0:00

Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty

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four is here and we here at

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But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good

0:25

morning, everybody, Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing

0:27

show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal.

0:29

Indeed, we do a lot of very consequential

0:31

news this morning, especially with regards to

0:34

Israel. So yesterday they

0:36

struck the Iranian embassy

0:38

in Syria, killing a top commander

0:41

and a number of other individuals. This

0:43

has potentially catastrophic and frankly

0:45

terrifying consequences the fallen of this, so we

0:47

will take a look at that. Also, yesterday

0:50

they struck and killed seven aid

0:52

workers with Jose Andres organization

0:55

in the World Central Kitchen. That organization

0:57

has now paused all operations in Gaza

1:00

Strip. One of the individuals who was killed is actually an

1:02

American citizen, So break that down for you

1:04

as well. We've got some Trump updates for you.

1:06

He took a billion dollar hit to

1:09

his net worth yesterday as a result of

1:11

true social stock really suffering

1:13

a bad blow, so we'll talk about that. We

1:16

also have a really interesting report from the Wall Street Journal

1:18

that we wanted to discuss gen Z increasingly

1:21

choosing blue collar work. So what could

1:23

that mean for the future. It is actually really fascinating

1:25

to look at these numbers. Sixty Minutes

1:28

dropped a supposed expose on

1:30

Havana syndrome, so Soccer and I both

1:33

took a.

1:33

Close look at that.

1:34

We will tell you what we make of their

1:36

big blockbuster report on this.

1:39

Richard Dawkins, famous atheist,

1:41

is saying now he is a cultural Christian

1:43

and also taking aim at Islam,

1:46

so we will discuss that. I'm taking a

1:48

look at what has been done to Al Shifa

1:50

Hospital. That hospital,

1:52

which is the largest in the Gaza Strip, or at least was the

1:55

largest in the Gaza Strip, is now completely

1:57

destroyed and as IDF soldiers

2:00

after a two week raid, a massacre

2:02

has been revealed. So I'm going to take you through everything

2:04

we know about what happened there. And

2:07

we have a fantastic guest in the show today. I'm really

2:09

excited for you guys to get to see

2:11

he has been every day on Capitol

2:14

Hill stalking members of Congress,

2:16

just trying to get basic answers from

2:18

them. Some of his exchanges have gone viral.

2:20

You may have seen a few, So we'll talk to him

2:23

about what he's been up to there.

2:25

But before we get into any of that, just want to thank all

2:27

of you so much for your support.

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To the show.

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That's right, Thank you so much to our premium subscribers.

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As we continue to tease it is becoming

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for the election season that's coming at.

3:00

So let's go ahead and jump into this big news

3:02

with regards to Israel. Let's put this up

3:04

on the screen. Yesterday, as I mentioned, Israel

3:06

struck the Iranian embassy in

3:09

Syria. That strike on

3:11

part of that embassy complex in Damascus

3:14

killed three generals in irans

3:16

Could's force and four other officers.

3:19

One of those individuals is quite a

3:21

high ranking commander. So

3:24

this is extraordinarily significant,

3:26

not only because who was taken

3:28

out, and you can see the images on the screen there

3:31

of that complex, you know, apparently smoke,

3:33

smoldering and on fire. It's not

3:35

only significant because of who was

3:37

taken out, but also because

3:40

of where this occurred. Let's put

3:42

this map up on the screen so you all can see

3:45

the Iranian embassy and this building

3:47

that was part of the Iranian embassy. I mean,

3:49

this is sandwiched right in between

3:52

the embassy of Canada and

3:54

the actual full embassy building

3:56

of Iran. This is right in the center of Damascus,

3:59

as you could see from these videos.

4:01

I don't think I could possibly describe to you

4:04

how extraordinary and how much of an

4:06

outrageous breach of international

4:08

law.

4:09

This truly is.

4:10

In fact, it's hard to think of

4:13

a similar scenario unfolding

4:15

and a similar targeting of an

4:17

embassy building. As you can

4:19

imagine, the response from

4:21

the Iranians has been complete

4:24

outrage at what has.

4:26

Been done here.

4:27

So they, you know, for one thing, are

4:29

saying that there will be some sort

4:32

of response. They also and

4:34

doctor Parci has been doing quite a bit of analysis

4:37

here, and I'm reading from one of his tweets.

4:39

Aroun messaged Biden via the

4:42

Swiss following that attack, and

4:44

they appear to also hold the

4:46

US responsible here. Because

4:48

of our overwhelming unconditional

4:51

support of Israel, Aron pressed Iraqi

4:53

malicious previously to stop attack in the US.

4:55

There have been zero attacks in six weeks.

4:57

Israel may have just killed that ceasefire,

5:00

put targets on US troops

5:03

now, Sager, you know, the US is saying,

5:05

oh, we had no idea in advance, We

5:07

had nothing.

5:07

To do with this. This was all Israel.

5:10

Will Aron believe that what will

5:12

the fallout here be of this extraordinary

5:15

provocation from the Israelis

5:18

who seem to be inviting and

5:20

courting a much larger

5:23

and much even more consequential war

5:25

than what we've already seen.

5:26

That's the terrifying part. So this is actually a breach

5:28

of the Vienna Convention. Vienna Convention

5:31

is what governs diplomatic relations effectively,

5:33

is what keeps people inside of embassy safe. Now,

5:35

before people who are like, hey, well it wasn't

5:37

really being used for embassy consular purposes,

5:39

let me cleane you in on something. All people,

5:42

all nations, including US, use

5:44

embassies as fronts for spying

5:47

illicit activity CIA.

5:50

You know, you can go and read the long history of

5:52

our own use of that. We know that it's

5:54

being done to us. That's why the embassies here in Washington

5:56

are all heavily surveils. Ours are heavily

5:58

surveiled across the world. One

6:00

of the reasons that we don't generally attack them, even

6:03

whenever people who are highly unseemly, including

6:05

people who we would like to kill who are inside

6:07

of them, is specifically to not breach the

6:09

Vienna Convention and then invite similar attacks

6:12

on our own diplomats and or spies all

6:14

across the world. So that's a little bit of the background.

6:16

Can we go and put the next element please up

6:19

on the screen, because this is very important. What

6:21

the Iranians say is that the strike on

6:23

its compound killed two separate generals

6:25

and that the envoy to Syria quote vows

6:28

decisive response in their

6:30

attack. Now, what's been

6:33

frankly not discussed enough in this is

6:35

that this is the continuation of

6:38

the last couple of days of a major ramp

6:40

up by Israel inside of Syria.

6:42

And we can put that next one up there please

6:44

on the screen. What this tells us

6:46

is that the Israelis actually struck previously

6:49

just days ago in Syria, killing quote dozens

6:52

of militants, including Syrian

6:54

soldiers and Hesbola militants.

6:57

This explicitly, let's again repeat, has

6:59

nothing to do with the current war on

7:01

Gaza and instead was an expansion

7:04

against Hezbolah militants and including

7:06

the killing of Syrian soldiers. So

7:08

let's just repeat here again that we have an attack

7:11

both here on in Iranian IRGC

7:13

general who was the major top

7:15

general of the Iyatolas kind of personal

7:18

revolutionary guard corps. We have the deaths

7:20

of Syrian soldiers and we have the deaths of Hesbela

7:23

militants. These are three very important constituencies

7:25

that are in the region there's also Crystal.

7:28

There is reports that are currently filtering

7:30

out of an all ton of

7:32

base in Syria. This is where the United

7:34

States has several US

7:37

service members who are stationed there who

7:39

are special operators supposedly going

7:41

against Isis. Anyway, these will recall

7:44

that that mission and some of these bases

7:46

have been previously attacked several weeks ago.

7:48

We are now getting reports just as of this morning,

7:50

that the US occupation that the US base in Altanov

7:53

is now being attacked with suicide drones, very

7:55

likely from the IRGC. So what the

7:57

terrifying part of that is that it's

7:59

not Israel these soldiers who are forward deployed

8:01

in Iraq, Syria, Jordan and elsewhere.

8:04

It is American soldiers who are

8:06

now appearing to be attacked by these suicide

8:08

drones after what appeared to be at

8:10

least some sort of quasi ceasefire after

8:13

a retaliatory strike on the IRGC previously.

8:16

I want to make this as clear as possible.

8:19

Israel's actions here and in

8:21

the Gaza Strip and throughout the region, and

8:23

our explicit support of

8:26

that policy has gravely

8:28

endangered our own service members.

8:31

We're going to bring you another report in a bit

8:33

about how those service members who are going

8:35

to be sent to build this frikin peer outside

8:38

the Gaza Strip or connecting the Gaza Strip, they

8:40

are going to be put at significant

8:42

risk because of course they're going to be

8:45

right there in a war zone. And

8:47

while we talk a lot here, of course

8:50

about Israel's action, the truth of the matter

8:52

is people throughout the region see us

8:54

as just as complicit as they should. I

8:56

mean, what did we talk about yesterday, How we

8:59

continue to ship these two thousand pounds bunker

9:01

buster bombs even as we go out

9:03

and pretend to handring our concern.

9:05

About civilian life.

9:07

So the level of risk that

9:10

our service members have been put at

9:12

is extraordinary and it's indefensible.

9:16

I mean, as you've discussed before soccer,

9:19

even if you don't care a lick about

9:21

Palestinian life, even if

9:23

you don't care, how does

9:25

this serve our interests

9:27

as Americans? This is insanity

9:30

and Biden, clearly, because

9:33

of his ideological fervency,

9:36

almost fundamentalist commitment to

9:39

Zionism and the cause of Israel,

9:41

has put us in an insane, outrageous,

9:45

indefensible position. And

9:47

a strike like this, God knows

9:50

what the fallout is going to be. There

9:53

are dire warnings coming from the Iranians.

9:56

There was a statement released

9:58

saying this attack will have our fierce

10:01

response. There of course talking about

10:03

how this is a violation of international

10:05

law. And that's the other piece of

10:07

this is there seems to be

10:10

an intentional pattern of

10:13

seeing what the Israelis can

10:15

get away with. They have violated

10:19

effectively every humanitarian international

10:22

law, norm, guideline, whatever

10:24

you want to call them.

10:24

You could possibly imagine.

10:26

Just yesterday, you have IDF

10:29

soldiers leaving Al

10:31

Shifa Hospital, which I'm going to talk about in my monologue,

10:33

revealing an atrocious massacre,

10:36

potentially hundreds of individuals

10:39

killed, many of whom proven to be civilians,

10:41

including a number of doctors, medical

10:43

staff who were killed, children,

10:45

field executions at this hospital

10:48

which is supposed.

10:49

To be off limits.

10:51

You have seven aid workers

10:54

operating in a deconfliction zone in

10:56

a clearly marked car. They're

10:58

to try to feed a popular that israel

11:00

Is starving to death, who are

11:03

targeted and killed. And you have

11:05

this strike on an embassy,

11:08

killing a top commander and leading

11:11

again to god knows what type

11:13

of escalation here. It is absolute

11:16

insanity. What we're seeing unfold.

11:17

Well, it's really terrifying, as I said, because we're

11:19

the ones who are forward deployed and we have effectively been

11:21

guaranteeing their security. We've got hundreds,

11:23

actually probably thousands of troops in the immediate

11:25

vicinity, and ours are the ones who

11:27

are sitting ducks and who would be and

11:30

incur the cost of any major

11:32

incursion. It is not in the United States interest

11:34

to get dragged into a war with Iran,

11:37

even with Syria. I mean, let's

11:39

even play this out. Let's say even the Iranians

11:41

don't get involved here, a war between Syria

11:43

and Israel would be a disaster for us.

11:46

We have thousands of troops who are nominally

11:48

in Syria, also on the border there with

11:50

Jordan, as we lost three already

11:53

in this conflict. An explosion there

11:55

would almost certainly draw in the tens

11:57

of thousands of Hezbola militants that are currently

11:59

inside of Syria, and then we could be a

12:01

full blown conflagration. And that's exactly how

12:03

you get Iran drawn into the

12:05

conflict. This is also an upping of

12:08

the ante, and this is kind of what we've been seeing

12:10

as strike, a breach of the Vienna Convention

12:12

in towntown Damascus. This doesn't

12:15

just happen, you know, as we've just demonstrated, there

12:17

had dozens of Syrians that were killed,

12:19

militants and others that were just a couple of days

12:21

ago. The Israelis have been wanton

12:23

links striking and blowing up whoever they want

12:26

inside of Syria basically for the last seven

12:28

years. They learned that strategy from Us. And

12:30

part of the problem is that when you erase any

12:33

of these norms around war and about

12:35

treating Syria as a sovereign state, we

12:37

get to this point where people can just feel as

12:39

if they can do what they want. I mean, this

12:41

isn't Hamas, this isn't even

12:43

technically a non state act. This is full blown

12:46

sovereign nations with the capacity

12:48

to destroy tens of millions.

12:50

And that is where, you know, the gamble

12:53

is really honestly terrifying. And that's what we see

12:55

here with Biden. I haven't even seen, you know,

12:57

some sort of reaction here from the Biden

13:00

administration. And instead what we're basically

13:02

doing is shipping them the weapons and selling

13:04

them the planes that they are then carrying

13:06

out such strikes with. Okay,

13:08

but then should we not have some say,

13:11

you know how these things are done and

13:13

are used my only humble suggestion.

13:15

But apparently that's too much.

13:16

Well, and they're they're claiming, oh, we we

13:18

had no idea. Maybe that's true. That's

13:21

kind of a terrifying possibility in and of itself.

