4/10/24: Arizona Civil War Era Abortion Ban, CNN Debunks Israel Flour Massacre Lies, Ecuador Raid On Mexican Embassy, MTG Threatens Johnson Ouster, Norfolk Southern Fined Over Derailment, NPR Editor Blasts Organizations Bias

Ryan and Emily discuss Arizona's Civil War era abortion ban, Lloyd Austin claims no evidence of Israel genocide, CNN debunks Israel claims on Flour Massacre, Ecuador raid on Mexican embassy, MTG threatens to oust Mike Johnson, 702 surveillance battle in Congress, Norfolk Southern fined over East Palestine derailment, NPR editor blasts the organizations bias.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints. We have an amazing
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Speaker 4 (00:53):
Yes, Well, today we're going to start, obviously in Arizona.
Huge news from the Supreme courtner zoning yesterday on an
abortion ruling one hundred and sixty year old abortion ruling
that is now in effect in the state of Arizona.
Will break it all down. We're then going to talk
about Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's a conversation with Tom Cotton
during testimony in front of Congress yesterday, and some other

(01:15):
big updates out of this.

Speaker 5 (01:17):
CNN has a new investigation into the Flower massacre. Looks
very similar to the World Central Kitchen massacre. Looks to
be a deliberate assault on the distribution of aid for
the purpose of what Lloyd Austin says is not happening.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
So we'll break that down.

Speaker 4 (01:33):
People can also see Ecuador on the screen. Not every
day that we have Ecuador on the Counterpoints Rundown, but.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
Today we is a wild one good reason to.

Speaker 4 (01:39):
Talk about Ecuador, and a really interesting guest.

Speaker 5 (01:41):
Yes, you may remember gaili Long, former foreign minister from
a previous show. He's now going to join us because
Mexico yesterday released harrowing video of Ecuadorian police raiding the
Mexican embassy in Ecuador, dragging out the leftist vice president
who they've charged with corruption, and kicking off an international incident.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
And we'll talk about the US response to the behavior of.

Speaker 5 (02:07):
Its US backed regime in Ecuador, which is quickly becoming
going from one of the safest countries in South America
to be a US back narco state.

Speaker 4 (02:16):
So Martya Taylor Green is on the precipice of moving
to vacate the chair charity. I guess filed the motion,
but when she pushes faux vote on it is anybody's guests.
And one of the big reasons for that is actually
a really admirable fight over Section seven two that Freedom
Caucus type Republicans and Justice Democrat type members can come

(02:38):
together on and try to get to some reform. It's
a huge surveillance mechanism. We've talked about it many times
and most of you are probably familiar with it. But
there's a lot going on. The Biden administration is backing
a terrible reauthorization bill.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
Essentially, and that vote is today and tomorrow.

Speaker 5 (02:53):
So this is a six month fight over surveillance authorities
that is coming down today. Donald Trump weighed in on
truth Social We'll try to figure out what he was
trying to say.

Speaker 4 (03:01):
And Norfolk Southern agreed announced that it will settle for
six hundred million dollars with victims in East Palestine, So
we'll bring some details, talk a little bit about that,
and an NPR business reporter of twenty plus years penned
an essay in The Free Press yesterday. It was super buzzy,
kind of blowing the whistle on NPR. But I think

(03:22):
Grann and I will have a lot to talk about
in that segment. Yeah, all right, let's start in Arizona.
We can put a one up on the screen. This
is a report from NBC News in which they point
out this one hundred and sixty year near total abortion
band that's still on the books in the state was
ruled enforceable by the Arizona Supreme Court yesterday. They call

(03:44):
it a bomb cell bombshell decision that adds to the
state growing lists of places where abortion care is effectively banned.
Now more from the article. This is an eighteen sixty
four law in the middle of the Civil War, before
Arizona was a state. It made a or a felony
punishable by two to five years in prison for anyone

(04:05):
who performs an abortion or helps a woman obtain an abortion. Now,
there's some back and forth in the courts after row,
as happened in a lot of states. Arizona is similar
to a lot of states in this respect. The Civil
War era law NBC rights, enacted a half a century
before Arizona even gains statehood, was never repealed, so an

(04:27):
appellate court ruled last year that it could remain on
the books as long as it was quote harmonized with
a twenty twenty two law, leading to substantial confusion in
Arizona regarding exactly when during a pregnancy abortion was outlawed.
The other thing I think is worth noting in this
case is that the Attorney General of Arizona has said

(04:47):
that she's not going to enforce it, but local prosecutors
can enforce the old law. So that's not entirely comforting
to supporters of abortion in Arizona or even opponents of
this move from the Supreme Court. The other thing that
I want to point out that I haven't seen in
a lot of media reports is the way the Arizona

(05:07):
Supreme Court handled this. Basically, they said, we think a
decision of this gravity should be left to the people
of Arizona. Basically that there's legislative supremacy over the court
in this case, so it's not sort of like the
Alabama you know, sort of what's the best way to
put it, like Judeo Christian theological decision about IVF. They're

(05:34):
actually just saying that we think the people of Arizona,
this is almost I'm paraphrasing from the decisions the people
of Arizona, the legislature of Arizona, their representatives should make
a decision on this, and in fact, it looks like
that's what's going to happen in Arizona later this year.

Speaker 5 (05:48):
It's like, hey, you know, the people of Arizona spoke
in eighteen sixty four, fifty years before Arizona was a thing,
and there were probably what fifteen settlers you know who
passed on him and voted on that.

Speaker 4 (06:01):
And like how you said before Arizona was a.

Speaker 5 (06:03):
Thing, Yeah, I mean it was a thing. It was
like part of Mexico and it was part it was,
you know, home to you know, a lot of indigenous
population still at the time. But yeah, seven of them
got together and wrote a law banning abortion. And so
now but yes, so before we get into Kerry Lake's
response here, the stage was set by Arizona Republicans. And

(06:27):
you correct me if I'm wrong, as you follow this
closer when they passed this fifteen week abortion ban in
twenty twenty two, before Roe v.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
Wade was overturned, and they.

Speaker 5 (06:37):
Put into that law a provision that said, if Roe v.
Wade is ever overturned, then actually forget this fifteen week ban.
We're going for broke. The entire eighteen sixty four law
goes into effect. And that's why the court was able
to make this completely ridiculous ruling and go back to

(06:57):
eighteen sixty four because they had re upped it in
twenty twenty two. And it's also why Carrie Lake kind
of knew ahead of time that this was going to happen.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
So it's not as if she can say she was
caught off guard here.

Speaker 5 (07:08):
Carrie Lake, of course the Republican senatorial candidate in Arizona.
So we can put up her reaction here to this ruling,
which is saying that this would be a three. You know,
this is her saying, I oppose today's ruling and I
am calling on Katie Hobbs in the state legislature to

(07:29):
come up with an immediate, common sense solution that Arizonas
can support. What's odd about this reaction is that she
was asked about this in twenty twenty two. And this
is in a presidential debate. This is not like a
gotcha moment with somebody on a rope line. Here she
is in a twenty twenty two senatorial debate.

Speaker 6 (07:51):
Carrie will start with you on this one. The new
law banning abortion, well, the new law banning abortion in
Arizona after fifteen weeks. There's that law, and there's a
territorial era law which bans all abortion, zippo. Over which
law do you think should take effect?

Speaker 5 (08:09):
My personal belief is that all life matters, all life counts,
and all life is precious.

Speaker 3 (08:12):
And I don't believe in abortion. I think the older
law is going to take is going to go into effect.

Speaker 4 (08:19):
That's what I believe will happen.

Speaker 6 (08:20):
Okay, but you approve of that at conception?

Speaker 3 (08:24):
I believe life begins at conception. Okay. What do we
do about abortion pills? What do we do about I.

Speaker 4 (08:28):
Don't think abortion pills should be legal, not in Arizona.

Speaker 5 (08:31):
So there you have Carrie Lake saying, look, I suspect
and I support the older law going into effect.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
Did she not?

Speaker 2 (08:42):
So?

Speaker 3 (08:42):
What explains the change in two years?

Speaker 5 (08:44):
Is it the she lacking that Republicans took and the
polls in twenty twenty two.

Speaker 4 (08:49):
Yeah, I think that's absolutely I've sort of seen the
pattern after Row and again, like Doug Doocey passed that law,
he was the governor of Arizona, considering.

Speaker 3 (08:59):
He was on two Are complaining about it, he was on.

Speaker 4 (09:01):
Twitter campaigning about it. It's considered sort of moderate, and
Doug Deucy said, this is not the outcome that I
would have preferred, and actually a lot of Arizona Republicans
it reminded me in many ways to what happened in
Alabama after the IVF ruling came down, where you had
a sort of race among Republicans to get out that

(09:22):
statement condemning the ruling and saying, you know, it's not
a workable solution. It's basically sounding similar to Democrats on
some of those questions, but with the caveat that I'm
really pro life, but X, Y and Z.

Speaker 5 (09:36):
So it really is like condemning the panther eating your face,
you know, after you nominated the panther to the court
and signed into law legislation that enabled the panther to then.

Speaker 3 (09:47):
Eat your face.

Speaker 4 (09:48):
It does seem like there was something intentionally ambiguous about
what happened with the fifteen week ban versus. Yeah, it
does seem like that, but obviously Dougducy says it's not
the outcome that he would have preferred. Carrie Lake is
back pedaling. I saw a senior advisor to Carry Lake
talking to Steve Bannon yesterday saying, you know, this is
obviously Democrats. Basically Democrats have a huge electoral gift in

(10:12):
the question of abortion, and so there has to be
a way to talk about this. And that puts the
writing on the wall for where Carry Lake is going
to go going forward. Now, I think a lot of
Arizona voters are going to be heading to the ballot
box and making decisions based on economics their pocketbooks in
the fall. I think it's probably going to be a
heavy border related election. But man, in terms of mobilizing

(10:35):
the base or demobilizing the base, not getting people excited
to vote for, for example, Carry Lake, brutal just I
mean that will matter the margins.

Speaker 5 (10:46):
So you think Carry Lake going kind of kind of
wobbly on this from the rights perspective, could kind of
hurt her with some I think for ground support, Well,
what do you mean by that.

Speaker 4 (10:56):
I think it's the type of thing that makes a
kind of the oposite. It makes a suburban woman who's
really upset with what they see is radical policies from
the Democrats, from Joe Biden, from Gaho, all of those things,
say I just I'm not going to vote. I can't
vote for Kerry Lake. You know, I don't like the

(11:16):
other guys, but I'm not going to vote for Kerry Lakes.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
I'm staying home, Okay. Yeah, Or they become single issue.

Speaker 4 (11:22):
That on that question, finitely, that'll happen too.

Speaker 5 (11:24):
And come out and say, look, this is we're not
going to be governed by seven settlers from eighteen sixty four.

Speaker 4 (11:29):
I also think this is such a bad This is
just a particular, particularly egregious flip flop on such a
high profile issue for Kerry Lake, where she's on tape
one way and now it's it just that's one of
those things that seeps into your public persona during an
election like this. It's hard to get rid of that.
Nobody likes to see that.

Speaker 5 (11:50):
Yeah, and yeah, the SoundBite is not great for her
because she also tried to do a little play on
like all lives matter, Yeah, like she's too kind web brained,
and I'm sure she regrets that.

Speaker 3 (12:03):
But at the same time, how do you not see
that coming?

Speaker 5 (12:07):
Like, if you're going to be a calculating politician, then
be the calculating politician in twenty twenty two.

Speaker 3 (12:14):
Also, wasn't an ancient history. I guess the only.

