Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 2: you know this is a compilation episode, So every episode
Speaker 2: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 2: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 2: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 2: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 2: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 2: you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 3: Hi everyone, and welcome to it could happen here. It's
Speaker 3: me James today and I am very lucky to join
Speaker 3: by Garrison. Iige. Hello, Hi Garrison. I've summoned you here
Speaker 3: today to talk about boats, a topic that white men love.
Speaker 3: But we're not going to talk about like going out
Speaker 3: on the lake and looking for bass today. I've only
Speaker 3: done bass fishing ones. It's not for me.
Speaker 4: Do you hold up the fish for the picture? Do
Speaker 4: you do the picture?
Speaker 3: I wasn't blessed with a bass on that trip, but
Speaker 3: I did get to It was very interesting because a
Speaker 3: guy had like a purple boat with gold flex in it.
Speaker 3: It didn't represent who I thought he was as a person.
Speaker 3: Turned out, actually he had a boat sponsorship and he
Speaker 3: was going to sell it. But ah, it was a
Speaker 3: cool boat. I got to drive that boat pretty fast
Speaker 3: through some doughnuts and stuff. So that's another thing that
Speaker 3: calls to a part of my soul. I want to
Speaker 3: talk about private maritime security today. The reason why, of course,
Speaker 3: is that Iran is currently attacking boats in the Strait
Speaker 3: of Horn Moves and elsewhere.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: There's some boats were attacked in portant Basara yesterday. We're
Speaker 3: recording this on Thursday. At the time of recording, they
Speaker 3: have attacked six boats. It's more likely than not that
Speaker 3: there will be more boats attacked by the time you
Speaker 3: are listening to this. It's been a really bad week
Speaker 3: for boat guys.
Speaker 4: It's been a bad year for boats in general.
Speaker 3: Oh, Venezuela, Yeah, yeah, let's talk about private maritime security.
Speaker 3: So like, when these boats are transmitting the Strait of
Speaker 3: Horn Moves, right, the United States has offered and then
Speaker 3: rescinded the offer to escort them through the straight up
Speaker 3: hor Moos. It's very unlikely that the United States is
Speaker 3: going to be able to sufficiently escort every boat that
Speaker 3: goes through the State of hormor Moves. And this is
Speaker 3: a longstanding issue, right, I think probably lots of listeners
Speaker 3: won't be aware of the long history of private security
Speaker 3: on ships. Right, I'm only going to talk about this
Speaker 3: in the context of the twenty first century, but this
Speaker 3: goes a lot further back. It's largely a consequence of
Speaker 3: the way the law governs the ocean. It's actually the
Speaker 3: same Wow. Sorry, yah, daddy long legs. I don't know
Speaker 3: if it's an American word for that that. I don't know,
Speaker 3: Daddy long legs. That's okay, Yeah, absolute unit has just
Speaker 3: entered my office space. A world LM be the reason
Speaker 3: that we can have private security contractors, often with machine guns, etc.
Speaker 3: On boats. It's the same reason that horrific labor abuses
Speaker 3: are perpetrated on boats on a daily basis. Right, Perhaps
Speaker 3: the most well documented are among the most well documented
Speaker 3: are the ones off Thailand on fishing ships, which often
Speaker 3: involve Burmese refugees or people fleeing Mianma. Right there, essentially
Speaker 3: enslaved on these boats or in sort of indentured servitude
Speaker 3: of trying to quote unquote pay off their trip out
Speaker 3: of the country they were fleeing. Right, I'm not talking
Speaker 3: about labor abuses today. I want to talk more about
Speaker 3: private security. Most of security provided two boats in the
Speaker 3: world in general is not provided by states. It is
Speaker 3: provided by private military contractors. Right earlier on in the
Speaker 3: twentieth century, the typical profile of one of these people
Speaker 3: would have been that they'd left the military and a
Speaker 3: state in the global north. They had found let's say,
Speaker 3: life for employment in the civilian world to be difficult
Speaker 3: for them. And I've met a number of these people
Speaker 3: in a number of places. Many of them went to
Speaker 3: parts of Africa thinking that they were going to work
Speaker 3: protecting wildlife and then ending up protecting large container ships instead,
Speaker 3: or attempting to work for a company that would one
Speaker 3: day let them protect wildlife or something similar. Generally, the
Speaker 3: companies they end up working for are generally referred to
Speaker 3: as private maritime security companies pmsc's, as opposed to PMC
Speaker 3: private military contractor, although it is a version of the
Speaker 3: same thing. Generally, these companies offer a shipping company a
Speaker 3: sort of package, and it's not just armed. Security also
Speaker 3: include stuff like intelligence, crisis response, and potential intervention. I
Speaker 3: spoke to someone, for instance, who had worked for a
Speaker 3: shipping company and his major job was to deal with
Speaker 3: when people were kidnapped off the boats. He would then
Speaker 3: either go and rescue the people or negotiate with the
Speaker 3: people who would kidnapped them.
Speaker 4: These are like cargo ships, oil tankers, like what kind of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so mostly there are on large commercial vessels, right,
Speaker 3: cargo ships, oil tankers, things with an expensive cargo, although
Speaker 3: it is not unheard of. For pms. For instance, you
Speaker 3: may have a maritime security company to secure your large
Speaker 3: mega yacht, sure right, or another boat that you're worried about.
Speaker 4: Did these happen on my cruise ships? Sometimes?
Speaker 3: Yes, there was. There was a shootout in the early
Speaker 3: two thousand so I shoot out, it's probably private security
Speaker 3: characters on it. I think it was an Italian cruise
Speaker 3: ship fired at pirates who are attempting to board the
Speaker 3: cruise ship. Huh. It's a lot less uncommon than you
Speaker 3: would think.
Speaker 4: So when we're planning the twenty twenty eight Cool Zone
Speaker 4: Media Cruise all all access included, we're going to have
Speaker 4: to contact with one of these companies.
Speaker 3: I think we can probably bring that in house. I
Speaker 3: think that that would be the goal at that point.
Speaker 3: Right within the Greater iHeart Ecosystem Garrison, we have so
Speaker 3: many automatic weapons you don't listen to the like a
Speaker 3: Belfed machine Gun podcast, the iHeart Militia, it's US and
Speaker 3: Ted cruise and where we haven't really agreed on very
Speaker 3: much other than gun ownership, maybe we should talk about
Speaker 3: when the real reason like PMSCs took off in the
Speaker 3: twenty first century was the rise in piracy off Somalia.
Speaker 3: Right before this, piracy had existed mostly in Southeast Asia.
Speaker 3: On piracy has guested for as long as people going
Speaker 3: on boats has existed, right but specifically paracy off Southeast
Speaker 3: Asia had before this been more of a like a
Speaker 3: smash and grab kind of situation, like turn up, take
Speaker 3: what you can leave. What was distinct in this piracy
Speaker 3: that we began to see from like two thousand and
Speaker 3: eight onwards was that pirates were either trying to see
Speaker 3: the entire cargo of a vessel the vessel itself, or
Speaker 3: to kidnap people from the vessel and hold them for ransom.
Speaker 3: I guess the most high profile case was called the Mayerscalabama.
Speaker 3: Are you familiar with this one?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: Okay? This is that's good because you get to hear
Speaker 3: a story. I don't keep up with piratenews dot org. Really,
Speaker 3: I can see you being like pirate curious, No, you're
Speaker 3: not interested in.
Speaker 4: I've always had kind of a love hate relationship with pirates, Okay,
Speaker 4: you know, undeniably cool in some way, also a little
Speaker 4: bit messy.
Speaker 3: They can be messy. Yeah, yeah, lots of lots of
Speaker 3: overlap between pirates and anarchism. I'm sure you've this is true.
Speaker 4: Yeah, some of my same critiques there for you both sides.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I can also be messy.
Speaker 4: As soon as the pirates all start wearing matching black suits,
Speaker 4: then we can talk.
Speaker 3: And I think that's inherently like the piracy isn't about that.
Speaker 3: Piracy is about self expression. That's the thing, got it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I see, Well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, great, disagree. I like I like a diverse pirate
Speaker 3: outfit personally, in this case, a small vessel, right. I
Speaker 3: think they had four or five pirates. They had like
Speaker 3: pretty basic weaponry, write like kalashnikovs. I think they boarded
Speaker 3: the mess Galabama. The boat had a pirate alarm, and
Speaker 3: they sounded the pirate alarm. In this you have to
Speaker 3: struggle to repress your like eighteenth century like mind palast right. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: the crew sheltered in. They had like a safe room. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they went in this safe room. Well, they captured the
Speaker 3: captain of the ship pretty quickly. The ship didn't have
Speaker 3: any means of defending itself other than it tried to
Speaker 3: like I'm not a massive boat, understander, It tried to
Speaker 3: use its rudder to swamp the pirate ship as it
Speaker 3: was coming up, so like kind of flick it that
Speaker 3: that didn't work. Yeah, And one member of the ship's
Speaker 3: crew who hid himself with a knife and successfully subdued
Speaker 3: and captured the leader of the pirates, and the crew
Speaker 3: then attempted to trade this person for their captain. They
Speaker 3: tied up the pirate who they had captured, attempted to
Speaker 3: trade him for their captain. The pirates took the leader
Speaker 3: of the pirates that then never gave the crew their
Speaker 3: captain and then made off in a lifeboat with a
Speaker 3: large amount of cash and the captain. This resulted in
Speaker 3: a standoff. Now, the Meskalabama was I believe a US
Speaker 3: flagged ship. It may have been a US Dutch ship,
Speaker 3: but it was flagged to like a nation in the
Speaker 3: major in the global north right. This would become relevant later.
Speaker 3: The United States sent two boats which proceeded to engage
Speaker 3: in a standoff with the lifeboat for several days, where
Speaker 3: they first attempted to drop a SAT phone and a
Speaker 3: mobile phone to the pirates in the lifeboat. The pirates
Speaker 3: through those in the ocean because they thought that they
Speaker 3: were using them to communicate with the captain of the ship.
Speaker 3: At one point, the captain, who they'd held hostage, ended
Speaker 3: up in the ocean, but then he got back into
Speaker 3: the lifeboat. The situation was resolved eventually by the Navy
Speaker 3: seals shooting all the pirates. They were based on one
Speaker 3: of the US ships, and they used sniper rifles to
Speaker 3: shoot the pirates. Really yep, they shot them all off
Speaker 3: the lifeboat while the captain of the ship was also
Speaker 3: in the lifeboat. WHOA yeah, no, then I would be
Speaker 3: shocked if that's not a film about this, or I
Speaker 3: know the captain of the ship has written a book
Speaker 3: about his time being captured. But obviously, like this kind
Speaker 3: of rattled the world, right, It scared a lot of people,
Speaker 3: specifically in the shipping industry, because this is a scary
Speaker 3: thing to happen, and specifically this change in the nature
Speaker 3: of piracy from taking stuff to potentially capturing people. And
Speaker 3: I believe the goal of the pirates here was to
Speaker 3: get the captain ashore where they could hide him more easily,
Speaker 3: right in Somalia. And then it becomes entirely different issue
Speaker 3: when you're trying to get US troops into a completely
Speaker 3: different country to rescue someone a different land mass. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And I think it's really important to talk about like
Speaker 3: the jurisdictional issues here because they are what gives the
Speaker 3: PMSCs so much leeway. I think we'll take a little
Speaker 3: break talking about jurisdiction and we will come back. All right,
Speaker 3: we're back. So to understand private maritime security companies, you've
Speaker 3: got to understand the world of flags of convenience. First.
Speaker 3: Are you familiar with flags the convenience garrison? No?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: Okay, this is this is good. This is James gets
Speaker 3: to download shit that he reads at for no reason
Speaker 3: at like eleven o'clock at night. There are nations in
Speaker 3: the world states that allow vessels to register under their
Speaker 3: flag even if the owner of the vessel is not
Speaker 3: a citizen of that country. It's called an open registry.
Speaker 3: So if you hang out in the port, spend time
Speaker 3: looking at boats, look at the flags of the boats.
Speaker 3: You will often see flags of a few countries. The
Speaker 3: most common ones are Liberia, Panama, and the Republic of
Speaker 3: the Marshall Islands. The reason that boat own might choose
Speaker 3: let's say you Garrison have a boat right there, you
Speaker 3: shipping company Garrison Davis Boats Incorporated, and you don't want
Speaker 3: to register them in Canada or the United States. Might
Speaker 3: be to avoid tax liability. Might be to avoid like
Speaker 3: what you consider to be burdens and safety regulations, okay.
Speaker 3: Might be to avoid the frustrating constraints of Canadian labor law.
Speaker 3: Or it might be to avoid some ecological constraints on
Speaker 3: your boats which your flag nation might impose. And generally
Speaker 3: flags of convenience have very little in the way of
Speaker 3: taxation and regulation, right and so people might choose to
Speaker 3: flag their vessel in Liberia, Panama, Publican Marshall Islands, Hong
Speaker 3: Kong instead to avoid some of those issues. Right now,
Speaker 3: The issue comes when you read say you register your
Speaker 3: boat in Liberia and your boat is off on its
Speaker 3: way delivering things, and then some pirates seize your boat.
Speaker 4: I'm guessing Liberia is not going to be of much assistance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're not coming, yeah, yeah, the Liberian Navy is
Speaker 3: not available to help you in that instance, right now,
Speaker 3: because there tend to be very little constraint on flags
Speaker 3: of convenience, there's also very little constraint on what can
Speaker 3: happen on those boats, right So you could hire a
Speaker 3: private maritime security company and they could protect your boat,
Speaker 3: and the chances are the flagger convenience country would not
Speaker 3: regulate anything that they did on your boat or the
Speaker 3: weaponry they held on your boat. Ah, the rmiders the
Speaker 3: Marshall Islands does just regulate somewhat the weaponry that the
Speaker 3: Marshal Islands flagged boats could have. I think the reason
Speaker 3: there are so many boats flagged in the Marshall Islands,
Speaker 3: at least in part, is because half the world's tuna
Speaker 3: is caught in Marshall Islands waters. So a lot of
Speaker 3: those vessels will probably have they'll choose to have the
Speaker 3: Marshal Islands flag because it allows them to fish in
Speaker 3: territorial waters. Would be my guess. I've met some some
Speaker 3: contractors on Marshal Lea's boat, so I'm not a guy
Speaker 3: who was a helicopter pilot for a tuna fishing boat
Speaker 3: in a bar once. I guess they fly the helicopter
Speaker 3: to look for the fish and then the boat comes
Speaker 3: and catches the fish. Huh yeah, fascinating world. I don't
Speaker 3: think it's a highly enjoyable job, but I think it's
Speaker 3: people do it to get their flight hours up so
Speaker 3: they can do other things. So because of this legal
Speaker 3: it's not really a legal gray area, just the fact
Speaker 3: that these people are not regulated in any way. Right,
Speaker 3: people can carry weapons on ships. Now. In the case
Speaker 3: of piracy off Somalia specifically, the United Nations did authorize
Speaker 3: military action against Somali pirates and between twenty and forty
Speaker 3: boats were there at any given time in the next
Speaker 3: four years trying to police piracy. But that's not enough
Speaker 3: boats because every boat that is moving through that area
Speaker 3: is at risk for piracy. And pirates can use very
Speaker 3: small boats to board very big boats, right, And unless
Speaker 3: that very big boat is somehow able to defend itself,
Speaker 3: all they need is a few weapons and the ability
Speaker 3: to get on board, and they're hard to trut.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: I've heard from people who did contracting in the pre
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight era that basically that they put
Speaker 3: barbed wire on the edge of the boat to stop
Speaker 3: people getting on and then they had the l rad
Speaker 3: like they was that long range. The sound weapon, Yeah,
Speaker 3: the sound weapon, and I'm not sure that it was
Speaker 3: there as a weapon. I think it was there to
Speaker 3: notify other ships like get out the way, but that
Speaker 3: it could be weaponized. And then after that it was
Speaker 3: like big sticks and harsh words, I guess. So like
Speaker 3: when you have the guys who took over the MESK
Speaker 3: Galabama coming in with a few kalashnikov they have the
Speaker 3: balance of force on their side, right, That is no
Speaker 3: longer the case anymore. Initially in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 3: groups like Blackwater tried to get in all this, and
Speaker 3: they did it actually by more or less, I guess,
Speaker 3: like copying the privateer model that we'd seen in the
Speaker 3: nineteenth century. They refitted commercial boats with weapons and offered
Speaker 3: them like for higher as like a rental, like as
Speaker 3: an accompaniment.
Speaker 4: They would like escort another ship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they'd escort you through this dangerous area and then
Speaker 3: turn around and escort someone who was going the other way.
Speaker 3: Or that was the idea. Sure it didn't really work
Speaker 3: a because it was expensive right to run these vessels,
Speaker 3: and b because you'd need so many of them, and
Speaker 3: so what they ended up doing instead was actually stationing
Speaker 3: people on the vessels. So like these security contractors will
Speaker 3: now live on the oil tanker or the container ship,
Speaker 3: either for its all journey or for the duration of
Speaker 3: the time which it's considered danger well.
Speaker 4: And also, I mean if pirates try to get onto
Speaker 4: the big ship and all of the military guys are
Speaker 4: on a different ship a little bit behind, you have
Speaker 4: to get those guys onto the other ship, right, and then.
Speaker 3: Then now you're shooting at the ship that you're supposed
Speaker 3: to be protecting. And I can see that.
Speaker 4: That does just make it a little bit more complicated.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Unfortunately, the way, according to reports I've read,
Speaker 3: I should say, the way they have got around this
Speaker 3: issue is by preemptively shooting at vessels that they consider
Speaker 3: to be a threat. Sure, and there are plenty of
Speaker 3: allegations of that will get onto the lack of really
Speaker 3: any means of legal accountability at some point. What they
Speaker 3: do instead is they allow contractors to go on the ships,
Speaker 3: and these contractors then have to be armed. Right. The
Speaker 3: way they tend to be armed is depending on the
Speaker 3: flag of the ship and what regulations it has. Right generally,
Speaker 3: if they're entering into an area where they can't be armed,
Speaker 3: they have what are called floating armories. Those are what
Speaker 3: they sound like. You don't understand how long in my
Speaker 3: freelance career I spent trying to get onto one of
Speaker 3: these particular boats. It was a long time.
Speaker 4: So is this just like a tiny boat on a
Speaker 4: string with whole winter of guns on it? Like what
Speaker 4: it could be?
Speaker 3: It could be an oil platform, could be a little boat,
Speaker 3: it could be a big boat sometimes the contractors themselves
Speaker 3: or like that's where the contractors will meet the big boat,
Speaker 3: right and they'll get on it there, so they have
Speaker 3: like an area they can hang out, like it has
Speaker 3: living facilities. Huh. I've spoken to a few people in
Speaker 3: this world, but you know, if you happen to be
Speaker 3: listening and you're a boat security guy, I know. This
Speaker 3: is continues to fascinate me as an area where like
Speaker 3: the state doesn't exist and we have this like post
Speaker 3: state private militarization.
Speaker 4: It's like anarcho capitalism.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yes, yeah, yeah exactly is it is a
Speaker 3: vision of the ancap future that I don't love. That
Speaker 3: is very interesting, Right, there were states that offered to
Speaker 3: have like vessel detachments. The Dutch did this. I believe
Speaker 3: they would be like we will send you. I'm not
Speaker 3: familiar with the Dutch military. Sorry, Dutch listeners, Dutch marines, I imagine, right,
Speaker 3: and you can have a few of them on your boat.
Speaker 3: But even Dutch companies or Dutch flag vessels weren't using
Speaker 3: it because it was so much paperwork and the government
Speaker 3: couldn't keep up with their demands. They right, now, we'll
Speaker 3: just get some guys, what's pay them? Be fine? Yeah.
Speaker 3: The state has more or less completely removed itself from
Speaker 3: the sphere and removed itself from doing anything approaching accountability,
Speaker 3: and so it is extremely hard for these people to
Speaker 3: be held accountable for things that they do in international waters. Right.
Speaker 3: There are like industry standards in the industry itself sets
Speaker 3: in the same way that there are standards for cops
Speaker 3: at the cops themselves set, and those have generally not
Speaker 3: been the best means of accountability. Right in the theory,
Speaker 3: anytime they engage someone, certainly, if they kill someone, the
Speaker 3: ship's authorities should report that. Yeah hopefully, yeah cool, I'm
Speaker 3: sure they will. I'm sure they love to do the paperwork.
Speaker 3: But then who would they report it to, right, do
Speaker 3: they report it to the country? They suspect the peace
Speaker 3: people they are shooting at their country. Do they report
Speaker 3: it to the flag of convenience country? Do they report
Speaker 3: it to the company they work for? Like I'm sure
Speaker 3: there is some jurisdiction of maritime law which would give
Speaker 3: us an answer to that, But in practice there appears
Speaker 3: to be very little mechanism for accountability in the same
Speaker 3: way that there is very little mechanism for accountability for
Speaker 3: labor law violations at sea. I would recommend if people
Speaker 3: haven't listened as a podcast called Outlaw Ocean. It's probably
Speaker 3: five or six years old at this point. I think
Speaker 3: it was in New York Times Investigation along with someone else.
Speaker 3: It was a good podcast about labor violations at sea,
Speaker 3: and they specifically looked at some of these fishing vessels
Speaker 3: and the fact that they use people who are essentially
Speaker 3: an indentured servitude. But they also touched on private maritime security.
Speaker 3: These days, we see a lot less piracy off Somalia
Speaker 3: right like it has reached its peak. This little little
Speaker 3: chunk in an article I was ringing on jastore this
Speaker 3: morning that I thought was interesting quote maritime security companies
Speaker 3: have been consulted on greenpeace activists attempt to climb onto
Speaker 3: a gas prom off your platform in September twenty thirteen
Speaker 3: to protest ruling in the Arctic and attacks against oil
Speaker 3: and gas installations by the Movement for the Emancipation is
Speaker 3: a niche a delta. So I guess these people have
Speaker 3: a wide remit in which they operate. As I say,
Speaker 3: they's somewhat different from like land based PMCs because land
Speaker 3: brace private military contractors are generally operating either with backup
Speaker 3: from a state or as back up to a state,
Speaker 3: and so there is like an accountability mechanism somewhat there.
Speaker 3: We saw in the Global War on Terror that that
Speaker 3: we still lack accountability mechanisms for private military contractors on land,
Speaker 3: but that certainly remains the case on the ocean. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So another thing we should consider here is a historical parallels, right,
Speaker 3: And the obvious historical parallel would be looked to nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty seven and the what's generally referred to as the
Speaker 3: tanker War. Right, what the United States attempted to do
Speaker 3: was to open up a channel. The straightform moves is
Speaker 3: very narrow. As I said, it's narrowest point, it's just
Speaker 3: twenty one miles. There are two channels because obviously not
Speaker 3: the entire twenty one miles is deep enough ships to
Speaker 3: go through. There are two channels that are each about
Speaker 3: two miles wide, and think they're three kilometers wide. It's
Speaker 3: still not very great at that conversion. So the United
Speaker 3: States attempted is to open one channel and then run
Speaker 3: a convoy system. Right. Think about when you have roadworks
Speaker 3: and you know the cars go one way and then
Speaker 3: the cars go the other way, and someone goes in
Speaker 3: front of you and they have it like a flashing
Speaker 3: light till you'd follow them or what have you. And
Speaker 3: the United States attempted to escort convoys of mostly reflagged
Speaker 3: Kuwaiti oil tankers through the straight Horn moves right. The
Speaker 3: very first escort mission involved a Kuwaiti oil tanker that
Speaker 3: had reflagged as an American tanker had become the Bridgeton.
Speaker 3: It was the Bridgiton that struck an underwater mine on
Speaker 3: that very first mission. I didn't cause any casualties, it
Speaker 3: did cause damage to the ship. During that same operation
Speaker 3: in a United States ship also struck a mine. It
Speaker 3: was called the United States Samuel Roberts Samuel B. Roberts.