13:24

If we did know and we're like, yeah, you're go ahead,

13:26

that's also a terrifying possibility.

13:29

But the bottom line is the Iranians.

13:31

Clearly see US as complicit

13:33

here, and you know how a media works

13:35

here, and you know how the many

13:38

hawkish members of Congress on both sides

13:40

of the Aisle work as well. So

13:43

far, the regional

13:45

attacks have come from proxy

13:47

groups, not directly from Iran. Is

13:50

that trend going to hold or are the

13:52

Iranians going to feel the need to now

13:55

directly respond?

13:57

What if US service members are killed by

14:00

on what?

14:01

Then?

14:02

How many voices are going to be out there calling

14:04

for a direct hot war with

14:06

a run over Israel's bullshit and

14:08

our support of Israel's bullshit. That's

14:11

where we are, that's what we're on the precipice

14:13

of. And that's why this development

14:15

is so extraordinary and frankly, so incredibly

14:19

terrifying. Let's

14:22

move on to the other horrific news

14:24

or some of the other horrific news that we

14:27

learned yesterday as well, got and put

14:29

this up on the screen. So as I alluded to before,

14:31

we now know that seven aid

14:34

workers for Jose

14:36

Andre's organization called World Central

14:39

Kitchen were killed. The

14:42

Israeli military bombed three cars

14:45

that belonged to these

14:47

foreign nationals. We now know

14:50

that one of the individuals who was

14:52

killed is a dual American

14:55

Canadian citizen, but a number

14:57

of other foreign nationals involved

14:59

here, as well as as one Palestinian.

15:02

Jose Andres himself put on a

15:04

statement saying, today World Central Kitchen lost

15:06

several of our sisters and brothers in an IDF airstrike

15:09

in Gaza. I'm heartbroken, greeming for their families

15:11

and friends and our whole WCK family.

15:13

These are people angels I served

15:15

alongside in Ukraine, Gaza, Turkey,

15:17

Morocco, Bahamas, Indonesia. They

15:19

are not faceless, they are not nameless.

15:22

The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate

15:25

of killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian

15:27

aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers,

15:30

Stop using food as a weapon.

15:32

No more innocent lives lost.

15:34

Peace starts with our shared humanity

15:36

and it needs to start now. You

15:39

can see that message up on the screen from

15:41

Jose Andres and of course the

15:44

context here is number one, a

15:46

policy of collective punishment and starvation

15:49

which has been ongoing since post

15:51

October seventh. You now have acute

15:54

levels of food insecurity where people

15:57

and especially children and babies are literally

16:00

to death. You have anarchy

16:02

breaking out because of the desperate circumstances,

16:05

especially in northern Gaza,

16:08

and now amidst that backdrop,

16:11

you have seven aid workers who there specifically

16:14

to try to feed hungry people who

16:16

are targeted and killed by

16:18

the IDF. Sober I know they're

16:21

expressing their quote unquote sorrow over

16:24

the incident, claiming they're going to investigate

16:26

it. But let's be really clear here.

16:29

These aid workers were in a deconflicted

16:31

zone. They had done everything

16:34

followed standard protocol to make

16:36

sure they were not targeted, that they would

16:38

be safe while they were conducting

16:40

aid activities trying to feed starving

16:43

people, and they were targeted and killed

16:45

anyway in a marked car.

16:47

There is no excuse for this, and

16:50

it fits.

16:51

A pattern of aid workers

16:53

being killed and slaughtered in the Gaza

16:56

strip by the IDF in the context of

16:58

this conflict.

16:58

Yeah, we have a statement here this morning, just breaking

17:01

from Benjamin Ntsenyahu, Prime Minister

17:03

of Israel, saying that the killing

17:05

of the AID workers quote was unintended

17:07

and is a tragic incident.

17:10

One of the things though, is that it

17:12

definitely strains a little bit of credulity. Is

17:14

for the pictures that are coming

17:16

out of the strike. For those of us who covered the

17:18

war on Terror, the image in front of us is not

17:21

in any way surprising. It's the exact tailtale

17:23

sign of a precision guided munition that's been going

17:25

through is fired easily by

17:28

a drone in some cases, actually,

17:30

there's been seen some speculation by munitions

17:32

and military experts it may have even been the

17:35

tailtale the bladed hell fire missile.

17:37

I know that that's one that the US has used

17:40

in the past because it's one that can carry directly

17:42

through a car and

17:45

create the whole just exactly like what you

17:47

see, which kills everybody inside but limits

17:49

the amount of collateral damage then on the outside.

17:52

So then there's a question of where do they get such

17:54

munition? Why are we using this on an

17:56

AID convoy and presumably you

17:58

know, given the fact that the top of the car literally

18:01

has the picture of food that's on

18:03

top of it clearly branded with the

18:05

name, then why was it targeted in

18:08

the first place? And I

18:10

mean, I think it does also tell you a lot

18:12

that these Reelis themselves have basically

18:15

givered no explanation as to how something

18:17

like this can happen. They just say it's an unintended

18:19

strike and that they

18:22

express their condolences for

18:24

the dead.

18:26

This is just another

18:28

number added to the hundreds of eight workers

18:30

who have already been killed by

18:34

the IDF, And so you

18:37

can't look at the numbers and just assume,

18:39

oh, well, this is all an accent, and let's think about

18:41

the fallout here, because now

18:43

World Central Kitchen they've suspended operations

18:46

in the Gaza strip. They've been actually one of the

18:48

more effective operations on the ground.

18:51

This is their first time working in Gaza,

18:53

but they've worked in many other difficult regions

18:55

around the world. They had been

18:57

quite bold in their approach and cowardedly

19:00

pretty effective. So this

19:02

is the worst thing that could possibly happen

19:05

in terms of starving Palestinians.

19:08

Yet another aid organization cut off

19:10

at the knees, just like Anra has been

19:12

as well. So the

19:14

consequences here are incredibly dire,

19:17

and it's so it

19:20

is so indescribable, the

19:22

number of atrocities that have been committed

19:24

day after day. And you just look at this and you

19:27

say, well, how are they so brazen killing

19:30

an American aid worker, potentially

19:33

dragging us.

19:34

Into World War three with Iran?

19:36

It was massacre at the hospital, the flower

19:39

massacre, the targeting of hospitals

19:42

and mosques and churches and refugee

19:44

camps with two thousand pound bunk or buster

19:46

bombs, and you look at it and it's

19:48

very clear it's because they've gotten away

19:50

with all of it. Is there any expectation

19:53

that even though they just bombed

19:55

one of our citizens, that there

19:58

will be any consequences for that?

20:00

No? Absolutely not.

20:02

Do you think that even as they just struck

20:04

the Iranian embassy in Damascus,

20:07

potentially dragging us into a

20:09

much broader and even more dangerous

20:11

conflict, do you think there will be any

20:14

consequences for that?

20:15

No?

20:16

So, when you want, well, why do they do these

20:18

things and how do they Well, it's because they

20:21

can, because they've been testing

20:23

and tribal and What can we get away with? What

20:25

can we get Can we get away with targeting

20:27

starving civilians who are trying to

20:29

obtain AID off a truck?

20:31

Yes we can.

20:31

Can we get away with targeting a hospital, Yes we can. Okay,

20:34

we're going to target basically every hospital in the entire

20:36

Gaza strip and destroy the entire health infrastructure.

20:38

Can we get away with targeting an

20:40

embassy in a foreign country?

20:42

Yes we can't.

20:43

Can we get away with targeting foreign nationals who

20:45

are aid workers?

20:46

And we already all.

20:47

Know the answer. I also don't want to lose

20:49

sight of the fact that these were extraordinary

20:53

human beings who decided

20:55

who signed up to be in

20:58

this dangerous, brutal

21:01

conflict zone. We wanted

21:03

to share with you a portion of a video

21:05

of two of the individuals who were

21:07

killed by the Israelis in this strike

21:10

and the work that they were doing there on the

21:12

ground.

21:12

Let's take a look.

21:13

Hey, this is on and we're at the Java

21:16

La kitchen, and we've

21:18

put the leason plus tell us a little

21:20

bit about the.

21:21

Past to make the book the rice

21:24

we have on the species or boil

21:27

the water or.

21:30

The boiling water inside.

21:33

This is the step language put oil.

21:38

We have the spices and.

21:41

After we have trying

21:43

the rice, not the water. The water is

21:46

aramatized with this these

21:48

mixed spices. There is a

21:51

black lemons. There is some chili, seven

21:54

mixed spices, ballets,

21:57

salt, pepper, and

21:59

at the base jay.

22:01

So this is the beautiful, fragrant

22:03

aromatic rice. So we'll be served today from

22:06

kitchen.

22:07

Thank you some of humanity's finess.

22:09

Right there, Zomi and Shefali. That was the final

22:11

video that they produced.

22:13

There you can see, you know, preparing food

22:16

for starving gosins. And now Sager,

22:18

they're gone.

22:18

Tragic, I mean beyond tragic,

22:21

honestly, just aid workers.

22:24

Look, we'll see what the what

22:26

the official reaction is from

22:29

their governments. But I'm not going to hold

22:31

my breath, especially I mean with the American

22:33

you know, especially for me. I'm like, you kill one

22:36

of our own citizens in a strike that

22:38

you say is unintended. You

22:40

got to release a lot of data here

22:42

on exactly how exactly this went

22:45

down. But the thing is, Chrystal, we know they won't do

22:47

that because that would expose the same level

22:49

of anger and internal I mean, at a certain

22:52

point we already know in terms of the indiscriminate,

22:55

the lack of tactics you've covered

22:57

it to in the past, the AI use in some cases,

22:59

the way that people are just killed Willy Neil. That's

23:02

another interesting question. Did human even make a decision

23:04

here or do they just program something in here and says if it's a

23:06

moving car in X, Y and z area, just blow

23:08

the shit out of that's right, and you know that, and

23:10

if so, you better answer a lot of questions

23:13

as to why I don't feel in any way confident

23:15

that our consulor you know, officials or state

23:17

department will in any way do something like that. It

23:20

takes me really upset.

23:21

We know what their response is going to

23:23

be. Matt Miller and these other people, Oh well, it

23:25

Israel says they're investigating, wait for the

23:27

results of that investigation. And guess what, you never hear

23:29

the results of that investigation. You never hear

23:31

about it again unless you know somebody like Ryan or

23:33

another journalist ask about it, to which

23:35

they just point to, you know, well, we're upset

23:37

about that, and they're investigating, and we'll wait to see

23:40

so we know exactly where this

23:42

is ultimately going to go. And you

23:44

know, the Israeli military,

23:46

the IDF. They're famously very

23:49

technically advanced, right, they have all

23:51

the technology in the world, and

23:53

yet we have consistently seen AID

23:57

workers, medical workers, ambulances.

24:00

The little girl who was trapped

24:02

in a car with her dead family

24:04

members begging for help, the

24:06

Red Crescent sends out medics in

24:08

an ambulance deconflicted with the

24:10

Israelis in an attempt to save

24:13

her, and everyone involved targeted

24:15

and killed.

24:16

Like at a certain point.

24:18

We can't be so naive as to think

24:20

these are all just unfortunate accidents

24:22

that the Israelis are truly, really profoundly

24:25

sorry about, because again, this

24:27

helps to further their

24:30

goal of inflicting pain and

24:32

suffering on the palestinating people, specifically

24:35

through the tool of starvation as

24:37

a weapon of war. So the fact that

24:39

this aid organization has now had

24:41

to pause their operations and

24:43

are no longer feeding the people

24:46

of Gaza who are starving to death

24:49

is a devastating, devastating Below,

24:54

let's move on to some additional

24:56

risks for our service members

24:58

that are President Joe Biden is willingly

25:01

putting them into. Let's put this up on the screen,

25:03

Soccer. You found this, I mean, this is it's

25:06

obvious in a way by the Washington posts. You made

25:08

a good job writing up here. Biden's plan for Gaza

25:10

Peer endangers US troops, experts

25:12

warn Skeptics fear the

25:14

humanitarian operation will be an enticing

25:17

target for Hamas or other militants.

25:20

They write in this piece, the Biden administration's

25:22

plan to install a floating peer as part

25:24

of the broad international initiative feed starving

25:27

Palas names will endanger the US service members who

25:29

must build, operate, and defend the structure from

25:31

attack. According to military experts,

25:33

they say there is a risk of enormous

25:35

political consequences for the president. I

25:37

love how the political consequences for the president

25:40

our top of mind here versus the lives

25:42

of the service members who are being put at

25:45

risk. The Americans fixed proximity

25:47

to the fighting and the intense anger at the US for

25:49

support of Israel will render the peer an enticing

25:51

target for Hamas or another militant

25:53

group, many of whom receive arms military guidance

25:55

from Iran. Skeptics of the operation worn rocket

25:58

fire, attack druns and divers, are boats hauling

26:00

explosives. All will pose a threat.

26:03

Paul Kennedy, who's a retired Marine Corps general

26:05

who led major humanitarian operations

26:07

after natural disasters into Paul in the Philippines,

26:09

said, quote, if a bomb went off in

26:11

that location, the American public will

26:13

ask what the hell were they doing

26:16

there in the first place, which seems

26:18

like something that the American people are frankly

26:20

already asking.

