It Could Happen Here Weekly 231

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
you know this is a compilation episode, So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
you can make your own decisions.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Hi, everyone, it's me James. I just wanted to do
very quick introduction to the episode. We have split it
into two parts because it went longer than we expected,
so you hear the first part to date, and you
will hear the second part tomorrow.

Speaker 4 (00:40):
Welcome everyone to It's going to happen here. My name
is Mick, and I'm here with the lovely James Stouts
and the lovely Molly Conger. How are you guys doing.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
I'm great, so excited. I just love violive France. I
love all things French. I've had such great times in France.
I just particularly lovely French identitarism. So I'm excited.

Speaker 4 (01:01):
You love French, No, it's love it with like like French.

Speaker 5 (01:06):
James out huge, I just love.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
Like like the the idea like of the themong nations,
like France has chosen one. It's just like, I'm not
particularly anti French, but it is quite funny to me.

Speaker 6 (01:20):
James travels to France every year to go to what
do they still have generation identity?

Speaker 4 (01:25):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:25):
Every and I uh and every year they say, oh, well,
your accent is not correct. You've not used vo in
the in the requisite time. Therefore you are no longer
welcome here. I went to France once with some Quebec
quir friends. This is a funny, like low key identity story.
I've already derailed this.

Speaker 4 (01:44):
Don't worry, don't worry.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
I went with two Quebec quar friends and we like
were doing something official and I did it, conducted my
thing in French.

Speaker 4 (01:52):
It was fine.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
I speak French and this wasn't an issue for me.
And then they went up at this woman just when
you don't speak French, sir, and then begin and addressing
them in English because she was unwilling to accept the
coco quebecqua in France.

Speaker 5 (02:05):
They're so mean.

Speaker 6 (02:06):
Yeah, well, I for one am excited to hear about
I don't know a lot about this guy.

Speaker 4 (02:12):
No, he's a weird little guy, my favorite kind of guy. Yeah, exactly, notably,
which is why I asked you. I'm also just recovering
from like an English person here saying that they love France.
But that must be like a historically first time that
that happen.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
Good place to race bikes, It's a good place to
if you like to hang out in the mountains and
race bikes. Pretty much France, Spain. Maybe Italy is where
it's at.

Speaker 6 (02:37):
I visited once and I didn't I don't know. People
are always saying that you are so cruel to Americans.
That wasn't my experience, but most people there long enough.
Yeah it's and you know, I'll always treasure the week
that I spent in Paris because it is the only
reason I didn't get deported from Germany for visa violations.

Speaker 4 (02:57):
Okay, that that is a story I actually want to hear.
I've ever done recording. So but yeah, we're talking about
French identitarianism, French Nazis. But before you start, James, I
wanted to ask you a very important question. First, you
have a podcasting honorary degree, a PhD. I've heard that's right.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
Yeah, me and Joe Rogan both.

Speaker 4 (03:24):
Yeah, exactly, And I just must ask, how do you
deal with the recurring trauma of having to hear your
own voice on recording?

Speaker 3 (03:32):
I play it at one point five time speed, so
it doesn't sound like me.

Speaker 4 (03:36):
I was very curious about that. I've also had a
fair shoff having to hear my own voice, and it
just doesn't get any easier. No.

Speaker 6 (03:42):
I thought I would struggle with it because I hate
the sound of my own voice in casual context, but
like listening to my own podcast.

Speaker 5 (03:50):
I guess because I talk like this on my podcast
and it sounds a little different, right, So it's.

Speaker 4 (03:55):
Like, oh, you go into podcast mode.

Speaker 5 (03:57):
Yeah, yeah, I have observe at Terry gross thing cooking.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
Okay, okay, yeah, I'll try that.

Speaker 4 (04:03):
I'll do my Molly voice next time. Well, see that
this is the kind of information that I need to
cope with.

Speaker 5 (04:10):
Now you have to form an alter ego, oh.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
Like a into your podcast self a podcast the Doctor
Checkle and mister Hyde exactly. Yeah, podcasting is just the
id of every man. Every every white guy in the
world has a podcasting id.

Speaker 4 (04:26):
This is uh. Freud would have loved this era.

Speaker 3 (04:29):
He wouldn't you don't have to psychoanalyze anyone anymore because
they just say shit.

Speaker 5 (04:33):
Just say it. They'll just say it.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
They put it on through social like it's not fun anymore.
He'd be bored.

Speaker 4 (04:38):
Well, that would be counteracted by like the higher quality
cocaine that we have right now compared to his era.
You would also be prosecuted for feeding his children cocaine.
So you know, you win some of you lose some.
You never know.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
Jeffrey Epteen got away with a lot of shit, Like
maybe maybe Freud could have joined the club.

Speaker 4 (04:56):
That's a horrifying mix of worlds.

Speaker 5 (04:59):
That's else about this French Nazis today.

Speaker 4 (05:02):
Oh okay, okay, I'm just I'm starting with a bit
of an introduction because this story actually happens in my
hometown of Utrecht. Oh no, shit, Yeah. Somewhere midway through February,
a message started to circulate in far right circles in
the Netherlands. It originated from a group called Defend Netherlands,
who made a public call to visit the AKU on

(05:24):
the night of Thursday twenty sixth to remember Quentin killed
in a cowardly manner by Antifa in Lyon. Earlier that
month small side notes. All these groups are so proud
of the Netherlands but never used Dutch language, and it's huh,
it's my personal pet peeve. Did you any English? Yeah,
they call themsel like defend Netherlands.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
Oh, it's called defend it's not translated. It's it's not translated.

Speaker 6 (05:49):
That's so interesting I find with European Nazi groups used
primarily English.

Speaker 5 (05:54):
It is because it is born American audience.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
Yeah, they're trying to communicate something.

Speaker 5 (05:58):
Because Americans only speaking yes, yeah, but.

Speaker 4 (06:01):
Anyway, that was the message that was circulated on Instagram
and telegram. The top of the in which that was
shared showed a Celtic cross, a symbol with a Christian
and Pagan origins but politically often used by white supremacists
and neo fascist groups. At the bottom is an Italian
slogan in orange letters at the national color of the Netherlands,

(06:24):
reading pertucti camarati caluti presente. The slogan originates from the
Italian fascist movements and means for our fallen comrades present,
signaling that the fallen comrades are present in spirit. I
can hear you all thinking, what the fuck has the
depth in France to do with the political community center

(06:44):
in the Netherlands, because that is what accuus. It's a
community center. There's concerts, there's a bar, sometimes there's fundraisers.
There's nothing openness going on there, but lots of more
left leaning people visit there, which is I think why
it was the original target. So but to understand how
it came to be that the death of a French

(07:05):
Nazi caused threats to a Doutch bar, we'll have to
explore the circumstances of the death of Quentin Drank Dan.

Speaker 5 (07:14):
You're asking the wrong crowd speaks French French.

Speaker 4 (07:18):
I guess it's der hunk like what d e I
A n k e.

Speaker 7 (07:22):
U e.

Speaker 4 (07:25):
Q Okay, I will I will butcher dispronunciation. It's okay
if it's a Nazzi, yeah, exactly, it's okay.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
If it's French that that Molly money's now going to
get kicked out of Paris never again, a law of money.

Speaker 4 (07:41):
Okay, I'll help you circumvent Dutch fees. Don't worry. But
Dan Dan was a far right activist who died on
February fourteenth after a violent altercation between the far right
and the far left. I also want to make like
a broad disclaimer, regardless of where anyone who listening to
this stance politically, I'm still going to say this was tragic.

(08:04):
Quentin was only twenty three, barely an adult, and as
much as his worldview and politics were vile, cruel, and
pretty much everything I'm personally opposed to, it was still
a son, a friend, and a family member. That that's
not coming home.

Speaker 6 (08:20):
I think it's always a tragic thing for someone to
get beaten to death in the street, or at least almost.

Speaker 4 (08:25):
Always, almost almost always.

Speaker 6 (08:27):
But you know, I'm not saying it's wrong to punch
a Nazi in the face, but I think beating a
young man to death is probably not necessary in this case, definitely.

Speaker 4 (08:37):
And I don't want to make it come off like
this is a celebration of some sorts, because it's not.
It's a tragedy. And as much as the world will
be a better place without his politics, I still think
it's within my own moral lines to say, like, fuck,
this shouldn't have happened.

Speaker 6 (08:55):
Yeah, And I think that's important to acknowledge upfront, because
I think me if I'm wrong, I don't know exactly
where the conversation is going. But from what I have
seen in you know, following a bunch of telegram chats
from Nazis all over the world. And I haven't engaged
really with this story. I don't know a lot about it,
but I see his name a lot. So his death
has become something that isn't really about him. It's not

(09:16):
about the tragic death of a young man, even to
the people who are celebrating his life and using his death.

Speaker 5 (09:22):
As a political tool.

Speaker 6 (09:23):
Right, It's like, it's not about the tragedy of his
death for the people who would have been his friends.

Speaker 4 (09:28):
No, and I think we could add some asterisks later
on with friends.

Speaker 5 (09:35):
Because he wasn't white, wasn't he he.

Speaker 4 (09:37):
Was half I think his mother was.

Speaker 6 (09:39):
Peruvian, half Peruvian exactly. Yeah, anyway, sorry, sorry to derail me.

Speaker 4 (09:44):
No, that's fine.

Speaker 6 (09:45):
His death is tragic, and I think that is a
much more generous read of the situation than many of
his comrades would actually have.

Speaker 4 (09:53):
Yeah. And also it's like, if I'm going to celebrate it,
then I'm no better than they would would be other
than being on the night different political aisle. So but
those two things can exist at the same time. But
to get back who was Quentin. He was a student
at Leon University. I've read contradictory reports on what it

(10:15):
exactly was that he studied, but it was in the
general area of mathematics and data science. Around his late teens,
he converted to Catholicism, and outside of his studies, he
was passionate about philosophy and ethics, specifically Saint Thomas Aquinas
and Saint Augustine. Those close to him who have spoken
with the media and describe him as more of a

(10:36):
bookworm than violent activist. Few quotes here to underline that
he was a normal young man who had reconnected with
his roots, who loved this country, his people, his civilization,
his religion. Quentin belongs to the legend. He is already
a hero and a barter.

Speaker 5 (10:53):
Well, yeah, these are the things said by the people
who loved him.

Speaker 4 (10:57):
This was a friend of his who spoke to the media.

Speaker 6 (11:00):
Yeah, I mean, you always hear this about I mean,
I don't know anything about Quentin specifically, but just because
someone close to him said he was he was a
nice boy. He was never violent. You heard that about
mass shooters. Yeah, yeah, great, ass.

Speaker 4 (11:12):
All exactly and apparently he was so devout in his
Catholicism that he managed to convince several family members to convert,
which led to him becoming his own father's godfather. Oh wow,
if you're.

Speaker 6 (11:25):
An adult convert, anyone can be your sponsor any other
baptized Catholic adult.

Speaker 5 (11:29):
Every he can confirmed Catholic adult.

Speaker 4 (11:31):
But it still feels weird to me. It's like, who's
going to give who presents in in that dynamic?

Speaker 3 (11:38):
Or yeah, what's the Christmas dynamic? Now does he do
you get? Do you get too?

Speaker 8 (11:43):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (11:43):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
Otherwise they've just shorted you right like someone else could it.
Any any adult Catholic could have done that, and his
dad will be cashing in now exactly.

Speaker 4 (11:51):
And now now it's just an equal trait, uh sort
of yeah, because they have to give each other presents.
The image painted of Quentin in the early day of
the coverage after his death overwhelmingly attempted to paint him
as like this devout person, as a curious bystander who
was either at the wrong place at the wrong time,
or ominously targeted by left wing militants. This narrative seemed

(12:14):
to dominate until his Twitter accounts were found. So you
already know where this is going.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
Yeah, I agreet.

Speaker 4 (12:22):
One of the first posts he bait was about his
support for the repeal of the Plevin and Guisa laws,
which are French laws that prohibit the Holocaust denial, among
other things. Subsequent posts throughout the following years were frequently antisemitic, racist, Islamophobic, fascist,
and homophobic. There will be some quotes later on. What

(12:44):
stood out to me most is that he seemed to
have like a very theoretical underpinning for his beliefs. This
is also a recurring theme that he seemed much more
ideologically constructed in his beliefs rather than your run of
the mill or your proud boy who are just like
straight dugs essentially.

Speaker 6 (13:04):
Yeah, I mean, the French really do excel at sort
of academic anti semitism. So he's really I mean, that's
he's getting back to his French identity.

Speaker 4 (13:11):
Right, exactly, Yeah, exactly. Unlike most French academics, half of
the things are completely impossible to understand. So another quote
from Quentin here, a fascist is someone who supports fascism,
someone who affirms the premacy of the state over the individual.
He wants the state to be a regenerative force, of

(13:31):
a moral order and to unite the nation. He opposes
liberalism and Marxism.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
So if he hadn't had it that last caveat, it
could be describing like a Stalinist, right.

Speaker 4 (13:43):
Like, yeah, I think that's why it was added. It
just copy pasted it.

Speaker 5 (13:48):
And also, by the way, those commies, yeah all right.

Speaker 4 (13:52):
Yes, the anti Tanky brigade has arrived. So sometimes he
would also correct others or less in formed right wing activists,
and he said, fascists and anti fascists literally have two
opposing visions of society. Political violence is not unique to fascists.
It is intrinsic to politics when you have a bit
of character, a.

Speaker 6 (14:13):
Bit of character that's oh well, well, yeah, that's I
mean ironic. I suppose, yeah, that's one or a rather
because it's not ironic.

Speaker 4 (14:21):
Yeah, there is a broken clock moment in there in that. Like,
political violence is not unique to fascists. But then but they.

Speaker 5 (14:30):
Tend to use it more.

Speaker 6 (14:30):
I would like, you know, I was racking my brain
thinking about you know, sort of street deaths of this
nature that that I'm familiar with in my work about
you know, white supremacist violence.

Speaker 5 (14:41):
They're usually the ones doing the killing.

Speaker 6 (14:44):
Sure there's political violence not unique to fascism, but they
sure do love it.

Speaker 4 (14:48):
If they have embraced it. Yeah, but when thinking about
the state and the how the state itself is like
a violence machine, absolutely sort of supports a status quo.
That's where I'm seeing the broken Clow moments and yeah, good,
did you notice a body that bit about you need
to have a bit of character because that also comes
back later On the twitters, he also commented about voting

(15:11):
for Fortress Europe, a fringe French political party led by
Pierre Marie Bono that made its campaign revolve around the
repeal of same sex marriage, reproductive rights and the creation
of a nationality codes and a new form of the
country's population census with additional religious and ethnic related criteria.
So like, already you know exactly what type of conservative

(15:35):
this guy was. There were also a lot of its
that sort of very racist terms against black and Muslim
people involving heart are words, including explicit calls from murder.
He used the acronym TND, which stands for Total Words Death.

Speaker 6 (15:53):
Oh yeah, so I can kind of guess where he
was hanging out online.

Speaker 3 (15:59):
Oh yeah, well, he's really in deep your Twitter should
have been enough of the red flag for that to
be honest. Yeah, it's true, it's probably you could get
that whole world view just from eggs dot comly everything.

Speaker 6 (16:09):
But if he's reposting like T and D type content
like this is this is not a guy who is
just reading Thomas Aquinas.

Speaker 4 (16:17):
No, no, you get what I'm saying. But no one
should read Thomas Aquinas to be honest. Neither Saint Augustine.
I've read both some and nonstick. What I do find
very interesting was a particular tweet in which he compared
African migration to German occupation, where he expressed his preference

(16:37):
for doughleco selethic blondes over blacks with large nostrils and
disproportionate lips. Oh that's great, and that that's a very
nice scrabble word for those of you that play. It's
a facilating choice of words. It comes from nineteenth century anthropology,
back when anthropology was the more problem than it is now.

(17:01):
It's like scientific racism pretty much. It comes from cephalometry,
the measuring of skulls and crania.

Speaker 3 (17:08):
Yes, I love a good caliper guy ology.

Speaker 4 (17:12):
No, this was like a branching off of phrenology. Okay,
I dove into this because it was like the is
he saying, yeah, But essentially it was used to make
different races, and of course the Aryan race was the
best one. Dooley's coocephalic refers specifically to the Aryan white race.
What he essentially said is that I prefer to be

(17:34):
occupied by white people. So great guy. And then this
is also how I come back to like how well
read he was in this garbage, because those are not
terms that you typically find when you're you're researching Nazis
or like the Nazi discourse. It almost is like an academic.

Speaker 5 (17:54):
Level of I mean, that's very French, very French.

Speaker 4 (17:59):
Well it it's reminded me of like creators of yours,
Molly Richard Spencer, who I think wants I'm not sure
if I can.

Speaker 5 (18:06):
Oh he does.

Speaker 6 (18:07):
He does love to let you know that he's read philosophy. Yeah, yeah,
he's not a common gutter racist. He's read papers, he's
read anthropology.

Speaker 4 (18:17):
Okay, well we can bleep the following word out because
I'm not too into like American discourse to know if
I can say this, But I think at some point
he referred to like people of African ancestry as ork taroons.
Oh yeah, that's an it's a.

Speaker 6 (18:31):
Very obscure, like old racial slur. Like it's something like
my great great grandparents would have.

Speaker 4 (18:37):
Said, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
Yeah, that's a fascinating Yeah, they love to flag so
they have read a book.

Speaker 6 (18:42):
The N word is for common racists, I know, old
fashioned racials.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
They genuinely do see themselves above in the hierarchy of
people who say that though like that.

Speaker 5 (18:51):
With well, James has half a PhD, right.

Speaker 6 (18:54):
PH he had, he had to drop out of this
PhD program to pursue a career in professional racism.

Speaker 4 (19:02):
I see.

Speaker 3 (19:04):
To be fair, many people in the PhD academia world
could have done that.

Speaker 5 (19:09):
Pursue a career in professional racism.

Speaker 3 (19:12):
Yeah, yes, yeah, the thing I had observed in the academy,
I believe that instantly. Yeah, you could argue in fact
that in some disciplines having a PhD is pursuing a
career in professional racism.

Speaker 4 (19:25):
Now I'm very curious as to what those disciplines are.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
In anthropology more than fifty years ago. Oh yes, oh,
de definitely it would be the obvious one.

Speaker 4 (19:36):
Yeah, it's as an anthropologist. Yeah, very much, very much true.
I could say it's it's less bad now nowadays that
it was fifty or years ago, but still there definitely
that there's still improvements to be made. And speaking of improvements,

(19:57):
you are the products and services that support this spot, guests,
And we're back. So we left off with Quentin being
on the twitters and saying Twitter things there, and what

(20:21):
you all gathered from this right now is that despite
what his friends and family and fellow fascists said, he
was definitely not as peaceful or as harmless as they
tried to portray him. In the wake of his death,
he was also getting increasingly involved with far right self
defense groups, among possible others, Active Club France.

Speaker 5 (20:44):
Oh that's a Nazi group.

Speaker 4 (20:46):
Oh you don't say, my poor philosophy student. With those people,
he had regular interactions with them, also with Odas Leon,
who provided combat trainings in local park. Their slogans are
nothing new or interesting. White people need to defend themselves

(21:06):
against migration and the left. What was interesting was one
of these training sessions was with toy knives, where they
had the practice like dueling against each other, and to
everyone's surprise, Quintin managed to defeat several people because he was.

Speaker 5 (21:22):
Very He's kind of a sprawny little guy.

Speaker 4 (21:24):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
He studied the way of the blade to blade.

Speaker 4 (21:29):
Yeah, specifically. I have not found a bench Shapiro Ninja
photo of him, but it would have been appropriate. At
this point, I'm now quoting a little bit from media
parts that also the ones who unearthed a lot of
his tweets. In the spring of twenty twenty five, Quintin
launched a small group in Bourgeois Jalieu. The ad sorry

(21:53):
to the French speakers.

Speaker 5 (21:54):
Sounded good to me.

Speaker 4 (21:55):
Yeah. On May tenth in Paris, he was photographed wearing
a partially covered by a neckwarmer and participated with a
small group into a neo Nazi march that was organized
annually in homage to a member of the Bitanist group,
le'vre Francois, who died in nineteen ninety four. Aloes Bourgeois

(22:17):
also paid tribute to Jean Marie la Perre one year
after the death of the founder of the National Front.
They now go by the Supplement and Nacional r N.
I suppose it's a rebranding exercise, so at this point
I think amongst ourselves we can agree that he was
not a particularly innocent philosopher or good hearted, saintly person.

(22:40):
It feels much more like he was someone who acted
on his beliefs, a neo.

Speaker 6 (22:44):
Nazi and someone who is a member of several violent
neo Nazi organizations.

Speaker 4 (22:48):
Yeah, that tends to be like a very strict causation
between hanging out with those groups and being one.

Speaker 6 (22:55):
And I'd be very curious to know sort of what
order these things happened in. Was his conversion to Catholicism
part of his descent into these neo Nazi groups, because
the sort of traditionalist Catholicism he was involved in, Because
it looks like he was involved in Academia Christiania, which
is not that's not normal, that's not church, that's a

(23:17):
Nazi group.

Speaker 4 (23:18):
Absolutely, in so far as I can tell, I think
his conversion happened earlier, so.

Speaker 6 (23:24):
Maybe a sincere conversion to Catholicism, but then he got
involved in traditionalism, maybe as part of his entry into
far right politics.

Speaker 5 (23:33):
I know these things are very intertwined. Given the like this.

Speaker 6 (23:37):
This Academia Christiana group was founded by one of the
founders of Generation Identity these things are overlapped completely. He
wasn't just going to Catholic Church. He was going to
a very extreme right wing anti Semitic, identitarian traditionalist subgroup.

Speaker 4 (23:55):
Yeah, to the Westboro Baptist Church. Pretty much.

Speaker 5 (24:00):
French Catholicism.

Speaker 4 (24:01):
French Catholicism. I don't know how many groups we've insulted
with that comparison.

Speaker 5 (24:08):
It's fine, we'll have to have Italian.

Speaker 4 (24:11):
Oh, okay, then that's good. But with that bit of
context about like Quentin's background behind him, we're going to
go to the faithful day of February twelve when he
was beaten. He was not fatally beaten, I have to say.
But more on that a tiny bit later. On the
day of February twelve, a French eupolemeritarian, a Palestinian woman

(24:32):
named Rima Hassan, was giving a speech at the Leon
Institute of Political Studies. Hassan is a member of the
French far left party Lace Sums French Unbowed. A counter
protest was announced by the far right feminist group Nemesis,
for which some fascist groups volunteer to do security at
the protest.

Speaker 6 (24:53):
Yeah, James, I see the look on your face. Girls
can do fascism too.

Speaker 4 (24:57):
Yeah, I'm sorry on the train chains.

Speaker 6 (25:01):
Yeah, okay, women's rights and women's wrongs.

Speaker 4 (25:07):
This is the only women's wrongs I will ever support.

Speaker 6 (25:10):
I am curious what neo nazi feminism looks like, because
they're not just like women's fascist group. Yeah, fascist feminist group.
What do you think those words mean, babe? Yeah, I'm
gonna find out more about that on my own time.