Speaker 5 (12:19):
Thing you say is that it was pre row and
that she genuinely just did not grasp, you know, what
a electoral albatross it would be. Although she seems to
be in the minority on that, most people who were
have been pushing this. You're you know, you've been very
open about this that like this is our view, but
it's not. It's not an electoral winner. Maybe, so maybe

(12:42):
she's not. Maybe she hasn't thought about it enough, Like
maybe it's more of a surface issue for her, because
if you're if you spend any time thinking about it,
you're like, this is not going to work out electorally.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (12:54):
No, And you know I heard Nancy Mace talking about
that as a Trump surguit actually on NPR yesterday. She
did pretty good interview with MPR. As much as a
loath to like congratulate Nancy may sometimes, but she talked
about it as a survivor of rape, she said, I
understand why there need to be exceptions, and I understand
why this is terrifying to women basically, And you can

(13:19):
see that's just it's very They didn't expect to have
to talk about this in that way. They didn't expect
post row, and I think that's the big mistake of
both the pro life movement and the Republican Party. There
was just not preparation, adequate preparation for what would happen
if Roe fell. People and people on the left too.

(13:39):
It just seemed so unthinkable that this would actually happen.
It was like the pipe dream of the pro life movement,
and it was the nightmare of the actual Republican Party,
where people are sort of moderately against abortion, but mostly
in favor of winning elections and gaining more and more power.
So I just Carrie like to me as an example
of somebody who was really riding high on the Trump wave,

(14:02):
somebody who was super popular with Trump's base ultimately lost
the election. When a lot of people said, carry Lake
is going to win this thing, like she's a man,
I've never seen anything like it before. She lost, But
she was riding really high, and I think the bubble
kind of popped.

Speaker 3 (14:18):
Yeah, and so if we can put up a five.

Speaker 5 (14:20):
This is this is to Emily's point earlier that the
Attorney general has said, you know that she won't enforce
this a reminder of sometimes every vote does matter. Two
hundred and eighty votes separated the Democrat and the Republican
in the Attorney General's jacey. If you remember, that was
one of the races. It wasn't called for weeks and
weeks and weeks. She she won it, and now she's

(14:44):
saying that she's not going to force us. Like you said,
local prosecutors you know, still still can do that in
the in the fall, it looks like Arizona is going
to have a constitutional you know, referendum. Basically in every
single state, including Montana, Kansas, Kentucky, abortion rights have triumphed

(15:05):
at the ballot box. And so the ones that we're
looking at this time are what we got potentially in Florida, YEP, Arizona.

Speaker 4 (15:13):
Florida, Maryland, New York looks like now definitely it's going
to happen in Arizona. They have to collect three hundred
and eighty four thousand dollos signatures by July fourth.

Speaker 3 (15:20):
That should be quite doable. Now that's the Supreme Court.

Speaker 4 (15:23):
Kyle, we could do it today. Yes, So it looks
like that constitutional amendment, as you said, Ryan, is going
to be there. Their efforts underway also in Arkansas, Nevada,
South Dakota, Montana, Missouri, Colorado. It's possible but unlikely according
to the AP's analysis, that it ends up on the
boot in Iowa, Maine, and Pennsylvania in the fall. But
a lot of swing states in there, obviously Florida, Arizona, Nevada,

(15:48):
maybe Missouri and Colorado. But states where this is going
to be a huge issue. Is this is better for
turnout for Democrats than Republicans. There's just no question about
it at this point. So actually, in a way, by
kicking this back to Arizona voters, what the Supreme Court
did is give Arizona voters a chance to get rid

(16:09):
of the fifteen week Doug Doosey law.

Speaker 3 (16:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (16:12):
What I when I saw that ruling and I wanted
to check was this Democrats?

Speaker 4 (16:17):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (16:17):
On this seriously, who or do they just really hate
Carry Lake?

Speaker 5 (16:23):
Like Carry Lake must be thinking to us, So what
have I done to this Arizona Supreme Court.

Speaker 3 (16:28):
I think there to treat me this way.

Speaker 4 (16:30):
Well, this also happened the day after Donald Trump sort
of you know, chrisln Sager talked about this, but had
a little bit of an earthquake or induced a little
bit of an earthquake in Republican politics with his statement
on abortion. And his statement on abortion was one that
basically only Donald Trump can get away with. It's sort
of a blueprint for other Republicans. And that's where you

(16:51):
see Kerry Lake, her senior advisors, Nancy Mace, all kind
of clustering in that region, which is basically saying things like, look,
we think the voter should have the voters are wildly
against the Democratic position, which is to not ban third
trimester abortions. We all basically agree that somewhere, you know,
meeting in that second trimester is the way to regulate abortion.

(17:13):
We don't agree with you completely cutting off access. There
have to be exceptions, and you know, it is an
electoral disaster, blah blah blah. That's sort of like taking
from Trump adapting it to different candidates. But I don't
know how what works if you're not Donald Trump in particular,
there's just It's like when he went off on Hillary

(17:34):
Clinton and that one debate you remember, where he was like,
she wants to rip babies out of wombs. At the
same time, he also believes like pro life Mike Pence
type people are kind of crazy and everybody knows it. Yeah, frankically,
like everybody knows it.

Speaker 5 (17:49):
So yeah, yes, he's creeped out by them, yes, but
he also every time during his presidency when he was
in trouble, that's.

Speaker 3 (17:57):
Who he would go back to.

Speaker 4 (17:58):
The pro life community because they know.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
It most ardent supporters, and so he knew it and
they knew it.

Speaker 4 (18:03):
They know it and really resent it. That's part of
the reason that people were really upset yesterday is on Mondays.
So they feel like they've really been taken for granted
by Donald Trump, that he'll go to them when he
needs that kind of bolstering.

Speaker 5 (18:15):
But then nobody can be happy in America, even the
even the anti abortion crowd that got rov Wade overturned
by Trump.

Speaker 3 (18:25):
I think you got to cut the guy some slack.

Speaker 5 (18:26):
He delivered to the right the thing that they've been
gunning for for fifty years.

Speaker 3 (18:30):
You sound like, yeah, there you go. I mean from
their perspectives like, come on, what do you want from
this guy?

Speaker 5 (18:36):
He obviously is personally pro completely opposed to everything you
guys believe in, like culturally, but he's doing it anyway,
just cynically, So just ride that.

Speaker 4 (18:46):
No, I agree with that position completely.

Speaker 5 (18:49):
Although it's going to get ritten right in the ground
right Like the effect that this is having on Republicans,
it's interesting to think what kind of Republican party you'd
have if the court just decided not to do that.
You'd have probably ten twenty extra Republics in the House.
They probably control the Senate right now and maybe control
the Center for the next fifty years.

Speaker 4 (19:11):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think that's an
interesting question because I feel like the benefits have been
pretty marginal to people like olisa slot Can, and like
there are just some races where like, okay, clearly women
were super motivated. The pattern of turnout looks like it
was here. But I think it's a lot of Republicans
have had this interesting position like this needs to hardcore,

(19:33):
like anti abortion people like myself have said like this
is you're not going to solve this problem. Rodrer had
a good post on this Isessuary you're not going to
solve this problem at the ballot box at this point.
All you're going to do is have catastrophic losses on
every other policy issue. If you force an issue at
the ballot box, that's going to lose time and again
because the culture is not anywhere near the anti abortion

(19:56):
movements position on it, So like what's the wisdom? But
on that side, you get immense pressure from people in
the pro life movement who are against this incrementalism as
like it, and so that's I mean, it's it's a
smaller and smaller wing as time goes by, But like
people in the anti abortion movement actually are facing pressure

(20:19):
from their right, even like hardcore people from their right.
That is like, and again it's understandable if you believe
that ending in life after conception is murder, it's understandable
why people would be against the incrementalism. But politics of
the possible, I mean, it's just there's really no path and.

Speaker 3 (20:37):
Correct people wrong.

Speaker 5 (20:38):
They often would make parallels to the abolition or the
anti slavery movement absolutely, which just was a fundamental misreading
of everything, but like it had the same moral force
to those particular people who were involved in it. But
they what they didn't understand is that there is a

(20:59):
day after you overturn rows.

Speaker 3 (21:01):
And so if you've got this gorilla.

Speaker 5 (21:04):
Which is different than the Civil War and emancipation, now,
well we don't need to go into reconstruction and Jim.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
Crow and all of that, but there's a day after row.

Speaker 5 (21:15):
And so they run this gorilla campaign to take a
minority position and make it the law for the majority
by taking over the courts. But then in the decision
they kind of didn't have the guts to go all
the way. Like Alido in the decision says, the Constitution
is silent on the question of abortion, and therefore it
needs to go back to the states, to the states,
and it could even go to Congress. So now you

(21:39):
you but you recognize that you're a minority position and
you had to run a gorilla campaign to ban it.
Now you've thrown it up to the public for them
to vote on.

Speaker 4 (21:48):
The public's not with you.

Speaker 5 (21:50):
And now you're Roger like, oh, maybe voting isn't the
way to do this. Let's go back to the course.
Well you just did. What else is there there's I mean,
there's like he's saying, wage a cultural war persuade people.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
But okay, good luck with that.

Speaker 4 (22:04):
Yeah, but that's really the only route. I mean, that's
the only way to do it. And it's it's not
a you know, it's it's definitely not a one that's
looking great. But Sager pointed this out yesterday on Twitter. Basically,
he's like, listen, the whole the message of the pro
life movement, my entire life was let's kick it back
to the States, and you know that's and now they're
saying exactly the opposite.

Speaker 3 (22:25):
Of that to the point you just made not like that.

Speaker 4 (22:27):
But what I think is interesting about that is, yes,
the Republican Party said that the pro life movement itself
as a whole has Yeah, because again, there are a
lot of students of a lot of like deep students
of John Brown and the abolitionist movement in the pro
life movement, and that take that comparison really seriously do
see it as a civil rights issue, and in that case,

(22:48):
incrementalism to a lot of people looks ridiculous. So again,
there's just plenty of people in the Republican Party who
are not logically intellectually consistent in their positions on abortion.
And I feel like that. I'm very curious about Kerry Lake,
who spent most of her life as a Democrat. I'm
very curious as to if she ever thought some of
that stuff through, because from Republican politicians, a lot of

(23:12):
the pro life talking points are cynical, and you know,
they're necessary in primaries, and then when push comes to shove,
it's like, well do I really Usually not, because they're
electoral consequences that don't jive with the logically consistent position, right.

Speaker 5 (23:27):
And basically, if you're trying to enforce minority position on
a country that still has some democratic mechanisms in place,
you can't.

Speaker 7 (23:35):
Do it's nice.

Speaker 5 (23:36):
You either have to be kind of have dictatorial power,
or like you said, you have to have a cultural
revolution where everybody just where you win over a majority,
you persuade a majority of people to.

Speaker 3 (23:48):
Agree with you.

Speaker 5 (23:50):
But you know, the polling and our global experience suggests
I think that's not going to happen. But I would
love to see them like try like that. I think
to me, that is the appropriate way to do it.
Go try to persuade people rather than having the court,
you know, come down and tell people what to do.
So yesterday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin showed up at Congress

(24:11):
and he was protested during his speech, as pretty much
everybody is who comes to Congress to talk about anything
touching on the Israel Gaza war. He was accused of
facilitating genocide. And so after the protesters left, Center, Tom
Cotton engagement in a bit of a back and forth
about whether or not there is a genocide going on

(24:32):
and whether or not the US and.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
Israel are affecting it. There let's listen to his response.

Speaker 8 (24:38):
Secretary Austin, thank you for acknowledging in response to Center
Wicker that Hamas committed war crimes on October seventh and
has been committing them every day since by using human shields.
I want to address what the protesters raised earlier, is
Israel committing genocide and Gaza. Senator gott And I, we

(25:00):
don't have any evidence of genocide being created. So that's
a no. Israel's not committing genocide and Gassa, we don't
have evidence of that.