Speaker 3: I believe it struck a mine while transiting international waters.
Speaker 3: It just goes to show that when there are minds
Speaker 3: in this area, in any area, it's very hard to
Speaker 3: know when they've all been removed, and it's very hard
Speaker 3: to know where they all are right now. During that
Speaker 3: same operation, a United States warship mistakenly shot down an
Speaker 3: Aralian civilian flight, killing all two hundred and ninety people
Speaker 3: on board. This goes to show how crowded the space
Speaker 3: is around the straight offore moves, and it goes to
Speaker 3: show how I mean, even in a relatively modern war,
Speaker 3: the possibility for mistakes is very high. And that's before
Speaker 3: you even considered the fact that the Trump administration is
Speaker 3: willing to accept, even among administrations as the United States,
Speaker 3: they are willing to accept a very high number of
Speaker 3: innocent deaths. I also want to talk about, because this
Speaker 3: is such a small straight to crowded straight right, the
Speaker 3: possibility of attack is not just limited to naval attack
Speaker 3: right to boats. We know that US destroyed most of
Speaker 3: Iran's navy, and we're going to speak about how the
Speaker 3: IRGC navy is not the same as Iran's regular flag navy.
Speaker 3: Right when we talk about the Iranian navy, big gray boats. Yes,
Speaker 3: the US has destroyed many of those with the IGC.
Speaker 3: We're looking at much smaller, fast attack vessels, right, sometimes
Speaker 3: civilian vessels with a machine gun mounted to them. Those
Speaker 3: have not all been destroyed, and it will be very
Speaker 3: hard for United States to destroy those all from the air,
Speaker 3: as it will be for the United States to destroy
Speaker 3: the ground attack capability that Iran has. Right. They have
Speaker 3: jrnmus missiles, they have Shahed drones. They can use regular
Speaker 3: unguided rockets. A Shahed drone from anywhere in the country
Speaker 3: of Iran, given its range, could hit a boat in
Speaker 3: the Strait of Hormos. These horn Moose class missiles. They're
Speaker 3: called Hormos missiles, so they're launched from vehicles. Right. It
Speaker 3: looks like a lorry and it comes out and it
Speaker 3: pops up its back. It lifts up the miss island
Speaker 3: launches it. These are very easy to hide, right. Lots
Speaker 3: of entities in this region use tunnels and caves to
Speaker 3: hide things. I'm sure the Iranian state does too, But
Speaker 3: you could hide one of these missile launches anywhere in
Speaker 3: a city in a cave and a tunnel. It only
Speaker 3: needs to pop out, deliver its missile and then it
Speaker 3: can be abandoned, right, or it can go back into
Speaker 3: its cave whatever it wants. But the Iranians don't need
Speaker 3: to destroy every ship that transits the Strait of Hormoos
Speaker 3: to close the Straight of Hormoos. First of all, there
Speaker 3: are only two three kilometer channels.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: If there is a wrecked ship in one of those channels,
Speaker 3: channel get smaller and smaller, and therefore your chance of
Speaker 3: hitting the minds that are there gets higher and higher. Right,
Speaker 3: because there's less way to go around them. The Iranians
Speaker 3: only have to make transiting the Strait of Hormus uninsurable
Speaker 3: to succeed, right. So what has happened with private maritime
Speaker 3: security contractors so far is that their presence has made
Speaker 3: transiting high risk areas areas at high risk for piracy
Speaker 3: an insurable effort. Because frequently you will hear that a
Speaker 3: ship with armed security has never been taken by pirates.
Speaker 3: That's really hard for us to confirm, right, like, there's
Speaker 3: no independent data on that, but certainly it it likely
Speaker 3: reduces a chance so then being taken by pirates, and
Speaker 3: that has made them insurable. The Iranians knocking out one
Speaker 3: or two tankers will make the Straight of hormones an
Speaker 3: uninsurable passage, or it will make the insurance so costly
Speaker 3: that commercial entities will not be willing to undertake that journey.
Speaker 3: Right now, Donald Trump is said the United States will
Speaker 3: act as the insurer. I know, man like it will
Speaker 3: be a lot of tankers for us to buy the
Speaker 3: if the Iranians keep you know, they've knocked out two
Speaker 3: large vessels overnight, it seems unlikely. Donal Trump has said
Speaker 3: a lot of things right, not all of them are true.
Speaker 3: Very well, even in the last few weeks, Donal Trump
Speaker 3: said a lot of things about the straight of Horror
Speaker 3: moves that were not true. So we will see that
Speaker 3: I wanted to explain some of those threats. Let's have
Speaker 3: a talk about the specific naval threat now that IGC
Speaker 3: Navy all right, So let's move on to discussing what
Speaker 3: exactly this means in the current era. Right when the
Speaker 3: United States is saying the straight of Horror moves is
Speaker 3: open except for Iran shooting at ships, and Iran is
Speaker 3: radioing ships right now and telling them they're not allowed
Speaker 3: to enter the straight of horm moves, and they're obviously
Speaker 3: threatening them if they do. So, what we will see
Speaker 3: right now in the straight of hornor moves is this
Speaker 3: situation where Iran has a few mechanisms for attacking these
Speaker 3: these ships. Right, the one that's being talked about the
Speaker 3: most are minds, and the mindset it ran has to
Speaker 3: my understanding of just straight up World War two leg
Speaker 3: s minds. Have you ever played mind sweeper Garrison?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So they look like that, right. They
Speaker 3: have these big contact fuses on them, that is what
Speaker 3: they are, right the way the current works in a
Speaker 3: straight of hornor moves, if they can kind of circulate around, okay,
Speaker 3: which will make them you know, you can't be like,
Speaker 3: okay that this area is mine, that we're just going
Speaker 3: to avoid the minds. Yeah, right, like this whole strait
Speaker 3: is mine now. And as we covered in ed on Friday,
Speaker 3: the US doesn't have a great capacity to remove those minds.
Speaker 3: But the thing which has been less discussed is that
Speaker 3: the IGC has tons, and if they don't have, if
Speaker 3: they run out, it's very easy to make more right
Speaker 3: of like civilian fast boats. Think of a little boat
Speaker 3: with a motor on the back and a belt fed
Speaker 3: machine gun in the front, right, Like, very easy to
Speaker 3: take those boats and swarm a large vessel, right, Like,
Speaker 3: even if that vessel has private security on board, the
Speaker 3: straightforard moves is twenty one miles across. Like, you could
Speaker 3: harass people if you had a jet ski.
Speaker 4: Yeah, have a little jet ski technical I just tell you, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: with an RPG on the back.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah yeah. And then most dudes rock vessel that
Speaker 3: has ever taken to the seas. Yeah. I might have
Speaker 3: to hand it to that LGC if they did that.
Speaker 7: But.
Speaker 3: Under very few circumsts. I don't know circumstances. Yeah, do
Speaker 3: you have to hand it to the Yeah, the Iranian
Speaker 3: state in any capacity. Now I'm shitting around, like I
Speaker 3: think the state of irun is terrible, misogynist, violent and
Speaker 3: oppressive entity and shouldn't exist just to be like super dupicle.
Speaker 3: They also have what are called uncrewed surface vessels. I'm
Speaker 3: sure they use like the gender neutral framing, but they
Speaker 3: are think of a large think of a boat that
Speaker 3: doesn't have anyone driving it, right, And it was uncrewed
Speaker 3: surface vessels that they used last night at the time
Speaker 3: of recording to explode a tanker in the port in Barcera, Right, Okay,
Speaker 3: very hard for the United States to stop these uncrewed
Speaker 3: surface vessels. Right, they are like the Shihi drone of
Speaker 3: the ocean. This boat's not coming home. It's designed to
Speaker 3: eliminate another boat. But it can be It could be steered, right,
Speaker 3: It's not just like a torpedo. So what exactly are
Speaker 3: the options I guess for the United States? Trump has
Speaker 3: offered to secure shipping through the straight ofform moose, right,
Speaker 3: he offered to accompany ships. The Navy doesn't have the
Speaker 3: capacity to do that. To accompany the amount of the
Speaker 3: world shipping that goes through the straight ofform moves would
Speaker 3: require masses of ships to accompany them, right, They'd have
Speaker 3: to travel at the same speed as these ships. Some
Speaker 3: of these ships are flagged to countries all over the world, right,
Speaker 3: including countries the US doesn't have the best relationship with,
Speaker 3: especially right now. The companies could hire more private maritime security,
Speaker 3: and I'm sure they will, but also like, part of
Speaker 3: the role of private maritime security companies is to be like,
Speaker 3: don't do that, it's too dangerous. And going through a
Speaker 3: straightform moods right now is probably too dangerous, right, sure,
Speaker 3: So I don't know how you would quickly equip a
Speaker 3: ship in a way that you could be like cast
Speaker 3: iron secure that it will be able to fend off
Speaker 3: like a little swarm of little boats trying to attack it. Right,
Speaker 3: I don't think an RPG could sink one of these ships,
Speaker 3: but it could really fucking give it a bad day.
Speaker 3: Oh you know, Like there's not a good situation when
Speaker 3: there's a hole in your boat from what I understand. So,
Speaker 3: like the other option would be for the US to
Speaker 3: put personnel on these ships, which would be problematic from
Speaker 3: a number of approaches. Right, it is a Liberian flagship,
Speaker 3: and now you're asking what US marines to risk their
Speaker 3: lives to defend the Liberian flagship so everyone can get
Speaker 3: their TIMU purchases. And like we can not slow down
Speaker 3: global trade. There is not a good option here. Like
Speaker 3: the state the States of the world couldn't find a
Speaker 3: good option when we were dealing with piracy in two
Speaker 3: thousand and nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Right, they felt better
Speaker 3: outsourcing the accountability for that to private companies. The States
Speaker 3: didn't want to have to wear the reputation damage for
Speaker 3: like this boat once again opened up with a belt
Speaker 3: fed on what turned out to be a fishing vessel,
Speaker 3: or they felt like that liability was too much for them, right,
Speaker 3: so they didn't want to do it and they would
Speaker 3: much rather have private companies do it. I don't really
Speaker 3: see an option here that makes the shipping safe going
Speaker 3: through this area.
Speaker 4: You could not start a war with Iran.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that is a really good option, actually one
Speaker 3: that one that sadly that ship has sailed as they say, Garrizon,
Speaker 3: But yeah, it is. This industry is already problematic, Like
Speaker 3: even before the United States started bombing Venezuela and the
Speaker 3: Colombian fishing vessels or vessels that it accused of being
Speaker 3: drug traffickers, there has been a long history of a
Speaker 3: lack of accountability for people being killed at sea and
Speaker 3: for people being abused at sea through labor violations. I
Speaker 3: don't really see a way we come out of this
Speaker 3: without more damage to innocent lives, right, Like, either the
Speaker 3: United States just decides that it's going to go like
Speaker 3: scorched Earth on any boat its seas in the straight
Speaker 3: of Horn moves isn't like a big tanker. And then
Speaker 3: these these vessels, they're not all US flagged, right, the
Speaker 3: US doesn't have a means to be like, Okay, you
Speaker 3: can go now you can't go now the straightforward moves
Speaker 3: is not in the United States. It doesn't control that water,
Speaker 3: and so I don't really see a solution for this now.
Speaker 3: Like one thing that the world of private maritime security
Speaker 3: shows us is that neoliberal globalism is willing to look
Speaker 3: the other way a great deal and allow a great
Speaker 3: deal of violence on behalf of corporations, not on behalf
Speaker 3: of the state. Right Like when people are getting engaged
Speaker 3: by these vessels, it is to protect property. Granted, sometimes
Speaker 3: it is also to protect life, right like these pirates
Speaker 3: have killed people and kidnap people in search. But the
Speaker 3: state has been willing to see its monopoly on violence
Speaker 3: at the high seas because it could find a good
Speaker 3: solution to this, and it's been willing to overlook a
Speaker 3: lot of loss of life. And I just don't see
Speaker 3: a way that this doesn't lead to more loss of life.
Speaker 3: That is probably what we have to look forward to.
Speaker 3: It may have already begun happening in the straight of
Speaker 3: horn Moves between when we record this and when you
Speaker 3: hear it, but it is deeply concerning and pretty shit,
Speaker 3: given that there are so many people just trying to
Speaker 3: make their way and live their lives in that area. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a happy one. Shout out to Greenpeace also for
Speaker 3: also patronizing these companies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you told me this was going to be a
Speaker 4: recording about pirates.
Speaker 3: There were pirates in it. That was a yeah. But
Speaker 3: I know, if you're a pirate and you're listening, I
Speaker 3: would love to hear it from more pirates.
Speaker 4: Between the pirates, the private maritime contractors, and the governments,
Speaker 4: it's like everyone here has their own issues. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: all these issues are getting massively intensified by the conflict
Speaker 4: in Aran obviously.
Speaker 3: Yeah, before we even talk about the ecological crisis that
Speaker 3: we will see in the Gulf, right, Like you start
Speaker 3: putting holes in oil tankers, that is going to be
Speaker 3: absolute horrific for the environment. Again in an area where
Speaker 3: people are ready to struggling to make it by, I mean.
Speaker 4: Why don't they just pull a pull of Fitzgernaldo. Why
Speaker 4: don't they just pull those ships up? Oh God, avoid
Speaker 4: them straight altogether.
Speaker 3: Maybe people haven't seen this, and this surface is like
Speaker 3: every three days right now on Twitter, like why don't
Speaker 3: they just go across land? It turns out that mountains,
Speaker 3: big mountains, hard water doesn't like going uphill, quite a
Speaker 3: challenging terrain to transit. I think maybe people don't realize
Speaker 3: that eighty percent think believe it's eighty percent of global
Speaker 3: trade still travels by boat. Yeah, like it is still
Speaker 3: the way that most things get to most places. And
Speaker 3: I think we are about to find out that the
Speaker 3: boat ignorers are about to find out. If this continues
Speaker 3: for weeks or months, then it will be incredibly detrimental.
Speaker 4: Is this a good or a bad time to enter
Speaker 4: the private mirror time contracting business?
Speaker 3: How much are you enjoying your life decently? Well, okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: probably stay out of it if I with you.
Speaker 4: Because they got to be getting a lot of money.
Speaker 4: But also they're in the one of the most highest
Speaker 4: positions they've probably ever been in.
Speaker 3: So yeah, this was already an area of military contracting
Speaker 3: that people looked to get into and get out of.
Speaker 3: I would say, like the bulk of these folks now
Speaker 3: will be the ones I've met have been Colombians. The
Speaker 3: Colombians provide a lot of military contractors around the world. Now,
Speaker 3: the people who are able to get out of it
Speaker 3: will do business in other areas, right, Like they'll do
Speaker 3: the private close protection and stuff like that there are
Speaker 3: protective details for journalists I know in who are operating
Speaker 3: in Iraq right now. Sure, yeah, these people will be
Speaker 3: making a lot of money, I think, especially like probably
Speaker 3: consulting right now with global shipping. I was reading about
Speaker 3: the East India Company this morning. I was learning, for instance,
Speaker 3: that the value of a t ship leave in China
Speaker 3: was a billion dollars in twenty twenty four money, which
Speaker 3: is how like these private maritime security companies in another
Speaker 3: age were able to develop right because it was worth
Speaker 3: boat jacking, that boat pirrating, whatever that's called, because of
Speaker 3: the value of tea at that time. So it's not
Speaker 3: a new problem. But there was a relatively short period
Speaker 3: of time in global trade history in which the state
Speaker 3: attempted to advance any form of hegemony over the high seas,
Speaker 3: and it is completely retreated from that in the twenty
Speaker 3: first century. But it will be very difficult for any
Speaker 3: state to try and regain that now, Like I don't
Speaker 3: see even the United States doesn't really have the capacity
Speaker 3: to do that. Garrison looks ponderous.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I guess I'll cancel my TIMU orders.
Speaker 3: They'll come someone someone right now is strapping a belt
Speaker 3: fed machine gun to a boat to make sure that
Speaker 3: you get your team orders. It is like, really kind
Speaker 3: of fucked that we're asking people to run a mine field, right,
Speaker 3: Like an understand global trade. It's not just temu orders,
Speaker 3: but certainly a lot of stuff is consumed when the
Speaker 3: global author doesn't need to be consumed. And it is
Speaker 3: wild that right now, the solution of the global shipping
Speaker 3: industry seems to be some of these people will die,
Speaker 3: but we will keep the oil moving and the treats moving.
Speaker 3: But that has been, as I hope I've illustrated here right, like,
Speaker 3: some people will die, but we will keep the treats moving,
Speaker 3: has been pretty much the status of the shipping industry
Speaker 3: for most of the twenty first century.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the status of the entire world at this point. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that is the capitalist logic, right. It's just it's like
Speaker 3: particularly I think particularly naked here. Yeah. I highly recommend
Speaker 3: the Outlaw Ocean podcast if you're interested in learning more
Speaker 3: about this. I will link to some of the jastore
Speaker 3: deep dive that I went on this morning if you
Speaker 3: are able to get past the jay Store paywall and
Speaker 3: would like to read that. I think that's about all
Speaker 3: we got anything else you want to say about boats.
Speaker 3: Garrison now is the age of pirates. Yeah, our flag
Speaker 3: means a complete lack of accountability.
Speaker 4: Hello everyone, a welcome to it could happen here. My
Speaker 4: name is Dad Al Kern.
Speaker 9: I'm an associate professor of political science, a senior non
Speaker 9: resident fell at the Arab Center Washington, and I specialize
Speaker 9: in Palestinian and Arab politics. Although Gaza has sort of
Speaker 9: leaked off the headlines with everything going on domestically, there's
Speaker 9: still obviously a lot happening on the issue of Palestine.
Speaker 9: I feel like I've started the last few episodes like this,
Speaker 9: but it's worth repeating. So here's an update on what's
Speaker 9: been happening in Gaza specifically, despite the ceasefire agreement, reports
Speaker 9: indicate ongoing demolition of homes in Gaza City and restricted
Speaker 9: entry of food, medical, and humanitarian aid. Again, since the
Speaker 9: ceasefire started, more than six hundred Palestinians have been killed
Speaker 9: by Israeli fire, with one hundreds more injured. For some reason,
Speaker 9: these don't count as ceasefire violations, and according to the
Speaker 9: Gaza Government Media Office, there's been over sixteen hundred violations
Speaker 9: by Israeli forces, including air attacks, shelling, and direct shooting.
Speaker 9: Of the past one hundred and thirty some days of
Speaker 9: the ceasefire, Analsis shows attacks on one hundred and eleven
Speaker 9: of them, at least in a previous episode, I also
Speaker 9: talked about what the yellow line was, which was this
Speaker 9: kind of unilaterally imposed military boundary inside Gaza to make
Speaker 9: sure that Palestinians are sequestered into smaller spaces, and Israeli
Speaker 9: forces have continued to target individuals and structures across this
Speaker 9: yellow line, claiming that these actions are necessary to stop
Speaker 9: militants and now JA zero reports, however, that Israeli backed
Speaker 9: gangs armed gangs are operating back and forth across the
Speaker 9: yellow line, so they're allowed now. Rapach Crossing, which is
Speaker 9: at the southern tip of Gaza, has officially opened but
Speaker 9: is operating under intense Israeli security with some monitoring by
Speaker 9: the Palestinian authority and EU officials, but reports indicate that
Speaker 9: only about fifty to one hundred and fifty people are
Speaker 9: allowed to cross daily, which is far below the demand
Speaker 9: for the estimated twenty thousand plus sick or wounded Palstinians
Speaker 9: needing evacuation. And since it's opened, its face closures. There's
Speaker 9: been a lot of confusion about policy, with many reporting
Speaker 9: harsh treatment, invasive searches, and restrictions on personal belongings for
Speaker 9: those passing through, and that crossing is not functioning for
Speaker 9: commercial or humanitarian aid, which must go through other Israeli
Speaker 9: controlled crossings. At the Munich Security Conference that was held
Speaker 9: February thirteenth, the top US appointed diplomat overseeing the ceasefire,
Speaker 9: Bulgarian diplomat Nicolaim Ladanov said, quote continued violations of the
Speaker 9: agreement pose major obstacles to the Pastinian committee expected to
Speaker 9: oversee post war governance and reconstruction end quote, and he
Speaker 9: was specifically talking about Hamas basically violating the agreement by
Speaker 9: not laying down its weapons not disarming, and the Paladian
Speaker 9: Foreign Minister Varsen Shaheen, speaking at the same panel, focused
Speaker 9: on this idea that Gaza must not be severed from
Speaker 9: the West Bank and that the Palsidian authority, meaning the
Speaker 9: government in the West Bank that she represents, will need
Speaker 9: to take control of governance at some point in Gaza
Speaker 9: so that Pastinians could maybe have a state in the future.
Speaker 9: Something of course, the Israeli government has rejected outright, which
Speaker 9: brings us to this issue of disarming Hamas. Now, this
Speaker 9: has been a condition of the US and its representatives
Speaker 9: on the Board of Peace. Here's Trump on this a
Speaker 9: few days after the ceasefire was announced.
Speaker 1: Will it take Hamas to disarm and can you guarantee
Speaker 1: that is.
Speaker 4: Going to happen?
Speaker 7: Well, I'm going to disarm and because they said they
Speaker 7: were going to disarm, and if they don't disarm, we
Speaker 7: will disarm them.
Speaker 1: How you do that, I don't have to explain that
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 7: But if they don't disarm, we will disarm them. They
Speaker 7: know I'm not playing games, okay.
Speaker 9: On February fifteenth, he announced on social media his Truth
Speaker 9: Social that he had gotten five billion dollars pledged by
Speaker 9: members of his quote unquote Board of Peace. As one
Speaker 9: article noted, reconstruction of Gaza is expected to cost seven
Speaker 9: hundred billion dollars according to the United Nations, World Bank,
Speaker 9: and European Union est, especially after more than two years
Speaker 9: of war. Trump has also claimed that countries had committed
Speaker 9: a bunch of troops to the International Security Force that's
Speaker 9: supposed to go into Gaza, secure Gaza and disarm Hamas.
Speaker 9: He didn't name which of these countries had committed troops,
Speaker 9: but Indonesia did confirm that it will send eight thousand troops.
Speaker 9: And in that same truth social post, Trump again reiterated
Speaker 9: that quote very importantly, HAMAS must uphold its commitment to
Speaker 9: full and immediate demilitarization end quote so. Back in December,
Speaker 9: in an interview with Israel's Channel twelve, as reported by
Speaker 9: drop site News, US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz,
Speaker 9: said that the International Security Force was intended to disarm
Speaker 9: Hamas one way or the other. Specifically, he said, quote
Speaker 9: by all means necessary, and that quote obviously it'll be
Speaker 9: a conversation with each country. Those rules of engagement are ongoing.
Speaker 9: I'll tell you this. President Trump has repeatedly said HAMAS
Speaker 9: will disarm one way or another, the easy way or
Speaker 9: the hard way. Now. Hamas, for its part, claims it
Speaker 9: never agreed to disarm. In an interview with drop site
Speaker 9: News in December twenty twenty five, senior HAMAS leader had
Speaker 9: Ad Micheald said that while HAMAS is open to quote
Speaker 9: freezing or storing its defensive weapons, it wouldn't disarm unless
Speaker 9: it was in the quote context of establishing a Palestinian
Speaker 9: army or security force capable of defending itself from Israeli aggression.
Speaker 9: Hamas has claimed that it only has a mandate to
Speaker 9: negotiate a ceasefire at exchange of captives, and that every
Speaker 9: other issue needs to be handled through some sort of
Speaker 9: consensus process involving the other Palestinian political factions. And in
Speaker 9: that same interview, Michild rejected the idea of an international
Speaker 9: security force disarming them, saying that quote we accept them
Speaker 9: on the borders as separation forces between the Palestinian side
Speaker 9: and the Israeli side, not as forces deployed inside Gaza
Speaker 9: as was intended for them, and as Nittanyaja wants for
Speaker 9: them to clash with Palestinians and disarm them end quote.
