bleeding
Speaker 13: certain things religiously, that is exactly the reason why they
Speaker 13: left Europe.
Speaker 8: The Fifth Circuit has presented a threat not only to
Speaker 8: the separation of church and state, free speech, and LGBTQ
Speaker 8: plus rights, but it's also placed the rights of workers
Speaker 8: in its crosshairs. On Angust nineteenth, the United States Fifth
Speaker 8: Circuit of Appeals upheld an injunction requested by attorneys for
Speaker 8: Elon Musk's SpaceX Corporation, ruling that the structure of the
Speaker 8: National Labor Relations Board is unconstitutional and prohibiting it from
Speaker 8: acting against that company and two other corporations the NLRB
Speaker 8: charged with labor law violations. As has often happened, the
Speaker 8: Fifth Circuit court ruling conflicts with that of another circuit court,
Speaker 8: the Ninth Circuit, which upheld the power granted by the NLRB.
Speaker 8: This split almost certainly guarantees the case will end up
Speaker 8: in front of a Supreme Court that has been no
Speaker 8: friend of American workers.
Speaker 7: On rare occasions, the Fifth Circuit might still acknowledge as
Speaker 7: society is tilted against the poor and people of color.
Speaker 7: A panel made up of Fifth Circuit judges ruled that
Speaker 7: Lebine Conan could proceed with our lawsuit against the United
Speaker 7: States Post Office, a landlord who owns two properties in Uless,
Speaker 7: a suburb between Dallas and for Worth. Conan claimed that,
Speaker 7: beginning in twenty twenty two, law postal employees abruptly stopped
Speaker 7: delivering mail, first to her and then to her tenants,
Speaker 7: because she said they didn't like the idea that a
Speaker 7: black person owned the properties.
Speaker 8: The Post Office is mostly shielded from lawsuits by a
Speaker 8: legal doctrine called sovereign immunity, under which, as legal analyst
Speaker 8: Ellie ms Dall explains, quote, the government cannot be held
Speaker 8: liable for monetary damages arising out of actions taken by
Speaker 8: the government. What was unique about the United States Postal
Speaker 8: Service Bucanan case, however, was that in this circumstance, the
Speaker 8: government was causing intentional damage to a private citizen. This time,
Speaker 8: the Fifth Circuit ruled in favor of a marginalized citizen
Speaker 8: and ruled the suit could go forward. This rare progressive
Speaker 8: ruling was for not. However, the Supreme Court overturned the
Speaker 8: Fifth Circuit once again. Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion for
Speaker 8: the five four majority, essentially ruling, as miss Stalls summarized
Speaker 8: the case, quote that the post officers immune from liability
Speaker 8: even when its workers intentionally refused to do their jobs.
Speaker 8: Misstall suggested that this decision carries ominous implications for the
Speaker 8: upcoming election should the US Postal Service, for instance, refuse
Speaker 8: to deliver mail in ballots in spite of james Hosts
Speaker 8: status as an immigrant. His most alarming opinion might be
Speaker 8: regarding birthright citizenship. Ratified in eighteen sixty eight, just three
Speaker 8: years after the end of the Civil War, fourteenth Amendment
Speaker 8: to the United States Constitution declares in its opening sentence
Speaker 8: that quote, all persons born or naturalized in the United States,
Speaker 8: and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the
Speaker 8: United States and of the state wherein they reside. For
Speaker 8: one hundred and twenty eight years, Supreme Court has rejected
Speaker 8: claims that citizenship can be denied to persons born or
Speaker 8: naturalized here based on their race or the immigration status
Speaker 8: of their parents. In the eighteen ninety eight United States
Speaker 8: versus Huang Kim Ar case, the Supreme Court upheld the
Speaker 8: citizenship of a man born in the United States to
Speaker 8: Chinese parents. The government tried to block Arc from returning
Speaker 8: to the United States after he visited China, based on
Speaker 8: the eighteen a two Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred the
Speaker 8: Chinese from immigrating here. The Court ruled sixth to two
Speaker 8: that ARC's birth in the United States established his American
Speaker 8: citizenship and his right to reside here. James Hoe has
Speaker 8: not always attacked the concept of birthright citizenship, and in fact,
Speaker 8: he used to defend it.
Speaker 5: Quote.
Speaker 8: Birthright citizenship is a constitutional right no less for the
Speaker 8: children of undocumented persons than for the descendants of passengers
Speaker 8: of the Mayflower, Hoe said in a two thousand and
Speaker 8: seven opinion piece for the Des Moines Registered.
Speaker 7: However, as the political wins shifted strongly against immigrants, particularly
Speaker 7: in the Trump era, Hoe is also tilted in a
Speaker 7: dramatically different direction. In a twenty twenty four interview, Hoe
Speaker 7: claimed that the United States was being invaded by the
Speaker 7: foreign born, and that denying citizenship to the children of
Speaker 7: the undocumented was necessary to defend national sovereignty.
Speaker 1: Hoe said, birthright citizenship obviously doesn't apply in case of
Speaker 1: war or invasion. No one, to my knowledge has ever
Speaker 1: argued that the children of invading aliens are entitled to
Speaker 1: birthright citizenship, and I can't imagine what the legal argument
Speaker 1: for that would be. It's like the debate over unlawful combatants.
Speaker 1: After nine to eleven, everyone agrees that birthright citizenship doesn't
Speaker 1: apply to the children of lawful combatants, and it's hard
Speaker 1: to see anyone arguing that unlawful combatants should be treated
Speaker 1: more favorably than lawful combatants.
Speaker 8: The question of birthright citizenship might now be out of
Speaker 8: the hands of Hoe and the rest of the Fifth Circuit.
Speaker 8: On December fifth, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a
Speaker 8: case on the constitutionality of Donald Trump's executive order that
Speaker 8: would deny citizenship to those born in the United States
Speaker 8: if their parents were in the country temporarily or lack
Speaker 8: legal status. Doctor you thinks that the Supreme Court is
Speaker 8: likely to accommodate those restrictions, even as they reject James
Speaker 8: Hoe's more extreme theories.
Speaker 13: I think that Supreme Court would roll back some portion
Speaker 13: of the Fourteenth Amendment protection over people who are born
Speaker 13: in this country.
Speaker 4: But I don't think they are.
Speaker 13: Going to what justice Hoe is going after, that is
Speaker 13: the invasion theory.
Speaker 7: That doesn't mean that James Hoe may not one day
Speaker 7: bring his extreme views on immigration to the nation's highest court.
Speaker 7: The two most far right judges on the United States
Speaker 7: Supreme Court are James Hoe's mentor, Clarence Thomas, who turns
Speaker 7: seventy eight on June twenty third, and Samuel Alito, who
Speaker 7: celebrates his seventy sixth birthday on April first. Court watchers
Speaker 7: are speculating that Alita might step down as early as October.
Speaker 7: His wife, Martha Anne, has expressed eager anticipation that the
Speaker 7: couple might soon be able to openly exp rest their
Speaker 7: political views. As though the Alito's opinions have ever been
Speaker 7: a mystery, It's still an uphill battle, but the odds
Speaker 7: of Democrats retaking the Senate after the off here elections
Speaker 7: have improved significantly in recent weeks. Alita may want to retire,
Speaker 7: while a Republican controlled Senate would still be able a
Speaker 7: rubber stamp Trump's choice for his successor.
Speaker 8: Alito also has a book coming out on October sixth,
Speaker 8: the day after the Supreme Court starts its fall term.
Speaker 8: Continuing to serve on the Court would interfere with any
Speaker 8: book promotion tour. Such an opening might lead to James
Speaker 8: Hoe getting a promotion, but Professor Hugh said that the
Speaker 8: Fifth Court judge shouldn't pack his bags just yet. Trump
Speaker 8: has largely outsourced the job of picking new federal judges
Speaker 8: or promoting them to the far right Federal Society, and
Speaker 8: you think that Home might lack the polish that a
Speaker 8: powerful lobbying group would see.
Speaker 13: I think, you know, it's not a secret that he's
Speaker 13: trying to get there, but I honestly think it's not
Speaker 13: going to be him. He does inter fit into the
Speaker 13: full file of a person who would get there. I
Speaker 13: think the Festoc, you know, the Federally Society is basically
Speaker 13: the handler of that situation.
Speaker 5: They would be able to.
Speaker 13: You know, screen in and you know, make short list
Speaker 13: to the White House. And so what kind of people
Speaker 13: they're looking for. I think that they're definitely looking for
Speaker 13: a conservative. If a little is going away right, Uh,
Speaker 13: They're looking for a conservative. But I don't think Justice
Speaker 13: Whole is in their favor because I think they are
Speaker 13: trying to find another person who is more sophisticated than
Speaker 13: Justice Whole, if I may say, may say that they
Speaker 13: wanted to find a person who is definitely a conservative
Speaker 13: but being able to rewrap the message with with academic
Speaker 13: legitimacy and to forge a need for majority at the
Speaker 13: Court to push through their agenda.
Speaker 7: Recently, Trump said he was considering Ted Cruz of Texas
Speaker 7: for the next Supreme Court vacancy. If so, James Hoe
Speaker 7: may be enjoying his lifetime post at the Fifth Circuit
Speaker 7: for the foreseeable future. Hoe celebrated his fifty third birthday
Speaker 7: on February twenty seventh. That means his legal philosophy will
Speaker 7: shape gay and trans writes the limits of free speech,
Speaker 7: who can buy firearms and where, and how how much
Speaker 7: autonomy women have over their bodies, and what access they
Speaker 7: will enjoy the healthcare and where the boundaries will be
Speaker 7: drawn between church and state for years to come. Hoe
Speaker 7: may not make it to the Supreme Court, but he
Speaker 7: could still be the loudest voice on the scariest court
Speaker 7: in America and shape the future of forty million Americans
Speaker 7: in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi for decades to come.
Speaker 8: We'd like to thank our friend Steve Mason for providing
Speaker 8: some of the voices today. This is Stephen Manchelly for
Speaker 8: it could happen here, and this.
Speaker 7: Is Michael Phillips. Until next time, Thanks for listening.
Speaker 4: Hello everyone, welcome to That could Happen Here.
Speaker 5: My name is Dana L.
Speaker 14: Kurd. I'm a researcher of Arab and Palestinian politics, and
Speaker 14: today I'm joined by Ilia Ayub.
Speaker 4: Would like to introduce yourself.
Speaker 15: Yeah, yeah, hi Danna, thank you for having me. My
Speaker 15: name is Idiah. I'm emotioning it from Lebanon. My background
Speaker 15: is in both history and journalism, and I often write
Speaker 15: about the region and more support Palestinian and I also
Speaker 15: write a lot about this aid in Palestine, and obviously
Speaker 15: in the past few years I've been covering and also
Speaker 15: worrying a lot about what's been happening.
Speaker 14: Yeah, thank you so much for joining us, especially at
Speaker 14: such a difficult time for the listeners. We are recording
Speaker 14: March twenty second, twenty twenty six, and is Uel's attack
Speaker 14: on Lebanon is ongoing. So we're really grateful to Elia
Speaker 14: for joining us and talking to us about what this
Speaker 14: means and what we're seeing on the ground. Yeah, So
Speaker 14: maybe I'll start there. Can you lay out for the
Speaker 14: listener what is happening in Lebanon right now?
Speaker 5: So what's been happening in Lebanon?
Speaker 15: Is that really connected to the US Israeli war on
Speaker 15: Iran which started what about twenty two twenty three days
Speaker 15: ago something like that, That was in itself in the
Speaker 15: context of negotiations between Americans and the Ionians in Switzerland
Speaker 15: mediated by Arman, and just moments later, really that same night,
Speaker 15: the bombing of Iran started.
Speaker 5: In Lebanon, or rather the way Lebanon enters.
Speaker 15: This story is a couple of days after the assassination
Speaker 15: of Chraminid atl of Ion has Boler launched the cockets
Speaker 15: towards Israel. And this was used by the Israelis as
Speaker 15: effectively them saying that we will only head on Lebanon.
Speaker 15: And that's often how it's been reported. What is often
Speaker 15: missed even in that context I mean, is that there
Speaker 15: was a so called ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, and
Speaker 15: Hasball obviously for thirteen months before that, but that so
Speaker 15: called seasfire, the reason what I'm saying, so called seasfire
Speaker 15: had already been violated by the Israelis. And this is
Speaker 15: the figures that come from the uniform the unp Is
Speaker 15: keeping forces in Lebanon over fifteen thousand times, whereas they themselves.
Speaker 15: In fact, even the BBC today I saw an article
Speaker 15: today I acknowledged that has Bulah had not violated the ceasefire,
Speaker 15: which you know is just I guess still is. You're
Speaker 15: also where the where the mood is add inters of
Speaker 15: the coverage since then, like in the past three weeks,
Speaker 15: the hell and this term was used by israel officials
Speaker 15: themselves that has been unleashed on Lebanon has been unprecedented,
Speaker 15: and even even by Israeli wars on Lebanon standards, which
Speaker 15: is saying a lot. As of time of recording, at
Speaker 15: least twenty percent of the entirety of Lebanon has already
Speaker 15: been displaced, and for the most part, these are people
Speaker 15: that had already experienced this placement at least once in
Speaker 15: twenty twenty four when this war started, if not older
Speaker 15: patterns of displacements going back to the Civil War and
Speaker 15: the Israeli occupy of South Lebanon in the eighties and
Speaker 15: nineties and so on. And pretty unclear where this is
Speaker 15: headed because just hours before we even started recording, they
Speaker 15: escalated their bombings of bridges connecting South Lebanon to the
Speaker 15: Gust of Lebanon, which is over the Littonia River, which
Speaker 15: is one of the rivers in the south, as part
Speaker 15: of the attempt to cut off the entire region of Lebanon,
Speaker 15: of South Lebanon from the rest of the country. And yeah,
Speaker 15: we can get into oftenly more of the details and
Speaker 15: the impact that this is having on Lebanon itself, of course,
Speaker 15: because this tends to be unfortunately like not covered.
Speaker 14: A much, Yeah, thank you, So to kind of summarize,
Speaker 14: because they decided to launch a war against Iran, and
Speaker 14: obviously there's so much to say about that, we're not
Speaker 14: going to be able to address every aspect of this conflict.
Speaker 14: But because of that, and after particularly the assassination of
Speaker 14: the Ayatola Hasbolo launch rockets, and then the Israelis, who
Speaker 14: had already been breaking the seasefire between them and Hesbola
Speaker 14: that had emerged over the past year, decided to kind
Speaker 14: of ramp up their attacks. And when we say ramp
Speaker 14: up their attacks, you know, you've mentioned like the destruction
Speaker 14: of infrastructure, cutting off the south, basically clearing villages, et cetera.
Speaker 14: The Israeli officials, including Natanya, who have said they want
Speaker 14: to impose what they called the Gaza.
Speaker 2: Model on Lebanon.
Speaker 14: So what can we understand from from this kind of comment?
Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 15: It's important to note that such comments are not new
Speaker 15: at all, and they have also been uttered in times
Speaker 15: of quote unquote peace. So when there isn't any kind
Speaker 15: of active conflict in my own article for nine seven two,
Speaker 15: which I wrote about it, don't know two weeks ago.
Speaker 15: So I quote in a number of those politicians, and
Speaker 15: I'll just mention a few of them. Here you have Galant,
Speaker 15: who has of course since been and still has in
Speaker 15: against warrant by the International Comment Court. He's hadned to
Speaker 15: send up on back to the Stone Agent. This was
Speaker 15: in November twenty twenty four. The Diaspora Affairs Minister Amishai
Speaker 15: quickly declared in September twenty twenty four that n quote
Speaker 15: does not mean the definition of a state, and he
Speaker 15: described all of the Shia population of Lebanon as quote
Speaker 15: unquote hostile, which is genocide the language by definition. And
Speaker 15: even about what two or three weeks ago, so smart
Speaker 15: Hitch who was one of kind of the main for
Speaker 15: great politicians in Israel today said that very soonly some
Speaker 15: un quoting, very soon Dahi will resemble Harne Newness. Dahi
Speaker 15: being the southern suburb of Bayhood where a lot there's
Speaker 15: a lot of support for has Bola and has always
Speaker 15: been talked about by the Israelis as like one of
Speaker 15: the quote blas songholds. In fact, they pioneered you might
Speaker 15: say that Dahi doctrine in two thousand and six, so
Speaker 15: named after Dahi, and there was a war in two
Speaker 15: thousand and six as well, Pteninsula has Butla, which is
Speaker 15: quite explicitly a policy of bombing civilian infrastructure in order
Speaker 15: to put pressure on the enemy.
Speaker 5: In this crist As Butler, which is basically in.
Speaker 15: Acknowledgment that they viorate international law as state policy. And
Speaker 15: on March eleven, a member of the Pignesset for the
Speaker 15: same party of smot Riach said, and I'm quoting, we
Speaker 15: must conquer territory in southern Lebanon, destroy villages there and
Speaker 15: annex the territory to the state of Israel.
Speaker 5: End quote. There's another one.
Speaker 15: Gadi Eisencote, who was the former chief of staff of
Speaker 15: the Israelia Media Idea, said around the same time, I
Speaker 15: think it was a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 5: Quote the dog Hit.
Speaker 15: Doctine has never been more relevant than right now, and
Speaker 15: it must be implemented end quote.
Speaker 5: Die here doctrine being the one that I just mentioned.
Speaker 15: And this is I said, not new, whether in the
Speaker 15: context of talking about Palestinians in the res a long
Speaker 15: before the ongoing genocide, whether in the context of talking
Speaker 15: about the Lebanese and so on, there has been this
Speaker 15: stain of open utterances of genocidal framing on behalf of
Speaker 15: like Israeli politicians and military leaders. One needs to notice
Speaker 15: to understand why they act in certain ways in Lebanon.
Speaker 15: If it was just about like you know, targeting their
Speaker 15: enemies or whatever, that would be like one one way
Speaker 15: of doing warfare. But it will then explain like detonating
Speaker 15: entire villages as they've been doing during the so ceasefire.
Speaker 15: It wouldn't explainplaining herbicide, which they did about a month
Speaker 15: ago over like large parts of Stuft Lebanon, including parts
Speaker 15: of Celia for that matter, which killed cops and so on.
Speaker 15: It would explain them not allowing farmers to harvest their cops. Know,
Speaker 15: it would explain all of these things. What would explain
Speaker 15: all of these things is if you take into account
Speaker 15: what they say the intentions are in Lebanon or the
Speaker 15: valley is what they want it to happen in Lebanon.
Speaker 5: If that makes sense.
Speaker 14: Yeah, it really seems like the Israeli policy, especially now
Speaker 14: that there's been really no accountability for what happened in Gaza.
Speaker 14: It's like basically to pursue maximum violence, including against civilians,
Speaker 14: and create I think kind of like a no man's
Speaker 14: land buffer zone around Israel. Now, there are some elements
Speaker 14: of Israeli society that are like religious scientists, like messianic
Speaker 14: types who want to like settle and like expand. But
Speaker 14: aside from those those people, like I think even we
Speaker 14: would call like centrists in or like the liberals in
Speaker 14: Israel are like, okay, well, yeah, we do need we
Speaker 14: do need a buffers, so we need a flatten gaza.
Speaker 4: We need to flatten Southern Lebanon.
Speaker 14: And what this translates to, I mean in Lebanon in
Speaker 14: particular is I think you know, some estimates say over
Speaker 14: a thousand have been killed in just the past like
Speaker 14: two and a half weeks. Yeah, and then millions displaced.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, twenty percent of the country.
Speaker 15: Lebanon is one of the smallest countries in the world,
Speaker 15: and South Lebanon is one of the only regions in
Speaker 15: the country that you might call like a bread basket
Speaker 15: in terms of agriculture. So yeah, twenty percent of the
Speaker 15: population has already been in this place, and those are
Speaker 15: those that could be registered.
Speaker 5: You can imagine number as being higher than that.
Speaker 15: And as I said, like a lot of those people
Speaker 15: have already been displaced a number of times before, even
Speaker 15: in twenty twenty four when there was the kind of
Speaker 15: the initial escalation, but many of them even going back
Speaker 15: to two thousand and six when there was the war,
Speaker 15: and in some cases even further back in the eighties
Speaker 15: and nineties when day is Lightlies occupied southern Lebanon. And
Speaker 15: I guess this is really important to note because obviously
Speaker 15: what's happening today is connected to the war on Iran.
Speaker 5: Of course it's directly connected.
Speaker 15: But if one only knows this, I think we missed
Speaker 15: what I would describe as a bit of an israel
Speaker 15: obsession with Lebanon specifically for a long time.
Speaker 5: There's like historical roots to all of this.
Speaker 15: It even goes back to the Israelis like having ties
Speaker 15: with like the local Christian far right in the sixties,
Speaker 15: especially as the seventies and.
Speaker 4: Eighties, like during the civil war, during the Civil.
Speaker 15: War in Lebanon, and a bit of this almost I
Speaker 15: mean ideological thing of like we will focus on the
Speaker 15: non Muslims and hope that they're on our side, that
Speaker 15: sort of thing, which is a policy that these Raelies
Speaker 15: have done within is A Palestine and in Syria. You know,
Speaker 15: this is an ongoing thing as well, and so on
Speaker 15: and so forth. I really want to emphasize this because
Speaker 15: I have had the experience when I hit a lot
Speaker 15: of the coverage and you know, listen to podcasts what
Speaker 15: have you that even among people who don't support the
Speaker 15: state of is read who are very critical of it,
Speaker 15: there tends to be understandably because Lebanon is less powerful
Speaker 15: than Iran, as you know, not as influential on a
Speaker 15: global scene or whatnot. But there's usually a tendency to
Speaker 15: link what happens in Lebanon directly to what's happening in Yon.
Speaker 15: And this has been two in the past few weeks.
Speaker 15: And as I said, says, of course partly the cases,
Speaker 15: it's not like completely un irrelevant. Has Bala did even
Speaker 15: stated that the reason why they launched those cockets was
Speaker 15: to avenge the assassination of Dietolus, of course is directly created.
Speaker 15: But there's all of this, like why they're in all
Speaker 15: the context that can help at the very least explain
Speaker 15: why the Asaetias are doing that in Lebanon and also
Speaker 15: help extain what's happening to Lebanon itself, which tends to
Speaker 15: be not as focused on.