Speaker 3 (25:23):
Yeah, yes, this is going to be Money's Evening gets
logged in now.

Speaker 4 (25:26):
Yeah, I can give you some pointers.

Speaker 6 (25:29):
I'm familiar with women doing fascist organizing, but it's usually
in sort of a convery, confined to a traditional female role.

Speaker 5 (25:38):
So what are fascist feminists?

Speaker 3 (25:39):
It was like the cession feminina of Francoist if if
that's any indication, but maybe so.

Speaker 6 (25:45):
Yeah, he was just being a gentleman providing security for
these girl boss Nazis.

Speaker 4 (25:50):
Pretty much. There is a very girl boss photo I found.
I'll pull it up bit a bit, but yeah, they
are identitarian air quotes. Feminists blame all sexual violence on
people of color and Muslims. It is okay, great, Yeah,
we knew this was coming.

Speaker 6 (26:07):
I bet there are white boyfriends never never missing.

Speaker 3 (26:11):
Never they respect to women no, depending on her race.

Speaker 4 (26:14):
And her politics, of course.

Speaker 6 (26:16):
And in the Beauty of the White Arian Woman, James Please.

Speaker 4 (26:21):
A founder and frequent guest on various French writing platforms,
Alice Cordier was the one who founded this collective. They
seem to have like a few hundred people in the collective,
but like a very small inner circle of like twelve people.
And Alice Cordier was already at the center of a controversy.
On March tenth this year, journalist Ricardo Pereira posted a

(26:43):
photo on Twitter of Alice mimicking an ASS symbol with
her hands. And in this photosho, wow, she's together with
former Lyon Populaire member who is allegedly now fighting with
the ass of a battalion in Ukraine.

Speaker 5 (26:57):
Wow, it's all coming together.

Speaker 4 (27:00):
Yeah exactly. So this is Alice doing an AS symbol
her hands.

Speaker 5 (27:05):
Oh yeah, okay, look at her Okay, yeah, yeah, wow.
That looks very intentional.

Speaker 4 (27:12):
This doesn't seem like a gesture you would make by accidents.

Speaker 5 (27:17):
Hm hmmm.

Speaker 3 (27:18):
Alice called a bas question, what does this sign mean?

Speaker 4 (27:25):
Yeah exactly, And just because we were talking about the
Girl Boss, can you see it?

Speaker 5 (27:32):
Oh wow?

Speaker 3 (27:33):
Yeah, oh wow, Okay, well wow they are Wow what
a vibe.

Speaker 4 (27:37):
Yeah, definite girl bosses m hm yeh. Pant suit fascism.

Speaker 6 (27:43):
Business casual fascism for the woman in the workplace.

Speaker 5 (27:47):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (27:48):
Yeah, it's the other pantsuit nation, yeah.

Speaker 5 (27:52):
An all white pantsuit nation.

Speaker 3 (27:53):
Yea yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 (27:56):
Although two of those women don't actually look Anglo Saxon.

Speaker 5 (27:59):
It's so interesting to me.

Speaker 4 (28:02):
That's something for the French to figure out.

Speaker 3 (28:05):
French identity and national identity is different.

Speaker 5 (28:10):
It's more immigrants. Your grandparents were fine.

Speaker 4 (28:14):
Yeah, ladder up exactly. Now now it's starting to punch
down on the other people who've had We don't have
the opportunities my parents had. Yeah, not a phenomenon that's
unique to France.

Speaker 5 (28:26):
Oh no, not at all.

Speaker 3 (28:27):
I mean settle a colonial country of the United States.

Speaker 4 (28:29):
French and colonialism, James, really no, they never would do that,
not the French. All those places were parts of France.

Speaker 5 (28:38):
They're not still doing that.

Speaker 4 (28:41):
No. I think all cheers would like to have a
word with you. Molly. That that was Alice from a
like the Nemesis Collective.

Speaker 5 (28:49):
Yeah, that's a collection of my nemesies.

Speaker 4 (28:51):
Now, yeah, like that is the name I used when
I was fourteen and I had to make up a
character name when I was playing video games or something.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
It's like, it's not original. Yeah, it is extremely teenage.

Speaker 4 (29:04):
Like Angel of Darkness, levels of cringe, something like that. Yeah.
But what I found most frightening about these people, though,
is they seem to be incredibly media sevy and cunning
as a group. And to give you an example, in
June of twenty twenty four, several members of this group
infiltrated an anti far right protest in Paris. They had

(29:28):
brought slogans highlighting legal convictions or trials from several high
profile far left French politicians. This includes Jean Lucam Malechon,
who was convicted of inciting rebellion or revolution in twenty nineteen.
That that's for the CV, right there, the thing for
the French to make illegal.

Speaker 5 (29:49):
That one cool thing we did, we'll never do it again,
never again.

Speaker 3 (29:53):
Yeah, yeah, the best thing about France pulling the old
ladder up behind them.

Speaker 4 (29:57):
Again exactly, there's no return to tradition if that's the
thing you're going to make illegal. And I thought these
guys were traditionalists exactly like same with the Dutch. We
can't do it anymore. But I think back in the
seventeen hundreds we literally clubbed some high functionary to death
and ate him and his brother.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
We can't do it anymore, but we can't do it
anywhere just because of woke, Because of woke exactly.

Speaker 4 (30:26):
This is the one Dutch tradition I foolheartedly support. If
you're upset with your elected official now well elected air quotes,
because I don't think they were elected, then now you know,
some casual cannibalism might just do the trick. Yeah, well,
if you.

Speaker 6 (30:43):
Guys bring back clubbing out of control elected officials, we
could look the other way on some of your more
questionable Christmas traditions.

Speaker 4 (30:49):
Oh, I know, if we could. That's not a Christmas tradition,
but I know what you mean.

Speaker 3 (30:56):
I think I'm going to look the other way on
that one. No, okay, the chimney sweep, guys, it's just
the chimney sweep.

Speaker 4 (31:02):
It's fine.

Speaker 3 (31:03):
Yeah, that's uh, that's what's called an Easter egg for listeners.
You can google that in your own don't google it. Yeah,
you're going to see some racist ship.

Speaker 5 (31:10):
Back to this guy getting beaten to death.

Speaker 4 (31:13):
Not to death, just being beaten he did die. He
did die, but apparently when everyone had flat he refused
to go to the hospital despite several non activitist bystanders
like emphasiagic, like, hey, you should go to the hospital,
and he did not. He walked for at least one

(31:33):
and a half kilometers like a little more than a
mile for the Americans, thank you, and he he then
collapsed and he was in a coma for two days
in the hospital, and then on Valentine's Day he died.

Speaker 5 (31:47):
A real bummer.

Speaker 4 (31:47):
So yeah, and that's also why I'm going to say,
like that he wasn't fatally beaten, because I don't know
if well.

Speaker 6 (31:55):
So, I mean, at least in American law, he did
die of injuries inflicted from that beating, So you would
say the people who inflicted that beating on him did
cause his death.

Speaker 5 (32:04):
Yeah, so I mean under American law.

Speaker 6 (32:06):
Like, if you get shot today and you die from
a disability from that shooting ten years from now, you
were murdered.

Speaker 4 (32:12):
Yeah. I hate that. I'm surprised by this.

Speaker 6 (32:16):
Because you would not be dead but for those injuries.
If he had not been hit in the head, yeah,
he would not have died.

Speaker 3 (32:22):
Indeed, you can in fact not be the person doing
the shooting and still be chied for murder in US
as someone.

Speaker 6 (32:27):
That's a different problem. The felony murder problem is very
serious here. But but no, I mean, he would not
have died had he not been beaten.

Speaker 5 (32:36):
So he was beaten to death.

Speaker 6 (32:37):
It was just that it would It is perhaps possible
that he could have survived.

Speaker 5 (32:42):
Yeah, he had, he attempted to survive.

Speaker 4 (32:44):
I don't know if he would have survived if he
had called if hits, called an ambulance straight after.

Speaker 5 (32:50):
That's the other thing.

Speaker 6 (32:50):
That's the other thing is if he had that, if
he had that much probably intracranial bleeding that he collapsed
pretty soon afterwards.

Speaker 5 (32:56):
He may have died regardless.

Speaker 4 (32:57):
We'll never know, probably.

Speaker 6 (32:59):
Right, but I would say he was fatally beaten because
he would not have died if the beating, at least
under American under American law, that would be the case.

Speaker 5 (33:07):
I don't know about in France.

Speaker 3 (33:08):
It's probably worth noting that, like the American phenomenon of
not wanting to go in an ambulance to hospital because you.

Speaker 4 (33:14):
Know that you will have life altering medical.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
Bills like this is believe me, as someone who did
not grow up in the United States and now lives here.
Is a unique and quite disturbing character trait of people
living in the United States, like because.

Speaker 4 (33:28):
People are thinking like.

Speaker 3 (33:31):
Yeah, like I personally have not gotten an ambulance when
I should have done in the United States because I
knew that I wouldn't be able to pay the bills.

Speaker 5 (33:38):
Oh, if I'm conscious and able to walk on my
own two feet, I'm not getting an animalance.

Speaker 4 (33:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (33:42):
This is just just so people understand that this is
not a thing that people tend to do as much,
at least not for that reason in Europe.

Speaker 5 (33:49):
He just don't want to be a pussy.

Speaker 4 (33:51):
I guess, I don't know. I can also imagine that maybe,
like after authorities were alerted, that maybe he would have
been visited by police in the hospital due to the.

Speaker 5 (33:59):
Fight, right, because he was involved in a conflict.

Speaker 4 (34:02):
Yes, And I have some photos later on, like images
taken by I think a journalist where you just see
the black leads like fascists with like iron bars in
their hands and everything. So I would say that the
self defense motive is very indefensible. You know what, let's
take an ad break, you know who who won't beat

(34:23):
you to death with a bar, to death with a
bar allegedly.

Speaker 6 (34:27):
I'm pretty sure none of our advertisers have ever beaten
someone to death with a pipe.

Speaker 5 (34:31):
M Oh no, I can't guarantee that.

Speaker 4 (34:35):
A mining company who can say.

Speaker 5 (34:37):
They will not beat you the listener to death. Probably.

Speaker 4 (34:41):
I was about to plug the Washington Highway state patrol,
but I'm not sure if I can do that. They
can get to be in the Netherlands some safe Yeah.
That and we're back unbeaten with iron bars. So when

(35:06):
we left off, we were supposed to talk about more
about nemesis, so we'll continue there. Yeah, they were carrying
slogans with like accusations and trials of like left prominent
left wing politicians, but they had them covered up with
like regular slogans. So at some point they unfilled their
actual slogans and they repeatedly chanted to the crowd of

(35:28):
antifar right protesters, you're not feminists. This action only took
about two minutes, a combination of chants being sped on
and the general hostility that I imagine followed very quickly.

Speaker 5 (35:41):
I'm feeling general hostility and I'm not even there now.

Speaker 4 (35:45):
Now what you've seen the Girl Boss photo. Now, so
you know why that's why you feel hostile. Maybe it's
just the pantsuits. Those two minutes were enough though, because
they had the content and the images that they were after.
Also brought bodyguard to protect them, which again it's this
this saviness and this this cunningness that I said earlier,

(36:08):
like they know they're going to be provoked and possibly attacked,
so they're already preemptively bringing bodyguards.

Speaker 5 (36:14):
Well, they're not going to be provoked. They were going
there too.

Speaker 6 (36:18):
They went they went to someone else's rally to do
a provocative stunt, and so they it makes sense, you'd
if I was going to if I was going to
cause problems on purpose, I'll bring your bodyguard.

Speaker 4 (36:26):
Okay, Okay, I'll make sure to watch out for you
if you ever bring a bodyguard and I see you.
But yeah, those two minutes they proved enough. They had
the content and the images they were after, which were
quickly published by far right magazines. Social media accounts for
members of the collective were later interviewed by c News,
and Cordier herself was hosted on europe One. Both of

(36:49):
these stations are owned by Vincente Bolour, who is sort
of rupert murdering portions of the French media ecosystem. So
again not surprising to anyone, and in so far as
I can tell, this is also nemesis preferred method of
getting attention. There are modus operandi, the big high visibility
locations or events where they provoke their opponents through their messaging,

(37:13):
and when confronted by people opposing their racism and their views, they'll.

Speaker 5 (37:17):
Play the victim cards, classic maneuver.

Speaker 4 (37:19):
Yeah exactly, Yeah, and it's the.

Speaker 6 (37:21):
Best way to get positive attention while not actually having
enough numbers to hold your own rally that anyone would notice.

Speaker 4 (37:28):
Exactly. But again we're coming back to this. This feels
much more sevy and thought out than Oh.

Speaker 6 (37:34):
Absolutely, it's a clever strategy, but it's like the media
keeps falling for it, Like you don't have to interview
the head of this little Nazi group just because they
put on a nice outfit.

Speaker 5 (37:43):
It's the Richard Spencer problem all over again.

Speaker 4 (37:45):
Yeah, just because they dress nice doesn't mean just.

Speaker 5 (37:47):
Because he owns a little suit jacket.

Speaker 4 (37:50):
Now, this is why I don't own any suits, just
to avoid being associated. In November twenty nineteen, they infiltrated
a Paris March against sexual and gender based violence, and
then they brandish science referring to foreign rapists.

Speaker 5 (38:06):
I hate these women.

Speaker 6 (38:07):
Yeah, you'd have to have a woman on so that
we could so someone can say, are dumb bitches?

Speaker 4 (38:14):
It's legal for me to say yes. In hindsight, I'm
very glad that you're here to say those things of alli,
because I won't talk about women's wrongs, but you can,
which I mean.

Speaker 6 (38:28):
It's just it's so cynical and so nasty to show
up to an anti rape march to displace the blame
for sexual violence onto immigrants, to just like, yeah, ooh,
gross gross.

Speaker 4 (38:41):
Yeah, that's that's like ninety percent of right wing politics
the moment.

Speaker 6 (38:46):
Right, But for the women themselves to be doing because
you see men do it all the time, but these
women know better, because I guarantee you at least half
of those women have been sexually assaulted and it probably
wasn't by an immigrant, like you know better, you know better.

Speaker 4 (39:00):
Let's call it. Yeay says she she suffered from a
sexual assault by immigrants, but there's no way to prove
it because it was allegedly when she was thirteen or fourteen,
So it's just this after defect justification that you can't
prove or disproof either way. And even even if we
were going to say, okay, you know what, we'll take
that argumented face value.

Speaker 5 (39:22):
I won't.

Speaker 4 (39:22):
That is your prerogative.

Speaker 6 (39:24):
No, I just you see, it reminds me, It mains
me so much of this. This funny little you Nazi
con artist that was she testified in the Oklahoma City trials.

Speaker 5 (39:35):
She had this like her origin story was.

Speaker 6 (39:37):
Like, oh, like I became a racist because I was
listening to racist radio shows while I was recovering. Because
I was attacked by a gang of black teenagers and
I broke my legs. She broke her legs because she
got drunk at the park and she jumped off a
giant Crucidex set up for a passion place.

Speaker 4 (39:55):
Okay, okay, so.

Speaker 6 (39:57):
This whole like, oh, my origin story is like I
was assaulted by a gang of people of color, Like
I believe you anyway.

Speaker 4 (40:05):
Completely valid. But what I meant to say is like,
even if that were true, there's no argument to like
generalize it to an entire population.

Speaker 5 (40:12):
No, or just show up to the anti rape march
to cause a scene.

Speaker 3 (40:16):
Girl, go home, yeah, you'd think, Yeah, if you've been
subject to sexual assault, you would want to be in
solidarity with other people, maybe make sexual assaults stop happening,
like period, not focus on a subset of human beings.

Speaker 4 (40:30):
But James, what you're forgetting there is that sexual violence
is okay if it's done by white people. Okay according
to Nemesis.

Speaker 5 (40:36):
And in a biblical way, you know, within the bounds
of marriage.

Speaker 4 (40:39):
Yeah, in the holy bounds of matrimony. So yeah, what
this group essentially does is they tie feminism or their
brand of it. Yeah, thank you for the air quotes. Yeah,
they tie it to their nationalism. But they focus solely
on sexual violence, and even then only the violence that
is connected to like migrants.

Speaker 5 (40:58):
So it's no feminism at all. It's just it's a lie.

Speaker 4 (41:01):
You won't be surprised that they're awfully silent about equal
pay or abortion rights.

Speaker 5 (41:07):
Well, I imagine they're probably anti abortion.

Speaker 4 (41:10):
How did you.

Speaker 3 (41:10):
Guess that, boy, depends who's getting the abortion.

Speaker 4 (41:13):
I would assume I will send them like an email
to ask for a verification, to specify I need more coverage.

Speaker 3 (41:20):
That's the way we should respond to this exactly.

Speaker 4 (41:23):
And I want to know which abortions are okay and
which are not, so I can accurately make you know
a herrowing story of it. Anyway, This exploitation of women's
issues by far right groups to proliferate their bullshits worldview
and pull people in is called femo nationalism. It was
coined by the British sociologist Sarah R. Feris in twenty seventeen,

(41:46):
which might be a broader topic worth exploring in the future.

Speaker 5 (41:50):
Yeah, I'm very interested you too.

Speaker 6 (41:52):
People have been complaining that I never talk about we're
little girls.

Speaker 4 (41:55):
Well now you can, Ellis Cordier. For now. It is
love to see this what they're doing as some sort
of bucked up arranged marriage of feminism and ethnic nationalism
that views gender issues explicitly through the lens of ethnicity. Yeah,
and as I said before, they're notably very quiet on

(42:18):
bodily autonomy, workplace equality, equal opportunity, abortion, and maternity care.

Speaker 6 (42:23):
So like actual sort of safety and well being and
equality for women, the things that I think of as feminism.

Speaker 4 (42:30):
Yeah, yeah, Like the maternity care was like that sprung
out to be because like in.

Speaker 5 (42:35):
My feminism, I don't die in childbirth.

Speaker 4 (42:38):
Because it's woke.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
They want to return to tradition and have it's eighty
percent of job as result in one or other party dying.

Speaker 4 (42:45):
Ah, great stuff, it's beautiful. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (42:49):
I guess if you were trying to invent feminism, but
the only text you had is the fourteen words, this
is what you would get.

Speaker 3 (42:57):
You had a dictionary with the word feminism and the
fourteen word, it's that's all he had to.

Speaker 5 (43:00):
Go David Lane, famous feminist.

Speaker 4 (43:03):
Yeah, I guarantee you that Alice Cordier has said the
fourteen words on probably multiple occasions. It's a garbage group
of people, and I hope they have to hiccups the
rest of their life.

Speaker 5 (43:15):
Oh that's hurtful. I like that.

Speaker 3 (43:17):
Yeah, it's a pretty good one.

Speaker 4 (43:19):
And with that, that is the end of part one.

Speaker 3 (43:22):
If you'd like to find out more about Quentin and
various other French fascists, please join us again tomorrow.

Speaker 4 (43:41):
We're picking back up at the rally where Quentin was
in the capacity of security for Nemesis. At some point
a confrontation developed between anti fascists and brown shirts. Clearly
the instigator depends on the political orientation of the media
that reports on it.

Speaker 6 (43:56):
But we've all seen scuffles like this. It's just they
don't usually divorce to a point where someone dies, like
I can I can imagine. I don't know, I can
imagine the outbreak of this scuffle because we've all seen it.

Speaker 4 (44:08):
Yeah, I'm not going to like litigate on who started
or who not that I'll never know and it doesn't.

Speaker 5 (44:14):
Matter because it doesn't matter.

Speaker 4 (44:15):
Yeah. But I found an independent while left fleaning a
medio website, contre Attique. They published several pieces on the
events with claims that the fascists started to roll. I
find that one personally also more credible because they have
multiple videos of photos of the far right being there
with weapons, including iron bars, crutches, motorcycle helmets, and at

(44:37):
least one smoker hagge.

Speaker 6 (44:39):
I mean, they showed up to someone else's event to
disrupt it, to cause a problem. When they got in
the middle of it, they brought weapons. It's hard to
say who started the fight, but I can tell who
wanted to exactly.

Speaker 4 (44:51):
Like. I've seen security at events and protests, but I've
never okay, unless they were cops, I've never seen them
carrying weapons. Oh I have.

Speaker 6 (44:58):
Well, that's more common in the idea states it's very
common here. Oh wow, okay, oh is that a pipe
in his hands? Yes, it is, so he's wearing a
balaclava and carrying a pipe.

Speaker 4 (45:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:10):
Yeah, it's not a great look, kind of classic. You're
a nuts, you fit skinny jeans.

Speaker 4 (45:15):
The sneakers always the sneakers.

Speaker 5 (45:18):
Always do one of those little unders.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
Yeah, yeah, of course I got to pick a brand that. Yeah,
since the beginning. Maybe some pumas in that.

Speaker 4 (45:28):
Of course, this pumas in there. Here's another pictures like
you can also see the motorcycle helmet in here in
disguise hands. Oh yeah, okay, yeah, most.

Speaker 6 (45:39):
Like a helmet's great because it's you put it on
to protect your head, or you can hit somebody with
it because he's holding it in his hand.

Speaker 5 (45:44):
He is not wearing it. That's a weapon.

Speaker 6 (45:46):
Yeah, but you have the plausible deniability of I rode
my motorcycle here or this is for defense.

Speaker 4 (45:53):
That's what I also find. They often use like things
that you could really have with Like they also use
belts or sticks and stuff that you could carry with
shack poles, slack poles, like stuff that you could carry
with you with you without it being as immediately recognized
as a weapon, Like if you were carrying night.

Speaker 6 (46:11):
After you use it as a weapon, it doesn't look
like premeditation because I just had this, Yeah, the pipe.
I don't know why you would just have a whole pipe.
Now he was honest, way to do some plumbing Mario
and Luigi.

Speaker 3 (46:22):
Yeah, maybe he found maybe he found it.

Speaker 4 (46:24):
I can imagine myself carrying a sledgehammer, be like, no, officer,
this is my.

Speaker 5 (46:29):
I was on my way to break big rocks into
small rocks.

Speaker 4 (46:31):
Yeah, exactly, I'm a fan. I don't think that would fly,
to be honest, but those I wanted to share as well.

Speaker 5 (46:38):
So he did show up with a pipe.

Speaker 4 (46:40):
That wasn't him. I didn't think he wasn't pipe that.

Speaker 5 (46:41):
Was that was one of his friends.

Speaker 4 (46:43):
That was one of that was one of the far
right activist that was present there. One media account sat
he was wearing a blue hoodie Quentin and I haven't
seen that in the pictures that I could find.

Speaker 6 (46:54):
Well, it looks like the only confirmed photograph of him
is that one that was provided by his family's lawyer
to the media, So we don't know if any of
those other photos even are him right now.

Speaker 4 (47:05):
There's also not that much footage of it, to be honest.

Speaker 6 (47:08):
Right, but I guess there is the footage of him
like lying on the ground, but I mean like, yeah,
like the only picture of his face is that one
that was provided to the media by his family and.