Speaker 5 (25:08):
What do you make of the You know, he could
say yes, he could say the ICJ has said there's
a plausible case for genocide.

Speaker 3 (25:17):
He could say no. Instead, he said, we don't have
evidence for it. What do you make of that?

Speaker 4 (25:21):
He said, we don't have evidence for it. And then
he also said there's quote no question that there have
been quote far too many civilian casualties throughout the Israel
Hamas war, and that he is stressed to jo Abgalante
that Israel's military must protect civilians. So my basic takeaway
of this is it's super characteristic of the Biden administration's
attempt to have it both ways, right, like they want

(25:44):
to be citing international law in one case and then
shirking it in another. And I know a lot of
people are familiar with the definition of genocide at this point,
the UN accept a definition, the ICC definition. I'm just
going to read it again because I think it's worth
talking about in the context of the exchange. In the
so they say genocide means any of the following acts

(26:04):
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part,
a national ethnical, racial, or religious group. So in whole
or in part a national ethnical, racial, or religious group.
And the reason I bring that up is because again
it shows how the Biden administration wants to have it
both ways on international law. And that's I think this

(26:24):
definition of genocide, which was adopted in the aftermath of
World War Two, is lacking. I think if you are
destroying quote in part, a national group, basically anything that
Israel did after October seventh would have been categorized as
genocide in whole a national group. When you have an
Ethno state and another Ethno state, there's just no way

(26:47):
to have that battle. I'm not saying it's right. The
way is real prosecuted the war. I don't agree with
that at all, But I also don't think that this
definition of genocide has stood the test of time because
it's just I mean, there's almost no way to prosecute
a war after October seventh, or to respond after October seventh,

(27:09):
which even Hamas expected what happened and not fall into
that definition.

Speaker 5 (27:13):
Because it really depends on the definition of the legal
definition of In part right, because you know, Hamas killed
several hundred Israeli civilians on October seventh, does that count
as in part?

Speaker 3 (27:25):
Legal experts generally say no, that's not what we mean.

Speaker 4 (27:28):
We had one on the show.

Speaker 3 (27:30):
In Part right, and he was saying no.

Speaker 4 (27:32):
He was saying no because in October seventh, right, he
was saying Hamas may have the intent, but they don't
have the capability, whereas Israel has the capability. And that
is an understandable distinction. But yes, that question of in
part is huge.

Speaker 5 (27:45):
And so said Ericott at the State Department, asked a
really good question which goes to this where he did
not obviously get a really good answer. But the question
is one to sit with, which is is there a
definition of genocide that would allow Bosnia and Rwanda to apply.

Speaker 3 (28:05):
But not Palestine.

Speaker 4 (28:06):
Oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 5 (28:08):
Because the US is comfortable with saying this was this
was a genocide in Rwanda, this is a genocide in Bosnia.

Speaker 3 (28:15):
The International Court.

Speaker 5 (28:16):
Of Justice, everybody around the world is comfortable saying, right, well,
the Wigers.

Speaker 3 (28:24):
He also mentioned Rohina.

Speaker 5 (28:26):
I believe because the Wigers you don't have the you
have the cultural destruction, a cultural genocide, but you don't
have the kind of mass death that you had in Rwanda,
the Rohina and in Bosnia. And also that one is
contested more more so than the than you know at

(28:46):
the international level Bosnia Rwanda, but.

Speaker 4 (28:48):
A lot of people that embraced that one would.

Speaker 5 (28:50):
Exactly exactly like you'd have, you know, right, ask Jack
Sullivan or Blincoln exactly right, They're gonna leave at that one.

Speaker 4 (28:58):
It's just so, it's it's and it's typical. I mean,
we talked last week about this quote that came across
an Oliver Norse memoir recently where he said, you know, Israel, Britain,
they were all selling arms to Iran. The thing that
really disappointed me. And I know saronic obviously coming from
Oliver North, but in his memoir he says, the thing
that really disappointed me is basically the United States was
like lecturing everybody to not do it right while doing it.

Speaker 5 (29:21):
Reminds me of this famous Chomsky interview where he's asked
what's the difference between counter terrorism and terrorism and he
says terrorism is when they do it. The counter terrorism
is when we do it. So, speaking of terrorism, if
we can put up the third element here Gozen's returned
to their neighborhood of Conunis over the last couple of days,
now that the IDF has withdrawn, to find it unrecognizable

(29:45):
the way the Associated Press lead says, stunned Palestinians found
their home city unrecognizable Monday as they filtered in to
estavage what they could from the vast destruction left by
Israeli troops who withdrew from Southern Gaz's con units a
day earlier after months of fight and bombardment, and the
scenes out the scenes are utterly dystopian. Uh and we

(30:08):
and you don't know, you know, how many people are
still buried under this this rubble Uh. Families who who've
returned back can't even kind of figure out which block
is theirs anymore because it's just so completely flattened and
rubble strewn. The reporter sees them by one plastic red
flower that they that helps him identify, like our apartment

(30:30):
was over here, and the mom puts that, puts that
in a bag as as they're headed back to who
knows where. And as the Associated Press points out in
this article, this is what Rafa would look like if
if who you know moves forward with with that, with
that coming invasion, and he has said it's they now
have a date, you know that it's it's going to happen.

(30:54):
There's been reports that when the Israelis and the Americans met,
the Israeli suggested that they're going to buy tents, hundreds
of thousands, you know, tents for hundreds of thousands of
people that they're going to move kind of somewhere else.

Speaker 4 (31:07):
They've already bought forty thousand and.

Speaker 5 (31:09):
Yeah, they're are already trying to purchase forty thousand. And
the Americans asked, well, okay, that's that's one thing, but
you've got what about food, what about sewage treatment?

Speaker 3 (31:19):
You know, what about the water, like, what about the other.

Speaker 5 (31:21):
Things that you know, one point three million people would
need to survive And that that was kind of that
was kind of brushed off. Going to the question of
whether or not there's any evidence of genocide. It's one
thing to say that there that Okay, we haven't come
to a final conclusion that there're you know, one hundred
percent certainty that genocide is happening. As Lloyd Austins had

(31:42):
to say, there's no evidence denies the actual evidence that
we do have on the ground. And one of those
and we can go to this next element is before
the CNN put together an interesting investigation into the flower
massacre of late late February.

Speaker 3 (31:59):
This was one of.

Speaker 5 (32:01):
The turning points I think for a lot of you know,
global global opinion. The US had purchased enough flower to
feed millions you know, to create millions of meals. And
for about a month, Isra was keeping this flower out,
not letting it into, not letting into Gaza. Finally, a

(32:23):
Connecticut based kind of charity was able to contract with
a couple of trucks and work with the IDF, which
escorted it in with tanks. And the very first day
that this flower that had been waiting outside for so
long came in, the idea starts opening fire.

Speaker 3 (32:40):
And this is what the CNN investigation.

Speaker 5 (32:42):
Finds IDEAF initially said, actually, we never fired, and then
later said we fired warning shots, and then they said
we fired at quote unquote suspects. Cianna has obtained a
bunch of different videos from Palestinians who were there, who
were filming at the time that this happened, that showed
that their time line is a lie, that they fire,
that they started firing at people who were at the.

Speaker 3 (33:03):
Checkpoint, and to me, if.

Speaker 5 (33:07):
You add everything else together, the fact that they had
been keeping this out for so long and it had
only let it in under intense pressure, and then you
learn from this reporting that they did open fire on
people waiting for them and then did lie about it.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
And it did then lead to.

Speaker 5 (33:27):
What they wanted, which was the rest of the flower
not getting in, which then did lead to what they
also have said publicly that they wanted, which is depriving
Palestinians of food. It's it's kind of one more deliberate act.
And so that that's why I say that there is evidence.
Whether or not that Lloyd Austin wants to say it's

(33:48):
conclusive evidence is a different question.

Speaker 3 (33:50):
But there's evidence.

Speaker 4 (33:51):
But this is Netnyahu's version of the Biden problem, and
that he has people saying, you know, yes, use food
as a weapon of war. In what case throughout human
history has food not been used as a weapon? In
what case throughout human history are people feeding the nation
that they are at war with. Well, it's kind of
what we decided to do after the horrors of World

(34:12):
War Two. It's kind of how everyone came to the
table and said, you can't let that happen again. So
if you agreed to those standards of war, then yes,
But there are people in net Yah who's right saying
why are we doing this? This food is going to
be used to bolster the people who are trying to
kill us, And so net Yahoo again has to kind

(34:32):
of try and have it both ways and not say
outright that they you know, there's a position in the
Israeli government, and there are factions in the Israeli government
that don't want to feed Palestinians because it's it's not
conducive to flattening Gaza, it's not conducive to their definition

(34:53):
of winning the war, which is still, by the way,
completely unclear. The Biden administration, which to a point that
you and Crystal and and Tager often make, is essential
to the prosecution of this war from Israel's position, is
not even cued in on what the date is. That
Yahoo is not telling them the date of this invasion
of Rafa, probably because of leaking concerns, intelligence sharing concerns.

(35:14):
But that just tells you how how fraught the relationship
is right now, or if it.

Speaker 3 (35:19):
Even exists, or if it's a bluff throughout the exactly.

Speaker 7 (35:23):
You know.

Speaker 5 (35:23):
Hamas reported earlier this week on its on its various
public channels that that in one day, in three different engagements,
thirteen IDF at least thirteen IDF soldiers had been had
been killed in combat. Yesterday, they posted some some video
confirming that that had in fact happened.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
These kind of setbacks are lining up.

Speaker 5 (35:44):
With the IDF announcing that it's withdrawing from these significant
areas of southern Gaza. So in some ways it might
just be public facing bluster from that Yahoo that that
actually a ground invade is not something that the IDF
thinks is kind of advantageous at this point when it's

(36:05):
also continuing to threaten and be threatened by Asbilla up
in the north. Plus we have waiting in the wings
the Iranian response to Israel's attack on the Iranian consulate
in Damascus, which was a massive breaking of international norms,
which brings us to our next segment on another massive

(36:26):
breaking of international norms which seems to perhaps triggered, you know,
by Israel getting a green light to go ahead and
attack as consulate and Damascus may have led to Ecuador
believing that it could just smash its way into the
Mexican embassy in Keto and drag out the former Vice
President will have kind of harrowing footage of that up next,

(36:48):
and will also be joined by Ecuadorian for Foreign Minister
Gilby Longs.

Speaker 3 (36:52):
Stick around for that.

Speaker 5 (36:55):
People may remember this wild footage from back in January
out of Ecuador. We can roll up this first vo here.
This was a group of gangs. Gang leader was broken
out of prison in Ecuador. The climax of this wild
incenti that you're looking at here is these gang members
taking over a TV station live on air, holding people hostage,

(37:20):
and really putting an exclamation mark on what had become
an extraordinary kind of devolution in Ecuador from one of
the safest countries in South America to basically what is
drifting towards a narco state run by kind of US
back gangs at this point. Now that brings us to

(37:41):
just last Thursday, that there was this remarkable moment on
the international stage where you had Ecuadorian forces burst into
the Mexican embassy. So this footage was released yesterday by Mexico.
These are kind of basically Ecuadorian stormtroopers here outside of

(38:03):
the embassy, burst busting their way in here.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
They're looking for the former vice president.

Speaker 5 (38:10):
They run into embassy staff as you see here, top officials.
They are throwing, throwing, throwing old diplomats down, down onto
the down, onto the ground, uh and and dragging out
uh the former vice president who had been formally offered
asylum by the Mexican government. It's it's hard to describe

(38:31):
a greater breach of international norms other than perhaps an
airstrike on an embassy has happened in Damascus quite recently. Now, uh,
the US took two days to respond with a very
modest statement where they where they condemned, where they didn't condemn.
They the headline on their statement was events at the

(38:52):
embassy of Mexico in Ecuador.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
Then these of the.