Speaker 14: I mean, yeah, let's discuss for a moment where Lebanon
Speaker 14: was before these latest attacks, before the ceasefire, before October seventh.
Speaker 14: For the Lebanese people, it has been increasingly unlivable. There's
Speaker 14: been a financial crisis and economic crisis. Lebanon has hosted
Speaker 14: huge amounts of refugees from Syria from Palestine. Continues to
Speaker 14: these conditions now where effectively like what like half of
Speaker 14: the country is like inaccessible or some large portion of
Speaker 14: the country is inaccessible, The capital city is being bombed,
Speaker 14: residential buildings, like there's nothing kind of off limits. What
Speaker 14: is the situation now for for regular people who first
Speaker 14: and foremost have not had any kind of like sense
Speaker 14: of accountability from their own government and have had also
Speaker 14: his Babla sort of you know, acting unilaterally in some ways.
Speaker 14: Obviously this does not excuse it's really actions in any way.
Speaker 14: But what's the kind of like sense of emotion right
Speaker 14: now among Lebanese people?
Speaker 15: I mean, despair is I guess one word to describe it.
Speaker 15: There's there's definitely a sense of helplessness. His bubble is
Speaker 15: not a popular party in the country in terms of
Speaker 15: like the percentage of the population there is in actions,
Speaker 15: whether this one or like after October seventh, the decision
Speaker 15: to join the war was unpopular.
Speaker 5: Instead it is unpopular.
Speaker 15: There's something that the Israelis are trying to capitalize on, obviously,
Speaker 15: either because they want to just descoy the party, you
Speaker 15: because as part of doing that they also want to
Speaker 15: destabilize all of Lebanon sort of that both of those
Speaker 15: things are happening at the same time. The current government
Speaker 15: in Leblon is led by the guy who was the
Speaker 15: head of the ICJ when South Africa had started this
Speaker 15: case of accusing is that of genocide like a year
Speaker 15: or so ago. So he's by no means a naive
Speaker 15: of what Israeli intentions are. But I think what's really
Speaker 15: important to understand of what's kind of the mood of
Speaker 15: the country is the sense that no matter what we
Speaker 15: decide as a nation, it's completely out of our hands.
Speaker 15: And this goes beyond even questions related to has Buddler
Speaker 15: and has Bula's actions, because, as I said, even when
Speaker 15: Hesbula does not launch cockets or whatnot, the Israeli Is
Speaker 15: continue to violence as far as anyway, they in coach
Speaker 15: Land anyway, they dynamite entire villages anyway, they sprayed those
Speaker 15: herbicides and so on and so on anyway, And it's
Speaker 15: one of those things that it's also important to know
Speaker 15: this to understand why there are people, for example, in
Speaker 15: South Lebanon that, regardless of their personal feelings towards his
Speaker 15: bud Law, don't see any alternatives because in fact there
Speaker 15: are none. Something that I know isn't talked about as
Speaker 15: much and certainly not covered as much, is the fact
Speaker 15: that the armed force that is supposed to be the
Speaker 15: alternative to Hasbola. The thing that we hear about all
Speaker 15: the time that the Americans what they want is for
Speaker 15: Hasbola to be disarmed and for the Lebanese army to
Speaker 15: take over, and so on and so forth. And this
Speaker 15: is basically the stated goal of the entire world in
Speaker 15: a sense, but is a good chunk of it, and
Speaker 15: in fact it's officially the stated policy of the Liberines
Speaker 15: state itself. That is their intention as far as like
Speaker 15: their public declarations and so on, and they have made
Speaker 15: certain moves to that end as well. But the Libanese
Speaker 15: army is the army of a very poor country that
Speaker 15: has been in economic crisis for a long time. When
Speaker 15: we had wildfires in twenty nineteen, there wasn't even enough
Speaker 15: like equipment to tackle them, and like foreign government had
Speaker 15: to donate helicopters and stuff like that. And that Libanese
Speaker 15: army is also heavily subsidized, if you want to say,
Speaker 15: like funded in any case by the United States itself,
Speaker 15: the same United States that obviously heavily funds and arms
Speaker 15: the Israelis. Of course, the weapons that the Lebanese get
Speaker 15: is nothing compared to the weapons that the Israelis get.
Speaker 15: There's no such thing as an iron dome in Lebanon.
Speaker 15: None of these things are available to the Lebanese. And
Speaker 15: so effectively, what is being asked off Lebanon itself, and
Speaker 15: especially of South Lebanon, of the Ahia and East Lebanon,
Speaker 15: ultimately of all of Lebanon, is that just accept your fate.
Speaker 15: Just accept that there's nothing you can do about the
Speaker 15: Israel least, there's nothing you can do about their actions
Speaker 15: in Lebanon proper. I'm not even talking about any actions
Speaker 15: like rockets towards this, and I'm talking to their actions
Speaker 15: in Lebanon itself and they're also asking has wella for example,
Speaker 15: to this arm which in itself I am not opposed to,
Speaker 15: but in the context of what has been happening, in
Speaker 15: the context of what's happening now, I think it's ludicrous
Speaker 15: to imagine that people in any context, like in South Lebanon,
Speaker 15: who have decades now long experience of seeing Israeli occupation,
Speaker 15: of seeing Israeli troops on their lands, no matter like
Speaker 15: multiple different you know, different prime ministers in Israel taking
Speaker 15: the charge and whatnot, but that continuing to be this
Speaker 15: kind of almost eternal fact. In a sense at least,
Speaker 15: that's how that's how it feels they're being asked to
Speaker 15: just disarm and hope for the best. That's really like
Speaker 15: effectively the policy towards Lebanon at the moment. Like I
Speaker 15: saw an interview with one of the French ministers a
Speaker 15: few few days ago, and she was asked like, why
Speaker 15: aren't we doing more to help Lebanon by someone in
Speaker 15: the audience or whatever, and she said that, like, we're
Speaker 15: sending humanitarian aid, and we have UNIFIL forces in southern
Speaker 15: Lebanon and so on, UNIFUIL forces those and peace keeping forces.
Speaker 15: As I said, don't have a legal right to even
Speaker 15: retaliate against the Israels, including when Israel bombs them, which
Speaker 15: it has done at least twice in the past few weeks.
Speaker 15: The Lebanese army really engages with Israelis, they don't even
Speaker 15: have the means in the first place, And so what
Speaker 15: do people expected to do? And this is sort of
Speaker 15: the context in which everything else almost doesn't matter, Like
Speaker 15: in terms of whether you personally like the Hasiboddla, I
Speaker 15: certainly don't, and whatever, like ones personal feelings or even
Speaker 15: politics is towards a political party because they're also members
Speaker 15: of the Lebanese Parliament, towards the state itself. It is
Speaker 15: that it really feels it ultimately, it's like out of
Speaker 15: our hands. And this is like a component of this
Speaker 15: entire thing that I really see, to be honest discussed
Speaker 15: as though like there are like two sides to the story,
Speaker 15: or like two equal armed actors for that even none
Speaker 15: on like equal states for that matter, and it's just
Speaker 15: not the case.
Speaker 14: Yeah, thank you so much for laying that out like that.
Speaker 14: I think that you're right that it's not well acknowledged
Speaker 14: how disempowered the international community basically expects people in the region,
Speaker 14: including the Lebanese, to behave and like accept the fact
Speaker 14: that they are collateral damage in Israel's you know, perpetual
Speaker 14: desire for domination. American political scientist Nathan Brown just published
Speaker 14: this article called Israel's Forever Wars for the Carnegie Domat.
Speaker 14: His argument is that there's been a shift in the
Speaker 14: Israeli policy where he says it used to be the
Speaker 14: domination and diplomacy have long blended in Israeli statecraft, and
Speaker 14: today he says, they've been eclipsed by something Harsher quote
Speaker 14: a preference for domination, degradation and the prevention of the
Speaker 14: adversaries recovery. I mean, I think he's right, though, I
Speaker 14: think that we've seen kind of a at least a
Speaker 14: lower intensity, maybe not as high intensity, but we've seen
Speaker 14: a long scale policy of domination even before this moment.
Speaker 14: But I think this moment does definitely bring it out,
Speaker 14: which brings me to my question of like for Hesbola
Speaker 14: in particular, in the last year two years, like, there
Speaker 14: have been assassinations, we saw the Pager attack. You know,
Speaker 14: it seems that Hesbola has been very effectively weakened, and
Speaker 14: since the Israelians are now kind of going all out.
Speaker 14: What do you think is going to happen to Hezbolas
Speaker 14: as a group, set aside perhaps their public support or
Speaker 14: you know, lack thereof.
Speaker 15: So it's important to note that Hezbola comes from a
Speaker 15: certain context, are they as in the context of South
Speaker 15: lebanojing the isla ocupation of South Lebanon. There goes as
Speaker 15: the alternative to existing parties that were either seen as
Speaker 15: to complicity with the Israelis or maybe too weak or
Speaker 15: complacent or whatnot. And essentially because there was a need
Speaker 15: for something like has Ball at the time. And again
Speaker 15: this is completely regardless of my personal opposition to a
Speaker 15: lot of their politics, whether it's in Lebanon or especially
Speaker 15: in Syria. But that question, if you're going to call
Speaker 15: it the Lebanese question, it's completely being side stepped.
Speaker 5: It's not being tackled whatsoever.
Speaker 15: And in fact it's not that dissimilar I think from
Speaker 15: the Israeli attempt to erase or high to pretend as
Speaker 15: of the Palestinian question as well as can be completely
Speaker 15: side stepped. But they can just continue to pursue this
Speaker 15: policy of just complete domination, as you said, you know,
Speaker 15: make these Applemic codeas with the UEE and other some
Speaker 15: of the other Arab states, for example, without any mentions
Speaker 15: of Palestine and Palestinians and so on and so forth.
Speaker 15: And in the case of Lebanon is like less official
Speaker 15: because there isn't that component, but sort of the spirit
Speaker 15: of it is pretty similar. There is a sort of
Speaker 15: like illegally legalistic framework of the Land for Peace, and
Speaker 15: I think explaining that at least briefly would I think
Speaker 15: could actualize the quote that even you just read out
Speaker 15: to us here that you know, the Israelis occupied Arab
Speaker 15: terriatories in nineteen sixty seven. Palestinitary there obviously they're being
Speaker 15: guzz at the West Bank, and is Jerusalem. Egypt, of
Speaker 15: course was the Sinai and Ciria was and still is
Speaker 15: the Golden Heights. And so that the Land for Peace
Speaker 15: quote unquote worked. In the case of Egypt, they occupied
Speaker 15: the Sinai and then as part of a peace deal
Speaker 15: with Egypt they returned the Sinai to the Egyptians.
Speaker 5: It didn't happen with Syria.
Speaker 15: The Sian Golden Heights have been occupied since nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 15: were effectively the factor annexed in nineteen eighty one. They've
Speaker 15: been annexed for so long that Smotrich himself was born
Speaker 15: in an illegal settlement in the Sying Golden Heights. And
Speaker 15: I'm mentioning this because the Lebanese state, the Prime Minister
Speaker 15: I mentioned earlier about what a week ago, ten days
Speaker 15: ago or so, said that he's hoping for a Land
Speaker 15: for Peace framework, which to me shows just how desperate
Speaker 15: even they are, like they don't know what to do,
Speaker 15: they have no options in front of them. So what
Speaker 15: they're hoping is that by doing all of these things
Speaker 15: public declarations against hezball law I, declaining some of the
Speaker 15: activities illegal by I think like a few days ago
Speaker 15: they said that the media cannot call them the resistance,
Speaker 15: for example, which is there in Arabic how they would
Speaker 15: be referred to, and so on and so forth, these
Speaker 15: attempts to placate the Americans especially, and so on, and
Speaker 15: maybe like show that you know, we're doing something about.
Speaker 5: This, can you stop?
Speaker 15: The Israelis essentially haven't achieved anything there is really have
Speaker 15: just escalated, continue to escalate, continue to bomb more and
Speaker 15: more and more larger in larger parts of the country.
Speaker 15: But that Land for Peace framework which is the frame
Speaker 15: of since the sixties basically is as far as I
Speaker 15: can tell right now, the only thing that the Debanese
Speaker 15: government hope that they can even use. But the difficulty
Speaker 15: in all of that, like a, I don't think it's
Speaker 15: it's realistic because of the same example, like they haven't
Speaker 15: they have never given up their Golden Heights. I don't
Speaker 15: see any reason why they would if they do decide
Speaker 15: to occupy all the stuth Lebanon. And also because the
Speaker 15: shift and this is what you're referring to with that
Speaker 15: code of that person you mentioned, the shift in Israeli
Speaker 15: politics in the past few decades. Isn't even that if
Speaker 15: you might call it strategic that like we're going to
Speaker 15: do the thing even if it's illegal. We're going to
Speaker 15: occupy land if it's illegal. But sort of like the
Speaker 15: ultimate purpose of it is something that resembles some kind
Speaker 15: of diplomatic negotiation. It's domination almost for its own sake.
Speaker 15: There is no end goal necessarily. You mentioned there of
Speaker 15: course religious Zionists, but you also have others that are
Speaker 15: not interested in settlements. They're just interested in destroying the land,
Speaker 15: like destroying having this so called buffer zone, which is
Speaker 15: a euphemism for just in no man's lands, just destroying everything.
Speaker 15: And so the policy can shift in a sense, but
Speaker 15: the intention is to just try and dominate for as
Speaker 15: long as possible for its own sake. And this is
Speaker 15: a wider pattern in Israeli politics that I don't know
Speaker 15: how well understood. It is maybe a bit more now
Speaker 15: than before, because even before the ongoing war you unstarted theft.
Speaker 15: Tally Bennet, who was the Prime Minister of Israel and
Speaker 15: reportedly wants to replace Natanya, who in the upcoming elections,
Speaker 15: said that Turkey is the next Evon. But virtually any
Speaker 15: Israeli paper center and further to the right, which is
Speaker 15: most of them, you read them, there is someone who
Speaker 15: has at some point in this I'm not talking to
Speaker 15: this a random person, I'm talking like a high ranking
Speaker 15: politician and military official at some point this hype like
Speaker 15: Turkey as being next. And what needs to be understood
Speaker 15: with all of this is not or can they actually
Speaker 15: do this or whatnot?
Speaker 5: Because maybe they can't. I don't know.
Speaker 15: I hope we never find out, but it's that like
Speaker 15: they can't stop. It's becoming an end in itself. There
Speaker 15: has to be an enemy there has to be a
Speaker 15: constant creation almost of like an external enemy in like
Speaker 15: in Israeli political discourse today, because nothing else works in
Speaker 15: Italy politics.
Speaker 5: And this is a shift in Isaeli politics in the past.
Speaker 15: I'm going to say, I don't know, two three decades,
Speaker 15: don't know how one would start counting that shift. And
Speaker 15: it does go back to the Palestinian question, and in
Speaker 15: the sense of like them not wanting to address it
Speaker 15: at all, not even pretending that they're going to, because
Speaker 15: they've been pretending, you know, obviously not actually doing it,
Speaker 15: but even pretending that, you know, they were doing so
Speaker 15: with the Austro accord and whatnot. There isn't even that
Speaker 15: I think it's useful to understand their attitude towards Lebanon
Speaker 15: as at least in part, a continuation of that attitude
Speaker 15: towards Palestinians, and in many ways, like the Palestine question itself,
Speaker 15: he means the one that they want to avoid at
Speaker 15: all costs, and whatever that means, bombing Iran, bombing Lebanon,
Speaker 15: bombing other countries later I don't know, obviously bombing year
Speaker 15: they've already done it, you know, and so on and
Speaker 15: so forth.
Speaker 4: Genocide as a tool of concept management.
Speaker 15: Yeah, yeah, it's just domination, I said, for its own sake,
Speaker 15: because they can't imagine any kind of other alternative, and
Speaker 15: they haven't had a need to do so, because you know,
Speaker 15: as you said, they've gotten away with a livestream genocide
Speaker 15: for over two years now, why would they think differently
Speaker 15: about Lebanon, a very poor country that you know, doesn't
Speaker 15: have that many resources and whatnot. Which isn't to say
Speaker 15: that they would succeed and they will win and so on.
Speaker 15: But what they've been saying this is the intention.
Speaker 2: I think that's very valid.
Speaker 14: I mean, it's not a coincidence you said, you know,
Speaker 14: you would try to trace it back to like the
Speaker 14: past two or three decades. It's not a coincidence that
Speaker 14: this mentality and this you know, reorientation of Israel's entire
Speaker 14: policy especially comes after the end of the Second Pausani
Speaker 14: Intfalda and then not even just no meaningful negotiations, no
Speaker 14: negotiations at all. Like you said, there was the Land
Speaker 14: for Peace mantra. The idea with that is that they
Speaker 14: were going to get peace if they give back land.
Speaker 14: But the underlying assumption of that is that they would
Speaker 14: be held accountable by the international community by their own allies.
Speaker 14: After the Second Intafauda, basically the Americans and the international
Speaker 14: community gave up, essentially even pretending that Palestinians would ever
Speaker 14: get anything. This has culminated now and Israel that as
Speaker 14: you said, it's domination for domination's sake, and they think
Speaker 14: that they can maintain control in this way. Now Turkey
Speaker 14: is going to be a different beast than Iran. Turkey's
Speaker 14: and NATO member. But as we've seen in the last
Speaker 14: couple of weeks, like they don't care about blowing up
Speaker 14: the entire region, they don't care about the Strait up
Speaker 14: Hormus being closed, they don't care about oil fields being attacked,
Speaker 14: and they don't care about you know, the global economy tanking.
Speaker 14: Like it's not inconceivable that they attack Turkey, even if
Speaker 14: the outcome might be different or we might see like
Speaker 14: further escalations, it's not inconceivable. And now I just want
Speaker 14: to point this out the very kind of pro Israel
Speaker 14: think tank in Washington, the Foundation for the Defensive Democracy.
Speaker 14: Their new line now is to say land for peace
Speaker 14: is outdated. Now we need to pursue instead peace for land, Yeah,
Speaker 14: which means acceptance of Zionism earns these people a right
Speaker 14: to govern themselves.
Speaker 15: It's a politicular vision that does not see the other
Speaker 15: as humans, as having agency, as as as deserving anything.
Speaker 15: It's not like they have an opposing side on an
Speaker 15: opponent that they want to defeat, but ultimately have some
Speaker 15: kind of settlement or or and move beyond that or whatnot.
Speaker 5: There is no long term plan, is what I'm trying
Speaker 5: to say, I guess.
Speaker 15: And maybe to emphasize a bit more in the case
Speaker 15: in the case of Lebinon, like, so, what happens next
Speaker 15: for Hesbela, for example, I'm not entirely sure.
Speaker 5: I don't I don't think anyone really knows.
Speaker 15: It's it seems clear that the Israelis underestimated their capabilities.
Speaker 15: But to what extent that will matter if the Israels
Speaker 15: continue to just bomb and bomb and bomb Lebanon for
Speaker 15: weeks on end, if not on end, and so on,
Speaker 15: I can't tell. What I can tell is that in
Speaker 15: the same way as the Israelis want to ignore the
Speaker 15: Palestinian question, but it's still it's still there. It haunts
Speaker 15: them in a way because I work onontology, and in
Speaker 15: case of Lebanon.
Speaker 5: There is also that in many ways that.
Speaker 15: If you look at the shift in this course, even
Speaker 15: within Israeli politics from like let's say seventies, but especially
Speaker 15: eighties onwards. I'm not going to say it was never good,
Speaker 15: but there was a stronger component of the Israeli politicians,
Speaker 15: let's say, like a higher percentage of them anyway, that were,
Speaker 15: for lack of a better term, pragmatic that we're willing
Speaker 15: to have concessions, that we're wanting to have whatever, because
Speaker 15: if only because they just did not want to deal
Speaker 15: with like occupying a foreign country that they had no
Speaker 15: intention to legally annexed, as they did with the legally
Speaker 15: none of this is legal, but like within Israel law,
Speaker 15: I mean, as they did with the Golden Heights. And
Speaker 15: so that's what I'm saying in the case of Lebanon,
Speaker 15: that it's almost like the worst case scenario is what's
Speaker 15: currently happening.
Speaker 5: And that's like completely.
Speaker 15: Regardless of what happens to Hesbola, because Hezbola can disappeared
Speaker 15: tomorrow and the problem will continue to be the same,
Speaker 15: if not just get worse. The country has no economy
Speaker 15: to speak of, the currency was already devalued during the
Speaker 15: economic crisis, was one of the.
Speaker 5: Highest value in the world.
Speaker 15: And there are no prospects going forward in terms of
Speaker 15: like making this accountry that can even sustain itself. It's
Speaker 15: already very like import dependent. But if you exclude the
Speaker 15: South Lebanon and it being a bread basket, East Lebanon
Speaker 15: as well, by the way, it's also a bread basket,
Speaker 15: and that's another aa of Lebanon that the realies have
Speaker 15: been constantly bombarding, to paraphrase, that is really ministered that like,
Speaker 15: Lebanon is not a state, it's not a nation. It doesn't,
Speaker 15: it doesn't, it's just a place that's on the map.
Speaker 5: And that will.
Speaker 15: Pose a problem obviously first and foremost for us, like
Speaker 15: for the Lebanese and people who live in Lebanon, but
Speaker 15: it's also a problem geopolitically. It's a problem internationally. It
Speaker 15: will freak out the EU in terms of the refugee
Speaker 15: crisis because the EU has actually counted on Lebanon to
Speaker 15: keep a lot of people in Lebanon. They extend like
Speaker 15: a billion euros. I think it was two or three
Speaker 15: years ago or something like that. I got about it
Speaker 15: twitches a year at the time. Actually because Lebanon had
Speaker 15: the highest percentage maybe still does now. I don't know
Speaker 15: of refugees per capital, so to speak, like compared to
Speaker 15: citizens in the world one million or so sceneor refugees
Speaker 15: with got three five million Lebanese or something like that
Speaker 15: along those lines.
Speaker 5: There's no census in Lebanon.
Speaker 15: So I'm saying all of this to sort of emphasize
Speaker 15: the why there is this sense of despair in the
Speaker 15: country and why if that's not even remotely addressed. Whatever
Speaker 15: fires we're seeing now, whatever like hors we're seeing, I
Speaker 15: just don't see any any way. They will stop anytime soon,
Speaker 15: whatever happens, even to his bottle next. There's no reason
Speaker 15: to imagine that some other group wouldn't be formed at
Speaker 15: some point because people live there, people are from that lane.