26:21

Well, they should ask that, because actually the more

26:23

that we learn about this, the more terrifying

26:25

it becomes. It says currently the amount that

26:28

you that one thousand four Army

26:30

ships deployed from Southeast Virginia March

26:32

twelve. After an estimated thirty day transit,

26:34

the vessels will pull in offshore. The soldiers

26:37

will then began building a floating

26:39

steel structure in eighteen hundred foot two

26:41

lane causeway stretching from the edd of

26:43

the Mediterranean Sea to a beachhead. All

26:45

deliveries will then be staged and inspected in

26:47

Cyprus before being loaded onto vessels

26:50

that carry them to the pier. US personnel

26:52

will have to move supplies to that causeway.

26:54

They say then that officials will not leave

26:56

it. Now here's where it gets even crazier

26:59

is that the Israel government has said that is really

27:01

forces will only ensure that aid reaches

27:04

those that it should. Now they're taking over,

27:06

So who exactly is this aid, you know, being

27:08

turned over to? The other question here

27:11

about troops and being top

27:13

of mind is they list the evacuation

27:15

of Afghanistan and the Bay Route

27:17

bombings from nineteen eighty three as

27:19

to consequences of what it looks

27:22

like whenever you just have troops in a very

27:24

uncertain environment. And that really what

27:26

makes me nervous about this, and I think

27:28

rightfully so is a way these are only a thousand,

27:31

you know, source of sailors. Let's not forget

27:33

you know, incidents like Beyrout, like

27:36

the USS coal bombing in two

27:38

thousand. All it took was a pittily little

27:40

speedboat and they killed a lot of

27:42

American sailors and they blew, you know, some two

27:44

hundred million dollar ship a

27:47

massive hole in the middle of the side of it. So it

27:49

just highlights the immense danger

27:51

that these guys are in. I mean, not to mention it's in

27:53

the middle of a freaking war zone. The

27:56

Israelis just bombed AID workers.

27:58

How do we know that our troops and personnel

28:01

won't come into content? How do we know that a hamas

28:03

rocket's not going to missfire or intentionally

28:06

be fired at them, and it just takes one

28:08

and then what do we know, We're all in the middle

28:11

of something else. Again, not to mention even

28:13

accidents. I mean, remember in the Obama administration

28:15

when the Navy speedboat what was it like,

28:18

drifted into Iranian waters and it was

28:20

a hostage crisis. These are all things

28:22

that we need to avoid absolute you

28:24

know that we should not even consider putting

28:26

our people in harms way, and instead we're actually

28:29

sending more people into harms way, specifically

28:31

to protect Israel's reputation. I guess

28:34

which is what's even more ridiculous.

28:35

I don't even know.

28:36

I mean, the logic of it is insane

28:39

and preposterous. There there

28:41

are plenty of AID crossings, there are plenty

28:43

of AID trucks. The thing that's lacking

28:45

is really will to actually

28:47

feed the people in Gaza

28:49

and not start them to death. That's what's

28:52

lacking. So that's why this whole pure

28:54

idea has always been preposterous. By

28:56

the way, after it was announced in Biden's

28:58

State of the Union, like it was some great humanitarian

29:00

gesture that he came up with, it later

29:03

was revealed through reporting that actually Netanyahu

29:05

was the one who suggested it.

29:07

It was his idea.

29:08

And then netanyahuo floated to the

29:11

Kanesset, to a group in the Kannesset

29:14

that hey, perhaps this peer could ultimately

29:16

be used to allow Palestinians,

29:18

allow quote unquote Palestinians to leave the

29:20

Gaza Strip, in other words, to help further

29:23

our aims of ethnic cleansing and

29:24

demographically thinning this

29:27

area. So that's what's

29:29

I think really going on here, because the

29:31

idea that this is the best way to get aid into

29:34

the Gaza Strip is insane. All

29:36

we need to do is actually pressure Israel

29:39

to let in the aid that is sitting

29:41

amassed at the border, but we

29:44

won't do that. Instead, we would rather

29:46

put our service members at

29:48

risk on some nonsense boondoggle

29:51

that's going to take months to even

29:53

come into effect anyway. And then,

29:55

by the way, every time the Panagamon of the State

29:57

Department gets asked about hey, you know,

30:00

okay, so once this peer is built, what

30:02

is even your plan for a distribution because

30:05

you have effectively anarchy at least.

30:06

In northern Gaza. And they're, oh, we'll get back to you

30:08

on that.

30:09

We don't really know that seems like a pretty

30:11

frickin key piece of the puzzle here, doesn't

30:13

it. Because one of the problems is

30:15

even when an AID truck does get in, Israel

30:18

has targeted the civil society workers

30:21

and the other groups on the ground that

30:23

have been trying to be responsible for safely

30:25

delivering.

30:26

This aid and not just having chaos.

30:28

And you know, or the massacres

30:30

that have occurred, like the Flower massacre where the IDF

30:33

directly fires on starving gossens

30:35

who are trying to seek

30:37

out this food for themselves and their families.

30:39

So just another layer of

30:42

irresponsibility and insanity

30:44

that you know, I think everyone clearly sees

30:46

through. Let's also talk a little bit about,

30:48

you know, some of the other events that have been

30:50

occurring that fell a little bit under the radars.

30:53

Put this up on the screen. So an Iraqi militia

30:55

was actually.

30:55

Able to strike inside of Israel

30:58

in their Red Sea port city of a Lot

31:00

came under an aerial attack on Monday.

31:02

Caused no casualties, the.

31:03

Military said, but was able

31:06

to get through their air defense systems.

31:08

So that is significant and also just a reminder

31:11

the Houthis are still out there doing their thing,

31:13

and we are still out there, you

31:15

know, shooting down their drones and attacking

31:18

inside of Yemen. In another

31:20

potentially you know, escalatory scenario.

31:22

Can put this up on the screen the Houthis

31:25

have. The US military says

31:27

it destroyed Houthy drones over the Red Sea

31:30

and in Yemen. So

31:32

you know, how many months at this point have we had

31:34

this policy of striking the Thies. Hasn't

31:37

slowed them down, haven't changed the dynamics,

31:39

not that they even expected that it would. But

31:41

this remains another potential point of

31:44

escalation. So a dangerous and horrifying

31:46

situation all the way around.

31:47

Yeah, it's scary, especially considering those attacks

31:49

on the Altoni base and others that could have

31:51

broken at least what was supposedly some sort of

31:53

six week you know, temporary ceasefire that

31:56

we saw in the region. All signs

31:58

point to more US soldiers, more

32:00

US blood, and more US involvement in the

32:02

Middle East. That's something I fought against for my entire

32:04

professional life. So makes sense that

32:07

this is exactly where we end up,

32:09

even though I would contend the super

32:11

majority of the American public has learned

32:13

our lessons from our adventures

32:16

in that region, and yet you know, Washington,

32:18

Israel, everybody else can't just keep

32:20

dragging us into it.

32:21

Yeah, that's right, all right.

32:22

So let's talk a little bit about Donald Trump

32:24

and his somewhat all over the police comments

32:27

that he made to an Israeli news

32:29

doundlet. The reaction

32:31

to those comments from the two right wing

32:33

Israeli journalists who were interviewing him is

32:35

now being reported in the New York Times. I can put this up

32:37

on the screen. So the

32:40

headline here is Trump's call for Israel to quote

32:42

finish up war. Alarm some

32:44

on the right recent remarks he made urging an end

32:46

to the Gaza conflict and no insistence on freeing

32:48

Israeli hostages. First, we're another departure from

32:51

conservative support for net and Yahoo.

32:54

So they right here. Two Israeli

32:56

journalists traveled to Palm Beach, Florida a little

32:58

over a week ago, hoping to elicit from

33:00

Donald J. Trump a powerful expression of

33:02

support for their country's war in Gaza.

33:04

Instead, one of them wrote that what they heard

33:07

from mister Trump at mar A Lago quote

33:09

shocked us to the core. Both

33:12

US presidential cannie Biden and Trump are turning

33:14

their rhetorical backs on Israel.

33:16

This is so delusional by the way, on every

33:18

level, both about Biden and about Trump. But anyway,

33:21

concluded Ariel Kahana, right wing settler

33:23

who is the senior diplomatic correspondent for Israel

33:25

Higham the newspapers owned by the billionaire

33:27

Republican donor at Miriam Maddilson. Miss Addilson

33:29

has arranged the interview

33:31

with mister Trump personally, Accordingyshaw, person with

33:34

direct knowledge of the planning, and

33:36

just as a little reminder of a bit

33:38

of what he said in that interview, let's go ahead

33:40

and listen to Donald Trump.

33:42

They would have.

33:42

Never done that because they knew there would have been very

33:45

big consequences.

33:46

All right, that.

33:47

Being said, you have to finish

33:49

up your war. You have to finish it up. You

33:51

got to get it done, and I'm

33:54

sure you'll do that. And we got to get

33:56

to peace. You can't have this going on. And

33:59

I will say, Israel has to be very careful because

34:01

you're losing a lot of the world, You're

34:03

losing a lot of support. You have to finish

34:06

up, you have to get the job done, and you

34:08

have to get onto peace. You have to get onto

34:11

a normal life for Israel. And for everybody

34:13

else here they say, if I ran for if

34:16

I ran for office in Israel, I

34:18

get ninety eight percent of the vote. I'm

34:21

not Jewish, and yet Israel to me is

34:23

very important.

34:24

He goes on to say, that's why I did gol on Heights, a reminder

34:26

of the fact that he was staunchly pro Israel

34:28

when he was president in the United States the last

34:30

time around. But one of those journalists

34:33

reacting saying Trump effectively bypassed

34:35

Biden from the left when he expressed willingness

34:37

to stop this war and get back to being the

34:39

great country you once were. There's no way to beautify,

34:42

minimize, or cover up that problematic

34:45

message. So a bit of a freak ount

34:47

there on those comments.

34:48

I found it, amuzing I.

34:49

Found it really funny, but actually really worth

34:51

reading this piece. Jonathan Swan always

34:53

a very good reporter and astute, and he had

34:56

an interesting thing. I definitely wanted to get your

34:58

reaction to Crystal is. John Poteerrits.

35:00

He's the editor of Commentary. People

35:03

who don't know we call him JPod

35:05

Online, probably one of the most unhinged

35:08

Israel supporters, has attacked the

35:10

Show Me and You Times

35:13

previously only known because his

35:15

father was a respected intellectual, but

35:17

many such cases here in Washington, DC. Anyway,

35:20

here's what he says, quote, the only difference

35:22

between Trump and Biden, and I say this as somebody

35:24

who is not a supporter of Biden, is that Biden

35:26

has put his money where his mouth is. He's been

35:28

sending arms. Mister Pudhert said so

35:31

that he seems to suggest, operationally, the

35:33

problem with Biden is rhetoric and not policy.

35:35

Trump is rhetoric and he's not laying

35:37

out any policy that should make anybody

35:40

feel good. And now I found that very

35:42

noteworthy because as you can see there,

35:44

the actual diehards for Israel

35:46

are very much appreciative of Joe

35:49

Biden. They are annoyed that he won't rhetorically back

35:51

him, but they're like, hey, he's been sending in the arms. That's what we

35:53

actually want the weapons. Trump

35:55

is a genuine wildcard. You have no idea.

35:58

And the irony is is that Trump doesn't care. He doesn't

36:00

care about anything. And in fact what

36:02

comes through is that he has quote

36:05

never forgiven Benjamin

36:07

Nettunnahoo for congratulating

36:10

Joe Biden as the winner of the twenty

36:13

twenty election, and it may

36:15

Hey, listen, take what you can get right with

36:18

Trump. That may be the

36:20

one thing that will

36:22

undercut his previous love affair

36:25

with Netauna Who. For example, in twenty

36:27

twenty one, mister Trump told Axios

36:29

journalist Brock Ravid he concluded Nettuna

36:32

Who never wanted peace with the Palestinians,

36:35

and his first reaction after October

36:37

seventh was to criticize Bibie and

36:39

the intelligence services. His advisors

36:41

then privately pleaded with him to clean up his comments,

36:44

and then he eventually turned to standard lines

36:46

of support before returning to the ambiguity

36:49

of you gotta wrap this thing up now as

36:51

much as possible. I mean, look, I've always put

36:53

some at least some faith in Trump's complete

36:56

indifference on these issues, because

36:58

with Trump it's better rather

37:00

than by Biden. Is ideological in some way, sometimes

37:02

good Afghanistan, sometimes horrible, like in Many,

37:05

Ukraine, for example, Israel. With

37:07

Trump, he'll just go where over the wind

37:09

blows. And what struck

37:12

out to me was with Trump throughout the whole thing,

37:14

he's like, it's becoming a real problem. You know, you look

37:16

all over the world, people are really starting to

37:18

abandon you. You got to wrap things up. He's

37:20

like an outside observer and with that,

37:22

now we don't know what policy will happen,

37:25

you know, if he were to assume the presidency.

37:27

But at the very least he is a genius in one

37:29

respect, which is public relations and with how

37:31

things are shifting politically and where

37:33

to stake out a position. And that's why

37:35

it was extraordinary to hear him say like, oh, you got

37:38

to wrap it up as soon as possible.