Speaker 5 (38:56):
United States condemns any violation of the of the Vienna
Conveys on diplomatic relations, so just generally condemning, but they
never go one to specifically condemn what had just happened.
This is forty eight hours earlier, bear in mindset. And
then they write, Mexico and Ecuador are crucial partners of
the United States, and we place a high value on
our relations with both countries. We encourage the two countries

(39:19):
to resolve their differences in accord with international norms, so
really taking a hands off approach there. They continued to
be under pressure to say something about what their US
backed government had done in Keto, and so Jake Sullivan
yesterday came out at the White House Press briefing, and
this is how he addressed it.

Speaker 9 (39:38):
Finally, I also want to take a moment before going
to your questions to address the events of April fifth
in Quito, Ecuador. We condemned this violation of the Vienna
Convention on Diplomatic relations, including the use of force against
embassy officials. We've reviewed the security camera footage from the
Mexican embassy and believe these actions were wrong. The Ecuadorian

(39:59):
government district guarded its obligations under international law as a
host state to respect the inviolability of diplomatic missions and
jeopardize the foundation of basic diplomatic norms and relationships.

Speaker 5 (40:11):
The backdrop of all of this is quite interesting if
we can put up this fourth veo here. This is
former National Assemblyman Ronnie Aliaga, who you're looking at here,
who has created a huge stir in Ecuador over the
past several weeks by releasing text messages between him and

(40:32):
Diana Salazar, who was the US backed Attorney General in Ecuador.
It was Salazar who issued the arrest warrant against the
former vice president and before Daniel Niboa issued the order
to carry it out inside the embassy. And what Aliaga
has been saying is that the text messages between him

(40:52):
and her confirm that she and the US ambassador have
been working hand in glove on various prosecutions and and
political interventions over the past several years, and that Salasar
is effectively kind of the US's closest ally inside Ecuador
and is being groomed, being groomed for the presidency. What

(41:14):
we can add to this, I've spoken to the former
National Assemblyman for several hours over the past couple of
weeks and he and he passed on to me we
can put this up on the screen here, a forensic
analysis of his of his two phones, because there's a
lot of speculation in Ecuador that he is making this
entire thing up, so he sent his He basically allowed

(41:36):
a Miami based firm to have access to his his
phones and they confirmed that in fact, these text messages
between him and the number that appears to belong to
Salas are are in fact accurate.

Speaker 3 (41:49):
So to kind of give us more.

Speaker 5 (41:52):
Background on all of this is the former Foreign Minister
of Ecuador, Giomi Long Giomilan, is joining us from like
much of the government of Rafael Korea of exile, and so,
first of all, Foreign Minister Long, thank you so much

(42:13):
for joining us.

Speaker 3 (42:14):
Really appreciate it.

Speaker 10 (42:15):
Thanks very much for the invitation. I'm not formerly in exile,
but I certainly.

Speaker 11 (42:20):
Don't live in Ecuador right now, unlike many of my
former colleagues who are in exile who enjoy political asylum
in a number of countries, actually Mexico being one, which
we'll discuss with you, Argentina also, but also Belgium, where
former President Correa himself has been granted political asylum.

Speaker 7 (42:38):
It's not my case, but I don't I don't, I
don't even ever go about them.

Speaker 3 (42:43):
Would you feel safe going back to Ecuador.

Speaker 5 (42:45):
At this point or do you think that the kind
of persecution of your party is so broad that there
might be some risk.

Speaker 7 (42:53):
Yeah, I mean I've been going back to Ecuador. I've been.

Speaker 10 (42:56):
I went back in the most recent elections in October
twenty twenty three. I was also there in August twenty
twenty three. I've been going back regularly, and I have
family in Ecuadors, so I do go back.

Speaker 7 (43:06):
But and it was.

Speaker 10 (43:08):
Better for a while, it's gotten significantly worse now. Again,
there was allal a little bit, but yeah, I mean,
for a few years I did not go back, and
it has been unsafe, largely speaking for well for Ecuadorans
because of the general security situation in Ecuador, but also
for obviously the political left. Yeah, there are lots. I mean,

(43:30):
the deep state is very active and very noticeable if
you've been part of the Gorrega government at some point
in time.

Speaker 5 (43:36):
Yeah, yeah, So tell us about Hoorge Glass, the former
vice president who was dragged out of the Mexican embassy.
You know what was, what's behind, what's behind these charges,
and what do we know about his safety because as
I understand it, the Americans privately did finally tell the
Ecuadorian government that he ought not to be harmed while

(43:59):
in prison.

Speaker 3 (43:59):
We'll see you know how effective that is.

Speaker 11 (44:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (44:03):
So the story of persecution necro is a long and
complicated one which I'm not going to go into many
details a belt, but this censed them. The big pivotal
moment is when Lenny Moreno becomes president in twenty seventeen,
elected on a continuity ticket after Correa.

Speaker 7 (44:20):
He had been a former vice president of Korea.

Speaker 10 (44:23):
Then he betrays that and does a U, turn sides
with the Trump administration, does all the things that many
of US know about, you know, throws Assange out of
the London embassy, brings Pompeo and Mike Pence Taquito, and
then signs loads of deals, including an IMF deal, grants
an an airstrip in the Galapagus to the Pentagon in

(44:44):
South comm And so I really realigns geopolitically within this
spield of the United States and within this field of
the Trump administration.

Speaker 7 (44:51):
Right.

Speaker 10 (44:52):
And then he organizes a referend in twenty eighteen, which
is the big problem till this day. So I'm just
going to say quick word about this, the referen And
while he was still popular, a few months later he
would have lost it, and he ended his term as
the most unpopular president in Ecuadorian history. This is Lenin Modno.
But when he had held referendum, he was still in
his honeymoon and supported by the media, managed to pass

(45:13):
this referendum. And there were a few questions. One of
them was to bar reelections so that Korea could never
be president again. But the other crucial question was to
do an overhaul of the judiciary, if you like, to
purge the judiciary.

Speaker 7 (45:28):
The government morena government.

Speaker 10 (45:29):
I actually called it a decorrealization if you like, this
a Spanish term, but the dec corea with the president
the Ecuadorian states, and so you have to get rid,
purge all the Correista elements of the Ecuadorian state and
actally includes the judiciary.

Speaker 7 (45:44):
And then he.

Speaker 10 (45:45):
Managed to name all the series of new very direhard
anti Korea judges who then started the persecution. And this
was a persecution that was essentially carried out in twenty
nineteen and twenty twenty in part against fortge Glass, who
ended up in jail. He did he purchaed six years
in jail, and another one a big case involving several people,

(46:07):
including President Correa himself, who got an eight year jail sentence,
but because he was already living abroad in Belgium, the
Belgium government, seeing that he was the actual sentence says
Correa was guilty of psychic influence over others to commit crimes. Right,
this is actually in the sentence. So the Belgium government
eventually gave Korea a political asylum based on the fact

(46:31):
that there was a clear case of political persecution.

Speaker 7 (46:34):
Interpol also denied several arrests read alerts.

Speaker 10 (46:38):
They're called for the arrest of Korea, and so internationally
the case crumbled, if you like, but domestically in Ecuador
they doubled down on this, and there is an arrest
warrant for Korea for several other people and Glass, because
he was in jail, they managed to start. As soon
as he was free, they managed to start a new case,
which is even more ludicrous than the other is this

(47:01):
essentially has to do with the reconstruction funds after the
earthquake of twenty sixteen. Ecuador had terrible worth Coak in
twenty sixteen, and Glass was as vice president, was in
charge of the reconstruction, and they're saying he use those
funds not for reconstruction, which okay, he headed a committee
and those funds were actually used for economic dynamism, you know,

(47:22):
to stimulate the growth and so on and so.

Speaker 7 (47:24):
Forth, so that's not strictly reconstruction.

Speaker 10 (47:26):
So they're not even accusing him of stealing money using them,
of not using the funds for reconstruction but for something else, which.

Speaker 7 (47:32):
Was also public policy. So the whole case is a sham.

Speaker 10 (47:35):
So he saw that it was a new sham, and
so he sought asylum in the Mexican embassy there would
be in a number of Ecuador and to form a
correac collaborators former minutes and so on and so forth
seeking asylum in a Mexican embassy. Over the last few years,
several of them would give granted safe passage in during
the previous administrations to enjoy their political asylum as the

(47:59):
technical term, you know, to be able to reach Mexico
and enjoy their political asylum there. But this time under Noboa,
ECUADORI refused to grant the safe passage and in fact,
as we saw this weekend, quite dramatically storm the embassy,
which is a massive violation. We could talk about this

(48:22):
of Article twenty two of the nineteen sixty one Vienna
Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which is really the ground flow
of international law, right, it is the convention that establishes
before any other agreement on international law is made. What
you know, how we're going to interact between states? What
are essential rules of the game of diplomacy. You know,
you have an embassy in my country, I have one

(48:43):
in yours. We can't touch those. It's kind of common sense.
Everybody knows that. You know, anybody's watched the kind of
you know, an action movie knows that you don't storm
the embassy, right, it's pretty common sense. But they violated that,
and it's one of the few times that's ever been
done in Latin American history. So it's very traumatic and
right now, I could always very isolated.

Speaker 4 (49:03):
So actually on that, I know Ryan has questions about Vienna,
but I also wanted to ask for people in the
States trying to like put these puzzle pieces together. This
question of why is Amlo involved to this degree, and
obviously the big picture context about crime and cartels and

(49:24):
COVID and poverty and all of that sort of comes together,
and Amilo's relationship with Korea and with the sort of
exiled from her Korea allies. Can you tell us a
little bit about maybe what's in it for Amlo, why
Amlo and Mexico are involved to the degree that they're involved,
and maybe how that speaks to that big picture question

(49:46):
of Noboha and Buclea and a lot of Latin American
politics kind of in general.

Speaker 10 (49:51):
Yeah, that's actually a great question. I mean, it's Amlo,
but it's also Mexico. Mexico has a long history of
being this sort of land for asylum seat, so we
played a key role in the nineteen fifty four Karakas
Convention on Asylum, which is sort of a piece of
international law that Latin Americans are quite proud of, Latin
American diplomats are quite proud of, because it was a

(50:12):
precursor law in international law that Latin Americans drafted in
the inter American system to protect asylum seekers, and it
was key in a number of ways to establish the
rules what the rules of political asylum are.

Speaker 7 (50:25):
So Mexico played a big role in that.