Speaker 15: We're talking about a million people. They have nowhere else
Speaker 15: to go. It's not like the Lebanese passport is so
Speaker 15: good that you can just you know, go on a
Speaker 15: flight and go so but there's nowhere else. They're just
Speaker 15: going to stay in Lebanon, and many of them would
Speaker 15: want to, of course go back to South Lebanon.
Speaker 5: This problem is not going away.
Speaker 15: But if you hear the rhetoric of your Nitanyajo, you're
Speaker 15: you're in your other politicians, like this is not part
Speaker 15: of the picture. This has nothing to do with what
Speaker 15: their intentions are. They're exclusively talking to other Israelis. Is
Speaker 15: not whether we should destroy South Lebanon or whether we
Speaker 15: should destroy Lebanon itself.
Speaker 5: The debate is what do we do once it's destroyed?
Speaker 15: And even that it is barely a debate, but like
Speaker 15: that's the extent of where it goes in terms of
Speaker 15: like it's really discourse. And yeah, I guess maybe just
Speaker 15: to drive the point home that if the Israelis themselves
Speaker 15: are not stopped in one way or another by their allies,
Speaker 15: obvious the America has the biggest leverage, or the EU
Speaker 15: being the second closest one in one way or another,
Speaker 15: whatever the means are. Economic boycott withdrawing your ambassador as
Speaker 15: Pain has done a couple of weeks ago. But just
Speaker 15: like on a global scale, like even maybe dwarfing the
Speaker 15: and the boycott campaign against Aparthe South Africa at the time,
Speaker 15: this problem is just going to expand, and people in
Speaker 15: listening to this of course see that seeing version of
Speaker 15: that Iran can just close the strait of Homus and
Speaker 15: then suddenly everyone this is everyone's problem is well and
Speaker 15: America bombing those oil depots, and of course Elon has
Speaker 15: also done that in retaliation, but proportionately still more the
Speaker 15: Americans in this Ali has polluted like I forgot the number,
Speaker 15: but like the equivalent of like eighty four countries combined
Speaker 15: in terms of like the toxins release in these are
Speaker 15: things that people in Iran are breathing in. And the
Speaker 15: entire region relies on design nation plants. And the Americans
Speaker 15: bombed one in Iran, Iran retaliated and bombed another one
Speaker 15: in Bahrain. If that continues, who knows. There's been increasing attems,
Speaker 15: not as attems, actually strikes, including just yesterday against like
Speaker 15: nuclear facilities or like close enough to nuclear facilities, so
Speaker 15: who knows what would have happen.
Speaker 5: Then to say it's out of control.
Speaker 15: Would be like meaningless at this point, But there are
Speaker 15: levels of where this can go. And Lebanon is in
Speaker 15: a sense like deceivingly small. There's a book Would Beware
Speaker 15: of Small States that talks about Lebanon because a lot
Speaker 15: of the world is happening in Lebanon. To put it
Speaker 15: to kind of put it maybe metaphorically, and the trends
Speaker 15: that are being done to the Lebanese or two people
Speaker 15: in Lebanon, like the DOJ doctrine in two thousand and
Speaker 15: six was then used in Gaza, obviously, and now they're
Speaker 15: saying that they're going to use the Gaza methodology in Lebanon's.
Speaker 15: It's like it came back to Lebanon in a sense.
Speaker 15: But the point is that this will continue. There is
Speaker 15: no objective reason to believe that if has Bola is
Speaker 15: destroyed and completely disarmed and what have you, that this
Speaker 15: problem is going to go away, because if anything, a
Speaker 15: new beast of some kind is going to be to
Speaker 15: be created in the fires in the same way that
Speaker 15: has Bola was hated in the initial ones. And so yeah,
Speaker 15: the problem ultimately, and I say this as someone who
Speaker 15: has been campaigning, writing, gotten the death threats from like
Speaker 15: Hesballa supporters in twenty nineteen when I was as part
Speaker 15: of the protest, we were beaten up by them. This
Speaker 15: comes from no sympathy whatsoever towards them. It's just an acknowledgement,
Speaker 15: I'm also a historian, that they come from a certain
Speaker 15: context and if that context is not acknowledged at all,
Speaker 15: and in fact the conditions that brought them are now
Speaker 15: much worse than even the eighties. Why would we believe
Speaker 15: that something else won't come along later on in one
Speaker 15: way or another. And this no that the Aeties have
Speaker 15: they're just a buffer zone and then destabilized Lebanon endlessly
Speaker 15: or whatever it might be. It also comes from like
Speaker 15: the sort of imperious hubiists that they believe that this
Speaker 15: won't harm them in one way or another, that they
Speaker 15: can endlessly and permanently have enabled to their north that
Speaker 15: has a lot of armed components and also constantly.
Speaker 5: At war or whatever it might be.
Speaker 15: It's Hubans, it's imperiadt hubids, and it's also extremely extremely
Speaker 15: dangerous even beyond just what would happen to people in Lebanon.
Speaker 14: Yeah, it's hard to, like you said, underscore how apocalyptic
Speaker 14: this is turning out to be, whether it's we're worried
Speaker 14: about the refugee waves that are going to be generated
Speaker 14: because of this, whether we're worried about the ecological impact,
Speaker 14: whether we're worried about non state actors, militia groups, violent
Speaker 14: groups emerging in the future.
Speaker 4: Like, on every level, this is not sustainable.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 14: I feel like I'm screaming into a void. Except we've known,
Speaker 14: We've known, like you said, for decades that this is
Speaker 14: not sustainable. This is this is not a sustainable situation
Speaker 14: in the Middle East. And I want people to know
Speaker 14: that this is not a trumpet problem.
Speaker 4: This has long.
Speaker 14: Been a problem of American decision makers. Biden in particular,
Speaker 14: also like bears a lot to blame for this situation.
Speaker 14: It's just like you said, it's an imperial hubris, both
Speaker 14: on the part of Israel and the United States. But
Speaker 14: it's also at its root the fact that they completely
Speaker 14: dehumanize people in the Middle East, like they don't see
Speaker 14: them as as human beings that will have human reactions. So, yeah,
Speaker 14: I'm not saying I'm not adding anything to what you're saying.
Speaker 14: I'm just emphasizing here because I'm, you know, as outraged
Speaker 14: as you.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 15: Yeah, And like the thing is that it's it's sort
Speaker 15: of the same principle in a sense of the same
Speaker 15: understanding that also led me to like for years now,
Speaker 15: to oppose the Ionian regime. It's the same understanding. It's
Speaker 15: not just that their brutality towards people within Iran of course,
Speaker 15: but they have. They have engaged in plist campaigns in
Speaker 15: Cim most notably, but also in Iraq and in Lebanon.
Speaker 15: Is like a different kind of thing, but there is
Speaker 15: that that component of it as well that hasn't contributed
Speaker 15: to make them like a better opponent of the Israelis
Speaker 15: or the Americans.
Speaker 5: If anything, it's made them weaker. One of the many problems.
Speaker 15: But I think the biggest one now is that this
Speaker 15: is and this is completely regardless of the ethics of
Speaker 15: the Iranian regime, which I've opposed for several years as well.
Speaker 15: This has nothing to do with supporting them or excusing
Speaker 15: their actions or anything like that, but just understanding why
Speaker 15: the Israelites are acting. Specifically, the Israelis are acting the
Speaker 15: way they have been acting for years now.
Speaker 5: There is this tendency.
Speaker 15: I mean, if you go on the Garden for example,
Speaker 15: now you see like crisis in the Middle East, and
Speaker 15: you can click on it, and then you just go
Speaker 15: book years and years and years as though it's the
Speaker 15: same thing as like you know, it's just displays that
Speaker 15: has crises, and it's sort of like you expect that
Speaker 15: this will happen. But as I think people know a
Speaker 15: bit better. Now the global component of it. This also
Speaker 15: has a global ramification. Even the technologies that are being
Speaker 15: pioneered if you want, by the Israelis and also by
Speaker 15: the Americans to some extent in places like Gaza, then
Speaker 15: get exported elsewhere. Palenteer is now going to be a
Speaker 15: penalty AI is now going to be a core component
Speaker 15: of the US military. These are things that are like
Speaker 15: because that's what I mean by like. Lebanon is deceptively small.
Speaker 15: It's like, it's not important geopolitically for the most part.
Speaker 15: But because that is the case, and of course Gaza
Speaker 15: as well, then it allows it has allowed the Israelis
Speaker 15: to get away with a lot of things. So maybe
Speaker 15: this is, I don't know, a cliched or I don't know,
Speaker 15: it's a meaningless thing to repeat. But the problem really
Speaker 15: goes back to impunity. The problem really goes back to
Speaker 15: the fact that nothing the Israelis have ever done, at
Speaker 15: least in the past several decades, has had any consequences
Speaker 15: to them, to what they do to the region and
Speaker 15: so on. And this is absolutely a biparthisan problem in America.
Speaker 15: None of this would be possible without the Americans. There's
Speaker 15: a very good argument to be made that if we're
Speaker 15: talking about the iscaely occupation of Palestine, we need to
Speaker 15: say the American is raely occupation of Palestine, the bombing
Speaker 15: of Lebanon, we need to say. It's also none of
Speaker 15: this would be physically possible, diplomatically possible, economically possible were
Speaker 15: it not for this unconditional support that the Israelis have
Speaker 15: gotten from the Americans for decades and decades now. If
Speaker 15: Biden had done anything about Israel's genocide and Gaza, really
Speaker 15: almost anything, I don't think we would be aware we
Speaker 15: are today. And so no, this is not a Trump problem.
Speaker 15: It's just that Trump being Trump is making it much worse.
Speaker 15: Speeding it up, is just exploding everything even faster, speeding
Speaker 15: it up and adding new dimensions to it, and so
Speaker 15: on and so forth. But the problem goes back to
Speaker 15: American imperialist hubris, a lot of people not knowing what
Speaker 15: they're even doing in the region, and the consequences of
Speaker 15: it all. So, yeah, I'm not someone who tends to
Speaker 15: be very pessimistic necessarily and stuff like that, but there's
Speaker 15: a lot of ways in which what is currently happening
Speaker 15: in terms of the iscaily and American war on Iran,
Speaker 15: and it's Gaily war Lebanon and so on that can
Speaker 15: just go to different levels that I generally, and I'm
Speaker 15: someone who has report even reported on conflicts for a
Speaker 15: long time now, generally struggle to even imagine. And I
Speaker 15: don't want to stand like I'm just panicking or anything
Speaker 15: like that, or d is there is a component of that,
Speaker 15: but it is a real problem that if Israel is
Speaker 15: not stopped in any way at this point, this will
Speaker 15: continue and there's no objective reason to believe otherwise.
Speaker 14: Yeah, extremely alarming to say the least. But thank you
Speaker 14: Elia so much for making the time to explain this.
Speaker 14: I'll link to the fire these times in the show notes.
Speaker 14: Ilia has a excellent podcast and it's not Lebanon specific.
Speaker 14: It's kind of an internationalist perspective. For disclosure, I've been
Speaker 14: on it many times. I've produced some episodes, so yeah,
Speaker 14: there's not a bias. But it really is a good,
Speaker 14: very good podcast. In any case, Thank you so much, Ylia,
Speaker 14: and hopefully we'll have you on on better times.
Speaker 5: Thanks, thank thank thank you having me.
Speaker 4: Welcome to it could happen here podcasts where a bunch
Speaker 4: of incredibly convoluted and very silly financial instruments to shore
Speaker 4: the entire world economy. I am your host, Mia Wong,
Speaker 4: and with me today is someone who does not spend
Speaker 4: all of her time deep in the bowels of arcane
Speaker 4: bullshit written by different Federal Reserve boards. And that is
Speaker 4: Maldy Conger, who is the host of the absolutely delightful
Speaker 4: I mean, okay, I guess this is a who is
Speaker 4: really winning here kind of christion? In terms of things, research.
Speaker 16: Spent a lot of time reading stuff written by Federal
Speaker 16: Reserve guys. I read a lot of stuff written by
Speaker 16: guys who want to kill the Federal Reserve guys. Yeah,
Speaker 16: you know what, I still don't know what the Federal
Speaker 16: Reserve is, and I'm not gonna find out.
Speaker 4: You know, I don't actually think knowing what the Federal
Speaker 4: Reserve is somehow.
Speaker 16: It doesn't change anything.
Speaker 4: And I don't think it's actually relevant to this app
Speaker 4: I mean it kind of. It's obviously it's relevant to everything.
Speaker 16: But means to say is the reason I'm here is
Speaker 16: because I don't know what the economy is, and at
Speaker 16: this point I'm afraid to find out.
Speaker 4: And unfortunately, your worst fears are happening.
Speaker 16: Don't worry. By the end of this I will not understand.
Speaker 4: I am going to attempt to explain the economy, and
Speaker 4: by by the economy, I mean shadow banking. Yeah. Also,
Speaker 4: before before I go into this, though, you should, you
Speaker 4: should listen to Weird Little Guys. It is. It's it's
Speaker 4: really good. I like it. All my friends really like it.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Yeah, it's somehow a come a kind of
Speaker 4: relaxing show about neo Nazis. So that's got very chill vibes.
Speaker 16: Yeah for a show about guys who are trying to
Speaker 16: like blow up school bus ypes.
Speaker 4: Yep. So all right, you know I'm reading this. I'm
Speaker 4: looking over this script miraculously this isn't Oh wait, hold on,
Speaker 4: I think I cut the part where people blow up
Speaker 4: school buses. There was legitimately a segment in here that
Speaker 4: I might put back in or someone blows up a
Speaker 4: school bus.
Speaker 16: But what a crossover event.
Speaker 4: Oh boy, oh boy, the Saudi is really good at
Speaker 4: that shit. It turns out. Okay, okay, but let let's
Speaker 4: get back to the topic at hand, which is what
Speaker 4: is shadow banking and why does it matter to all
Speaker 4: of us people who live in the normal, real world
Speaker 4: and not in fake finance world.
Speaker 16: Does it have anything to do with shadow wolves?
Speaker 4: Unfortunately? No, what about shadow facts? Sadly? Actually they're probably
Speaker 4: is a connection between the financing for the Lord of
Speaker 4: the Rings movies and shadow banking. I'm just too tired
Speaker 4: to work it right now.
Speaker 16: I've dragged us off track. If we haven't even gotten
Speaker 16: on track yet. What is shadow bank?
Speaker 4: Okay? So the good news, the good news this this
Speaker 4: is this is the first. It's not the last piece
Speaker 4: of good news. We're gonna get this episode. But come,
Speaker 4: the definition used by most non academics is actually not
Speaker 4: that bad. There's a pretty good It's very wishy washy
Speaker 4: because it's a congressional report and so it's specifically not
Speaker 4: supposed to be taking a stance in either direction on
Speaker 4: anything because it's it's the Congressional Review Office, and they're
Speaker 4: supposed to be neutral, et cetera, et cetera. Allegedly, Yeah, right,
Speaker 4: you know, and like obviously they're not, but like you know,
Speaker 4: it's like kind of fine congressional report on the subject.
Speaker 4: And they do the thing that almost everyone does, which
Speaker 4: is they go back to the definition created by the
Speaker 4: Financial Stability Board. And I'm just gonna I'm just gonna
Speaker 4: quote that because it's not that bad. Quote financial activities
Speaker 4: facilitated by institutions other than central banks, banks or public
Speaker 4: financial institutions.
Speaker 16: So it's banking that doesn't involve a bank canceled. I'm out,
Speaker 16: I'm out already.
Speaker 4: Yes, And they.
Speaker 16: Don't mean like me loaning you twenty.
Speaker 4: Dollars No, no, no, of course not.
Speaker 16: They just mean unregulated banking. Oh yeah, which you can't
Speaker 16: legally call banking.
Speaker 4: I mean, you actually can't legally call it banking. It's
Speaker 4: just things get weird really quickly.
Speaker 16: I mean, I'm not a bank understander, but I know,
Speaker 16: at least in Virginia, you can't incorporate a business that
Speaker 16: has the word bank in the title unless you are
Speaker 16: legally a bank, because that's like misleading.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't think they can legally call themselves a bank,
Speaker 4: but I guess you can call it banking activity that's
Speaker 4: stupid in a matter already.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 4: Oh, you're going to get so much more mad by
Speaker 4: the end of this. So the base definition is it's
Speaker 4: not that complicated, right, It's something that does banking stuff
Speaker 4: that is legally not a bank, you know, And so
Speaker 4: we could talk about what what kinds of things is this? Right,
Speaker 4: It's like private equity firms, it's hedge funds, it's venture
Speaker 4: capital firms.
Speaker 16: So it's like evil stuff that ruins the world for
Speaker 16: no reason except for like ten guys make money.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it's also you know, pension funds, it's like
Speaker 4: insurance companies. It's sovereign wealth funds, business development companies, repo markets,
Speaker 4: broker dealers, special investment vehicles, securitization vehicles, money market mutual funds,
Speaker 4: assey backed commercial paper conduits.
Speaker 16: Hey thing, Bud, Most of those things you just said
Speaker 16: to me are fake and they make me upset.
Speaker 4: It's really bad. Sovereign wealth funds shop that's not that's
Speaker 4: not me.
Speaker 16: I still, you know all these all these things are
Speaker 16: just like different ways of saying like you're poor and
Speaker 16: you're gonna die.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean the funny thing is sovereign wealth fund
Speaker 4: is like kind of a less fake one in that
Speaker 4: it's like, hey, this is like sol fake. It's the well,
Speaker 4: It's like this is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has
Speaker 4: pooled all of the money it's gotten from its like
Speaker 4: horrific crimes and put them together into one giant thing,
Speaker 4: and that's a sovereign wealth fund.
Speaker 16: Oh so it's good, it's what you mean.
Speaker 4: No, I am a notable. There is, by the way,
Speaker 4: a camp of people who believe that sovereign wealth funds
Speaker 4: are like a socialist thing and that you could use
Speaker 4: them to do socialism.
Speaker 16: I'm gonna jump out the window.
Speaker 4: I think this is so stupid. Yeah, we haven't even
Speaker 4: gotten into the nightmare stuff. So remember I was talking
Speaker 4: about the Financial Stability Board definition in that congressional report
Speaker 4: right where it's like, okay, this is a bank that
Speaker 4: does non banking stuff or a non bank that does
Speaker 4: banking stuff. Sorry, oh, I.
Speaker 16: Guess we should say I guess we forgot to say
Speaker 16: at the top. The reason you're explaining shadow banking to
Speaker 16: me is because we saw an article last week that
Speaker 16: what those not banks were putting a stop on withdrawals
Speaker 16: from their not banks and I didn't know what that meant.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's amazingly, this is so convoluted. We're not even
Speaker 4: gonna get to that this week, right, But like that
Speaker 4: why we're exciting, That's why, right, there's like, yeah, there's
Speaker 4: like there's like a mini bank run going on with
Speaker 4: these like shadow banks, no banks. Yeah, so we're gonna
Speaker 4: get into how that can happen and why. But but
Speaker 4: before we get there, we need to talk about all, right,
Speaker 4: to get a sense of the complexity of this. Right,
Speaker 4: the Congressional report, like the accepted terminology for this is
Speaker 4: not shadow banks, it.
Speaker 16: Is, right, that can't be their official name. That's not
Speaker 16: their government name.
Speaker 4: No, it's it's non bank financial intermediation. Now what the
Speaker 4: fuck is that? And this is where this episode goes
Speaker 4: completely off the rails because the components of what count
Speaker 4: as intermediation are so complicated. I Am not going to
Speaker 4: try to describe it until literally the end of this I.
Speaker 16: Mean, is it like what is Venmo officially?
Speaker 4: Really?
Speaker 16: Venmo's not a bank, but it provides like financial services.
Speaker 4: Actually, I why.
Speaker 16: Because it's because it's like a financial intermediary.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, it might technically be a non bank. I
Speaker 4: don't know what the regulatory structure is legally about. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I think I think that technically is.
Speaker 16: One score one for MOLI.
Speaker 4: Yeah. But okay, so this is this is gonna get
Speaker 4: really bad. Okay. So when I first started researching this episode, right,
Speaker 4: the first thing that I click on is is the
Speaker 4: Federal Reserves chart of how the shadow banking sector works
Speaker 4: compared to the normal banking sector. Molly, you have seen
Speaker 4: this because I posted it as a joke in our
Speaker 4: group chat. This chart. I have like a very very large,
Speaker 4: like it is like a big, normal ass size monitor
Speaker 4: that I like to do my work on. I had
Speaker 4: to zoom in to three hundred and eighty percent just
Speaker 4: to make out the letters that label the boxes on
Speaker 4: this chart. If you want to read it, you have
Speaker 4: to zoom into five hundred percent.
Speaker 16: That doesn't seem like a well made chart.
Speaker 4: No, here's the thing. It's actually really good. It's just
Speaker 4: this complicated. I learned later from a paper by Copenhagen
Speaker 4: Business School professor Odny Helga Daughter. We're gonna come back
Speaker 4: to Hellga Daughter's work a lot in this episode, but
Speaker 4: I learned from from her because she has also experienced
Speaker 4: seeing this same chart and going what the is this
Speaker 4: fuck ass chart? I found out that the Federal Reserve
Speaker 4: recommends that in order to have the diagram be legible,
Speaker 4: you're supposed to print this chart as a three foot
Speaker 4: by four foot poster.
Speaker 16: Oh that makes sense, like meeting style, but like we're
Speaker 16: on easel.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, But like again, this is this is a
Speaker 4: diagram that he's just labeling the parts of the system
Speaker 4: and making and making like a line that shows how
Speaker 4: stuff moves through it.
Speaker 16: I guess I still don't know what we're talking about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this is what we're going to get into
Speaker 4: in a second. But first we have to talk about
Speaker 4: something even more bleak, which is that.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, by the way, these like non banking bank things
Speaker 4: like these like all these like venture capital firms, all
Speaker 4: these hedge funds, all these fucking weird, ghoulish banks that
Speaker 4: are off banks. Yeah, they have twice as many assets
Speaker 4: than the regular banking system. Oh that doesn't seem good. Oh,
Speaker 4: it's about to get worse. It's about to get worse. Molley'.