37:39

The safest assumption with Trump is obviously that

37:41

he's going to connect himself the same way he read last

37:43

time, which is overwhelming pro Israel

37:46

support. And one thing that was noteworthy in that

37:48

interview that didn't get as enough

37:50

attention is the interviewers

37:53

asked specifically about

37:55

this proposal from Trump's

37:59

ambassador to Israel when

38:01

he was president of the United States, where

38:03

his proposal asked for Israel to fully

38:05

assert sovereignty over

38:08

the West Bank, what he of course calls today in

38:10

Samaria. And they asked Trump about it,

38:12

and he basically indicated he was open to

38:15

it. I mean, that's the thing, is you're right

38:17

that he he doesn't have the same

38:19

ideological, fervent commitment

38:22

to Israel that Joe Biden clearly does. He

38:25

is a purely transactional

38:27

character. However, always

38:30

up to this point in the modern

38:33

you know, in the past thirty years or whatever,

38:36

that transactional math

38:38

always, especially on the Republican side,

38:40

at this point, adds up to fervent,

38:43

unconditional support of whatever the hell Israel

38:45

wants to do. Because remember, the actually

38:47

the strongest, most lockstep

38:50

diehard supporters not just of Israel, but of

38:52

Nan Yahoo and Moriss and Ben Giveren, whatever

38:55

insanity and psychosis

38:57

they want to unleash, is not

38:59

actually Jewish Americans. It's the white

39:01

evangelical Christians who make up the most

39:04

important part and the most fervent

39:06

supporters of Donald Trump. You

39:08

also have, you know, part of why last time

39:10

around he was so pro Israel. It is not just because

39:12

of Kushner, but because of the close relationship and

39:14

the money that came from Sheldon Addelson.

39:17

So it's not clear to me that

39:19

any of that fundamental transactional

39:22

math has really shifted from him.

39:25

So I can't have any like hope or

39:27

expectation that the fact that he made these like

39:29

sort of vague comments saying you got to wrap it up,

39:31

which can also be construed as you need to sort

39:34

of like, you know, the guy who said you need to knew

39:36

Gaza and finish it off the Republican congressman. I mean,

39:38

Trump obviously didn't say that, but that finished the job.

39:40

Rhetoric is similar to

39:43

what that Congresszan cleaned up his

39:46

nuke Gaza comments to mean. So

39:48

anyway, I think the freak ount

39:50

over where Trump would be from the Israeli

39:53

perspective and from the right wing we got to support

39:55

Israel no matter what perspective is

39:58

misplaced. Although I do acknowledge that

40:00

he does not have the ideological furquency

40:02

around this issue that certainly Joe Biden does.

40:04

I have no idea what he's gonna do. That's always

40:07

kind of the fun thing with Trump, and we have a relative idea.

40:09

But I still found it noteworthy, and I

40:11

did find it especially interesting that the Netanyahu

40:14

personal angle, and also the

40:16

fact that, I mean, look, let's not pretend Miriam

40:18

will Aidelson is one of the most powerful people

40:20

in the entire GOP. Her late husband

40:22

Sheldon Addleston, the multi billionaire Las

40:24

Vegas Las Vegas stands. I mean,

40:27

he is the funder of birthright,

40:29

probably single handedly responsible for

40:31

a huge portion of the GOP electorate's

40:33

actual positioning on Israel.

40:36

For him to still say that to a Miriam

40:38

Adelson interviewee is actually

40:40

pretty crazy. Now, you know, you could take

40:42

whatever you want from that. You have no idea

40:45

which way it will go. But noteworthy

40:47

to me nonetheless, that at least in Israel they

40:49

were like, oh wow, like at least he is really right.

40:52

They're starting to understand that things

40:54

are a little bit different.

40:56

Here's what is important is even

40:58

though like I said, I don't think that there could concern

41:00

over whether Trump is going to be pro Israel or

41:02

not is particularly well founded, the

41:04

fact that there's a bit of a freak out over it

41:06

is actually positive because one of the

41:09

things that you might expect is that you know,

41:11

Bbe would prefer Trump to be in office

41:13

and thinks he can basically like you know, Thombas

41:15

knows that Joe Biden and wait it out, weigh out

41:17

these little, you know, handbringing recriminations

41:20

that are coming from the Biden administration with the expectation

41:22

that he's going to have Trump his buddy to deal with next

41:24

time around. And so this at least scrambles

41:26

that calculus a little bit, and that way is

41:28

a positive thing.

41:29

Not to mention.

41:30

It's just the comments are amusing in and of themselves.

41:32

They were shocked to their core, all

41:34

right, So let's go ahead and get to the business

41:36

news with regards to Donald Trump.

41:39

Let's put this up on the screen. So we

41:42

just learned.

41:43

That Truth Social lost

41:45

fifty eight million dollars last

41:48

year and as a result,

41:50

their stock absolutely

41:53

tanked. It slid ultimately

41:55

at the end of the day twenty one percent.

41:57

At one point during the day it was down. That

42:02

is a direct hit obviously

42:04

to Donald Trump and his

42:06

wealth because he owns a fifty seven percent

42:08

stake in that company. So as a

42:10

result of this massive drop,

42:13

his personal net worth dropped

42:15

one billion dollars in

42:17

a day. We can put up the chart showing

42:20

the trajectory of the Trump

42:23

Media and Technology Group stock price. You

42:25

know, this is over a long period of time when

42:27

it was the Spack and whatever. So we

42:29

can see in the recent

42:31

era there at the end of this chart, you know.

42:33

Kind of up and down movement.

42:34

Then you have this huge spike just

42:37

before they you know, officially

42:39

become this Trump Median Technology stock.

42:41

And then yesterday you see this precipitous

42:44

fall in the stock price, which you

42:47

know, it's a big deal for Trump because

42:49

he has a cash crunch right now because of

42:51

his legal issues. He did get catch a bit of

42:53

a break in New York in terms of what

42:55

he's going to have to put down upfront, but it's still

42:57

a lot of money that he's on the.

42:58

Hook for here.

43:00

So the fact that the stock price took such a hit is

43:02

significant. And also, you

43:04

know, as we discussed before, so Trump

43:06

Media and Technology Group True Social they

43:09

generated just four point one million

43:11

dollars in revenue last year

43:13

and lost fifty eight million

43:16

dollars.

43:16

So the idea that this is some.

43:18

Multi billion dollar company is

43:21

just like the most preposterous thing

43:23

ever.

43:24

But it's basically a meme stock.

43:25

His supporters liked the stock,

43:27

They wanted to help Trump. They wanted to see if they can

43:29

make some money off of it too, So they've been bidding an

43:31

up and up and up, and a significant

43:33

portion of that, although not all of it came crashing

43:36

down yesterday.

43:36

Yeah. What's interesting is that especially highlight some

43:38

issues with SPACs and with the shell

43:41

companies and the way that they go public, in

43:43

that the filing was made

43:45

after actually the

43:47

offering. Now as I understand that this is

43:49

something unique in particular

43:51

to when SPACs can are allowed to go public

43:54

before then they are allowed to report their financials

43:56

and is a little bit different than a traditional IPO.

43:59

I was reading a little bit in the business

44:01

press, but the filing at the end of the day

44:04

shocked all of Wall Street, not just because

44:06

of the where the price was, because it showed

44:09

that the company generated Crystal

44:11

just seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in

44:13

revenue in just the fourth quarter of

44:15

last year. I mean, I think people need to understand this too.

44:18

Fourth quarter, especially if you're doing advertising, that's

44:20

that's like the best time because that's

44:23

when a huge portion of ad spend

44:25

is actually recorded and is actually

44:27

deployed because that's when all of us

44:30

are shopping for Christmas presents

44:32

or Black Friday. I mean, it's usually it's

44:34

like for us, for example here on YouTube,

44:36

that's when we're going to make the most amount of money because

44:39

that is when our ad rates you're not going

44:41

to go up. And then Q one January

44:43

through March is usually the worst time because

44:45

that's like the lowest ad spend period, so

44:47

for them to bring in just some three quarters

44:50

of a million dollars in revenue is honestly

44:52

stunning, you know, given like it's like, how

44:54

are you even signing up any clients? And

44:56

then then you give their top line figures

44:58

and then you have to wonder about what that growth

45:00

is and about the burn rate for some

45:02

sixty million dollars. That's another question

45:04

I have. I'm like, what the hell are you even spending sixty million dollars

45:07

on?

45:07

Is?

45:07

It's just I mean, what is it? Servers?

45:10

Like, it can't take that many engineers to

45:12

run this. It's very basic technology. Look at

45:14

Elon he fired ninety percent of the people on Twitter

45:16

in this site mostly still works. It's like,

45:18

what are you doing over there?

45:19

Apparently a lot of.

45:20

It was an interest expense. I'm

45:22

not really clear interest on what, but I guess

45:24

must have some sort of loan massive

45:27

set that they Yeah. So anyway, which,

45:29

yeah, that is a problem because that means

45:31

that's going to continue potentially and definitely right

45:35

the thing was true social I mean, just to get to pretend

45:38

like this is a serious business model for a moment.

45:40

We were always skeptical of these like Twitter

45:42

alternatives back when you

45:44

know, Trump was kicked off of Twitter, and before it

45:47

was in the Elon Musk era and whatever.

45:49

But at that point, at.

45:50

Least there was some sort of a business

45:52

logic to a Twitter alternative

45:54

of like, you've got all these conservatives who are upset

45:56

about the way this company is being managed. You feel

45:59

like it doesn't represent there are values who

46:01

want to be able to go somewhere else.

46:03

And so if you've got Donald Trump on this other

46:06

platform that's basically Twitter, but it's

46:08

run by someone that you feel more ideologically

46:10

aligned with, that at least has some logic

46:13

to it. But now that you have the elon

46:15

Twitter era and it's

46:17

much more of a sympathetic place to conservatives

46:20

and it's you know, sort of coded right wing.

46:23

Now, whether the reality of that is true or not, the

46:26

business case really doesn't make any sense. I mean,

46:28

at this point, true Social is just relevant

46:31

only because Trump is on it, and

46:33

I can't say that I have personally spent a

46:35

lot of time on truth Social. But

46:37

apparently because there's no liberals

46:40

there to like, you know, to sneer

46:42

at and mock, it's also kind of destructive

46:44

to the conservative movement because it's just them arguing

46:46

with each other and like tearing each.

46:48

Other apart to yeah, I don't know enough.

46:49

But it's this, you know, it's this tiny silo

46:52

where the only thing that really matters on it is

46:55

whatever Donald Trump says, which gets picked up

46:57

and also put on Twitter, and which is

46:59

where we usually see it or also polished,

47:01

you know, by media outlets when it's something worthy,

47:03

like his various Easter deranged

47:06

truths. So it really

47:09

doesn't have a logical business

47:11

case at this point. So on the one hand, it's

47:13

like, oh, I can't believe they only they only got

47:15

in seven hour, fifty thousand dollars in

47:17

revenue last quarter. But it's also like,

47:20

who is even advertising on this platform

47:22

at all? And what yeah, what

47:24

business would say, Oh, the place I

47:26

really want to be is true Social. It's going

47:28

to be definitionally, it's going to be very

47:31

niche organizations who are really just trying to

47:33

target this specific ideological group.

47:35

And you know, I was trying to look up how many daily

47:38

active users True Social has. That information's

47:40

not out there, but it obviously is dwarfed by other,

47:43

you know, mainstream social media

47:45

platforms. So in any case, I

47:47

think it was only a matter of time before there was a

47:49

significant cratch, and I would expect that

47:52

there's more to come. And

47:54

again it is one more illustration of just how incredibly

47:56

fake our economy is. Because I do

47:59

this, even after the crash, it still has like a

48:01

six point six billion dollars valuation.

48:04

Crazy.

48:04

No, it's been an e Yeah, And that's the other view

48:06

is that they haven't yet had to

48:08

tell us what their number of monthly users

48:11

is. There is an estimate that there

48:13

are approximately one million

48:15

monthly active users, but not daily

48:17

active users. I mean, for context,

48:20

I think Twitter has two hundred and seventeen

48:22

million. I believe like

48:24

actual daily active users.

48:27

I'm pretty sure i'd have to go back. Yeah, daily

48:29

user base of two hundred and seventeen million as of April

48:31

of twenty twenty two. Don't know what it is under

48:33

Elon. According to Elon, it's actually up, so you

48:35

know. Anyway, So we're talking at two to three

48:37

hundred times, And just so everybody knows,

48:39

trude social is what worth six billion. Fidelity

48:42

has marked down their investment

48:45

in Elon's Twitter by some seventy

48:47

percent. So let's do the

48:49

math here. Let's doo point three times.

48:52

What did Elon pay for a forty four billion, so

48:54

their fidelity is valuing

48:57

Twitter under Elon around thirteen billion,

48:59

so there's no way yeah double, So it's

49:01

like that actually sounds reasonable to me, thirteen

49:03

billion dollars for the current Twitter, but yeah,

49:05

six billion is wildly outrageous.

49:08

I mean, think about that.

49:09

Okay, obviously it's not exactly apples to apples

49:11

because we're a very different business here, but only

49:14

a million monthly active users.

49:16

That means way more people watch our

49:18

show in a month, oh than are active

49:20

on truth social I.

49:21

Don't even know.

49:21

I go to show you what a tiny niche

49:25

sliver of the market is and how completely

49:27

irrelevant it is the moment that Donald Trump

49:30

stops posting there.

49:31

Yeah, not to brag, but you know, might as well

49:34

problem it would be, you know,

49:36

twenty million something like that.

49:38

That sounds pretty good in terms of how

49:40

we're doing. But yeah, we're not idiots, and we don't think that

49:42

our business is worth six billion dollars.

49:45

There.

49:48

At the same time, we wanted to put some good news actually

49:50

in the show. There's been an astounding development

49:52

amongst gen z. Even though a lot of people

49:55

are very concerned about their political views

49:57

and maybe their online phone usage.

49:59

It seems that they are a lot more sensible than my millennial

50:02

generation whenever it comes to employment. Let's go

50:04

and put this out there on the screen quote

50:06

from the Wall Street Journal, how gen Z is becoming

50:08

the tool belt generation. More

50:10

young workers are going into trades

50:12

at disenchantment with the college treck continues,

50:15

rising pay, and new technologies shine

50:17

up plumbing and electrical jobs.