Speaker 10 (50:27):
But then in the sixties, seventies and early eighties, in
the sort of heyday of military dictatorship, particularly in the
Southern Code, Mexico was the land of exile or political
asylum of the opponents that were being persecuted by all
these military Cold War US backed largely military regimes. So
Mexico became famous as a sort of safe haven. It
never did have the military regimes that other countries in

(50:50):
Latin America had, and so Mexico's kind of got this
kind of prestige. There's also something called the Estrada doctrine,
which is a doctrine of a former foreign minutes to
Mexico that has a big impact on the doctrine of
Mexican foreign policy, but the foreign policy of other Latin
American states. So there's a whole sort of Mexican I
will say, almost the institutional culture of international law and

(51:14):
asylum law, which is symbolic here, and it kind of
had been a little bit abandoned in the last ten
twenty years in Mexico, you know, after joining NAFTA stopped
sort of being seen like this, and AMLO really insisted
on bringing back this sort of age old tradition of
Mexico being a land of asylum. And when you had

(51:37):
during the Trump years this kind of conservative backlash in
Latin America, including coups like in Bolivia, like where did
people seek refuge? Where did people hide? You know, people
who had been part of Evo Morales's cabinet. So they
went to the Mexican embassy. I actually they went to
the Mexican and the Spanish embassy in the Bolivian case,
and in Ecuador, when Moreno started persecuting the left, they're same,

(52:01):
they went to the Mexican embassy, and AMLO eventually granted
people asylum, and a number of people asylum. Right now,
Mexico is the place where there is the greatest number
of Ecuadorian refugees. There is some in Argentina, has just said.
President Corprea himself is in Belgium, but lots of people,
lots of former ministers are in Mexico. So Glass went

(52:22):
to the Mexican embassy. This seemed to be the logical
sort of place to go to. And yeah, I think
it speaks of two things, so answering a question, One
is Mexican tradition. The other is Amlo, who's kind of
on the political left, so there may be some sympathies there,
but I think it's more of a political left that
wanted to revive this age old Mexican tradition right and

(52:42):
to go back to the estrata doctrine I've just mentioned.
And the other element is, of course the geopolitical context,
with since twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, a sort of right
wood shift in the hemisphere which is less aggressive now
because Bolsonado's not there anymore, and have been a few
victories for the left in Colours and Chile elsewhere, but
there was fifteen twenty sixteen a big pendudu shift to

(53:05):
the right and an authoritarian right which persecuted people, which
meant there were suddenly, just as you had in the
sixties and seventies, Mexico playing that role again.

Speaker 5 (53:15):
And let me ask you about these charges that have
been leveled by Ronnie Aliaga in his conversation with me
and also in these videos that have gone viral inside Ecuador.
One of the charges he made is related to the
assassination of Fernando Vievisensi via Essensio. People will remember, probably
we covered this. This was the presidential candidate, kind of

(53:37):
anti corruption crusader who was assassinated out right after a
rally as he's walking to his car. People probably remember
seeing that footage. What Aliaga says is that Diana Styles
Are the Attorney General, told him that she had dinner.
She had a dinner with the US ambassador, and the
US ambassador told her that they had three field offices

(53:59):
working on this because Viavisensio was a high level kind
of US informer US asset uh and that they were
putting out a five million dollar reward for any information
leading to his killing, and that they knew their investigation
had already uncovered the fact that it was the Los
Lobos gang that was behind his assassination, these are Narco traffickers,

(54:21):
but that Correa's party was surging in the elections, the
first round was coming in two weeks, and that it
would not be good to get that information out because
the time the Ecuadorian media was blaming Correa and Correa's
party for this, for this assassination.

Speaker 3 (54:38):
So it's better to you know, allow that to play out.

Speaker 5 (54:42):
Rather than give a gift to the left, you know,
heading into the election. Niboa does end up then winning
a very tight election in the second round against Correa's party.
So what do you make of these allegations from Aliaga
and are they how seriously are they being taken.

Speaker 10 (54:59):
In So these allegations which are just coming out, and
you know, it seems they seem to be certified by
this by this US.

Speaker 7 (55:07):
Based verification, you know it verification.

Speaker 10 (55:11):
Outfit, which is going to be very important because he's
going to have the proof that this is legitimate. Uh,
These they're going to I mean only just starting to
play out now, and because of what's just happened in
the Mexican embassy in Ecuador, this kind of news cycle
that is focused on that. But I think once the
story is out and once it's it hits the mainstream press,
including outside Ecuador, it's going to have a huge impact

(55:33):
because they confirm a lot of our suspicions and a
lot of the accusations that were leveled at Salas R
back then, and I've been leveled at Salas are back.
So that's the sort of equivalent of the attorney general
in Ecuador. FI scale can always say in Ecuador, the
prosecutor general, if you like, who did not prosecute and

(55:54):
has did not accelerate investigation before the elections, as you
just said, because it would have deflected attention or accusations
away from Cosmo and Kraismo was ahead in the power
and she's been the arch persecutor of Coraismo and the
left in Ecuador in the last few years.

Speaker 7 (56:12):
So it's extremely serious.

Speaker 10 (56:14):
But it would mean that the prosecutor general, the attorney
general would would have acted in a politicized way, would
have decided to not investigate a crime and who the
authors of that crime are, or at least delay it
for political purposes so that you know, Coraismo would get that,
you know, the the yeah, I would get accused of

(56:36):
this crime during elections, and bearing in mind that Bavisensio
was an arch opponent of coraismo, sort of one of
those kind of very yeah, I mean, sort of played
the role of a whistleblower, you know, and sort of
a very you know on the media, constantly sort of

(57:01):
throwing accusations pretty much against everybody. He was that kind
of character, and he was we always suspected supported by
the United States. We're now going to see whether there's
any more evidence for this, but this was kind of
vox popular, right. It was the rumor everywhere in the
political circles that censor was essentially a US agent. Whether

(57:24):
that's exactly true or order, whether he was supported in
some way or another, we're going to find out. And
then when he was murdered, when he was assassinated in
something which really hurt Ecuador and democracy and the ecuador elections,
right because he was a presidential candidate, and this is
the first time in contemporary history that you have a
presidential candidate that's murdered in Ecuador. I mean, he wouldn't

(57:45):
have won the elections. It didn't change the outcome. While
it did in a way, but it wouldn't It's not
as if it was leading the polls. He was depending
on different polls, in fourth, fifth place, sixth place, whatever.

Speaker 7 (57:57):
But you know, it was still traumatic, was you know,
a crucial sort of Yeah.

Speaker 10 (58:02):
It was a political well known politician in Ecuador was
running for the presidency. He was murdered, and there are
lots of suspicions at the time that his murder was
politically motivated in order to hurt Karismo.

Speaker 7 (58:15):
That because he was such sort of an art.

Speaker 10 (58:18):
Critic of Charismo, because he was, you know, constantly throwing
accusations of Coarismo.

Speaker 7 (58:23):
The natural conclusion of that.

Speaker 10 (58:25):
Would be that it was Corraismo that had him murdered,
which so you see after his murder, which was on
the ninth of August, I believe yes, and the actually
of August, you see between the ninth and twentieth of August,
a decline of the leading candidacy of the Cordista candidate,
the left wing candidate, and she, you know, Luisa Gonsiles

(58:47):
lost probably eight seven, eight nine whatever points.

Speaker 7 (58:53):
She might have.

Speaker 10 (58:54):
Made it without the need for a runoff, without the assassination,
did recuperate a few. It's right towards the end, when
it became clearer and clearer that this was not a
you know that there were there was more and more
evidence showing that it was a sort of deep state
narco plot that had nothing to do with Goraismo. So

(59:15):
I mean, yeah, we I think it significantly changed the
results of the elections.

Speaker 7 (59:20):
We don't know what would have happened.

Speaker 10 (59:22):
It's very difficult to establish counter factual here, but certainly
it's very very serious. If judicial authorities in Ecuador decided
not to investigate this crime, or to delay the investigation
of the crime in order to prejudice a candidacy, it
would have been it was a massive judicial wrongdoing and

(59:44):
you know, intervention in the in the electoral process, in
democracy essentially, And if the US supported this, if the
State Department or it's US representatives in Ecuador supported this,
it is extremely serious. And it's appears from the preliminary

(01:00:08):
information that we have that the Prosecutor General, in these
chats with a former member of Congress, Roniel Jaga, is
saying that she was backed, supported, encouraged by US diplomats
to do this.

Speaker 5 (01:00:27):
And yeah, that does that does indeed, that does indeed
appear to be what the chats say. And as I've said,
the Miami based forensic firm confirms that these chats are authentic.
There was for for people who are confused about why
that would be needed. Uh, there's this app called Confeede
used down in South America, which you can you can

(01:00:48):
pay a little extra to get to get to get
it so that as soon as you press the button,
the message goes away.

Speaker 3 (01:00:57):
You read it and boom, it's gone.

Speaker 5 (01:00:59):
So people in that said, there's no way he has
these because they were communicating via confide. And as he
showed me, he always carries two phones, so he would
film himself reading the message, and so he has the
film of all those messages, and so he sent he
sent basically the metadata and the guts of all both
of those phones to the Miami based firm to confirm

(01:01:21):
that his story actually does line up that that is
what he did. Will continue to follow the story because,
as you said, the US involvement here is extraordinarily you know,
profound and crucial and the result has been basically a
collapsing of the of the state and society of Ecuador.
But gil Me look looking forward to have you on

(01:01:44):
again and we'll continue to follow this.

Speaker 3 (01:01:46):
Thanks so much for joining us.

Speaker 7 (01:01:48):
Thank you very much.

Speaker 5 (01:01:49):
Pleasure all right, up up next, major surveillance reforms in Congress,
voting today and tomorrow.

Speaker 3 (01:01:57):
Stick around for that.

Speaker 4 (01:02:01):
All right, Well, it sounds like the same old story
over and over again, and that's because basically it is
the House of Representatives is in a state of chaos
on the press appress of getting rid of the Speaker
of the House. Right now, once again little Rinson repeat
going on, but this time it's over an inch in
an issue that has real bipartisan support against Section seven

(01:02:27):
oh two. This has become a flash point in the
House Freedom Caucuses battle with Speaker Mike Johnson, who they
accused rightfully of working with Democrats. Now, from Mike Johnson's perspective,
he would say, who am I supposed to work with?
I have a one vote margin here in the House
of Representatives. My majority is slim one vote, so we

(01:02:50):
kind of have to be at the table with Democrats.
But the Freedom Caucus believes rightfully again that he's made
a lot of promises about not doing omnibus bill, about
not funding the war Ukraine, and then seems to be
moving closer to Democrats on the issue. So Marjorie Taylor
Green actually released a letter she sent to Mike Johnson's basically,

(01:03:13):
I think well characterized as an airing of grievances. Ryan,
It sure seems like an airing of grievances. In fact,
the Hill outright called it an airing of grievances against
Mike Johnson. Yes, yes, exactly happy and you can actually
she tweeted out the full letter, which I'm sure Mike

(01:03:36):
Johnson was very happy about. That's D two. It's a
it's a long letter, and she goes through seven points
essentially and walks through things that Mike Johnson says and
seems to be renegging on. She also talked to CNN
about her plans just for this week, So there's a
real question here if Mike Johnson survives the week. And

(01:03:57):
again section seven zero two hugely important part of all
all of this. But let's listen to Marjorie Taylor Green
in this interview with CNN talk about what happened after
she released that letter and sent it to Mike Johnson.

Speaker 9 (01:04:08):
So you sent this letter out to your college this morning.

Speaker 4 (01:04:10):
What kind of response have you got?

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
Mostly support, It's been pretty incredible. Everyone's flying into town
today this so.

Speaker 4 (01:04:18):
I haven't spoken with.

Speaker 1 (01:04:19):
Everyone, but most of the members I've talked to agree
with what I've said, they may not come out and
publicly say it. Many are relieved I've said it, and
I've even heard within the ranks of leadership there's agreement there.

Speaker 7 (01:04:31):
So there's agreement for members of the readership with a.

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
Letter with much of what I said.

Speaker 4 (01:04:37):
The letter. Ryan's laughing over it made me laugh. It's
very It reminds me of Trump being like many people
are saying that I wrote the greatest letter.

Speaker 3 (01:04:46):
Yeah, like that.

Speaker 5 (01:04:46):
Meting with the guys, like all my friends are just
out of the picture here having an amazing time.

Speaker 4 (01:04:52):
They're standing out a frame. You know, we're all having
a blast.

Speaker 3 (01:04:54):
We're all going to overthrow the speaker.

Speaker 4 (01:04:56):
So Matt Gad's last night around eight pm on his
podcast said, if Speaker Johnson is unwilling to fix Fiza,
we are left wondering what he is indeed willing to fix. Now.
Marjorie Taylor Green is not a member of the House
Freedom of Caucus anymore. She's sort of Freedom Caucus adjacent.
They kicked her out. They're having all kinds of internal battles.
You can go watch our long interview with Freedom Coccus

(01:05:17):
German Bob Good that we did late last year.