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 9: Speaking at an Al Jazera forum on February eighth, the
Speaker 9: same person, hadath Micheald reiterated this argument, saying that the
Speaker 9: calls for Hamas's disarmament is not an international demand but
Speaker 9: and Israeli dictate being pushed onto Washington.
Speaker 4: He also said that calls to.
Speaker 9: Disarm Palstinians while the occupation continues would quote leave Gaza
Speaker 9: defenseless against Israel's overwhelming military power and exterminationist agenda. As
Speaker 9: job site News reported on their social media quote, mitchad
Speaker 9: acknowledged the need for pragmatic post war framework to enable
Speaker 9: reconstruction and prevent a return to fighting, but explained that
Speaker 9: it could not be built on total disarmament. So with
Speaker 9: that as an introduction, I wanted to take this episode
Speaker 9: to talk about what Palestinians think of disarmament and broadly
Speaker 9: and more generally arm tactics. And when I say Palestinians,
Speaker 9: I hope it's clear I don't just mean Hemas. I
Speaker 9: know that comes as a shock to some, but Pastinians
Speaker 9: aren't monolithic. And there has been a great deal of
Speaker 9: debate since the Octu over seventh attacks by hems on
Speaker 9: the role of arm tactics armed groups, especially in the
Speaker 9: absence of national institutions or functioning national liberation movements. In
Speaker 9: December of last year, twenty twenty five, the New Arab
Speaker 9: hosted a very interesting debate between different Pastinian representatives of
Speaker 9: Hamas Fateh, the party of the Pasidian Authority, and a
Speaker 9: human rights activist and writer. And they hosted this in Gaza,
Speaker 9: literally on the grounds of the bombed out of Shippe hospital,
Speaker 9: and they've debated some key questions, for example, who has
Speaker 9: the right to decide or in peace for Palestinians, How
Speaker 9: can Pastinians understand October seventh, does Hamas need to disarm?
Speaker 9: Who should govern Gaza? And you know what, this may
Speaker 9: come as a shock to both the American left and
Speaker 9: the American right, but the Pasadian speakers at this interview
Speaker 9: did not all agree with each other. So I'm going
Speaker 9: to give a brief rountdown of what this panel discussed.
Speaker 9: The main Hamas spokesperson hasn't caused him basically argued that
Speaker 9: decisions on war and peace should be made through national
Speaker 9: consensus within a unified Pastinian institution, not unilatterally by any faction,
Speaker 9: but that in the absence of functioning institutions, then Hamas
Speaker 9: is a part of the Palastinian body politic has a
Speaker 9: right to engage in violence and defend Palestinians. He also
Speaker 9: argued that it wasn't Hamas's fault that there wasn't national
Speaker 9: consensus or functioning national institutions. His narrative was that Hamas
Speaker 9: consistently sought unity first by entering into elections in two
Speaker 9: thousand and six and supporting election attempts that President Mahmad
Speaker 9: Abbas of the Party and the Paladian Authority ended up canceling.
Speaker 9: He also reiterated that Hamas doesn't mind handing over governance
Speaker 9: in Gaza to a technocratic body, which proves from his perspective,
Speaker 9: that they aren't trying to govern alone. And on the
Speaker 9: question of disarmament, he said Hamas would commit to cease fire,
Speaker 9: they would commit to maybe storing their weapons, but they
Speaker 9: wouldn't disarm entirely, and they maintained that armed tactics are
Speaker 9: illegitimate right. He also emphasized that Israel alone was responsible
Speaker 9: for the destruction of Gaza and that no one could
Speaker 9: have anticipated the level of brutality Israel would unleash now.
Speaker 9: The Faateehespauk's person Munder Hayek understandably disagreed with many of
Speaker 9: these points. He represents the opposing party, and from his perspective,
Speaker 9: the October seventh attacks were launched without national consensus and
Speaker 9: that Concessus could only operate through the Past Time Liberation
Speaker 9: Organization the PLO, which is the internationally recognized representative of
Speaker 9: the Palestinian people. Hayak also made the reasonable argument that
Speaker 9: even if everyone agrees armed resistance is a right that
Speaker 9: those engaging in that tactic should consider the regional and
Speaker 9: international context, as well as the impact of these kinds
Speaker 9: of tactics and the likelihood of their success, and in
Speaker 9: his view, because these things were not considered October seventh
Speaker 9: led to very negative results for Palestinians and a lack
Speaker 9: of meaningful international support. He also admonished Hamas leadership for
Speaker 9: making what he thinks this is a political decision of
Speaker 9: not negotiating a ceasefire earlier, accusing them of having been
Speaker 9: able to stop the war in the first six months
Speaker 9: and limit the bloodshed. And finally, he criticized Hamas for
Speaker 9: prolonging negotiations and refusing to put the PA in charge
Speaker 9: of Gaza. And he landed on the argument that there
Speaker 9: could be no future for Hamas from his perspective, as
Speaker 9: part of a national liberation movement unless it accepted the PLO,
Speaker 9: it disarmed, it renounced violence, and understood that the PA,
Speaker 9: the Palsenian Authority, was the only legitimate authority that could
Speaker 9: control both territories, the West Bank and Gaza. And the
Speaker 9: way to quote unify Palstinen geography is through the Palsenian
Speaker 9: authority and doing that would be the only way to
Speaker 9: get back to the state building project. I'm just summarizing
Speaker 9: here to be clear, his words, not mine.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 9: The final panelist, Mustaf Ebrahim is a writer and human
Speaker 9: rights activist in Gaza who took a critical position of
Speaker 9: both parties. He basically said that both Hamas and Fate
Speaker 9: share the blame for the division in the Palestinian body
Speaker 9: politic and the fact that there was a lack of
Speaker 9: mechanism for collective Pastenian decision making and no functioning national institutions.
Speaker 9: He blamed both sides, and he accused both sides of
Speaker 9: not actually being serious about any of the dialogue sessions
Speaker 9: that were held between the two parties in the past
Speaker 9: in Cairo, Beirut, and Beijing. But he agreed with the
Speaker 9: fatehpokesperson that October seventh has not been allowed to be
Speaker 9: assessed properly and that Palestinians never got to decide if
Speaker 9: the consequences justified whatever October semath was trying to do,
Speaker 9: and he blamed Hamas for that, so, agreeing with the
Speaker 9: other panelists that the rights to resist as legitimate. He
Speaker 9: also acknowledged that disarmament was an internationally demanded condition, so
Speaker 9: he posed the question how would Palestinians navigate this, and
Speaker 9: from his perspective, Hamas should be more flexible on the
Speaker 9: weapons and disarmament issue, especially given the degree of people's
Speaker 9: suffering and the need for reconstruction in Gaza. I summarize
Speaker 9: all of this for you, because this debate held in
Speaker 9: Gaza among people who had directly lived through the last
Speaker 9: two years of genocide, should demonstrate that there is no
Speaker 9: national consensus, and that it's not because Postinians don't know
Speaker 9: how to resolve these issues, it's because they haven't been
Speaker 9: given the space to do so. There has been a
Speaker 9: lot of discussion about how to unify these different parties,
Speaker 9: about reviving the Pastaine Liberation Organization, making it more inclusive
Speaker 9: and democratic and therefore more legitimate as an actor, so
Speaker 9: that it could make decisions the Pastinian people would accept,
Speaker 9: and so that not one faction can do what at
Speaker 9: once can engage in tactics without considering the consequences. But
Speaker 9: none of these attempts, and there have been plenty, like
Speaker 9: the Palstinian National Conference, have really been incorporated into discussions
Speaker 9: of post conflict processes or management by the international community.
Speaker 9: Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised when the idea we're going
Speaker 9: with is the quote Board of Peace basically functioning as
Speaker 9: a colonial oversight board and a club for authoritarian regimes.
Speaker 4: But I digress.
Speaker 3: I think it's also important.
Speaker 4: To make two points here.
Speaker 9: First, that polling of the Palestinian people by the Palstinian
Speaker 9: Center for Policy and Survey Research shows that most Palestinians
Speaker 9: are not supportive of either party, neither Fetah or Hamas.
Speaker 9: There is a degree of malaise and cynicism where both
Speaker 9: parties are seen as a part of an unacceptable status quo.
Speaker 9: For example, when asked about whether they would support a
Speaker 9: Hamas candidate or a Fete candidate if elections were held
Speaker 9: for the presidency, thirty four percent of Palestinians say they
Speaker 9: would vote for a Fute candidate, twenty four percent would
Speaker 9: say a Hamas candidate, nine percent would say they would
Speaker 9: keep president Mahammad Abbass, and a whopping thirty two percent
Speaker 9: would say they wouldn't even vote, And this non voting
Speaker 9: percentage goes up to forty seven percent if the elections
Speaker 9: are just between Mahmud Abass and a Hamas candidate. And
Speaker 9: they also ask about direct support of political parties, so
Speaker 9: there's a more direct question. In the latest poll from
Speaker 9: October twenty twenty five, again it shows twenty four percent
Speaker 9: support FATEH, hardly a majority, thirty five percent support MS,
Speaker 9: again hardly a majority, nine percent support third parties, and
Speaker 9: thirty two percent either say they don't know or refuse
Speaker 9: to answer. So this is not a situation where either
Speaker 9: of these parties have im mandate, and it's clear that
Speaker 9: neither party is representing the Pasenian people right now, nor
Speaker 9: do their actions have majority support. Now, some might wonder
Speaker 9: is this debate emerging because of the sheer level of
Speaker 9: destruction in Gaza. We are talking over seventy thousand people
Speaker 9: killed in Gaza that we can even confirm so far.
Speaker 9: Is it that, in this context, this context of severe
Speaker 9: consequences from Israel, what prompted this debate and self reflection?
Speaker 4: Well, the short answer is no.
Speaker 9: Pastenians have always debated these issues, and in the absence
Speaker 9: of a functioning national liberation movement with all of its institutions,
Speaker 9: they haven't been able to hold any particular party accountable
Speaker 9: for its actions. I could point to a lot in
Speaker 9: Paustenian history to demonstrate this, but I'll point out an
Speaker 9: essay by a Pastinian intellectual, Asmibshada, that he wrote and
Speaker 9: released within a month of October seventh. This essay, titled
Speaker 9: Moral Matters and Hard Times, again demonstrates the Palestinians have
Speaker 9: never shied away from this discussion and indeed made criticisms
Speaker 9: of these political parties very quickly following the attacks. Now,
Speaker 9: of course, Bashada lays the blame for civilian deaths on Israel,
Speaker 9: given that it targets Palestinian civilians as he argues out
Speaker 9: of racism, and as he argues to try to turn
Speaker 9: the population against armed tactics and armed resistance, and he
Speaker 9: quotes Israeli leaders directly here. So he talks about President
Speaker 9: Herzog saying there are no innocence in Gaza and Israeli
Speaker 9: Defense Minister you Off Gallant at the time calling people
Speaker 9: in Gaza human animals. And he also points out that
Speaker 9: Israeli society at the time was overwhelmingly supportive of cutting
Speaker 9: off food, water, and medicine to Gaza. So, although Bashada
Speaker 9: rejects this kind of absolute evil framing of the attacks
Speaker 9: and says we need to understand the context of a
Speaker 9: seventeen year see John Gaza settlement expansion, incursions on the
Speaker 9: al Axamosk and prisoner mistreatment. He also plainly argues that
Speaker 9: immoral acts committed during October seventh So to him, documented
Speaker 9: instances of harm to civilians, theft, mistreatment, et cetera, are
Speaker 9: not acts of resistance, and in fact, from his perspective,
Speaker 9: they harm legitimate resistance, and he argues again a month
Speaker 9: within the attacks, that the leadership of the quote unquote
Speaker 9: resistance have a duty to clarify what happened and condemn
Speaker 9: those immoral acts. He says, quote having recognized a people's
Speaker 9: right to resist occupation, can it be concluded that we
Speaker 9: are not permitted to judge the morality of acts of
Speaker 9: resistance to occupation. My answer is that, on the contrary,
Speaker 9: it is not only permissible, but perhaps necessary end quote.
Speaker 9: So he argues that the right to resist does not
Speaker 9: exempt these movements from moral judgment, and distinguishing between legitimate
Speaker 9: military operations and a moral acts against civilians is essential
Speaker 9: to maintaining the justice of the Pastinian cause. Even as
Speaker 9: we can acknowledge and emphasize the quote moral depravity of
Speaker 9: the Israeli response end quote. Now, whether you agree with
Speaker 9: him or not, whether you side with one of the
Speaker 9: panelists I mentioned from the interview or the other, what
Speaker 9: I want people to take away from this episode is
Speaker 9: that all of this clearly shows Palestinians have been taking
Speaker 9: seriously the strategic and moral implications of all of these
Speaker 9: tactics arm tactics included, and that there isn't any one
Speaker 9: party that speaks for what Postinians want right now. The
Speaker 9: only way to get national consensus is to allow the
Speaker 9: Palestinians to create or revive the institutions necessary for that
Speaker 9: to take place. Disempowering Palestinians, ignoring their aspirations and ignoring
Speaker 9: the need for their input, or blocking them from undergoing
Speaker 9: this essential process will only prolong the conflict and prolong
Speaker 9: the suffering. That's it for me today, Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Welcome to It Could Happened Here, a podcast frequently about
Speaker 1: the horrifying tech gouls and in this case, venture capital
Speaker 1: gouls who are plotting to take over the United States
Speaker 1: and have already made your lives significantly worse. I am
Speaker 1: your host, Mia Wong, and with me today, I'm very,
Speaker 1: very excited about this to talk about the forces of
Speaker 1: venture capital and how they're ruining our lives. Is Shaneley,
Speaker 1: who is one of the people who puts together the
Speaker 1: website VC Infodocs, which I really cannot recommend enough. It
Speaker 1: is the most comprehensive, compile source of information on these
Speaker 1: venture capital firms and the network state and all the
Speaker 1: things that I've been talking about that I've ever encountered.
Speaker 1: It was a very significant source for the episodes that
Speaker 1: I did about Abundance. Shanley, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 8: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 5: This is actually the first podcast I've ever done, so
Speaker 5: thank you.
Speaker 10: I feel very special.
Speaker 8: So it's great, It's it's good to be here with you.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you want to talk a little bit about your
Speaker 1: work and about your time confronting the sort of Leviathan
Speaker 1: of venture capital.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, So. I actually used to work in the tech industry.
Speaker 5: It feels like a lifetime ago, but I remember when
Speaker 5: I first started encountering venture capital, like I knew in
Speaker 5: my body and my heart and my soul that something
Speaker 5: was terribly wrong with this situation.
Speaker 8: And so I started following that down, you know, over.
Speaker 5: The course of years, and now I've been doing it
Speaker 5: for about thirteen years. At different times, I've been more
Speaker 5: of an activist. I ran a tech critical magazine at
Speaker 5: one point, and now I really do a bunch of
Speaker 5: research and work with other researchers around the world to
Speaker 5: try to bring as much much serious and material information
Speaker 5: about venture capital and what we're facing as possible and
Speaker 5: put it in people's hands who can do something about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and those hands are amazingly You the listener, You,
Speaker 1: dear listener, can be one of the people who helps
Speaker 1: end these people's reign over the world. Absolutely so, all right,
Speaker 1: I think the place that we should start is I
Speaker 1: think when people think about and it's something that you have
Speaker 1: talked about, when people think about sort of venture capital
Speaker 1: and tech and the wave that they're trying to take
Speaker 1: over the country, there is this myopic focus on Peter
Speaker 1: Thiel and Jarvin Curtis because they are these sort of
Speaker 1: almost semi mythological at this point figures who have a
Speaker 1: bunch of really really unhinged beliefs and love talking about
Speaker 1: them constantly.
Speaker 5: Yes, one hundred percent. It almost turns into a circus.
Speaker 5: Look at these freaks, get these like three freaks that
Speaker 5: then get sort of obsessively focused on and Sam Altman
Speaker 5: and one is one of those. Peter Tiela's one of those.
Speaker 5: Curtis Jarvin is one of those. And it kind of
Speaker 5: ends up being people are looking at this through the
Speaker 5: lens of individuals, through the lens of sort of these
Speaker 5: cults of personalities that are being created. They're relating to
Speaker 5: this issue through sort of like individual players in the environment,
Speaker 5: and that's actually very limiting when we're talking about a
Speaker 5: system that consists of trillions of dollars, hundreds of venture
Speaker 5: capital firms, thousands and thousands and thousands of startups, and
Speaker 5: all of the financial structures that are around them. So
Speaker 5: it has this effect of almost minimizing what's happening, yeah,
Speaker 5: and also kind of diverting something so serious into something
Speaker 5: that is kind of like, well, we can just make
Speaker 5: fun of them and that's gonna do something, and that's activism.
Speaker 8: The reality is they.
Speaker 5: Think that we are labrats. Yeah, they do not care
Speaker 5: what we think about them. So having this very like
Speaker 5: we're gonna call them stupid, we're gonna call them dumb,
Speaker 5: we're gonna make fun of them, we're gonna do whatever,
Speaker 5: that becomes the dominant form of critique and that takes
Speaker 5: us way off course of what's actually happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like it's a kind of like Great Man
Speaker 1: theory a venture capital yes, yeah, And this isn't a
Speaker 1: situation where it's like, you know, you're looking at like
Speaker 1: Napoleon history on horseback stuff and you're you're debating whether
Speaker 1: or okay, to what extent is just like the Great
Speaker 1: Man and to what extent this is like the structural
Speaker 1: forces of history. This is a situation where like we're
Speaker 1: looking at a structural force and everyone is like looking
Speaker 1: at the clown they've stuck on top of the structural force.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, no, no, no, no, we got to understand
Speaker 1: the actual structures here, which I think you've done maybe
Speaker 1: the best job I've ever seen, and actually looking at
Speaker 1: what we're dealing with, which is these networks of hundreds
Speaker 1: of venture capital firms and startups and yeah, this entire
Speaker 1: sort of ecosystem that has become a sort of force
Speaker 1: of history.
Speaker 5: Yes, one hundred person And that's where the conversation needs
Speaker 5: to go is towards like what are we actually dealing with,
Speaker 5: Like what are we actually facing and what are the
Speaker 5: causes of that So I always like to start with
Speaker 5: sort of talking about you know, what are some of
Speaker 5: the core dynamics that are.
Speaker 8: Happening within venture capital.
Speaker 5: One of them is that venture capitalists act as a
Speaker 5: central coordinator of this giant machinery of startups and technological
Speaker 5: development and infrastructure. So one thing I often see, like
Speaker 5: you might be looking at like fifteen different startups and
Speaker 5: that's all the same thing. Yeah, you're even looking at
Speaker 5: five different VC firms. That is all the same thing.
Speaker 8: It is our.
Speaker 5: Cartel that it has a central financial backbone that is
Speaker 5: generating companies at an incredible speed with incredible efficiency. They
Speaker 5: are machines for turning out these startups which they're then
Speaker 5: able to orchestrate to work together, and that becomes just
Speaker 5: a profound force and a very efficient force in changing
Speaker 5: the world, in interacting with the world, and as we
Speaker 5: increasingly see, you know, impacting geopolitics.
Speaker 1: So for people like me who are fortunate enough to
Speaker 1: not sort of live inside one of these people's center
Speaker 1: of power, which is you know, like places like the
Speaker 1: Bay or like these these places where these concentrations of
Speaker 1: tech capital have fundamentally reshaped the world to the extent
Speaker 1: that it feels just being in one of these places
Speaker 1: feels so different than being in a place that's not
Speaker 1: like a tech capital center. For those of us who
Speaker 1: like aren't living as much under the eye of the panopticon.
Speaker 1: Can you explain a little bit about what venture capital
Speaker 1: is dex and then what the effect on sort of
Speaker 1: the tech sector that it's had has been.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, So, you know, venture capital essentially what it does.
Speaker 5: It takes in capital from around the world. And one
Speaker 5: of the interesting things about venture capital is like we
Speaker 5: do not have a lot of visibility into where their
Speaker 5: money is coming from. We know some things about them,
Speaker 5: but we do not get a list of like here's
Speaker 5: everyone who's giving us money.
Speaker 8: So we have all this money coming in, and then
Speaker 8: on the.
Speaker 5: Outside of that, weapons companies are coming out, Yeah, crypto
Speaker 5: companies are coming out, and you know, derne companies coming out,
Speaker 5: nuclear energy companies are coming out. So you sort of
Speaker 5: have this like it's almost like a black box where
Speaker 5: unknown money goes in. Yeah, and then all of this
Speaker 5: shit comes out the other side.
Speaker 8: And that becomes really.
Speaker 5: Scary when you start to look at things like we
Speaker 5: know that Israel is funding many venture capital firms in
Speaker 5: the US, and those venture capital firms are turning out
Speaker 5: dozens and dozens of weapons companies, and then those weapons
Speaker 5: companies are going to Israel and being used in the genocide.
Speaker 8: So you have these very sort of.
Speaker 5: Complex relationships going on between like the investors, between other
Speaker 5: nations and what venture capital is doing.
Speaker 1: One of the things that this reminds me of is
Speaker 1: this is something we've talked about on this show to
Speaker 1: some extent, but one of the major forces that kind
Speaker 1: of reshaped the latter half of the twentieth century was
Speaker 1: after the sort of oil shocks, where you know, you
Speaker 1: have all of these countries, like you have like countries
Speaker 1: like Saudi Arabia, like the golf monarchies who are like
Speaker 1: very intimately tied to all of these All of these
Speaker 1: venture capital firms are certainly just flush with oil money,
Speaker 1: and they have this problem, which is that, Okay, we
Speaker 1: have all of these piles of money, but this money
Speaker 1: is capital, right, and capital wants to be turned into
Speaker 1: more and increasing amounts of capital. But how do you
Speaker 1: do that, Like where do you actually put this money
Speaker 1: in an economy where you know, like this is the
Speaker 1: context of the seventies, where like output everywhere is decreasing
Speaker 1: and like the returns are on capital are falling, and
Speaker 1: you know the long range rate of returns collapsing, what
Speaker 1: do you do with it? And in the seventies, the
Speaker 1: thing that they did with it was they put it
Speaker 1: into like third world debt. And this is like why
Speaker 1: the term third world is a slur now when it
Speaker 1: used to be a political movement, is that, you know,
Speaker 1: these countries took all of these redgestable interest rate loans
Speaker 1: and then when the interest rate went to like two
Speaker 1: hundred percent or whatever, they got completely annihilated. And some
Speaker 1: of that capital went to weapons, because weapons are a
Speaker 1: thing that you can put capital into that destroys capital.
Speaker 1: And also it let's you know it lets like Saudi
Speaker 1: the Saudi monarchy stay in power. But it's also a
Speaker 1: thing where like you don't find a way to make
Speaker 1: money with that capital. You could just buy a bunch
Speaker 1: of jet fighters from the US, which do nothing, but
Speaker 1: you spent your money on something one hundred percent.
Speaker 5: And I think to that point, specifically Saudi Arabia, one
Speaker 5: of the main reasons what's happening in venture capital now
Speaker 5: is because Saudi Arabia is trying to diversify its wealth
Speaker 5: outside of oil, and they want a globally competitive technology industry,
Speaker 5: so they're going to turn to the people who can
Speaker 5: give them that, and that is venture capital, and that
Speaker 5: a tech companies in America. There's sort of this race
Speaker 5: happening all over the world of countries trying to make
Speaker 5: sure that they're able to compete or at least exist
Speaker 5: on the technological plane of what's being developed. And that
Speaker 5: makes venture capital almost like the crown jewel now that
Speaker 5: everyone is trying to get ahold of.
Speaker 8: So now they have this huge leverage.