Speaker 4 (47:16):
So far as I found, Yes, Yeah, and then and
one of the few of the articles, there's like one
where he's like half ballacloth out up. But then that
was at some Nazi rally in Lyon, So it still
wasn't his first Nazi No, it was. It was not
okay in any case, I think you would have a
hard time defending that there was purely self defense on
part of the security of that counter demonstration.

Speaker 6 (47:40):
Again, no one is saying that he deserved to be
beaten to death. We're just trying to figure out what
happened here.

Speaker 4 (47:44):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Concra Attik also published another article on
February twentieth about acts of violence from fascist militants in
just Lyon. There had been around one hundred and two
acts of violence as of twenty ten. Yeah, that's one
of the spots. From what I understand, there's lots of

(48:05):
groups that formed in response to like the fascist threats
that were there, and also a lot of the fascist
violence is them just harassing brown people or like Muslim people,
so it's hard to get a proper estimate. But I
found this one very detailed. They mentioned like from the
top of their head, like twenty five different instances. The

(48:27):
article for that will be in the show notes so
people can read it themselves. Okay, now I'll cite this
from France info dot fr eye witness accounts from residents
who saw the flight fighting take place. Christine also witnessed
the violence. I saw a fight over there with lots
of young people. They were hitting each other, hitting each other,

(48:47):
hitting each other, and then I saw a young men fall,
She recounts. Maxim also saw the attackers flee. They shouted
disperse when they saw I think that they might have
hit them hard. They went off into all the streets,
got out of their cars. Some guys on scooters stopped.
They put him, I assume Quentin in the recovery position,
The resident explains. Neighbors then came to aid the injured.

(49:11):
Another neighbor, Willem, saw him get up after being beaten.
I went outside. I saw someone with blood on his hands.
He looked a bit dazed. He was just standing, but
he refused to go to the hospital, even though they
offered to. I just saw the people talking to him
who told him to go to the hospital in any case,
but the certaines iss that he refused.

Speaker 6 (49:32):
So this was a much large It wasn't like ten
on one. It was like a group versus a group.

Speaker 4 (49:36):
It was a group versus a group.

Speaker 5 (49:38):
Year it was a melee.

Speaker 4 (49:39):
Yeah, Okay, I'm not sure which article exactly was, but
said that the fighting went on for like five minutes.

Speaker 6 (49:47):
Which is a long. It doesn't sound like along, but
for a fight, that's like a long. It's a lot
of minutes to be fighting.

Speaker 3 (49:51):
Yeah, fighting is normally brief fast, especially fighting of this
level of violence.

Speaker 5 (49:58):
Especially if you're getting hit the head with a pie or.

Speaker 4 (50:00):
A motorcycle helmet.

Speaker 3 (50:02):
Yeah, there's a little video of it, Like I've seen
a couple of very small videos of the actual confrontation.
It's not like it gives the impression like because of
the big repercussions. This was like a huge set piece,
but it's not. It's like what three people maybe at most.

Speaker 4 (50:18):
Yeah, And it was just like in some streets it
looks like street corner. Yeah, it wasn't a battle of
thermopili or something. Yeah, I'm sponsored by not being able
to pronounce foreign words outside of English.

Speaker 6 (50:33):
Well, you could just tell us that that's how it's
said in Dutch and we would all have to believe you,
because we're not going to find out.

Speaker 4 (50:39):
I'm conf use that as a caveat the next time.

Speaker 6 (50:41):
That's how we say it in the Netherlands, stupid Americans.

Speaker 4 (50:45):
Yes, I'll be saved by the fact that like Denmark
and the Netherlands, nobody speaks to Dutch, or that they
confused Danish with Dutch, which is also very funny.

Speaker 3 (50:56):
But also, yeah, I did see some kind of funny
posts regarding Greenland with.

Speaker 4 (51:01):
Ah, okay, then we're at and entering a whole other discussion. Yeah.
But anyway, after the fighting, about half an hour and
a half later, in the full Chiron district on the
banks of the San Quentin was evacuated in serious condition
by firefighters. To get there, he had to walk more
than a kilometer and a half, cross two bridges, and

(51:21):
traverse the Lyon Peninsula. His route between the attack and
his arrival at the hospital is unknown.

Speaker 6 (51:27):
Sound so sounds like he's just sort of staggered off disoriented?
Is something like that because he was probably bleeding in
his brain.

Speaker 3 (51:34):
Yeah, he like he has a TVI, right, I would imagine.

Speaker 4 (51:37):
So I just find it incredibly sad. To be honest, it.

Speaker 6 (51:41):
Is sad, but also the like so like these bystanders
are saying, hey, man, like, let's get you an ambulance
to get to the hospital. Where were his friends that
he walked off alone?

Speaker 4 (51:51):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (51:51):
Where were the guys he came with? Were the guys
that were fighting on his side? How did he manage
to walk off alone? So these people want to make
him a martyr, but like they're the ones, Yeah, let
him die.

Speaker 4 (52:02):
This is also why I'm like, I'm not going to
say he was it's Lee Beatson, because like, who knows.

Speaker 6 (52:07):
It sounds like a lot of people have some responsibility here.
If you die, if you die after being hit in
the head, the person who hit you in the head
killed you, that's it works. But like, why did his
friends let him walk away alone?

Speaker 4 (52:18):
Yeah, knowing he was injured.

Speaker 6 (52:20):
Right, No, even if you weren't injured, you never walk
away from something like this alone because someone could follow
you and keep beating you.

Speaker 3 (52:26):
Yeah, if there are people who are trying to hurt you.
The best time for them to do it is when
you're on your own.

Speaker 5 (52:31):
Like you never leave an action alone.

Speaker 4 (52:34):
Yeah, the whole thing.

Speaker 3 (52:35):
Like I guess I should just say, like, I don't know,
when you fucking hit people in the head, this is
one of the consequences that is on the list of
possible consequences. Like, I fucking hate people who can hit
people in the head come from a place in the
world where like that kind of violence is more common
because guns are less accessible to people, and like, yeah,

(52:56):
people are going to fucking die sometimes when you do that,
Like it's serious.

Speaker 6 (52:59):
You don't have to inten to have killed them, Like
you one get punch to the head in an otherwise
very fair, normal fight, Yeah, someone could die.

Speaker 3 (53:06):
Yeah, people have died from a single punch to the
head that started to fight and ended their life at
the same time. I think people sometimes, you know, you
watch boxing or wrestling or whatever. Then you see people
fighting very hard and not dying. But like you find
someone with your bare knuckles to their bare head, and
they could die, even if it's only once, if he
didn't mean to you.

Speaker 4 (53:24):
Yeah, it's just one one small vein in one vein
that gets nicked that can cause off a whole lot
of trouble in the head. Yeah, and even if it's
not death, then there's still.

Speaker 3 (53:34):
Like life altering consequences.

Speaker 5 (53:37):
Be careful with your brain, kids.

Speaker 4 (53:39):
Yeah, which is why you need to wear a helmet's
on your head instead of in a hand.

Speaker 5 (53:43):
It's just using it as a bludgeon.

Speaker 4 (53:45):
Yeah, yeah, and only come back to light. I find
it sad because it's a death that may may have
been preventable with like proper medical intervention, also with like
friends that should have backed him.

Speaker 3 (53:58):
Yeah, it's pretty sad that this guy felt like he
was part of something and those guys left him to
die alone on the street like.

Speaker 6 (54:03):
It's another Now they're trying to take his death and
profit from it politically.

Speaker 3 (54:07):
And then yeah, he's only useful to him when he's
fucking dead.

Speaker 5 (54:10):
I mean, you know, he's he's a little horse vessel.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
Yeah, that's a nature of fascism.

Speaker 4 (54:14):
But yeah, it's almost exactly like Charlie Kirk, where he
was more useful as a martyr than when he was
just a propagandist.

Speaker 5 (54:23):
But then he turned out not to even be good
at that.

Speaker 4 (54:26):
I don't think we can fault him for being about
martyr for all the things. Of all the things we
can criticize Charlie Kirk for, that is not one of them.

Speaker 3 (54:35):
Yeah, it's not on him.

Speaker 6 (54:36):
Right, But I think in order to have a successful
martyrdom you have to have someone to blame, and there
was just not enough publicity around the guy who actually
killed Charlie Kirk, you know what I mean, Like, you know,
horse Vessel was killed by communists, so we're mad at communists,
but like.

Speaker 3 (54:51):
There was an attempt to pin that on the trans community, right,
like it didn't see the landing and it didn't work.
Should say that guy is accused of in Karli Church
as well?

Speaker 6 (55:02):
Exactly I don't know, but that the right is constantly
trying to create a horse Vessel and it just kind
of never works.

Speaker 4 (55:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:08):
Well, I mean that's how the Spanish Civil War started
as well, right, like they it was probably easier in
an age with less information and like party propaganda.

Speaker 6 (55:17):
I mean, these days, these days, we would all be
talking about like was horse vessel opinion?

Speaker 5 (55:21):
It kind of seems like maybe he.

Speaker 4 (55:23):
Would have had a Twitter account and we would.

Speaker 5 (55:24):
Have and we would have said, what was he doing?

Speaker 4 (55:27):
With all those girls, or we would have found his
racist tweets. Oh well, that would have.

Speaker 6 (55:34):
It seems like a local the head of his local
strum up ti Long. Of course he had racist tweets,
but being a pimp is not conducive to traditional Aryan values.

Speaker 4 (55:44):
Please, okay, okay, okay, there goes my career change. I'm
now going into the last section, which is about what
happened here in your trekt. They attempted to martyr him

(56:06):
and the fed Netherlands. It said, we're coming to the
AKU to hold the vigil for him. The Netherlands is
an umbrella terms not the perfect word. There's lots of
local defense chapters, but they have like more where they organized.
But they also have like a main telegram group. So

(56:27):
these are people who explicitly came to U treckt to
hold this visual. The reason why, I think is because
they think aku ACU stands for Antifa Center you trecked.
Oh wow, yes, it used to be. It used to
be a former auto garage back in the eighties. I think,
so it says for auto center. You tracked.

Speaker 5 (56:47):
Oh my god, yes.

Speaker 3 (56:50):
I'm at the auto shop. I'm at the Anti PA center.
In a combination auto show at Center.

Speaker 6 (56:54):
I'm at the Four Seasons total landscape, that's.

Speaker 4 (56:57):
What it is. Yeah. Ah, but it was a pretty
big deal because for reasons that I still can't understand,
Like the mayor didn't like instantly ban this very obvious
intimidation at ten ten threats hold official in your backyard
or something. It's like, there's absolutely no reason to travel

(57:19):
to U Trek to hold that visual other than the
being threatening and intimidating.

Speaker 5 (57:24):
But I think that's part of why they love trying
to make these martyrs is because.

Speaker 6 (57:27):
It again, it's this like being the victim, like they
killed one of us. How can this isn't a politicism
political you can't ban our event, right, this isn't a
Nazi rally, it's a vigil. Yeah, it's this victimhood thing
and it does make you harder to suppress.

Speaker 4 (57:42):
Yeah, I still find it unbelievable as the local authorities
didn't do it.

Speaker 5 (57:48):
It's tacky.

Speaker 4 (57:50):
I was also there that evening because when I do
activist stuff, I mostly do like if like first eight
at events or protests.

Speaker 5 (57:58):
Very noble, nobody's got to do it.

Speaker 4 (58:00):
I'm not a confrontational person, so yeah, I'll give you
a band aid later. That's that's that's where where I'm good.
You're a non combatant exactly. And I actually came from
the office that day, so I was also looking very inconspicuous,
which was good because I ended up standing between my
left all all the anti fascists that are my right,

(58:21):
all the black lift fascists, and I was like and
then two lines of.

Speaker 5 (58:25):
Like riot, I'm just a band aid.

Speaker 8 (58:27):
GI.

Speaker 4 (58:27):
Yeah, so like get in a narrow alley. So I left,
I'm enclosed. On my right, I'm enclosed. And then this
girl boss cop comes up to me like, do you
want to get out of here? I was like, yes,
it seems like it could go wrong, and then she
guided me through the fucking fascists.

Speaker 6 (58:45):
Yeah, I like to I like to be a lot
closer to an exit than nassively good are you?

Speaker 4 (58:50):
So it's it's even worse because I was I was
with someone who was also doing first aids, and we
tried to get back to the location and we accidentally
went into an lead it at a dead end, and
when we turned around not ceased walking there. I was like,
oh fuck, no, yeah, but I think they just thought

(59:10):
that it was a way around and had just followed
also because they thought it was a way through. They
didn't actually like control us or anything.

Speaker 5 (59:17):
That makes my tummy hurt maic. I don't like that.

Speaker 4 (59:20):
It was one of the most scary moments. I'm going
to admit that. Anyway. The fan Netherlands mostly carried the
picture I sent you with, like the bad AI sketch
of a photo of Quincon.

Speaker 5 (59:33):
Okay, I'm sorry. If I ever get.

Speaker 6 (59:35):
Murdered and you're holding a rally for my memory, use
a real fucking picture.

Speaker 4 (59:38):
Of Yeah, this is really okay they're.

Speaker 6 (59:42):
Using they're using a fake picture of a more handsome guy.

Speaker 4 (59:46):
Yeah, the other didn't flact that.

Speaker 6 (59:48):
You said yes, Like I'm saying, like, use a good
picture of me, you know, like a cute picture, but
like they're using a fake.

Speaker 5 (59:54):
Picture of a more handsome guy because this guy was
weird looking.

Speaker 3 (59:57):
Yeah, the person who is on the flag and the
BBC I had to go, that's just straight up not him.
It's not a it's not a guy who looks like him.

Speaker 4 (01:00:04):
It's not a.

Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
Rendering of him by AI.

Speaker 6 (01:00:08):
That is like old school German propaganda of like an Aryan. Yeah,
they're like an Aryan specimen, where like this was like
a skinny little guy who's half.

Speaker 4 (01:00:17):
A Hispanic Latino Latino.

Speaker 6 (01:00:20):
Yeah, Like it's just disrespectful to his memory to whitewash
him and make him more handsome.

Speaker 5 (01:00:27):
You're not a good enough martyr.

Speaker 6 (01:00:28):
We had to find a better looking guy to pretend
was you so we can profit politically from your murder.

Speaker 4 (01:00:33):
What pictures of you do we need to do you
molly in the events?

Speaker 5 (01:00:37):
Oh yeah, I should, I should, I should pre yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:00:39):
Exactly, And then you can also select which which photo
we're going to use, on which we're going to put
on the banners.

Speaker 6 (01:00:45):
But it's like they don't actually care about this man.
Most people holding those banners don't know that's not him.

Speaker 4 (01:00:50):
Yeah, it's a very empty performance.

Speaker 6 (01:00:54):
I'm performing outrage over the like the theoretical death of
a guy whose politics were similar to mine.

Speaker 4 (01:00:59):
Yeah. But defense Netherlands, they also carried what we call
the princess flag in the Netherlands.

Speaker 6 (01:01:04):
Princess flag, yeah, the flag of the Prince, oh princess.

Speaker 4 (01:01:07):
Yeah, and it's a it's a variational on the flag
that we have right now, but it was co opted
by the Dutch National Socialist Party prior and during World
War Two, so it's now heavily associated with those groups,
and that is the flag they choose to carry.

Speaker 6 (01:01:23):
I'm just skeptical of all flags, Like, unless I'm one
hundred percent sure what I'm looking at, I'm skeptical of
a flag.

Speaker 5 (01:01:29):
Because usually a guy that like, I don't know what
you're doing? What does that mean?

Speaker 3 (01:01:32):
It is always telling when people are like, oh, this
nationalist flag is the flag of our nation. Is not
nationalist enough? Let me let me find an obscure one
from the past. It has only been revived by fascist Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:01:43):
Like anyone in South Africa carrying something other than the
current official South African flags.

Speaker 5 (01:01:48):
Yeah, because there's a lot of variations and they're all about.

Speaker 4 (01:01:50):
Oh, well, well we're getting to those variations. Baly, because
like the flag flag was not only used by collaborators,
but they've also added because just a alluding to like
the collaborationists, it's not enough. They added a voc logo
from the Dutch East is in the company onto the.

Speaker 3 (01:02:11):
What that honestly that came from fucking nowhere? God, just
like these people fucking hated people who weren't white as well,
Like just.

Speaker 4 (01:02:22):
Sorry, that is incredible or evil. Yeah, it's amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
Yeah, I can't believe we've opened that kind of went,
because there's gonna be that's gonna happen in Britain now.
Unfortunately I've put it in the chat like something like that.

Speaker 5 (01:02:38):
I mean it's just like comedically.

Speaker 3 (01:02:40):
Fuck, it's a ship logo as well. It looks like
a ranch brand. It looks like somebody didn't want their
cows to go missing and they did that.

Speaker 5 (01:02:52):
I would stamp that on a horse for sure.

Speaker 4 (01:02:55):
It probably was probably also on people. You're going to
say that unfortunate.

Speaker 3 (01:03:03):
What the fuck though, Like, I can't believe they did that.
Is that a thing on the Dutch right, like like
make dutchy c India company great.

Speaker 5 (01:03:12):
And nostalgic for the dusty dident. My loyalty lies with
the Duchies.

Speaker 4 (01:03:17):
Yeah, it's such a niche.

Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
This is what you get from the European ultra nationalism
is these incredibly niche racism.

Speaker 5 (01:03:24):
I'm a monarchist for spice trading.

Speaker 4 (01:03:27):
Yeah, yeah, it's this is something they actually do. I've
seen it a multiple like far eyed rallies where they're
just waving that shit and like that rocks. Yeah, it's
like the poorest dog whistle that any normal human being
can also hear. Like, okay, you you long back to
the days of like killing hundreds of thousands of people

(01:03:49):
for the spices that we don't use in our cuisine.

Speaker 3 (01:03:53):
Yeah, wow, that is so.

Speaker 5 (01:03:55):
Niche, it's so good. That's so I hope those guys
get pressed into servius on a ship.

Speaker 4 (01:04:01):
Yeah, you know, they might be shipped iran soon. Who knows.

Speaker 5 (01:04:05):
Like enjoy sailing around the world. You love it so much, going.

Speaker 4 (01:04:08):
To bangal by sale.

Speaker 3 (01:04:10):
Yeah, you love fucking racism. Getting scurvy to own the lives.

Speaker 4 (01:04:16):
You know, they will get scirvy because they won't be
eating fruit.

Speaker 3 (01:04:19):
Yeah, because they're exclusively eating uh what what the Americans
call French fries because of the erasure.

Speaker 4 (01:04:26):
Of Dutch cultural brilliant. That's true. They are more like
fermented to meat or something, just exclusively Yeah. Because return
But yeah, anyway, with the rally, in the end, nothing
really happens. There were some chances going up, up and down.
I think there were only two arrests for insulting police officers.

(01:04:47):
I think one on either side.

Speaker 5 (01:04:48):
But that's illegal there, Yes, oh I can never go.

Speaker 3 (01:04:54):
You can also just avoid police that's that's the thing. Wow,
they won't they won't immediately ch issue with a gun here.
But I've never had any experience with American cops, so
there's no comparison for me. I also hope that never happens,
because I heard stories of what happens.

Speaker 4 (01:05:10):
Yeah, American cops. No good.

Speaker 3 (01:05:11):
Yeah, it's one of one of the founding principles this
here podcast network.

Speaker 4 (01:05:16):
Well we have that there is one cop in your
tractor was allegedly a member of like an openly Dutch
Nazi group, but I think he's just since left it.

Speaker 5 (01:05:26):
That happens a lot here.

Speaker 3 (01:05:27):
Yeah, that's not an uncommon occurrence.

Speaker 4 (01:05:29):
No, what's a cops and clan go hand and haund.

Speaker 5 (01:05:34):
Yeah, yeah, we say it for a reason.

Speaker 3 (01:05:36):
Yeah, well we can ad cops in in company bracket
Dutch East India that those.

Speaker 4 (01:05:43):
Were not cops because it was a corporation. James. Yeah,
that's an enforced urs.

Speaker 3 (01:05:48):
You can't be a fascist for the Dutch East India
company because it's something a little bit different.

Speaker 5 (01:05:52):
That's true. That's true. They were not a state.

Speaker 3 (01:05:54):
No, it's a non state entity. It's like an autonomous
it's autonomous fascism of its.

Speaker 6 (01:06:00):
Own kind of cooked for a fascist to be nostalgic
for a company.

Speaker 4 (01:06:04):
Yeah, but as long as it's a nationalist company then
it's okay. This is great.

Speaker 3 (01:06:09):
I'm going to revive him like like like eighteenth century
pirate ship, you know, when like the British were like
attacking the Dutch East India company ships. I'm going to
bring that back. Okay now because fuck these people. You
have my personal permission to attack Dutch sailing ships.

Speaker 4 (01:06:25):
I have that authority.

Speaker 5 (01:06:37):
But to get back Quentin.

Speaker 4 (01:06:40):
Sorry, No, there was one other thing that happened because
the day after the rally there was an unknown person
who threw a smoke bomb inside the AKU. Shit. A
person was never caught. I'm going to make a wild
guest and say he was probably involved with Defend Netherlands
or some other similar fascist groups. No one at AKU
was hurt. It was mostly just an e convenients. And

(01:07:02):
that is pretty much the story of how the depth
of a French Nazi involved threats to a community center
in the Netherlands.

Speaker 3 (01:07:09):
Wow, yeah, I think you mentioned Ntem when called him
Francis Charlie Kirk. Yeah, but it's wild how like this
one has been so seized upon right by people who, like,
as we said, they did not give a shit about
this guy when he was alive. Now, I think our
national rally would be the English or like National Assembly.

Speaker 5 (01:07:31):
Yeah, I think national rally is how they do it
in English.

Speaker 4 (01:07:34):
Okay, Yeah, those guys held like also like on a
political level, it was like a national thing that happened
where they were memorizing it, and they were blaming a
French unbout for whatever happened. Because one of the people
who was arrested for the violence was an aide I
think to someone from French unbouts.

Speaker 5 (01:07:54):
That's not great.

Speaker 4 (01:07:55):
Yeah, that's not great.

Speaker 5 (01:07:57):
I imagine their boss would have preferred that they had
not done that.

Speaker 4 (01:08:00):
Probably probably, But it was a huge thing. And I mean, like.

Speaker 6 (01:08:04):
From my end, Like I mean, obviously I don't read
a lot of French news, but I subscribe to a
lot of Nazi telegram channels and I see his name
a lot, like the Active club sort of networks, Like
it's not always directly the Active clubs, sort of these
sort of ancillary telegram groups that spen up around them,
but in that milieu they're talking about him a lot.

(01:08:26):
They're talking about like, you know, training in his honor,
punching communists in his honor, you know what I mean,
Like they're trying to make this a rallying point to
inspire more violence.

Speaker 5 (01:08:36):
Yeah, I don't know if it will work long term.
I've seen many such attempts that do not work long term.
But it's been two months and they are still talking about,
you know, hurting people in his name.

Speaker 4 (01:08:47):
Also if my doubts on whether that will.