Speaker 3 (01:05:19):
Useful idiot.

Speaker 4 (01:05:19):
Yeah, he called Marjor Taylor Green. He told us that
Marjori Tailler Green was a useful idiot. So go ahead
and watch that if you need a primer on all
the Freedom Caucus dynamics at the moment. But they are
all in alignment on this question of seven oh two,
which is becoming again. This is one of the things
in the push and poll that Mike Johnson has with
the Freedom Caucus type Republicans. Marjor Tayler Green has already
filed that motion to vacate. That's what got rid of

(01:05:41):
Kevin McCarthy. It's what Nancy Pelosi herself got rid of
after she watched Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan use it
to get rid of John Bayner. She said nope. But
then Kevin McCarthy made a promise to the Freedom Caucus
to bring it back if they elected him speaker. They
elected him speaker, then used the motion of Va Kate
to get rid of him. Marjorie Taylor Green is now
doing the same thing to Mike Johnson, but hasn't actually

(01:06:02):
forced the vote on getting rid of Mike Johnson yet.
She could do that basically at any moment. You know
that that's not parliamentarily accurate, accurate, but it could basically
happen any day if she has enough support to force
that vote on getting rid of Mike Johnson. And if
Mike Johnson does not come to the table on FISA reform,

(01:06:23):
that's going to be a huge problem for him. That
could lead to getting rid of the Speaker of the House. Now,
Brian and I would love to see section seven h
two reformed finally, because this is I mean, people who
care about government surveillance going back years, this has been
one of these central problems, one of the biggest sources

(01:06:43):
of abuse. Trump tweeted recently true social recently recently that
FISA was abused against him.

Speaker 5 (01:06:50):
That is, he tweeted last night, kill PIZA. It was
illegally used against me and many others. They spied on
my campaign.

Speaker 3 (01:06:56):
DJT.

Speaker 4 (01:06:56):
It's funny to say someone who is like upset saying
kill PISA because FISA came out of the Church Committee
era to like protect people against government surveillance. But because
the civil state is so powerful, FISA as this protective
measure is abused.

Speaker 5 (01:07:11):
So people are trying to interpret well what does this
mean about the details of this ongoing seven zero two fight,
And a lot of people are interpreting it as he's
with the Matt Gates side, which I think is a
totally fair reading of it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:25):
And so this is a live fight.

Speaker 5 (01:07:27):
So the House Rules Committee produced a rule last night
that will be voted on on the floor later today
unless he pulls it, which is as he's done before.

Speaker 3 (01:07:36):
Gates has said he's against the rule with a one
vote margin.

Speaker 5 (01:07:40):
If Democrats don't join, that means it could the rule
could go down. There are basically three key things that
they're fighting over in seven oh two. The main one,
you could call the back door search loophole, which is
seven oh two allows the NSA to basically spy on
any foreign person outside of American soil. So they then

(01:08:03):
use that authority to gobble up basically the entire world's communications.
Within the entire world's communications, you obviously have hundreds of
millions of Americans communications.

Speaker 3 (01:08:16):
So what the NSA says is, well.

Speaker 5 (01:08:18):
We legally acquired all of this data and all these communications,
so now we can search it and we can search
it for Americans because we acquired it legally.

Speaker 4 (01:08:28):
Right, We don't need a warrant.

Speaker 5 (01:08:29):
Because we already we already had the legal authority to
pick this stuff up. It's like, if you get a
warrant to search a home and you find something that's
a different crime than the one you're looking for or
a different person, you're allowed to use that.

Speaker 3 (01:08:42):
So they're trying to kind of shoehorn it into that, but.

Speaker 4 (01:08:45):
That doesn't even make sense because that would be like
you would be like going into a different house.

Speaker 3 (01:08:50):
Yes, actually they didn't have.

Speaker 4 (01:08:51):
A warrant to go into a different house.

Speaker 3 (01:08:52):
None of it. None of it makes sense. And so
but the courts have upheld it.

Speaker 5 (01:08:56):
And so what civil liberties advocates have been trying to
do for years is to close this back door search loophole.
And so that's a that's a key live fight right now.
The second one is the data broker loophole, which probably
people are probably pretty familiar with, which is that the

(01:09:17):
US is not allowed, you know, to collect American data
without a warrant, you can't do it. And so aside
from the back door search loophole, what they have is
a data broker loophole.

Speaker 3 (01:09:29):
Private companies are allowed to collect all this data.

Speaker 5 (01:09:32):
So they go out then and they buy up the
data and then they search it that way. And this
this would this amendment would say you can't do that.
It's called the Fourth Amendment Is Not for Sale Act,
which passed unanimously through the Judiciary Committee with the support

(01:09:52):
of WHO Representative Mike Johnson at the time. Mike Johnson
has now made a change in the rule last night
that will make it impossible for there to be a
vote on the bill that he the amendment that he
claims to support the bill, he claims the support the
Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act.

Speaker 3 (01:10:11):
And so Mike.

Speaker 5 (01:10:12):
Johnson is currently screwing everybody on closing the data broker loophole.
Then the third one is what Mike Johnson's done. He
has turned over a lot of the bill to the
Intelligence Committee. This is Republican Mike Turner and Democrat Jim Hymes,
who were absolutely just in lockstep with the intelligence.

Speaker 4 (01:10:35):
Community and the Biden administration.

Speaker 5 (01:10:36):
Like Mike, they were out a couple you may have
seen this couple weeks or a couple of months ago.

Speaker 3 (01:10:41):
They were out there saying they leaked this news.

Speaker 5 (01:10:43):
About how the Russians were using nukes in space and
therefore we need to hurry up and give more spying
authorities to the government, like it's been bad faith from
start to finish. One of the provisions that they are
putting into this so called reform and that they're saying
is a narrowing would actually allow the US to spy

(01:11:06):
on any American business if it has some connection, some
foreign connection. And so what civil liberties folks pointed out was,
so you can just walk into Starbucks then, and without
a warrant, you can hit their router because there are
Starbucks everywhere around the world. A lot of these kind

(01:11:27):
of landlord firms own properties all over the world, so
you could so that basically all these landlords you can
search them. And you can imagine why this would be
valuable information to the FBI. Did this person go to
this Starbucks? What about this person that lives in this building?

Speaker 3 (01:11:45):
For months?

Speaker 5 (01:11:45):
Mike Turner and Jim Himes said that people were just
fear mongering and lying and that the bill wouldn't actually
do this. So the new language that came out last
night says that all of these authorities on businesses remain
in this new bill, but there are carve outs for
food service and for landlords, which is an admission that

(01:12:09):
the critics were correct. And what it also means then
anything there are like four carveouts that they list in there.
Anything not mentioned there would then be subject to this
warrantless spying, like whether it's a bowling alley or something. Hey,
they don't serve enough food, you know, and that the
pizza that's spinning underneath that land that doesn't count as food.

Speaker 3 (01:12:31):
That's cardboard. So therefore we as.

Speaker 5 (01:12:33):
The FBI NSA, we can go in and we can
scoop up all of this data.

Speaker 4 (01:12:37):
Here we laugh, but they will sink to know.

Speaker 5 (01:12:40):
Also, it's not food. It is cardboard. So you have
to be like, all right, fair enough, they're serving cardboard.
I don't know, but what if you eat the cardboard?

Speaker 3 (01:12:47):
Does that mean food? That's why you got to go
That's why you got to go to the courts here.

Speaker 5 (01:12:52):
So basically, what started out as reform could end up
with an actual expansion of surveillance authority. And it's all
up to Mike and who his whole career twenty eighteen,
he voted for the toughest surveillance reform. His whole career,
he has been a surveillance.

Speaker 3 (01:13:10):
You know critic. Yeah, he's been with the Freedom Caucus
on everything.

Speaker 7 (01:13:14):
Yep.

Speaker 5 (01:13:15):
Now that he's in power, the question is can he
stand up to the intelligence community or not?

Speaker 4 (01:13:20):
And I think that goes back to the way Matt
Gates put it. He said, if he won't, he's unwilling
to fix FISA. We are left wondering what he is
indeed willing to fix. And that coming from Matt Gates,
someone obviously who Kevin McCarthy just yesterday said I am
not Speaker of the House right now because one member
didn't was upset about an ethics complaint about whether he

(01:13:41):
had sex with the seventeen year old girl. And McCarthy said,
I don't know if he did it, but that's what
this was all about. The point is, Matt Gates, that
was a hair trigger because the majority is so small
and the motion of a kate just requires one member.
It's already been filed in this case. And so where
you have that sense of betrayal that Mike Johnson his friends,
with many of those Freedom Caucus guys who could be

(01:14:03):
easily persuaded by this argument. Granted, where else do they go?
You know who else is going to be Speaker at
that point, and it doesn't serve their purposes. I think
a lot of them ultimately aren't happy about how everything
has gone post McCarthy. And you know it's easy to
get to laugh at that and be like, yeah, no kidding, well, yes,
no kidding. So all that is to say, Mike Lee,

(01:14:25):
here's a good tweet from Mike Lee. This is D five.
Mike Lee has this point that Ryan just made Speaker
Johnson and Jeffries Minority Leader Jefferies. I came Jeffries voted
for a Five's a seven oh two weren't requirement back
in twenty eighteen, and then he said, why do the
Intel Bros. Trademarket to tell House leadership what to do?

(01:14:46):
This is also D six. This is a tweet from
an expert on seven oh two at the Brennan Center,
So from the left surveillance, anti surveillance experts from the
left laying out exactly what Ryan just said. And I
would encourage everyone to go check out this thread. It's
called RISA. That's the version of the bill that has
this ridiculous permanent reauthorization basically embedded into it. Such a

(01:15:07):
familiar tactic to a lot of people ryan coming with
the label of reform and actually having a backdoor either
reauthorization or a permanent codification of these types of these
types of rules. Now, let's roll D four just so

(01:15:28):
people can get a taste of how doggedly the Biden
administration House Republicans and Senate members and Senate Democrats that
are so tied to Section seven o two because they
get these briefings, they go into the you know, they
go into the secure briefing center, get this terrifying information

(01:15:49):
from the FBI, and then Russian space nukes. Russian space nukes,
They're coming for everyone.

Speaker 3 (01:15:55):
I don't even go to space anymore after hearing that.

Speaker 4 (01:15:57):
Yeah, it's too dangerous. So anyway, let's listen to Jake Selban.

Speaker 9 (01:16:02):
The administration strongly supports the bipartisan bill whose text is
now with the Rules Committee, to reauthorize this Essential Intelligence
Authority and other files of provisions before they would expire
on April nineteenth. If we lost seven oh two, we
would lose vital insight into precisely the threats Americans expect
us in government to identify, encounter terrorist threats to the homeland,

(01:16:26):
ventanyl supply chains, bringing deadly drugs into American communities, hostile governments,
recruitment of spies in our midst transnational repression by authoritarian regimes,
penetrations of our critical infrastructure adversaries, attempts to illicitly acquire
sensitive dual use and military commodities and technology, ransomware attacks

(01:16:47):
against major American companies and nonprofits, Russian war crimes.

Speaker 7 (01:16:52):
And more.

Speaker 4 (01:16:52):
My absolute favorite part of that is when it's actually
not bad strategically messaging, when he's saying, we need seven
or two to do what the people expect us to do.

Speaker 5 (01:17:04):
Yeah, And Russian war crimes. They can't investigate Russian war
crimes without this story. All that's a lie. All that's
a complete lie. They have the authority to do overseas searches.

Speaker 3 (01:17:16):
And they can even continue their investigations.