Speaker 5: And you hear them. They hang out with MBS. They
Speaker 5: sing the praises of MBS, you know, to the heavens,
Speaker 5: and they have done a lot of work to quote
Speaker 5: unquote repair the image of MBS, particularly after the killing
Speaker 5: of Jamal Kushogi, who is a huge major journalist, and
Speaker 5: for a time that cooled relations between Saudi Arabia and
Speaker 5: vendor Capital, at least on the surface. But they don't
Speaker 5: care about that stuff, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, and I think I think the
Speaker 1: other part of that campaign too, and this this is
Speaker 1: just one of my mia on the soapbox things, is
Speaker 1: that the other thing they were trying to get everyone
Speaker 1: to forget about. Was the hideous, hiteous war that all
Speaker 1: of the Golf states, particularly Saudi Arabia, but also the
Speaker 1: UAE has a massive part in this. We're fighting in
Speaker 1: Yemen where they we literally don't know how many people
Speaker 1: they killed, like they tried, they tried to do a
Speaker 1: starvation genocide of the whole country because they couldn't win
Speaker 1: the war militarily. They were deploying Sudanese child soldiers as
Speaker 1: mercenaries who have been taken from the Jualadid, the group
Speaker 1: who's now like doing a genocide in Sudan. They are
Speaker 1: also people who do the genocide and are four back
Speaker 1: in the two thousands. Like this is like the scale
Speaker 1: of atrocity that they're committing. You know, everyone's very focused
Speaker 1: on walkashowgime is like yeah, it's very very bad obviously
Speaker 1: to like kill journalists and like cut them up with
Speaker 1: bone salt. But like these are people who were doing
Speaker 1: airstrikes on school buses. These are people who were again
Speaker 1: deploying Sudanese the child soldiers on battlefields. And these people
Speaker 1: are going, no, fuck it. Not only are we going
Speaker 1: to rehabilitate their image, we're going to take their money,
Speaker 1: and we're going to build them fucking weapons forever.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 5: You know, when you talk about like what is a
Speaker 5: venture capitalist, and one of the things that they really
Speaker 5: do is they are like constructing entire markets. They're not
Speaker 5: just they're not just creating a startup hoping it succeeds.
Speaker 5: And then the case of the military, you know, people
Speaker 5: focus on and Dural. They have hundreds of weapons companies
Speaker 5: now hundreds of weapons companies, and they have the big
Speaker 5: prime companies like and Dural that are really like the
Speaker 5: power houses that are supposed to be like Lockheed and raytheon.
Speaker 5: But they also have weapons part manufacturers. They have drone
Speaker 5: companies for like all layers of earth see you know,
Speaker 5: air everything like that. They're doing hypersonic missiles, They've advocated
Speaker 5: for a new Manhattan project. They're working on developing weapons
Speaker 5: of mass destruction. So when venture capital is going into
Speaker 5: these spaces like they are going into win, they are
Speaker 5: going in with a fully envisioned picture of what the
Speaker 5: new age military looks like with AI technologies, with autonomous technologies,
Speaker 5: you know, with everything that they've been able to developed,
Speaker 5: and now they have a fully featured war platform that
Speaker 5: they have to try to get other countries to buy
Speaker 5: because it's ready.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so they need wars.
Speaker 1: Which is extremely bad news for everyone on Earth.
Speaker 8: Everybody, Yes, everyone on Earth.
Speaker 5: And you know, they have been so deeply complicit in
Speaker 5: the genocide of Palestinians.
Speaker 8: They are so incredibly enmeshed with Israel.
Speaker 5: Venture capitalists refer to Israel as a technocratic state and
Speaker 5: as sort of like the ideal state and a model
Speaker 5: for what they can be as a technocratic state because Israel,
Speaker 5: by proportion, the share of tech GDP in Israel is
Speaker 5: actually twice as much as in the US, and as
Speaker 5: parts of the Israeli economy have suffered as a result
Speaker 5: of the genocide, the tech industry is doing amazing yah,
Speaker 5: and venture kapitalists are pouring money into it. And so
Speaker 5: you see that one of the immediate things that has
Speaker 5: come out of, you know, the Israel American VC relationship
Speaker 5: is the genocide, and is the ongoing development of themselves
Speaker 5: and of Israel's the technocratic state.
Speaker 8: It's awful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think I want to zoom out a
Speaker 1: little bit. We've we've talked a bit about you know,
Speaker 1: what these companies do. Do you want to talk about
Speaker 1: some of the major firms that are building all of
Speaker 1: these things and building all of these startups that people
Speaker 1: haven't heard about and need to know about.
Speaker 5: Yeah, one hundred percent, So people have heard about andresen Horowitz,
Speaker 5: but not enough.
Speaker 8: Definitely not enough.
Speaker 5: If I had to put a firm that is the
Speaker 5: most responsible for what's going on, it is definitely andresen Horowitz.
Speaker 5: One of the things that's happening in the venture capital market.
Speaker 5: Why this is happening is because a small number of
Speaker 5: firms is forming a monopoly on venture capital, and andresen
Speaker 5: Horowitz is right there. And in fact, in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 5: dresen Horowisz raised over eighteen percent of all venture capital
Speaker 5: dollars just that one firm. Okay, so now you start
Speaker 5: adding that up the other firms that they work most
Speaker 5: closely with and are working on the exact same things
Speaker 5: and fund the exact same startups. Founder's fund, Peter Thiel's
Speaker 5: firm is one of those. General Catalysts is another one
Speaker 5: that's very very important. And General Catalyst looks a lot
Speaker 5: like andresen Horowitz.
Speaker 8: They are very close.
Speaker 5: And you see this throughout like you're like you have
Speaker 5: different names on your offices but y'all are the same thing.
Speaker 5: Sequoia is another big one. They were one of the
Speaker 5: early venture capital firms. They did not make their first
Speaker 5: devents investment until twenty twenty three, but they were founded
Speaker 5: in nineteen seventy two. So this is an example of
Speaker 5: how a giant VC firm has really been yoked to
Speaker 5: an agenda that started in sort of these other younger
Speaker 5: upstart players and Andres and Horoz has talked about how
Speaker 5: ultimately venter capital will consist of four or five major
Speaker 5: firms and then basically no mid size firms and then
Speaker 5: some sort of boutique firms that are a little bit
Speaker 5: more specialized. So in that that kind of category, we
Speaker 5: have firms like lux Capital. Lex Capital is one of
Speaker 5: the most bloodthirsty, sociopathic, zionist, weird biotech shit, weird weapon shit,
Speaker 5: out and out bloodthirsty extremists, like just openly maybe one
Speaker 5: of the most in that sense. They're incredibly Zionist, and
Speaker 5: they are a relatively small firm, but they're able to
Speaker 5: be in the mix because they have this sociopathy, this
Speaker 5: blood lust that you actually see across all of these
Speaker 5: firms is that like there's sort of like outright sadistic
Speaker 5: at a certain point. You know, Andresen Horowitz actually hired
Speaker 5: Daniel Penny too killed jordan' neely, who was a thirty
Speaker 5: year old, you know, black homeless man. And this guy
Speaker 5: was not a venture capitalist and Mark Andresen hired him.
Speaker 5: There's a degradation in morality, and there's sort of this
Speaker 5: like welling up in the venture capital space of this
Speaker 5: like extremely depraved like anti morality where they hired this murder. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you know, someone who killed a black man and and
Speaker 5: made press releases about it and they talk about what
Speaker 5: a great VC he is, and so they're immersed in
Speaker 5: this like this like culture of sort of of of
Speaker 5: war and like genocide and like killing them so super disserting, So.
Speaker 1: Any any great things happening here the most powerful people
Speaker 1: in the world.
Speaker 8: Yeah, really bad.
Speaker 5: It's it's a moral free fall for sure. So so yeah,
Speaker 5: you have that type of stuff going on. But you
Speaker 5: know Lux Capital we talked about that. You have Eric Schmidt,
Speaker 5: who's the Google CEO. He runs a number of sort
Speaker 5: of smaller scale venture capital firms, and then you have
Speaker 5: some of the major crypto firms like Ribbit Capital, Paradigm
Speaker 5: Blockchain Capital, and actually Blockchain Capital, which runs a crypto cartel,
Speaker 5: is an investor in Blue Sky.
Speaker 8: He thinks great.
Speaker 5: So everyone who's thinking that, you know, blue Sky is
Speaker 5: this wonderful alternative, Like Blue Sky is owned by a
Speaker 5: venture capitalists who are running a crypto cartel.
Speaker 8: So those are some of those firms.
Speaker 5: And you know, you have y Combinator, which is a
Speaker 5: smaller firm feeding in.
Speaker 8: Then you have some other kind of pieces outside that.
Speaker 5: One that's super important is and this is always tough
Speaker 5: for me to talk about because people look at you
Speaker 5: like you're conspiracy theorists if you say anything about the CIA. Yeah,
Speaker 5: if it's one hundred percent true. But the CIA made
Speaker 5: a venture capital firm many many years ago, and that
Speaker 5: venture capital firm is called inq tel and they have
Speaker 5: funded over eight hundred startups.
Speaker 1: It's amazing, incredible stuff. Also, the fact that they called
Speaker 1: it in q tel.
Speaker 10: Is just like incredible. Come on, So, yeah, we're gonna.
Speaker 1: Put intail in the name of it, but we're gonna
Speaker 1: put it in qtel because fuck you god, it's like
Speaker 1: qt spy bullshit.
Speaker 8: Yes, it's totally mild. And I always tell this story.
Speaker 5: You know, I worked at startups and sliconbl I worked
Speaker 5: in database startups, Internet infrastructure APIs, like you know, infrastructure
Speaker 5: service stuff like that. I went to a big data
Speaker 5: conference in like maybe like twenty twelve or something like that.
Speaker 5: I won't say, I don't know for sure which one
Speaker 5: it was, but it was in New York. There was
Speaker 5: all all these companies there. One of the keynote speakers
Speaker 5: was the Chief Technology Officer of the.
Speaker 10: CIA, J's Christ.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So none of this has been a secret to people
Speaker 5: in the industry.
Speaker 8: The CAA operates.
Speaker 5: Openly in the industry and invests openly in thery.
Speaker 8: But he got on.
Speaker 5: Stage and he said, our goal is to collect all
Speaker 5: of the data in the world and save it forever.
Speaker 8: And I looked around me.
Speaker 5: To see if anyone else was And this was months
Speaker 5: before the soda and revelations. Yeah, so the CIA was
Speaker 5: openly admitted into all all of this stuff anyways. But
Speaker 5: point being, you know, and in q Tel has been
Speaker 5: so key to this because they have brought all of
Speaker 5: the venture capital startups into the government, into intelligence and
Speaker 5: into defense. From the CIA's perspective, this has also given
Speaker 5: them a revenue source and a way to operate outside
Speaker 5: of just the government budget. And we can go back
Speaker 5: to this when we're talking about the network state, because
Speaker 5: what the CIA is really good at is cooing and
Speaker 5: other countries. And now you see the network state down
Speaker 5: in Latin America trying to keep governments down there. So
Speaker 5: there's been in there's been an incredible fusion of the
Speaker 5: CIA with venture capital that has has transformed both of them.
Speaker 8: They are both changed by this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like it's like tech is the new like
Speaker 1: running opium out of like Vietnam or whatever. It's like,
Speaker 1: I guess we've replaced. We've replaced doing like really overt
Speaker 1: drug running shit to fuel our operations with uh oh, hey,
Speaker 1: we can just get on stage and like talk to
Speaker 1: all of these venture capital gouls and get a bunch
Speaker 1: of money that way for a like whatever weird shit
Speaker 1: we want to be up to.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's it's wild. So you have that.
Speaker 5: And then another piece of it is that venture capital
Speaker 5: has formed this incredibly close relationship with black Rock and Blackstone,
Speaker 5: so they have a trigal finance backing.
Speaker 1: Can you explain for people who are not familiar what
Speaker 1: Blackrock and Blackstone are and that I can tell my
Speaker 1: completely deranged Blackstone story.
Speaker 5: Okay, so, yes, Blackrock is a giant, you know, financial beast,
Speaker 5: a monster monstrosity. Yeah. I don't have the most up
Speaker 5: to date numbers on how much money that they manage,
Speaker 5: but as of twenty twenty five, it was over twelve
Speaker 5: trillion dollars in assets under management. Christ So you are
Speaker 5: talking about a absolutely, you.
Speaker 8: Know, huge, huge financial entity.
Speaker 5: So they have been one of the first to really
Speaker 5: back venture capital in the traditional finance world in crypto.
Speaker 8: So they are the ones that started bringing.
Speaker 5: To market the ETFs that made it easy to invest
Speaker 5: in in bitcoin. They have ETFs that are trading. They
Speaker 5: also have one for ethereum.
Speaker 1: Can you explain what an ETF is.
Speaker 5: Yes, what an ETF is, It's basically, you know, what
Speaker 5: it does for crypto is, instead of having to buy
Speaker 5: and manage your own crypto assets, the financial institution basically
Speaker 5: takes on the administration and management of those underlying assets. So,
Speaker 5: you know, for investors who don't want to be on coinbase,
Speaker 5: you know, buying from these like sketchy companies, these were
Speaker 5: ways to make these assets available to the investment market
Speaker 5: and crypto really needed that and Blackrock came in to
Speaker 5: do that, and the they partnered with Coinbase, and they
Speaker 5: partnered with other you know, venture capital things, so they
Speaker 5: did the.
Speaker 8: VC is a big solid there.
Speaker 5: And then to our point, like they are very invested
Speaker 5: with this, Saudi is as well partnered with the Saudi
Speaker 5: Sovereign Wealth Fund, you know, the leading to weapons deals.
Speaker 5: They are also doing a bunch of data centers in
Speaker 5: the UK and they've been operating in Israel for a
Speaker 5: really long time, so that you know, this was a
Speaker 5: very natural partner, I would say for venture capital.
Speaker 8: But it also gives venture capital.
Speaker 10: A lot.
Speaker 5: The Chicapo has gotten a lot out of this deal.
Speaker 5: So you have that start to happen. And one question
Speaker 5: I've always asked is, like to crypto people who have
Speaker 5: said like this is the way around the banks and
Speaker 5: blah blah blah, Well, why is Wall Street getting crypto
Speaker 5: before you?
Speaker 10: Yeah? It really truly not. It does not really seemed
Speaker 10: to be doing that. It's not.
Speaker 8: It's just the math is not math in here.
Speaker 1: One of the things I think is interesting about what
Speaker 1: you've done is talking about what the relationship between crypto
Speaker 1: and these venture capital firms is and what purpose crypto
Speaker 1: serves for them.
Speaker 3: Yes, can you get into that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So crypto one of my absolute favorite topics to
Speaker 5: talk about. There are a lot of ways of looking
Speaker 5: at this. One of the ones that I find most
Speaker 5: interesting is when the first sort of dot com bubble
Speaker 5: happened and when they first started making absolute fucked tons
Speaker 5: of money. So they have tons of money coming and
Speaker 5: they're making tons of money, and they are putting that
Speaker 5: money in banks they don't own and financial infrastructure they
Speaker 5: don't own, and they're paying a lot of.
Speaker 8: Taxes on it. So it's some point the decision.
Speaker 5: Is made by them, like why would you want to
Speaker 5: make so much money and then have that money going
Speaker 5: right out the door to a bunch of bankers who
Speaker 5: are going to take all your money. So at some
Speaker 5: point it occurs to them, all of this money that's
Speaker 5: transacting not just through us, but over the internet overall
Speaker 5: is something we can make a ton of money on.
Speaker 5: And one of Mark Andresen's first things was trying to
Speaker 5: get internet credit card payments working over the browser, and
Speaker 5: then you have PayPal, So at the point that they
Speaker 5: sort of were like, we're going to do our.
Speaker 8: Own financial infrastructure.
Speaker 5: Okay, Now they have a financial infrastructure that is literally
Speaker 5: in competition with the sovereign financial system of the United
Speaker 5: States of America. And this, more than anything else, might
Speaker 5: be the source of the rupture between the American government
Speaker 5: and between venture capital because as soon as you start
Speaker 5: developing this ecosystem and people think that crypto is just
Speaker 5: like bitcoin and like doge coin and like ethereum, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 5: These people have a whole bunch of banks. They have banks,
Speaker 5: They are developing stock markets and stock exchanges. They have
Speaker 5: point of sales systems, they have betting markets.
Speaker 1: Oh god, crypto betting markets.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they.
Speaker 5: Have gotment, they have you know, they have loans programs,
Speaker 5: they have savings, they have.
Speaker 8: Blah blah blah.
Speaker 5: Like crypto is really a very fully featured financial system,
Speaker 5: and they need to get is much money out of
Speaker 5: the existing financial system moved into their financial system. So
Speaker 5: they are in this war essentially over that. And that's
Speaker 5: what we're looking at, is the global financial system being
Speaker 5: replaced with a financial system that is owned and controlled
Speaker 5: by venture capitalists. And that's a profound thing that has
Speaker 5: profound implications. We're going to talk about the network state more.
Speaker 5: But another reason why the network stay has happened is
Speaker 5: because as the crypto market really kind of started to
Speaker 5: take off, they decided, we don't want to pay taxes
Speaker 5: on this. We did this all by ourselves. And one
Speaker 5: of the things the network state is it is a
Speaker 5: series of global tax shelters and tax evasion zones all
Speaker 5: over the world because they knew that they were striking
Speaker 5: goal and they wanted to make sure they get it
Speaker 5: out of having to pay it to the irs and
Speaker 5: having to pay it to the people in this country
Speaker 5: and other countries.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you know, like the more control you
Speaker 1: can get over like what there is of the American state,
Speaker 1: the more you can just be like, hey, look, we're
Speaker 1: just gonna not ever look into the fact that there's
Speaker 1: all this tax evation shit going on. You can just
Speaker 1: like use our control of like vant and you know,
Speaker 1: like our control of the levers of the state to
Speaker 1: make sure that like we're just allowed to do this.
Speaker 8: M yeah, one hundred percent. You know.
Speaker 5: It also goes back to like what are the roots
Speaker 5: sort of causes of tech fascism or whatever you would
Speaker 5: like to call them. And one of the big reasons
Speaker 5: for that is because as venture capital itself is diversified
Speaker 5: and it's moving into finance, and it's moving into medicine,
Speaker 5: and it's moving into land, and it's moving into energy.
Speaker 5: There are existing monopolies in every single part.
Speaker 8: Of those markets that they have to.
Speaker 5: Fight in order to get into them, and they've openly
Speaker 5: talked about this. So when they're entering these markets, they're
Speaker 5: going to war with existing monopolies in order to create
Speaker 5: their own monopolies. And that's forced them to these really
Speaker 5: like sort of extreme and perverse strategies like we're going
Speaker 5: to cure the US government, like God, and they've been
Speaker 5: really successful at that. So they work hard. Everyone's like
Speaker 5: they're lazy, they don't do anything, they're not smart, blah
Speaker 5: blah blah. I'm like Mark and Dresen works like the devil.
Speaker 5: He does not take a day off.
Speaker 10: He is.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately.
Speaker 1: So the story here, I think is one of these
Speaker 1: companies getting you know, heavily invested into the defense sector,
Speaker 1: heavily invested into building their own sort of financial system,
Speaker 1: like to some accept building links with the major financial
Speaker 1: powers that already exists, and to some extent, you know,
Speaker 1: like combating the powers that they want that are like
Speaker 1: monopolizing the places where they want to expand into. But
Speaker 1: there's also a global strategy here that's all kind of
Speaker 1: like a part of this larger plan, and I was
Speaker 1: wondering if you could talk a little bit about that
Speaker 1: before we go much deeper into a next episode.
Speaker 5: Yes, absolutely, so, you know, I think what we have
Speaker 5: talked about so far as we'really looking at like kind
Speaker 5: of root causes, dynamics, new markets they're going into, and
Speaker 5: the next sort of stage of thinking about that is.
Speaker 8: Like what what demands.
Speaker 5: And what global program and strategy comes out of sort
Speaker 5: of their needs for capital, for returns, for expansion, for
Speaker 5: fighting monopolies, for tax evasion, everything like that. And what
Speaker 5: they've come up with what we can already see, is
Speaker 5: really like a global playbook.
Speaker 8: For how they're going to do that. And this is about.
Speaker 5: Running everything in the world as venture capital firms and
Speaker 5: their startups and including the government. So what is happening
Speaker 5: in America is the venture capitalists are trying to replace
Speaker 5: the government with venture capital firms and their startups who
Speaker 5: are operating the state that can be done everywhere. They
Speaker 5: want global deregulation, they want global suspension of taxes all
Speaker 5: over the world. They're going to bolster techno fascists align
Speaker 5: right wing politicians. We already see this with Bukele, with Malay.
Speaker 5: They're going to do the interference in elections, the lobby
Speaker 5: and the bribery, social medium manipulation, everything that they need
Speaker 5: to do to make sure they get politicians all over
Speaker 5: the place who are going to take their orders. As
Speaker 5: we discuss replacing the global economic system with the crypto
Speaker 5: financial system, and then these megaprojects, the data centers, the
Speaker 5: new cities in order to feed all of their data
Speaker 5: centers and all of their new factories and their new manufacturing.
Speaker 5: We're headed for a new age of resource extraction where
Speaker 5: they're literally already going all over the world with AI
Speaker 5: mining companies to find li the uranium and cobalt. They
Speaker 5: need to re arm all of Europe, they need to
Speaker 5: recolonize Latin American Africa. They need to suppress leftism and
Speaker 5: communism globally. And you know, ultimately this all unfolds within
Speaker 5: a war with China, because that's what's waiting for them
Speaker 5: at the end of this thing. And once you have
Speaker 5: all these things in place, you're looking at the rise
Speaker 5: of the techno fascist civilization, which is the network.
Speaker 8: State, which we are going to talk about in our
Speaker 8: next episode. It sounds u.
Speaker 10: Yep.
Speaker 3: So you could look forward to.
Speaker 1: God the global systemic tech fashion state.
Speaker 3: Tomorrow. Oh God, Okay, Chayley.
Speaker 1: Where can people find your work and more information about this?
Speaker 5: Yes, please check out the research site. It's a vc
Speaker 5: infodox dot com and like, please help us get this
Speaker 5: information out there because people all over the world need
Speaker 5: to know stuff and to know what's hitting them. Particularly
Speaker 5: this affects other countries, and you know, we really need
Speaker 5: people who can activate around this information and make sure
Speaker 5: when we show up and we build our resistance that
Speaker 5: like that resistance is not designed to take down Curtis Yarvin. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it is designed to take down a capitalist system.
Speaker 1: Welcome to it could happen here the podcast where it's
Speaker 1: happening both here and everywhere else. I am your host
Speaker 1: Fo Wong, and today we're talking about the it being
Speaker 1: the fascist network state that the all of these ventured
Speaker 1: capital tech ghouls are trying to set up.
Speaker 3: And with you.
Speaker 1: Once again to talk about this is Shaneley, who is
Speaker 1: one of the contributors and people behind vc infodox, which
Speaker 1: is one of the best resources about these bloodthirsty tyrants.
Speaker 10: Shy Welcome to the show.
Speaker 8: Thank you, thank you for having me again.
Speaker 1: I constantly have these moments where it's like, oh great,
Speaker 1: I'm talking to people who are really cool, and I
Speaker 1: really wish I was talking to them about literally anything else,
Speaker 1: because oh my god, this stuff sucks. Like please, please
Speaker 1: cause the end of this system, so I could talk
Speaker 1: to people about things that are good instead.
Speaker 10: Of things that are imers.
Speaker 5: Yes, my dream is to not wake up every single
Speaker 5: morning and the first thing I think about is Winter Capital.
Speaker 8: I think about it every second of.
Speaker 5: Every day, and then that's when I go to sleep
Speaker 5: thinking about and then that is also sometimes what I
Speaker 5: dream about, which is unfortunate.