Speaker 5 (01:08:49):
Work, because they try a lot, try a lot.

Speaker 4 (01:08:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:08:53):
I particular a bunch of examples of attempted martyrs that
led just like nobody remembers.

Speaker 4 (01:08:59):
I can't think if anyone exactly exactly besides the one
we already talked about whose wife is now running the foundation.

Speaker 6 (01:09:07):
And for the most part it's I mean, at least
in America, most of the right wing martyrs are people
who died in prison or were killed by the police.
We don't have a lot of sort of street deaths
like this.

Speaker 4 (01:09:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:16):
Yeah, although, like I do feel like the right wing
martin is killed by the police, like if they like
if the Weaver family were killed by the cops, to
the members of the Weaver family who were killed by
the FBI, Vicky Wheel yeah. Like if that happened today,
I think half of the right would be like hell yeah,
get them cops, like like the Bootleck attendance.

Speaker 6 (01:09:37):
See, I mean like they tried to make LaVoi Finicum
was killed during the Bundy standoff in twenty sixteen.

Speaker 5 (01:09:42):
Did you remember LaVoi Finicum?

Speaker 4 (01:09:44):
No? Yeah, no one.

Speaker 6 (01:09:46):
I mean Ashley Babbitt. Ashley Babbitt should have been their martyr.
They moved on.

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
Yeah, and they've been doing some acshally Babbitt stuff like
I think they it didn't work.

Speaker 4 (01:09:56):
Yeah, it still hasn't.

Speaker 3 (01:09:57):
What they're trying to bury her, I believe, with the
military honors now and get her Air Force pension or something,
and then she can sue Capitol Police now that it
hasn't worked. Like in terms of popular culture, no one cares.

Speaker 6 (01:10:10):
Yeah, I mean the closest thing we have are when
white women are killed by black men or immigrants.

Speaker 5 (01:10:14):
That sometimes will Yeah, that flash in the pan lasts.

Speaker 6 (01:10:17):
A little longer, but even still, like Kate Steinley, Molly
Tibbet's like Arena Zarutska, like.

Speaker 4 (01:10:24):
Well, they stuck the landing with they can Riley.

Speaker 3 (01:10:28):
They had the Lake and Riley Act right, they managed
to essentially create a system where immigrants are guilty until
prement innocent, right now, Yeah, they have not spoken about
her since, but like the legal version of the legal
tendency on the right, right, the right Legislative movement kind
of did with that.

Speaker 6 (01:10:49):
But they are they're like constantly scrounging around for a
martyr and trying to make one happen. Like in twenty twenty,
like right after George Floyd Kenan Hinnant, that five year
old boy that was killed by his neighbor. Oh yeah,
like this is our George Floyd. You never heard about
it again?

Speaker 3 (01:11:05):
Yeah, they tried and try to try and stay at
the union, right.

Speaker 6 (01:11:09):
And then what was it two weeks ago he posted
that video of a one being beaten to death. Yeah,
it just it doesn't work, like so that the sauce
isn't there for them to create martyrs, but they love
to try.

Speaker 4 (01:11:21):
Yeah, but in order to have a martyr, that that
person needs to have had value in their eyes in
the first place. And I think that's what missing.

Speaker 5 (01:11:29):
Right, because they don't care.

Speaker 3 (01:11:31):
Yeah, well they posthumously tried to kind of yeah stack
it on old Quentin here, but.

Speaker 4 (01:11:37):
Yeah, but I think that this person needs to have
a reason.

Speaker 5 (01:11:40):
They needed to have really died for an actual cause, that.

Speaker 4 (01:11:44):
For an actual cause, but also someone who was like
broadly known and looked up to.

Speaker 6 (01:11:48):
Well, not necessarily, I mean, you don't have to be
somebody before your death to be an important martyr. I
mean em at Till was not as civil rights activist,
he was a little boy.

Speaker 4 (01:11:58):
Yeah. Fair.

Speaker 3 (01:11:59):
I think it's worked historically more on the left because
it is people who are It tends to be people
who are victimized for just for being themselves bless Yeah,
people who are just existing in the world.

Speaker 6 (01:12:10):
Right, It's like if you got into a fight at
a Nazi rally, Like I'm not going to blame the victim,
but it's not a it's not a blameless death.

Speaker 4 (01:12:18):
No, Like more like Renee Goot I think what's her name,
where she was just yeah, you know, looking out for
her or for her neighbors, but then it was murdered.

Speaker 5 (01:12:30):
You've been a good person in the first place.

Speaker 4 (01:12:32):
Yeah, maybe that's where the ride goes wrong.

Speaker 5 (01:12:35):
That's where it really.

Speaker 3 (01:12:36):
Goes right, that's the root cause yes, yeah, the.

Speaker 6 (01:12:39):
Only ones I can think of that really stick are
older and maybe that is like you're saying James because
it was like a lower information environment. But like they
still do Martyr's Day for Robert Matthews and that was
forty years ago.

Speaker 3 (01:12:51):
Yeah, like it was easier, right, like for them to
do it back then.

Speaker 6 (01:12:57):
And like Matthews got sort of enshrined into this this
Martyr's pantheon.

Speaker 5 (01:13:01):
Yeah, at a very important time in the movement.

Speaker 6 (01:13:04):
I just don't know that his death would be that
important if it happened today.

Speaker 4 (01:13:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:08):
I think a lot about the Vickiy Weaver thing because
we had a Bill Gore, who was a sheriff in
San Diego, had been an FBI agent who was part
of the operation at Ruby Ridge. It was very interesting
in San Diego because initially when Gore became sheriff, you
had all these people on the right Lake, specifically posting
on the Sheriff's department lost a lawsuit for deleting comments

(01:13:28):
on its Facebook page regarding this. They can't delete comments, rightly,
they're a public agency.

Speaker 4 (01:13:33):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:13:34):
Then twenty twenty happened and that same tendency, those same groups,
not the individual who bought the suit, but like those
folks were showing up with their Blue Lives Matter flags.
But then like also struggling to line that up with like, oh,
we should bring guns. Oh, but that would be illegal California. Oh,
but we have a right under the Second Amendment. Well,

(01:13:54):
who would be the person who enforced the law that
you think contravenes the Second Amendment? It's a cops, right,
and you're also here.

Speaker 5 (01:14:01):
Just they're so stuck. They're so stuck.

Speaker 3 (01:14:03):
Yeah, they just kind of backed themselves into a corner
there where like they're in a way more ideologically consistent
back in the day at least, like they're like loving
the cops thing that they made part of their identity
largely in the George Floyd moment, right, and the yutual
leut riding has really fucked them when it comes to
people who get killed by the cops.

Speaker 5 (01:14:22):
So hopefully this one fades away like all their other martyrs.

Speaker 3 (01:14:25):
Yeah yeah, I mean I don't like know where his
family are at either, Like if family may not have
been bigots.

Speaker 6 (01:14:33):
Right, Like have they come out and tried to capitalize
on this, Like does he have a crying mother on
the news talking about evil Antifa?

Speaker 4 (01:14:39):
They don't have a crying mother on the news, So
I do know they have a lawyer, and I think
there is some form of legal action being taken.

Speaker 6 (01:14:46):
And that makes sense because like there were people arrested
who were responsible for the.

Speaker 3 (01:14:49):
Death, like somebody hit him in that be a legal.

Speaker 5 (01:14:51):
Process to move forward.

Speaker 6 (01:14:53):
But I mean, like, they's not like a member of
his family out there doing propaganda against like anti fascists.

Speaker 4 (01:15:00):
Not that I'm aware of, but they were very quiet
and so far as I've could see, Yeah, like I've
written this over the space of like two months, so
may have missed something somewhere, sure, but they were pretty
quiet on his activist activities. So I'm not sure how.
I'm not sure if it's something they didn't know, or

(01:15:20):
if it was something that.

Speaker 5 (01:15:22):
Maybe they didn't know how bad it was, how.

Speaker 4 (01:15:24):
Bad it could also have been kept quiet in order
to like they're doing a lawsuit.

Speaker 6 (01:15:28):
Yeah, right, they should say less if they're pursuiting litigation.

Speaker 5 (01:15:31):
That makes perfect sense.

Speaker 6 (01:15:32):
So it seems like most of the propaganda around his
death is being produced by the groups he was in.

Speaker 5 (01:15:37):
Right, you said he was in an active club.

Speaker 6 (01:15:38):
I'm mostly seeing this from active clubs, so it makes
sense that they would be doing that.

Speaker 3 (01:15:43):
Yeah, it's just if they're not, like if it happens that,
like at least someone in his family is, you said,
like a migrant to France themselves. Like it would really
fucking suck to know, first of all, to find out
that this kid in your family had these reprehensible views,
and then to see their face everywhere.

Speaker 5 (01:15:59):
Well, luckily it's not his face.

Speaker 4 (01:16:01):
Yeah, that's true. That's true.

Speaker 3 (01:16:02):
You see someone else's face in his name.

Speaker 4 (01:16:04):
It's just vague resemblance. Yeah. So yeah, before we close
it out, though, I do want to plug something because
I do know when the ACU they shut down, they
had concerts and the entire venue was closed the day
of the vigil, so they did miss a lot of income.
And I also personally know a few people who spend

(01:16:26):
quite some money on just barricading that or getting iron
grades for the windows, or steal grades.

Speaker 5 (01:16:32):
That's dark.

Speaker 4 (01:16:33):
Yes, yeah, so there is a donate link for the
ACU because it's also entirely volunteer run, like there's no
paid employees there. Everyone's just doing that in their spare time.
So if there are people who have some money to
spare anything that's a worthy calls, then in the show
notes you can find the donate link to support the
local community center.

Speaker 3 (01:16:54):
Yeah, it'd be nice if people did that.

Speaker 5 (01:16:56):
That's beautiful.

Speaker 4 (01:16:58):
Yeah, it was very hard wark to see. I think
at the demonstration it self, I think that the Nazis
were outnumbered like three to one, maybe more usually are
usually are, but it's still very heartwarming to see such
a a quick and rapid response with people just being like, hey,
we don't want them here, go back to your backyard.
All the vigil there and it was a thing that happens.

(01:17:21):
But after we've spoken so much about weird Nazis, Molly,
I've been told you do also something with weird little Nazis.

Speaker 6 (01:17:30):
Oh, I love a weird little guy. I'm going to
talk about them every week on my show We're Little Guys.
You can find it anywhere you get your podcasts. Great,
And now I'm I'm actually so curious about these weird
little girls. I might have to check this out.

Speaker 3 (01:17:43):
Okay, it's new fascination unlogged.

Speaker 4 (01:17:46):
I'll share some of the links with you than you
can have a starting point, although I think you're a
much better researcher this than I am.

Speaker 5 (01:17:55):
So unfortunately it's all going to be in French. That's
what I'm married.

Speaker 4 (01:17:59):
Just auto translate. That's true because I also don't speak
French and also translate. Safety made a powerful enemy. Okay,
the Francophone world.

Speaker 6 (01:18:09):
They're so uptight about their silly little language.

Speaker 3 (01:18:13):
I love to speak French. French speaking people, please don't as.

Speaker 4 (01:18:18):
Next time I read French articles, James will send the
link to you and ask you to translate them for me.

Speaker 5 (01:18:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:18:23):
I'm really worried that I'm going to have to translate
some heenous ship.

Speaker 4 (01:18:29):
Here's like the French version of my comp Could you
please translate it for me.

Speaker 5 (01:18:33):
I do have some holocaust and dial texts.

Speaker 4 (01:18:35):
Translation perfect.

Speaker 3 (01:18:36):
Yeah, just make sure I'm not in France when I
receive them. NBA crime, you.

Speaker 4 (01:18:42):
Might have visa problems as well.

Speaker 5 (01:18:44):
Yeah, I'm not going okay.

Speaker 3 (01:18:48):
I'm no longer a EU citizen, so I now have
to get visas for places too.

Speaker 4 (01:18:54):
Bad and you have to be not to be declared
for no grata. Yeah okay, then, yeah, I think we
can wrap this up. Thank you guys for being here
and making is a lovely time talking about Nazis.

Speaker 6 (01:19:08):
Yes, thank you for introducing me to some terrible new concepts.

Speaker 5 (01:19:11):
I'm very excited.

Speaker 4 (01:19:13):
You're welcome.

Speaker 1 (01:19:27):
Hello everyone, and this is it could happen here. My
name is Daniel Kurd.

Speaker 9 (01:19:31):
I'm a researcher and analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics.

Speaker 1 (01:19:34):
Today I'm joined by.

Speaker 9 (01:19:35):
Justin Salhani, who is a non resident fellow at the
Titate Institute for Middle East Policy and a writer and
journalist based in Beirut. He has worked with Al Jazira
Digital and has contributed to a number of different outlets
in the past, and has been reporting on the region
since twenty eleven. Justin, thank you so much for coming
on the show. Thanks for having me so since you are,

(01:19:56):
you know, based invite with them, so intimately knowledgeable of
what's been going on, I thought we could start by
just kind of laying out what conditions are like in
Lebanon right now.

Speaker 7 (01:20:06):
So right now, as we speak, we're in the midst
of kind of a tenuous, fragile incomplete we can call
it ceasefire in beitoot proper. There still is occasionally, you know,
a drone overhead, this kind of infamous drone that buzzes
incessantly and keeps everyone constantly on their toes. But there's

(01:20:27):
been almost two weeks or a little maybe a little
bit more now without an attack on Beaitoo. Basically, we
had that day April eighth, which is being called locally
Black Wednesday, where around the country I think the numbers
are now over three hundred and fifty people were killed,
and many of those were in bed roots in areas
that came without warning. You know, there is this kind

(01:20:49):
of dynamic now where the Israeli military will at times
announce warnings for certain areas, though many attacks come with
no warning, and they brought down buildings without warning in
some cases as well in central Bayoot. So the conditions
right now are you know, relatively, I guess we can
call it quiet here. Of course, that's vastly different in
the south, where there was an intensification, particularly yesterday, there

(01:21:12):
wasn't really any cessation of hostilities. We can talk about
how the minutes leading up to April sixteen, when the
ceasefire went into effect, you know, throughout the country in Lebanon,
the Israelis were attacking around the country, not Bayedoot, but
in other parts of the country, particularly in the south
and in the city of Sworde bombs. You know, I
was down there the other day and people were talking

(01:21:34):
about what time the Israelis dropped their last bomb, whether
it was twelve on the dot or eleven fifty nine
pm or eleven fifty seven pm. And so these are
the conditions that essentially journalists media workers are forced to
live with on a daily basis.

Speaker 1 (01:21:52):
I mean, it's wild how conscientious they are.

Speaker 9 (01:21:56):
You know, they have to take every single minute to
bomb their neighbors. So yeah, maybe tell us what the
situation has been like for journalists in particular. I imagine different
parts of the country are struggling with maybe different challenges.

Speaker 7 (01:22:13):
Yeah, this exists on a sliding scale, obviously since twenty
twenty three, the first week post October seven, there was
a Lebanese journalist by the name of Isam Abdala who
was killed. He was a Reuters photographer, and that was
a strike that wounded other journalists, including journalists from AFP
and Al Jazeera. So, I mean it's been over two

(01:22:33):
and a half years now that there has been a
danger and that first strike that killed Isam changed the
way that media assesses risk in this country. Since then
a number of other journalists have also been killed. So
in that sense, there still is a fear that targeting,
much like in Gaza, is a thing that happens.

Speaker 4 (01:22:52):
Of course, in Gaza was way worse.

Speaker 7 (01:22:54):
There was a way higher threat level, and I think
part of that is because there were no foreign journalists
in Gaza during that period of Palestinians. Until now there
has been at least a one foreign journalist who was
wounded in that initial attack. Since then, most of the
attacks have targeted Lebanese journalists, and particularly Lebanese journalists working
with outlets who have some sort of we can call

(01:23:14):
it line that supports or is differential to Hezbala. I mean,
of course, this is not an excuse, right, They're still journalists,
They're still working in the media, regardless of what their
political affiliation is. These are people who are there to
assess information. Recently, in this latest intensification, there have been
more killings of journalists, of course, and these are typically

(01:23:36):
journalists who are working on the front lines and in
the south. You know, we can't know what's in the
minds of the Israeli military, but based on my conversations
with media professionals and media watchdogs in the recent years,
I wrote a piece for Al Jazeera back in twenty
twenty four. I believe it was about the killing of
journalists in Gaza, and you know, people at outlets like

(01:23:56):
Reporters Without Borders, we're telling me that at that point
we're talking, you know, a year and a half ago,
it was already systematic. There was a systematic means of
trying to control the narrative through the killing of journalists.
And this is a big thing for these groups that
are you know, work really hard to share.

Speaker 4 (01:24:15):
Only things that they've backed up with data.

Speaker 7 (01:24:17):
They're not bombastic spokespeople who have some sort of political
lean you can say, these are people who really have
to own organizations, that really have to be careful with
the language that they pick and choose. So I thought
that was like a really interesting framing. So what they
had told me at the time, and I think this
is inevitably still true if you subscribe to this idea,
is that the goal was to prevent the information from

(01:24:41):
getting out from the front lines, to stop people from
knowing what was happening. And this has been clear as
lately we've seen journalists targeted. And you know, this isn't
a case whereby journalists were killed, and I'm speaking specifically
in Lebanon, this also happened in Gaza, but specifically in Lebanon,
and the last few weeks we've seen cases where there

(01:25:03):
were double tap strikes on journalists that had targeted journalists,
and then the Israeli military came out, particularly with an
incident that happened I think just a little over a
month ago now. They came out and photoshopped journalists from
the TV station Almonard in Hasbala Fatigues and claimed that
he was part of this elite fighting force that awed
one forces. They offered no proof for this, the Israeli

(01:25:25):
military as spokesperson. I believe it was later admitted that
this was a doctored or an AI created photo that
they that they released. But these are the conditions that
journalists are working with. Unfortunately, Lebanon is not signatory to
the ICC or the ICJ, and so these cases though
there's been pressure by media watchdogs and other bodies to

(01:25:47):
get Lebanon to sign up to join the ICC and
ICJ so that they can put forward cases against Israel
for specifically the targeting of journalists, as well as many
other actions the Israelis have taken in Lebanon, particularly South
Lebanon over the last two and a half years. These
are essentially the conditions that Lebaniz journalists are working under
where their lives are at risk.

Speaker 4 (01:26:07):
I might point out one other.

Speaker 7 (01:26:09):
Incident where a journalist from RT was reporting on a
bridge in South Lebanon. It was one of the last
bridges to not yet have been bombed that would connect
South Lebanon to the rest of the country. He was
reporting when it was caught on video that a strike
had happened. I think there are legitimate criticisms about this
journalist's conduct in terms of placing himself.

Speaker 4 (01:26:30):
He wasn't wearing a helmet at the time.

Speaker 7 (01:26:33):
Those are legitimate criticisms for you know, kind of here's
how you can do better sort of thing. That still
does not excuse the fact that the attack happened while
the journalist was there covering. And again, regardless of the
outlets lean, regardless of what their agenda is, etc.

Speaker 4 (01:26:47):
Etc.

Speaker 7 (01:26:48):
These are still media professionals working. I believe that a
warning had happened at that time, so again questions over
maybe decisions that were made. Still that does not excuse
the Israeli military action. And I've heard people say, you
know that if you work through this logic, if we
go back to the logic of what happened in Gaza,
for example, with the first attack on a hospital, and

(01:27:09):
I know, you know, this was in the first few
weeks after October seven. You may remember at the time
there was this whole kind of debate between analysts and
pundits and talking heads and what have you. You know,
Israel would never do that, they would never attack a hospital.
And then months later, here we are and every hospital
in Gaza. You know, at one point multiple hospitals in
Gaza were completely unoperational. Attacks that happened around hospitals at

(01:27:31):
hospitals claiming hospitals were militant centers or centers that were
hosting militants and all these other sort of things. Forensic
Architecture has done fantastic work on the Gaza example of
how the Israelis had structurally gone in and dismantled Gaza
and healthcare at Palestinian Healthcare in Gaza. And I think
it might be fair to say that there's a similar
logic that is working here in Lebanon. Is that, you know,

(01:27:54):
because after the murder of Isam Abdallah, essentially there was
a period where journalists were not killed for at least
a short period of time. Then two journalists from the
outlet Al Mayodine were killed, and then since then we've
had others from Mayodine, from Monar, etc.

Speaker 4 (01:28:09):
That have been killed by the Israelis.

Speaker 7 (01:28:11):
So you see kind of a pattern that, Okay, we
can get away with killing these journalists that are ostensibly
working with outlets who have some sort of affiliation or
lean towards the Hesbala narrative. That's also the case for Alahabart,
with the newspaper that Ama Radil worked with. She was
killed in a really horrific targeted strike just a few

(01:28:32):
days ago.

Speaker 4 (01:28:33):
Where her and a colleague were in the South.

Speaker 7 (01:28:36):
An attack happened, they fled into a building, then the
Israelis attacked that building. She was stuck under the rubble,
and the Israelis prevented Red Cross medics and first responders
from getting to her for a series of hours. I
think it was around seven hours, the official reporting says,
and she died. There's no way to frame this other
than that Israel attacked her and then prevented her from

(01:28:58):
receiving the treatment that she needed to be able to
continue to live. And I'm always somebody who I didn't
know personally, so I can't speak to her character in
my sense, but from the reports people reported her as
a person that was incredibly generous with their time, was
incredibly helpful, was very kind to animals. She was somebody
who was in the South for years and years, was

(01:29:18):
often in the South, was constantly in the South, was
always on the front lines, felt it was her duty
to report from the front lines as much as possible.
You know, these are the people that the Israelis have
targeted until now. Without maybe going too much into, you know,
an attempt to draw some sort of pattern, I think
that what seems clear is that those people are targets.

(01:29:39):
But we have to ask are the Israelis maybe trying
to expand that a bit because this is the first
journalist they've killed from Allahabad, right, if they've killed Manar before,
they've gone onto Myodine, or they've killed Myodine, and and
you know Manard and Myodine in one way gone on
to about are they widening the scope? Are they challenging
more people, are more people at risk? So I think

(01:30:00):
what this does is inevitably now journalists will think twice
about going south, They'll think twice about going to the
front lines. Security advisors will put more caution into allowing
their journalists to go south.

Speaker 4 (01:30:14):
People will take less risks.

Speaker 7 (01:30:15):
Obviously, people who will see themselves who work as targets,
maybe with outlets that the Israelis are openly in opposition to,
might take different decisions, you know. So I think this
is where we end up at basically after such killings
and such actions.

Speaker 9 (01:30:40):
Referring back to the killing of the Amatil, we're recording
this April twenty seventh. As far as I'm aware, no
other journalist has been killed since she was the last
person who was killed. But we'll see what happens. But
Amos was not only double tapped, they had been threatening
her over text message.

Speaker 7 (01:30:57):
Right, Yeah, So this is a phenomenon that has happened.
Obviously it's not just journalists, but it's others as well
that have gotten threatening messages. There have been cases reporting
cases of people receiving text.