Speaker 5 (01:17:19):
They're doing this fear mongering over the authorities expiring on
April nineteenth, But the authorities are like, everyone that's stamped
is good for a year, so it's actually good for
well into twenty twenty five. So all of it is lying,
All of it is fear mongering. What should what do
you think? What should people root for? At this point,
I'd say voting the rule down later today the House
floor and forcing Mike Johnson to at least allow a

(01:17:42):
vote on the fourth Amendment is not for sale. At
least allow vote.

Speaker 3 (01:17:47):
Look. Oh oh, and there's one other thing that they've
done here.

Speaker 5 (01:17:51):
They and Mike Turner didn't appear to realize this, and
the Rules Committee hearing last night, they put two provisions
in that specifically grant new protections for members of Congress
when it comes to surveillance that do not apply to
anybody else.

Speaker 3 (01:18:08):
So it's it's the.

Speaker 4 (01:18:10):
Can't foil them, can't surveil them.

Speaker 5 (01:18:12):
They get amazing healthcare and a cool pension, and so
that one of it would be one of them is
like they get noticed, you know, they get noticed, and
you need different authorities. Like basically it sets members of
Congress apart in a way that they hadn't been before.

Speaker 3 (01:18:30):
It has been used against them, and it comes from Yes.

Speaker 5 (01:18:32):
A member of Congress was spied on like a year
ago or two years ago or so. It was a
kind of rank and file Republican who had been really
supportive of like five authorities.

Speaker 3 (01:18:44):
Right, I forget, I forget who exactly it was.

Speaker 5 (01:18:48):
But as a result of that, they're like Okay, fine,
we'll we'll stop surveilling members of Congress without going through
these these hoops, rather than what you would hope Congress
would demand is actual reform for all American citizens.

Speaker 4 (01:19:05):
Yeah, I mean, it's just so ridiculous, and it's a
great example of why so many people are upset with
Mike Johnson, but also how the kind of DC blob
feels the public. Time and again, it's plainly unconstitutional. If
they want it to be constitutional, they should make that
case as to why we should amend the Constitution to
allow them to do that.

Speaker 3 (01:19:25):
And Marjorie Taylor Green's list of grievances was mostly.

Speaker 5 (01:19:30):
Abortion related, Green New Deal, climate change trands, stuff like.

Speaker 3 (01:19:35):
It was a four page list.

Speaker 5 (01:19:38):
Hopefully people like Gates can channel her into a seven
oh two direction.

Speaker 4 (01:19:43):
Oh, they absolutely are, Yeah, I mean they're absolutely yeah.
Margor Tayler Green's.

Speaker 3 (01:19:47):
Got if you got this club, you might as well
wield it for something useful.

Speaker 11 (01:19:50):
Well.

Speaker 4 (01:19:50):
Yeah, And it comes down to again, if you're not
all of those grievances from Marjorie Taylor Green, it was
basically about Mike Johnson saying all of these things before
he became s talking a really big game about what's
wrong with Republican leadership in DC, you know, voting by
or ruling by omnibus. That's packed with all of these
handouts to the left special interests via nonprofit funding and

(01:20:15):
grants and all of that. But what a lot of
people see, and we just talked about this, but it's
worth emphasizing what a lot of people see in that
is this is the Mike Johnson like, this is the
central This is one that we all agree on. You've
agreed with us on this for years seven oh two.
This was used as a weapon against Donald Trump politically.

(01:20:36):
It is one of the most glaring and egregious things.
And if you're flipping on this, we can't trust you
on anything else. And Matt Gates basically came out and
said that last night.

Speaker 3 (01:20:44):
So that's that's.

Speaker 4 (01:20:45):
Totally on the table in these conversations about the motion
of vacate, no question about it. So stay tuned. We'll
see what happens by the end of the week. I
think Johnson, I don't think they have anywhere to go.
They learned that after McCarthy, so I don't think they'll
they'll vacate Johnson. But that's totally up in the air
could happen.

Speaker 3 (01:21:03):
Yeah, call your member of Congress, tell them not to
do this.

Speaker 4 (01:21:06):
Get rid of seven oh two.

Speaker 3 (01:21:07):
Yeah, Form seven oh two whatever.

Speaker 4 (01:21:09):
Get rid of.

Speaker 3 (01:21:10):
What they want to do is a stupid rule.

Speaker 4 (01:21:12):
Down, Yes, vote the rule down. All right. Let's talk
about Norfolk Southern, which has Yesterday it was announced that
Norfolk Southern reached what could be the largest settlement in
the history of railroads in the United States over the
train derailment in East Palestine. We can go put the

(01:21:34):
first element up on the screen here, six hundred million
dollars to residents and businesses in East Palestine, Ohio and
some I think it's like within a ten mile radius,
something to that extent. So on Tuesday, the lead attorneys
representing the victims of Norfolk Southern announced the Atlanta based
company had agreed in principle to a six hundred million

(01:21:55):
dollar class action lawsuit settlement. It does, though still in
the to be approved by a US District Court judge
in Youngstown. I'm reading now from the Canton repository. Now,
based on our research and settlements are often confidential, but
this looks significantly larger than any other derailment settlement that
we're aware of in the United States, said Jane Conroy

(01:22:17):
of Simons Tanley Conroy, one of the lead attorneys, in
a zoom interview with the Canton Repository yesterday. Although Ryan,
I want to put this next element up on the
screen as well. This is actually a tweet reacting to
the settlement by Aaron Brockovich, who is quoting one of
Julia Roberts's big lines, obviously based on her own life

(01:22:39):
in the movie. Aaron Brockovich quote, before you come back
here with another lay mass offer, I want you to
think real hard about what your spine is worth, mister Walker,
or what you might expect someone to pay you for
your uterism, miss Stanchez. And then Aaron Brockovich added, the
money never makes them whole. That's a I think a
really apt way to put it. Looking at the sixth

(01:23:00):
dread million dollars settlement class action lawsuit that is going
to be spread across many many people in East Palestine,
many many businesses in East Palestine, and the money never
could make you whole.

Speaker 5 (01:23:10):
Yeah, And there's still open questions about uh criminal guilt
here like there have there there have not been prosecutions yet.
There there are important questions that investigators need to be
asking about. Uh, you know, in particular, you know, what
did the company know when they did the controlled demolition?

Speaker 3 (01:23:30):
Did how was it was that actually necessary? Did what
information did they have?

Speaker 7 (01:23:37):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (01:23:37):
Did they did?

Speaker 5 (01:23:38):
They did they willingly, you know, create an environmental catastrophe
in order to just get the trains moving a little
bit quicker.

Speaker 3 (01:23:47):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:23:48):
You know they they have claimed that they really had
no choice, but there the evidence does not seem to
be lining up in that direction. And you know, this
does not admit any any guilt. So you know, hopefully,
you know, prosecutors are still looking at this, you know,
if you know, if if history.

Speaker 3 (01:24:06):
Is any guide, they're not.

Speaker 5 (01:24:09):
But you know, you've got jd Vance, You've got Shared Brown,
You've got you know, politicians from both parties who continue
to put pressure on Norfolk Southern Yet the jade Vans
and Shared Brown's real safety reform. You know, we haven't
seen that, you know, we've we've seen that get bottled up.

(01:24:30):
So you know, they it's good that people are going
to get some compensation, but systemically it looks like so
far the culprits are getting away with it.

Speaker 4 (01:24:42):
Yeah, that's a really important point that bill, the JD
Vance Bill, has gone basically nowhere in Congress because of
opposition to people who you take money from the industry,
are close with the industry. That's a real uphill battle. Now.
As the attorney said, Norfolk Southern actually settled quicker than
what was expected and right, and you made this quick
yeah yeah, and looks like victims could potentially get money

(01:25:04):
by the end of the year, which is I mean,
that is fast as these things go. But the other
important point that you made, Ran is that they're not
admitting any guilt, so no liability, no fault admitted in
this settlement. But they're also still facing a lawsuit that
was filed by the Ohio Attorney General for environmental damages

(01:25:24):
that resulted after the derailment, and Yost has said Dave
Yos the Age has said he wouldn't settle the suit
quote without a detailed understanding of what happened, who is responsible,
and how we avoid other communities like East Palestine from
being victims to this type of incident. Also worth noting,
as The New York Times does, that the National Transportation Safety
Board is continuing to investigate the incident, hasn't released its

(01:25:49):
own report into what happened. So there's plenty more in
all of this to come for getting to the bottom
of actually what happened. Now a little bit more the
details of the settlement. The lawyer said that it would
provide payment to residents and businesses in East Palestine and
also the affected surrounding communities within a twenty mile radius,
pending the court approval that we mentioned earlier. Now East

(01:26:12):
Palatine alone is almost five thousand people and they would
all be eligible for payment from the settlement. Then it
also has a voluntary program that would compensate individuals within
a ten mile radius for past, present, and future personal
injuries that result from chemical exposure at Norfolk. Southern highlighted
their contributions to the community, which again like they've already

(01:26:35):
poured more than one hundred million dollars into different infrastructure.
You know they've done community They say they've done two
million dollars for community directive projects, four point three million
to upgrades drinking water infrastructure, five hundred thousand dollars for
an economic development grant, and that huge one hundred and
four million for community assistance to communities around East Palestine

(01:26:57):
including Ohio and Pennsylvania twenty five million dollars included in
that for regional safety training improvements to their city park,
direct payments to residents twenty one million for that, and
then nine million dollars to local first responders. So just
the cost of doing business, I guess for Norfolk Southern
until Congress acts and steps in.

Speaker 5 (01:27:16):
Here, right, it's the it's the right.

Speaker 4 (01:27:21):
They seven hundred million dollars.

Speaker 5 (01:27:22):
Using the money that they're saving by you know, reducing
the number of workers that they pay and keeping their
pay low.

Speaker 4 (01:27:29):
Yeah, seven hundred million dollar accidents so far, you can
you can put a price tag on it.

Speaker 3 (01:27:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:27:34):
Indeed, until Congress does anything, this is basically what you're
stuck with. But I thought that Aaron Brockovich quote was poignant.
The money never makes anyone hole these some people's homes,
it's their community. It's just unbelievable, but believable that Norfolk
Southern settled so quickly, given I think what we will
continue to find out about their liability. Let's move on

(01:27:59):
to this extremely buzzy viral story that The Free Press
published yesterday from a current, at least as of right now,
employee of National Public Radio. Right at least as of
the time the op ed was published. Is Ury Berliner,
who has worked for NPR for more than twenty five years.
For more than twenty years, I think he said twenty

(01:28:20):
five years, penned an article sort of blowing the whistle
on the internal ideological bias at NPR, which again people
will laugh at because it seems so obvious. But he
does have kind of an interesting quote when he writes
about Actually he acknowledges that in this article for the
Free Press, we can put the first element up on

(01:28:40):
the screen that's a picture of him, and the headline
is I've bet at an NPR for twenty five years.
Here's how we lost America's trust. He does cite in
fact polling that shows NPR it was celebrated internally by NPR.
This was one of my favorite parts of his article.

Speaker 3 (01:28:56):
But the poll.