Speaker 10: You know, we've all been there.
Speaker 8: We've all been there.
Speaker 1: Oh god, So speaking of things all being in places, Look,
Speaker 1: they pay me the mediocre bucks if you have a
Speaker 1: better transitions more. But you know, let's get into what
Speaker 1: the network state actually is, because I think it's something
Speaker 1: that is not understood particularly well.
Speaker 8: Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 5: So again this kind of comes in what we're talking
Speaker 5: about last episode, that kind of people's ideas about what
Speaker 5: these projects are not necessarily like fully fully formed. And
Speaker 5: I think a lot of people think that the network
Speaker 5: state is just kind of like them going to do
Speaker 5: weird shit, which yes, that's that's part of it. But
Speaker 5: I think something that you know, people don't really see
Speaker 5: is how how many purposes that the network state sites
Speaker 5: have for them. You know, the network state is basically
Speaker 5: creating zones around the world where they can execute their projects.
Speaker 5: So you know, some of these are more of the
Speaker 5: like ideological projects like maybe like practice or something like that.
Speaker 5: But you also see network state sites that are very
Speaker 5: focused on being like industrial centers, manufacturing centers, you know,
Speaker 5: biotech and start development where they can get away from
Speaker 5: regulations where they can sort of benefit from like co
Speaker 5: development on a campus. You know, you have sort of
Speaker 5: new city ideas like California Forever. You have network state
Speaker 5: sites that the only thing they're doing right now is
Speaker 5: they're registering startups to operate in different countries and favorable terms.
Speaker 5: You have a whole sort of bunch of different versions
Speaker 5: of this, so it's a very like extensible concept for them.
Speaker 5: I think some other you know, interesting properties of the
Speaker 5: network state is that it can become like a point
Speaker 5: of sort of negotiation with the with the host country.
Speaker 5: Like one of the points of the network state is
Speaker 5: to open up a country to the cryptocurrency markets, to
Speaker 5: mining markets.
Speaker 8: To you know, just the different for biotech markets.
Speaker 5: This is a way of them getting into a country
Speaker 5: like kind of on their own terms.
Speaker 8: Which I think is a big, big function of it.
Speaker 5: A lot of it has to do with crypto adoption,
Speaker 5: because if they're going to make cryptocurrency work, they need
Speaker 5: it to be adopted.
Speaker 8: Around the world.
Speaker 5: And this is why coinbase is making such extreme investments
Speaker 5: in the network state, because this is a way to
Speaker 5: also you know, get crypto into all of these markets,
Speaker 5: start entering into trade with other nation states where the
Speaker 5: points of negotiation are around regulation, are around taxation, around
Speaker 5: access to land and minerals.
Speaker 1: So can you describe kind of what does it look
Speaker 1: like inside one of these zones, like for example, like
Speaker 1: how do these compare to say, like a special economic zone,
Speaker 1: which is the kind of models of this that we've
Speaker 1: had traditionally.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Absolutely, And you know, the network state is built
Speaker 5: using special economic zones, so it's really not functionally different
Speaker 5: on a lot of different levels. It's more about like
Speaker 5: who is using this special economic zone and what do
Speaker 5: they want to do with it? Yea, and medical experimentation
Speaker 5: is actually a huge goal here because you know, again
Speaker 5: when we're talking about them getting into medical development, developing
Speaker 5: all of these biotech startups, they're facing existing monopolies in
Speaker 5: the US.
Speaker 8: They're also facing the FDA.
Speaker 5: The Network State book by Belaji shrina Vasan, who's an
Speaker 5: andresen Horowitz like guy for life like he's andresen Horowitz.
Speaker 5: One of the main motivations for the Network State is
Speaker 5: getting to a place where you can't have any medical regulations,
Speaker 5: and so in hanjurists they've been doing that. They've been
Speaker 5: doing unregulated clinical trials. The doctors in Honduras have been
Speaker 5: organizing to try to shut this down and they haven't
Speaker 5: been able to and they're gonna have way worse problems
Speaker 5: now because Trump just installed a new president, install the
Speaker 5: president there who is in support and is taking the
Speaker 5: steps to you know, support this a special economic zone
Speaker 5: called their ZA. But that's that's one of the big
Speaker 5: reasons that they're doing it. Their medical offering is profound.
Speaker 5: They're doing clinical trials, drug developments, activating clinical research sites.
Speaker 5: They're also involved in like insurance software, insurance marketplaces, IVF, longevity,
Speaker 5: anti aging, like the whole you know thing. And this
Speaker 5: goes back. It's like when venture capital is entering a
Speaker 5: new market now, like they come like locked and loaded
Speaker 5: with a full platform and getting more accelerated clinical trials
Speaker 5: is something that is going to move their project forward significantly.
Speaker 5: Network state is is a way to accomplish that.
Speaker 1: So these these sort of nodes that they're setting up
Speaker 1: of these networks stix sites are places where you know,
Speaker 1: they've been able to sort of carve out special economic
Speaker 1: zone status that means that like the traditional sort of
Speaker 1: regulatory structure of the country simply does not apply. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is very which is in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: and this is like a special economics zone thing in general.
Speaker 1: It's like very sort of like fascist state of exception
Speaker 1: where like oh yeah, no, we've just you know, there's
Speaker 1: like a crisis in the crisis is that we can't
Speaker 1: do like human experimentation, and so we've now created this
Speaker 1: zone where just none of.
Speaker 10: The laws apply.
Speaker 1: It's like the kind of like evil Mirror World Universe
Speaker 1: version of like temporary autonomous zones, except it's like what
Speaker 1: if we had a permanent zone of fascism where all
Speaker 1: the laws didn't apply, if we could just do whatever
Speaker 1: we wanted.
Speaker 8: One hundred percent.
Speaker 5: It's also deeply concerning because the obsession with accelerating clinical innovation,
Speaker 5: drug innovation, like whatever that is, like at some point
Speaker 5: there is a like what makes that stuff move the fastest,
Speaker 5: and it's human trials and human experiments and the more
Speaker 5: people that you can shove, the faster you can shove
Speaker 5: through medical development.
Speaker 8: And that's very concerning.
Speaker 5: So to me, I see this as like a recipe
Speaker 5: for large scale medical abuse and disaster.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, so yeah when you when you.
Speaker 5: Look at them doing is unregulated and unethical medical experiments
Speaker 5: and trials in Honduras, and then you see and this
Speaker 5: other part of the world in different countries in Africa
Speaker 5: that the network site is also targeting that you know.
Speaker 5: Recently news came out about a very controversial and very
Speaker 5: unethical experiment in Guinea Buso to test the vaccine timing
Speaker 5: of eppetitis B on fourteen thousand infants, and the acting
Speaker 5: director of the CDC at the time that this was
Speaker 5: approved is Jim o'nill. And Jim o'nill is from Peter
Speaker 5: Thiel's Vendor Capital from myth Roles and he was also
Speaker 5: on the board of the C studying Institute, which is
Speaker 5: where a lot of this sort of network state stuff
Speaker 5: does come from. So this is a recipe for like
Speaker 5: mass scale medical abuse. And even if you look at
Speaker 5: like what world coin, which is Sam Altman's like eyeball
Speaker 5: scanning thing like that is a biotech thing like that
Speaker 5: starts to get into the the realm of like medicine
Speaker 5: and stuff like that. So you see these sort of
Speaker 5: forces starting to converge in these areas, like these aren't
Speaker 5: infants that they are doing these babies that they're doing
Speaker 5: these on. And at the same time, in that same country,
Speaker 5: an extremely well established executive in the network state is
Speaker 5: looking to build a network state city.
Speaker 8: So you know, getting these sites.
Speaker 5: In there into different countries in Africa, they can go
Speaker 5: after the precious minerals. They have a labor source there.
Speaker 5: They're already exploiting people there for the AI content moration
Speaker 5: and tagging and like all of that with disastrous effects.
Speaker 5: You also have the really concerning factor of like so
Speaker 5: many people in the top of the venture capital apparatus
Speaker 5: are South Africans, and when you just start to put
Speaker 5: all those pieces together, it's extremely worrying. One of the
Speaker 5: venture capital mining startups because now they have multiple mining startups.
Speaker 5: Discovered the largest discovery of copper in ten years from
Speaker 5: computers in Berkeley, and then they showed up in Zambia,
Speaker 5: Oh God, to start extracting the copper. So, you know,
Speaker 5: the network state opens up these countries to like this
Speaker 5: new era of like exploited labor, mineral harvesting, medical experiments,
Speaker 5: and the network state gives them a way to get
Speaker 5: into a country and start exploiting the fuck out of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's corporate colonization.
Speaker 8: Yeah, period.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a bunch of these people going like, oh,
Speaker 1: the problem with the East India company was that they
Speaker 1: actually had to like run the country, which is really expensive.
Speaker 1: So what if instead of that, we just took over
Speaker 1: like the nodes that we wanted to use and then
Speaker 1: use that to push everything sort of further instead of
Speaker 1: like building a giant army and marching through India one.
Speaker 5: Hundred percent and you know, the labor exploitation that is
Speaker 5: like developing some of this stuff that we're starting to
Speaker 5: see where like you know, Venture Capital has a very
Speaker 5: close relationship with bou kell and al Salvador. Yeah, bou
Speaker 5: Kelly is sitting on a prison full of people that
Speaker 5: haven't had due process and he's now using them for
Speaker 5: free labor.
Speaker 8: Slave labor.
Speaker 1: This is the Seacot person that you might remember, like
Speaker 1: Trump had been deporting people here, and this place is
Speaker 1: just unbelievably hideous abuses. Yeah, it's an entire facility that
Speaker 1: is just dedicated to inflicting violence and suffering and humiliation
Speaker 1: on these people who have no trials, have no access
Speaker 1: to rights through legal system, and it's just this like
Speaker 1: nightmare black hole.
Speaker 5: Yes, you know, there's always lots of factors involved when
Speaker 5: I talk about stuff like I'm talking about the venture
Speaker 5: capital aspect, and there are other players involved, but one
Speaker 5: of the big things is like what happens when venture
Speaker 5: capital starts interacting with another country. Yeah, and what we
Speaker 5: see in Latin America is that they make contact with Hunterists,
Speaker 5: they set up a colony, they start terrorizing the people
Speaker 5: on the island, They become material actors in installing an
Speaker 5: illegitimate president with Trump's.
Speaker 8: Help, and then you know.
Speaker 5: They make contact with El Salvador and El Salvador becomes
Speaker 5: quote unquote bitcoin country, and l Salvador becomes a prison
Speaker 5: state and like a slave labor state in Argentina, same
Speaker 5: things the venture capitalists back to Malay to the absolute
Speaker 5: health Malay is now gutted to government, deregulated everything. He
Speaker 5: is putting these terrible labor abuse policies through.
Speaker 8: So when when.
Speaker 5: Venture capital contacts these countries, it is transforming them, is
Speaker 5: changing them, it's changing their politicians, it's changing their policies,
Speaker 5: it's changing their land, it's changing their financial system.
Speaker 8: And that is really concerning.
Speaker 5: And you know, one of the things about the venture
Speaker 5: capital model, this goes back to even just the fact
Speaker 5: that like they have operated global IT systems, so they
Speaker 5: have servers everywhere in the world, and all of the
Speaker 5: servers are exactly the same. And so when you look
Speaker 5: at what the network stata is going to look like,
Speaker 5: it's going.
Speaker 8: To be very similar.
Speaker 5: It's going to be the same thing everywhere, and those
Speaker 5: will be basically commanding control nodes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it seems like they've done a very very
Speaker 1: good job of kind of either subverting or like allying
Speaker 1: with factions of the traditional sort of like right wing
Speaker 1: elite and then you know, propelling them to power and
Speaker 1: then using their power and influence and the fact that
Speaker 1: they were able to get these people into power in
Speaker 1: the first place to sort of set up zones of
Speaker 1: extraction for them and increase their power inside of these states.
Speaker 8: One thousand percent.
Speaker 5: And you know, if you look at how much they've
Speaker 5: been able to compromise the American government.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and then these.
Speaker 5: Countries do not have the wealth, the infrastructure of that,
Speaker 5: you know, anything like that, they're so vulnerable to this
Speaker 5: type of attack. So if in order to get its
Speaker 5: global projects done, venture capital needs to install favorable politicians
Speaker 5: all over the world. They're offering packages to all of
Speaker 5: those politicians. They're offering the money, the social media attention
Speaker 5: and platform that they can give them. They're giving them
Speaker 5: an economic policy that they can go forward and say,
Speaker 5: we're going to turn this country into like a technology
Speaker 5: industry and we're going to bring all this foreign investment
Speaker 5: blah blah blah. You know, they can really just like
Speaker 5: hand pick politicians and pretty easily like set them up
Speaker 5: with a guaranteed win and over time, that's like a
Speaker 5: global tech fascist access.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that we know about sort
Speaker 1: of the way that fascist stay construction works is that
Speaker 1: if you're constructing, you've constructed a bunch of these nodes
Speaker 1: of the sort of this fascist network state. But fascist
Speaker 1: states always need to sort of create an enemy for themselves,
Speaker 1: and the enemy has been China. So do you want
Speaker 1: to talk about the way that they've been seeing Belton
Speaker 1: Road and how they've turned this into a civilizational conflict?
Speaker 8: One hundred percent? You know, if you listen to what
Speaker 8: venture capitalists say about who.
Speaker 5: The enemy is, like, it is China. They talk literally
Speaker 5: constantly about China. Almost all of their startups in every
Speaker 5: single sector talk about China all of the time, but
Speaker 5: particularly in the weapons part of that and the premise
Speaker 5: of their military build out. What they say is that
Speaker 5: this is about China, and this is about fighting China, and.
Speaker 8: This is very serious to them.
Speaker 5: And the fundamental cause is like their technology competing with
Speaker 5: China's technology, And actually venture capitalists would admit that China
Speaker 5: has better technology than us and that they're ahead of us,
Speaker 5: so this is a crisis for them.
Speaker 1: This is all, in some sets, very silly to me.
Speaker 1: The girl the girl who saydies China a lot, because
Speaker 1: it's like all the Tinese tech people you're competing against,
Speaker 1: like believe like ninety five percent of the same shit
Speaker 1: you do, All of you could simply work together and
Speaker 1: make money forever.
Speaker 10: But instead you've decided to do this like.
Speaker 1: Oh god, this like unhinged genocidal military build up because
Speaker 1: like you needed a great enemy in order to like
Speaker 1: keep doing yourking fascist bullshit.
Speaker 3: Oh god yeah.
Speaker 5: And like via absolute worst case scenario for the world
Speaker 5: would probably be like the top technocratic elite from China
Speaker 5: and the top technocratic elite from the US deciding they
Speaker 5: were gonna work together and just fucking literally everyone else
Speaker 5: in the world.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, it's like they were like on the road
Speaker 1: to doing that.
Speaker 10: It was like like this is like China wto integration.
Speaker 10: This was a thing.
Speaker 1: This this was like a version of history they could
Speaker 1: have had where it's like, yeah, congratulations, you've created like
Speaker 1: prominent technocratic rule, but like no, no, eat shit, we
Speaker 1: want to fight each other for obscure and nebulous ideological
Speaker 1: reasons is to generate the sort of fear necessary to
Speaker 1: do their projects. It's just like, oh.
Speaker 5: My god, yeah, one thousand percent.
Speaker 8: It's very it's very strange.
Speaker 5: But you know, like Palmer Lucky, who you know, and
Speaker 5: Palmer Lucky, like people make fun of a lot of
Speaker 5: the tech people for being dumb, and like Palmer Lucky
Speaker 5: is absolutely not dumb, Like he is a very very
Speaker 5: smart person and he's spending every single moment of every
Speaker 5: single day figuring out how to defeat China. And then
Speaker 5: that's the case for his entire company. But this, this
Speaker 5: is an issue for them. It's shapying sort of the dialectic.
Speaker 5: And so within this the net where is the network
Speaker 5: staying well? China's Belt and Road initiative is creating infrastructure
Speaker 5: projects and nation state alliances across Latin America and across
Speaker 5: Africa for China, and you see the network state really
Speaker 5: investing in Latin America and Africas. While so certainly, one
Speaker 5: way to conceptualize this is as the network state is
Speaker 5: a counter to Belt and Road and it is part
Speaker 5: of their cold war with China which is playing out
Speaker 5: across all of these regions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's another thing where it's just like I have
Speaker 1: seen how how both of these groups treat the workers
Speaker 1: in Africa that they're employing. Like both of you two
Speaker 1: believe the same shit. You're both fucking racist doing colonialism,
Speaker 1: but like you've decided to drag the entire fucking world
Speaker 1: into your Like oh god, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: tell one China racism story here, because we've be getting
Speaker 1: in a normal am out of American racism, like like
Speaker 1: this is this is a country where like, like China's
Speaker 1: the country where like you get soapbads, where like you
Speaker 1: have a black person and they like rub their skin
Speaker 1: with soap and they like turn white. This is like
Speaker 1: the kind of racism you're dealing with. One of the
Speaker 1: big ecological moments in China was there's a documentary called
Speaker 1: Under the Dome. So we're gonna get a little bit
Speaker 1: far field here, but this I think matters a lot
Speaker 1: in terms of why this is happening. The CCP allowed
Speaker 1: this woman who'd been a state broadcaster like a television
Speaker 1: personality like broadcaster for a long time. She had a kid,
Speaker 1: so she was taking time off. This is like the
Speaker 1: early twenty tens, like the height of like air pollution
Speaker 1: in China, and she does this like giant documentary about
Speaker 1: air pollution. It's allowed to stay on the Internet for
Speaker 1: like a couple of days before it's taken down. And
Speaker 1: one of the big points of this is that part
Speaker 1: of the reason that pollution is so bad is that
Speaker 1: there are all of these cars in China that don't
Speaker 1: meet Chinese emission standards for being sold to the Chinese market,
Speaker 1: And the reason they're producing these cars is that they
Speaker 1: specifically have an entire class of cars that are like way,
Speaker 1: way way more pollutant and shittier that they specifically designed
Speaker 1: to sell to Africa. Like it's like that kind of
Speaker 1: like structure of racism, right, and it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just like the sort of horror show of like
Speaker 1: watching these two just like different versions of this sort
Speaker 1: of like nightmare colonialism entity where you know, like China
Speaker 1: is trying to find a way to reproduce its own
Speaker 1: capital as its growth rate like slows, and the networks
Speaker 1: that people, you know, I have also had this project
Speaker 1: of like we want to sort of install our own
Speaker 1: version of fascism here, and they're just sort of like
Speaker 1: building these like parallel networks against each other just like
Speaker 1: I don't know, it makes me so miserable that so
Speaker 1: many people are getting fucked by just like the global
Speaker 1: capital of superpowers and the way that like venture capital
Speaker 1: money has become a political force that can do their
Speaker 1: own unbelievably like probably more hideously fucked versions of what
Speaker 1: Chinese capital has been able to do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think you know, at the end of the day,
Speaker 5: that's where where we need to come back to, is
Speaker 5: like this is about capitalism, Like this is about colonialism,
Speaker 5: it's about like imperialism, and like, yeah, we fight this
Speaker 5: at that level, at the level of structural analysis, of
Speaker 5: historical analysis, of like full analysis, of unflinching analysis, and
Speaker 5: that that is the only way to get out of
Speaker 5: this situation that we're in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is to understand what is actually happening at a
Speaker 1: structural level and understand the actual forces that are operating
Speaker 1: instead of the big, flashy name people who the spotlight
Speaker 1: has been on.
Speaker 5: Yeah. That is one of the few things that makes
Speaker 5: me excited about venture capital because like, here is a
Speaker 5: lens where we can actually see capitalism in a live
Speaker 5: movie and active, dynamic, destructive, very much visible. You can
Speaker 5: see this, you can see it happening, and that is
Speaker 5: like such an opportunity to wrap up the network state stuff. So,
Speaker 5: you know, a lot a lot is sort of said
Speaker 5: about this being their own state, which it absolutely is.
Speaker 5: It leads to that, but once you add up these
Speaker 5: pieces of them having land and them having cities, and
Speaker 5: then they're racism. So they think that they're better than everyone,
Speaker 5: and they're like misogyny and like their wealth and them
Speaker 5: being sort of in their own kind of category which
Speaker 5: also has all of the different sort of pieces of civilization.
Speaker 5: Like out of that they derive both an identity and
Speaker 5: like a drive for civilization building. And so one thing
Speaker 5: that people talk about a lot is eugenics, and like
Speaker 5: eugenics beliefs sort of in the tech class, but we
Speaker 5: are so far beyond that and into an actual eugenics
Speaker 5: project where venture capitalists are encouraging the tech class to
Speaker 5: create more and more babies. They are creating a dizzying
Speaker 5: number of fertility startups, IVF, genetic screening, you know, engineering
Speaker 5: of the genome, like all of these different areas. And
Speaker 5: they see Israel as the example of that because the
Speaker 5: Israeli fertility rate is really high despite it being a technocratic.
Speaker 8: This is there where it's not mine. Yeah, yeah, just
Speaker 8: to be clear, this is what they say.
Speaker 5: They say Israel is aspirational because it's the technocratic state
Speaker 5: where they have a really high birth rate, and that
Speaker 5: that is what they want to emulate, you know, through
Speaker 5: the network state, and they want to you know, selectively
Speaker 5: breed and they want to use these technologies to breed
Speaker 5: and hyperbreed. And one of the tech philosophers that should
Speaker 5: actually get way more intention than Curtis Yarvin but doesn't
Speaker 5: is Nick Land.
Speaker 8: And nick Land.
Speaker 5: Basically yeah, but nick Land's one of his main thing
Speaker 5: is that a small elite will use eugenics technology to
Speaker 5: rapidly outpace the rest of the world to such an
Speaker 5: extent that it creates basically like a new species in
Speaker 5: that sense, I see, you know, ideology being something that
Speaker 5: emerges out of all of this other things that they're doing.
Speaker 8: They do all of this crazy shit.
Speaker 5: They have all this economic stuff going on, you know,
Speaker 5: they have all this medical stuff going on, and then
Speaker 5: what comes out of that is this is our civilization.
Speaker 5: We are going to breed to populate this civilization, and
Speaker 5: we are going to surpass the rest of humanity which
Speaker 5: we lolls and which we see as lab rats and
Speaker 5: guinea pigs and vermin and scum.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's the situation where like, like this is
Speaker 1: like a thing that a lot of the worst right
Speaker 1: wingers have believed for a long time. But these people
Speaker 1: control vast sections of the global economy, and because they
Speaker 1: do that, whatever, like unhinged like racist eugenic breeding project
Speaker 1: thing they want to do, they could just do it
Speaker 1: because they have the capital to like actually create these things.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, like obviously they're not going to be
Speaker 1: able to successfully like create a super race or whatever,
Speaker 1: because like that's just digenics doesn't work, right, Like but
Speaker 1: like it's you know, but like it doesn't matter. They
Speaker 1: have achieved a level of power and a level of capital.
Speaker 1: Where like the actual quote behind the reality based community thing,
Speaker 1: where for the Push administration, we're like the thing that
Speaker 1: got into like the media was like calling their roles
Speaker 1: the reality based community. The actual quote is about how
Speaker 1: liberals observe reality and conservatives create it, and so they're
Speaker 1: trying to sort of just hammer reality into their preferred
Speaker 1: shape through this combination of wealth and violence. And because
Speaker 1: of that, yeah, they can just fucking do this, all
Speaker 1: of this like eugenic shit that people just talk about.
Speaker 3: They can just attempt to do it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 5: It's they're telling their workers to have more children. They're
Speaker 5: doing their own school programs, elite schools for these kids.
Speaker 5: They've talked about having their children being able to work
Speaker 5: at a startup by the age of.
Speaker 8: Fifteen Jesus Christ.