Speaker 4 (01:31:09):
Saying we're going to attack you.

Speaker 2 (01:31:11):
Now.

Speaker 4 (01:31:11):
You can die by yourself or you can die with
your family.

Speaker 7 (01:31:13):
And I want to be clearly until now that's not
a journalist that this has happened to. Ama did receive
threatening text messages. Other reporters have followed up and messaged
the number that messaged her. It's really hard to deduct
if this is an actual campaign, if this is somebody
within state capacity, or if these are individuals that found
her phone number and did that. However, there is a
psychological effect that takes place here right. There has been

(01:31:36):
a phenomenon of different municipalities around Lebanon receiving phone calls
from Israeli officials or Israeli military officials warning them of
hosting displaced people. You know, this has been reported and outlets,
including in the New York Times and others. So essentially
a psychological effect has begun to take hold with that
as well. There have been a number of calls that

(01:31:56):
are essentially fake calls. So you know, for example, weeks ago,
a neighbor of mine, or a neighboring building just a
couple streets over, reportedly received a warning, a threatening call,
threatening them that there might be attack on their building.
Now that attack never manifested and never developed, at least
not at that precise building. That there have been other
attacks within a walking distance of my house in the

(01:32:16):
last few weeks. That being said, you know, that has
a psychological effect because many people will not take the
risk they'll leave. Other times, you'll find cases where people
will get some sort of caller, people in the building
will get some sort of call, they'll write it off
as fake, and they won't leave their house. And so
there have been people who have seen warnings coming one
way or another. You know, I'm not saying it's directly
through a phone call, but through one way or another,

(01:32:37):
and thought, you know, whatever the case, we're not.

Speaker 4 (01:32:39):
Going to leave our homes. And they end up dying
in strikes. So there is absolutely a psychological effect.

Speaker 7 (01:32:44):
And we have no way of knowing if these fake
calls are coming from the Israeli military or officials or
individuals or just other people playing pranks. All those things
can be true to varying levels. A neighbor who lives
above me got a call from ostensibly a Cuban number
that was like an automated recording of sorts, and through
her mind she started thinking, you know, what are the

(01:33:05):
different possibilities of these calls? What sort of chances do
I want to take. Incidentally, a day or two later,
I got a call from a Cuban number as well,
and I just chose not to pick it up because
at that point we had figured out it was very
likely to be fake. But this has a psychological effect,
and this is one of the many things that Lebanese
people are dealing with when we talk about these sort
of psychological warfare through the things like you know, calls,

(01:33:28):
warnings of your neighborhood or of your entire village at times,
or maybe even of your building, sonic booms, distribution of leaflets,
all these things are happening simultaneously when we talk about
the things that I'm unreceived again, this is the targeting
of media workers and journalists, and you will see kind
of this international indifference. Luckily, now there's been kind of

(01:33:49):
more voices, i think, picking up on the fact that
journalists are a threat. And it is a case where
it seems like yesterday it was Palestinians and today it's
Lebanese and tomorrow who could be next? And maybe this
is starting to ruminate a bit with journalists and the
international community. But you know, these are the things that
you know, we've seen happen with Lebanese journalists, that they

(01:34:11):
are directly attacked.

Speaker 4 (01:34:12):
There's been huge in difference.

Speaker 7 (01:34:14):
There is always kind of this you might call it
not an indifference, but maybe kind of a hedging of
sorts of like, yeah, of course we don't condone the
attack of media workers, you know, but the affiliation with
hesbela right because this thing exists on a sliding scale
of sorts. International humanitarian law is not a super cut
and dry thing all the time. So our nuances and

(01:34:34):
exceptions and whatever have you under international humanitary laws, I
understand it. I mean, media workers absolutely are off the table.
They're not somebody you can attack unless they're actually caring
and taking part in battles. Even combatants who are not
actively on the field of battle are not legitimate targets. However,
Israel does not play by those rules. Israel will target
people who are ostensibly in Hamas or Pezbala or there's

(01:34:57):
such groups, even if they're at home with their families. Well, now,
nobody has held them accountable for this right. This is
why they've been able to attack betutat will, to attack
the be suburbs at will. This is why they can
bring down buildings in the capital or in the south
and say that you know, there were Hasbala figures in
the building, even if they were not carrying weapons, even
if they were not active combatants, and the burden of
proof has not been on them though it should be.

(01:35:19):
So this is a sliding scale. So it starts with
these kind of militants and they get away with with
you know, attacking maybe somebody who is a former militant
who's no longer carrying weapon, or somebody who's not an
active combatant, and it goes all the way to media
workers who have the sort of you know what we
might call kind of this not clear cut affiliation or whatever.
We should be clear that it doesn't matter what their

(01:35:40):
affiliation is as a media worker, as a journalist, they
should be protected, but because of these affiliations they're not.

Speaker 4 (01:35:46):
Again and Gaza.

Speaker 7 (01:35:47):
It started with such media workers, it ended up with
more recently seeing for example, a Palacitian journalists who worked
with the Associated Press being killed on a live stream.
So this is kind of the sliding scale that we're
seeing happening now.

Speaker 1 (01:36:01):
Like you said, it's widening. It's a testing of the limits.

Speaker 9 (01:36:04):
Some outlets will get no outrage, but then they widen
the scope of it. The entire landscape and dynamic that
you're describing it can only be described as terrorizing. And
we've seen this in the past of course, like in Gaza,
they drop leaflets to terrorize people and they send those
text messages to Gazan's I mean, I don't encourage anybody

(01:36:24):
to look for these, but there have been videos of
people fleeing their cars because they're about to be droned
after receiving a threat saying leave.

Speaker 1 (01:36:33):
Or your family will get droned with you. Like it's unbelievable.

Speaker 9 (01:36:36):
And of course, as you said, we're talk about journals now,
but we've seen a targeting of like medical professionals, Like
we've seen quadruple taps at this point of medical professionals
to prevent people from helping those under the rubble, to
prevent helping those who have now then been targeted for
being in an ambulance. I mean, it's a really outrageous
state of affairs. Has there been an exodus a foreign journalist?

(01:37:10):
What's the situation like for those who are in Lebanon.

Speaker 4 (01:37:13):
No, there's not been an exodus.

Speaker 9 (01:37:15):
You know.

Speaker 7 (01:37:15):
I think that many foreign journalists still feel that they're protected.
It's an interesting dynamic, you know, because I think, as
you'll know very well, right like whenever there are active
hostilities or things like this, we have this flock of
journalists who come in and then once it kind of
calms down, they leave. And I always find that bizarre
because I feel like so much of the work to

(01:37:37):
be done happens when ces fires go into effect, because
that's when you can see the extent of damages. That's
when you can actually investigate and see, you know, Okay,
now that the firing has stopped, you have better access
to places, you can spend more time in places, you
can get deeper stories. I mean, unfortunately, the way that
media works today, there's not the luxury of time. Oftentimes,
you know, media outlets are under staffed and under funded,

(01:38:00):
and so it's a difficult prospect. There's still actually quite
a lot of foreign journalists here. Luckily, some of them
even covered Amalhai's funeral, they covered her memorial, they covered
what happened to her because it was such an egregious example.
And you know, at the same time, I think that
there is this sort of dynamic the Israelis are aware
of that if they kill a foreign journalist right like,
they can kill They have killed a Lebanese journalist who

(01:38:22):
worked for a major international outlet, and that led to
some troubles for them. Because Reuters and others collaborated to
do an investigation. Human rights organizations are reporting on this killing.
Other Lebanese journalists that worked for less prominent outlets still
led to certain condemnations, certain reports were written. But I
think that, you know, it's kind of this effect. It's

(01:38:42):
like an avalanche effect. It's that the more sort of
attention goes towards these sort of incidents, the more of
a more problem it becomes for Israel with their international
partners or or their international relations, right, And so I
think there's an acute awareness about that from the Israeli side.
They know kind of how how far they can get
away with things to a certain extent, you know, I
think a lot of journalists are aware of that as well,

(01:39:04):
and so they feel that for until now, they can
still go into these places. But like you said, it's
a widening effect, right, It's trying to see how far
you can expand and how much you can get away with. Now,
Let's say that you know, for example, this RT journalist,
if they had killed him, he's a British citizen, you know,
does that suddenly change the calculus or the fact that
he worked for art does that count against him. How

(01:39:25):
many politicians, let's say in Europe, will come out and say,
you know, this is wrong the fact that it was
an RT journalist. Hopefully they still would, but it creates
this kind of you know, indecision, if you will.

Speaker 9 (01:39:36):
It seems to me from your answer that like they
still expect that the current effect of their foreignness.

Speaker 7 (01:39:42):
Essentially, yeah, I think so they still carry that, and
I think they have an awareness of that.

Speaker 4 (01:39:49):
You know, I wouldn't want to speak on their behalf.

Speaker 7 (01:39:52):
And there's always layers, right, There's the ones who parachute
in who may be a good basis in the region.
There are those who are based here and have been
here a long time. There are those who speak the
language and understand the culture. There are those who don't.
And I mean, like this is not to single out
foreign journalists. There are local journalists for amazing and their
local journalists for horrible obviously, right, but I think that
there is kind of a thought process that, yeah, carrying

(01:40:15):
you know, a foreign passport, working for a major organization
still comes with some sort of protection. So but I mean,
at the same time, this also means that the israelis
killing the journalists that they have killed it's it's not
a mistake, right. I can think off the top of
my head of at least two journalists who are killed
in their homes and so you know, again this is
attacking civilian infrastructure, attacking buildings, and that comes with a

(01:40:38):
different sort of criticisms. But if we're talking just about
the operation of journalists while they're doing their jobs, you know,
while they're driving in cars, while they're covering sometimes conflicts,
sometimes you know, maybe just moving from one place to
the other, it becomes very clear that you know, if
you feel protected by the fact that you have a
foreign passport, that also means that the Israelis are aware
of who they're.

Speaker 4 (01:40:56):
Attacking and when they're attacking aids.

Speaker 7 (01:40:58):
You know, we've seen things, for example, like you know,
compared to the killing of people, this might be a
minor example, but we saw this thing that got a
lot of international attention of an Israeli soldier destroying a
statue of Jesus in a Catholic town in the south
of Lebanon. And then more recently there was the destruction
of solar panels in another Christian town in South Lebanon,
and the Israeli military will come out and say things like,

(01:41:19):
you know, this does not represent the values of the
Israeli military. So okay, then there's the targeting and killing
of journalists. Does that represent the you know? And then
and then additionally, I think it's important to say that
with the level of data, with the level of precision
that the Israelis have, that they've killed at times. You know,
I visited a scene in a Christian town just east

(01:41:39):
of Bayout, in a place called Aasade, where our you know,
mutual friend Eli Ayub grew up and we saw the attack,
the side of the attack, and I went to a
building behind the building that attack that had, you know,
we had the view from up top and you could
see that two holes were in the rooftop of the
building that was struck. And it's because the shells went
through or the rockets went through the top of the

(01:42:01):
building through the roof, went down a floor below and
then exploded and killed women.

Speaker 4 (01:42:06):
Ended up killing a local.

Speaker 7 (01:42:08):
Christian official, and that was according to Israeli, is not
the target of who they wanted to kill. But the
point being is that they have this technology that they
can attack precisely certain areas they can attack to the
apartment they can blow out the walls of one apartment
and leave the one a floor below or two floors
below intact.

Speaker 4 (01:42:23):
And they've done this.

Speaker 7 (01:42:24):
They did this at a hotel just five minutes away.
Some ostensible Iranian officials were staying in a hotel.

Speaker 4 (01:42:30):
They destroyed that room.

Speaker 7 (01:42:31):
It doesn't mean that at times there aren't other people
nearby that are hurt. But if you're able to attack,
and you know the figures that you are going after,
and it is this precise, then what is the need
to take down entire buildings or what is your excuse
when you're going after media workers? Now they say it
in a sense of, you know, like they did with
this Minar correspondent that he was a member of the

(01:42:52):
broad one forces, but again they've provided no information to
do that. You know, these are people who who have
very public face social media accounts. These are people who
are in the public eye, who are on TV, who
are doing all these sort of things. So you know,
it really begs to ask many, many questions of the Israelis.

Speaker 1 (01:43:09):
Yeah, statues are off limits.

Speaker 4 (01:43:11):
But people are okay, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:43:14):
Yeah, a fair game. So there's a cease fire.

Speaker 9 (01:43:18):
Now, what are people expecting for baut and what does
that ceasar look like.

Speaker 1 (01:43:22):
As you said, the attacks are.

Speaker 9 (01:43:24):
Still going on in the south, but what are people
expecting for these different parts of Lebanon.

Speaker 7 (01:43:29):
Yeah, the South is still very active and yesterday was
a particularly brutal day with attacks across the area. There
was a forced evacuation orders for areas above the Leetani River,
which for anyone following, you know, there's been this whole
kind of dynamic about disarming Hazabella below the lee Tani River,
which runs across South Lebanon. The Israelis have previously issued

(01:43:52):
evacuation orders for above the Laitani as well, reaching up
to another river called the Zaharani. According to Human Rights
someone at Human Rights Watch choice to these evacuation demands
to comply with international humanitarian law, they need to be precise,
they need to be exact, and they need to be temporary.
You know, you need to leave your home now because
we're attacking a target. But you know, they can't be

(01:44:13):
open ended the way that they've been with the Israelis,
and they cannot be indiscriminate the way that they've been
of demanding the entirety of South Lebanon to move north
or the entirety of the Southern suburbs. So attacks on
Bedut after Black Wednesday have come to a halt. And
it's also true for the Southern suburbs, which you know,
have been an area whereby they've suffered many, many attacks,

(01:44:34):
and so it's a bit of a stranger despite at
the same time, I think people have gone home to
check on their houses. Some people have gone home to
just stay in their houses for a variety of reasons,
either because they might feel that it's safe for this moment,
or you know, they're hedging their beds. But still a
lot of people have not returned home.

Speaker 4 (01:44:50):
Many of them cannot.

Speaker 7 (01:44:51):
These are obviously people at the South, or you cannot
if you've had your home destroyed in the South or
in the Southern suburbs or parts of the eastern Bacau Valley.
You know, I've got a school by my house which
is hosting displaced people, and it's still filled with the displaced,
either because they cannot go home or because, as many
have told me, they don't trust that this ceasefire will hold. Obviously,
in places like the South it has not held, and

(01:45:12):
it's still ongoing with attacks coming from both sides.

Speaker 4 (01:45:16):
In Bedut.

Speaker 7 (01:45:16):
You know, it's calm in a sense for this moment.
Like I mentioned, there's still a drone overhead. At times,
there have been reports of warplanes flying over different parts
of the country. So you know, there's still this doubt
if this ceasefire, this truce will hold. So we're kind
of expecting or waiting any moment. But I should say
that this was also true of the twenty twenty four

(01:45:37):
Seas fire to an extent. Now, in twenty twenty four,
immediately the next day, people went home.

Speaker 4 (01:45:41):
They drove home, they drove south, they went ahead with it.

Speaker 7 (01:45:44):
Of course, the attacks from the Israelis did not stop
in the south, in Beirut and the southern suburbs predominantly.
There were a few attacks in the southern suburbs, but
not regular attacks. You know, a kind of normalcy returned
a bit. However, there was still kind of this attitude
of waiting and seeing what would happen, because very few
people trust the Israelis to stop the attacks. Very few

(01:46:04):
people trust that the Israelis want to stop the war.
At this point in time, they're stronger, they're the hegemon
in the region. They control the skies to a large
extent they control disease, and now in southern Lebanon they also,
you know, to an extent, control parts of the land.
And so I think that the attitude here is very
much one of this truce is tenuous. We're living day

(01:46:26):
by day, We're waiting to see if tomorrow, you know,
we have to return to kind of a pre April
sixteen reality where we're checking our shoulders, we're deciding in
which streets to go down. You know, those of us
who are lucky enough to maybe have relatives or friends
in other parts of the country that we feel we
can go to be a bit safer, are.

Speaker 4 (01:46:46):
You know, waiting to do that again.

Speaker 7 (01:46:47):
Maybe initially there was something of an exhale kind of okay,
we know that we're going to be okay for or
we hope will be okay for at least a few days.
But as the days go on, and as there's been
no conclusion to this issue, and of course know that
these are connected to the Iran US discussions, which are
in a whole other place themselves, I think everyone's just
kind of waiting to see what develops, and there is

(01:47:10):
the sort of bated breath.

Speaker 9 (01:47:11):
And of course the reality I mean, even if the
ceasefire holds for a bit, like, the reality is that
the situation on the ground has changed. Whether it's how
much land they've taken there's like a new yellow line
and Lebanon in the same way that they've constricted Gaza,
and also the damage that's been left behind, not just
of the infrastructure, but of the herbicides that they're spraying

(01:47:32):
and the environmental destruction. So there's just so much to
think about. Thank you so much for coming on and
making time to talk about this, and please stay safe.

Speaker 4 (01:47:43):
Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you so much.

Speaker 9 (01:47:44):
Donner.

Speaker 8 (01:47:58):
Welcome, take it up and here podcast about things falling
apart and although not today putting them back together again.
Today we are going to be talking about some of
the ways in which the world is falling apart and
the ways that they've been invisibilized. Now there are obviously
a wide and broad variety of ways in which the

(01:48:22):
world is coming to pieces, but one of them is
the impact of the continued dual blockade now of the
strait up Wamus. The sense you get reading the papers,
if you are looking at the economic reality of the
situation is that everything is broadly fine. The economic impacts

(01:48:42):
have been less bad than expected. The economy is proving
more resilient. Economies, particularly in East Asia, are hanging on
better than predicted. China has been resilient, America has been resilient.
Trump will eventually back down, which will head off the
worst case scenario long range forecasting of materials. Now, the

(01:49:03):
rest of you, I'm assuming, if you're listening to this podcast,
you live in reality and not the distorted mirror world
of the stock market. Stock market, as I think everyone
has been able to see by this point, is increasingly unmoored,
if it ever was moored to begin with, from the
reality of how the global economy is actually functioning. And

(01:49:28):
Trump has been able to play a game by which
she makes the appearance of backing down in every time
the stock market seems to be actually tanking, and the
markets have simply come to believe as an axiom, that
if they simply bet that Trump will eventually back down,
it will simply happen.

Speaker 4 (01:49:47):
Now it hasn't.

Speaker 8 (01:49:49):
The wars continuing apace, and it seems to have no
signs of slowing down, but the markets are behaving as
if they know that it's going to happen, and this
has created a kind of paradox where on the one
hand there is us living in this world, and on
the other hand there are the markets living in a

(01:50:09):
world where everything is going to be fine, and in
the world that we live in, things are not good,
but they are breaking, I think more slowly than people
tended to expect. Now. Part of this, and we will
go over this in this episode, is that the impacts
of this have been worst felt obviously innro on itself,

(01:50:32):
and then across South and East Asia, which are the
markets that are incredibly in economies that are incredibly reliant
on not just oil but things like naphtha and also
fertilizers that pass through the strato fromuz. But if the
markets are wily e coyote hovering in the air thro

(01:50:52):
this year power of not looking down the rest of
the economy is a kind of slow moving train wreck.
It isn't collapsing all at once. But the more you
poke through, and the more you go past the first
page of the newspaper and start looking at the later ones,
and the more that you look at the press in

(01:51:13):
other countries, the more you begin to realize that things
are going quite quite badly. Now in the West. The
sign of this has been five dollars a gallon gasoline
in vast portions of the United States. We are quite
frankly seeing the better side of it. There have been

(01:51:35):
widespread shutdowns of transportation across South and East Asia. Buses
simply aren't running, both public and private. There have been
strikes and protests over high gas prices by people who
normally drive buses.

Speaker 4 (01:51:50):
Even in the US, you can.

Speaker 8 (01:51:51):
Talk to people who try to do Uber deliveries, and
it's becoming effectively impossible even to do that simply because
gas prices are so high. But they are simply nowhere
near as bad here as they are in places like
the Philippines. Now, the interconnected nature of the global economy
means that there are things that are being broken right

(01:52:12):
now that are going to break more things later down
the line, and are continuing to break things down and
across the supply chain, but the ripples are moving slowly.
Transportation costs are something that we tend to think about
in terms of moving people around, right We try to
think about it in terms of buses, in terms of cars. However,

(01:52:35):
one of the very significant issues that we are running
into across particularly Southeast Asian also Southeast Asia to I'm
combining all sorts of don't know three of the regions.
A bunch of the island nations in the Pacific are
dealing with this two to various extent. Sri Lanka has
been one of the worst hits to the extent that

(01:52:55):
we're seeing a bunch of these countries are doing kind
of like miniature government shutdowns. And obviously there's a bunch
of different versions of this. Pakistan, for example, is going
into more debt in an attempt to sort of keep
the economy running. But returning to transformation costs for a moment,
it is important that we also understand that goods are transported,

(01:53:17):
and increases in the price of gasoline to the point
where it's simply impossible to afford also affects shipping and
in particular effects things that are delivered on trucks. I'm
going to read this quote about Vietnam and rice production
in Vietnam quote. In today's abnormal times, rice buyers are hesitating.

(01:53:42):
Shipping delays of ten to fifteen days have become common
as carriers slow steam to conserve fuel. Osmadi rice from
India bound for the Middle East has been unable to
get through this trade of romuz in the Philippines, wholesalers
are not sure when there might be enough diesel to
move imports around the country. That means rice has been
piling up across Asia, creating a short term paradox. Wholesale

(01:54:06):
price is declining as production costs rise after a year
of healthy harvests. Traders are paying farmers less right now
to hedge against future risk. So this is a really
complicated fucking mess.

Speaker 4 (01:54:22):
Right.

Speaker 8 (01:54:23):
What the New York Times is saying here is that
buyers aren't buying the massive amount of rice that has
already been planted, right. But on the other hand, there's
also now we're running into fertilizer shortages because of a
bunch of elements for fertilizers that is used in a lot.
I mean, this is also affecting the United States too,

(01:54:45):
but it's significantly worse in places like the Philippines and
places like Vietnam. Some of the important elements needed to
create fertilizer pass these trader farm news they're not getting through.
And this means that on the one hand, farmers are
facing enormous rising production prices, but production is a process
that takes place over and through time, right, And this

(01:55:06):
is something that very importantly most economic models are really
really bad at dealing with. Conventional macroeconomic models assume time
and space don't exist to a large extent like this
is like a real issue for a lot of large
scale economic models. Unfortunately they exist here. And so what
we're dealing with, right, is that there has been production
that's already happened because there's already have been harvests. But

(01:55:30):
now farmers can't sell the stuff that they've harvested because
the transportation costs are so high that the buyers don't.

Speaker 4 (01:55:37):
Want to buy it.