50:19

Let's actually go to the next part because this is

50:21

a really interesting chart that people can

50:24

see. It shows that enrollment

50:26

growth in four year college degree

50:28

in vocational community focused

50:31

community college has gone up

50:33

by some fifteen percent from

50:35

the twenty twenty one baseline,

50:38

whereas there has been maybe

50:40

a single digit increase if you look

50:42

at other four year institutions

50:45

and even community college that are not vocational

50:47

focus. What that tells us is that

50:49

the spike, the overall fifteen or

50:52

percent spike, is one of the most extraordinary

50:54

that we've seen in modern American history

50:56

for younger people who are explicitly choosing

50:59

to go in to trades based educations

51:02

with set wages that are much higher

51:04

than they ever were before than at any time

51:06

previously when they were choosing for more service

51:08

based economies, we can go to the

51:10

next one too, because this is really really

51:12

fascinating is you can watch

51:14

there how the precipitous decline

51:17

has happened in the average age

51:19

of select trades electrician, heating,

51:21

air conditioning, carpenter, and

51:24

I think every trade except for welding

51:27

has seen a precipitous drop just

51:29

since twenty twenty, and especially since

51:31

twenty seventeen in

51:33

the median age of the people

51:35

who are engaged in the trades. Crystal.

51:38

And the main thing that comes through in this piece

51:41

over and over again on top of the data is

51:43

that people believe a couple of things. Number one

51:45

is that the wage premium for college

51:47

is no longer worth it. That is absolutely one hundred

51:50

percent true. But two, and even more interesting

51:52

to me, young people are sitting there

51:54

eighteen years old. They're looking at AI. They're

51:56

looking at the productivity gains that

51:59

are being rolled up up into the stock prices these big

52:01

tech companies, and they're saying, yeah,

52:03

you know what, the one thing you can't AI

52:05

is plumbing, welding, Having

52:08

a job as an auto mechanic, having a job

52:10

as an EV technician, having his job

52:13

as an electrician. They're always

52:15

going to need that, if anything, that's what's going to build

52:17

the backbone of the future economy.

52:19

And they're choosing to make that choice. And I think

52:21

they're setting themselves up for a much easier

52:24

and previously trodden path to middle class

52:26

and frankly to prosperity and not taking out a lot of debt.

52:28

They're setting themselves up for very very well. They're

52:31

going to start airning a lot more money than they would have previously.

52:33

It's a very very sensible direction for a lot of people who

52:36

are out there.

52:36

Yeah, it's incredibly rational.

52:38

Yeah, college is insanely

52:40

expensive and debt loads

52:42

are skyrocketing with no real

52:44

relief in sight. So you've got that on

52:46

one side of the ledger, you have a bunch

52:49

of young people who may have watched

52:51

their are parents, you know,

52:53

white collar professions, and seeing how their life

52:56

is consisted of staring at a computer screen all day

52:58

and thought, you know what, this isn't really what

53:00

I want for myself, And so I think there's a reaction

53:02

in the other direction there. There's

53:04

also tremendous demand in

53:07

some of these trades where there'd been previously

53:09

a crisis of a lot of older

53:11

journeymen who were retiring and

53:13

there wasn't a clear pipeline of new young

53:16

talent to replace them. Well, that is now reversing,

53:18

and you pointed to the pay, So

53:21

in this piece they point out that the median pay for

53:23

new construction hires actually rose

53:25

a five point one percent to forty eight thousand

53:27

dollars roughly last year. By contrast,

53:30

new hires and professional services. So like your

53:32

sort of traditional white collar job out

53:34

of college earned an annual thirty

53:37

nine thousand and experienced

53:39

a two point seven percent, so a lower increase

53:42

from twenty twenty two. This is according to ADP,

53:45

so at least in terms of where you start out,

53:47

you may start at a higher salary

53:50

if you go into one of these trades versus

53:52

if you go and spend all the money on a four

53:55

year college degree. Now, still

53:57

over the lifetime of these different

53:59

careers blue collar versus white collar, right

54:01

now, the median for white collar work

54:04

once you're into your career continues

54:07

to outpace blue collar work.

54:09

But you know, does that remain the case? Is

54:11

it worth it given the extraordinary

54:14

expense that you have to incur on

54:16

the front end, the fact that there's been a

54:18

shift away from this idea that everyone

54:20

has to go to college and if you're going to succeed in life,

54:23

you have to go to college, and that's the only path forward.

54:25

I think it's a really positive thing because you know,

54:27

there's also a lot of people who find

54:29

tremendous fulfillment in the trades

54:32

and like being able to build things and work with their

54:34

hands and don't want to just sit in an office all

54:36

day. So I think this is a really incredibly

54:39

positive and hopeful development.

54:40

Honestly, the other very important thing with this

54:42

is we're talking about the part of the problem.

54:44

What we talk about with wages is that we look at the

54:46

average. So, yeah, it's true if you're in the white collar

54:49

work, if you're college educated, you are probably

54:51

on average, your lifetime earnings are going

54:53

to be higher. But where do you live? What are

54:56

you netting out? One of the nice things about

54:58

trades is you can live wherever you want. You

55:00

don't necessarily have to live in a city if you don't want

55:02

to, and one hundred k a year in a smaller

55:04

town where they need HVAC just as much as HVAC

55:06

as we live here in Washington, DC. In

55:09

some cases, your cost of living

55:11

can be especially on housing can

55:13

be like one fifth the amount in

55:15

a major metropolitan area. You have a

55:17

lot more flexibility. I see this all

55:19

the time with people who are skilled, especially

55:21

like nurses. Nurses they can just

55:23

decide to move whenever they want, and they're in

55:25

demand literally everywhere for small town,

55:27

big town they want to make more money, they can travel

55:30

to. It's an incredible career

55:32

field. I see this too with people who are electricians

55:35

and plumbers. When you have such

55:37

a valuable skill, you can effectively

55:40

transplant anywhere in the entire United States. You

55:42

have more job security, and you also make it so they

55:44

don't necessarily have to live in a major metropolitan area

55:46

if you don't want to. It just gives you a

55:49

ton of optionality. And the other thing,

55:51

and this is what I really hope for, is that the

55:53

colleges finally have to compete, because

55:56

if their revenues start to go down,

55:58

they're going to have to start mark getting themselves

56:01

as to why they are actually worth

56:03

it, and not just so mom and dad can

56:05

feel good that you went to a four year college

56:08

degree. They actually got to be like, no, no, no, if you come here, we're going

56:10

to get you a job. So I actually invest some of that

56:12

money that they're basically stealing from people and

56:14

from the government into actually

56:16

getting you a job on the other side, or maybe the lower their

56:19

admissions rates, or maybe you know, we can change up

56:21

our policy. That's probably the most fundamentally

56:23

important thing, is a shake up to higher education.

56:26

Yeah, I think that that is correct.

56:28

I also think there's something really important happening

56:31

in terms of cultural

56:33

views of college educated

56:35

white collar work versus blue collar

56:38

skilled trade work, which this

56:40

was really you know, for a lot of years,

56:42

especially in sort of like the peak of the neoliberal

56:44

era, college was viewed as

56:47

the pinnacle and trades

56:49

were considered sort of like the fallback,

56:51

right, the lesser choice.

56:53

It was like the stepchild. You know.

56:55

They talk about in this article, they talk about

56:57

a high school where it used to be, you know, the trade building

56:59

was sort of pushed off to the side and people

57:01

sneered at it and looked down their nose at it. And

57:04

now it's got a nice new equipment,

57:06

it's at the front of.

57:07

The school, it's featured. People actively

57:09

seek.

57:09

This out, you know, it doesn't have that

57:11

same sort of like stigma

57:13

around it that unfortunately it has

57:16

for far too long.

57:17

So I think that's a.

57:18

Really positive direction as well,

57:20

and also could lead to you know, blue

57:22

collar people, average working people having

57:24

more say and more political power

57:27

in terms of our politics as well. So I think that's

57:30

really important. I also think there's something soccer to

57:32

the fact that, just like the mystique

57:34

and the fantasy of college is really worn off.

57:37

How many people go and you know,

57:39

they do the thing they're supposed to do, and they get their four

57:41

year degree and then end up,

57:43

you know, Barista's Starbucks, are working in a

57:46

field or an industry where they don't even need a four

57:48

year college degree, or they're certainly not

57:50

working in mess I mean, perhaps

57:52

a majority of people end up not even working

57:54

in the thing that they studied in college.

57:56

So it's like, what are we really doing here?

57:59

We just here for some sort of a life

58:01

experience, or is this actually leading

58:03

us to where we want to be in terms

58:05

of our life and career trajectories.

58:08

So the fact that stigma's being

58:10

removed, the fact that wages are going up,

58:12

the fact that this is being seen as a viable,

58:15

positive affirmative choice by more

58:17

people in gen Z, I genuinely think this

58:19

is such a.

58:19

Positive thing absolutely you can. Let's spend some more

58:21

time on this. Thirty nine percent of eighteen

58:24

to twenty four year olds are enrolled in a post secondary

58:26

program. That's way too high, way

58:28

too high. The vast majority of those people are

58:30

enrolled in quote unquote knowledge

58:32

based service programs and previously

58:35

were not engaged in vocational programs.

58:37

The previous percent of people who went to college.

58:39

I think the right amount was referent around

58:41

nineteen percent. It should be a luxury

58:44

good. It should be something where, yes, you

58:46

have to take out a tremendous amount of debt or you come from a family

58:49

that can afford it, and then you can use

58:51

that wage premium in the service based economy.

58:53

But the vast majority of people don't need to attend.

58:55

It's not a good trade. So twenty percent

58:57

or so of people who attended exactly

59:00

into that bucket. Now I'm not saying it's fair. I

59:02

don't think it is fair. But what I do think

59:04

is that watching people go into hundreds

59:07

of thousands of dollars in debt, the average

59:09

college what is the average student loan that's

59:11

out there, something like twenty five something thirty

59:13

thousand dollars, especially on these variable interest

59:15

rates with some of these private loan programs is usury.

59:18

I mean, it's insane, and thanks to our current

59:20

president, by the way, you can't even discharge

59:22

it through bankruptcy. So it makes it that

59:25

it's just an incredible news around people's neck. In

59:27

this country right now, we have a huge problem where

59:29

the average woman wants to have two point two

59:31

kids and is having one point eight. The

59:34

number one reason that families cite

59:36

as to why is money and debt. Specifically,

59:39

a huge portion of this is student

59:41

debt. The other issue is I just was talking

59:43

about if you want to have a job and

59:46

you want to work with your college degree,

59:48

the likelihood is, like us, you need

59:50

to move to a major metropolitan area

59:53

which has a very high cost of living and is

59:55

where the major concentration of these

59:57

things are. And so over and over you're getting

59:59

on the wheel where very few people are

1:00:01

actually winning. The people who won are the boomers

1:00:03

in the past, and like I said, traditionally

1:00:06

some twenty percent or so of the population,

1:00:09

which does really justify that

1:00:11

college premium highly concentrated

1:00:13

in STEM in particular, for what is

1:00:15

actually worth it. But we never thought about it

1:00:18

as a trade. We just thought of it as an intrinsic

1:00:20

good, and that's really how we ended up here.

1:00:21

I mean, I'm just in favor of more choices, right.

1:00:24

I think we should have debt forgiveness. I think we should have

1:00:26

free public collers, so people who want to pursue

1:00:28

that path, who want to go into STEM, want to go into

1:00:31

a white collar career. For them, that's the

1:00:33

thing, and it makes sense for them that they

1:00:35

have that opportunity, and that's fantastic.

1:00:38

I think it should be you know, like I said, I think public

1:00:40

college should be free. It should certainly be way

1:00:42

more affordable than it is right now. And we take it

1:00:44

for granted because of the era that we grew

1:00:46

up in that it should be this incredible

1:00:49

burdensome load, when not that long

1:00:51

ago, the University

1:00:53

of California system was free and

1:00:55

many other schools were extremely affordable where

1:00:57

you could work and actually afford to

1:01:00

pay your way through school. Like the idea

1:01:02

of being able to do that is preposterous

1:01:04

now, So people even at state

1:01:06

schools leave with tens

1:01:08

of thousands of dollars in debt to

1:01:11

start their life. That has ripple effects

1:01:13

throughout their entire life. As you're pointing out not

1:01:15

only with family creation, also really stifles

1:01:18

entrepreneurship because you know,

1:01:20

you've got this thing you got to pay

1:01:23

every month, and that's hanging over you, and

1:01:25

so you just feel.

1:01:26

Like, all right, I got to get to work.

1:01:27

I got to get whatever is the highest paying job that

1:01:29

I possibly can. Forget about potential

1:01:31

entrepreneurship, forget about whatever the dream job

1:01:34

might be that potentially is lower paying. I

1:01:36

just got to get on that grind and try to pay

1:01:38

the sucker off. So it really does

1:01:40

constrain from the jump your life choices,

1:01:43

which is a disaster.

1:01:43

So the fact that you.

1:01:44

Have, you know, other pathways that are

1:01:47

being seen as attractive, that

1:01:49

people are pursuing, that you know,

1:01:51

have that the stigma around them

1:01:54

is going away, and that lead can lead,

1:01:56

you know, very clearly and like on a direct

1:01:58

path to this sort of you know, state middle

1:02:00

class life.

1:02:01

It's it's a really it's a really.