Speaker 5: Ah, Yeah, it's really wild. This is very much a reality.
Speaker 5: It's something that is allready happening now. And so one
Speaker 5: of the main messages that I have for peoples, like
Speaker 5: they are so much more advanced in these projects than
Speaker 5: anyone has awareness of, Like things are way beyond the
Speaker 5: emergency moment, and we need global response, and we need
Speaker 5: global emergency response, and we need resistance. When venture capitalists
Speaker 5: show up to these areas, the people there don't know
Speaker 5: what's hitting them.
Speaker 8: And that's even.
Speaker 5: True in the US, where these venture capitalists came from,
Speaker 5: people did not know that they were about to take
Speaker 5: the presidency. In other countries, they definitely don't know. We
Speaker 5: need global defense from this. Everywhere they fucking go. They
Speaker 5: should be met not only by people there who have
Speaker 5: been told and have the access to the information, but
Speaker 5: also to a global coalition that's ready to stand by.
Speaker 5: These are invasions of countries, These are invasions of sovereign
Speaker 5: nations and of communities, and that's what we need to
Speaker 5: fight back. And I think my research and other researchers
Speaker 5: and what's on vcmfhodox like leads to that conclusion of
Speaker 5: like that is how we're going to have to fight this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that's something that right now feels unimaginable.
Speaker 1: But also unless you are really really young, you have
Speaker 1: lived in a period where something like that existed, you know,
Speaker 1: to a large extent. This is what the global justice
Speaker 1: movement was. There's a bunch of different names, but like
Speaker 1: the original anti globalization movements, like the one that was
Speaker 1: born out of the nineties, the one that was born
Speaker 1: out of the Zapatista's rebellion against NAFTA, Like the Zapatista
Speaker 1: is brought together hundreds and hundreds of groups from all
Speaker 1: over the world, like to these giant convergencies, and they
Speaker 1: planned like an international strategy to presist these sort of
Speaker 1: these like free trade proposals. And you know, were they
Speaker 1: able to like defeat capitalism and like retake the globe. No,
Speaker 1: but they were successful in killing basically all new free
Speaker 1: trade agreements like in the period after. And this is
Speaker 1: where you get like the Battle of Seattle and like
Speaker 1: the whole Giant, like all the protests at all of
Speaker 1: the summits, and like Genoa, and this is the process
Speaker 1: that built the modern left right, like the modern American
Speaker 1: left comes out of occupy, which is a bunch of
Speaker 1: the veterans of that movement by doing this. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: like you all, like everyone listening to this, unless you
Speaker 1: were born in like the twenty tens, have lived in
Speaker 1: a world where people did this.
Speaker 3: It's kind of a parallel movement.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that happens in this period
Speaker 1: in your lifetimes almost certainly, is that a bunch of
Speaker 1: people like took the city of Wahaka in like two
Speaker 1: thousand and six, we have taken major North American cities
Speaker 1: from them in your lifetime. We can do this. We
Speaker 1: just have to be willing to work together and fight.
Speaker 5: Yes, one hundred percent. And as much as I like
Speaker 5: live in this issue and look at this, and I'm like,
Speaker 5: what the fuck are we gonna do?
Speaker 8: Like it's over, it's over.
Speaker 5: Like I also am like, this is a chance because
Speaker 5: what's having a mentor capital It's one of the fastest
Speaker 5: moving parts of capitalism, one of the most dynamic, one
Speaker 5: of the most powerful, one of them that has the
Speaker 5: most infrastructure. Like, yeah, what if we got all the
Speaker 5: computers back? Yeah, what if we could use the computers
Speaker 5: for you know, this is a chance. And I think
Speaker 5: there's a possibility, and I hope to build a global
Speaker 5: resistance around this. And that's why I'm here, and that's
Speaker 5: why I stay in this because this fucking sucks and
Speaker 5: there's not a lot of community support. It's isolating, da
Speaker 5: da da. But I think this is I think this
Speaker 5: is a fight we can win if we're all willing
Speaker 5: to get on board about what is happening and do
Speaker 5: the work of building that. So I am I'm excited
Speaker 5: for that. I think I think it can happen.
Speaker 1: So yeah, And I think this is something that it's
Speaker 1: really really easy to look into the world and despair,
Speaker 1: and I think one of the things that helps with
Speaker 1: that is remembering that people have faced odds that were
Speaker 1: so much worse than this, right, Like if you look
Speaker 1: at like the origin of Pan Africanism, right, and like
Speaker 1: you look at like C. L. R. James and a
Speaker 1: bunch of like his friends are like meeting in these
Speaker 1: rooms in like London, and you know, they're looking out
Speaker 1: at it across entire continents that are colonized and fifteen
Speaker 1: to twenty years later, literally like the people who are
Speaker 1: his friends who are there have liberated Africa, right, Like
Speaker 1: you know, we're talking about like this this what looked
Speaker 1: like a just a group of just like random people
Speaker 1: facing within a completely impossible project of defeating colonialism. Suddenly
Speaker 1: you know again, like twenty years later, it's like Julius
Speaker 1: de Reira is like running Tanzania, right, And the odds
Speaker 1: that they faced are so much longer than the odds
Speaker 1: that we faced, and were they able to create exactly
Speaker 1: the world that they wanted to know. But the world
Speaker 1: that they left after them was one where entire continents
Speaker 1: were no longer It's literally directly ruled by colonizers. Yes,
Speaker 1: and yeah, like that is probably the kind of response
Speaker 1: that this requires, but I don't know, people have done
Speaker 1: it before, and it can be done again.
Speaker 5: It can be done again, and you know, if you
Speaker 5: people who are interested in that reach out and like,
Speaker 5: let's get a movie in because this is like, this
Speaker 5: is a chance, This is a chance, and we need
Speaker 5: to take it because if we just let this go
Speaker 5: and like, today is our best chance of stopping it.
Speaker 8: You know, today is our best chance.
Speaker 5: So if we can hop on this and be professional
Speaker 5: in the sense of like being a professional resist in
Speaker 5: anti colonialists and anti fascists and take this as not
Speaker 5: just an ideological thing, but this is a tactical situation.
Speaker 5: We need to be figuring out strategies and tactics to
Speaker 5: take this down.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think on that note, where can people go
Speaker 1: to find your work and find more information about this
Speaker 1: and start this process?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Absolutely.
Speaker 5: Vcinfodox is at www dot vcinfodox dot com. There's a
Speaker 5: contact email address on that page. Would love to hear
Speaker 5: from you. We give presentations also, or happy to just
Speaker 5: talk to any other organizers. And I am on social media.
Speaker 5: I'm a Blue Sky and Twitter and I have a
Speaker 5: blog at.
Speaker 8: Shanlee dot com, so any.
Speaker 5: Of those, but definitely want to hear from people who
Speaker 5: are serious about building a movement around this. And thank
Speaker 5: you so much. Thank you so much for having me,
Speaker 5: Thank you for being my first podcast.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, I hope we can help contribute
Speaker 1: to the start of something that changes the state of things.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Executive Dysphonia, a podcast about people who are
Speaker 2: in executive positions but can't hear well. Right, isn't that
Speaker 2: what the show we're doing is?
Speaker 4: This is it could happen here? Executive disorder.
Speaker 2: Oh, I guess I have Executive Dysphonia.
Speaker 4: Our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House,
Speaker 4: the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm
Speaker 4: Garrison Davis. That was Robert Evans, also joined by James Stout,
Speaker 4: with a segment later on by Mia Wong said, we
Speaker 4: are covering the week of March eleventh to March eighteenth.
Speaker 2: And I was wrong about dysphonia. That's just horseness.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, yeah, they probably are people in the executive
Speaker 3: branch who a horse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, horse and wearing shoes too big for their feet.
Speaker 4: We have to start by issuing an apology, that's right,
Speaker 4: a serious apology. We have both failed you, the audience
Speaker 4: and ourselves as an outlet by neglecting to cover a
Speaker 4: story the way that it deserves to. Last week we
Speaker 4: reported on the buffalo wild wings Espresso Proteini, that's right,
Speaker 4: and promised an in depth report on the drink upon
Speaker 4: delivery this past weekend, which was National E Spresso Martini Day.
Speaker 4: And there I was Sunday, March fifteenth, on my phone
Speaker 4: googling to find the closest buffalo wild wings when I
Speaker 4: discovered that these us at Bertini was in fact, only
Speaker 4: to be served in five cities. Yeah, in Tennessee, Illinois, Georgia, Texas,
Speaker 4: and the Sea World location in Orlando, Florida. And I
Speaker 4: failed myself and you by not traveling specifically to the
Speaker 4: Sea World location to try the Espresso Proteini, which would
Speaker 4: have been the correct choice.
Speaker 2: That would have been the right move to.
Speaker 4: Deliver the sort of coverage that you expect out of
Speaker 4: us and deserve. It's going to take a while to
Speaker 4: win your trust back, and we understand this, and we
Speaker 4: are hoping to be able to demonstrate that to you
Speaker 4: in the coming in the coming weeks.
Speaker 2: Gary, this isn't all your fault, you know, I knew
Speaker 2: years ago that we should have moved the entire production
Speaker 2: team to the Buffalo Wild Wings at SeaWorld. This was
Speaker 2: a foreseeable mistake, you know. Sophie and I are to
Speaker 2: blame for this as well, is all I'm saying. And
Speaker 2: we apologize then.
Speaker 3: Obviously, as a British person, the Sea World location in Orlando,
Speaker 3: Florida is house spiritual home, so that really should have
Speaker 3: been at the very center of my be.
Speaker 2: Just imagine how much more sunburnt you could be every
Speaker 2: single day we record this podcast, James.
Speaker 3: You could be I'm wearing a red shirt right now
Speaker 3: for this. You could probably never tell if I lived
Speaker 3: in Orlando, Florida, if I was wearing a red shirt
Speaker 3: or just had extensive sunburns. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So yeah, let's go for some small news items. Meta
Speaker 4: is shutting down. It's VR Metaverse Worlds.
Speaker 2: On June fifteenth, it stuck being named Metahu.
Speaker 4: It's the Horizon. Worlds continued to exist as a mobile
Speaker 4: phone only application. The metaverse portion is going to be sunseted.
Speaker 4: Like I said on the fifteenth of June.
Speaker 3: I'll be on there in June fourteenth, throat up till midnight.
Speaker 3: Just it's enjoying my final moments of beauty. Is there
Speaker 3: a SeaWorld Orlando that I can visit in the Metaverse?
Speaker 3: I bet there was too soon, James, too soon.
Speaker 4: In the United District of Illinois, Evanston mayor Daniel Biss
Speaker 4: beat Kat Abagazzali and Laura Fine this one over thirty
Speaker 4: five thousand votes. Kat won over thirty one thousand votes
Speaker 4: and find the Apac back to candidate to got twenty
Speaker 4: four thousand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know it.
Speaker 2: It was a really impressive first campaign from Kat who's
Speaker 2: a friend of the show. We're proud of her and
Speaker 2: her whole team. And yeah that's politics. Baby, onto the
Speaker 2: next thing, I guess.
Speaker 4: Columbia student Lka Cordella was released from ice custody after
Speaker 4: over a year in detention after government lawyers declined to
Speaker 4: appeal a judge's third release order. Her name was one
Speaker 4: of the four on the list that Marmon Donnie gave
Speaker 4: to Trump during their last meeting.
Speaker 3: Cuba is facing another blackout makes its aging infrastructure in
Speaker 3: a United States enforced BLOCKERID on the country. It has
Speaker 3: been running largely on thermoelectric, solar, and natural gas sources
Speaker 3: of electricity as imports from Venezuela have ceased. The United
Speaker 3: States has threatened to tariff anybody sending oil to Cuba,
Speaker 3: but on Sunday, Claudio Scheinenbaum, president of Mexico, did say
Speaker 3: that Mexico would continue to send aid to the Caribbean nation.
Speaker 3: Also checking in on the Shield of the Americas, which
Speaker 3: we mentioned last week, Gustavo Petro, president of Columbia, has
Speaker 3: responded to what appears to be an Ecuadorian bomb falling
Speaker 3: on Colombia. So we are a couple of weeks into
Speaker 3: this and Ecuador's already bombed the wrong country. Oh good,
Speaker 3: not great. It was in an area very close to
Speaker 3: the border. But Petro posted today on egg dot com,
Speaker 3: the everything website, I'm blighted by the fact that groc
Speaker 3: thinks it can speak Spanish better than meat. So I'm
Speaker 3: just going to read whatever this shitty translation is. I
Speaker 3: suppose it has been confirmed that the bomb in Colombian
Speaker 3: territory belongs to the Ecuadorian Army. The investigat continues and
Speaker 3: a diplomatic protest note will be sent. So yeah, that's
Speaker 3: Ecuador playing with fire there. Yeah. Finally, PBS is reporting
Speaker 3: today that an offer is on the table from the
Speaker 3: White House to end the shutdown. I'm just going to
Speaker 3: read I guess the terms that have been offered by
Speaker 3: the White House. So the first one would be the
Speaker 3: expansion in the use of body worn cameras by DHS
Speaker 3: law enforcement, and they will increase congressional oversight by requiring
Speaker 3: retention of body worn camera footage. The next one, they
Speaker 3: would limit civil immigration enforcement at certain sensitive locations. They
Speaker 3: go on to say sensitive locations include places like hospitals
Speaker 3: and schools, which is current practice. There were other places
Speaker 3: that were considered sensitive locations previously not to be churches, right,
Speaker 3: But that's not a definitive list, and I don't does
Speaker 3: it mean they will return to the old sensitive his doctrine.
Speaker 3: It's a little unclear. Yeah, they talk again about increasing
Speaker 3: congressional oversight, particularly by creating mandatory review and compliance reporting
Speaker 3: from the Spectro General of the HS. They talk about
Speaker 3: visible officer identification and the administration would require officers to
Speaker 3: clearly verbalize their agency and identification upon request when engaging
Speaker 3: in official duties. And then finally they will adhere to
Speaker 3: existing practices of law and practice of not deporting US citizens.
Speaker 3: And then they go and say they only detain them
Speaker 3: of a crime has taken place. Some of these appear
Speaker 3: like concessions, but they kind of only matter in so
Speaker 3: much as you trust them. They've always got like even
Speaker 3: the sensitive places has an exemption for like a terrorist threat,
Speaker 3: given that, for instance, it was suggested very shortly after
Speaker 3: Alex Pretty was killed that he was a terrorist attempting
Speaker 3: to kill officers, etc. Yeah, none of this matters, and
Speaker 3: like it's still going to be this is we are
Speaker 3: pleasing ourselves, right, Perhaps we should move on talking of DHS.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about Friend of the Podcast, Gregory Bovino.
Speaker 2: Oh, Greg, Oh, Greg Gregy b.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's been a frequent, frequent cool Zone all across
Speaker 3: the cool Zone universe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, friend of the Pod. But no, nothing gold can stay,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Nope, And sadly Greg cannot stay at his job.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it'd be fair. Even before Trump took office, he
Speaker 2: was talking about retiring in like two years, Like he's
Speaker 2: been talking about that for a while. So yeah, it's
Speaker 2: not this is not like super weird, but the timing
Speaker 2: of it is earlier than he'd previously talked about wanting
Speaker 2: to do. And I think pretty undeniably connected to you know,
Speaker 2: him being made the sacrificial bond of the regime.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the fact that he he for instance, said
Speaker 3: shortly after Alex Pretty was killed by CBP agents, Pretty
Speaker 3: was planning to quote ATTACA agents. We have seen no
Speaker 3: evidence that that is true.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: He's currently the chief patrol agent of the El Centro sector. Previously,
Speaker 3: he was CBP's commander at large of its interior enforcement operations.
Speaker 3: That he was removed from that job in late January.
Speaker 3: He gave an exclusive interview to bright Bart News Bright
Speaker 3: but I have a former Border Patrol agent who writes
Speaker 3: to him. So I'm guessink that's why saying quote, watching
Speaker 3: these agents out there giving it there all in some
Speaker 3: of the most dangerous of environments we have ever faced,
Speaker 3: was humbling. Cool. He will be retiring just a few
Speaker 3: days after his fifty sixth birthday. The agency's mandatory requirement
Speaker 3: ages fifty seven, and I've seen a lot of places
Speaker 3: citing that that applies to offices hired after the middle
Speaker 3: of two thousand and eight. Bavino was hired in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety six, but at fifty five, with thirty years of service,
Speaker 3: he would be eligible for optional retirement under the FERS.
Speaker 3: He hasn't reached a minimum retirement age, so I think
Speaker 3: that would impact the amount of retirement he gets. Oh interesting, Oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he usually does, unless they make a special
Speaker 2: exception for him or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because previously, right, like previously, Border patrol agents were
Speaker 3: essentially hired. It's like federal employees or civil servants. It
Speaker 3: was only after two thousand and eight that they're hiring,
Speaker 3: I guess came slightly more in line with people in
Speaker 3: the armed services, for instance, or police, and so like
Speaker 3: under first you'd have to do the thirty years plus
Speaker 3: reach the minimum retirement age, versus under the newer system
Speaker 3: when they have a mandatory retirement of fifty seven. I
Speaker 3: do feel like this, plus Gnome, plus the stuff that
Speaker 3: you've mentioned up top Garrison, it suggests that the tides
Speaker 3: are perhaps turning. Plus this, we've seen Republican sheriffs in
Speaker 3: Florida opposing mass deportations this week, right, we've seen Republican
Speaker 3: congress people making public statements about this. We are probably
Speaker 3: really beginning to see the beginning of the end of
Speaker 3: the Right being in lockstep behind mass deportations. I don't
Speaker 3: think that means with it going to see the end
Speaker 3: of ice raids. I don't think that means we're going
Speaker 3: to see the end, no, of massive detention and of
Speaker 3: massive deportation. But it's clearly, as we are looking towards
Speaker 3: the midterms, something that some parts of the Republican Party
Speaker 3: want to distance themselves from. And there's movement on this,
Speaker 3: and it shows that these forces are fluid in can
Speaker 3: actually be changed through taking like agency, like through through
Speaker 3: through imparting yourself upon the world, like what's happened in
Speaker 3: Minneapolis for those for those weeks to to you know,
Speaker 3: months showed that the world actually can be changed through
Speaker 3: through mass action. Yeah, like like Border Patrol and Ice
Speaker 3: went to Minneapolis to fight, and it seems like they
Speaker 3: came off worse, right, Like they were not able to
Speaker 3: subdue the city in a meaningful way and it has
Speaker 3: resulted in most of their leadership being removed. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about something
Speaker 2: that's happened this week that I kind of I felt
Speaker 2: a deep sense of foreboding reading this article. It's going
Speaker 2: to sound like this is another piece of kind of
Speaker 2: Israel Palestine reporting, but it's really not. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: where this particular story is set. But we're we're talking
Speaker 2: about something that's going to be an increasing factor in
Speaker 2: the lives of everyone gathering news and everybody consuming it,
Speaker 2: which is poly market our gamble on everything happening in
Speaker 2: the world. App that apparently the world needed for some reason.
Speaker 2: So on Tuesday, March tenth, twenty twenty six, as you know,
Speaker 2: hostilities continued between Iran and Israel, ballistic missile got past
Speaker 2: Israel's defense systems and landed in near the city of
Speaker 2: bait Schemesh, just outside of j Rusalem. It did not
Speaker 2: land near anything, but it looks like trees, you can see.
Speaker 2: There was video captured of the explosion and posted by
Speaker 2: a journalist named Immanubal Fabian Oh yeah, who wrote with
Speaker 2: his post, no injuries are reported in Iran's latest ballistic
Speaker 2: missile attack on Israel. The fourth to day one missile
Speaker 2: struck an open area just outside beit Chamesh first responder say,
Speaker 2: and footage shows, and the footage does indeed show a
Speaker 2: ballistic missile impacting. There is an explosion. This does not
Speaker 2: look like fragments of a missile that were taken down.
Speaker 2: You know, based on what I know of ballistic missiles,
Speaker 2: and based on what people who I know no more
Speaker 2: than me know about ballistic missiles, this was an intact
Speaker 2: ballistic missile hitting. It didn't hit a target that was valuable,
Speaker 2: It didn't hurt anybody as far as we're aware, but
Speaker 2: it got through the missile shield and a hit in
Speaker 2: Israeli territory. Normally you would wonder like, why does this this?
Speaker 2: I mean, this matters, you know if you're a local reporter, obviously,
Speaker 2: but why would anyone else care?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 2: The day after, Manny Fabian posted this and this brief
Speaker 2: bit of reporting. He started receiving emails, weird emails, mostly
Speaker 2: in Hebrew, and like, here's one example from Times of
Speaker 2: Israel piece that he wrote, sorry for reaching out without
Speaker 2: a prior introduction, but I assume we will get to
Speaker 2: know each other.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: I have an urgent request regarding the accuracy of your
Speaker 2: report on the missile attack on March tenth. I would
Speaker 2: really appreciate a response if possible. There is an inaccurate
Speaker 2: report from you about the missile attack on March tenth,
Speaker 2: and it's causing a chain of errors. If you could
Speaker 2: reply to me tonight, you would be helping me many
Speaker 2: others and of course the State of Israel, and along
Speaker 2: the way you would gain a good source.
Speaker 3: So that's really weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the fuck is going if you're this guy. All
Speaker 2: you did was post, oh, hey, a rocket hit but
Speaker 2: it didn't hit anything. Yeah, like not a big deal.
Speaker 2: Give him the state of the war. And he starts
Speaker 2: getting spammed with a bunch of similar emails like this,
Speaker 2: And in addition to that, he's got people like on
Speaker 2: Twitter responding saying like hey, One person responded to one
Speaker 2: of his posts saying there are people saying they've received
Speaker 2: word from you that the missile strike in bite Schamesh
Speaker 2: on March tenth was in fact intercepted. Is this true
Speaker 2: or did no such interaction occur? So people start posting
Speaker 2: and sharing in other places that oh, I reached out
Speaker 2: to this guy and he said the missile was actually
Speaker 2: intercepted and it was just a piece that fell, and
Speaker 2: he reported it wrong, which is not at all what
Speaker 2: this guy had reported. So he's really confused. He has like,
Speaker 2: why are all these people bugging me about this very
Speaker 2: minor story and why are they spreading disinformation claiming that
Speaker 2: I debunked my own story when I didn't.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: The obvious reason why is that people that day on
Speaker 2: polymarket on March tenth were gambling on when Iran would
Speaker 2: strike Israel. There were fourteen million dollars waged that there
Speaker 2: would be a strike on March tenth. The rules of
Speaker 2: the bet per polymarket stated, this market will resolve to
Speaker 2: yes if Iran initiates a drone, missile or airstrike on
Speaker 2: Israel soil on the listed date in Israel time gmt
Speaker 2: plus two. Otherwise, this market will resolve. No missiles or
Speaker 2: drones that are intercepted will not be sufficient for a
Speaker 2: yes resolution. Right, So that's why fourteen million dollars was
Speaker 2: in the air.
Speaker 4: It's people who had a lot of money on this event. Yeah, yes, specifically.
Speaker 4: And these people don't care if anyone was right. They
Speaker 4: don't care that a missile was fired. All they care
Speaker 4: about is whether or not the missile made it through
Speaker 4: the defense network intact, right, because these were people who
Speaker 4: I guess had bet against that because they didn't want
Speaker 4: that to be the case.
Speaker 3: Right, right.
Speaker 2: He initially ignores these weird emails, and they start getting
Speaker 2: more and more aggressive, and people are like, when you're
Speaker 2: gonna update the article, Daniel, Daniel, update the article. You
Speaker 2: have to update the article. You know you were wrong.
Speaker 3: And after the.
Speaker 2: Weekend he starts getting messages like you have exactly half
Speaker 2: an hour to correct your attempted influence, despite the fact
Speaker 2: that you receive countless inquiries, you insist on leaving it
Speaker 2: this way. If you do not correct this by one
Speaker 2: am is reel time today, March fifteenth, you are bringing
Speaker 2: upon yourself damage you have never imagined you would suffer.