Speaker 8 (01:55:38):
But that means also on the other hand, food is
still getting more expensive on your end, because even though
the people making the food can't get enough money for
the food they are selling because again the buyers won't
buy it because it's too expensive, you're now also paying
like people in the region are now paying increased rice
prices because they have to pay the shipping cost. So

(01:56:00):
even though on the one hand, right the actual price
that consumers are paying is going up, right, and the
cost to produce the rice is also going up, the
actual price at which these people can sell the rice
is going down. And this is a fucking nightmare, and
it means that crops aren't getting planted. It means that

(01:56:20):
crops are also just rotting in the fields because there's
no way to sell and move them. This is causing really,
really significant concerns that we're going to be, you know,
like we are looking over the coming months at a
kind of agricultural catastrophe where you're starting to see sort
of projections of people going, oh God, like, hey, what

(01:56:42):
if people simply stop exporting food. There's a great quote
in this New York Times article from a guy who's
a senior fellow in food security at Singapore's ISS where
he says, quote, complex systems have the habit of creating
wicked problems. The way that like capitalist markets interact with

(01:57:06):
food shortages is a complete fucking nightmare. And this is
something that we have seen that has caused famines all
over the world. Is that once you get into the
point where food genuinely becomes scarce, which is not quite
the point where we're at now, we're in the beginning
of the process by which this could happen. Right The

(01:57:26):
part of the process we're in right now is these
farmers who also, by the way, and this is also
very important, these rice farmers are not operating on particularly
high margins, right. They are not very wealthy when I
say low margins, right, they are not making all that
much money. And so you know, being unable to sell

(01:57:46):
your rice or being forced to sell it at an
extremely low price and then having your production cost rise
because you're cost of fertilizer of skyrocketing, is how these
things effectively go under. If this stuff continues, This is
how you get waves of people being forced off their
land because they simply can't afford to do the farming anymore.

Speaker 4 (01:58:04):
Right.

Speaker 8 (01:58:05):
But then you know, you also have sort of in
some sense, you have the reverse of this in other
places where if you look at what's happening in India
we talked about this on an executive disorder a few
weeks back. You know, like a bunch of the ceramics
industry it's just like shut down, Like four hundred thousand
people are out of work from this, and this is
causing those people to, Okay, like what do you do
when you can't get work in sort of urban industrial centers.

(01:58:27):
As you go back to a lot of the rural places,
where these people are from. But you know, the thing
about oil, right, is that oil price increase is something
that hits people across the board. It hits both rural
and urban economies because they both are heavily oil dependent.
This is something that New York Times mentions when you're
talking about like rice problems in Vietnam.

Speaker 4 (01:58:49):
Right.

Speaker 8 (01:58:50):
Part of the other thing that's been making rice like
harder to farm is that their irrigation system is powered
by like diesel engines, it's punctures and diesel stuff, and
so because of that, you know, there's sort of like
broad scale shortages in Vietnam, and you have to choose
whether you're you know, using the limited amount of diesel

(01:59:13):
that you have in cities or in rural areas. And
so these things are just kind of rapidly becoming a nightmare.
Now you know what isn't a nightmare, it's it's the
products and services that support this podcast. And we are back,

(01:59:42):
so I want to talk a bit about why the
system is structured like this and why you know, on
the one hand, like we are starting to see things
that are very incredibly alarming in East and Southeast Asia
on varying levels that and I guess I because I
should be really clear about this, right, The actual economics

(02:00:04):
impacts of this are really dispersed. It depends a lot
on how wealthy of a country you are in and
then also like how reliant on oil your economy is.
So the Chinese economy, for example, is not been that
badly affected because they have large oil supplies. The Taiwanese economy,

(02:00:25):
you know, like there's kind of plastic bag shortages, and
that's been another element of all of this is like
people panicking about are there going to be enough trash
backs because for reasons that I will get into in
a seconds, like plastic is made of oil, right, Everything
around you that is plastic is just oil. And it

(02:00:45):
does turn out that you do need crude oil in
order to produce plastics, and this has been causing lots
of production issues across like a whole variety of sectors
that use plastics. Now, the bottom hasn't just completely fallen
out yet, and it's worth taking a little bit of
time to examine why. And the reason why it hasn't
immediately collapsed is actually, strangely the same reason why we're

(02:01:10):
in this mess from the first place, which is that
in a lot of ways. The way that our system
of production works, the way that we produce things in
the world, and the way that we move things around
is made in the image of oil. So what do
I mean by that? What I mean is that the
system of production is very nodal right. It operates on

(02:01:32):
a whole bunch of these nodes. And you know, you
have a node where a part of a production is happening,
and then that node moves an item from one thing
to another where it goes another stage of production process,
and inputs and outputs come in in these nodes. And
the thing about these nodes, right, is that in theory,
you know, the way the system is supposed to be designed,

(02:01:54):
right in the way that it's been sort of they
call it like flexibilization to some extent, the way this's
to work is that like okay, So, like if you
are a company that needs to get like I don't know,
you're like a Ramen company, to take an example that's
been in the news at least in these in like
in East Asia's like there's been disruption to like robin
making companies, right, and you need plastic, you have like

(02:02:15):
one plastic supplier you're normally going to, but there are
a bunch of other ones, right and so you know,
or maybe maybe maybe a better way to explain this
would be using the example of like the way that
like fast fashion works and the way that like drop
shipping works right where they're like there are all of
these different, like small sort of factories around China or
like these small like sort of garment production places where

(02:02:36):
you can like very very quickly crank out the same
like drass or whatever, and if you're doing the drop shipping,
you can like source your drop ship stuff from one
of like a hundred of these places right now. This
is what I mean when I say that it's noble,
is that it's designed in such a way that's a

(02:02:57):
blockage in one part of the system isn't supposed to
be that bad, because the system isn't designed in a
way where you know, there's like one railway from one
place to another, and you have to move all of
your goods along this one railway, and you can only
get it from like one buyer who produces the thing
to preeces anovery thing prius and everything. You're supposed to
be able to get it from like a broad distributed

(02:03:20):
network of people, and if one node of the network
goes out, you're supposed to be able to pivot to
another one. And this is the way that the economics
of oil works.

Speaker 2 (02:03:31):
Right.

Speaker 8 (02:03:31):
There are a shit tot of different oil producers, and
in theory, you're supposed to be able to pivot around
between different oil wells in a way that's different from,
for example, the way that coal worked.

Speaker 4 (02:03:42):
Right. With coal, and a lot of this.

Speaker 8 (02:03:44):
I'm sourcing from Timothy Mitchell's book Carbon Democracy, which is
very very good. You know, with coal, right, you're usually
not moving it by ship, which is this is like
another thing that we're going to get to in a second,
but with it's very easy. The way that coal is
mined and the way that you have to move it, right,

(02:04:06):
It goes from one place to another to another to
another in a line. And if one part of that
process shuts down, there isn't like another coal thing you
can get your coal from, right, You're just fucked Like,
there's not like another mind that feeds into your factory.
This is this sort of the way the coal production worked,
and sort of the eighteen and early nineteen hundreds. Oil
works in basically the opposite way, right, where there's just

(02:04:29):
like a shit ton of things, and because you're mostly
moving it by water at some except by pipeline, the
way the production process works and the way that it's
sort of easier to move and just like the way
that it flows, means that it's harder to block off
the entire supply of oil in the same way that
it was actually kind of easy to just like completely

(02:04:50):
stop up huge swas of the economy by just blocking
off their access to coal and capital has like long
realized the danger of choke points. This is called four shadowing.
This is a literary device, et cetera, et cetera. You know,
the choke point used to be coal mines and the
railways on which like coal was moved, right. And one

(02:05:10):
of the things that Timothy Mitchell argues is that a
lot of the militancy of the nineteenth and twentieth century
labor movement is a direct product of the ways in
which these coal miners were both extremely militant and also
very very easily able to shut down production in a
line by mobilizing a force that was greater than their numbers. Right,

(02:05:34):
a relatively small portion of of you know, like hyperbiligant
coal miners can shut down like the rest of the
economy because everyone else is relying on their being coal.
But oil has the opposite problem. Well, Like the problem
with coal is that there's not enough of it, so
you have to constantly extract it. The problem with oil
is that there's too much of it. Right. If you

(02:05:56):
shut down coal production, it's a nightmare for the companies
that produce coal because they can't make any money because
there's like a fixed number of mines and it takes
like large scale capital investment to like get them out.
And it's also true that like it's expensive to attract oil.
But the thing about oil is again like there were
just there are too many refineries, right, This is sort
of why OPIC was formed. If you shut down production,

(02:06:18):
if you restrict the amount of oil, it comes down
to the market. That's actually how you make money versus
if you shut down coal production, suddenly nobody's making any
money versus oil, where it's like if you shut down
oil production, usually it just means that like the oil
companies make more money because the price of oil goes up.
And the specifics of why this is true, I would
encourage people to go with your carbon democracy. I could

(02:06:39):
spend another like two hours talking about the materiality of
oil and why it specifically works like this differently. But yeah,
oil has the other opposite problem of coal, like there's
too much of it. And so this goes to a
point where Mitchell talks about how in the early nineteen hundreds,
companies are deliberately setting off oil stripes right because it'll
raise their production prices because shutting down their own production

(02:07:02):
and having an excuse to shut down their own production,
like we'll let them just knock off oil refinery so
they can reduce the amount of oil in the market.
The system of oil is designed to get around these blockades, right.
This is a big part of the reason for the
transition from cold oil was specifically it was it was
like the US and the Marshall Plan was trying to
defeat these extremely militants like French unions after World War Two,

(02:07:23):
and these unions were largely coal mining based, and they
were like, oh shit, we can you know, we can
do like a pivot to Saudi Arabia to move to oil,
and this can be like this can be our solution
to like crush these coal mining unions because oil is
extremely hard to unionize. It has like a highly divided workforce,
you know, And so they tried to design the system
that doesn't have choke points. But the problem is there's
one fucking big one, and that one big one is

(02:07:47):
the straight over mouse. And at this point, the sort
of advantage of the system, right, which is that it's
all these different nodes that are like bound together in
this like extremely convoluted weave. The strength of the system
is also its weakness. It means that we're all getting
dragged down together with the system when it stopped working

(02:08:10):
because we all rely on stuff from all over the world.
The way that the system has a bout us altogether
means that we're all reliant on every other part of
the economy, and we're all reliant on oil. And this
is sort of the root of the catastrophe and also
the reason why this crash is operating in slow motion.
In order to stop the international labor movement, right, this

(02:08:31):
system was set up in a specific way where it
works along nose and it is supposed to be designed
to deal with a crisis like this, so instead of
collapsing immediately, it collapses in slow motion. But it is
still collapsing because capital and I guess like the presidents
of the United States, has taken the action that the

(02:08:51):
system was designed to avoid, which is like, you know,
like a large scale blockade of production, and the consequences
of this are both die and expanding as we speak. Yeah,
this has been It could happen here. Things are only
going to get worse before they get better.

Speaker 2 (02:09:24):
I enjoyed the new Devil War's Brata movie. It was
weirdly relevant. I did not expect Meryl Streep to deliver
like a monologue about how AI is destroying independent internet
writers or comedy writers or whatnot, any kind of independent
internet writer. But I guess that's what we got.

Speaker 5 (02:09:44):
So that's good and thinly veiled Jeff Bezos villain.

Speaker 2 (02:09:47):
Then the veiled Jeff Bezos villain.

Speaker 5 (02:09:49):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:09:50):
Well this isn't our movie review podcast, because we don't
have one of those, because I would be bad at it.
This is Electile Disorder.

Speaker 5 (02:09:58):
Function Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in
the White House. Now it's fine, the crumbling world and
what it means for you. Embarrassed Davis today, joined by
Robert Evans, James stout me along and maybe Sophie Lichterman.
This episode, we are covering the week of April thirtieth
to May sixth. I want to roll things back to

(02:10:20):
just before we recorded, because Sophie brought up the California
gubernatorial debate that happened Tuesday.

Speaker 2 (02:10:27):
Night, Ubernatorial Garrison, you gotta make it sound so please.

Speaker 5 (02:10:30):
Which I tried watching as that kind of is my job,
only to discover it was not streaming anywhere online and
only available feel the CNN channel on television like you know,
like actual TV channels, which prompted Sophie to ask the
good question who is this for?

Speaker 3 (02:10:48):
Why?

Speaker 5 (02:10:49):
Why? Why does this even exist?

Speaker 10 (02:10:51):
Then?

Speaker 5 (02:10:51):
If only people watching cable can watch it? And then
I realized the real reason this exists is to generate
short video clips for social media. And that's I guess
how most people are actually engaging with this debate in
contextless fifty second that's generous chunks of time in which
Stier came off the best, did not come off great,

(02:11:14):
but came off okay, Okay, he came off fine. He
had this weird tick where he would be he would
ask a question and when he would respond, it would
sound like he was deflecting the question even when he wasn't.
But the sort of like defensiveness of his framing sounded
like he was deflecting a lot of questions that actually

(02:11:34):
he was giving kind of good answers to Porter. Was
I don't know Sophie. Can you speak about Porter?

Speaker 2 (02:11:41):
I don't Porter, I hardly know her.

Speaker 11 (02:11:43):
I don't have a mic, so I'll be really quick.

Speaker 4 (02:11:46):
That was pretty good.

Speaker 11 (02:11:48):
Porter kind of overcoppensati snarky remarks. But she's only pulling
like eight or ten percent, where Sultan and Styr are
both pulling closer to twenty. Also, Steve Hilton ew.

Speaker 3 (02:12:02):
Yeah, short video content has not been kind to Katie
Porter in the in the last couple of years.

Speaker 5 (02:12:08):
It was interesting earlier that morning, Katie Porter released an
ad that ended with a joke about her abuse of
her staff. Ended with like a reference to a line
that she said that was in those articles and like
she had all these background extras laugh at the joke
referencing the abuse allegations against her to her staff. Interesting choice,

(02:12:29):
crazy move. Who is that for? Who is that for?

Speaker 2 (02:12:34):
I mean, you know what it is. Actually it's her
trying to be like Trump, like One of the lessons
that Trump has taught the political class is that if
people come at you for like being corrupt or fucked
up or evil or irresponsible, you just kind of barrel
right through that. You don't acknowledge it, you don't like
acknowledging any validity in it, and like you, you kind

(02:12:57):
of make fun of it. You try to like make
it a selling point for yourself. And I'm not saying
she's doing a good job of it, but I think
that's what is she's trying to do.

Speaker 5 (02:13:06):
I think that's she's like tough, no nonsense.

Speaker 4 (02:13:09):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 3 (02:13:11):
Yeah, the amount of money being spent on anti Staya
attack ads is judging by the amount of them that
get beamed into my home every night.

Speaker 4 (02:13:19):
Now, it's pretty significant.

Speaker 3 (02:13:22):
As the resident Californian, I didn't watch the debate because
the choices we have make me very angry and upset,
and I didn't want to think about that.

Speaker 5 (02:13:33):
That's politics. Yeah, James, do you want to start with
a few of yours I see are at the top
of the dock here.

Speaker 3 (02:13:42):
Yeah, Well, let's begin with the biggest news of the week,
which is that the White House Twitter account has shared.

Speaker 4 (02:13:48):
The new crest for nice.

Speaker 5 (02:13:50):
I gotta see this.

Speaker 4 (02:13:52):
Oh yeah, click on that. Oh good, thank god she
had that screen.

Speaker 3 (02:13:55):
Garrison garaging you can't have a treat and must share
with everybody.

Speaker 5 (02:14:02):
I've get I've got it. I'm good, I've got to
get there.

Speaker 4 (02:14:04):
We go.

Speaker 2 (02:14:05):
Okay, So, yeah, that looks like shit. It looks like
lazily AI generated garbage.

Speaker 3 (02:14:12):
Yeah, if you asked, AI is generated crest for a
US law enforcement see.

Speaker 2 (02:14:16):
The most basic that could possibly be?

Speaker 4 (02:14:19):
Yeah, yeah, sure, Oh well.

Speaker 3 (02:14:22):
National Immigration and Customs Enforcement nice.

Speaker 5 (02:14:25):
Always good. When you throw national in front of any
any acronym, that's never it's never turned out bad.

Speaker 3 (02:14:31):
As many people have shared with me, several television shows
had already come up with the idea for rebranding ICE
as nice. I don't think this is going to stop
them moving on. The DOJ said that it is suing
Denver for infringing the Second Amendment. This potains to their
assault weapon ban, which bans a lot of semi automatic rifles,

(02:14:52):
including A Fifteen's interesting kind of precedent for DOJ behavior
in that obviously, like lots of states have a so
weapons bans, and previously we have not seen the DOJ
intervene against those and there are a few no cases
about them on their way to Supreme Court, with Supreme
courts showing any particular desire to get to them.

Speaker 2 (02:15:15):
Yeah, this has been an interesting thing for a while,
is that even as the Republican the right has had
control of the Supreme Court for years now, they have
shown a distinct unwillingness to visit the matter of like
assault weapons and like magazine capacity bands. Yeah, as well
as because there's definitely been some some folks this is

(02:15:36):
less popular, but some some folks on the pro gun
side who want them to look at like state level
restrictions on like you have to like waiting periods and stuff.
And it's just kind of been this detent that's existed,
where like they have not pushed too far in a
certain direction to like limit what Blue states can do
with their gun control and if if they are, that's

(02:15:58):
an interesting ship.

Speaker 3 (02:16:01):
Yeah, it's interesting that this has gone after it's a
civil rights to it's through the Civil rights Division, right,
I guess they're using the Hella precedent, right, which was
the last time and it was Hell, it wasn't the
last time.

Speaker 4 (02:16:12):
The previous one was.

Speaker 3 (02:16:13):
Bruin yeah, yeah, sir, Yeah, yeah, bruin the Brewant decision,
which was the last time that the Supreme Court really
made it made to change to national firearms rules. Right,
It's interesting they're going off to Denver and not like,
for instance, California.

Speaker 2 (02:16:28):
Well, Denver has a specific there's specifically banned VAR fifteen
as opposed to California doesn't ban any specific guns. They
banned features on firearms. So I suspect that would be
why is that Denver is going Colorado's going after this
specific firearm that and the argument that's going to be
made is that the Air fifteen is the common most

(02:16:51):
commonly available like rifle. Like it's absolutely the equivalent of
a musket in its day, is the argument that they
will be making because I Clarence Thomas has made that
argument before. Yeah, so California never tried to ban air fifteens.
They just made it a giant pain and they ask
to own them. And that's a lot I think safer
from this sort of attack, although I guess we'll see.

Speaker 3 (02:17:13):
You know, Denver's assault weapons ban is not the same
as California's, but nor does it ban.

Speaker 4 (02:17:20):
AAR fifteen's by name.

Speaker 3 (02:17:22):
I'm just reading from the Denver Municipal Code, Section thirty
eight one thirty the categories or the way it defines
an assault weapon is a semi automatic centerfire rifle with a
detachable magazine capacity at for twenty one rounds or higher.
That's subsequent legislation arter that which further limits magazine capacity

(02:17:44):
in Colorado all semi automatic shotguns that can take more
than six cartridges and or have a folding stock, or
a weapon which can be converted into one of those things.
So that's actually a pretty it's not the same as
a California ban. It's interesting to see them picking this one.

(02:18:05):
It's also pretty old. It Denver started. It's a sort
weapons ban story. It's been through the courts quite a
few times, but it begins in nineteen eighty nine. But yeah,
it's an interesting sort of area that will keep tabs on.

Speaker 2 (02:18:18):
Yeah, we'll keep because there's a couple of big gun
things going in front of the Supreme Court this year.
Right like earlier in March, the Court heard arguments on
the United States versus HARMANI, which was a case about
the legality of basically, if you're using a drug that
is illegal, even if it's like a drug, even if
it's marijuana and it's legal at the state level, if
it's like federally illegal, you cannot possess own that you

(02:18:41):
do anything with guns, right, And that's not really constitutional
because the Second Amendment, like it or not, is like
a civil right, and the idea that like, you lose
a civil right because you're like ingested a substance at
some point is like a wildly dangerous and anyway whatever.
It's the kind of thing that just again, courts have

(02:19:02):
refused to sort of take seriously, even though everyone's known
there's very thin precedents. So the fact that the Supreme
Court is finally hearing arguments on this is really interesting.
This is a case of a guy who had both
marijuana and cocaine on him when he got busted, and yeah,
so we'll also cover that case. But there's a lot
of going to be a lot of interesting gun stuff

(02:19:23):
happening this year, not all of it bad, because honestly,
if the Supreme Court were to rule that, like, no,
you can't say someone can't own a gun just because
they smoked pot, I would say that's a net win.
But obviously there's a lot of you know, violations of
States rights and whatnot. That's that's going to be I'm
sure a part of this too. It'll be a messy

(02:19:44):
summer for that, but this is going to be some
major stories this year.

Speaker 3 (02:19:48):
Yeah, yeah, it's yeah. I think we'll certainly see some
movement here. Bortal Wool construction crews have destroyed an intaglio
sacred to the Autumn people. The son Old Last playas
Intagli sacred site is irreparably damaged, despite the ing gray
world recorded and having been identified to construction crews by

(02:20:09):
cultural monitors. Ton Oudam chairman Verlin Jose said, quote, this
was a devastating and entirely avoidable loss. There is nothing
more important than our history, which is what makes us
who we are. As oddum, the site was also an
irreparable piece of the United States history, one none of
us can ever get back. The nation's leaders have and

(02:20:31):
will continue to meet with senior Department of Homeland Security
officials to obtain more information and to communicate the nation's
absolute insistance so this cannot happen again. And then, finally
for me, the United States State Department has approved the
sale of Jadam's to Ukraine, which is a significant increase
in their capacity. Right jam if people an't familiar, stands

(02:20:52):
to a joint director attack comlicition, think big bomb, Like
it's a guided bomb. It can either be bomb that
comes guided or you can you can change a different
munition to make it become guided.

Speaker 2 (02:21:05):
These are packages, right, Like, these are kits that you
take so you have like a bomb of a various
sizes because they can range, and you like basically apply
this kit to them and it makes it into a
guided munition. Right. So it's a you can have whatever
kind of explosive package you want and you can convert
it into a guided munition that you then you know,

(02:21:27):
drop or throw or whatever via you know, whichever.

Speaker 8 (02:21:30):
Platform you have it to be using. Yeah, these are
like aircraft fired right.

Speaker 3 (02:21:35):
Yes, yes, And in these case they're extended range tail kits.
It's not the bomb itself, but the thing that allows
the bomb to be delivered to a target.

Speaker 4 (02:21:47):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:21:47):
Again, this is a package. You have a bomb that's
a dumb explosive and this is the thing that you
put onto it that allows it to be like a
smart munition that's targeted. Like it's it's an air to
surface munition. Generally they're like one thousand two thousand pound
warheads I think for the most part.

Speaker 3 (02:22:05):
Yeah, I guess in this case it would depend on
whatever the warhead is, right.

Speaker 2 (02:22:10):
But like there's there's five hundred pound ones, Like there's
a variety of sizes.

Speaker 3 (02:22:16):
Obviously, the Ukrainians have used many of their long range
assets right to attack Russia inside Russia. Previously, this has
been something the United States had kind of drawn a
line at.

Speaker 4 (02:22:28):
That seems to no longer be the case. This will
obviously also be a massive contract right there.

Speaker 3 (02:22:34):
The principal contractor he's going to be Boeing, who are
located in Saint Louis, and the estimated total cost is
about a third of a billion dollars, so three hundred
and seventy.