1:02:03

Good thing, really encouraging, and I think we'll

1:02:05

potentially have some impact on college

1:02:08

affordability as well, because you are

1:02:10

already seeing actually enrollment declines in

1:02:12

four year institutions

1:02:14

as things are shifting.

1:02:15

So I do think it's a good direction.

1:02:17

Yeah, and I hope that these private colleges in particular,

1:02:19

I hope they get crushed from the wave

1:02:21

of this because it is criminal how much they've

1:02:24

been jacked.

1:02:24

Yeah to show true a freaking

1:02:26

mediocre school and you're paying those insane

1:02:28

amounts.

1:02:29

It's crazy.

1:02:29

Did you see that in the Northeast some of these premium

1:02:32

like liberal arts colleges are now charging

1:02:34

some ninety thousand dollars a year. Look

1:02:36

Yale maybe, and maybe

1:02:39

I want to say again big maybe

1:02:41

the rest of them, Sarah Lawrence or something like that.

1:02:43

You are an idiot. If you're paying ninety thousand dollars

1:02:46

for something like that, it ain't worth it. It ain't

1:02:48

worth it.

1:02:48

Wow, that's wild.

1:02:49

Let's move on to Havana syndrome. This

1:02:52

is it's the syndrome

1:02:54

which simply just won't die for

1:02:56

those the fakes has wont killed

1:02:59

more people in frustration at

1:03:01

its coverage, then it actually has allegedly

1:03:03

killed. And Havana syndrome

1:03:06

just a return for those who have not heard of it.

1:03:08

It has been now alleged for some five six

1:03:10

odd years from the

1:03:12

Cuban embassy in Havana, where

1:03:15

it gets its name, where allegedly

1:03:17

US workers embassy workers were

1:03:19

being targeted with some new directed

1:03:22

energy weapon and experiencing a

1:03:24

bizarre array of symptoms. This was

1:03:26

then accepted as fact published by

1:03:29

the media ascribed then even

1:03:31

though it occurred supposedly in Havana

1:03:33

to the Russian government and became a full

1:03:35

on Russia Gate craze throughout the two

1:03:37

thousands, to the extent that the United States

1:03:40

Congress passed money to help them with their

1:03:42

health bills. Where the US intelligence

1:03:44

community at first was treating it as real, the

1:03:46

media has an entire panic about

1:03:48

whether US diplomats are being attacked

1:03:51

with this newfangled weapon. It was

1:03:53

eventually killed and said that it was totally

1:03:55

fake and by the US intelligence community

1:03:57

itself. And yet sixty minutes

1:04:00

has decided to resurrect Havana

1:04:02

syndrome and say no even though

1:04:04

the people who have every incentive to lie and

1:04:07

say that it is real, even though they even

1:04:09

say that it's not real, they are actually

1:04:11

orchestrating a cover up. Here's what they had to say.

1:04:14

If it is Russia. Investigative

1:04:16

reporter Kristo Grozev believes he knows

1:04:18

who's involved. In twenty eighteen, Grozev

1:04:21

was the first to discover the existence of

1:04:23

a top secret Russian intelligence unit

1:04:25

which goes by a number two

1:04:27

nine one five five.

1:04:29

These are people who are trained to be versatile

1:04:32

assassins and sabotage of raiters. They're

1:04:34

trained in comp savellas, they're trained and exposess.

1:04:37

They're trained at using poison and technology

1:04:39

equipment, actually in thick

1:04:41

pain or damage to the targets.

1:04:43

And Grozev says he found one that may

1:04:46

link two nine one five five to

1:04:48

a directed energy weapon.

1:04:50

And when I saw it, I literally had tears in my eyes

1:04:52

because it was spelling out what they had been

1:04:54

doing.

1:04:55

It's a piece of accounting. An officer

1:04:57

of two nine one five five received

1:05:00

for work on quote potential

1:05:02

capabilities of non lethal acoustic

1:05:05

weapons.

1:05:06

So he uh, supposedly this

1:05:08

is clearly reads like a Tom Clancy novel,

1:05:10

Crystal Unit two nine one five

1:05:13

of the GRU. By the way, who is this man?

1:05:15

He's a Bulgarian journalist who previously

1:05:17

worked for Belling Cat, which has been funded by

1:05:19

the CIA, and head of the investigations

1:05:22

at quote. The Insider, which is an

1:05:24

online newspaper supposedly

1:05:26

Russia, founded by a Russian journalist and

1:05:28

as obviously hostile to the Russian government.

1:05:31

Now I'm not I don't know very much about this

1:05:33

man. What I do know is that if you just

1:05:35

look, it's very basic in terms of the

1:05:37

you know, the Midon, the Belling Cat connections

1:05:40

and all that, with all the incentive in the world to play

1:05:42

up some grand conspiracy and

1:05:44

all of this just taking at the word,

1:05:47

frankly, a bunch of diplomats and other

1:05:49

people who could be suffering from

1:05:51

any kinds of health maladies from

1:05:54

for whatever reason, hypochondriacs

1:05:57

and others who are just being totally believed

1:05:59

with frankly no skepticism

1:06:01

by the media here and in parroting a

1:06:04

crazy accusation, which is that somebody is

1:06:06

firing a secret microwave

1:06:09

energy weapon through the walls

1:06:11

at your head to I mean,

1:06:13

for what purpose, to immobilize you? And just

1:06:15

keep coming back to why, for what reason,

1:06:17

what purpose would this entire thing exists?

1:06:20

Yeah, So this was really sold as

1:06:22

you know, blockbuster story. It

1:06:25

was a partnership between sixty minutes

1:06:27

German newspaper Der Spiegel and Insider,

1:06:30

which, as Zager is just saying, is this outlet

1:06:32

of Russian dissidents. So

1:06:34

clearly, you know they have a perspective that's fine,

1:06:37

but you have to take that perspective into account

1:06:39

when you're considering the quote unquote reporting

1:06:42

here.

1:06:43

And they even have to admit.

1:06:45

In the piece that the quote unquote evidence

1:06:48

that they're able to produce is circumstantial.

1:06:51

So the big smoking gun is the piece

1:06:53

that we just showed you this translated,

1:06:56

you know, memo of accounting referring

1:06:58

to some ambiguous directed energy

1:07:01

acoustic weapon, right that has

1:07:04

no specifics. We have no tie

1:07:06

in to what's happening here. We don't even know

1:07:08

if this is a real thing, right, so it's

1:07:10

very speculative.

1:07:13

Okay, there's another

1:07:15

piece.

1:07:16

There was an incident that unfolded in

1:07:18

the country of Georgia, and

1:07:20

they have some potential indications

1:07:24

that maybe this one guy who

1:07:27

may be affiliated with this unit

1:07:29

could have been in the area when

1:07:31

one of these attacks happen. And then they also

1:07:34

have one of these attacks, I'll use the quotes

1:07:37

happen. And then they also have some

1:07:39

sort of a brief intercepted communication

1:07:42

in Russian where someone says

1:07:44

is the green light supposed to be flashing?

1:07:46

And should it stay on all night?

1:07:48

Now, again, this is very speculative,

1:07:52

Okay to connect

1:07:54

these pieces and say aha, that must be what's

1:07:57

happening. The evidence

1:07:59

is just not there to justify to

1:08:01

justify that conclusion, I'm trying to be a diplomatic

1:08:03

asponsible.

1:08:04

Okay, okay, the green light thing.

1:08:05

That could be anything.

1:08:06

That's something, you know, for those of you who are

1:08:08

Whoop gang, that's what I say when I plug

1:08:10

in my whoop charger because it's green and it shines

1:08:13

in the middle of the night.

1:08:14

I want to guess there's like a fair number

1:08:16

of Russian speakers in the country of Georgia

1:08:18

and Toblisi at a given moment. So,

1:08:21

you know, the idea intercepted

1:08:23

this call, they painted as again

1:08:26

like this kind of smoking gun when it really

1:08:28

really isn't. But to me,

1:08:31

perhaps the most revealing part

1:08:33

of the sixty minutes you

1:08:36

know segment on this expose

1:08:39

on this came at the very end where

1:08:41

one of the primary people that they're

1:08:43

relying on for this analysis,

1:08:46

they mentioned in passing that now

1:08:48

he's left the Pentagon and he

1:08:50

wants to get government contracts

1:08:53

to deal with Havana syndrome suffers,

1:08:55

so he has a direct monetary

1:08:58

incentive to you know,

1:09:00

spin this story and paint this picture,

1:09:02

et cetera. One of the other key

1:09:05

individuals that they interview as part of

1:09:07

this is a lawyer who's representing

1:09:10

a bunch of Havana syndrome quote

1:09:12

unquote sufferers. So you

1:09:14

also have, you know, a monetary and

1:09:16

personal incentive to paint this picture,

1:09:19

so you know, when you put the pieces together,

1:09:22

of what they actually were able to

1:09:24

produce here versus

1:09:26

you know, what we know and what the government

1:09:28

has even had to admit at this point.

1:09:31

And I don't think that they were excited to admit this, by

1:09:33

the way, because they seem very gung ho about the whole syndrome

1:09:35

situation. It doesn't

1:09:38

really add up.

1:09:40

No, it's certainly And there's also a hilarious

1:09:42

part of the interview where they attempt

1:09:45

to disguise a woman by just

1:09:47

putting her in a wig, hoping

1:09:49

that if she looks a little bit like Lady Gaga, nobody

1:09:52

will be able to guess who she is. So

1:09:54

if you're watching in particular, you're gonna want to see

1:09:56

this. Let's take a listen.

1:09:57

One of them is Carrie. We're discuss

1:10:00

and not using her last name because she's

1:10:02

still an FBI agent working in

1:10:04

counterintelligence. She says

1:10:07

in twenty twenty one she was home in Florida

1:10:09

when she was hit by a crippling force

1:10:12

and bam, and.

1:10:12

So in my right ear, it was like a

1:10:15

dentist drilling on steroids,

1:10:17

that feeling when.

1:10:19

It gets too close to your eardron.

1:10:21

It's like that, you know, times ten.

1:10:23

It was like a high pitch metallic drilling noise,

1:10:25

and it knocked me forward at like a

1:10:27

forty five degree angle this way.

1:10:28

As you can see, she's talking about some bizarre

1:10:31

symptoms. But frankly, just from watching

1:10:33

that Crystal, look, I'm not going to look into who she is close. You shouldn't

1:10:35

want her identity revealed.

1:10:37

But it's like, how is that possibly going to shield

1:10:39

you from any public scrutiny?

1:10:42

Just ridiculous. You're actually trying to protect

1:10:44

somebody's protect somebody's

1:10:46

actual, you know, their identity.

1:10:48

Let's also go and put this up there on the screen. As we mentioned,

1:10:51

the intelligence community itself says that this

1:10:53

is vake. They say that Havana syndrome

1:10:55

was not caused by an energy weapon or

1:10:58

a foreign adversary according to them, and

1:11:00

the basic sixty minutes theory

1:11:03

is that all of this is being covered up to avoid

1:11:05

some sort of war with Russia or

1:11:07

some sort of accusation. Just think

1:11:09

about this very clearly. Our government

1:11:11

has every incentive in the world to

1:11:13

whip up conspiracy theories about Russia

1:11:16

to keep the American population against

1:11:19

them so that we can continue to buy

1:11:21

into their Ukraine funding hoax,

1:11:23

which they are dramatically unpopular

1:11:25

and underwater with. There's no reason

1:11:27

that they would want to cover this up. If

1:11:30

it was even two percent true, they would

1:11:32

say it was true. Think about the other crap

1:11:34

that they've pushed on us, the Russian bounty story

1:11:37

in Afghanistan. I mean, I can

1:11:39

go on forever, but for some reason,

1:11:41

this one in particular. Yeah,

1:11:44

that one they're covering up. We're not even talking about

1:11:46

debts, you know, we're talking about alleged attacks.

1:11:48

Another very clear sign about who are the

1:11:50

people who are very I guess rejoicing

1:11:52

around this. Here you have John Bolton saying

1:11:55

that it's real and that we need to get very serious about it.

1:11:57

Let's take a listen.

1:11:58

When I was a National security by I

1:12:00

was briefed on this.

1:12:01

I was very concerned about it.

1:12:03

I did then and do now think that

1:12:05

there's very likely some

1:12:08

hostile adversary behavior

1:12:10

here, whether it's Russia, China, maybe somebody

1:12:12

else, more than likely Russia. I

1:12:15

don't think the government, frankly,

1:12:17

when I was there took it seriously enough. I

1:12:19

don't think they've taken it seriously enough since

1:12:22

then. I commend CBS for going

1:12:24

after it. I think you should continue to go

1:12:26

after it too, because the danger

1:12:28

that the Russians or any adversary could

1:12:31

actually perfect this kind of weapon,

1:12:33

the damage it could do to our troops,

1:12:36

to high level government officials in a time

1:12:38

of crisis is very very

1:12:40

concerning, and I just think people

1:12:42

swept.

1:12:43

It aside too quickly.

1:12:44

Some of the people who were affected actually

1:12:46

were National Security Council staff when

1:12:48

I was there, and the idea that

1:12:50

these people had some kind of psychosomatic

1:12:53

experience was not credible to me. But

1:12:55

we know that the Russians have used directed energy

1:12:57

efforts against our embassy in Moscow

1:13:00

out in years past. The

1:13:03

speculation this time on sixty

1:13:05

minutes was it was acoustical devices.

1:13:08

I think directored energy is probably

1:13:10

more likely.

1:13:11

So there you go, Crystal, If directed energy

1:13:14

this is the likely reason, it's definitely the Russians.