Speaker 3: That's already easer if I've ever seen one.
Speaker 2: Like, there's a bunch of shit like this. Someone said
Speaker 2: after you make a lose nine hundred thousand dollars, we
Speaker 2: will invest no less than that to finish you. This
Speaker 2: is insane, but it's inevitable if you think about how
Speaker 2: polymarket works, right that once people are putting fortunes on
Speaker 2: the line around stupid shit, you know, like betting whether
Speaker 2: or not, oh the missile make it through or not
Speaker 2: on this That is dumb, right, missiles and stuff that's
Speaker 2: very serious to a lot of people who live in
Speaker 2: the region, But betting on it this way is fundamentally stupid.
Speaker 2: But it's all Polymarket's all stupid bets like this, and
Speaker 2: they are going to increase only come after people once
Speaker 2: they realize, hey, maybe I can actually change and get
Speaker 2: a winning resolution or whatever if I harass the journalist
Speaker 2: on the ground. There's a vested financial interest in going
Speaker 2: after people over stuff like this. So this is this
Speaker 2: particular story is happening in Israel, involves the reporting of
Speaker 2: an Israeli journalist. This isn't gonna stay limited to that
Speaker 2: conflict or to that region of the world. This is
Speaker 2: going to be thing that journalists all over the world
Speaker 2: increasingly deal with. This isn't important story and one that
Speaker 2: I think says some pretty bleak shit about the immediate
Speaker 2: future of news gathering in this country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's cool.
Speaker 2: On the upside, Polymarket is about to open a splashy
Speaker 2: new bar in Washington, DC called the Situation Room, and
Speaker 2: I found Polymarket made a post on their substack in
Speaker 2: which they announced this, saying, the world's first bar dedicated
Speaker 2: to monitoring the situation. Imagine a sports bar, but just
Speaker 2: for situation monitoring live X feeds, flight radar, Bloomberg terminals,
Speaker 2: and Polymarket screens. Grand opening this Friday. Imagine the first response.
Speaker 4: This is every bar in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2: First response is just someone saying, drink your way through
Speaker 2: World War three, which just also every bar in Washington DC.
Speaker 2: Someone else says, this seems awful, but I guess that
Speaker 2: perfectly aligns with your company in general.
Speaker 3: Get uh cool?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I love poly Market. It's good that this
Speaker 2: is what we've turned society into.
Speaker 3: No notes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll just add this to the list of things
Speaker 4: that prediction markets will destabilize geopolitically. Yeah great, not just
Speaker 4: the insider trading problems of people with you know, before
Speaker 4: had knowledge of military strikes or certain world events, but
Speaker 4: trying to influence the reporting of events to sway polymarket
Speaker 4: or Calshi's decision on whether whether the market was correctly fulfilled.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: Yep, interesting and yeah foreboding.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, so yeah, here's some Ads. You built the animals.
Speaker 2: We're back. Here's some James. You built the animals.
Speaker 3: Yeah, lucky you. First, I want to talk about the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court, and then I'm going to throw it to
Speaker 3: Garrison talk about some other court stuff. This is our
Speaker 3: court segment. The Supreme Court has schedule cases for the TPS.
Speaker 3: That's a temporary protected status pretending to Syria and Haiti
Speaker 3: for April, meaning these statuses will remain in effect, likely
Speaker 3: until the end of June or July. The justices didn't
Speaker 3: alter the position of the New York and DC judges
Speaker 3: who indefinitely postpone the termination of the TPS. The Trump
Speaker 3: administration has hustled really hard to get this to the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court. They first tried to get the Supreme Court
Speaker 3: to let them remove people while it waited to weigh
Speaker 3: in on the case, and then they tried to get
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court to take the case before the Second
Speaker 3: Circuit had a chance to weigh in This is called
Speaker 3: thirty or right before judgment. It's how the case got
Speaker 3: to the Supreme Court. This, I should note it's different
Speaker 3: from the Venezuela case where the TPS was terminated because
Speaker 3: the numbers are much smaller, and therefore it's going to
Speaker 3: be harder for the US government to show harm. Right,
Speaker 3: it pertains to thirty forty thousand people ever had to
Speaker 3: guess by con trust. It's very easy for people to
Speaker 3: show potential harm in Haiti or Syria. Right, just to
Speaker 3: give an example of Syria that has been folenced directed
Speaker 3: against Alavites, Drew's people and Kurds largely unimpeded by the
Speaker 3: government since a sad fell last year, and Syria remains
Speaker 3: on the State Departments do not travel list. Yeah, you
Speaker 3: had some stuff about prairie Land. Do you want to
Speaker 3: share in it?
Speaker 4: Yes, let's talk about the prairie Land trial. Yeah, we're
Speaker 4: going to be doing a more in depth episode next
Speaker 4: week the start of next week on prairie Land. It's
Speaker 4: about double the length of today's summary, But I do
Speaker 4: want to go over some essential information about the trial
Speaker 4: that concluded last week. So last week the Trump administration
Speaker 4: got their first conviction in an antifat heroism case. On Friday,
Speaker 4: March thirteenth, eight people were convicted by a federal grand
Speaker 4: jury on charge of riot, conspiracy to use and carry
Speaker 4: an explosive, and providing material support to terrorists. One of
Speaker 4: the defendants was convicted of attempted murder of a police officer,
Speaker 4: and another person was convicted on two accounts of concealing documents,
Speaker 4: bringing the total number of federal defendants to nine. This
Speaker 4: case stemmed from what the defense argued was a noise
Speaker 4: demonstration protest outside of an ICE attention facility in Prairie Land, Texas,
Speaker 4: last summer on the night of July fourth. After protesters
Speaker 4: through fireworks and vandalized property, DHS personnel called local police
Speaker 4: for assistance. One officer arrived, drew his handgun, and yelled
Speaker 4: stop at a person in all black clothes who was
Speaker 4: running away. One of the defendants, named Benjamin's Song, then
Speaker 4: yelled get to the rifles, before firing toward the officer
Speaker 4: with an air of fifteen, hitting him in the neck.
Speaker 4: A week into the trial, US District Court Judge Mark
Speaker 4: Pittman ruled at defense attorneys could not argue that the
Speaker 4: defendants include the accused shooter were acting in self defense
Speaker 4: or the defense of others against unlawful force just because
Speaker 4: the officer had already drawn and pointed his handgun before
Speaker 4: Song fired. Prosecutors compared this to Waco. Judge Pittman ruled
Speaker 4: that the officer drawing and pointing his handgun at a
Speaker 4: fleeing suspect is not quote unquote excessive as a matter
Speaker 4: of law because the officer did not actually use deadly
Speaker 4: force or shoot first, and he listed three federal precedents
Speaker 4: for this. Let's get into this action and the role
Speaker 4: of Antifa in the court case. This action was originally
Speaker 4: planned on the encrypted messaging app Signal and via an
Speaker 4: in person quote unquote gear check meeting. The day before
Speaker 4: the action. Benjamin Song advertised the action in a larger
Speaker 4: group chat of dozens of quote unquote trusted individuals. When
Speaker 4: asked about bringing firearms during action planning, Song repeatedly stated,
Speaker 4: I'm not going back to prison, I'm not getting arrested.
Speaker 3: I'm bringing guns. Quote.
Speaker 4: So the trial, Song was characterized as the de facto
Speaker 4: leader of the Antifa cell or affinity group, but he
Speaker 4: did not have a close relationship with all fellow defendants.
Speaker 4: At the gear Check meeting on July third, Song proposed
Speaker 4: to free detainees using quote unquote suppressive fire, but this
Speaker 4: idea was shot down by other meeting attendees.
Speaker 3: Some of the.
Speaker 4: Defendants attended a daytime protest outside the ICE facility earlier
Speaker 4: that day, on July fourth, after which they reported back
Speaker 4: to fellow defendants details regarding the facility security prior to
Speaker 4: the nighttime action. Two defendants were neither in these planning
Speaker 4: chats nor attended the gear check meeting, but all of
Speaker 4: defendants that attended the protest carpooled in two vehicles, bringing
Speaker 4: a total of eleven firearms, body armor, eye facts, and
Speaker 4: all war Black Bloc which were all presented as government
Speaker 4: evidence exhibits. The government argued that the defendants were members
Speaker 4: of a quote unquote North Texas Antifa cell. The indictment
Speaker 4: describes Antifa as a quote militant enterprise made up of
Speaker 4: networks of individuals and small groups, primarily ascribing to a revolutionary,
Speaker 4: anarchist or autonomous Marxist ideology which explicitly calls for the
Speaker 4: overthrow of the United States government, law enforcement authorities, and
Speaker 4: the system of law. Prosecution argued that this cell was
Speaker 4: linked through a triple ven diagram of the Socialist Rifle Association,
Speaker 4: the John Brown Gun Club, and the Emma Goldman Book Club,
Speaker 4: which is a local Zene Destro group that also put
Speaker 4: on community events. Prosecution said that this ven diagram converged
Speaker 4: on quote unquote direct militant action. The government called on
Speaker 4: David Kyle Sheeter as an expert witness to testify about Antifa.
Speaker 4: Cheter's a member of the Center for Security Policy, an
Speaker 4: SPLC designated hate group. Defense tried to object to this
Speaker 4: witness's expertise, but the judge informed the defense that they
Speaker 4: missed the deadline for such objections, which would have been
Speaker 4: in a pre trial motion. Much of this case was
Speaker 4: spent arguing over whether the defendants were quote unquote Antifa,
Speaker 4: what that even means, and if it's relevant to the charges.
Speaker 4: According to Prairie Land Support Committee court notes, Judge Pittman
Speaker 4: asked the prosecution, quote is it necessary to prove this
Speaker 4: stuff about Antifa? The prosecution responded that Antifa ideology, particularly
Speaker 4: black block, was how the group operated. The judge pressed,
Speaker 4: whether it's Antifa or the Methodist Women's Auxiliary, why does
Speaker 4: it matter? The prosecution argued, they took direct action against
Speaker 4: the ice facility. The prosecution argued black Block and Antifa
Speaker 4: ideology were central to how the alleged attack was carried out.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 4: The government described black block for the purposes of this
Speaker 4: case as quote dark clothing with head and face coverings
Speaker 4: that concealed their identities, designed to hide each individual's identity,
Speaker 4: but also aid in a bet those members engaged in
Speaker 4: illegal acts by making members indistinguishable from one another to
Speaker 4: law enforcement. Now, all of this raises the question whether
Speaker 4: this prosecution is against the defendant's political ideology or the
Speaker 4: specific criminal acts of throwing fireworks or shooting at a
Speaker 4: police officer, rather than being convicted of being members of
Speaker 4: Antifa the terrorist group, something that still doesn't really have
Speaker 4: legal precedent. Prosecutors argued that the Antifa ideology, left wing
Speaker 4: anti authoritarianism played a role in inspiring defendants, formed the
Speaker 4: basis of political affinity that brought the collection of individuals together,
Speaker 4: and relates to a collection of security practices, subcultural practices,
Speaker 4: and associated tactics which were employed before, during, and after
Speaker 4: the criminal acts related to the Noise Demo protest. There's
Speaker 4: been a lot of reporting on people being convicted for
Speaker 4: possessing zines. These are short political pamphlets, usually with some
Speaker 4: kind of radical political ideology. There's a lot of anarchist
Speaker 4: zines out there now. Zines did play a role in
Speaker 4: this trial, a two part role. Prosecution argued that the
Speaker 4: presence of insurrectionary zines is indicative of an alignment with Antifa,
Speaker 4: even if possession of these zines itself is not a crime.
Speaker 4: The other relevancy of zines to this case relates to
Speaker 4: the concealing documents charges against Daniel Ronaldo Sanchez Estrada and
Speaker 4: his wife Marcela Rueda, based on transporting a box of
Speaker 4: political zines from his wife's house to a friend's house
Speaker 4: in dent In, Texas. The government claimed that Rieda called
Speaker 4: Sanchez Estrada from jail on July seven, instructing him to
Speaker 4: conceal evidence by telling her husband to tow her vehicle,
Speaker 4: which was at the action staging site. Quote toe it.
Speaker 4: My phone is in the back. Do what you got
Speaker 4: to do. Just toe it unquote. The defense claimed that
Speaker 4: she was worried about her car being repoed. Centisstrada never
Speaker 4: got to the car or the phone, but Raeda also
Speaker 4: said quote move whatever you need to move in the
Speaker 4: house unquote. Saniasstrada mentioned already being at the house and replied,
Speaker 4: we're good quote unquote in reference to moving stuff from
Speaker 4: the house. Prosecution argued this meant moving evidence. Defense noted
Speaker 4: that Raeda was talking about her pets at the time.
Speaker 4: According to support committee notes, Sanchisstrada and his wife Rida
Speaker 4: were found guilty of conspiracy to conceal documents and other
Speaker 4: objects that would implicate Reeda in the riot and shooting
Speaker 4: at the Prairie Land Facility. Now nine of the counts
Speaker 4: count one, two, four, and five through ten cited Pinkerton versus.
Speaker 4: United States, nineteen forty six. The judge explained to the
Speaker 4: jury that a defendant can be criminally liable for the
Speaker 4: offenses committed by another co conspirator if the offense was
Speaker 4: quote reasonably foreseeable and committed in furtherance of the conspiracy unquote.
Speaker 4: From very early on in the trial, prosecution argued that
Speaker 4: song firing on the officers was quote unquote reasonably foreseeable
Speaker 4: based on the planning of the protest and previous statements
Speaker 4: made by Song. The jury found all defendants charged guilty
Speaker 4: of counts one two, three and four that's riot material sport, terrorists,
Speaker 4: and explosive charges, but did not find other defendants besides
Speaker 4: Song guilty of attempted murder or discharging a firearm using
Speaker 4: this Pinkerton co conspirator liability. Lastly, let's discuss two charges
Speaker 4: which now could carry worrying potential to be used against
Speaker 4: protesters in the future based on this case's precedent. First
Speaker 4: conspiracy to use and carry an explosive and using and
Speaker 4: carrying an explosive during a riot. The only explosives used
Speaker 4: were fireworks, and even the judge confirmed in this case
Speaker 4: that it was established that the fireworks caused no damage
Speaker 4: to the ice facility. Yet Stephen Brenneman and ats explosives
Speaker 4: a special agent, testified that fireworks still meet the statutory
Speaker 4: definition of explosives under eighteen usc. Section eight four four
Speaker 4: IJ because they contain gunpowder as defined in the statute.
Speaker 4: Me and Robert have been to and reported on a
Speaker 4: fourth of July protest also in from of a government
Speaker 4: building back in twenty twenty, where people launched a lot
Speaker 4: of fireworks up at that Federal courthouse.
Speaker 2: A lot of fireworks and other places.
Speaker 4: And this was a very similar event with the launching
Speaker 4: of fireworks at federal property, which now under this president,
Speaker 4: could be charged as a crime. Finally, let's talk about
Speaker 4: providing material support to terrorists. That's eighteen Usc. Two three
Speaker 4: three nine. This statute has two sections. One relates to
Speaker 4: material support provided to a designated foreign terrorist organization. This
Speaker 4: is not what the defendants were charged under. They're not
Speaker 4: saying that Antifa qualifies as one of these designated foreign
Speaker 4: terrorist organizations. That's not what's being argued here. The defendants
Speaker 4: were charged under Section A, alleging they provided and attempted
Speaker 4: to provide material support and resources, including property that can
Speaker 4: be money, services, training, communic pations, equipment like walkie talkies, weapons, explosives,
Speaker 4: personnel including themselves, and transportation, knowing and intending that they
Speaker 4: were to be used in preparation for and in carrying
Speaker 4: out an offence identified as a federal crime of terrorism,
Speaker 4: or in carrying out the concealment of an escape from
Speaker 4: set offense. The statute lists at least twenty eight possible
Speaker 4: terrorism offenses. Relevant to this case are three eighteen Usc.
Speaker 4: Eight four to four F. It's maliciously attempting to damage
Speaker 4: government property by means of fire or an explosive fireworks
Speaker 4: count eighteen USC. One three sixty one, willful depredation against
Speaker 4: any property of the United States exceeding one thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: This is property damaged by other means exceeding that one
Speaker 4: thousand dollars threshold. And eighteen USC one one four killing
Speaker 4: or attempting to kill any officer or employee of the
Speaker 4: United States. Government accused the defendants of providing material support
Speaker 4: to terrorists in these three different ways, but to convict,
Speaker 4: the jury only had to decide there was proof beyond
Speaker 4: reasonable doubt on one of these ways. They didn't need
Speaker 4: all three. To quote the jury instructions, Quote, if a
Speaker 4: defendant's speech, expression, or associations were made with intent to
Speaker 4: knowingly provide material support or resources to be used to
Speaker 4: prepare for or carry out a violation of federal law,
Speaker 4: or to carry out the concealment of an escape from
Speaker 4: such violation, then the First Amendment would not provide a
Speaker 4: defense to that conduct.
Speaker 3: Unquote.
Speaker 4: Benjamin's Song now faces a minimum penalty of twenty years
Speaker 4: and a maximum of life imprisonment. Other defendants at Prairie
Speaker 4: Land face sentences ranging from a minimum of ten years
Speaker 4: to up to sixty years in federal prison, and the
Speaker 4: husband convicted of concealing documents faces up to forty years
Speaker 4: in federal prison.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a very bleak case and I don't
Speaker 2: really have much to add.
Speaker 4: It's very sad m Yeah, no, and it's worth understanding
Speaker 4: the specific way they're using this material support statute. Yeah,
Speaker 4: just establishing someone is a member of quote unquote Antifa
Speaker 4: is not really what they're going after. But they're using
Speaker 4: Antifa as this way to link the defendants through this
Speaker 4: ideological unity to show that there's a conspiracy, some kind
Speaker 4: of like political conspiracy that then could be tied to
Speaker 4: offenses that are terrorism, like damaging government property with the
Speaker 4: intent to influence or intimidate government policy. Right, that's the
Speaker 4: sort of framing that was used in the guilty please
Speaker 4: for some other former defendants of this case, And that's
Speaker 4: what the government is trying to argue here. We're gonna
Speaker 4: go on a break and return for one final segment
Speaker 4: touching on the economy and Iroan. Sorry lacking.
Speaker 3: Locking jazz bob, locking jazz bot, Sorry lacking locking jazz bo,
Speaker 3: locking jazz bo.
Speaker 1: Let's check in with the strait of ramuse where things
Speaker 1: are going extremely poorly for the US, Israel and every
Speaker 1: country in the world that relies on oil and liquefied
Speaker 1: natural gas, as well as helium fertilizer at a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of other exports. All attempts to actually open the Strait
Speaker 1: have failed. Now, Iran has still been shipping a decent
Speaker 1: amount of oil out to some extent, They've been able
Speaker 1: to send their own tankers through and the US and
Speaker 1: Israel have not attacked them thus far. Now there has
Speaker 1: been some developments in terms of attempts to open the Strait.
Speaker 1: Israel claimed they would help reopen the Strait. We also
Speaker 1: got a report in Reuters that Britain, France, Germany, Italy,
Speaker 1: the Netherlands and Japan have agreed to help open the Strait.
Speaker 1: This is a kind of weird group of countries. It
Speaker 1: is the G seven, which is the Good Group of Seven,
Speaker 1: which is a very sort of influential group of American allies.
Speaker 1: But it's the G seven minus Canada with the Netherlands
Speaker 1: in its place, which is sort of odd. Now, this
Speaker 1: is not going to do anything to actually open the Straits.
Speaker 1: There are two reasons for this. One is that none
Speaker 1: of these countries have actually committed to do anything other
Speaker 1: than quote to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe
Speaker 1: passages through the Strait and start quote preparatory planning, which
Speaker 1: means absolutely nothing. And the second reason is that if
Speaker 1: all of these countries, you know, put every single naval
Speaker 1: asset at the disposal for some reason, to put all
Speaker 1: of them in the street and four news, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: do anything to actually open them straight. There's a good
Speaker 1: piece and defector about this called Trump to World, Please
Speaker 1: help Me Unshoot my own leg off, where the author
Speaker 1: Albert Burneco points out, and I think this is a
Speaker 1: very useful way of understanding the problem here that these
Speaker 1: oil tankers are.
Speaker 10: The size of skyscrapers.
Speaker 1: They're not They're not getting oil takers do the straight
Speaker 1: as long as.
Speaker 10: The run on do this. Every week I say this,
Speaker 10: and every week.
Speaker 1: A bunch of people go, oh, they're gonna open the
Speaker 1: straight Ooh do There's all these pre cycles, and like
Speaker 1: the stock market, oil prices go down and the stock
Speaker 1: market goes up, and then everyone collectively realizes it's not true,
Speaker 1: and then the herd animals go back to raising the
Speaker 1: stock prices. So this leaves us in the same situation
Speaker 1: we were before, except everything has gotten significantly worse because
Speaker 1: on Wednesday, Israel hit the largest natural gas field in
Speaker 1: the world when they attack the Runs South Pars gas field. Now,
Speaker 1: as political points out, these are the fields that few
Speaker 1: Iran's domestic energy grade, which means any hit to them
Speaker 1: is extremely painful because it means that people lose like
Speaker 1: heat and power. Now, Trump did very quickly make an
Speaker 1: extremely funny post that is sadly too long to read
Speaker 1: here begging Iran not to attack Cotter, saying the US
Speaker 1: didn't know anything about it and that Cotter didn't have
Speaker 1: anything to do with the strike. There's been a bunch
Speaker 1: of contradictory information. Netanyahu has claimed publicly now that the
Speaker 1: US didn't know anything about the strike in Israel, you know. Laterally,
Speaker 1: there's also been reports of the US knew it was
Speaker 1: going to happen this whole The US didn't know anything
Speaker 1: about it. Please don't hit Cotter seems to be a
Speaker 1: kind of pr strategy on their parts. It didn't work.
Speaker 1: Iran ignored it and retaliated on Thursday by hitting Cotter's
Speaker 1: massive liquid natural gas processing facility. This is one of
Speaker 1: the largest facilities in the world for liquid natural gas,
Speaker 1: of which Cotter is one of the world's largest suppliers.
Speaker 1: I think they're the second largest of liquid natural gas.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read this from Reuter's because this is
Speaker 1: what the straight laced analysts are saying now.
Speaker 10: Quote.
Speaker 1: We are now well on the road to the doomsday
Speaker 1: gas crisis scenario, said Saul Kavona, can energy analyst at
Speaker 1: MST Financial. Even once the war ends, the disruption to
Speaker 1: liquord natural gas supply could last for months or even years.