Speaker 4 (01:28:58):
Let me just read from him. He says, if ever,
our audience insights team sent an email proudly announcing that
we had a higher trustworthy score, that's a CNN or
the New York Times. But the research from the Harris
poll is hardly reassuring. It found that three and ten
audience members familiar with NPR said, they associate MPR with
the characteristic quote trustworthy. That's what NPR was internally celebrating,

(01:29:20):
because it was higher than the trustworthiness of The New
York at times. But he also does write into that
question of like NPR sort of a punchline in conservative circles, like,
of course, you know, the NPR tote bag crowd is
something that everybody makes a joke about. Of course NPR
is liberal, he says. If you are conservative, you will
read this and say, duh. It's always been this way,
he writes, but it hasn't. Back in twenty eleven, although

(01:29:41):
NPR's audience tilted a bit to the left, it still
bore a resemblance to America at large, twenty six percent
of listeners described themselves as conservative, twenty three percent as
middle of the road, and thirty seven percent as liberal.
By twenty twenty three, the picture was completely different. Only
eleven percent describe themselves as very or somewhat conservative, twenty
one percent as middle of the road, and sixty seven

(01:30:01):
percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal.
We weren't just losing conservatives, we were also losing moderates
and traditional liberals. He goes on to complain about coverage
of the pandemic of the lab leak of the Hunter
Biden laptop, of Russiagate. He talks about how often NPR
would interview Adam Shift but then Shift, but then how

(01:30:21):
quickly Russiagate faded from NPR's coverage after the Muller report
came out with basically no Maya Kalpa. He also has
a really interesting section about how NPR's union has pushed
for affinity groups, as he calls them to allow or
to require NPR management to tackle this is his word

(01:30:42):
DEI issues in the coverage, and that's a particularly interesting
one where you bring labor into this question of ideological
bents and newsrooms. I don't know what you make of that, Ryan,
and I don't know what you make of this whole article.
I'm curious.

Speaker 3 (01:30:56):
It is an interesting phenomenon in that.

Speaker 5 (01:31:00):
Know, the traditional role of unions has been to fight
for better job protections, wages, benefits, general workplace issues, but
to be kind of ideological, ideologically and politically agnostic in newsrooms.
The last five six years you have seen a trend
where staff unions have argued much more around editorial content,

(01:31:25):
which is kind of which is an interesting development and
an interesting way to think about unions. He also said
that he felt like NPR was kind of too too
supportive of the Palestinian cause.

Speaker 4 (01:31:38):
Oh you found a tweet, actually an interesting tweet for you.

Speaker 5 (01:31:40):
Yeah, so in a couple Actually, z squirrel flagged a
couple of these that Twitter account.

Speaker 3 (01:31:47):
So one from October twenty twenty.

Speaker 5 (01:31:49):
Three, it's about a Barack Revied reported that there was
going to be an event in New York called the
Antifada fund Raver and so somebody else, somebody.

Speaker 3 (01:32:05):
Else sounds like just such a great time.

Speaker 5 (01:32:09):
So somebody else then posted, uh, one hopes at one
hopes a lot of FBI and NYPD types will be
in attendance, also press taking pictures and getting names. Opportunities
like this are hard to come by. Yuri Berliner retweeted that,
so no, which is you know, you can be like, look,

(01:32:32):
I don't think there should be an anti fat A fundraiver,
Like that's that's one thing. To say that there ought
to be FBI and NYPD surveillance of people who are
outside of it is is in contradiction with Berliner's claim
that he's like anti censorship and like, you know, pro
free speech, and it's published in a what does she

(01:32:53):
call her news outlet, free press?

Speaker 4 (01:32:55):
They Wise newsletter.

Speaker 5 (01:32:56):
Yeah, I mean, but Barry Wise would have you know eagerly.
You know, that's exact same position.

Speaker 3 (01:33:02):
In fact, I mean it speaks.

Speaker 4 (01:33:03):
To a broader problem with like the Bill Ackman sort
of contingency on the Center that has been sort of
very critical of Harvard, and I think rightfully highlighting a
double standard. But some of those same people are in
favor of restrictions or will have inflated definitions of anti
Semitism that will broadly sweep speech into the category of

(01:33:27):
hate I think in ways that are objectionable. When, for example,
talking about as he does here, pro trans advocacy groups
briefed their newsroom and asked them not to use the
term biological sex. MPR brought them in as part of
this DEI push that is broadly swept into this category
of hate speech sometimes and that's wrong, but it's not consistent.

Speaker 5 (01:33:48):
Yeah, I do think newsrooms should not newsrooms, I think
should make their own judgments and should not be taking
guidance from advocacy groups one way or another. On you know,
it's fine to like, obviously you should talk to everybody.
That's what reporters do. They go up and talk to people.
But I and I actually think so. One of the
things he complains about was that this database that was

(01:34:09):
listing the kind of rais and gender of the guests
that were on air, And I actually kind of disagree
with him on that one, because if you let you know,
if you are just blindly booking guests, and let's say
you're a white guy and most of your friends are

(01:34:29):
white guys, like you're going to end up not through
any kind of conscious bias, you're just gonna be booking
endless white guys. And that is a disservice from my perspective,
to your audience, because you're you're cutting out a lot
of interesting perspective by keeping this really tight circle.

Speaker 4 (01:34:48):
And so what even accidentally.

Speaker 5 (01:34:50):
Actually right, Yeah, And so what a database does is
after a couple of months, you look at it and
you're like, oh, we've had like thirty guests and like
twenty eight of them are white guys.

Speaker 3 (01:35:03):
Two of them were white women.

Speaker 5 (01:35:04):
Like, maybe we need to make a more conscious effort
to not just call the people that we know.

Speaker 4 (01:35:11):
Yeah, I think that's if that's what's happening, as opposed
to like if there are internal quota systems, because the.

Speaker 3 (01:35:20):
Way I'm interpreting the quota system should be come.

Speaker 4 (01:35:23):
On the quota session.

Speaker 3 (01:35:24):
Yet believe h Look, come on.

Speaker 4 (01:35:26):
I think it's yeah. I feel like you can make
that internal effort to include genuinely diverse voices, whether that's race, sex, ideology,
which I.

Speaker 3 (01:35:36):
Know NPR not doing so great on that.

Speaker 4 (01:35:38):
Yet not doing so great on that all the time. Although,
like I said, I was listening to Nancy Master an
interesting interview with them on the arizon A Supreme Court
thing just yesterday, so I think they still try. But
whether they're actually capable of that is a different question.
Because this is one of the biggest problems in media
right now, is the idea that people who for example,

(01:36:01):
support Donald Trump. Nancy Mace huge Donald Trump supporter, but
she's a little different because she has this different perspective
on abortion, and that's what they were interviewing her about.
But people who support Donald Trump, for example, I don't
know if you were still at HuffPo when they have
post when they did the asterisk thing with Donald Trump,
donald Trump as a racist bigot. So if you extend

(01:36:23):
that to Donald Trump supporters, that means they're necessarily supporting racism, sexism, bigotry, etc.
Which is not the case for why a lot of
people vote for Donald Trump. If you have that sort
of categorization and say this isn't ideological, it's like joy
Reads saying we want more Republicans on our network. We
want more List Cheney, more Adam Kinsinger on our network,

(01:36:45):
but not Ronald McDaniel. That's probably the biggest problem with
like ideological diversity is that it's not even seen as
a lack of ideological diversity in some newsrooms because they
categorize people who support roughly half of the country who
voted in twenty twenty voted for Donald Trump. So if

(01:37:06):
you categorize them as supporters of perpetuators of racism, sexism,
migatry in that sort of direct sense, then you're not
going to think it makes sense to interview them. I'm
not going to interview you know, strom Thurman on this
this You know that would have been a mistake back then.
It's a mistake now we can't repeat it.

Speaker 5 (01:37:24):
It does feel like NPR in recent years has taken
on a more kind of democratic feel activist. Yeah, it's
like they really do feel like a lot of the
assumptions that the standard Democrat makes about the world are
the assumptions that the NPR is also making about the world.
And the Russia Gate situation, I think is a good

(01:37:46):
example of that and the way that they handled Trump
as well.

Speaker 3 (01:37:50):
Like I was listening to an interview with Scott.

Speaker 5 (01:37:52):
Walker a couple of months ago, and basically every single
question they asked Scott Walker was about January sixth, then
like was election stolen?

Speaker 4 (01:38:01):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (01:38:01):
It's like all right, Like and come on in PR,
is there anything else you can Is there anything else
you want.

Speaker 3 (01:38:07):
To talk about here?

Speaker 5 (01:38:08):
Like it's twenty twenty four, now move, let's you've got
Scott Walker, like ask him some other questions like what
labor anything?

Speaker 4 (01:38:18):
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot that could be asked.

Speaker 5 (01:38:20):
And then like why is Then then they'll say why
is Donald Trump obsessed with this?

Speaker 3 (01:38:24):
It's like, yes, you're the one that stops.

Speaker 4 (01:38:28):
Talking about one hundred percent? And you know, I was
listening to NPR. I just looked this up and was
obviously on March twenty first, because that's the date the
story was published. But I was listening to a segment
on the Murphy versus Missouri case, and they were talking
to Barbara McQuade, who's former US attorney for Eastern District Michigan.
If you watch MSNBC, you have seen her all of

(01:38:48):
the time, and the conversation it was on point was
out rageous on free speech and the press and the
First Amendment. It was like to hear journalist talking about
that case with a former prosecutor in the way that
they were, which is basically terrifying, but basically saying, like

(01:39:09):
the First Amendment, you know, the government has to police
dangerous speech, et cetera. Just like operating on that presumption
and acting as though anybody who questioned that was either
a victim of right wing disinformation, which has been a
charge that Matt Taibi has been hit with and Glenn
Greenwald has been hit with. I mean, it's just so
disturbing to see that baked into the presumption again from

(01:39:32):
like a news outlet that's not supposed to be super
far to the left. It's funded by taxpayers to some extent,
like it's National Public Radio. It's just unfortunate. And part
of the reason I want to do this segment is
that I feel like a lot of people have a
lot of nostalgia for NPR, like they grew up listening
to NPR, even across socioeconomic divides. It's just in the

(01:39:55):
past it was kind of a consensus outlet, like a
lot of people listen to it. They might have disagreed
with it. Conservatives definitely disagreed with it, but it's convenience
listen to.

Speaker 5 (01:40:05):
And there's each Each local station is so important because
you know, I think a city is really enriched by
having a local public radio station that then feeds up
to the national one. And I think we are enriched
as a nation as as like a single people to have,
you know, one place that everybody kind of trusts.

Speaker 3 (01:40:27):
Yeah, as you're sitting in traffic frustrated.

Speaker 4 (01:40:30):
Yes, I completely agree with that. Before we wrap the
show today, RN, I just want to say that seven
hundred million dollars from Norfolk Southern I just quickly looked
it up. They had almost two billion in stock buybacks
in twenty three, so seven hundred million dollars basically six
hundred million in the settlement more than one hundred million

(01:40:50):
so far in voluntary payments to East Palestine for infrastructure
cleanup and all of that. So a company that has
a round two billion dollars in stock buybacks in a year,
it's a seven hundred million dollar fine. Essentially, it's the cost.

Speaker 7 (01:41:04):
Of doing business.

Speaker 4 (01:41:06):
Well, that does it for us. On today's editional counterpoints.

Speaker 3 (01:41:09):
Ed move bark to all who celebrate.

Speaker 5 (01:41:10):
I'm going to a feast later, but I feel like
I didn't earn it because I did zero fasting.

Speaker 4 (01:41:16):
You really, I mean, you did not earn it at all.

Speaker 3 (01:41:18):
I'm going to go. It's not just a feeling.

Speaker 4 (01:41:19):
You really didn't earn it.

Speaker 3 (01:41:21):
But I'm gonna go anyway. There's just food on the table.
I'm gonna be there.

Speaker 4 (01:41:25):
There you go, There you go. Well, we'll be back
next week with more counterpoints. Make sure that you subscribe
to the premium version at breaking points dot com because
we do have some really cool stuff coming down the pipeline. Actually,
I don't want to give anybody a date yet, but
sooner than you might even think, you're just within the
next several weeks, So stay tuned everyone, We've got some
fun stuff coming up.

Speaker 3 (01:41:45):
See that, see you that