Speaker 16: That's like saying I keep seventy percent of the food
Speaker 16: in my house outside on the porch, like it goes
Speaker 16: in the fridge.
Speaker 4: Oh, oh, it's so bad, it's so bad. So okay,
Speaker 4: there's a pretty good congressional report that I was talking
Speaker 4: about earlier that has this terrifying quote quote. As of
Speaker 4: twenty twenty three, the broad measured total financial assets and
Speaker 4: narrow measure assets at NBFISIS is the shadow banks reached
Speaker 4: eighty five point seven trillion dollars and twenty two point
Speaker 4: two trillion dollars, respectively in the United States.
Speaker 16: But that's more than our GDP.
Speaker 4: That's almost three times our GDP.
Speaker 16: So that's a fake amount of money. Yes, that's not real.
Speaker 4: At all, but it kind of is. Right. These compared
Speaker 4: to total financial assets of thirty one point one trillion
Speaker 4: dollars at banks in the same period. So again this
Speaker 4: is this is almost three times our GDP in assets
Speaker 4: that they manage or control. So where does the money live?
Speaker 4: In a whole bunch of unbelievably convoluted bullshit like combinations
Speaker 4: of like loans and real estate and stuff like that,
Speaker 4: not real money.
Speaker 16: So like, okay, imagine this is schoolhouse rock and instead
Speaker 16: of the singing bill, you're like a dollar bill, Like
Speaker 16: where are you?
Speaker 4: We are about to explain this where does the money live? Yeah?
Speaker 4: So okay, okay, we're we are about one huge paragraphs
Speaker 4: away from getting to this, or like one paragraph. Okay.
Speaker 4: So the other thing that's very important about this, and
Speaker 4: this is something Molly was kind of touching out to
Speaker 4: the beginning to get the appen So maybe I should
Speaker 4: have opened with this. Yeah, these people, these are the
Speaker 4: people who blew up the economy in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 16: Well, yeah, because they're making stuff up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's so, it's so bullshit, Molly, you're gonna get
Speaker 4: so mad if this is Calvin Ball, fuck you I win. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it literally is. It's nonsense. It's gibberish. They're doing fucking
Speaker 4: betting markets with the entire world economy. Oh yeah, we
Speaker 4: can all do that now. Yeah, it's fun. It's like
Speaker 4: we we now have the power to do the shit
Speaker 4: that destroyed the entire world economy in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 4: So that The thing about shadow banking, and the reason
Speaker 4: why it's complicated to explain, is that it's a catch
Speaker 4: all term for like a million types of institutions that
Speaker 4: do different things, Right, the commonality they have is that
Speaker 4: they're all not regulated by the banking regulations.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 16: It's like, we found a way to do financial crime
Speaker 16: that's not illegal because they forgot to make this illegal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know, but but the thing is it's
Speaker 4: so embedded into the system that, like the US debt
Speaker 4: working is dependent on the shadow banks buying it. Like
Speaker 4: I don't believe in that either. So I'm good. Oh
Speaker 4: it's so fake, Molly. I'm not even gonna attempt to
Speaker 4: explain what an o night repo purchases to you, because
Speaker 4: it's the fakest thing I've ever seen, where they they
Speaker 4: make one trillion dollars exist overnight and then it stops
Speaker 4: existing at the end of the night. It's incredible.
Speaker 16: I love how much of the economy is based on
Speaker 16: guys just imagining stuff and agreeing on the thing they
Speaker 16: imagined and then trading their imaginary tokens like this is
Speaker 16: fucking POGs.
Speaker 4: Grow up, yep, this is this is this is unfortunately,
Speaker 4: what our entire world is based on. It's so fun.
Speaker 4: Oh god, Okay, So what is actually shadow banking? I've
Speaker 4: given you like the broadest definition possible, which is like
Speaker 4: it again, it's the it's doing bank ship without being
Speaker 4: a bank. But let's go back to the beginning of
Speaker 4: the term, which is where most people tend to start
Speaker 4: or get to eventually. This is from an IMF paper quote.
Speaker 4: The term shadow bank was coined by economist Paul McCauley
Speaker 4: at a two thousand and seven speech at the Annual
Speaker 4: Financial Symposium hosted by the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank
Speaker 4: in jacksonvill Wyoming. And basically it's institutions that borrow money
Speaker 4: in the short term through money markets to finance long
Speaker 4: term loans. But they aren't banks, so they can't go
Speaker 4: through the FED. They're financing loans with other loans. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we're gonna so from a not bank. Yeah, but the
Speaker 4: big loan is from a real bank, and then the
Speaker 4: little loan is from a fake bank. Give me, none
Speaker 4: of the money is real. Hold on, hold on, Okay,
Speaker 4: we're going to get there. We're going to explain this
Speaker 4: in terms of burgers. It's going to be Okay, I
Speaker 4: believe in us perfect, perfect, Yes. But the other thing
Speaker 4: he describes is, and this is from Helga daughter quote
Speaker 4: in the speech, she describes shadow banking as the whole
Speaker 4: alphabet soup of leveraged up investment conduits, vehicles, and structures.
Speaker 4: So what he's talking about specifically is these are the
Speaker 4: guys who blew up the economy two does eight like
Speaker 4: these specifically, this is what he's talking about, right, These
Speaker 4: are the people who took a mortgage and then did
Speaker 4: a bunch of bullshit to it and what's called a
Speaker 4: securitization chain. They did a bunch of bullshit to it,
Speaker 4: so you could give the loan to someone else, you
Speaker 4: could sell someone else, and this blew up the entire
Speaker 4: world economy. That's what she's talking about. He's talking about
Speaker 4: the banks that are not banks, the shadow banks that
Speaker 4: did all of this bullshit to turn like someone's mortgage
Speaker 4: into a fucking thing you could bet on.
Speaker 16: So selling debt is like selling the idea of future money. Yeah,
Speaker 16: and then sometimes that future money doesn't come. Yeah, so
Speaker 16: it doesn't exist.
Speaker 4: So so okay, I will say, you do not need
Speaker 4: to understand this yet, because we haven't. We still have
Speaker 4: not already the actual explanation.
Speaker 16: I'm never going to.
Speaker 4: I believe in us. We can do this. It's not
Speaker 4: that bad, okay. I'm not torturing your on purpose. I'm
Speaker 4: just no, it's okay, I believe in you. So I
Speaker 4: want to mention that I'm very indebted here to the
Speaker 4: paper I mentioned earlier from Copenhagen Business School professor Adny
Speaker 4: Helga Daughter, who wrote of She wrote a very good
Speaker 4: fight explanation of this in her Review of International Political
Speaker 4: Economy article called Banking upside Down The Implicit Politics of
Speaker 4: Shadow Banking expertise, but Okay, as you can tell by
Speaker 4: the fact that it's called banking upside down, the implicit
Speaker 4: politics of shadow banking expertise this has been when she's
Speaker 4: simplifying it. She's simplifying it from like economists down to
Speaker 4: like a political scientist or an anthropologist can understand this.
Speaker 4: I am about to attempt to simplify this down to
Speaker 4: a regular person. Can I understand this? So I'm drawing
Speaker 4: on a lot of her stuff for the first part
Speaker 4: of this explanation, but I am I've turned it into burgers.
Speaker 16: So I'll do my best. I'm being very brave.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 4: So a shadow bank, right, it's something that does banking shit.
Speaker 4: That's not a bank. So what do I mean by
Speaker 4: banking shit?
Speaker 16: That was my next question. Yes, I think we need
Speaker 16: to start with what is a bank?
Speaker 4: Yes? So first, so okay, okay, and this is this
Speaker 4: is where we're starting here. What does a bank do?
Speaker 16: I put my money in it and they hold it
Speaker 16: for me?
Speaker 4: So no, actually, and this is the interesting part.
Speaker 16: No, they do stuff with it. Oh yeah, they're holding
Speaker 16: onto the promise of my money.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So okay, let's let's just let's just look at this
Speaker 4: for a second. So Okay, So regular people give them
Speaker 4: money to store in the bank. This is called a deposit.
Speaker 4: The bank takes your money and loans it out right
Speaker 4: and uses that to make more money. This is how
Speaker 4: it pays you interest, right, is that it's it's taking
Speaker 4: your money and it's loaning it out to other to
Speaker 4: other people, it's buying things with it.
Speaker 16: That part I understand.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And this is obviously a cartoon image. And I
Speaker 4: know there's gonna be econ people who are gonna be
Speaker 4: mad at me. Look you, if you understand, why are.
Speaker 16: They listening to this? If you already know what this means,
Speaker 16: go away. This isn't for you. I'm not humiliating myself
Speaker 16: for your entertainment, like like for.
Speaker 4: The political economy people here. When I say stuff that
Speaker 4: might that's like technically kind of fuzzy. It's for me
Speaker 4: the podcast idiot. Yeah, like you you understand this, Like
Speaker 4: I work at the level of Hamburgers here, so like
Speaker 4: we have to do some abstractions. So okay, the important
Speaker 4: thing for our purposes, right, is that there's two things here. Right,
Speaker 4: There's like the deposit to the money you give them,
Speaker 4: and then there's the loans, right, and these operates on
Speaker 4: different timelines. Right. You can take the deposit out at
Speaker 4: any time, least in theory, but they can't get the
Speaker 4: money from the loan back at any time right now.
Speaker 4: This is like one of the critical things of what
Speaker 4: a bank is is this timeline thing. Right. It turns
Speaker 4: your money, which you can take out at any time,
Speaker 4: into a different kind of thing, this loan, which can't
Speaker 4: be taken out immediately, right, and then they use that
Speaker 4: to make money. So this is called maturity transformation. This
Speaker 4: is a very simple concept they have made very complicated.
Speaker 4: This is one of the core aspects of that definition
Speaker 4: I was talking about earlier. This is one of the
Speaker 4: four things in it. But you now understand this. It's
Speaker 4: not that complicated. It's takes short term, make long term,
Speaker 4: and we'll get to doing the reverse in a second.
Speaker 16: Oh, I don't think it works the other way.
Speaker 4: It's gonna go so badly, really so badly.
Speaker 16: I don't know about bank, but just generally speaking, like
Speaker 16: in terms of time and like how like material reality works.
Speaker 16: I don't think it works the other way.
Speaker 4: It's it's not great. It's not great, Molly, it's not great. Okay,
Speaker 4: So okay, there is However, a problem here, right, which
Speaker 4: is what happens if everyone tries to get their short
Speaker 4: term money back at the same time.
Speaker 16: I only can't, yeah, right, because you have deposit insurance.
Speaker 4: Yeah right, because the banks aren't holding short term cash.
Speaker 4: What they're holding is long term loans. And those loans
Speaker 4: like you can't pay someone alone. Well okay, actually, this
Speaker 4: entire the crux of this episode is they faced that
Speaker 4: they did do that. Yeah, yes, and it blew up
Speaker 4: the entire world to columy.
Speaker 16: But if but if I wanted forty thousand dollars out
Speaker 16: of my if I had a checking out it was
Speaker 16: forty thousand dollars in it. Yeah, and they gave me
Speaker 16: my neighbor's mortgage as a prompt Like that.
Speaker 4: Would have worked for me, That would have worked for
Speaker 4: no fuck that, No no, no, no. You need you need,
Speaker 4: you need, you need something that can buy a burger,
Speaker 4: and they're not giving you that. So okay, this is
Speaker 4: very very bad. If people try to do this, it
Speaker 4: is called a bank run. It is not good. It's bad. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And so this this blew up the entire world economy
Speaker 4: so many goddamn times that eventually we got financial regulation
Speaker 4: now this. This regulation requires banks to have money that
Speaker 4: is like actual cash they can hand you like right now,
Speaker 4: on hand at all times, and the government gets to
Speaker 4: and this is that's a little bit simification, but like yeah,
Speaker 4: that's how.
Speaker 16: It works, right, Like, and it's insured by the government.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think the government will give you your money back
Speaker 4: if if the bank goes under up to like a
Speaker 4: certain amount of dollars ensured. Yep, this is this this
Speaker 4: that's that's what that means, right, the government will give
Speaker 4: you your money back. But also there's a there's a
Speaker 4: trade off to this. So this is a massive benefit
Speaker 4: for the banks, right the fact the fact that if
Speaker 4: they go under, all of their assets will be repaid
Speaker 4: by the government. It's a it's a massive benefit for
Speaker 4: them because it means that putting your money in the
Speaker 4: bank is like safe.
Speaker 16: Yeah, I love that for me, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: It's good. Now. The cost to the banks is that
Speaker 4: the Feds get to see their balance sheet, right, the
Speaker 4: Feds get to see what they're doing with their fucking money,
Speaker 4: and they get to make sure that these banks aren't
Speaker 4: doing insane shit. Okay, that makes sense because they're insurance. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and that like they're not doing like unbelievably risky, awful shit,
Speaker 4: and also that they're actually holding enough money to be
Speaker 4: able to pay people out right.
Speaker 16: Okay, so far, so good, I understand bank.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Now, shadow banking boldly asked the question, Okay, but
Speaker 4: what if you did all of the banking backwards, no
Speaker 4: one had access to the books, and the governments will
Speaker 4: only pay you back if the entire world economy looks
Speaker 4: like it's going to die. I feel like at that.
Speaker 16: Point the government should just just step back.
Speaker 4: And here's the thing. Here's the thing, right I I
Speaker 4: I yeah, Like I'm so down with this, Like yeah,
Speaker 4: I don't know, fuck it, Like every single one of
Speaker 4: your motherfuckers is gonna pay this off by working as
Speaker 4: a barista for thirty years, like fuck you. But the
Speaker 4: government was like, nah, we want like we want capitalism
Speaker 4: to keep working.
Speaker 16: Make every hedge fund manager work at a waffle house.
Speaker 17: Yeah, fuck them.
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm gonna say something and then I'm gonna make
Speaker 4: a disclaim. So the kind of shadow banks that did
Speaker 4: two thousand and eight work in the opposite direction. They
Speaker 4: start with debt, they take that debt, and they turn
Speaker 4: that debt into like cash, right.
Speaker 16: Can I do that No, does that work for me
Speaker 16: at my hed No?
Speaker 4: So okay, And I also want to mention there's a
Speaker 4: bunch of other kinds of shadow banks. The kind of
Speaker 4: shadow bank that's going under right now is not really this.
Speaker 4: The kind of shadow bank that's like exploding right now
Speaker 4: is a kind of shadow bank that's like what if
Speaker 4: a bank that wasn't a bank gave a completely unregulated
Speaker 4: loan with secret terms to a corporation, And that's the
Speaker 4: one that's going under right now. But for a long
Speaker 4: long time, the kind of shadow bank that was really
Speaker 4: important to the global economy, and this is still like
Speaker 4: a massive portion of how all of the economic system works,
Speaker 4: is these ones where you're trying to take debt and
Speaker 4: turn it into something you can trade for cash. So, okay,
Speaker 4: you take debt, right, you start off with a mortgage. Okay,
Speaker 4: so these mortgages pay out over the extremely long term, right,
Speaker 4: But you want to be able to trade this mortgage
Speaker 4: for cash, right, And this is a process called securitization.
Speaker 4: Turning this mortgage into something you can sell for cash
Speaker 4: is making it into what's called a security. So now
Speaker 4: what happens right when is packaged into a security when
Speaker 4: there's a securitization process, and then like the regular bank,
Speaker 4: the regular bank sends the mortgage to the shadow bank,
Speaker 4: and the shadow bank like does like stuff and turns
Speaker 4: it into a security. And now what this means is
Speaker 4: that instead of you, who paid the more gage, owing
Speaker 4: money to the bank, you own it to the shadow
Speaker 4: bank or whoever the fuck the shadow bank sells it to.
Speaker 16: Right, Okay, so the real bank is involved, The real
Speaker 16: bank is involved.
Speaker 4: Yes, oh yes, the real bank is making so much
Speaker 4: money off of this. Is this is why two thousand
Speaker 4: and eight happened.
Speaker 16: Oh because Wells Fargo did this with everybody's mortgage.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, oh yeah, okay.
Speaker 16: Because I couldn't figure out because you said this is
Speaker 16: a two thousand names and I was like, I thought,
Speaker 16: Wells Fargo did that. That's a real bank. Oh, the
Speaker 16: real bank was shadow banking.
Speaker 4: The real bank figured out a way to sell their mortgages.
Speaker 4: And it's gonna get much worse as we go through this.
Speaker 4: But that's what causes this, right, is like turning is
Speaker 4: turning these mortgages into these like securities and like these
Speaker 4: like collateralized debt obligations and these like special packaged bullshit
Speaker 4: that you could sell to someone. So the way I
Speaker 4: would describe this is it's like, do you know how
Speaker 4: a bond works? Honestly, Mia, I do not. Okay, we
Speaker 4: let's let's do this. We can we can do this. Okay.
Speaker 4: So the kind of bond that you are normally likely
Speaker 4: to in character is a government bond. Yeah, okay, So
Speaker 4: you you pay the government money to buy the bond,
Speaker 4: and what the bond says is at a certain point
Speaker 4: in time, you hand it back to the government and
Speaker 4: they pay you more money.
Speaker 16: Right, It's like a promise for later.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Right, So it's it's basically a loan, but it's
Speaker 4: a loan in a form where like the government's technically
Speaker 4: like selling it. And and then the other thing about bonds,
Speaker 4: right is if you hand the bond to someone else,
Speaker 4: well okay, I mean this is technically bear bonds, but
Speaker 4: like you can you can then give the bond to
Speaker 4: someone else, and now if they give it back to
Speaker 4: the government, they get the money in like ten years,
Speaker 4: they get the money, right, right, Okay, I get that.
Speaker 4: And you can sell these things, and this is what
Speaker 4: these people are doing with mortgages.
Speaker 16: That's not as like secured as like a government bond,
Speaker 16: because if I had one hundred dollars government, like if
Speaker 16: I have one hundred dollar bearers bond, I know for
Speaker 16: a fact on the date on the bond, it's going
Speaker 16: to be worth.
Speaker 4: One hundred dollars. Yeah, they're gonna pay out right.
Speaker 16: But if it's mortgage, the government's go pay it. But
Speaker 16: like the mortgage, the property has the work. That's not Yep,
Speaker 16: that's not real.
Speaker 4: That's not money. Nope, yep, that's like that's a that's
Speaker 4: a promise. But like my hand, it's behind my back. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's it's a shit show. And this whole process is
Speaker 4: the largest sort of I'm not sure if it's actually
Speaker 4: the largest that I would need to actually get I've
Speaker 4: never I haven't seen in death breakdown sectorially.
Speaker 16: But like, none of this is real. You could just
Speaker 16: say whatever.
Speaker 4: This this is one of the most important kind of
Speaker 4: shadow banks because in order to turn this mortgage into
Speaker 4: security the moment you do that, you do this by
Speaker 4: creating what's called a special purpose vehicle, or someone else
Speaker 4: creates one. It's called a special purpose vehicle. Yeah, it's
Speaker 4: it's a nightmare. It's a nightmare.
Speaker 16: I'm gonna put this mortgage on a roller coaster.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's fucking ridiculous. Right, it's a special purpose vehicle,
Speaker 4: is it does a loopy loop. But the moment you
Speaker 4: create one of these, the moment you create one of
Speaker 4: these like security mortgages, right, that's a shadow bank. You've
Speaker 4: created a shadow bank.
Speaker 16: Right, because that's not real banking. That's shadow bank.
Speaker 18: Yep.
Speaker 4: Because because you're creating another entity that is not a
Speaker 4: bank that's doing the banking stuff.
Speaker 16: I thought that the banking and the shadow banking were
Speaker 16: like separate things, right, because it's shadow like it's like, oh,
Speaker 16: they're doing.
Speaker 4: Non things, they're all in all.
Speaker 16: If the bank is the shadow banking, I would I'm stupid,
Speaker 16: but I would call.
Speaker 4: That a crime. This is this is another thing that
Speaker 4: costs two thousand and eight because a bunch of what
Speaker 4: was happening. Isn't that a crime? Because our country is
Speaker 4: run by the bourgeoisie, Molly that that's why it's not
Speaker 4: a crime. You're just telling me this for the first time. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's bad.
Speaker 13: So so what what what?
Speaker 4: What happened? What happened in two thousand and eight. One
Speaker 4: of the things that happened, right, is so all of
Speaker 4: these regulators are supposed to be looking at the balance
Speaker 4: sheets of these companies, but they're hiding stuff off the books. Yeah,
Speaker 4: they were hiding these things in these like special purpose vehicles,
Speaker 4: like in these like shadow banks.
Speaker 16: They didn't open the trunks on the special purpose vehicles.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so no one could see the fucking dead bodies
Speaker 4: in the trunks of the vehicles because they weren't on
Speaker 4: the balance sheet that like the government had access to.
Speaker 16: What's the point of the balance sheet if you don't
Speaker 16: put the whole balance on it.
Speaker 4: I'm fucking I don't know. And this is like legitimately
Speaker 4: when you read the accounts of like why shadow making
Speaker 4: has exploded, by the way it's exploded since two thousand
Speaker 4: and eight, it's like way bigger exploded.
Speaker 16: Like in popularity, or like exploded as in like distrubularity.
Speaker 4: There's so much there's so much more of it. There's
Speaker 4: so much more of it because also, oh.
Speaker 16: Because it went so well, It went so well in
Speaker 16: two thousand and eight, and now.
Speaker 4: We're because here's the thing. After two thousand and eight,
Speaker 4: we got like a little tiny bit of banking regulation,
Speaker 4: and the banks lost their fucking minds, and so more
Speaker 4: and more money went into all of these unhidden shadow
Speaker 4: making things.
Speaker 16: Okay, but so like when a toddler has a tantrum,
Speaker 16: you don't give them a billion dollars.
Speaker 4: When the shadow banks went under, these things were not
Speaker 4: backed by the government. The government bailed them out anyways. Yeah,
Speaker 4: they didn't have to do that. Nope.
Speaker 16: So they really they learned their lesson. They really learned
Speaker 16: their lesson this time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like they bailed out these banks and they fucking
Speaker 4: sold you out, and like you know, like and one
Speaker 4: of the things that I think people have forgotten was
Speaker 4: there's this thing called robocalls durning the Obama administration. Right,
Speaker 4: part of how the financial recovery happened was that all
Speaker 4: these banks would like go to courthouses, right, and they
Speaker 4: would just repossess mortgages on Mass.