Speaker 1: Writers got some statements from Carter State natural gas firm
Speaker 1: saying that they had lost seventeen percent of their total
Speaker 1: export capacity and that that was destroyed for three to
Speaker 1: five years. That is catastrophic for significant parts of the
Speaker 1: economy worldwide. As we are going to talk about in
Speaker 1: a second. All of this is also happening in the
Speaker 1: context of Trump's threats to destroy carg Island, which is
Speaker 1: where ninety percent of Iran's oil imports flow through, which
Speaker 1: would likewise be absolutely catastrophic for the Iranian economy because
Speaker 1: it would take a significant amount of time to repair. However, Comma,
Speaker 1: these are all kind of empty threats. Well, when I
Speaker 1: say empty threats. They don't mean that the US or
Speaker 1: Israel won't do it. I mean that it doesn't solve
Speaker 1: the problem, because the problem with any threat you can
Speaker 1: make against Iran is like you already killed the Iya Toola,
Speaker 1: Like what else are you going to do? Right, you
Speaker 1: can completely destroy Iran's economic capacity for a significant period
Speaker 1: of time, But if you do that, then the Iranian
Speaker 1: government is still just going to not open the strait. Right,
Speaker 1: the more you attack them, the more incentive they have
Speaker 1: to continue to retaliate. And that's what's going to happen
Speaker 1: if you continue this campaign, which it seems like the
Speaker 1: US and Israel determined to do. They're just holding all
Speaker 1: this talk about like revenger to do phase of the war,
Speaker 1: and the war is going to now last like several
Speaker 1: months longer. And again, the problem here is that the
Speaker 1: more that you attack critical infrastructure inside Iran, the more
Speaker 1: that the Iranian government gives less of a shit about
Speaker 1: again destroying significant portions of the world's natural gas supply,
Speaker 1: or hitting more oil facilities or you know, and this
Speaker 1: is the one that I really haven't seen any talk about,
Speaker 1: but is a thing that Iran could do if they
Speaker 1: decided that you know, this is like the end for
Speaker 1: our people is starting to hit desalinization plants in places
Speaker 1: like the UAE and Cotter, which are i mean, infrastructure
Speaker 1: that will make the country's uninhabitable. And right now there
Speaker 1: haven't been any attacks on them because that's a really
Speaker 1: hideous thing to do, and it's also the sort of
Speaker 1: absolute last resort. But it's a thing that like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you keep hitting them, they're going to keep hitting
Speaker 1: more and more targets that are going to significantly impact
Speaker 1: the lives of everyone in the region and around the world. Now,
Speaker 1: on the sort of economics end, we've been kind of
Speaker 1: in this little bouncing up and down Stace's lock, A
Speaker 1: little bit of this has been broken because of again
Speaker 1: we're now seeing instead of just the already very very
Speaker 1: bad damage of nothing can get to the strait, we're
Speaker 1: now starting to see permanent damage to oil infrastructure. Right
Speaker 1: and by the way, it's us as are worth noting
Speaker 1: Royer's reports that the estimated damage i think both from
Speaker 1: revenue lost and from to actually repair the facility that
Speaker 1: Carter State run gas company is talking about, they're talking
Speaker 1: about twenty billion dollars of damage. This has fine caused
Speaker 1: a sort of tank in the Asian markets, which are
Speaker 1: down like around three percent. In a lot of places,
Speaker 1: we're seeing like somewhere between two to three percent for
Speaker 1: things like the DK in Japan. We're seeing like one
Speaker 1: percent down in Shanghai. And you know this is because
Speaker 1: a lot of these countries, particularly in Asia, use a
Speaker 1: large quantity of not just oil but also natural gas
Speaker 1: from the Gulf, which means that these are the countries
Speaker 1: that are on the front lines of this crisis. Now,
Speaker 1: the Brink Crude Index, which is your sort of basemark
Speaker 1: for oil prices, is over one hundred dollars. Now it's
Speaker 1: staying over one hundred dollars. Experts are saying it's only
Speaker 1: going to increase, which yes, no shit, of course, it's
Speaker 1: only going to increase. It's just going to be continued
Speaker 1: to be more tax I have seen some reporting saying
Speaker 1: that like, worst case scenario, we could see it at
Speaker 1: two hundred dollars. Two hundred dollars is like a nightmare,
Speaker 1: like the nine dollars gasoline. Unbelievable, hideous nightmare. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to weigh in on whether we're going to get
Speaker 1: to that point before Trump, like Baiales out of this war,
Speaker 1: but it's going to continue to go up as both
Speaker 1: the actual global oil supply is reduced and also as
Speaker 1: the capacity for a rebound once if this war ends,
Speaker 1: is decreased by the continued destruction of oil infrastructure. So
Speaker 1: all in all, things continue to be extremely bad, and
Speaker 1: the outlook for the global economy is very bad. The
Speaker 1: outlook for the people of Iran is very bad. The
Speaker 1: outlook for people across the world is not good.
Speaker 3: Thank you, miya. And for a final segment, I'm going
Speaker 3: to talk about the ongoing war against Iran, Yeah, which
Speaker 3: I guess we're still deciding if it's a war or not.
Speaker 3: Earlier this week, Donald Trump denied the existence of uncrewed
Speaker 3: surface vessels, something Garrison and I talked about in the
Speaker 3: podcast that came out earlier this week. I'm just going
Speaker 3: to pay you the clip.
Speaker 6: So they put out phone and furnish during the Mkazi boats.
Speaker 6: The comic Kazi boats don't exist. They're fake and you
Speaker 6: can almost see that when you look at them. You
Speaker 6: look sam, yeah, because if they did exist, we'd hit
Speaker 6: them just like we hit other boats all over the place.
Speaker 6: But they don't exist. In fact, some of the people
Speaker 6: say where are the boats? Well, how come nobody see
Speaker 6: the boats?
Speaker 10: You know why? Because it's AI generated.
Speaker 6: It's fake and I found it, realized this before they
Speaker 6: we started. But Iran is known for a lot of
Speaker 6: fake news, and they deal with our fake news. And
Speaker 6: I actually think it's pretty criminal because our media companies,
Speaker 6: who have no credibility whatsoever, are putting out information that they.
Speaker 3: Know is foll Yeah. So uncrewed safesce vessels are real.
Speaker 8: Yes, they sure are.
Speaker 2: They've been used massively in Ukraine among other places.
Speaker 3: Yeah. In fact, rob it would you like to hear
Speaker 3: about Saint com Commander Admiral Brad Cooper talking about uncrewed
Speaker 3: his vessels.
Speaker 2: I will always listen to someone named Brad James. You
Speaker 2: know that about me?
Speaker 3: Okay? Yeah.
Speaker 2: Here you see a photo from March first of a
Speaker 2: naval drone storage facility located near the Strait of Hoar.
Speaker 3: Moves, so as you can see naval drones uncrewed surface vessels.
Speaker 3: This is going to be an issue in this conflict
Speaker 3: and many others going forward. People are going to deny
Speaker 3: any reality that they don't want to engage with by
Speaker 3: saying that it is AI yep, and that's deeply troubling.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about what has been happening since we
Speaker 3: last spoke. Hag Island and no, only did the Persian
Speaker 3: Gulf that is replete with oil infrastructure and storage facilities,
Speaker 3: it's the island throughach a large amount of Iran's oil
Speaker 3: exports ravel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a basically, so the most of the coast
Speaker 2: of Iran is too shallow for the huge vessels that
Speaker 2: are necessary to actually move crude oil and carg Island
Speaker 2: is like a very rare deep on port basically, so
Speaker 2: it's kind of the hub.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was struck by the United States last weekend
Speaker 3: of raid the plane that the raid only hit oil
Speaker 3: infrastructure on Kyleg Island. It's very hard to get any
Speaker 3: independent information from Iran currently because of blackouts, because of
Speaker 3: the lack of connectivity, and because of ratiome oppression. Right,
Speaker 3: So we just it's quite possible that what the US
Speaker 3: is saying is not true. It's also quite possible what
Speaker 3: the Iranian state is saying is not true. We can
Speaker 3: confirm that there were strikes there using all kinds of
Speaker 3: information by satellite imagery, open source flight threatening, et cetera.
Speaker 3: That strikes definitely happened. Strikes this week by the IDF
Speaker 3: also killed Ali Larijani and basiege unit Commada Hola Moreza Solemoni.
Speaker 3: Shortly after these claims first surfaced, a note was published
Speaker 3: in Lara Johanni's handwriting. But it is fairly certain now
Speaker 3: that he is dead. Larijani's assassination, I guess or killing
Speaker 3: one of your call it by the IDF is notable
Speaker 3: because he's one of the people who would have had
Speaker 3: the sway in the regime to negotiate with the United States.
Speaker 3: You could make a case that the IDF killing him
Speaker 3: is a way for a negotiated piece to be even harder,
Speaker 3: for this conflict to continue even more. He is also
Speaker 3: a person who is responsible for massive crimes against the
Speaker 3: citizens of Iran, right including the violent, murderous clampdown on
Speaker 3: protests that we saw in January of this year. The
Speaker 3: United States is also deploying the thirty first Marine Expeditionary
Speaker 3: Unit to the Middle East as part of an amphibious
Speaker 3: response group that includes the USS Tripoly. In fact, it's
Speaker 3: approximately twenty five hundred marines who will be deployed. This
Speaker 3: is the closest we've seen twenty official communication of United
Speaker 3: States boots on the ground in the region. There's a
Speaker 3: number of things that a marine expedition unit could do.
Speaker 3: One of them is to do search and rescue or
Speaker 3: provide evacuations for people on vessels in the straight of
Speaker 3: horn moves that are struck right. Another of them is
Speaker 3: to assault or take islands where Iran may have based
Speaker 3: its military infrastructure, so to do things that are either
Speaker 3: not possible or not easy with air strikes. Another one
Speaker 3: is to add more air power that's closer to the
Speaker 3: region that the Tripoli can carry their thirty five lightnings,
Speaker 3: So it could be that. Another one is for these
Speaker 3: two thy five hundred marines to invade Iran, right and
Speaker 3: to begin a land war to attempt to They could
Speaker 3: also be training Iranian opposition groups, right that that's possible.
Speaker 3: It wouldn't. It's not like a core Marine Corps mission,
Speaker 3: but there's a Special Forces mission. But there's a number
Speaker 3: of things it can be doing. There are also a
Speaker 3: number of more marine expeditionary units and other forces that
Speaker 3: could be moved to the region. It's interesting to see
Speaker 3: this just a few months after we saw that National
Speaker 3: Security strategy which focused heavily on the Western hemisphere. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, right,
Speaker 3: the US isn't going to involve its OLM Forever Wars
Speaker 3: in the release anymore.
Speaker 4: I can't believe it.
Speaker 3: Yeah shocking.
Speaker 4: What's the status of these marines right now?
Speaker 3: I believe they are motoring who the region? Right? So
Speaker 3: TRIPLEY is a big boat. It's called an amphibious assault boat.
Speaker 3: But that makes it sound like it's like a Higgins boat.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, like if this is not the boat that
Speaker 3: you see in the d DA movement. Okay, in fact,
Speaker 3: I don't think it can actually have this particular one
Speaker 3: if I understand correctly, doesn't carry those kinds of boats,
Speaker 3: Like it's not set up for doing like a beach
Speaker 3: landing and Amphoebius assault. But these marine expeditioning units are
Speaker 3: like the like the first response, I guess, like they
Speaker 3: have their own air power, they have helicopters. Yeah, obviously
Speaker 3: they come on a boat. They can move quite quickly.
Speaker 3: They have the marine so capable of doing infantry stuff.
Speaker 3: So like it makes sense that this would be what
Speaker 3: they would sayd talking of US forces in the region.
Speaker 3: A US case one pint thirty five aircraft crashed over
Speaker 3: Iraq last week. This is not a combat aircraft, right,
Speaker 3: it's not another a fighter bomber. But to my knowledge,
Speaker 3: the only way out of these planes is bailing, and
Speaker 3: all six crew members on board are confirmed to have died.
Speaker 3: The United States SAT Consas has flown over six thousand
Speaker 3: sorties since OEF began.
Speaker 4: Oh, yes, there's Operation Epic Fury.
Speaker 3: Yeah it's great because Operation During Freedom had the same acronym,
Speaker 3: and I'm sure it's not a mistake. But yeah, this
Speaker 3: is Operation Epic Fury. It's a very high tempo, right,
Speaker 3: and it's a very crowded airspace. The six thousand sorties yeap, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's a lot. Yeah, accidents like this will happen, right,
Speaker 3: Not everybody who dies in warfare dies in combat. And thirdly,
Speaker 3: this means that another six people are coming home from
Speaker 3: Iraqi coffins as they have been since before. Many of
Speaker 3: our listeners who were born and of course a lot
Speaker 3: of people in Iraq who have no quarrel with anyone
Speaker 3: that will also be innocent victims of this. I don't mean,
Speaker 3: by any means to suggest it's only US service people
Speaker 3: who are the victims. Here. I want to talk about
Speaker 3: the conflict between the United States and Hashda Shabi. The
Speaker 3: US has carried out a series of air strikes against
Speaker 3: PMF groups, so these are popular mobilization forces for Shia
Speaker 3: groups in Iran for the Islamic State. A strike on
Speaker 3: a house in Baghdad killed the leader of Katib Hasbola
Speaker 3: in a Raq. The strike was confirmed on Sabrine News.
Speaker 3: Sabrine News is like their telegram outlet. It's like an
Speaker 3: aligned telegram news outlet for the group. Yeah, for the PMF,
Speaker 3: and they made the statement quote, we announced you the
Speaker 3: martyrdom of hajj Abu Ali al Askari. In the days
Speaker 3: since he's killing, we have I've seen many attacks on
Speaker 3: United States facilities in it Rut. The embassy's cram CRAM
Speaker 3: is counter rocket artillery and mortar. When you see videos
Speaker 3: of drones being shot down, when you see like a
Speaker 3: you hear like a runt and then you see a
Speaker 3: burst of like tracer fire and the drone explodes, it's
Speaker 3: normally the c RAM, So the embassy cram egaz and
Speaker 3: is destroyed drone. But other footage posted online shows an
Speaker 3: FPV drone that's the first person view drone FPV drone.
Speaker 3: It looks like you're flying as opposed to like you're
Speaker 3: looking directly down flying over the embassy compound for almost
Speaker 3: two minutes. I'm guessing it was a fiber optic controlled drone, right,
Speaker 3: so there's no means of like jamming the signal, but
Speaker 3: this is still a monumental failure for security. Right. At
Speaker 3: the same time, we saw two drones at least enter
Speaker 3: and explode in the Victory Base, which is near Baghdad Airport.
Speaker 3: The videos from those are bizarre. It seems like the
Speaker 3: drone gets into the base and then it's just like whoa,
Speaker 3: what the hell, Like it didn't seem like they had
Speaker 3: a clear target. It kind of flies around and like
Speaker 3: seems so shocked that it was able to penetrate this
Speaker 3: supposedly impenetrable area.
Speaker 4: How much of these security systems are designed to counter
Speaker 4: drones versus originally designed to counter older types of like
Speaker 4: aerial threats.
Speaker 3: Yeah, drones is a broad category, I guess. So you
Speaker 3: have like your Shahed drone, which kind of blurs the
Speaker 3: line between a drone and a missile, right, It's like
Speaker 3: a missile that can take a more varied flight path. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it doesn't just don't go in the arc like ballistically.
Speaker 3: In those cases there are things that there are things
Speaker 3: that you can do to shoot them down. Right, you
Speaker 3: can have your Patriot missiles, you can use of see RAM,
Speaker 3: you can shoot them down with various weapon systems on
Speaker 3: an aircraft. But if we group FPV and like drop
Speaker 3: A drones as commercial office shelf drones, this is the thing, right,
Speaker 3: you know, the United States has been supporting Ukraine since
Speaker 3: twenty one, since before twenty twenty two, but it's including
Speaker 3: since twenty twenty two with the false galvation. It has
Speaker 3: not been supporting the revolution in the Ammar. But clearly
Speaker 3: they have not learned enough from those two conflicts, right
Speaker 3: in terms of the use of these small commercial off
Speaker 3: the shelf drones, And this is now showing up as
Speaker 3: a weakness in their defense strategy. Like this is a
Speaker 3: serious thing for the US government for someone to be
Speaker 3: and for them to just fly a recondrone over the embassy,
Speaker 3: obviously they now know where everything is, and for them
Speaker 3: to publish that footage is like a public somewhat like humiliation, right,
Speaker 3: the sort of security infrastructure. So finally, I guess a
Speaker 3: couple more things. Iran is now militarizing the area of
Speaker 3: Kurdistan between the Iranian and Iraqi states. So that's the
Speaker 3: Iran Iraq border in kurdis Dan. Right, it seems to
Speaker 3: have issued orders preventing people moving around the region as
Speaker 3: they habitually. Would people move around because they've always moved around.
Speaker 3: People move around with their animals, right. The Iranian government
Speaker 3: appears to have ordered its troops to shoot people who
Speaker 3: perceived to be moving around without permission. People often gather
Speaker 3: near the border with a ruck to access cell signal,
Speaker 3: and the government forces appear to have left their bases
Speaker 3: in the region in favor of occupying the mountains as
Speaker 3: well as local educational institutions and sports facilities. Right, So
Speaker 3: that means that people in town are now its threat,
Speaker 3: and Hengar has some incidents where people have been shot
Speaker 3: by security forces in that region. Finally, then I want
Speaker 3: to talk about the resignation of the director of the
Speaker 3: National Countess Terrorism Center, Joe Kent. Kent resigned this week saying, quote,
Speaker 3: Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation. It does
Speaker 3: seem that that is where a lot of people stopped
Speaker 3: reading anything. Kent said, Yeah, are people who did not
Speaker 3: know who Joe Kent is, right, and don't have access
Speaker 3: to Google for reasons that I don't understand. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: some really incredibly shitty reporting on this. Kent went on
Speaker 3: in his note to among other things, talk about the
Speaker 3: death of his wife, which is genuinely tragic. Kent has
Speaker 3: some disgusting views, right, Like, but it does seem that
Speaker 3: the death of his wife was kind of a I guess,
Speaker 3: a turning point. It's a fair to say, yeah, like
Speaker 3: you've looked at Kent a lot, like in his politics.
Speaker 4: He talks about it a lot. Yeah, Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 4: very load bearing for him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's just with people aren't aware. His wife, Shannon,
Speaker 3: was a cryptologist and linguist attacked to the ISA intelligence
Speaker 3: support activity sometimes called Task Force Orange. She was in
Speaker 3: Mambies in Syria when she was killed by in Islamic
Speaker 3: State suicide bomber. She was in the buffer zone that
Speaker 3: that was like the buffer that Turkey had forced to exist.
Speaker 3: He calls that in his resignation statement quote a war
Speaker 3: manufactured by Israel, and he also seems to suggest that
Speaker 3: Trump was conned by Israel into starting the war with Iran.
Speaker 3: Far too much reporting has missed this context, so he's
Speaker 3: essentially using what, on the face of it is an
Speaker 3: anti submit like saying, I mean, yeah he.
Speaker 4: He like is he is like an anti Semitic fascist, Yes.
Speaker 3: His reason for retiring is like explicitally anti Semitic.
Speaker 4: This like yeah, this is the same justification that someone
Speaker 4: like Nick Quentes uses to oppose the war in Iran.
Speaker 4: Not out of you know, principled solidarity. These people don't
Speaker 4: care about civilians dying in Iran. No, And it's not
Speaker 4: actually about any sort of like notion of anti imperialism.
Speaker 3: No, it's anti Semitism.
Speaker 4: They believe that this is a Zionist occupied government in
Speaker 4: the zog meaning of the term, like there's like a
Speaker 4: literally literally like a total Jewish control over all state operations,
Speaker 4: not linked to actual lobbying groups that lobby for Israel
Speaker 4: within the United States, but conspiratorial framework invoking anti Semitic
Speaker 4: tropes and stereotypes. This is the sort of it army
Speaker 4: that Joe Kent comes out of. As we are recording this,
Speaker 4: Joe Kent has an interview dropping with Tucker Carlson, Yes,
Speaker 4: where he's going to expound on this. Carlson has similarly
Speaker 4: voiced these sorts of objections based on if any intelligent
Speaker 4: person you know reads into it based on anti Semitism,
Speaker 4: not actually based on again principled solidarity with oppressed people's
Speaker 4: or anti imperialism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think if you're reading new sources like
Speaker 3: oh wow, Trump is beginning to lose people and they
Speaker 3: have mention any of this, really consider if you want
Speaker 3: to be reading those news sources. I'll just say that,
Speaker 3: I guess. Caroline Levitt responded with a post on X quote.
Speaker 3: The Commander in chief determines what does and does not
Speaker 3: constitute a threat because he is the only one constitutionally
Speaker 3: empowered to do so, and because the American people went
Speaker 3: to the ballot box and it trusted him and him
Speaker 3: alone to make such final judgments. That is a remarkable
Speaker 3: statement for those of us who lived through the whole
Speaker 3: Iraq has WNDS era. But the United States has long
Speaker 3: history of involvement in the Middle East, and yes, the
Speaker 3: extent to which we are partnering with Israel is often
Speaker 3: in support of our other objectives in the Middle East
Speaker 3: and our ability to use Israel as like a proxy state.
Speaker 3: That's why the Unitedate government has such a large interest
Speaker 3: in Israel. Is we have other reasons for wanting to
Speaker 3: be active and control parts of the region or influence
Speaker 3: the region. Yeah, often the priorities of Israel not always right,
Speaker 3: like in the first time the United States invaded the
Speaker 3: Persian Gulf. That often they are fighting alongside each other
Speaker 3: because they have similar interest not because of any nefarious
Speaker 3: Jewish conspiracy. Yeah, yep, which.
Speaker 4: Very frustrating that continues to be something that needs to
Speaker 4: be reiterated.
Speaker 3: Yeah, even on the left, but it does.
Speaker 2: And the first time I started seeing people who had
Speaker 2: previously been doing other campus ships start using the phrase zog,
Speaker 2: I was like, Okay, we've come, We've come full circle.
Speaker 2: Everything's where it was always going to be beautiful.
Speaker 4: The normalization of zog and like goy across parts of
Speaker 4: the online left.
Speaker 2: Is from anarchistparian of the new Turks, the Young Turks
Speaker 2: whatever the fuck the ty t they.
Speaker 3: Call them, the young has fallen. Yeah, well let's yeah,
Speaker 3: let let's be honest. Choosing that name didn't predispose them
Speaker 3: to the anti genocide.
Speaker 2: She has always been like that, she's sucked for a while,
Speaker 2: but just seeing her use the fray the word GOI
Speaker 2: like that was like.
Speaker 3: Whoa wow, Yeah, I haven't seen it, Okay.
Speaker 2: I used to have to go to Telegram to see
Speaker 2: people boasting ship like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, that's sort of shit. You would
Speaker 3: hear like ham radio, Like it's just like old school racism. Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, there is this interesting emergence of like a red
Speaker 4: brown alliance specifically targeting like Israel or people's notions of
Speaker 4: Israel's global influence.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah no, great, no, great stuff a tool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we should just say, since this is going
Speaker 2: to be one of the big news stories this week
Speaker 2: and coming into next week, the New York Times has
Speaker 2: published a in article with very extensive sourcing, including from
Speaker 2: people very close to Cesser Chavez, who reported that he
Speaker 2: sexually assaulted, raped, molested an abused mix of girls and women,
Speaker 2: including a lot of girls preteen girls, started grooming them
Speaker 2: as young as eight or nine. In some cases, there's
Speaker 2: evidence of molestation of girls as young as like twelve thirteen.
Speaker 2: And then Deloresuerta, who was very famously one of his
Speaker 2: organizing partners for quite a long time, came out and
Speaker 2: said that he's sexually assault to her on at least
Speaker 2: raped her on at least two occasions, which led to pregnancies.
Speaker 2: So that is all coming out now and it's all
Speaker 2: pretty horrific. But yeah, I like, there's not much more
Speaker 2: to say. You can read the article, yeah, and should Yeah.
Speaker 3: I will link to finish shure it. If you'd like
Speaker 3: to email us, you can send a message to cool
Speaker 3: Zone Tips at proton dot me.
Speaker 4: That's for tips, that's for news gathering tips.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is for It is not for you to
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Speaker 2: I will find you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not believe me, buddy. We're gonna if people
Speaker 3: keep trying this ship, we're gonna have a list and
Speaker 3: we're gonna read it at the end of everybody, and
Speaker 3: I will give them your remail address.
Speaker 2: I will do anti advertising. I will accuse your boss
Speaker 2: that you want to go on my podcast of various crimes.
Speaker 2: And thanks to my understanding of libel laws in the
Speaker 2: United States. I should be fine. Yeah, where's that slander?
Speaker 2: I always yeah, well I'll do both. It'll be fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're right, it will say, we'll post it.
Speaker 4: We we reported the news.
Speaker 3: Mm hm, 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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