Speaker 4 (02:22:43):
Three million to be exact.

Speaker 2 (02:22:45):
There's been like a big push in a couple of
different states to increase munition production, and it has been
very uneven in terms of how it's worked so far.
They've encountered a lot of issues scaling up production to
the level they need. I'm not convinced in our ability
to actually like meet this at the time frame being proposed,
but we'll see. That's what we I've caught. I've been

(02:23:06):
reporting on that a couple of times so far. This Yeah, yeah,
the munition shortage and our issues and scaling up product production.
I'll probably do something later this year, like a more
detailed look at like what the pitfalls have been. But
it's actually surprisingly hard just because they say we're putting
this much money into, you know, creating these facilities or
encouraging the production to scale up, it's not necessarily that

(02:23:28):
easy to actually do that.

Speaker 3 (02:23:30):
A close to State Department says there will be no
adverse impact on US defense readiness as a result of
this for post sale.

Speaker 2 (02:23:36):
I don't see why there would.

Speaker 4 (02:23:37):
Yeah, that's what they're going to say.

Speaker 2 (02:23:39):
These are standoff munitions. The US military is not show
on them for our purposes. But like the shit that
we're getting cleaned out on primarily is not Like this
is not the main thing. I mean, we're definitely being stretched,
but this is not the main thing. It's it's sidewinders.
It's like our cruise missiles and it's our our interceptor
missiles are like the big things that we're st right

(02:24:00):
now speaking of.

Speaker 5 (02:24:03):
On May one, Resident Trump quote unquote joked that's some
most people are referring to this joke that we will
be sure quote unquote taking over Cuba almost immediately great
after finishing.

Speaker 2 (02:24:17):
With Iran sounds real.

Speaker 5 (02:24:18):
He has made previous comments to this effect the past
few months.

Speaker 3 (02:24:22):
Yeah, his joke was that Abraham Lincoln would stop on
the way back from Iran right and park off one
hundred yards off the coast of Cuba and they would
immediately surrender.

Speaker 2 (02:24:31):
Just kind of knock that out.

Speaker 3 (02:24:33):
Yeah, I mean, we're going to get onto this, but
this is not the only thing pointing towards Cuba right now.

Speaker 2 (02:24:39):
I have trouble knowing how this is going to go
because obviously, like Venezuela was the best case scenario for them,
Like Maduro was not personally popular, and he had us,
he had like the apparatus below him, was more than
happy to just kind of like everyone move up a
step and be nicer to the US on paper, like,
whereas Iran, that's certainly not how anything has worked out,

(02:25:02):
because you had this whole state has been built for
the last sixty years to endure casualties without like losing
operational capacity or its ability to resist. Cuba's not really
quite like either government and I don't know what's going
to happen. You know, on one hand, it is a
country that's exhausted by decades of sanctions and exhausted by

(02:25:24):
you know what has become after Venezuela since they're no
longer sending fuel cube, but like their fuel crisis is
just devastating. I don't know. Maybe it is a case
where the government would capitulate fairly quickly, and then you
just kind of have the okay, what happens now question,
like the humanitarian issue, which I'm sure would be very

(02:25:44):
I'm sure you'd get a lot of like grifters get
flowed in there by the Trump administration. It would not
be a positive situation. Or you know, is this a
thing where there would be even as exhausted as people are,
immediate and like vicious resistance to any attempt by the
US to assert its will politically over there.

Speaker 4 (02:26:04):
I have no idea. And the other thing is that military.

Speaker 3 (02:26:07):
It's more when it's why it's he's at than where
around he's at, Right they get out, sure, and the funded.

Speaker 2 (02:26:14):
It was the Cuban military that we were fighting in
Venezuela to an extent. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (02:26:20):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (02:26:21):
That said like, it's also at the point at which
those carrier groups are trying to do that in Cuba,
they'll have been on almost twice as long as they're
normally supposed to be out, and who knows, Like what
is done in Iran? Look like what's that going to mean?

Speaker 8 (02:26:37):
Yeah, like there that war is not ending anytime soon.
So like I mean, maybe he just tries to do
it at the same time, but like it's yeah, I
don't know. We're stuck in the mutual blockade right now,
so impossible to know what he's gonna do or what
will what will happen as a result of it, other
than I don't expect any of it's going to go
very well. Nope, it's gonna be a nightmare.

Speaker 5 (02:26:58):
In some sad news, on Sunday, America's mayor Rudy Giuliani
was sent to the hospital in critical condition. Giuliani is
obviously a friend of the POD. We had him on
a few years ago to discuss sending weapons to Ukraine.
We would love to have him back to discuss this
this recent sale, but unfortunately, Giuliani developed pneumonia after coming

(02:27:21):
back from a trip to Paris and was put on
a ventilator this weekend. Now, thankfully he's been since we've
taken off the ventilator, and skokesman Ted Goodman, who I
do not like very much, announced that Giuliani's condition is
stabilized and he is now breathing on his own. Last
time we interacted with Goodman, it was specifically him pulling
Giuliani away from us after speaking with him for about

(02:27:45):
twenty minutes. So I really don't care for Goodman personally,
But I mean, if if Giuliani ever wants to discuss
weapons sales to Ukraine on the show again, I'm sure
we would love to have him.

Speaker 2 (02:27:56):
Yeah, you know, Garret, I saved a little vial of
the spittle that that flew off of his mouth when
when he and I were discussing UH weapons sales to
Ukraine back at the r n C, and I keep
it on me every day, and I'm i'm holding it now,
and I'm I'm just thinking to you, Rudy. I'm just
I'm just pulling for you, man, I'm pulling for you.

Speaker 5 (02:28:17):
We'll probably go on and had a break now, Okay,
we are back. Robert has just failed to execute a
Simpson's themed audio bit.

Speaker 2 (02:28:39):
I know I wanted to play you crusty the clowns
saying the hantavirus, because we're talking about the haunt virus.

Speaker 5 (02:28:45):
Well, that's good enough.

Speaker 4 (02:28:46):
There, you're your impression. I think services does that? Does
that work? It's beautiful.

Speaker 5 (02:28:51):
I'm still saying eight people I suspected, at least people are.
They're suspected to be infected with a haunt of virus
restrain that I've confirmed capable of human to human transmission.
This is stemming from an outbreak on a cruise ship.
We got to do something about the cruise ships.

Speaker 2 (02:29:08):
Yeah, yeah, Now they're disease factories. First off, like everyone knows,
this happens in cruise ships, which is why we shouldn't
have them. We don't know exactly how this went down.
We know there at least five people are confirmed who
have gotten the haunt of virus like they've done, and
another three are suspect from testing. Three people are dead, yes,
and I think another couple are in serious conditions.

Speaker 4 (02:29:29):
Still.

Speaker 2 (02:29:30):
Yes, it's not known how they got it. It's possible
that some of them were human to human transmission.

Speaker 5 (02:29:37):
Argentine officials believe that a Dutch couple contracted the virus
about bird watching at a landfill where they may have
been exposed to rat poop before boarding the cruise ship.
What a series auntavirus has been has been a problem
in Argentina for the past year. This has been a
known problem. Oh yeah, some human to human cases. There's

(02:29:59):
multiple strains there now. So far, three people are suspected
to have died from the virus, while three others have
been evacuated to Europe from the cruise ship for treatment.

Speaker 2 (02:30:09):
To be clear, it's not because because this is what
I'd read, it's a strain that can be transmitted human
to human. Ok they don't know how everyone who got
it got it, Like, they don't know that everyone who
got it was human to human or that they were
didn't all just get exposed to the same droppings. But
it's the Andean strain that can transfer humanity. Okay, it's

(02:30:31):
a problem, but probably it'll be fine, right, Garrison Well,
the World.

Speaker 5 (02:30:35):
Health Organization's top epidemic expert Maria van Kirkhov, has cautioned, quote,
this is not the next COVID, but it is a
serious infectious disease. Most people will never be exposed to
this unquote, and Reuters included a statement from the World
Health Organization and they're reporting. They say that the risk

(02:30:55):
to the public remains low and that the variant detected
among passengers can be spread between humans only through close
prolonged contact unquote. Now, there is contact tracing currently in
effect by officials in South Africa and Switzerland specifically, who
are tracking a few people that departed the ship. Many

(02:31:17):
others are still on the ship, which is set to
land either at Spain or some of the Canary Islands
around Spain in a few days. That's what that's what
we know. That's what we know. So sure, yeah, it's
it's this is changing like literally by the hour, so
it's possible by the time you listen to this there'll
be a whole bunch of more information about what's happened.
But that is the current, the current situation as of

(02:31:39):
Wednesday afternoon.

Speaker 8 (02:31:41):
Yeah, and I think we can also say definitively that
if you want to avoid the haunt of virus, like
the number one step you can take is not getting
on a plague ship.

Speaker 4 (02:31:49):
Yeah, and.

Speaker 3 (02:31:52):
Land landfill to cruise ships. It's a series.

Speaker 8 (02:31:56):
Yeah, we can. We have the technology to avoid this.

Speaker 5 (02:32:02):
Speaking of rat poop, on Wednesday, ms NOW my favorite
outlet reported that the FBI is investigating leaks to the
Atlantic Journalists to publish that story about Cash Betel's drinking
habits and absences from his job, a story that the
FBI is previously called false but now is launching a

(02:32:25):
criminal leak investigation into. These investigations typically focus on leaking
classhid information, which does not appear to be a factor
in this Atlantic article. Betel is also suing The Atlantic
for defamation for like two hundred and fifty million dollars,
and now through this investigation, the FBI may be able

(02:32:46):
to seize the journalist's digital records. The FBI is denied, though,
that this investigation exists, and a few hours ago the
Atlantic Journalists published a follow up story which we should
mention that Cash Hotel has been giving away customized whiskey
flask bottles, like bottles full full.

Speaker 4 (02:33:07):
Full of rate. It's reserve. It's what it is. It's
a bottle.

Speaker 3 (02:33:11):
Yeah, he's got his own bottle of Woodford reserve. Yeah
he's getting he's getting what Costco has.

Speaker 2 (02:33:16):
Yeah, he's getting like a thoroughly mediocre, like middling bourbon
with his name on it, which is definitely something an
alcoholic doesn't have. Definitely a normal non alcoholic thing to
do is to have like a thirty dollars bottle of
bourbon with your name on it that you hand out
to strangers at work.

Speaker 4 (02:33:37):
Alcoholics still do. Yeah, it's not great. This is not
a great revelation.

Speaker 5 (02:33:43):
This, this investigation, if real, very very dangerous, right, It's
a really really bad shit to happen. To have this
clearly like personally motivated weaponization of the FBI against a
journalist going through social media records, data bases, digital records,
very worrying. But also cash Ptel funny.

Speaker 2 (02:34:06):
Yeah, but yeah, Cashptel is this fascinating? Like, well, this
is should certainly a legal, incredibly dangerous thing to have
the FBI director doing, And like what a ridiculous man?
What It's just a fundamentally ridiculous guy.

Speaker 4 (02:34:23):
I don't know what else to say.

Speaker 8 (02:34:26):
Meanwhile, in the broad world of things falling apart, Spirit
Airlines has fallen. It is effectively no.

Speaker 3 (02:34:33):
More all right, p pouring one out, specifically, a personalized
bottle of Woodford Reserve is what I'm pulling out for
Spirit Airlines.

Speaker 8 (02:34:43):
So Spirit Airlines, I mean, has been in financial trouble
for a bit, but it has now filed for bankruptcy.
It has grounded all of its planes and fired everyone.
So it is gone, and it is gone very very suddenly.
This is not something that was you know, like the
there had been long gooing negotiation, not long going, but
there have been negotiations with the Trump administration to try

(02:35:04):
to arrange a bailout. But they just kind of woke
up one morning and sent everyone a letter of that
said you're fired and canceled all the planes, which left
a whole bunch of people stranded.

Speaker 4 (02:35:17):
Not ideal. Yeah, and this is a.

Speaker 8 (02:35:19):
Real catastrophe for a lot of people because there are
a bunch of routes that Spirit was doing that there
just isn't really coverage of for anything else. And it's
also one of the few of these bunch of airlines
are getting just hammered by the increase in fuel prices
for people who don't know aviation stuff. As much as
airplane companies complained about like the cost of labor as

(02:35:41):
they like horrifically exploit flight attendants, the actual most expensive
part of flying is fuel, and as fuel prices have skyrocketed,
specifically jet fuel prices have skyrocketed, that is taking an
absolutely enormous hit out of the bottom line of these companies,
and companies that were sort of just barely getting along
and operated on the low margins are getting hit really badly.

(02:36:03):
And this is something that's not just a Spirit Airlines thing.
This is happening to airlines across the world. It's particularly
intense in South and East Asia right now, where a
huge number of their airlines are operating in this kind
of like they call it like emergency management, where they've
like significantly reduced the amount of flights that they're doing.

(02:36:25):
In cases like Korean Air, there routes from you know,
for example, like sold in New York, like or operating
on two hundred percent price increases. This has been going
on for a while. Spirit is the first big American one.

Speaker 4 (02:36:39):
To just go out completely.

Speaker 8 (02:36:41):
There are reports that Trump personally really wanted to save
Spirit Airlines for kind of weird personal reasons.

Speaker 2 (02:36:54):
Yeah. I can see that, Yeah, but I mean it's Spirit.

Speaker 4 (02:36:59):
Also.

Speaker 2 (02:37:00):
A part of like why it has fallen apart is
that it's been a victim of its own success. Like
Spirit introduced to the airline industry, the idea of like, no,
everyone should be paying for a bag and for a
drink for every single thing. We should financialize every single
aspect of the of the airline, of the flying process

(02:37:20):
that we can. And as a result, like they stopped
being particularly cheap and they stopped working any different from
any of the other airlines. So there was not really
much of a reason to go with Spirit as opposed
to any of the slightly nicer airlines anymore, you know,
Like I mean, I'm not surprised that they are falling, definitely,

(02:37:42):
Like the fuel strike is what has been the death
blow to them, but they've been they've been in trouble
for a little while.

Speaker 8 (02:37:51):
Yeah, And because like we've known that they've been in
trouble the Trump administration negotiations, apparently the stumbling block was
that the US plan was to give them like five
hundred million dollars, but it would involve buying most of
their stock, and the rest of the airline industry was
like absolutely not, We're not We're not doing a bailout
for just one company if like, instead of an industry

(02:38:13):
wide one. And so they started putting pressure and then
Trump was apparently looking at like using the Defense Production
Act for this, but the Department of Defense finally found
a defense Production Act thing that Trump wants to do.
That they were like, absolutely not, Like we are simply
not doing Like we finally found I've been talking about
this in tariff episodes for a long time, where we've

(02:38:33):
been looking for the limit of the president's ability to
go this is the national security concern, and apparent limit
is buying Speri Airlines.

Speaker 3 (02:38:44):
That's funny because it is a time when the US
is flying a lot of stuff around the world, like
the airlift to Iran has been bonkers.

Speaker 4 (02:38:53):
Yeah, it would have been fun to see Spirit.

Speaker 8 (02:38:56):
The one kind of final that I want to talk
about is that there's been a lot of blaming of
the from the administration. And you know, there's even been
some of this in places like Salon, where there's been
a lot of blame on the Biden administration's antitrust unit
because in twenty twenty two, there had been an attempt
by Spirit Airlines to like merge with Jet Blue, which

(02:39:17):
is like a slightly nicer airline, and there's a lot
of people going, oh, well, they wouldn't have gone out
of business if they've been allowed to you the merger.
But the Biden administration national trust people were like this
is obviously a competition issue, and that's maybe kind of true,
but it's also like it's not clear to me that
like a Jet Blue Spirit airline wouldn't also be in

(02:39:38):
really bad shape right now, Yeah, totally.

Speaker 4 (02:39:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (02:39:41):
I think the thing about competition, right is that sometimes
you go out of business. And I know this is
something that like business people absolutely despise, and like pro
minocally people absolutely despise. But like in theory, if you
are a supporter of the free market, that means sometimes
the firms go under. Yeah, and they're all very mad
about this.

Speaker 2 (02:40:00):
We especially airlines. Lots of airlines die out. That's why
mad men, you know, like you look at all the
dead airlines and madmen, like it's not an unheard of thing.
It's a difficult business.

Speaker 4 (02:40:15):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 8 (02:40:16):
And it's like and that's like why you've gotten the
degree of monopoly you already have in the airline industries,
that these companies sort of bought up the carcasses and
like you know, did all of these very monopolistic mergers.
So there now you just have this thing where like, yeah,
flying absolutely sucks because it's all just these like oh god,
there's some economics term for it. That I'm forgetting right now.
But it's it's all of these types of monopolies that
have like divided up the country into their rome basically

(02:40:37):
personal fiefdoms, and yeah, that sucks, and it's why, it's
why being on an airplane sucks. Shit and opposing monopolies
is not the reason that we're here. It's the main
reason that we are here right now with Spear Airlines
dead is that the President of the United States unilaterally
decided he was going to fight a war against Iran.

Speaker 4 (02:40:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (02:40:56):
I guess technically bilaterally because God BB decided to Israelis,
but like you know, the President United like the the
the US is mad dictator, decided to fight a war.
And that's why this airline is gone. Yeah, that's that's
that's the main thing. That's why it's gone. Like now
in this way.

Speaker 2 (02:41:12):
Yeah, somebody needs to photoshop like Spirit Airlines in heaven
with uh the ayatola hameni uh.

Speaker 5 (02:41:19):
Just like.

Speaker 2 (02:41:21):
Holding hands together. Two beautiful souls lost too.

Speaker 8 (02:41:26):
He's getting on one final final flight.

Speaker 2 (02:41:29):
Yeah, see later, space Cowboy.

Speaker 4 (02:41:34):
God.

Speaker 8 (02:41:35):
In other wonderful news, we're pivoting from spirits to ghosts,
and we are pivoting to a very a very interesting
piece of reporting from CNN, who has obtained polling data
that suggests that the President's new Ballroom, which has expanded
significant political capital from an assassination attempt to attempt to

(02:41:58):
get built, is in terms of quote, Americans who support
or believe in new White House Ballroom is pulling at
twenty eight percent, which is lower than the percentage of
Americans who believe in ghosts and one percent lower than
the percentage of Americans who believe in telepathy.

Speaker 5 (02:42:15):
Americans love believing in ghosts, h we.

Speaker 4 (02:42:18):
Do, we do love to believe in ghosts. Well, ghosts
thing at thirty nine percent.

Speaker 5 (02:42:23):
I was I was expecting to let usually it's higher
than that.

Speaker 8 (02:42:26):
I I it could also be support ghosts, right like.

Speaker 3 (02:42:32):
Unted, Yeah, I'm gonna take believe in the ballroom, like
do they believe it exists? Like like this is an odd.

Speaker 2 (02:42:40):
I have a lot of questions of the methodology.

Speaker 4 (02:42:42):
I'm a White House denia.

Speaker 5 (02:42:44):
Part of the frustration here is, I think because this
this presentation is coming from noted enemy of the podcast
Harry Eaton CNN's discount version of Steve Kornacki, who is
a is a noted noted Calshi supporter. Yeah, I do
not like this man, and I think he manipulates data
for entertainment. Yeah, no, he is, He's not good.

Speaker 8 (02:43:07):
It is also also worth noting so that like the
opposition to the ballroom, Oh he is also like yeah,
it's about twenty eight percent, like everyone hates it. It's
it's somehow it's lower than his approval reading, which the
stars reading is like getting lower through the thirties and
threatening to go below thirty percent, and somehow the ballroom
beating is worse, which just astonishing.

Speaker 2 (02:43:31):
Yeah, I do want to talk to the people who
still like him, but the ballroom.

Speaker 5 (02:43:36):
They really the people that support the people that support
the war on Iran, but draw the line at the
ballroom is a really disturbing character today.

Speaker 8 (02:43:45):
Yeah, it's like, well, no, it's it's it's the converted
never Trump Republican.

Speaker 4 (02:43:50):
Yeah, maybe.

Speaker 5 (02:43:52):
If I agree with that, but yeah, speaking of that ballroom,
the Senate GOP has released a seventy two billion reconciliation
package to fund ice and border patrol after their funding
was removed from the long fought after DHS funding package,
which finally passed last week.

Speaker 3 (02:44:14):
Yay.

Speaker 5 (02:44:15):
The Judiciary Committee and the Homeland Security Committee each released
proposed bills, and this package can pass the sent out
with a simple majority rather than sixty votes. There's also
a small provision here for the ballroom, which I'll get
to you. But let's start with talking about the other funding.
These bills appropriate over twenty two point five billion dollars

(02:44:38):
for US Customs and Border Protection until September thirtieth, twenty
twenty nine, for hiring, paying, training, equipping agents, and necessary
support staff, plus other necessary expenses for mission support, operations
and maintenance. I'll draw atension to an extra three point
five billion allotted for quote, procurement and integration of a

(02:45:00):
new non intrusive inspection equipment unquote, which they specify as
AI tools to combat drug smuggling at ports of entry.

Speaker 4 (02:45:11):
Yeah, they've been on that one for a while.

Speaker 3 (02:45:13):
I'm guessing it will be their continued facial recognition or
pattern recognition stuff.

Speaker 5 (02:45:20):
That's listed also in addition to this AI drug detection
inspection tool. Because they also have this three point five
billion going towards quote, upgrades and procurement of border surveillance
technologies and the deployment of technology relating to the biometric
entry and exit system.

Speaker 4 (02:45:41):
Quote.

Speaker 5 (02:45:42):
Thirty eight billion dollars is appropriated for ICE for quote hiring, paying, training,
and equipping personnel including officers, agents, investigators, attorneys, and support
staff to carry out immigration enforcement activities. Quote. This funding
also covers transportation costs, information technology, facility and fleet maintenance
and expand in coordination with local and state officials. Both

(02:46:04):
the DHS and the DOJ each get a few extra
billion for various uses in these bills, but at the
end of the Judiciary bill, it allocates one billion dollars
of tax pair dollars for security enhancements to the new
White House Ballroom. This money would go to Secret Service
quote for the purposes of security adjustments and upgrades, including

(02:46:27):
within the perimeter fence of the White House compound, including
above ground and below ground security features unquote. Trump has
touted the ballroom as being entirely funded by private donors,
originally costing two hundred million but ballooning to four hundred
million this year, which means that these security funds are
greater than the total previously estimated cost of construction. What

(02:46:52):
one billion dollars versus four hundred million dollars. Now, these
security funds do have a stated limitation quote. None of
the funds made available under this section may be used
for non security elements of the East Wing modernization project,
which is what they call the ballroom. But what qualifies
as security or non security elements is not clear. Is

(02:47:16):
bulletproof glass or reinforced walls a security element? Does paying
contractors to make adjustments or enhancements to the building count
as security elements? We don't know, because this is this
is a lot of money. And this again comes after
the Trump administration's deployment of the attempted assassination at the
White House dinner to further the development of the ballroom,

(02:47:40):
and now this bill includes extra funding for it in
the wake of that, and it's unclear how exactly that
money would be used if passed it.