Speaker 19: Oh.
Speaker 4: And they had like a robot that was like signed it.
Speaker 4: It would just sign like a blank check sign off
Speaker 4: on all of these mortgages that were supposed to be underwater.
Speaker 4: And they would just steal people's houses, people who were
Speaker 4: on top of their payings, people who liked to know money.
Speaker 4: They would just take their houses. And this happened on
Speaker 4: Mass And this is like how the banks recovered was
Speaker 4: they stole everyone's houses and that's a crime, right, it
Speaker 4: should have been a crime, like it was illegal. It
Speaker 4: didn't matter though, because everything you're describing to me as
Speaker 4: a crime, it's so nightmarish. Well it's here's the thing,
Speaker 4: most of this of them describing is not a crime.
Speaker 4: This was actually a crime. But why isn't nobody in
Speaker 4: jail because Barack Obama went up in front of these
Speaker 4: people and said, I am the only thing standing between
Speaker 4: you and the guillotines. I'm pretty sure that's a direct quote.
Speaker 4: And why didn't he bring the guillotine with him? Because
Speaker 4: he wants the capital assistant to continue. I mean, I'm
Speaker 4: just upset. It's not good. Okay, So let's get you
Speaker 4: another question that you asked, which is why would you
Speaker 4: do this? Why would you do this to make money? Yes,
Speaker 4: but it's actually more complicated than that. Oh okay. So
Speaker 4: on the one hand, these assets, you know, a mortgage
Speaker 4: does make more money than just putting your money in
Speaker 4: the bank. Right, That's like the basis of banking is
Speaker 4: that they can use your money that's sitting in the
Speaker 4: bank and getting interested and then they make more money
Speaker 4: by spending it.
Speaker 5: Elsewhere.
Speaker 16: But so they're just doing this because they hate us,
Speaker 16: not just to make money.
Speaker 4: No, there is an actual explanation, there's a third reason.
Speaker 4: So then why would you ever have your money in
Speaker 4: a bank or like buy something like safe like government
Speaker 4: bonds you can sell really quickly, right, Why would you
Speaker 4: ever want that? And the reason why is something called liquidity?
Speaker 18: Right.
Speaker 16: You want to be able to spend the money, yes,
Speaker 16: rather than wait thirty years for it to get paid back.
Speaker 4: Yes. Liquidity is just how easy is it to turn
Speaker 4: whatever you own into cash?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: Real money?
Speaker 16: Because most of it we're talking about is not money,
Speaker 16: it's the idea of money.
Speaker 4: Yes, so, so liquidity is literally it's the burger test?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 4: Can you buy a burger with this? Can I eat this? Money?
Speaker 4: Is like the most liquid asset, right, because you can?
Speaker 4: You can? You can turn this into a burger?
Speaker 16: Right, So liquidity is the only part of this that's
Speaker 16: actually money. Everything else is not money.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, liquidity is the measure of how money is it?
Speaker 4: Basically like, how easy is it to turn this into burger?
Speaker 16: Is this a special vehicle securitization?
Speaker 4: That's not real? Mia, No, it's fake as shit, right,
Speaker 4: this is not that complicated, right if you if it's
Speaker 4: like like you can you can buy a burger with
Speaker 4: ten dollars, yeah, right, that's liquid. Actually you kind of
Speaker 4: can't these days.
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 4: Look, I look, I imagine a world where you can
Speaker 4: buy a burger for ten dollars. Imagine imagine a burger, yes,
Speaker 4: imagine a burger that's purchasable. Now, what you can't buy
Speaker 4: a burger with is like the ten bucks that a
Speaker 4: guy you work with owes you for buying him a burger.
Speaker 16: Depends on how well you know the burger guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that's that's where things get bad. Yeah, right now,
Speaker 4: the thing is right, right, So the ten bucks the
Speaker 4: guy you work with like owes you not liquid. You
Speaker 4: don't have the money in your hands, and if you
Speaker 4: want to get it from him, you have to like
Speaker 4: go ask him for the money, and maybe he has
Speaker 4: ten bucks and maybe he doesn't, right at which point
Speaker 4: you can't get your ten dollars back until he has
Speaker 4: the money.
Speaker 16: That but then ten dollars that I'm theoretically owed is
Speaker 16: an asset though I have not a debt.
Speaker 4: Yes, okay, yes, it's stupid. Now, Loans loans are not
Speaker 4: liquid assets, right, and they're not liquid assets because you
Speaker 4: can't get the money back like immediately.
Speaker 16: So I don't have ten dollars I can spend, but
Speaker 16: on paper, I do have ten theoretical dollars.
Speaker 4: Yeah right. And this is also like most of what
Speaker 4: billionaire money is, hey, correct, Like most of their money
Speaker 4: is like in like a stock or some shit or
Speaker 4: like it's weird fake money.
Speaker 16: Like they could access this amount of money, but.
Speaker 4: They don't have it. Yeah, it's not real now, Okay,
Speaker 4: there is this question, so why why would you keep
Speaker 4: your money in fake money instead of real money? And
Speaker 4: the answer is that it gives you more money back
Speaker 4: because say you're an asshole, right, and you're charging interest
Speaker 4: on your coworker for that burger.
Speaker 16: Love right, So that ten dollars is actually worth more
Speaker 16: than ten dollars money. So the ten dollars that I
Speaker 16: don't have is theoretically worthwll.
Speaker 4: You're worth more. Yeah, it's worth more than the money
Speaker 4: that you do have. I can get cheese on the burger, yes, right.
Speaker 4: And this is like the fundamental thing of the banking system,
Speaker 4: Like one of them is that ill liquid assets or
Speaker 4: like assets that you that aren't money are worth more
Speaker 4: than money.
Speaker 16: I guess like when I put a small amount of
Speaker 16: my savings into a CD. That's what I'm doing, except
Speaker 16: normal style. They're doing it weird. Yeah, basically because that's
Speaker 16: like an I liquid asset that I'm I'm I'm trading
Speaker 16: the ability to access that liquidity for the POTENTI more
Speaker 16: money later.
Speaker 4: Wait. Sorry when you say do you mean like a
Speaker 4: like a physical like a disc, like a CD. No,
Speaker 4: a CD like at the bank, like the yeah yeah,
Speaker 4: like the investment product. Yeah sure, yeah yeah, Sorry. I
Speaker 4: was like, no, I'm not talking about buying compact. I
Speaker 4: would just leave at five am this time. It's been
Speaker 4: ever heard of it. Wow, there's there's actually a really
Speaker 4: an annoying thing researching this episode because there's like, so
Speaker 4: CDOs are like a type of loan that will kind
Speaker 4: of get you in a bit. But there's also a
Speaker 4: tech position called cdo. It's like chief something.
Speaker 16: Officer, a dookie officer who cares.
Speaker 4: Yeah whatever the fuck? Right, But like when you're trying
Speaker 4: to search for stuff that's like about CDOs, right, the
Speaker 4: other one keeps coming up. I hate it. Okay, okay,
Speaker 4: locking in, locking in, right, lock and load. Now what
Speaker 4: if you both want into more money and also the
Speaker 4: ability to buy a burger.
Speaker 16: I guess I would uh probably break one of Carl's fingers.
Speaker 16: This is the guy that owes me the ten dollars, Carl.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but even then, and it's hard to even that's like,
Speaker 4: this is too hard for these people.
Speaker 16: I would go to Carl's house and kick him out
Speaker 16: of it.
Speaker 4: Well yeah, so but the other thing is like you
Speaker 4: are not very rich, okay these people. If you are
Speaker 4: really really rich, I am talking like billionaires maybe like
Speaker 4: high high class multimillionaires. Well, you can go to a
Speaker 4: shadow bank. Oh right, you can get a loan based
Speaker 4: on the loan. No, well you're saying. So the thing
Speaker 4: is that you have money, right, but you want to
Speaker 4: turn your money into more money, Like you have like
Speaker 4: actual cash, right, like you are you are, for example,
Speaker 4: a pension fund. You have a shit ton of cash.
Speaker 4: Or imagine imagine a pension fund.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: This is okay.
Speaker 4: This is also really hard because it used to be
Speaker 4: easier to explain this because like we used to live
Speaker 4: in a world where people had pension funds and had mortgages,
Speaker 4: and now we no longer have pension funds or mortgages.
Speaker 16: I live in an apartment, and I will always live
Speaker 16: in an apartment.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, and still okay, So like imagine imagine a pension fund. Right,
Speaker 4: you have a shit ton of money from your members
Speaker 4: paying into the fund, but it's cash. You need to
Speaker 4: turn that cash into more money. But also you're a
Speaker 4: pension fund, so you constantly have to take money back
Speaker 4: out in order to pay the people who are retiring
Speaker 4: to pay old right. Well, yeah, and this is also
Speaker 4: a thing that like, you know, if you're just like
Speaker 4: a rich person, sometimes you want your a lot of
Speaker 4: times you want your money in assets that are like
Speaker 4: you can you can turn back into real money, but
Speaker 4: also make you a shit ton of money.
Speaker 18: Right.
Speaker 16: They need to sort of revolve a little bit theyd
Speaker 16: be like yeah, I don't know, like a jello like
Speaker 16: partially liquid.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and this is this is what the shadow banks do, right,
Speaker 4: because the thing that you can buy is one of
Speaker 4: those mortgages they've turned into like a security. Right, you
Speaker 4: can go buy someone else's debt, huh, but because it's
Speaker 4: a magic security now, and these are called mortgage backed securities.
Speaker 4: And again, if you're to remember, yeah, anything about anything
Speaker 4: about two thousand and eight, that's what blew up the
Speaker 4: whole economy. Is these mortgage backed securities?
Speaker 16: Yeah, I've heard of that because it was bad, yep,
Speaker 16: terrible idea, and so we're still doing that.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, it's good. I mean it's it's less specifically
Speaker 4: the mortgage back ones are less bad as they started
Speaker 4: doing it with like commercial retail loans, which is incredible. Great,
Speaker 4: so that's really fun. They're also doing with other unhidden
Speaker 4: shit that we're gonna do like next episode. And what
Speaker 4: these people are really buying aren't just these like you're
Speaker 4: not buying like one person's mortgage, right right. They're like
Speaker 4: pooled and like bundled. Yeah, yeah, they like they bundle
Speaker 4: them all together and then you you buy the rights
Speaker 4: to a percentage of the pool.
Speaker 16: It's not like when you sponsor like an elephant in
Speaker 16: Africa or something, and they send you a picture of
Speaker 16: like a specific element, or they don't send you they
Speaker 16: doesten to a picture of the family you're arming. No,
Speaker 16: these are the Joneses. You own their fucking house.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's it's it's it's it's a ship show. No, well,
Speaker 4: I mean eventually you might have to go figure out
Speaker 4: who that is because you like own whatever the fuck
Speaker 4: percentage of like the mortgages or whatever. But like, okay,
Speaker 4: so these are these are just like someone else's debt
Speaker 4: that you're buying, and that the people who can do
Speaker 4: this are you know, people who have billions of dollars.
Speaker 4: It's not you, the listener. And by the way, if
Speaker 4: you the listener have billions of dollars lying around for
Speaker 4: some reason, can I have some please? Yes, please please
Speaker 4: give me some of them so I can house like
Speaker 4: literally every trans woman and like transperson, I can. I
Speaker 4: can do it, Like, please give me your billions of
Speaker 4: dollars so I can I can achieve this goal. But
Speaker 4: like we're talking about you know, like like the Pension
Speaker 4: Fund of California, we're talking about mega corporations, insurance companies,
Speaker 4: the kinds of things I can actually buy these, like
Speaker 4: you know. Now, this is where we get to one
Speaker 4: of the other problems, which is that these things are
Speaker 4: not insured. So yeah, what do you do in order
Speaker 4: to try to make it less risky? What do you
Speaker 4: get if you can't pay the loan back? And this
Speaker 4: is what's called collateral I don't know, swift punch of
Speaker 4: the nuts. Oh no, they take your house right, Yes,
Speaker 4: that's supposed to be the thing. So okay. The way
Speaker 4: that like shadow banking loans tend to work is that
Speaker 4: they they have collateral, right, so you you give them
Speaker 4: something or or it's either you give them something directly
Speaker 4: or it's like if you promise to give them the thing. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and giving it to them directly is like a repo
Speaker 4: market thing. We're not really going to get into those
Speaker 4: right now, but this does. That's like, that's also a
Speaker 4: kind of shadow bank. But there's a problem, right, which
Speaker 4: is what if the thing that you're paying, you're paying
Speaker 4: as collateral, Like what if your house becomes worthless? And
Speaker 4: what if? What if Molly, and it's.
Speaker 16: Completely uninsured and there's no way to fix it because
Speaker 16: I don't even have anything to give you.
Speaker 4: Now, now, Molly, what if And this is purely hypothetical,
Speaker 4: It could never happen in the real world, Molly, But
Speaker 4: what if somehow, someone someone decided to use the same
Speaker 4: house as collateral for multiple different securities.
Speaker 16: Well, that could never go wrong.
Speaker 4: What if, Mollie, they made a word for this that
Speaker 4: is so complicated, I am not going to attempt to
Speaker 4: read it on the show. What if, Molly?
Speaker 16: What is it in German or something.
Speaker 4: No, it's like it's just like this, it's like the
Speaker 4: it's like the length of my head. It's like hyper
Speaker 4: hyper something bullshit. Like I refuse to say it because
Speaker 4: it is just like a completely like financed goal bullshit
Speaker 4: term they made up.
Speaker 16: So but the point of the point of collateral is
Speaker 16: that you can use it to pay off the loan
Speaker 16: if you default one. And so that literally won't work
Speaker 16: more than once because once I eat the burger, Once
Speaker 16: I eat the burger.
Speaker 4: It's bond yep. And this is one of the things
Speaker 4: that happened in two thousand years. I can't prom I
Speaker 4: can't promise ten guys my burger, now, Molly, here's the
Speaker 4: amazing thing here, right, Because but then the advantage for
Speaker 4: these companies, right is like, if you're the bank that
Speaker 4: has the mortgage, suddenly you can spin your mortgage off
Speaker 4: into like multiple securities that you can sell.
Speaker 16: Right, it's worth ten times more and that's great for you.
Speaker 4: Yes, and comma, comma, we we haven't even okay, I
Speaker 4: just I just described as to where these people are
Speaker 4: promising the same house to multiple people. This isn't even
Speaker 4: the extremely unfathomably reckless and greedy shit. No it is,
Speaker 4: Oh it is, but it's not the worst of it.
Speaker 4: Oh good. Okay, So do you remember that quote from
Speaker 4: when I was giving the first definition of shadow banking, right, Like,
Speaker 4: I gave this quote from the guy who invented the
Speaker 4: term where he called it quote the whole alphabet soup
Speaker 4: of leveraged up investment conduits, vehicles, and structures. Right. So
Speaker 4: we've kind of talked about the conduits, vehicles, and structures, right,
Speaker 4: those are all of the shadow banks that like make
Speaker 4: the things. Right.
Speaker 16: I love the conduits, vehicles, and structures. Yeah, all the acronyms.
Speaker 4: But what does leveraged up mean?
Speaker 14: Now?
Speaker 4: Okay? In this case, it means that a bunch of
Speaker 4: these banks have taken out a shit ton of like
Speaker 4: risky high end loans in order to buy more of
Speaker 4: these fucking mortgages because they think they can make more
Speaker 4: money off of it.
Speaker 16: So they took out they took out loans to buy
Speaker 16: these unsecured securities.
Speaker 4: The regular ass banks were doing this, Yeah, they they
Speaker 4: went into debt to buy more of these shitty mortgages.
Speaker 16: So they took out loans to buy what are essentially
Speaker 16: unsecured loans.
Speaker 4: Yep, because I thought it would make them more money.
Speaker 16: But there's no money involved.
Speaker 4: Money It is about to get so much worse, right,
Speaker 4: So okay, So sticking with leveraging for a second. Right,
Speaker 4: you might have actually heard of something called a leveraged buyout.
Speaker 4: I have heard those words, and then I stopped listening. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so here's the thing. Leverage buyouts are something that actually
Speaker 4: happens in the real world that does fuck you directly,
Speaker 4: which is a whole bunch of companies that used to
Speaker 4: be like normalized companies like died because venture capital firms, you,
Speaker 4: by the way, are also shadow banks. Oh did this right?
Speaker 4: They came in tactically speaking, they did it through like
Speaker 4: risky bond purchases, but basically they did a bunch of
Speaker 4: high interest loans and then they go buy a company
Speaker 4: and then they like strip it for parts, and then
Speaker 4: they try to raise the stock price of the company.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the river parts, sell everything and and get out. Right,
Speaker 3: that's what a leverage buyout is.
Speaker 4: These people are sort of are doing kind of a
Speaker 4: version of that, but like they're they're taking on this
Speaker 4: debt in order to like buy fucking shitty underwater mortgages
Speaker 4: because they look like they're making so much money.
Speaker 15: They're taking on.
Speaker 16: Real debt to buy hypothetical debt.
Speaker 4: Oh, it's about to get so much worse.
Speaker 16: That doesn't seem like a good idea.
Speaker 4: So not to get so much worse. So that's what
Speaker 4: like the leveraged part of that.
Speaker 16: I don't even know how you do that in burgers.
Speaker 4: I don't know. You're going into debt to like buy
Speaker 4: the promise of burgers in the future so you can
Speaker 4: sell those future burgers.
Speaker 16: Yeah, but burgers are real. The thing we're not talking
Speaker 16: about a real.
Speaker 4: Well technically technically speaking. Somewhere at the bottom of this
Speaker 4: is mortgages. However, Comma, we're about to get into a
Speaker 4: kind of asset where there isn't anything behind it. And
Speaker 4: this is where the really really truly unhinged shit starts.
Speaker 4: It hasn't, which is that these companies figured out a
Speaker 4: way to bet on whether these mortgages were going to
Speaker 4: fail or not.
Speaker 16: That's so tight MEA, I fucking love that.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, by the way, I kindatize enough, how how
Speaker 4: unhinged this is the mechanism they're using to do this
Speaker 4: is called a credit default swap. Oh, I've heard that phrase.
Speaker 4: This was supposed to be how they did insurance. Their
Speaker 4: mechanism for doing insurance on all of these insane loans
Speaker 4: they were doing was originally like Okay, I'm gonna you're
Speaker 4: don't know, so you have a you have a bank, right,
Speaker 4: the bank has given out a risky loan. So this
Speaker 4: bank goes to another bank they shouldn't do that, and
Speaker 4: they say, hey, if this person actually pays the loan back,
Speaker 4: I will pay you money.
Speaker 16: Okay, So the other so the other bank is like
Speaker 16: taking a gamble.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So the other bank that's giving out the loan
Speaker 4: right gets money if the loan goes under. So in
Speaker 4: theory they're sort of like insured against the risk. They
Speaker 4: call it like hedging. They're like so like like so
Speaker 4: theoretically it's less bad from them because now even if
Speaker 4: the loan goes under, they still get money back from
Speaker 4: that other bank. So the other bank is just a bookie. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and the other bank is betting that they are going
Speaker 4: to get it. So then and if the loan does
Speaker 4: get paid, then that bank makes money. And this is
Speaker 4: legal for everyone to do. Yep.
Speaker 16: This is real banking or shadow bank.
Speaker 4: This is real bank didn't know this is technically actually no,
Speaker 4: this is actually both both of them do this. Technically speaking,
Speaker 4: the instrument like like the actual like credit default swap
Speaker 4: or whatever, is made by the shadow banks, but then
Speaker 4: they're brought by the regular banks.
Speaker 16: I'm started to think that the bank starts the shadow
Speaker 16: banks and then all of this is just fake and bad.
Speaker 5: Like.
Speaker 4: So here's the thing about these systems, right, is that,
Speaker 4: like a lot of the original literature on it was
Speaker 4: considering them separate. But it's like no, like the regular
Speaker 4: banks are making their own shadow banks do these things.
Speaker 4: They're all involved in these assets. They're also investing in
Speaker 4: the shadow banks, which is the problem we're having right now.
Speaker 4: It's like it's the same guy.
Speaker 16: He just like turns his chair around at his desk
Speaker 16: and he's like, now I'm shadow bank Todd.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, and sometimes it's that sometimes there legitimately is
Speaker 4: just other entities they work with, but yeah.
Speaker 16: But there's still it's still a bank engaging. So it's like, oh,
Speaker 16: these are non banking practices, yeah, but the bank is
Speaker 16: doing it well.
Speaker 4: But here's the thing. The important part for that though,
Speaker 4: is that like the non bank also can do this
Speaker 4: with other non banks even better even yeah, right, I.
Speaker 16: Just feel like once we're once we're talking about shadow banking,
Speaker 16: like the real bank should not be in the room,
Speaker 16: Like go home, Wells Fargo, you don't belong here, you're drunk.
Speaker 4: No, But like they're funding all of this, right, If the.
Speaker 16: Real bank is involved with the shadow banking, that means
Speaker 16: like I can't opt out of being involved in this
Speaker 16: because they get my money.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know what we were talking about that at
Speaker 4: the top that like so some of these like bank
Speaker 4: banks had to like stop their withdrawals. Oh yeah, one
Speaker 4: of those, by the way, was JP Morgan. But that's
Speaker 4: a real bank, Yep. They're involved in the banking shit,
Speaker 4: so they are exposed to when they're like fucking seven
Speaker 4: hundred million dollar loan to like a fucking actually went home.
Speaker 4: Which one was the seven hundred million dollar I think
Speaker 4: a seven hundred million dollar loan that went under was
Speaker 4: the one that was to a subprime auto loan company.
Speaker 4: That's a bad investment. It's why it's so evil.
Speaker 16: So why am I trusting all of my money that
Speaker 16: I have in this world? I'm letting this guy hold
Speaker 16: on to it who's obviously not good with fucking money.
Speaker 4: Well, because the fdi C is ensuring it. Why are
Speaker 4: you in charge of it?
Speaker 16: Why are you in charge of having the money? You
Speaker 16: obviously don't make great financial decisions because you invested seven
Speaker 16: hundred million dollars in subprime auto loans.