1:13:16

Anytime I see something like this, you just have

1:13:19

to be deeply skeptical, And I think the broader

1:13:21

point to all of this why do we even care

1:13:23

is because certain siops that

1:13:25

the media deems credible of,

1:13:28

you know, airing here basically with very

1:13:30

little shreds of evidence again on sixty minutes,

1:13:32

our premier television investigative

1:13:35

review program for some reason. As long

1:13:37

as it's Russia, then you know, we can roll

1:13:39

it out there. We can even allege that the US government,

1:13:41

which has cooked up the most insane Russian

1:13:43

conspiracies of the last seven years, that they

1:13:46

itself are in on some grand Russian conspiracy.

1:13:48

Yeah, it doesn't pass the smell test.

1:13:50

Joe Biden called Vladimir Putin a war

1:13:52

criminals administration's official positions

1:13:54

that they're committing genocide in Ukraine,

1:13:56

thank you, but he's going

1:13:58

to be afraid to say that are using some sort

1:14:00

of directed energy or acoustic weapon or

1:14:03

whatever against our diplomats. It just doesn't

1:14:05

really make sense. And as I said, I

1:14:07

genuinely listen to this thing with an open mind.

1:14:09

Okay, I am perfectly willing

1:14:12

to be wrong, and as someone who

1:14:14

you know, I trust in respect took it

1:14:16

seriously and was like, really give it a genuine

1:14:19

listen. But the scraps

1:14:21

of quote unquote evidence that they offered

1:14:23

just do not justify this

1:14:26

really extraordinary conclusion. And it

1:14:28

is an extraordinary conclusion. I mean, as

1:14:30

you said, it sounds like something out of a spy novel. So

1:14:32

if you're going to assert something that

1:14:35

is really extraordinary and

1:14:37

also potentially, you know, leads to

1:14:39

escalation and provocation and all of these

1:14:42

sorts of things, you may have some

1:14:44

real stuff to back it up.

1:14:46

And they definitely did not in

1:14:48

this instance.

1:14:48

And also they relied on the credibility

1:14:50

of a number of people who have direct financial

1:14:53

interests or personal interests

1:14:56

in Havana syndrome being real and

1:14:58

being you know, from a foreign advert National

1:15:01

Institutes of Health. In addition to that Intel

1:15:04

assessment that said, you know, we really don't think that

1:15:06

this came from a foreign adversary, there were

1:15:08

new studies that were just conducted by National

1:15:10

Institutes of Health NIH which failed to

1:15:12

find any evidence of brain injury

1:15:14

in scans or blood markers of the diplomats

1:15:17

and spies who said they suffered symptoms of Heavna

1:15:19

syndrome.

1:15:20

Now, this did contrast with.

1:15:22

There was a previous, earlier study done

1:15:24

by University of Pennsylvania that did claim

1:15:26

to find some differences in the

1:15:28

brain scans. What

1:15:30

NIH says is that they were able to

1:15:32

do a more comprehensive study,

1:15:35

both in terms of the brain scans that they had,

1:15:37

but also in terms of the control group

1:15:39

more closely matched the demographic

1:15:41

characteristics of the people who were the

1:15:43

sufferers. So they felt more strongly about their

1:15:45

conclusions. So, you know, the very latest

1:15:48

studies from the NIH, for

1:15:50

what it's worth, say we don't actually even

1:15:52

see signs of injury in these individuals.

1:15:55

I don't want to say like that they didn't suffer

1:15:57

something real, because

1:16:00

even if it is stress

1:16:02

induced psychosomatic, that

1:16:04

can still be experienced as a very

1:16:08

real and potentially debilitating

1:16:11

event. So this is not to

1:16:13

dismiss them or say they're lying and they

1:16:15

didn't really suffer anything whatsoever,

1:16:17

but to put all these instances together

1:16:20

and to allege one culprit and

1:16:22

to craft this narrative

1:16:24

which really, you know, beggars belief

1:16:27

is just it's

1:16:29

just a way too many.

1:16:30

Bridges, too far, multiple bridges too

1:16:33

far.

1:16:33

You are very you're a lot more charitable than

1:16:35

I am. Let's just say that. And yeah,

1:16:37

I guess look you if you have suffered from

1:16:39

havana syndrome, and you can prove it.

1:16:42

You're welcome on the show anytime. You know, we'll

1:16:44

talk to you for sure. All

1:16:47

right, let's move on to the next part. This was brought

1:16:50

about by a side at the end of our last

1:16:52

year.

1:16:52

He yeah, we weren't really well to cover this.

1:16:54

We're not planning it to cover it at all. No. Usually,

1:16:57

Richard Dawkins, who some of you may know,

1:16:59

probably when most famous atheists in

1:17:01

the entire world, gave a very interesting

1:17:03

interview to the LBC, the

1:17:06

London Broadcasting Corporation, which

1:17:08

has caused a lot of discussion about

1:17:11

atheism, cultural Christianity,

1:17:14

Islamophobia.

1:17:15

More.

1:17:15

Let's take a listen to what mister Dawkins had

1:17:17

to say.

1:17:18

Church attendance is plummeting.

1:17:20

But the building the erection of mosques

1:17:22

across Europe, I think six thousand are

1:17:25

under construction, and there are many more, I

1:17:27

mean are being planned. So do

1:17:29

you think you regard

1:17:31

that as a problem. Do you think that matters?

1:17:35

Yes?

1:17:35

I do, really, I mean I might

1:17:40

choose my words carefully. I mean, if

1:17:42

I had to choose between Christianity and Islam,

1:17:45

I choose Christianity every single time.

1:17:47

I mean, it seems to me to be a fundamentally

1:17:50

decent religion in

1:17:52

a way that I think Islam is not.

1:17:55

I think you're going to have to explain why

1:17:57

you say that, Professor Dawkins. Why

1:17:59

is Islam profundtion? Well,

1:18:01

the way fundamentally not decent

1:18:04

like Christianity.

1:18:05

Yes, I mean the way women

1:18:07

refuted. I mean Christianity is not great about that.

1:18:10

He's had its problem as female

1:18:13

becas and female bishops and things. But

1:18:15

there's an active hostility to women which

1:18:17

is promoted I think by the holy

1:18:19

books of Islam.

1:18:21

I'm not talking about individual Muslims, who

1:18:23

of course are quite quite different,

1:18:26

but the doctrines of Islam, the Hadith

1:18:28

and and the Quran. It's fundamentally

1:18:31

hostile to women, hostile to gaze.

1:18:35

And I

1:18:38

find that I

1:18:41

like to live in a culturally Christian country,

1:18:43

although I do not believe a single

1:18:46

word of the Christian faith.

1:18:48

Okay, So that last part that is what sit

1:18:50

the Internet on fire. What was interesting is

1:18:52

that because we live in parallel universes.

1:18:55

On my timeline, I follow

1:18:58

this is on Twitter. Okay, it's just very reveal

1:19:00

my own bias. I follow a lot

1:19:02

of right wing Christians in particular,

1:19:04

just to keep my tabs, like what exactly

1:19:07

is going on? And a lot of them were attacking

1:19:09

Dawkins. They're like, oh, he tore down

1:19:11

Christianity and he advocated for

1:19:14

secularism, and now he's coming back

1:19:16

and calling himself a cultural Christian. And I'll just

1:19:18

say this, like I followed Richard Dawkins for a long time,

1:19:21

was personal inspiration. I had my cringe

1:19:23

atheist phase like anybody else. He was a young man

1:19:25

on YouTube, had copies of The

1:19:27

God Delusion and gave him out to people.

1:19:30

Read every book that the man has literally ever

1:19:32

written. At least they stopped ten years ago. I don't know

1:19:34

if he's written.

1:19:35

Anything saying science books two before God. Yeah, they were

1:19:37

great, phenomenal.

1:19:37

Yeah, I mean it's I think

1:19:40

it's controversial. He I think he created

1:19:42

the word mimetic, like the word meme,

1:19:44

which eventually became meme online.

1:19:46

That's again controversial in terms of

1:19:48

the attribution. Yeah, the attribution

1:19:51

of the term. Let's return to this. The reason

1:19:53

I was annoyed by that is because having read

1:19:55

and listened to a lot of Dawkins, even attended

1:19:58

one of his lectures, we could put this up there here

1:20:00

on the screen, which I went back and found is

1:20:03

he's been calling himself a cultural Christian here

1:20:05

for quite a long time. And why I

1:20:07

was annoyed in terms of the Christian

1:20:09

reaction to Dawkins is that

1:20:12

Dawkins has always said that he

1:20:14

ascribes, as he points out here, a

1:20:16

celebration of Judeo Christian

1:20:19

type values, but not

1:20:21

in the actual text of the Bible

1:20:24

and of the religion of Christianity himself.

1:20:26

Egalitarianism, equality,

1:20:29

just the general like the general

1:20:31

respect of English common

1:20:33

law, which of course, you know, even atheists

1:20:36

and secular people like me can acknowledge

1:20:38

comes from a Christian tradition. That's

1:20:40

what he meant by the term. So

1:20:43

anyway, for me, watching a lot of the

1:20:45

Christian right attack Dawkins

1:20:47

as somehow being hypocritical,

1:20:50

I mean, frankly, he's been saying stuff

1:20:52

like this for twenty somethings, probably before

1:20:54

I was even born, but at least in my

1:20:57

adult lifetime, nothing that he said was

1:20:59

new anyway, I'm curious.

1:21:00

So the reaction from the left, I mean, there was

1:21:02

a little bit of commentary on the cultural

1:21:05

Christian thing, because

1:21:07

it I mean, I understand why people are like your whole

1:21:10

thing is being an atheist. But now you're like, well,

1:21:12

no, actually this is my tribe. There is

1:21:14

something about that. They're like all right, dude,

1:21:16

like you're just making a full right turn now.

1:21:18

But the part that I saw more reaction to,

1:21:21

and which I personally reacted more to, were

1:21:23

the comments about Islam, which again

1:21:26

are actually not new.

1:21:28

They're not new at all from Dawkins.

1:21:29

Who has been smearing Islam

1:21:32

and by extension, all followers of

1:21:34

that faith for quite a while. And

1:21:37

you know, I personally think it's outrageous

1:21:39

and actually, to me, if you're a

1:21:41

serious intellectual and you know

1:21:43

that you're you consider yourself

1:21:46

a cultural Christian whatever, that actually means

1:21:49

you should interrogate your

1:21:51

own potential bias towards

1:21:54

this ecosystem that you grew up

1:21:56

in and the you know, belief system that has

1:21:58

been sort of like humanized and made

1:22:00

normal to you. Because

1:22:02

he clearly has a huge blind

1:22:05

spot. The problem is not any

1:22:07

particular faith. The problem

1:22:10

is extremist in any

1:22:12

faith. I think we can look throughout history

1:22:14

and see that, I mean Christianity. It was used to justify

1:22:17

slavery, it was used to justify

1:22:19

Jim Crow. Right, do I think those

1:22:21

are true and faithful readings of Christianity.

1:22:24

No, But I mean I'm also not a religious

1:22:26

believer at all, so I'm not really the person to determine

1:22:28

that, right. But even if you look just

1:22:30

right now, what's unfolding in

1:22:33

Gods, which I think is particularly why there was,

1:22:35

you know, a heightened sensitivity

1:22:37

to the smearing of Islam in this

1:22:39

context, is you have Muslims

1:22:42

who committed a terror attack on October

1:22:45

seventh, committed atrocities, no doubt about

1:22:47

that.

1:22:47

You have a response from.

1:22:48

A Jewish state, and

1:22:51

a lot of you know, led by Jewish extremists

1:22:53

who claimed to be doing this in the name of you

1:22:56

know, basically their religion, and who have

1:22:58

used and perverted and tortured that

1:23:01

religious doctrine to justify a

1:23:03

genocide. And then if you go back one

1:23:05

step further, well, why do we have the creation

1:23:08

of these really? Straight to start with, it's

1:23:11

because of the Holocaust, and before that, because

1:23:13

of pagrums throughout Europe, which

1:23:15

were by and large committed by Christians.

1:23:18

So to think that any religious

1:23:21

faith has a monopoly on truth

1:23:23

and justice, or to think that any religious

1:23:25

faith has a monopoly on violence

1:23:28

and hatred, is just I think incredibly

1:23:31

ahistorical and inaccurate.

1:23:33

So, you know, a lot of what I

1:23:36

saw in my timeline, which is again,

1:23:38

you know, I think to give us some credit. Part

1:23:40

of what makes the show interesting is that

1:23:42

we, you know, have to expose each other

1:23:44

to these different conversations that are happening in different

1:23:47

corners of the world, and the Internet was

1:23:49

a lot of like, actually, thank you Richard

1:23:51

Dowkins for confirming what we suspected about

1:23:53

your actually ideological worldview based

1:23:55

on your previous comments, and by extension,

1:23:58

what others who were sort of in

1:24:00

this fervent new atheist camp

1:24:02

were really about at the time.