Speaker 8 (02:47:51):
Garrison, my dear friend, you are thinking way too small
in terms of what the president just tried to use.
Just try to use Defense Production Act buy an airline
so he could like run it right, Like they're gonna
be like, yeah, I had to I had to like
put this this gold lace on, Like this column is
actually bullet reflecting.

Speaker 5 (02:48:10):
It's gonna be like that kind of shit. That's just
like the.

Speaker 8 (02:48:14):
Way this entire administration has operated.

Speaker 5 (02:48:19):
A lot of the construction could have security elements.

Speaker 3 (02:48:22):
Yeah, well, this is already something that's been discussed at
length in the National Trust for Historical Preservation lawsuit against
the construction right. And essentially, the Trump administration has argued
that the project in and of itself is an indivisible thing. That,
let the project is a security project, and you can't

(02:48:44):
break out the security from the ball have a yes,
And the judge has so found not agreed to that.

Speaker 4 (02:48:50):
Right.

Speaker 3 (02:48:50):
But the Trump administration has argued that like the below
ground hospital room, security infrastructure, bomb shelter, et cetera, and
the above ground party having room are like all one
big security project.

Speaker 5 (02:49:07):
It should be one secured zone.

Speaker 3 (02:49:08):
Yeah, And and that like you cannot be because the
in this case, the discussion is about the injunction, right,
which paused construction. Yeah, so they're saying we can't do
the security construction only, we have to do all the
construction because it's a contiguous whole.

Speaker 4 (02:49:25):
So like that seems like it's relevant to this. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:49:29):
We will keep keep keep checking in on these reconciliation
bills as they as they move through Congress. But first
we will go on this ad break and then discuss
Ran and some of the Tuesday elections.

Speaker 3 (02:49:55):
We are back back in the Strait of hor Moves,
a place where we spend a lot of time these
last few weeks.

Speaker 4 (02:50:02):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (02:50:03):
So's I guess just trying to take this in kind
of chronological order, because it's probably the.

Speaker 4 (02:50:08):
Best way to explain it.

Speaker 3 (02:50:09):
Iran has launched cruise, missiles and drones at United States
ships in the Strait of horn Moves. For a while there,
Iranian news sources were claiming that they had it hit
or turned around US vessels.

Speaker 4 (02:50:23):
This does not appear to be true.

Speaker 3 (02:50:24):
Saint Con certainly denied it, although some news networks did
run with this, apparently based on what the Iranian government aligned.

Speaker 4 (02:50:32):
Media were claiming.

Speaker 3 (02:50:33):
It seems that two United States the stories did transit
the straight and they did receive various types of incoming
fire from small boats, from missiles, and from drones. Following that,
a mask vessel sailed through the strait. The Alliance Fairfax
is United States flagged vessel, and it received assistance from
the US military, and then the motor Tanka Anthem of

(02:50:56):
Crowley Maritime also sailed through. Trump has called this assistance
quote Project Freedom truthing for the good of Iran, the
Middle East, and the United States. We have told these
countries that we will guide their ships safely out of
these restricted waterways so that they can freely and ably
get on with their business. Again, these are ships from

(02:51:18):
areas of the world that are not in any way
involved with that which is currently taking place in the
Middle East. I have told my representative to inform them
that we will use best effort to get their ships
and crews safely out straight. Exactly what this meant was
unclear when the President first truthed it, but what it
seems what I've seen reported now is that the United

(02:51:40):
States a provides them on safe routes and then provided
in at least two cases security detachment to go on
board the ships. Despite this, the UK MTO still has
the reports of attacks, and on Tuesday night it reported
that one vessel had been hit, and so it does
not seem that there's been like a universal ability to

(02:52:03):
allow vessels to move through the Strait. The United States
also claims to have sunk seven small Iranian vessels in
the strate Let's hear from Marca Rubio where he's explaining
a little bit about why the US is doing.

Speaker 4 (02:52:15):
This, and we're going to do it as a favor
to the world.

Speaker 12 (02:52:17):
Understand this, This is a favor to the world because
it's their ships that are stranded, it's their fuel supplies
that are stranded. By the way, it's their humanitarian there's
humanitarian aid destined for different countries in the world that
stranded in the Persian Gulf right now. It's the fertilizer
that they need for their food and crops that stranded
in the person not our fertilizer.

Speaker 4 (02:52:35):
Their fertilizer.

Speaker 12 (02:52:36):
So we want to be helpful, and that's why the
presidents stepped forward because we're the only ones that can. Frankly,
we're the only ones that can.

Speaker 3 (02:52:43):
So the United States there wanting to be helpful help
the world with their humanitarian aid. On Tuesday, the President
then truth based on the request of Pakistan and other countries.
It's a tremendous military success that we have had during
the campaign against the country of the run, and additionally
the fact that great progress has been made toward a
complete and final agreement with representatives of Iran. We have

(02:53:05):
mutually agreed that while the blockade will remain in place
and will remain in full force and effect Project Freedom.
The movement of ships with straightforward moves will be paused
for a short period of time to see whether or
not the agreement can be finalized and signed. So that
was the twenty four hour duration of Project Freedom Rest
in Peace. Then this morning, the President truth to quote,

(02:53:28):
assuming Iran agrees to give what has been agreed to,
which is perhaps a big assumption, the already legendary epic
fury will be at an end. If they don't agree,
the bombing starts, and it will be, sadly, at a
much higher level and intensity than it was before.

Speaker 4 (02:53:43):
President Jerald J. Trump.

Speaker 3 (02:53:45):
The parties, according to Axios, not an outlet known for
its accurate reporting, appear to be closing in on a
fourteen point deal. The reporting suggests that Iran has committed
to a moratorium of fifteen to twenty years on uranium enrichment.
The United States would then lift sanctions and release frozen

(02:54:07):
Iranian funds, which is a massive concession, and both sides
would lift restrictions on passage through the straight andform moves. However,
hours after this was reported, a United States aircraft shut
the rudder out of an Iranian motor tanker called the Hasna.
They say they warned the ship which was headed towards
Iranian ports. It was empty at the time it was

(02:54:29):
heading towards Iranian ports. Right then we saw reporting from
algia's zero reporter Ali Hashem that instructions have been sent
to boats crossing the street. These instructions include quote priority
of payment in Iran's national currency, issuance of guarantees in
Iranian banks. Three of a country caused damage to Iran
in the recent war, it must first pay the damages

(02:54:51):
before obtaining a passage permit. Countries that have sanctioned Iran
or blocked Around's money and not allowed passage for the
correct title Persian gol must have written in all documents.
Five non compliance with the above result and seizure and
a fine of twenty percent of the cargo value.

Speaker 4 (02:55:07):
So it is chaos in.

Speaker 3 (02:55:10):
The strait of horror moves right like we have at
once Trump saying the us WL eschortship through and then
pausing the escorting of ship through, and then the Iranians
shooting at a commercial ship, and then the United States
shooting at an Iranian ship. The Iranians asking for money
this time not in cryptocurrency and the United States saying

(02:55:30):
that we are about to reach a peace agreement. This
of course provides a lot of certainty, which markets love,
and I'm sure this will result in the gas price
not being nearly seven dollars a gallon here pretty soon.
I also want to briefly talk about suicide dolphins. In
a press conference, Iranian suicide dolphins were raised.

Speaker 4 (02:55:55):
Here's the question being asked.

Speaker 7 (02:55:57):
Can you kind of clarify these reports of kamakazi dolphins
that we've heard about.

Speaker 4 (02:56:03):
I haven't heard the kamakazi dolphins thing. It's like sharks
with laser beams. And then if you could play heg
sass response as well, and.

Speaker 8 (02:56:13):
I can't confirm or deny whether we have kamakazi dolphins,
but I can confirm they don't.

Speaker 5 (02:56:18):
Ultimately, well, it's good, we're ultimate on that.

Speaker 3 (02:56:22):
Yeah, so heccess pretty definity of Ryan having kamakazi dolphins.
It did seem kind of where the people reporting on
this one ware the United States has had a marine mammal.
Yeah yeah, yeah, like you can see them in San Diego. Yeah,
they are not, to my knowledge, like used in a
kamikazi capacity, mainly.

Speaker 4 (02:56:40):
Because it's just chea but to do that with drones.

Speaker 8 (02:56:42):
The US military did briefly experiment with bats, which turned
out to be a terrible idea because the bats which
just fly back to you the boomerang man, this this,
this nearly wiped out a huge portion of you as
such a command in that. Yeah, great stuff.

Speaker 4 (02:56:55):
Yeah it doesn't.

Speaker 3 (02:56:56):
I mean, I'm pretty sure that Ryan doesn't have suicide
dolphins either. People are asking that again, it is just.

Speaker 5 (02:57:04):
Cheaper, unliving dolphins, Dolph.

Speaker 3 (02:57:06):
Yeah, sure, one way. Dolphins how we refer to them
if they were munitions, But it just doesn't.

Speaker 8 (02:57:12):
Isn't a suicide dolphin if you're pressing the buttons though, Like,
are you just blowing up a dolphin?

Speaker 4 (02:57:17):
No, it's not. It's a murdered dolphin.

Speaker 5 (02:57:19):
It's really it's really unfair to the dolphins.

Speaker 4 (02:57:21):
It's not a dolphin. It hasn't made that commitment. It's
just a dolphin.

Speaker 2 (02:57:25):
It's a homicide dolphin.

Speaker 5 (02:57:27):
I can't believe that those reporters would mess up such
a basic fact.

Speaker 3 (02:57:31):
Yeah, well yeah, yeah. The people on the suicide dolphin
really need to get back to journalism. One O one shut,
all right, we're talking about the Ocean. Marco Rubio has
visited South coom and Post for a photo with General
Francis Eldonovan in front of what is very obviously a
large map of Cuba.

Speaker 5 (02:57:49):
Hell yeah, I think what you meant to say is
d J Mark Rubio. But continue, Yeah, I said. The
map is titled Cuba Reference Map. That's not good.

Speaker 3 (02:58:01):
Yeah, in terms of like a subtle signaling, that's not good.
Ribo also claimed to a press conference the Operation Epic
Fury was over.

Speaker 12 (02:58:10):
The Operation Epic Fury is concluded. We achieve the objectives
of that operation. I'm not going to you know, we're
not cheering for an additional situation to occur. We would
prefer the path of peace. What the President would prefer
is a deal. He would prefer to sit down, work
out a memorandum of understanding for future negotiations that touches
on all the key topics that have to be addressed.

(02:58:30):
A full opening of the straits so the world can
get back to normal. That he and he preferred to
that being negotiated through the route that Steve and Jarrett
have been working and that all of us have been supporting.

Speaker 4 (02:58:38):
That's the route he prefers. That is so far not
the route that Iron has chosen.

Speaker 12 (02:58:42):
And so the result has been that the United States
has to do something about the fact that we're the
only nation on earth that can do anything to open
up a lane within the Straits of Hormuz to get
product and to rescue these people that are trapped in there.
And that's what we're undergoing now.

Speaker 3 (02:58:55):
So let's see the end of operation of Epic Fury
and the beginning of the United Dates doing something to
open up a lane in the straight up hoole moods.

Speaker 2 (02:59:04):
Great operation unclear.

Speaker 3 (02:59:09):
The goals of which are unclear the but apparently the
first one succeeded.

Speaker 4 (02:59:14):
So congrats to all the Epic Fury people listening.

Speaker 2 (02:59:19):
Operation is going great. Things are really good. Uh, and
we're we're just minutes away from figuring out what we're
doing next.

Speaker 5 (02:59:27):
Really thrilled for winby invade Cuba. And it's like aporation
bacon awesome sauce.

Speaker 4 (02:59:31):
Yeah, yeah, right, like epic bacon. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:59:37):
Before we close, there's a few a few shorter things
that we should mention. That's first by turning to as
Ramaswami has said, not the best state in the nation, Ohio.

Speaker 4 (02:59:49):
Which.

Speaker 2 (02:59:52):
Not the best state in the nation.

Speaker 5 (02:59:54):
Which for some reason but is the GOP and late
for governor. I has some juice. He has the.

Speaker 2 (03:00:00):
Connections to Ohio where he's lived for how long Garrison, sure,
just long enough to be on the ballot, like a
few days we could two.

Speaker 5 (03:00:08):
Yeah, it's a good state. I can't say it's the
best state. Incredible stuff, high praise, high accurate praise. We
will be following this because if Vivek loses to the Democrat,
that would be an interesting indicator not just of support
for Trump and Mega, but also how annoying the vechro

(03:00:31):
Oswami is. But Robert, there's someone that you would like
to briefly mention as well.

Speaker 4 (03:00:37):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (03:00:37):
So, in addition to Vivek doing so well last night,
another candidate who did pretty well is Brian Poindexter. Brian
is running for Well was running and won the Democratic
primary for the Ohio seventh district seat, and he will
be running against the Republican incumbent and that district, a

(03:01:01):
guy named Max Miller, who initially ran for and won
his way into Congress in twenty twenty two. He was
a former aid of President Trump and a bit of
a sleeve back. If I'm going to be honest with
you if I'm going to talk about this guy. I mean,
first off, he's like definitely a NEPO baby. His grandfather

(03:01:23):
was Samuel H. Miller, who was the former coachair emeritus
of Forest City Realty Trust, which was acquired in this
big real estate deal in twenty eighteen for six point
eight billion dollars. So he is like a kid who
came from a family with a shitload of real estate
money and wound up working in the Trump White House

(03:01:43):
and then got into Congress, where he has a fourteen
percent lifetime voting score from the AFLCIO. When he was
initially running for Congress, and he was asked because I
found a fun interview with him where he was asked
to give like his elevator pitch, and I just have
to read this was Max Miller's elevator pitch for why
he should be in Congress. So with my background in

(03:02:06):
the Marine Corps in the infantry and six years on
the reserve side, and the work and working for Senator
Rubio and my time in the White House, I've been
in these meetings with the presidents and other cabinet secretaries,
and the reason why I'm running for office is because
of what I saw when I was there. We send
people to Washington, d C. To represent our values, and
for the most part what we see is regular Americans
as they don't they're so out of touch with reality.

(03:02:27):
And for the most part, these individuals only go there
to befit their own way of life, and they lose
sight of everyone that they were sent there to protect.
And I saw that through throughout the four years that
I was in Washington, d C. In the White House,
and it was extremely eye open.

Speaker 5 (03:02:39):
And that's why I'm running to be the Republican representation.

Speaker 2 (03:02:42):
You are asked, okay, what's your elevator pitch? Why should
you be in office? That's an amazingly incoherent bit of Babbel.
So he was asked like, what do you think you're
the right guy? And he was like, well, I've been
in North Korea, I've been in Iraq bouncing between a
La Sad and Arabil. I was in Fghanistan negotiating with
foreign delegations on behalf of the president, and I've been

(03:03:04):
in the pressure cooker. And again he was like a
Trump ad like he's he's like followed around and meetings
where more important people were making decisions.

Speaker 5 (03:03:12):
Like that was he was like a coffee boy.

Speaker 2 (03:03:14):
Yeah and no cooker again, walking around with the president
not making any decisions. He was like a diet coke
boy more than anything. Negotiations, yes, negotiation. This interview firing
gets them to pin down and like what is the
issue you most want to deal with? He's like, my
top issue, hands down is inflation in the economy, and

(03:03:36):
like he talks about how like there's seventy or sixty
seven billion dollars worth a credit card debt that Americans
are and that's his top issue. So what does he
do once he's in power? First off, none of the
bills that he co sponsored in his first year in
Congress had anything to do all I made it through
was like the first year and a half, But none
of those had anything to do with credit card bills, inflation,

(03:03:58):
or the economy. And the main bill that he is
like can attach his name to that he co authored
was the Full House Act and Unfair Taxation of Gambling losses.

Speaker 4 (03:04:09):
So not a great guy.

Speaker 2 (03:04:13):
So anyway, while when I'm while I'm going through this interview,
there's a moment here where the interviewer's like, hey, so
your girlfriend recently made some allegations against you.

Speaker 4 (03:04:26):
Do we see that one colling? So here's what.

Speaker 2 (03:04:28):
Here's what, Taylor Poplars, that's the journalist. Here says your
ex girlfriend, Stephanie Grisham, who also worked in the Trump
White House with you, she has a legen some pretty
serious things related to you, that you've slapped her, pushed her,
threw a dog toy at her, cheated on her. And
I know you've denied all that.

Speaker 4 (03:04:42):
You fought a lossuit at one point.

Speaker 2 (03:04:44):
Do you still deny all that? His response was, to
be clear, we're handling this in litigation. In her motion
to dismiss was denied, so the case will be heard now.
We're so, we've already won our first battle in that hurdle.
And to be clear, she herself has never articulated the allegations.
It was all hearsayd by second and third sources. Anyway,
that's not the only scandalous guy has on his record.

(03:05:05):
I just briefly looked into him, and I found not
only those allegations from this former staffer, that he had
become violent in the White House and that the president
was aware of that and was like that's kind of
fucked up, like the President on Malania where both saw
him become violent and we're like, oh god, oh wow,
that's kind of fucked up. Yeah, but didn't actually do

(03:05:25):
anything like it's really messed up, Like the allegations here
at least really messed up. That's not the only person
who has made allegations against him. He in his like
messy divorce, his ex wife has alleged that he has
gotten violent with her. He has countered and said that
she got violent with him, But then his representatives had
to admit that their client fabricated testimony in court documents

(03:05:48):
soon order to obtain a protection order against his ex wife.
So this dude is a real piece of shit, Like
Max Miller bona fide trash person. And currently he's up
by about five points in this election in Ohio seven
against Poindexter, So it's very unclear how are things gonna
actually go. But I I just looking at how sleazy

(03:06:11):
this guy is and how how soft his actual base
of organic support seems to be. This is one where
I kind of suspect maybe once you actually get a
decent candidate, and Poindexter really seems to be like He's
a guy who spent his pretty much his entire year
as like a union metal worker and is a reasonably

(03:06:31):
good campaigner. He's been a five term councilman in brook Park, Ohio.
Like he's he's someone who like this isn't a dilettante
in politics, but also has like a real life I
don't know, I could see this being something that, like,
maybe the Democrats are actually able to flip here if
Poindexter proves to be as good at campaigning in like
an open election as he was in the primary. I'm

(03:06:52):
kind of bullish about him anyway. It's something to watch.

Speaker 5 (03:06:55):
Yeah, last big story. As part of the ongoing lawsuit
Louisiana v. FDA, on May one, the Fifth Circuit Court
of Appeals granted a temporary ban on the remote prescription
and mailed delivery of the abortion pill mith pristone. Last October,
Louisiana brought this case against the FDA for a Biden

(03:07:17):
era regulation allowing telehealth prescription and mail order access to
the drug, which Louisiana claimed was unsafe and facilitated illegal
abortions in the state. A district court had previously agreed
that Louisiana was likely to win its challenge, but it
did not grant the state's requested stay on the regulation.

(03:07:39):
In fact, the lower court put the entire case on
hold because last year RFK Junior announced an FDA review
of mith pristone and its quote unquote reported adverse effects,
with RFKA Junior specifically mentioning in his announcement that quote
the Biden administration removed with the pristone's in person dispensing

(03:08:01):
rule without studying the safety risks. Despite the case being
put on hold due to the FDA's review, Louisiana appealed
the lower court's decision to decline a stay on mail
order with the pristone, and last week the Fifth Circuit
ruled in the state's favor, temporarily reinstating this in person
dispensing requirement while the case continues. But then on May fourth,

(03:08:25):
the Supreme Court restored remote prescription and mail order access
to with a pristone by blocking the Fifth Circuit Court
of Appeals ruling. But this stay by the Supreme Court
is only in effect until Monday, May eleventh. Meanwhile, the
Supreme Court will consider responses from both parties and then
issue a subsequent ruling. The majority of abortions in the

(03:08:46):
United States are now administered through abortion medication like with
a pristone, and according to a study publish in twenty
twenty five, to one quarter of abortions are now done
through telehealth services, double the rate from before the overturning
of Dobbs. Other Republican states like Texas and Missouri are
also engaged in other efforts to restrict access to with

(03:09:07):
the prostone nationwide. Yeah, we'll keep up on this as
the Supreme Court issues more definitive ruling in the near future.
The last thing I want to mention very ever so briefly,
a big news in marx Land, biggest update in Marxism
in a while.

Speaker 4 (03:09:27):
Oh boy, oh good.

Speaker 2 (03:09:28):
New Marxism just dract.

Speaker 5 (03:09:30):
On Monday, the Secret Service shot a forty five year
old man from Texas named Michael Marx spelt the same way,
who was allegedly concealed carrying a sig p P sixty five.

Speaker 2 (03:09:43):
P three sixty five, Okay, P three sixty.

Speaker 5 (03:09:46):
Five well between the White House and Washington Monument. Secret
Service say they tried to approach the man after noticing
the imprint of a gun. The man then fled and
allegedly fired towards the agents, who were turned fire, wounding
mister Marx. While in the ambulance, he allegedly said, quote,
fuck the White House and kill me, kill me, kill

(03:10:09):
me unquote, oh dear. A fifteen year old was also
shot during this incident, and at first Secret Service claimed
that the armed man shot the kid, but they later
renegged that claim, though after Marx was charged, US attorney
Janine Piro repeated this claim, saying that he quote shot

(03:10:30):
an innocent bystander who was simply crossing the street with
his family unquote. After the shooting, Chris McDonald, a Congressional
affairs official with Secret Service, told Congress that there was
no indication that the man was targeting anyone inside the
Executive complex, writing quote President Trump was not in any danger,
So we.

Speaker 2 (03:10:49):
Don't actually know what happened here. Was this just some
weirdo concealed carrying us presumably.

Speaker 4 (03:10:55):
Illegally right illegally? Yes?

Speaker 2 (03:10:57):
Yeah, yeah, just because he's just does that? Or was
he did he have something? Was he trying to commit?
Doesn't it? That doesn't make much sense right now?

Speaker 5 (03:11:08):
Yeah, No, it's it's unclear what his intention was at
this point. But then after being shot, by Secret Service.
That's when he expressed, fuck the White House, kill me,
kill me, kill me. But there's no indication he was
targeting any elected official. Sure, but did allegedly shoot at
Secret Service as they tried to approach and chase him.

Speaker 4 (03:11:28):
Interesting.

Speaker 5 (03:11:29):
Yeah, yeah, anyway, cool, I mean it's bad, but you know,
yeah that that's it for us here and it could
happen here. Yeah, we reported the news.

Speaker 8 (03:11:44):
Great, put a transcrol on your couch.

Speaker 3 (03:11:48):
If you want to send us an email specifically pretending
to tits about news, you can do so.

Speaker 4 (03:11:54):
Cool Zone tips at proton on me. We reported the news.

Speaker 2 (03:12:03):
Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the universe.

Speaker 10 (03:12:09):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

Speaker 5 (03:12:20):
You listen to podcasts.

Speaker 10 (03:12:22):
You can now find sources for it could Happen here
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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Behind the Bastards News

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Robert Evans

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