Speaker 4: So, Mollie, this is the this is the point where
Speaker 4: we need to bring debt the first five thousand years
Speaker 4: back into this and emphasize the extent to which the
Speaker 4: financial class has always been deeply connected to the military,
Speaker 4: and why has always been deconnected to war financing. I'm
Speaker 4: starting to realize that this is all very bad. It's
Speaker 4: very bad, it's all fair, and this is this is
Speaker 4: to some extent why right Like part part of what
Speaker 4: right wing conspiracism about the financial system is is that
Speaker 4: like these people are like like the right wingers, like
Speaker 4: these people are there's like a baseline level of anti semitism,
Speaker 4: like in the US right because it is a is
Speaker 4: a Christian society that is just like what fucking happens there?
Speaker 4: And these people are like, Okay, we can channel all
Speaker 4: of the anger at like, oh my god, by fucking
Speaker 4: house got stolen by the bank because because they were
Speaker 4: betting on the mortgage to.
Speaker 16: Fail, and I still understand why that's legal.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, all these right wing conspiracits do is they look
Speaker 4: at that shit and they go, oh, well it was
Speaker 4: the Jews, and it's like but no, like fuck off,
Speaker 4: like these are all No, it was the band and
Speaker 4: the other thing. And this is actually a really important
Speaker 4: thing that's not well understood here is that like the
Speaker 4: actual people who run these fucking banks and the people
Speaker 4: who work at them are all fucking white Christian dipshits.
Speaker 4: This is like a really really like persistent issue that
Speaker 4: everyone fucking has, which is that like one of one
Speaker 4: of the great successes of anti Semitism was like creating
Speaker 4: the image of the banker as a Jewish person. And no,
Speaker 4: they're not the bait, Like I fucking went to school
Speaker 4: with these people. They're all a bunch of fucking white
Speaker 4: frat bros. They're fucking white Christian frat ros. Oh right,
Speaker 4: you University of Chicago, you have a degree in economics
Speaker 4: in the University of Chicago. No, facing, I have an
Speaker 4: anthropology degree, Thank you very much. I took a not
Speaker 4: a fucking fake degree like the stupid econ bullshit.
Speaker 16: ID say that's actually so evil to study economics. It's Chicago,
Speaker 16: you probably met some of the most evil people.
Speaker 4: Armed I was just like in a dorm with them,
Speaker 4: so you saw that I know all these people. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and like it is not it is not a bunch
Speaker 4: of Jewish people. It's it's a bunch of Christian frat bros.
Speaker 4: Like that's like the thing that's actually going on. There's
Speaker 4: actually a whole One day I will write Behind the
Speaker 4: Basket's episode about leverage buyouts and about how like there
Speaker 4: was like a Jewish guy who kind of like like
Speaker 4: did a lot of the inventing stuff, but him breaking
Speaker 4: into the banking thing was like a whole thing because
Speaker 4: there was so much anti Semitism because all of the
Speaker 4: banking sector was run by all of the fucking like
Speaker 4: weird dipshit like CIA, like like wasp motherfuckers. I mean,
Speaker 4: the Mormons have a huge hedge fund. Yep, yep, yep,
Speaker 4: yep yep.
Speaker 16: Yeah, so like the what I say, I read an
Speaker 16: article about it, the hedge fund, that the Mormons operate
Speaker 16: like they have their like best and brightest finance bros.
Speaker 16: Like you know, Mormons do their to your mission. If
Speaker 16: you're really good at finance your mission that you don't
Speaker 16: have to go to South America and like tell people
Speaker 16: about the Book of Mormon. You can work at the
Speaker 16: hedge fund as your mission.
Speaker 4: It's a nightmare. I'm doing a hedge funds for God. Yep.
Speaker 4: That's a SATs shadow bank, by the way, Yep, it's great.
Speaker 4: So okay, okay, coming back to this again. Right, so
Speaker 4: we're talking about like what what causes two thousand and
Speaker 4: eight and how do these shadow banks like do this?
Speaker 4: And the answer is that they've turned all of these
Speaker 4: mortgages into these like fake securities then they can trade, right,
Speaker 4: they package them all together, and they find out something
Speaker 4: really crucial, which is that if they throw a bunch
Speaker 4: of loans that they obviously know are going to fail
Speaker 4: together and send them to a regulatory agency. And by
Speaker 4: the way, all of these like bonds that they're issuing
Speaker 4: have like grades based on supposed to be like how
Speaker 4: safe they are, And they figure out yeah, and they
Speaker 4: figure out that they can send a bunch of really
Speaker 4: shitty bonds. But if they package enough shitty bonds together,
Speaker 4: they could send them to the regulators and the regulators
Speaker 4: would have would evaluate some of them as being good,
Speaker 4: and then you could sell the good ones to your
Speaker 4: pension fund because I thought it was a good bond
Speaker 4: and it made money. That's just lying and then and
Speaker 4: then yes, and yes and then and then behind the scenes, right,
Speaker 4: all of these fucking companies, all these shadow banks, all
Speaker 4: the regular banks, they're all doing these. They're all doing
Speaker 4: these credit default swaps, right, so they're all betting on
Speaker 4: which ones of these are going to fail.
Speaker 16: I'm putting all of these boys in time out.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna put them in the bottom of a tad
Speaker 4: so evil. And and they they start, they start doing these,
Speaker 4: making these like even more complicated instruments right where, Now
Speaker 4: what they're what they're selling to you isn't just the
Speaker 4: package of mortgages. They're also selling you the credit default
Speaker 4: swaps with the loan. So theoretically, what's happening is like
Speaker 4: they've created an instrument that, regardless of what happens to
Speaker 4: the loan, you make money. That's not how anything works. No,
Speaker 4: it's bullshit. It's so obviously bullshit.
Speaker 16: I made up this fake thing where no matter what happens,
Speaker 16: I get rich.
Speaker 4: That's cool. I would love to do that. Yeah, And
Speaker 4: nobody was like wait, well, I mean sometimes a couple
Speaker 4: of people were, but like, like people didn't just be
Speaker 4: like wait, hold on, no, obviously, you can't make an
Speaker 4: asset that makes money regardless of whether the thing fails
Speaker 4: or not. I invented a money machine, Like that's fucking ridiculous.
Speaker 4: And then eventually, yeah, it was like, no, they ran
Speaker 4: out of fucking mortgages.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: One of the ways that the blame for this was
Speaker 4: deflected onto regular people was that they blamed the banks
Speaker 4: or like they blamed regular people for like not being
Speaker 4: able to pay the mortgages. But the thing is, by
Speaker 4: the time you get to the point where you're like
Speaker 4: packaging all that, you're betting on the mortgages. Right, if
Speaker 4: you're a bank, even if you're the regular bank, you
Speaker 4: don't make money off of like someone paying their mortgage back.
Speaker 4: You make money on betting on the mortgages. So you're incentive.
Speaker 4: So just keep giving out loans you know won't happen
Speaker 4: because you can sell those loans off to some other
Speaker 4: dipshit and then you and then you can bet on
Speaker 4: those loans that they're going to fail and you can
Speaker 4: make money. And that's how you make your money because you're.
Speaker 16: You're not a bank anymore, you're a bookie who's cheating.
Speaker 4: Yep. I don't think that's good Mia. No, this was
Speaker 4: the entire fucking financial system. We just let these people
Speaker 4: stay in power, and.
Speaker 16: I'm just supposed to just continue living my life like this.
Speaker 4: I don't know, like looking at this and then and
Speaker 4: then learning that all of these people got fucking bailed
Speaker 4: up by the government and none of them went to prison.
Speaker 4: And do they know they're cheating liars who are faking
Speaker 4: and making it up?
Speaker 16: Or are they like so high on their own supply
Speaker 16: they're like they're like, no, bro, no, but this is
Speaker 16: totally gonna work.
Speaker 4: It's totally gonna work. Well, here's the thing. Some of
Speaker 4: them know and some of them don't, because some of
Speaker 4: them believe that this is cool. Yeah, Like some some
Speaker 4: of them legitimately thought that this was just going to
Speaker 4: work forever.
Speaker 16: Like do they believe they're negative money backed by other
Speaker 16: fake money backed by the idea of promise? Is a
Speaker 16: fake money? They think that's money?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yep, Well, thought was gonna work. It's not. It's not. Nope,
Speaker 4: And it turned out to not be any fucking money,
Speaker 4: and it blew up again, like entire countries, countries were
Speaker 4: buying these, they went bankrupt, So like this.
Speaker 16: Is less real than a board ape, nft, And that's
Speaker 16: really saying something.
Speaker 4: It's it's astonishing.
Speaker 16: Because at least the at least I can look at
Speaker 16: least I can look at the picture of the monkey.
Speaker 4: I can't look at this no, like it like you
Speaker 4: can't look at the bet you're making on whether and
Speaker 4: whether monkey go down, Like it's like like all my
Speaker 4: apes gone. Yeah, but it's suppressing because the entire world
Speaker 4: is just this. Now it's a shit the banks were
Speaker 4: doing where you're betting on whether mortgage would a fail,
Speaker 4: but now it's your betting on whether like what day
Speaker 4: we're going to drop a bomb on a run?
Speaker 16: Like nothing is real and everything is gambling.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, And this is you know what what I
Speaker 4: would call a sort of terminal crisis stage of capitalism
Speaker 4: where alike.
Speaker 16: Because everything is so divorced from any material reality, from
Speaker 16: any good.
Speaker 4: Or service, Like there is a limit to which you
Speaker 4: can run an entire economy that is purely based on gambling.
Speaker 4: Like they're just there's a limit and we're going to
Speaker 4: hit it. Really, So that's God, that's gonna break, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's going to break. It's going to break spectacularly. However, Comma,
Speaker 4: I do have good news for you, don't I do?
Speaker 4: I have good news. You now actually understand what non
Speaker 4: bank financial intermediation is. No, I don't. I'm gonna walk
Speaker 4: you through it. You actually do. So, I'm going to
Speaker 4: quote the IMFs definition of non bank financial intermediation. Quote
Speaker 4: all entities outside the regulated banking system that perform the
Speaker 4: core banking functions. Credit intermediation, that is taking money from
Speaker 4: savers and letting it to borrowers. The four key aspects
Speaker 4: of intermediation are maturity transformation. We know this one, right,
Speaker 4: This is this is what the bank does.
Speaker 16: Alone gets older, Yeah, yeah, you gets paid back over time.
Speaker 17: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well it's you you turn your short term thing into
Speaker 4: a long term investment, or you do the opposite opposite.
Speaker 4: It's not good. They're both kind of a disaster, but like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: the the other opposite is kind of how we got
Speaker 4: into this mess. There's liquidity transformation, which we know this too.
Speaker 16: It's turning money into a thing that's not money.
Speaker 4: Yeah, or turning not money into things you can buy
Speaker 4: burger with. Okay, Yeah, I got this leverage. We also
Speaker 4: know this, which is you go into a bunch of
Speaker 4: debt to buy something else. And then there's credit risk transfer,
Speaker 4: which we know that one too. It's the betting market.
Speaker 4: Were supposedly swapping the risk by both of you two
Speaker 4: are now betting on whether this thing is going to fail.
Speaker 4: So it sounds like.
Speaker 16: Even just like regular banking is kind of just gambling now.
Speaker 4: Yep, yep, yep. Well, and it's fun too, So this
Speaker 4: is the thing that you used to be talked about
Speaker 4: more and isn't now. But like most of like like
Speaker 4: the world's corporations are also basically this, know, like this
Speaker 4: has been a thing for a while. But it's like
Speaker 4: the auto manufacturers don't make their money off of cars.
Speaker 4: I mean they sort of do. They make some money
Speaker 4: of cars, or like most of what they make their
Speaker 4: money off of is like the forward finance company, which
Speaker 4: is like the auto loans thing. Oh and then the
Speaker 4: auto loans thing trades a bunch of like does all
Speaker 4: of this other financial bullshit to make money? So like,
Speaker 4: I don't think that's a good idea. That's that's what
Speaker 4: capitalism is.
Speaker 16: So everything everything is fully reliant on.
Speaker 4: This, like stupid, gambling, bullshit, Emperor's.
Speaker 16: Wearing no clothes, economy yep. And if anybody, if anybody
Speaker 16: points out that none of this is connected to a
Speaker 16: material reality, everything falls apart.
Speaker 4: Well, here's the thing. The thing that stoves everything for
Speaker 4: falling apart is that the one thing you can do
Speaker 4: with your money is turn it into gun.
Speaker 3: Now I'm listening, and that's what stops of falling apart, right,
Speaker 3: because now I'm listening. And this is also a sort
Speaker 3: of graverism.
Speaker 4: But it's like behind every bank is a man with
Speaker 4: a gun, because the reason that this money is even
Speaker 4: sort of real is that the bank can like like
Speaker 4: the police will come get you, right, like men with
Speaker 4: guns will appear and coerce you to pay shit.
Speaker 16: Right, But what if what if instead of burger we
Speaker 16: bought gun?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: Like this is what is broadly referred to as the
Speaker 4: social revolution. Is it is broadly considered a negative by
Speaker 4: the financial sector. It is broadly considered a positive by
Speaker 4: everyone the fuck else. Okay, that's not true. It's not
Speaker 4: consider it a positive by like, I guess the people
Speaker 4: who own regular businesses. And this is like this shit
Speaker 4: that like, you know, it was kind of less unhinged
Speaker 4: back then. But like if you go read the people
Speaker 4: who were like doing this shit in like the early
Speaker 4: nineteen hundreds, if you read the writing, it's all them
Speaker 4: being like, oh yeah, no, by the way, like a
Speaker 4: bunch of banks just like turned the entire Ottoman empire
Speaker 4: into like a debt peon, and now their entire economy
Speaker 4: is just dedicated to paying off these fucking loans. And
Speaker 4: this is like hideously fucking evil, Like they're all complaining
Speaker 4: about the same shit.
Speaker 16: And the important lesson we learned from that, The important
Speaker 16: lesson we learned from that was to do it more
Speaker 16: more oh yeah, yeah yeah, to invent increasingly more complicated
Speaker 16: ways of doing that.
Speaker 18: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And like this this is why the term third world
Speaker 4: is a slur, because because instead of being a political movement,
Speaker 4: because those the countries in the political movement that was
Speaker 4: called the Third World movement, all of their economies got
Speaker 4: fucking annihilated because they had these like loans whose interest
Speaker 4: rate could change, and the US jacked up all the
Speaker 4: interest rates and so suddenly their loans were like like
Speaker 4: the amount you had to like pay on the loans
Speaker 4: it went from like twenty percent or something to like
Speaker 4: fifty or one hundred or some shit, and you know,
Speaker 4: and like in these countries have never recovered, like Nigeria
Speaker 4: has never really economically recovered from the shit that happened
Speaker 4: to them. This this is why a whole bunch of
Speaker 4: Latin America is like this too, Like it was, like
Speaker 4: why there's so much sort of like writing systemic poverty
Speaker 4: is that the economies were entirely transformed into machines to
Speaker 4: like pay back these fucking debts taken out by these dictators.
Speaker 4: This is the whole fucking economy now. And you know,
Speaker 4: there's other shadow banks that do other kind of completely unhandshit,
Speaker 4: right And I've been focusing this week on like specifically
Speaker 4: the kind that blew up the economy in two thousand
Speaker 4: and eight, But there's another kind that's like blowing up
Speaker 4: the economy right now, which is called private credit, which
Speaker 4: is I mentioned this briefly earlier. But private credit is
Speaker 4: when these like unregulated companies that are not banks, give
Speaker 4: out unregulated loans with unknown terms to other companies and
Speaker 4: then those loans go to shit. And there's a whole
Speaker 4: bunch of ways that can blow up, including by the
Speaker 4: way these companies are funding a bunch of the AI bubble.
Speaker 16: Oh, and that's a great investment.
Speaker 4: It's great, you know, because much much like a.
Speaker 16: Mortgage, there's a real physical thing like a house involved, Right,
Speaker 16: it's not just vibes.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, oh Molly, Molly, they those motherfuckers. I'm gonna
Speaker 4: talk about this a bit. I might have d just
Speaker 4: run on for this part of it too, just because
Speaker 4: like Ed does this all the time, but like those
Speaker 4: motherfuckers out there selling securities that are backed by fucking
Speaker 4: graphics cards, Like at least the more I can't believe
Speaker 4: I'm fucking saying this, but at least the mortgage backed securities,
Speaker 4: like there was a house you could steal to get
Speaker 4: your money back graphics cards. Ball, My all my apes are.
Speaker 3: Gone.
Speaker 16: All my apes are gone.
Speaker 4: Like there's other ones like it's it's so bad. It's
Speaker 4: just bad. But that's for another time because it is
Speaker 4: late as fuck and we are out of here.
Speaker 5: Mollie.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Thank you for sitting and enduring an hour
Speaker 4: of you knowing what a shadow bank is.
Speaker 16: Now I almost know what a bank is. I'm still
Speaker 16: working on the rest of it, but I think I'm
Speaker 16: getting closer.
Speaker 4: I believe in you. I think we've made for a
Speaker 4: progress today.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Now, now you can kind of understand what's going on.
Speaker 4: When this sting sector explodes again in like two weeks,
Speaker 4: you'll have to explain it to me again. Then I
Speaker 4: will be happy to Oh God, I hate these assholes Zoom.
Speaker 4: If you're listening to this and leaking my ship.
Speaker 2: Keep follow this in, than you keep follow this in.
Speaker 2: Keep it all in beautiful.
Speaker 4: Settings, beautiful stuff.
Speaker 2: Sufferable, it's welcome to it could happen here. Executive dysfunction, disorder,
Speaker 2: I for disorder.
Speaker 3: The weekly newscast we do that covers what's happening in
Speaker 3: the White House, the crumbling world of what it means.
Speaker 2: For you, and Sophie's simmering rage at Zoom constantly moving
Speaker 2: the recording button.
Speaker 20: Not even just Zoom, it's all the it's insufferable, all
Speaker 20: these goddamn platforms, but they're stupid AI features and moving
Speaker 20: of my settings.
Speaker 4: I sound like the oldest person in the world, but
Speaker 4: that's the record. But this, sup it, it's so annoying.
Speaker 2: Holy shit, everybody's pretty pissed about AI these days.
Speaker 20: I mean, sufferbly stupid, but stop it, stop it, And
Speaker 20: we have to use Microsoft for work, and every time
Speaker 20: I try to copy something, it asks if I want.
Speaker 4: To use Copilot. No, I never want to use copilot.
Speaker 3: Fuck off, Sophie, You're really not maximizing your productivity.
Speaker 20: Okay, this week we're covering in I CO eighteens now
Speaker 20: and no, don't do that to me.
Speaker 4: Clavicular a shit, stop it, stop it. Okay, I'm going
Speaker 4: away now to your jobs.
Speaker 2: What are our jobs?
Speaker 4: Really? You're not going to join in? Oh I'm here,
Speaker 4: I'm always here.
Speaker 3: That's Sophie Lichterman, also Mia Wong, Robert Evans, I'm Garrison Davis.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: This episode recovering the week of March eighteen to March
Speaker 3: twenty fifth. Speaking of AI, open ai is announced they
Speaker 3: are shutting down their AI generated video apps Sora as
Speaker 3: a results, the Disney deal has fell through. Disney's no
Speaker 3: longer going through with the one billion dollar investment and
Speaker 3: character licensing deal with open Ai.
Speaker 4: Oh no.
Speaker 3: According to the Hollywood Reporter, I know our audience is
Speaker 3: full of a lot of big Sora ads, and I'm
Speaker 3: sure this is some tough news.
Speaker 2: The Soura community is taking hits.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it's okay. You can still play Sora in
Speaker 4: Smash Ultimate. You can recover I believe in you want.
Speaker 2: There's a video game character named Sora too.
Speaker 4: Huh yeah, the key Blade. The key Blade will still
Speaker 4: be there.
Speaker 2: I didn't. I didn't get into those games.
Speaker 4: Actually lyricously, Also, it also a Disney franchise, also licensed
Speaker 4: to Disney.
Speaker 2: Yeah, great, great stuff. Well, I found this very funny
Speaker 2: in part because like, when Sora came out, there was
Speaker 2: this like burst of enthusiasm for like, soon we'll just
Speaker 2: be generating our own movies and TV. You won't need Hollywood.
Speaker 2: But then it turned out that you can't actually like
Speaker 2: do like even if you want to make stuff with Sora,
Speaker 2: like even if you wanted to include like clips of
Speaker 2: it to like help augment other films you were making.
Speaker 2: And there were a couple of filmmakers who tried to
Speaker 2: do this. You can summon critical ways where they were like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: you know, I can use like pieces of Soora generated
Speaker 2: video to like illustrate at this point I want to
Speaker 2: about AI. Well, you couldn't actually use like Sora footage
Speaker 2: in anything that you wanted to like sell to Netflix
Speaker 2: or Amazon or like whoever put in a theater, because
Speaker 2: like the terms of use basically did not allow it
Speaker 2: because of how much risk you were at of getting
Speaker 2: sued for, you know, utilizing other people's shit content other
Speaker 2: people made. Open Ai was not willing to indemnify the users.
Speaker 2: Adobe has a similar like slop ai video generation machine
Speaker 2: that does indemnify like users of the content they make,
Speaker 2: and that is still going. Yeah, so I think that's
Speaker 2: was kind of like one of the key issues here
Speaker 2: is just that, like you can't actually do anything with
Speaker 2: your Sora eclips.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, this doesn't mean it's gonna lead to
Speaker 3: the end of AI generated video on social media. Lord, No, unfortunately, No,
Speaker 3: this is a movement that open air is making towards
Speaker 3: business to business sales and away from this direct to
Speaker 3: consumer application. It's still an interesting move. The fact that
Speaker 3: Disney's breaking off the deal also interesting. Its exact gramifications
Speaker 3: for open ai and like a generated video in the
Speaker 3: long run still unclear.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I also just want to mention that, like, obviously,
Speaker 4: the other reason they're doing this is that this stuff
Speaker 4: is hideously expensive, Like, yeah, a lot of money to
Speaker 4: generate this stuff onfathomable amounts of money are just being
Speaker 4: lit on fire. Listen to everything ever written by our
Speaker 4: friends and colleague ed Zytron. If you want to know
Speaker 4: how much money is being lit on fire by this bullshit?