1:24:04

See this is where look, I guess it's time to piss

1:24:06

off some of the Palestinian viewers here. I

1:24:09

gotta say. What I think Dawkins

1:24:11

is trying to talk about is that if we look

1:24:13

at majority Islamic countries

1:24:15

and particularly ones ruled by

1:24:18

Islamic deocracy, I mean, look, I've lived under

1:24:20

Islamic deocracy in the state of Qatar. I

1:24:22

wouldn't recommend it. I don't think it's a good way of

1:24:24

living. Some of that is rooted in the faith

1:24:26

of Islam. How do I think that individual Muslims,

1:24:28

as Dawkins was saying, are bad. No, absolutely,

1:24:31

I don't believe that in for any individual

1:24:33

person. I do believe that the

1:24:35

application of said theocratic

1:24:38

like law on people is

1:24:40

very counter to a lot of the things that we value

1:24:43

here in the West, So for example, egalitarianism,

1:24:46

equality, the treatment of women. I mean personally,

1:24:48

I'm repulsed by it. Like whenever I'm in the

1:24:51

Middle East and I see for women shrouded

1:24:53

in a burka walking ten paces

1:24:56

behind their husband, I think it's disgusting. I know that

1:24:58

they have no rights. In India, for example,

1:25:00

where my family's from. This has been a huge tension

1:25:02

where India has effectively an

1:25:04

English common law system. But then you have two

1:25:07

hundred million or some Muslims who want

1:25:09

to or at least some want to live

1:25:12

with their ability. This was a huge controversy about

1:25:14

the ability to divorce their wives by saying that

1:25:16

they divorced them as that required

1:25:18

in Sharia law. And it comes

1:25:20

into major tension because then they're saying

1:25:22

that it's discrimination if you don't allow that.

1:25:25

Whenever you're trying to have equal application

1:25:27

and protection of the law. So I'm not saying individual

1:25:30

Muslims are bad. I would never say that about anybody.

1:25:32

I think that extreme interpretations, or

1:25:35

I would more put it this way. I would never want to live

1:25:37

under Christian theocracy. Got a taste

1:25:39

of it growing up in college station. I

1:25:41

definitely wouldn't want to live in Muslim

1:25:44

theocracy. Got a taste of that as well. And

1:25:47

I in general, you know, like and

1:25:49

respect places places like Thailand, I

1:25:52

think, India, to some extent, Japan

1:25:54

and others which have non Western interpretations

1:25:56

and or worldviews in their

1:25:58

governance that when you combined with English

1:26:01

common law and some Judeo Christian values

1:26:04

and influence, you come to more

1:26:06

of an equal application and understanding of

1:26:08

the laws.

1:26:09

Right.

1:26:09

That's where I will defend him a little bit.

1:26:10

Okay, but what you're saying is different than

1:26:12

what he said because he so secularism.

1:26:16

As you're laying out the you know, ideal

1:26:19

of the American model of you

1:26:21

know, freedom of religion and we're

1:26:23

not going.

1:26:23

To have a theocracy.

1:26:25

That very clearly to me is the

1:26:27

way to go, because yeah, I mean, if

1:26:29

we were ruled by the

1:26:32

UH and we had an actual Christian theocracy

1:26:35

with you know, the minority of real

1:26:37

Christian fundamentalists in charge,

1:26:40

how do.

1:26:41

They feel about gay people?

1:26:42

Right?

1:26:42

What would that life look like for them? How do they feel

1:26:44

about women and women's rights? What would life

1:26:46

look like for women? Here we can see with

1:26:49

you know, we had a conversation yesterday about ultra Orthodox

1:26:51

Jews within Israel, and you

1:26:54

know, Israel is moving more and more to

1:26:56

being this overt pretty extreme

1:26:58

religious theocrime government. That's

1:27:00

a real divide that is unfolding right now

1:27:03

in real time in Israel. I wouldn't

1:27:05

want to live under that either, And you're absolutely

1:27:07

right, I don't want to live under a

1:27:09

Muslim theocracy either. But

1:27:11

to you know, point

1:27:14

to this one faith and

1:27:16

say, oh, this is the bad one and Christianity

1:27:18

is the good one. I just like I said, I think

1:27:21

if you take any even take

1:27:23

your religion out of it, if you take any

1:27:25

fervently held ideological

1:27:28

belief system, someone

1:27:30

is going to pervert it to do horrific

1:27:33

things. We've seen this throughout history. But

1:27:35

religion is a particularly potent

1:27:38

one. And perhaps my view of this is part of why

1:27:40

originally I like Twkins, and you know, I

1:27:42

like the way that he laid out these arguments. Religion

1:27:45

is so potent because the minute

1:27:47

that you see Okay, number one, these

1:27:49

people who share my belief these are the tribe,

1:27:52

These are the people who really count, really matter, and

1:27:54

God is on our side. The

1:27:57

things that can be used to justify

1:27:59

are horrifying. And you know,

1:28:01

I keep bringing up the example of Israel Gaza

1:28:03

because obviously this is you know, top of mind for me

1:28:05

and many people around the world right now. But just

1:28:08

think about you have these settlers

1:28:11

in the West Bank who

1:28:13

truly believe that the

1:28:16

righteous and holy thing to do is

1:28:19

to steal the land of Palestinians,

1:28:22

potentially by force and if necessary,

1:28:25

murder them. They believe that they

1:28:27

are righteously doing God's will

1:28:30

when they do. Just listen to that, Daniella Weiss,

1:28:32

that settler activists. Sure she thinks

1:28:34

she is righteous and absolutely

1:28:37

moral. Again, no

1:28:39

one faith has a monopoly on

1:28:42

being twisted and perverted to

1:28:44

justify things that in any other

1:28:46

sort of moral context you could

1:28:49

see clearly that this is wrong,

1:28:51

period, end of story.

1:28:53

So yeah, that's my problem

1:28:55

with you.

1:28:55

The problem is that what he's really referring to,

1:28:57

and this is true if we look at the data, is that most

1:29:00

Muslims are far more observant at

1:29:02

least and also in a Western context when

1:29:04

we're talking about the mixing, especially

1:29:06

in Europe, than they are let's say, secular

1:29:09

Christians in the West. And so when

1:29:11

you have fundamentalists as Islam brush

1:29:14

up against Western democratic values,

1:29:16

it leads to a lot of tension. I totally

1:29:18

agree in terms of extremist interpretations

1:29:21

of all of that. But it is a legitimate

1:29:23

question as to wire should this be tolerable

1:29:26

and acceptable? But I have a Western style

1:29:28

democracy.

1:29:29

Even that I want to dig into a little bit because

1:29:32

why is it that you have

1:29:36

such you know, fervently held beliefs,

1:29:39

Because part of that story is

1:29:42

us meddling in the region that went

1:29:44

against any sort of you know, secular

1:29:46

nationalism, had any sort of tie into

1:29:49

the Soviet Union or communism or

1:29:51

socialism we crushed. I mean, how

1:29:54

many fundamentalists Islamic

1:29:56

movements did we back inside

1:29:58

with.

1:29:58

Throughout the region.

1:30:00

But of course, think about how we prop up the Saudi

1:30:02

regime. I mean, so much of what is

1:30:05

unfolding in the Middle East right now is a result

1:30:07

of you know, our meddling and our

1:30:09

policy over years and years and years.

1:30:12

So I think to you know, remove us from the situation.

1:30:15

That's where this gets to me, and I'm

1:30:17

not putting this on you, but you know, I listen

1:30:19

to comments from Sam Harris or J. Dawkins and others.

1:30:22

It gets to this place of basically insinuating,

1:30:24

if not outright saying.

1:30:26

Well, these people are just barbarians. They're

1:30:28

just uncivilized.

1:30:30

That's part of the justification that's being

1:30:32

used right now to justify this genocide

1:30:34

of Palestinians that's unfolding in Gaza.

1:30:37

Netnyahu's saying we are the children of

1:30:39

the light and they are the Sun's children of the

1:30:41

darkness. This is a war for civilization,

1:30:43

et cetera. It ends up resulting

1:30:46

in this argument that they are just inherently

1:30:48

inferior barbaric people, and

1:30:50

I think that is absolutely repulsible.

1:30:52

I don't support that, but I don't think it's America's fault that

1:30:54

Saudi Arabians cut people's head off in the street.

1:30:57

I mean, that's their regime. That's not our I mean,

1:30:59

if anything, actually it's their own people that want

1:31:01

something like that. I don't want to live there, and I definitely don't

1:31:03

want any of that that's over here. And

1:31:05

look, it's not America's fault that Muslims

1:31:08

in India have, for example, have become way

1:31:10

more observant as a kind of basically

1:31:12

as you've had Hindu nationalism

1:31:15

on the rise. These are natural, you know, inherent

1:31:17

tensions when they run up against each

1:31:20

other for real. Frankly, it's

1:31:22

just a battle of values. It's like, what do we actually

1:31:24

want? What do we have evilack

1:31:26

application of the law? Should we not like should

1:31:28

we allow people to marry three people because their religion

1:31:30

says though I think no, but they say yes. I

1:31:33

mean, it's one of those where I don't think that's

1:31:35

on America. And if you look, why does

1:31:37

Saudi have the regime they have? Okay, but why does

1:31:39

the run how the regime they have?

1:31:40

Why does the Taliban have power in Afghanistan?

1:31:43

We have nothing to do with that.

1:31:44

Nothing.

1:31:45

We have just allowed.

1:31:46

Free and fair elections and self determination

1:31:48

throughout the region.

1:31:49

Come on, if they had free and fair elections, I guarantee

1:31:51

you as the lists would still win in the entire And by the way,

1:31:53

I don't care if they want to be Muslim and they want

1:31:55

to rule under theocratic rule, be my guest.

1:31:58

I'm talking about how we govern ourselves. I

1:32:00

don't give a shit what they do over there at the end of the day.

1:32:02

But really what it is is that what I think Dawkins

1:32:04

is talking about, and what is a fair conversation is

1:32:07

about here what we tolerate,

1:32:09

what we think is acceptable. And I

1:32:11

would stand what I think what Dawkins is trying

1:32:13

to say. For a Judeo Christian influence,

1:32:16

English common law egalitarianism,

1:32:18

which is what I believe in, that is absolutely

1:32:21

counter to Christian theocracy.

1:32:24

Luckily that is mostly on the decline

1:32:26

here in this country. Luckily

1:32:28

we don't have the same Jewish level.

1:32:31

I guess here in the US in terms of Orthodox

1:32:33

Judaism is taking over the

1:32:35

entire culture. But that is not necessarily

1:32:38

the case of majority Muslim

1:32:40

countries that are all across the world,

1:32:42

Indonesia, for example,

1:32:44

Malaysia, any of these places, there's

1:32:47

high levels of diversity and others,

1:32:49

but there are what I think are troubling

1:32:51

ways that they do. He's right, I mean, which

1:32:53

they treat women or in terms of how

1:32:55

they have different views of what homosexuality

1:32:58

or any of this. I think it's abhorn

1:33:01

and I think it's bad WHI and I don't think

1:33:03

we should have it here.

1:33:04

Doesn't just come from Islam.

1:33:06

I mean again, if you look at what

1:33:09

Christians, like evangelical

1:33:11

fundamentalists, Christians believe, it

1:33:14

would not be good life for gay people

1:33:16

to live under that sort of regime. Which

1:33:18

is why to me, you're

1:33:21

you're wanting to see give Dawkins the most.

1:33:23

Charitable interpretation, and that's not fair.

1:33:25

I like it.

1:33:25

That's fine, that's fair, you know, to give

1:33:27

him the best faith reading. But you're also

1:33:30

reading into his comments a lot of things that he didn't

1:33:32

say, because he didn't talk about, you know, a secularism

1:33:35

and universalism, he didn't talk about

1:33:37

common law or any of these things.

1:33:38

Well, he's just saying he said.

1:33:41

Very blatantly that you know, new

1:33:43

mass are a problem, but new churches aren't.

1:33:45

He said that Christianity is a fundamentally

1:33:47

decent religion and Islam is not. I

1:33:49

think that is total bullshit. I

1:33:52

think it's xenophobic. I think it's

1:33:54

islamophobic. I think that it is you

1:33:56

know, completely at odds with

1:33:58

the ideas. But really that the

1:34:01

best thing is to have actual universal

1:34:04

values, not the sort of like moral

1:34:06

equivalents. Universal values

1:34:08

and secularism where yes, people's

1:34:11

religions are respected and they have

1:34:13

a right and you know, freedom to religion, but

1:34:15

also within the confines of respecting

1:34:18

and acknowledging basic human rights.

1:34:21

And you know, as I.

1:34:22

Said before, any religion taken

1:34:25

to an extreme place, yes, and

1:34:27

in ugliness can end. In

1:34:29

ugliness can be easily perverted.

1:34:32

And you know, to give any one

1:34:34

of these fates the past for that, I think is I

1:34:37

just.

1:34:37

Think is wrong.

1:34:37

What I'm drawing from is just his look.

1:34:40

Nobody can express themselves properly in a two and a half

1:34:42

minute clip from LBC. I'm drawing

1:34:44

from his books what he has put out

1:34:46

there in longer interpretations. In

1:34:49

general, if you are going to see atheists

1:34:51

and others people who talk and debate

1:34:53

some of these subjects, they're going to bring up a lot of

1:34:55

what I am now. I mean a lot of Christians

1:34:57

would be very upset. They would say, is that you're

1:35:00

you owe galitarianism, you know,

1:35:02

to Judaeo Christianity, And I would say, that's bullshit.

1:35:04

You can look at countries like India or

1:35:06

Japan or Korea anywhere

1:35:09

else that don't have majority Christian

1:35:11

populations. A Thailand actually is a country

1:35:13

that I truly love deeply. Buddhist

1:35:15

culture, lots of egalitarianism, no

1:35:18

Christian influence, so I can give the counter

1:35:20

two. I'm only bringing in what I

1:35:22

think he is best trying to say, and I'm giving

1:35:24

him charity because I also think that he's done a lot

1:35:26

of good in this world. So it opened up a lot of

1:35:28