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: A few other small news stories. The US Army has
Speaker 3: raised its maximum enlistment age to forty two, and the
Speaker 3: Pentagon is planning to maintain National Guard presence in Washington,
Speaker 3: d C. Through the entirety of Trump's second term. In
Speaker 3: a special election Tuesday night, the Dems flipped Trump's own
Speaker 3: state house district in Florida Palm Beach County. Trump won
Speaker 3: this district by eleven points in the twenty twenty four election.
Speaker 3: This Tuesday, Democrat Emily Gregory won by two points, nearly
Speaker 3: a fourteen point swing.
Speaker 4: Are we going to point out how he voted in that.
Speaker 3: Election vote by mail? But it's okay because the Florida
Speaker 3: system is safe and secure.
Speaker 5: Yeah huh.
Speaker 4: Also, I want to point out this is more vindication
Speaker 4: of the Meya of the Miya Blue tsunami theory that
Speaker 4: this is going to be a two thousand and eight
Speaker 4: style blowout if they're losing fucking Marl logo by two points.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I try not to predict how the fucking bigger
Speaker 2: elections are going to go anymore. Yeah, just because Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's so hard. But isn't that you wouldn't call
Speaker 2: it a good sign for the Republicans.
Speaker 4: This is not a good sign for Republicans.
Speaker 3: Even though only like thirty three thousand people voted in
Speaker 3: this election, it is still interesting data.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you would think again that he would he would
Speaker 2: have more of a lock on his backyard. But also
Speaker 2: why would he have thought about it? Like I go
Speaker 2: back and forth and people are like, well, if they
Speaker 2: were going to steal an election, wouldn't they have done
Speaker 2: the one in mar Alago? Probably not, Nah, wouldn't the
Speaker 2: thought to do it? Probably would have figured they don't
Speaker 2: need to.
Speaker 3: The FBI is investigating former director of the National counter
Speaker 3: Terrorism Center Joe Kent for allegedly leaking class haided information,
Speaker 3: and this investigation predates his resignation last week. In an
Speaker 3: interview with Tucker Carlson last week, Kent implied Israel may
Speaker 3: have been involved in the killing of Charlie Kirk and
Speaker 3: that the FBI stopped Kent's investigation into this quote unquote linkage.
Speaker 2: Oh my Jesus, right, God, Yeah, man, Israel killed Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 2: That's why there haven't been any other people on the
Speaker 2: right who have complained about Trump's aiding and the betting
Speaker 2: Israeli war crimes. Like what, No other conservatives have been
Speaker 2: pissed about the invasion of Iran. Just Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 4: He was the lone anti semi He was the only one.
Speaker 3: Charlie Kirk was the Golden dome. Sly Trump, Yeah, no, yeah,
Speaker 3: silly idea for our first big story. Let's talk about airports,
Speaker 3: Everyone's favorite way to spend five to who knows, however impossible?
Speaker 4: How many hours? Yeah? An impossible avout? Oh god, no
Speaker 4: way to know. DHS has been shut.
Speaker 3: Down for over a month now, and more than four
Speaker 3: hundred TIS agents have quit after being left without pay,
Speaker 3: while ICE agents continued to receive paychecks through last year's
Speaker 3: Big Beautiful Bill. This past weekend, Trump announced ICE would
Speaker 3: be deployed to airports to assist TSA during the shutdown.
Speaker 3: By Monday morning, ICE agents have been sent to airports
Speaker 3: in Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, Fort Myers, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh,
Speaker 3: San Juan, Newark, and the two New York airports. Interestingly,
Speaker 3: come Monday, when ICE was spotted they were not wearing masks,
Speaker 3: which seems to go against agency claims that masks are
Speaker 3: for protecting agents against so called dosing. That morning, Trump
Speaker 3: truth to quote, I'm a big proponent of ice wearing
Speaker 3: masks as they search for and are forced to deal
Speaker 3: with hardened criminals.
Speaker 4: I would greatly appreciate. However, no masks in all caps.
Speaker 3: When helping our country out of the Democrat caused mess
Speaker 3: at the airports, etc.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Later on Monday, Trump was asked whose idea it was
Speaker 3: to send ice to airports, and he had this fascinating response.
Speaker 18: Mine, that was mine.
Speaker 10: That was like the paper clip.
Speaker 18: You know the story of the paper clip. One hundred
Speaker 18: and eighty two years ago. A man discovered the paper clip.
Speaker 18: It was so simple, and everybody that looked at it
Speaker 18: and say, why didn't I think of that?
Speaker 4: Ice was my idea.
Speaker 18: I called. First person I called was Tom Homan. I said,
Speaker 18: what do you think? He said, I think it's great.
Speaker 18: Then I saw it today there was some masks so
Speaker 18: and I didn't think the masks were proper. I put
Speaker 18: out a statement and I asked them would it be
Speaker 18: possible to take off the mask, because they should wear
Speaker 18: a mask when they're dealing with the murderers and the
Speaker 18: thugs left and let into our guns.
Speaker 2: Discovered the paper cliff, discovered the paper clip. Every now
Speaker 2: and then you get a little hint about his media diet.
Speaker 3: It is just fascinating discover the paper paper clip. It's
Speaker 3: one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard.
Speaker 4: It's it's insane.
Speaker 2: Somebody told them a little story about like, well, you
Speaker 2: know the person who vented the paper clip, and Trump
Speaker 2: just kind of ran with it.
Speaker 3: That's got to be it, right, Yeah, It's like it's
Speaker 3: like the paper clip exists as like as like a
Speaker 3: platonic form, like like.
Speaker 4: Existing, and the existing as like as like a piece
Speaker 4: of truth.
Speaker 2: Someone chiseled it out of a piece of granite, the
Speaker 2: first paper cliff and was like, yes, I've done it.
Speaker 2: It's like forty case shit. Where Like the theory is
Speaker 2: that all technology has already been invented. So if you
Speaker 2: invented technology or discovering it, yes, the dark Age of
Speaker 2: technology gave us the paper clip, and it is actually
Speaker 2: heresy to invent a new kind of paper clip or
Speaker 2: either way to attach papers together.
Speaker 3: Now in less funny news, also on Monday, Trump confirmed
Speaker 3: that ice would be arresting people at airports.
Speaker 9: We see ICE arresting legal migration.
Speaker 18: Yeah. Yeah, that's why the Democrats are going crazy because
Speaker 18: they've allowed by what they did and hold up. We
Speaker 18: put ICE who are a very high level I mean,
Speaker 18: they really are a high level group of people, and
Speaker 18: they love it because they're able to now arrest illegals
Speaker 18: as they come into the country that's.
Speaker 4: Very fertile territory. But that's not why they're there. They're
Speaker 4: really there to help.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, there to help.
Speaker 3: Most people who are documented do not illegally enter the
Speaker 3: country through airports.
Speaker 2: That would be silly.
Speaker 3: They overstay a visa that so they lose their legal presence.
Speaker 3: On Fox News, Tom Homan claimed that ICE was helping
Speaker 3: to reduce long lines at airports as well as arrest criminals.
Speaker 21: And we're filling the holes. The weight lines already dropped.
Speaker 21: Plus we're doing a security function at the airports. We're
Speaker 21: going to arrest criminals going to the airport. We're going
Speaker 21: to look for human trafficking, sex trafficking, money, you know, money,
Speaker 21: small run money smuggling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're they're just gonna steal cash off of people
Speaker 2: at the airport. Yeah, Yeah, Now, TSA has done that
Speaker 2: for a while off and on, so this isn't entirely new.
Speaker 2: But they're just gonna take money from people.
Speaker 3: By Tuesday evening lines at atl the airport in Atlanta,
Speaker 3: the most busy airport in the world, has the most
Speaker 3: amount of travel to and from. By Tuesday evening lines
Speaker 3: were back down, but by Wednesday morning, a friend of
Speaker 3: mine took three hours to get through TSA.
Speaker 4: God, so what exactly is ICE doing?
Speaker 3: Mostly standing behind TSA at security checkpoints, standing behind people
Speaker 3: still doing the regular TSA work, occasionally directing pedestrian traffic,
Speaker 3: and maybe at most yelling at people to empty their pockets.
Speaker 4: Hey, they're keeping the cookie clicker economy going. The mobile
Speaker 4: app economy is benefiting enormously for all these people standing
Speaker 4: around their phones.
Speaker 3: ICE agents cannot actually do the job of TSA since
Speaker 3: they do not have the training nor the certification required
Speaker 3: to do so. Nope, So ICE is largely just acting
Speaker 3: as auxiliary staff and security for the airport.
Speaker 4: But regular airport.
Speaker 3: Staff aren't suffering from the financial strain of the shutdown
Speaker 3: because they're still getting paid. Aaron Barker, the president of
Speaker 3: the TSA union Local five five, four, which covers airports
Speaker 3: in Georgia like atl denied that ice contributed to short
Speaker 3: lines on Tuesday compared to the weekend, noting that Tuesday
Speaker 3: is a non peak travel day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course it's quote, it has.
Speaker 3: Nothing to do with ice presence being there. The ICE
Speaker 3: officers in Atlanta are not doing any screening functions. They
Speaker 3: are literally standing behind the officers while they're checking documents
Speaker 3: and screening passengers or walking the que line that cascades
Speaker 3: through the airport.
Speaker 4: Un quote.
Speaker 3: New York and New Jersey TSA union president Heydrich Thomas
Speaker 3: said during a press conference, quote, you want to bring
Speaker 3: a tactical force into an environment where you're required to
Speaker 3: have customer service and skill set, a mindset where you
Speaker 3: know what you're doing, how to identify something that might
Speaker 3: be suspicious.
Speaker 4: They don't have that training unquote now, and.
Speaker 2: The TSA doesn't really have that training. Let's be clear, No, no,
Speaker 2: TSA does not actually a TSA doesn't know what they're
Speaker 2: doing at all. There was never any chance of this
Speaker 2: helping anything. This is only going to be more of
Speaker 2: a pain in the ass for people at airports, which
Speaker 2: already are unpleasant to be at.
Speaker 3: Now on Monday, there was viral video of plane clothes
Speaker 3: agents wrestling a woman into handcuffs at the San Francisco Airport.
Speaker 3: This incident actually took place Sunday night. Angelina Lopez Jimenez
Speaker 3: and her nine year old daughter were supposed to fly
Speaker 3: to Miami to visit a relative. Instead, she was detained
Speaker 3: by ICE agents and sent to an airport holding room,
Speaker 3: according to The New York Times, On Friday, TSA agents
Speaker 3: flagged her name on an upcoming passenger list and in
Speaker 3: formed ICE that Lopez Jimenez was scheduled to fly from
Speaker 3: Miami on Sunday. Lopez Semenez and her daughter were detained
Speaker 3: by border patrol back in twenty eighteen, but were released
Speaker 3: with a notice to attend court for removal proceedings. Eventually,
Speaker 3: she stopped showing up for appointments and her deportation was
Speaker 3: ordered in twenty nineteen. This weekend, at around nine to
Speaker 3: thirty pm Sunday night, two plane clothes agents approached Lopez
Speaker 3: Jimenez in Terminal three in San Francisco, and she then
Speaker 3: handed over her two Guatemalan passports, one for her and
Speaker 3: the other for her daughter. While being led to the
Speaker 3: international terminal, she tried to run away, prompting the agents
Speaker 3: to tackle her to the ground. On Tuesday, her and
Speaker 3: her daughter were sent to Guatemala. The New York Times
Speaker 3: says that this operation was unrelated to the Ice airport
Speaker 3: deployment ordered by Trump. Also on Sunday night, Republican Senate
Speaker 3: majority leader John Thune told Trump that the Senate had
Speaker 3: reached a deal to fund TSA and the rest of DHS,
Speaker 3: except for Ice, which would be handled later in a
Speaker 3: reconciliation bill, but Trump instructed Thune to kill the deal.
Speaker 3: Later that night, Trump truthed, I don't think that we
Speaker 3: should make any deal with crazy country destroying radical left
Speaker 3: Democrats unless and until they vote with Republicans to pass
Speaker 3: the Save America Act, that is, the voting Restriction Act,
Speaker 3: which includes voter ID with picture proof of citizenship to vote,
Speaker 3: heavily restricting mail in voting, requiring paper ballots, as well
Speaker 3: as quote no men in women's sports and no transgender
Speaker 3: mutilation of our precious children unquote. Senator Ted Cruz and
Speaker 3: John Kennedy are continuing to work on this plan that
Speaker 3: Thune told Trump about to reopen DHS sans Ice. On
Speaker 3: Tuesday morning, Kennedy said on Fox News that Thune told
Speaker 3: him the president is reconsidering the option and quote unquote
Speaker 3: may on board. Later that day, Trump was asked if
Speaker 3: he supports what appears to be the quote unquote emerging
Speaker 3: agreement coming out of the Senate reopen DHS. Trump replied, quote,
Speaker 3: I'm going to look at it. We're going to take
Speaker 3: a good, hard look at it. I want to support Republicans,
Speaker 3: and sometimes it's awfully hard to get votes when you
Speaker 3: have Democrats that don't want to have voter id unquote.
Speaker 3: Trump then went on to discuss the same act and
Speaker 3: how he added no men in women's sports quote unquote,
Speaker 3: because it's nearly a quote unquote ninety nine to one issue.
Speaker 3: It's time for our first break, and we will return
Speaker 3: with more news.
Speaker 2: We're back, So let's talk about the war that's been
Speaker 2: going on for like a month at this point in time.
Speaker 2: You know, as we're kind of sitting here right now,
Speaker 2: we've all seen gas prices leap up substantially. In California,
Speaker 2: there's samarias where you're paying like seven to fifty a gallon.
Speaker 2: Good lord, it's gone by about a dollar where I live.
Speaker 2: It looks fairly credible. There was a lot of fear
Speaker 2: that like kind of the worst case scenario would be
Speaker 2: that oil gets anywhere near like two hundred dollars a
Speaker 2: gallon or two hundred dollars a barrel from me a
Speaker 2: gallin Sorry, that would be that'd be real bad. But
Speaker 2: what we're looking at right now, there's credible reason to
Speaker 2: expect that like this stuff won't peak any lower than
Speaker 2: about one hundred and seventy five bucks a barrel, which
Speaker 2: is pretty catastrophic for the US economy and the global
Speaker 2: economy as a whole. Night it's bad, and Trump has been,
Speaker 2: i think, increasingly making it clear that he is looking
Speaker 2: for an off ramp. There's a lot of reporting from
Speaker 2: inside the administration that suggests they did not think things
Speaker 2: would still be going on this long, That they thought
Speaker 2: that after the first rank of Iranian leaders were kind
Speaker 2: of wiped out, the guys behind them would be willing
Speaker 2: to play ball with the administration in exchange for staying
Speaker 2: in power, which is more or less the offer that
Speaker 2: we gave Delsi Rodriguez in Venezuela and the Venezuelan regime.
Speaker 2: The people who kind of were behind Maduro were willing
Speaker 2: to take, but Iran is a very different country, and
Speaker 2: they're in a very different situation, and they have a
Speaker 2: very different military, and they have a very different physical
Speaker 2: strategic situation than Venezuela does than any other country that
Speaker 2: the United States has attempted to use these kind of
Speaker 2: like violent bullying tactics on and so far, on does
Speaker 2: not seem to be interested in coming to the table.
Speaker 2: Trump has made a couple of statements about how we're
Speaker 2: working on getting out of this. You know, we've presented
Speaker 2: an option to the Iranian government that would basically allow
Speaker 2: them to get rid of all of the sanctions if
Speaker 2: they just promised to stop enriching uranium and to handover
Speaker 2: everything that they do have and to never try to
Speaker 2: get a new I think it's pretty clear they're not
Speaker 2: willing to make that promise anymore.
Speaker 4: I think they were.
Speaker 2: I mean, they certainly were earlier five years ago. But
Speaker 2: at the time in which you've repeatedly killed all the
Speaker 2: people running the country, you've kind of only made it
Speaker 2: clear that they need noops. And that's the waiting game
Speaker 2: that we find ourselves kind of currently locked in here
Speaker 2: is Iran has shut down the straight of hornm moves.
Speaker 2: They've at least the last I checked, I think, hit
Speaker 2: seventeen ships heading through the straight or in the straight,
Speaker 2: and that's caused the vast majority of traffic that would
Speaker 2: be crossing through to hold back, and so you've got
Speaker 2: this massive backlog of craft just kind of waiting because
Speaker 2: they can't go through. Trump previously had made some big
Speaker 2: statements about while the US Navy will escort them through
Speaker 2: and will get like a global coalition of naval forces
Speaker 2: to escort them through. That hasn't come to pass. For
Speaker 2: one thing, very few governments with navies seem interested in
Speaker 2: sending sizeable naval forces to the strait of horror moves.
Speaker 5: To do this.
Speaker 2: And for the other thing, that's not an easy thing
Speaker 2: to do. It may seem like it because it would
Speaker 2: be a real crazy thing to all of us listening
Speaker 2: if a single US naval vessel were destroyed in combat,
Speaker 2: right like the last time anything that happened with the
Speaker 2: USS coal which was hit while it was in dock
Speaker 2: by a suicide bomb. The idea of like a destroyer
Speaker 2: getting sunk would be deeply upsetting to the American people,
Speaker 2: I think probably, and like deeply it would be a
Speaker 2: huge problem for let alone if an aircraft carrier were
Speaker 2: to take serious damage, these would be serious problems for
Speaker 2: the administration. The problem is that you can't escort fuel
Speaker 2: tankers through the Strait of Hormuz without exposing them and
Speaker 2: the ships escorting them to direct fire. Geographically, you've probably
Speaker 2: heard a lot about carg Island recently, which is this
Speaker 2: island that, as we talked about in a previous episode,
Speaker 2: a lot of Iran's oil infrastructures on because the coast
Speaker 2: of Iran is not mostly not deep water, and you
Speaker 2: need very deep water for the boats that transport huge
Speaker 2: amounts of crude oil. These are massive vessels. These are
Speaker 2: some of the largest machines human beings have ever built
Speaker 2: of any kind. Yeah, these are the size of skyscrapers,
Speaker 2: Like these are skyscrapers on their side. They are enormous boats.
Speaker 2: It is when people were suggested, what if we just
Speaker 2: drive the oil? You have no idea how big these
Speaker 2: fucking boats are and how much oil it takes to
Speaker 2: keep the world running. So you have a very narrow
Speaker 2: waterway through most of this, so it's not like it
Speaker 2: is in other waterways or in the broader ocean where
Speaker 2: people have a lot of roots they can take. Big
Speaker 2: ships can only take one very well known path through
Speaker 2: the strait, right, and it's really easy to mine that path.
Speaker 2: If you've got naval vessels escorting those big boats, then
Speaker 2: you've got us naval vessels that are exposing themselves to
Speaker 2: direct fire from the mountains and hills in a way
Speaker 2: that is impossible to stop them from getting shot at,
Speaker 2: from having drones flung at them. And we have a
Speaker 2: pretty good understanding of what we can stop and what
Speaker 2: we can't stop. And based on everything that's been happening,
Speaker 2: my suspicion is that Trump has been getting told by
Speaker 2: his officers, we can't guarantee we won't lose sailors and
Speaker 2: we won't lose ships if we do this, because you
Speaker 2: are sending them through the chokiest of choke points, and
Speaker 2: Iran has spent fifty years preparing to shit at naval
Speaker 2: vessels escorting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormus. There's
Speaker 2: no guarantee it's not going to be a blood bath.
Speaker 2: So that's why the administration is looking at stuff like
Speaker 2: what should be we sending in marines, and we have
Speaker 2: marines that are moving into the area. There's been a
Speaker 2: lot of talk about having them seize islands in the Strait,
Speaker 2: potentially even carg Island. The problem with that is, obviously
Speaker 2: Iran has to deal with the bottleneck of we need
Speaker 2: this big island with its deep harbors, otherwise we can't
Speaker 2: get our oil out. But if the US takes that island,
Speaker 2: it's in the middle of a bunch of shit Iran controls,
Speaker 2: and they can fling explosives at the forces who take
Speaker 2: that island all fucking day long. It is a very
Speaker 2: bad position to be in. If you're the Marines. I
Speaker 2: don't care how well trained you are, I don't care
Speaker 2: how much support you have. That is a bad position
Speaker 2: to be in. And any military leader who has been
Speaker 2: under fire is trying very hard right now to let
Speaker 2: Trump know this will not be a low casualty endeavor.
Speaker 2: It will not be an easy endeavor, and you will
Speaker 2: not wind up just controlling this island and being able
Speaker 2: to dictate things to Iran. You will wind up having
Speaker 2: potentially thousands of your boys held captive by Iranian forces
Speaker 2: that surround them and flink explosives at them all day long.
Speaker 2: It's a bad position to be in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and this and this is I think part of
Speaker 4: like the issue with with the Trump administration's policy here
Speaker 4: is like Trump himself and the people around him just
Speaker 4: seem to have been treating the Iranian army as not
Speaker 4: a real armist and it is no, this is this
Speaker 4: is an actual they know what they're doing, Like this
Speaker 4: is this is not the Venezuelan army, Like this is
Speaker 4: an actual army. Yeah, Like you can't do this ship.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of guys left to have a lot
Speaker 2: of experience in it preparing for this exact war for
Speaker 2: a very long time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and who are ideologically motivated to not have the
Speaker 4: US like invade their country. The issues here with the
Speaker 4: fact that there's there's no good way to open the
Speaker 4: straight I think it's been dictating a lot of what
Speaker 4: Trump's been doing with his newgotiations, and I've started calling
Speaker 4: them like market negotiations because if you look at whenever
Speaker 4: Trump releases a statement, So on Monday, for example, he
Speaker 4: released the thing saying like, ah, we've entered like peace negotiations.
Speaker 4: And that was Monday morning, as the markets were opening
Speaker 4: from a very panicky weekend where people were it was
Speaker 4: sort of setting in that oil prices were going to
Speaker 4: be increasing and whenever Trump does one of these speeches
Speaker 4: where he says, oh, well, we're gonna we're going to
Speaker 4: find some way to open the straight or he does
Speaker 4: these like peace off like he sends this piece deal
Speaker 4: to a Ron, which we don't know the details of.
Speaker 4: There was like a reported leak of it in the
Speaker 4: Israeli media, but we don't know exactly what's in it.
Speaker 4: From that Israeli leak, it didn't seem to be a
Speaker 4: I mean, it didn't seem to be something that the
Speaker 4: government would accept, right. But the reason he's doing it
Speaker 4: is because he's trying to calm the markets down on
Speaker 4: a sort of on a sort of day by day basis.
Speaker 4: And part of it also was that there was this
Speaker 4: whole panic that Trump had been threatening early this week
Speaker 4: to start doing all of these bombing campaigns against Iranian
Speaker 4: like civilian power facilities and supposedly Onzi billion power facilities too,
Speaker 4: and then on Monday he was like, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: we're not actually doing that. Actually, we're doing peace talks.
Speaker 4: We're pushing this off for five days. And this is
Speaker 4: again market manipulation stuff, right, because he.
Speaker 3: Walked only we're only at war during the weekend when
Speaker 3: the markets are closed.
Speaker 4: So so this is what these negotiations are, right, and
Speaker 4: that's why and Ron immediately like it goes like no,
Speaker 4: like we're not, We're not in negotiations, and then released
Speaker 4: their own five point plan to end the war, which
Speaker 4: the US would pay war damages. And they've been really
Speaker 4: consistent about this, which the US would pay war damages
Speaker 4: and reparations. And then this one. And also you know,
Speaker 4: there was a whole thing about obviously like the US
Speaker 4: stopping the war, they're being the current measures in place
Speaker 4: to keep the US and doing it again. They want
Speaker 4: the US to have its regional proxies stand down, which
Speaker 4: would also presumably end the other major thing that's going
Speaker 4: on in this war, which is just Israel ethnically cleansing
Speaker 4: this south to Lebanon. We just we just released an
Speaker 4: episode about this. It's very good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, make a defensive barrier.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And the ever, the last part about this, and this
Speaker 4: is the part that I that I I think is
Speaker 4: the real kind of clincher here, is that it would
Speaker 4: give Iran control over the straight oh hormeuse, which is
Speaker 4: a real problem for any kind of American negotiation because
Speaker 4: this was always a thing that the Iran government never did, right,
Speaker 4: They had the military capacity to hold the straight. The
Speaker 4: reason they didn't do it was that it would start
Speaker 4: a war. But now you've started the war, and now
Speaker 4: you've opened Pandora's box, and you can't put the fact
Speaker 4: that they can do this militarily back into the box.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Right, So now they're just being like, fuck it, you
Speaker 4: guys can't actually defeat us militarily before the entire world
Speaker 4: economy collapses, Like fuck it, give us the straight now.
Speaker 4: I do want to mention something about some of the
Speaker 4: oil tankers, which is that, Okay, the whole situation is
Speaker 4: very murky, but Iran has been I mean, obviously it's
Speaker 4: been allowing its own tankers to go through, which is
Speaker 4: not a huge amount of oil, but it's some We
Speaker 4: got a reported case. The statements on this were released
Speaker 4: by the Thai governments and also a Thai oil company
Speaker 4: where the Thai basically foreign minutes like called the Iranian
Speaker 4: government and said, hey, we have an oil taker here
Speaker 4: where you let it through, and they went yeah, sure.
Speaker 4: So there seems to be some kind of process by
Speaker 4: which countries can do some kind of negotiation with the
Speaker 4: running government and be let through. What exactly the look
Speaker 4: that looks like in the details of it are really unclear.
Speaker 4: We don't know if this is a pattern or if
Speaker 4: they were just like, yeah, sure whatever, Thailand, you can
Speaker 4: you can do this. But yeah, that's kind of the
Speaker 4: state of things.
Speaker 5: I guess.
Speaker 4: I guess we should also mention there's been a bunch
Speaker 4: of reporting at the US is deploying two thousand paratroopers.
Speaker 4: I've seen both one thousand and two thousand side it
Speaker 4: is the number from the eighty second Airborne into the region,
Speaker 4: which presumably would be there for that like disastrous carg
Speaker 4: Island campaign. But oh boy, which is not boots on
Speaker 4: the ground because it's.
Speaker 2: It's doesn't the ground doesn't. We're good.
Speaker 4: I'm so excited for US to fight an entire war
Speaker 4: in the Arctic where he's like, there's not boots on
Speaker 4: the ground because they're all wearing snow shirts.
Speaker 2: Can't can't get us there.
Speaker 3: You see, all the Marines are wearing jet packs. They
Speaker 3: never touched the ground.
Speaker 2: They never touched the ground. They've got those weird what
Speaker 2: there's wearing water backpacks that you fly you can fly.
Speaker 4: With little jet ski to get those. They're not touching
Speaker 4: the ground. They're they're all laying a corduet road in
Speaker 4: front of them, so they're not technically on the ground,
Speaker 4: they're on this road. That Yeah, so things continue to
Speaker 4: go bad. Leave for kind of everyone involved in this
Speaker 4: war except I guess the Israelis, who are they seem
Speaker 4: to be happy. Yeah, they shouldn't be having a great
Speaker 4: time doing their doing another ethnic cleansing. But another group
Speaker 4: of people who've been doing extremely badly as a result
Speaker 4: of this, and has gotten almost no coverage in the
Speaker 4: American press to the extent that like I found out
Speaker 4: about I mean, like I was started hearing about the
Speaker 4: stuff from just like by friends who are Indian, which
Speaker 4: is that things are very very bad right now in
Speaker 4: East and Southeast Asia and just Southeast in general. Multiple countries,
Speaker 4: including a Thailand for example, have either sent part or
Speaker 4: all of their government employees home and told them to
Speaker 4: just work from home because they can't afford to keep
Speaker 4: their offices open because like cooling the offices is too expensive.
Speaker 4: They're sort of rolling crisis like across the entire sort
Speaker 4: of Pacific rim area because all of these countries are
Speaker 4: unbelievably reliance on oil, natural gas. This is also down
Speaker 4: to stuff like cooking oil too, which they also have
Speaker 4: not been able to get. And so you know, you
Speaker 4: can look at Sri Lanka where there are these just
Speaker 4: enormous fuel cues because the Sri Lankan governments they're four
Speaker 4: years out from the last time that they weren't able
Speaker 4: to input oil. That one was a sort of currency crisis,
Speaker 4: balance of payments issue they were having, but the moment
Speaker 4: there was there was a problem with the oil supply,
Speaker 4: the government started doing rationing. So now you have these
Speaker 4: massive lines for people trying to get gasoline. That's I
Speaker 4: think one of the worst ones in terms of just
Speaker 4: pure inability to get gasoline. So this is a problem
Speaker 4: across the region. The BBC also said, I was just
Speaker 4: gonna read the quot from the VC that they quote
Speaker 4: declared Wednesdays a public holiday. Sure, so yeah, they're just
Speaker 4: adding another day to the weekend because they can't have
Speaker 4: businesses open. Because businesses can't afford to like heat or
Speaker 4: cool themselves, they literally can't afford to keep the economy running.
Speaker 4: And variations of this are playing out all across South Asia.
Speaker 4: There's been a massive closure of industries in India, A
Speaker 4: whole bunch of restaurants. I think the estimates were about
Speaker 4: one fifth of restaurants are just gone because they can't
Speaker 4: get cooking oil. And you have the situations where like
Speaker 4: anything that requires like cooking oil, even other things that
Speaker 4: are open like can't be used. Gujarat, but the Indian
Speaker 4: side of Gujarat has a very large ceramic industry and
Speaker 4: it's gone. It's been gone for like a month. Eighty
Speaker 4: percent of it is shut down. This is four hundred
Speaker 4: thousand people affected by this because they're using for pain
Speaker 4: and there's no propane and this this is playing out
Speaker 4: across the region right There's been some reporting about concerns
Speaker 4: in Taiwan over whether they're going to have enough sort
Speaker 4: of liquified natural gas in order to keep their ship
Speaker 4: facilities running. But Taiwan is like kind of okay. It's
Speaker 4: places like Sri Lanka's, places like Thailand's, places like Miammars,
Speaker 4: India where things are getting really really bleak really quickly.
Speaker 4: There's a story that kind of did make it through
Speaker 4: into the American press about how the US temporary lifted
Speaker 4: sanctions on Iranian oil specifically so that there were these
Speaker 4: tankers the Iranian tankers that were just at sea and
Speaker 4: the sanctions specifically on those tankers are lifted so India
Speaker 4: could buy it. And this has been happening with Russian
Speaker 4: oil too. And the reason this is happening is that
Speaker 4: if you're not getting these kind of injections of oil,
Speaker 4: the situation there would be even more bleak than it
Speaker 4: already is. And obviously there's some places where it's just
Speaker 4: everything is continuing as normal, but you're starting to see
Speaker 4: just kind of these countries un raffle because so much
Speaker 4: of their infrastructure is based on an oil and natural
Speaker 4: gas that's that's that's coming through the Gulf, and it's
Speaker 4: really fucking bleak. And it's something to keep in mind
Speaker 4: as as this crisis rolls on. We're dealing with like
Speaker 4: gas price go up, which is obviously bad in an issue.
Speaker 4: There are a shit ton of people in the world
Speaker 4: where it's like, yeah, I know, like four hundred thousand
Speaker 4: people are out of their jobs because their entire ceramics
Speaker 4: industry is gone. Yeah, right, and these are these are
Speaker 4: not people who have money in the first place. And
Speaker 4: this is crisis is just going to continue as long
Speaker 4: as the Trump keeps this war going.
Speaker 2: So I guess we'll see how long that is.
Speaker 4: Hopefully not long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean Poland continues to be bad.
Speaker 3: I'm sure Marco Rubio and JD. Events are going to
Speaker 3: be on it as they god, as they continue their negotiations.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's not a long list of people that I
Speaker 4: want running negotiations less than JD.
Speaker 5: Vance.
Speaker 4: But like it's it's not great. It's not no, it's
Speaker 4: not great. It's there's no way to sugarcoat it here.
Speaker 2: It says something about how much fucking Kushner screwed the
Speaker 2: pooch that Iran is like, yeah, I get.
Speaker 4: Vance in here, bring bringing Vance, You get JD.
Speaker 2: Vance in here. I don't want to talk to that
Speaker 2: other guy again.
Speaker 4: There is like a legitimate problem they're having, which is
Speaker 4: like there's been a lot of jokes about how like
Speaker 4: all the DEI firings are like fucking the but like
Speaker 4: it actually is where there's like a whole bunch of
Speaker 4: the embassy staff people like got fired because they weren't
Speaker 4: white and because the Dose people were just like fuck it.
Speaker 4: And now it's like, I mean this was a situation already.
Speaker 4: The US government's, like experts on on other countries tend
Speaker 4: to be like.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you look at what happened in the
Speaker 2: lead up to the Iraq War, anyone who knew anything
Speaker 2: about Iraq as an actual s subject matter expert was
Speaker 2: basically isolated and cut out of like the planning because
Speaker 2: they were all saying, don't do what you do, it's
Speaker 2: not gonna work well.
Speaker 4: And and and even even even in administrations we regard
Speaker 4: as competent. Like I I randomly, like when I was
Speaker 4: at You'd reach Chicago, like going to school, I met
Speaker 4: the guy who was who was set Calm Syria analyst
Speaker 4: like right when at the beginning of this year in revolution,
Speaker 4: and he was like reporting to Barack Obama about what
Speaker 4: was going on, and it was just like some guy
Speaker 4: like it was it was it was like some guy
Speaker 4: who'd gotten like an undergrad degree, right, yeah, like and
Speaker 4: even those guys are getting like it was just like
Speaker 4: some random asshole with I mean, like he's like knew
Speaker 4: his stuff, but he wasn't like a he wasn't like
Speaker 4: an expert on this, right, And even those people are gone,
Speaker 4: And so now you're dealing with those people who are
Speaker 4: supposedly running these negotiations. You just have like literally no idea.
Speaker 4: What's going on? Because they fired every non white person,
Speaker 4: so it's just catastrophic for the entire world.
Speaker 3: Yep, cool, one more ad break and we will return
Speaker 3: for a final segment giving an update on a friend
Speaker 3: of the pod, Gregory Thethno oh, Greg, all right, we
Speaker 3: are back. Unfortunately, it's time for our reoccurring Bavino segment,
Speaker 3: hopefully the last.
Speaker 2: God what's boving on?
Speaker 3: He just had a very interesting interview with The New
Speaker 3: York Times he did in which he said that before
Speaker 3: he was demoted from his role as Commander at Large,
Speaker 3: he had a plan at DHS to deport one hundred
Speaker 3: million people, something that DHS then tweeted about with a
Speaker 3: silly little graphic that they stole from another artist. The
Speaker 3: New York Times reported quote mister Bavino said he had
Speaker 3: a master plan that was in motion before his exile
Speaker 3: back to Eli Centro. Have neutralized protesters, he said, and
Speaker 3: made it possible to deport one hundred million people. That
Speaker 3: as a goal that the Department of Home and Security
Speaker 3: has widely promoted. If it sounds extreme, it's because it's
Speaker 3: nearly ten times the estimated number of undocumented people in
Speaker 3: the country. It's also more than a quarter of the
Speaker 3: entire US population unquote.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 3: Gregory is also quoted in this piece of saying, I
Speaker 3: wish I'd caught even more illegal aliens. I mean, we
Speaker 3: went as hard as we could, but there's always a
Speaker 3: creative and innovative solution to catching more unquote. God would
Speaker 3: have been nice for a journalist to follow up.
Speaker 4: On what he meant by that, yep, yep, mm hmm.
Speaker 4: I want to talk a little bit about that one
Speaker 4: hundred million number, because sure there was a New York
Speaker 4: Times report where Trump said in one meeting to you
Speaker 4: the twenty twenty four campaign, mister Trump said that if
Speaker 4: it was up to mister Miller, there would only be
Speaker 4: one hundred million people in this country and they would
Speaker 4: all look like mister Miller. Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's he's not lying, Yeah, you.
Speaker 5: Know, and he he.
Speaker 4: I guess has the numbers reversed in that in that
Speaker 4: the Bovino one is to port one hundred million people,
Speaker 4: which is the one that's been floating around in sort
Speaker 4: of like right wind circles more and this one was
Speaker 4: that there's only one hundred million left.
Speaker 3: But it's completely disconnected from reality, and like the economic
Speaker 3: reasons for why. Yeah, these deportations are even something disconnected
Speaker 3: from the economic reasons behind this sort of immigration enforcement. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's just no logistical capacity.
Speaker 4: No, they're like, it's it's I mean, yeah, it would
Speaker 4: be one of the largest ethnic cleansings we've ever seen.
Speaker 4: But it's it's a thing that like people like Miller
Speaker 4: and the Boveno want. This is kind of what we've
Speaker 4: seen a lot in thro administration between the people who
Speaker 4: actually want the economy to work and the people who
Speaker 4: have like some other ideological goal. Yeah, because there's the
Speaker 4: people who just want the white ethno state, right, and
Speaker 4: that's sort of the Boveno like Miller wing, and then
Speaker 4: there's everyone else like Scott Besting, like the Treasury people
Speaker 4: who were like holy shit, like yeah, we want we
Speaker 4: want there that we want that we we we we
Speaker 4: need the permanently subjucated immigant under class. You can't deport
Speaker 4: one hundred and well this wouldn't even be the immigrant
Speaker 4: under class, right, This is this is like most of
Speaker 4: the norn white people in the US, right, who who
Speaker 4: they're talking about deporting? Who are just you know, people
Speaker 4: here like me and obviously like we don't know if
Speaker 4: Bavino's just lying about this, because who knows it's Bovino.
Speaker 3: But yeah, what this master plan actually looks like or
Speaker 3: what it included also not expounded upon something that the
Speaker 3: journalists at least did not get an answer out of
Speaker 3: that was then reported. No, it's unclear, but during Bavino's
Speaker 3: like rain at border patrol, this number was something that
Speaker 3: d just mentioned as a gold multiple times. For an example,
Speaker 3: earlier this month, Louisiana Senator John Kennedy was questioning David J. Ber,
Speaker 3: director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute, about his
Speaker 3: criticism of DHS, and Senator Kennedy read a quote from
Speaker 3: Beer's social media.
Speaker 19: They referring to Republicans think they control their way into
Speaker 19: US accepting ethnic cleansing.
Speaker 8: End quote your your words, not mind?
Speaker 6: Did I read that correctly?
Speaker 2: That was in regard to.
Speaker 6: Post about advocating one hundred million deportations. That is what
Speaker 6: DHS has tweeted from their own account. One hundred million
Speaker 6: deprit parts that would be ethnic cleansing. You would be
Speaker 6: learning one third of the country. So yes, there are people,
Speaker 6: we got homeland security.
Speaker 2: I think this is hyperbolic.
Speaker 5: Give me thirty more seconds.
Speaker 6: I think advocating one hundred million pavications.
Speaker 14: In having fun.
Speaker 4: On February he really thought he ate with that one.
Speaker 2: He was really he was really thinking he was going
Speaker 2: to dine out on that.
Speaker 4: Huh Wow. What is rattling around in your skull that
Speaker 4: you listen to that and think you want, like, what
Speaker 4: is happening here?
Speaker 2: God, you're having fun having fun with that? Huh okay.
Speaker 3: Speaking of the Department of Homeland Security, there is a
Speaker 3: new big boss in town. Former Senator Mark Wayne Mullen
Speaker 3: has been sworn in as the new DHS Secretary. During
Speaker 3: his confirmation hearings, Mullen said he regrets calling Alex pretty
Speaker 3: a quote deranged individual who came to cause Max damage.
Speaker 19: Those words probably should have been retracted. I shouldn't have
Speaker 19: said that, and Secretary, I wouldn't. The investigation is ongoing
Speaker 19: and there is, Like I said, there's sometimes going to
Speaker 19: make mistake and I own it that one. I went
Speaker 19: out there too fast. I was responding immediately without the facts.
Speaker 19: That's my fault. That won't happen as secretary. So you
Speaker 19: regret that statement, I already said that, Yes, sir, would
Speaker 19: you want to apologize to the family.
Speaker 5: Of preddy Well.
Speaker 19: Sir, I just said I regret those statements.
Speaker 5: Is that the same as an apology?
Speaker 19: I haven't seen the investigation. We'll let the investigation go through,
Speaker 19: and if I'm proven wrong, then I will absolutely.
Speaker 2: The same as an apology.
Speaker 4: Oh God, man, just speak like a person.
Speaker 2: We got to bring mister Rogers in here to tell
Speaker 2: you what an apology is. Come on, bro, yes.
Speaker 22: I also there's a lot of discourse about his name
Speaker 22: being Mark Wayne.
Speaker 4: You can't tell me that guy doesn't look like a
Speaker 4: Mark Wayne.
Speaker 2: He looks like a Mark wayn.
Speaker 4: He looks like a Mark Wayne. Thank you so much,
Speaker 4: Jesus Christ. Just say sorry, dude.
Speaker 3: Later on in this same hearing, Mullen defended the actions
Speaker 3: of the officer who killed Renee Good, saying, quote, it's
Speaker 3: very clear that an officer had to make a split
Speaker 3: decision in that case. Throughout these lyrics, Mullen reiterated that
Speaker 3: he wants to keep the agency out of the news. Quote,
Speaker 3: my goal in six months is that we are not
Speaker 3: in the story every single day. When questioned about what
Speaker 3: ICE reforms he would be willing to put into law,
Speaker 3: Mullen said that a quote unquote better approach would be
Speaker 3: working with local municipalities.
Speaker 19: I would love to see ICE become a transport more
Speaker 19: than the front line if we get back, if we
Speaker 19: can get back into just simply working with law enforcement.
Speaker 19: We're going to them and we're picking up these criminals
Speaker 19: from their jail.
Speaker 5: One.
Speaker 19: We're going to reimburse them for having the person there.
Speaker 19: And a partnership is violent important. I don't think there
Speaker 19: needs to be a wall to change that. I think
Speaker 19: I can work within what is there. But there's an
Speaker 19: approach that can happen, but we've got to have partners.
Speaker 3: What he's trying to do here is essentially blame ICE
Speaker 3: overreach on sanctuary city policies, saying that ICE would need
Speaker 3: to be in all these places being on the ground
Speaker 3: if sanctuary cities would just cooperate with ICE for removal operations.
Speaker 3: In response to a question about ICE and cbp illegally
Speaker 3: entering people's homes, Mullen said, quote, we will not enter
Speaker 3: a home or a place of business without a judicial
Speaker 3: warrant unless we're pursuing an individual that runs into a
Speaker 3: place of business or residence or a house.
Speaker 4: Unquote.
Speaker 3: If this is true, this definitely is a partial movement
Speaker 3: still with this exception, but a partial movement from the
Speaker 3: so called administrative warrants which became popular under Christine Nome,
Speaker 3: which big if like it, I think, as like James
Speaker 3: has said before, I think there is like that the
Speaker 3: wind is changing a little bit, but I mean it
Speaker 3: could very easily change back. The other way is it
Speaker 3: is simply too soon to say. And obviously none of
Speaker 3: these things will be like satisfactory. ICE should not exist
Speaker 3: as an agency, But it is interesting to see the
Speaker 3: Trump administration slowly adjust towards pressure being put on ICE
Speaker 3: from the public. At Mullin's swearing in ceremony, Trump said, quote,
Speaker 3: generally speaking, Mark Wayne would be very much in favor of.
Speaker 4: What I'm in favor of. He might be worse. He
Speaker 4: might be worse than me. Oh no, So.
Speaker 18: Generally speaking, I think I can answer that Mark Wayne
Speaker 18: would be very much in favor of what I'm in
Speaker 18: favor of.
Speaker 2: Would you say that's right, Mark?
Speaker 5: I can't think of too many things.
Speaker 4: He might be worse.
Speaker 18: He might be worse than me.
Speaker 4: That's my look at his wife is saying that's right.
Speaker 18: But uh so, yeah, he's going to be great.
Speaker 4: So we'll see, we'll see what that turns out to be.
Speaker 4: Great stuff, great stuff. These people are so bizarre, like
Speaker 4: they can't talk. They sound ridiculous. Nightmare. That's my only take.
Speaker 4: They can't do nor they can't human.
Speaker 3: If you would like to send us a news tip
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Speaker 2: We reported the news, We reported the news.
Speaker 5: We reported the news.
Speaker 2: Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
Speaker 2: from now until the heat death of the Universe.
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