Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 222

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. I'm Clayton Eckerd. In 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. But here's the thing. Bachelor fans hated him. If I could press a button and rewind it all I would. That's when his life took a disturbing turn.

Starting point is 00:00:18 A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to Love Trapped on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:00:40 Next Monday, our 2026 IHeart Podcast Awards are happening live at South by Southwest. It's the biggest night in podcasting. We'll honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative, talented creators in the industry. And the winner is creativity, knowledge, and passion will all be on full display. Thank you so much. IHeartRadio. Thank you to all the other nominees. You guys are awesome.

Starting point is 00:01:04 Watch live next Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific free at veeps.com or the Veeps app. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? Evidence has been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a. a story we chose to believe. Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to doubt the case of Lucy Letby on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Joe

Starting point is 00:01:42 interesting, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today I'm talking with my dear friend, Krista Williams. It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change, dance with the breakdown, The embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves. So I'm like delusionally proud of my chart. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. Oh, Media.

Starting point is 00:02:20 Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package. for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Hello, everyone. My name is Donna Al-Kurd, and this is It Could Happen here. I'm an associate professor of political science and a researcher of Arab and Palestinian politics. Today on the podcast, we have Danielle Cantor, and she'll be talking to us about mutual aid work in Israel,

Starting point is 00:03:00 leftist politics in Israel, and her personal journey. Thank you so much for being on the show. Hi. So yeah, if you'd like to introduce us to yourself and your organization, culture of solidarity, that would be fantastic. Sure. Yeah. Hi. I'm Danielle. I run with a beautiful community, a mutual aid called Culture of Solidarity. I don't know if people here are familiar with mutual aid work or if I should give a little explanation about that. I mean, you can give a spiel, yeah. A little spiel, yeah. Just basically kind of caring for your community. through different aid programs while resisting the systems that kind of preserve their poverty and their oppression. That's how I view what mutual aid work is. And yeah, so we run a mutual aid. It runs in many forms, but mostly we have a food security program that supports kind of the

Starting point is 00:03:59 people that fall in between the cracks of the systems within Israel and Palestine. Well, obviously, the systems within Israel and in Palestine, we work mainly in Area C in the West Bank in Masafaliyata. Yeah, so we do food security, like food packs that are culturally appropriate for each community receiving them based off of what they are asking, whether it's diapers, baby formula, you know, fit to each holiday. Now we just finished, or we're still in the midst of a Ramadan annual campaign where they're all going to be boxes fit for the holiday. And we host, well, we had a community center for the past five years.

Starting point is 00:04:42 We've been a collective, I guess, since March 2020 when COVID hit. So basically when that started, it was kind of like we saw that there was going to be a lot of food waste, like an obscene amount of food waste because all the restaurants, offices, hotels, la, la, la, la, la, who would be closing. And we thought we'd kind of rescue that food and redistribute. it to communities that were in need until the government kind of got on their feet and understood what their virus was. That was kind of the beginning of our deep, deep political awakening of this place, thinking that there would be a system that would come and serve the vulnerable communities

Starting point is 00:05:23 around us. So that's when it started. And I think only like a few months into that when we thought we were kind of just like, yeah, good citizens doing the work and not understanding how politically charged it is to serve your community when they're actively being oppressed by the systems that are supposed to care for them. And I think in that moment, we understood that we want to not only serve our neighbors or community, we also need to learn about these root causes of oppression and what brought them to this position in the first place. You know, people often say like, oh, you know, someone's poor. They don't have food in their fridge, like in their ways of trying to raise funds or whatever.

Starting point is 00:06:06 And it's an atrocity almost to kind of depict it that way because all of these communities are actively being abandoned. Yeah, being abandoned in a nice way. You know, they didn't wake up one morning and didn't have food in their fridge. Right. They don't have food in their fridge because of a policy that preserves that status. And so that is the mutual aid that we run. We had a community center for five years where we hosted weekly events or daily events every evening. All the events would be under that umbrella of learning as a community about these injustices.

Starting point is 00:06:47 And they could also be shows and they could be debates and they could be lectures or workshops. And all of the proceeds would go to our food security program. and in that way we are 100% community funded. No one has salaries. We made a conscious decision back in the beginning when we realized all the injustices around us that we didn't want to institutionalize and become part of a system that is responsible for that.

Starting point is 00:07:15 And that is not to say that NGOs aren't amazing. That is not to say that there aren't NGOs doing God's work here. But they're constrained. Yeah, there's different constraints. Yeah, and this is our personal decision to act as a community. There's another reason we didn't want to institutionalize, and it's because we don't want to make a business out of something that shouldn't be needed. You know what I mean?

Starting point is 00:07:39 When you get salaries intact and it perpetuates the need to continue. In a way, and like there's always going to be need, right? Like it's not, we're going to, you know, oh, and then they're not going to need anymore. But, you know, I saw on Hinge, it's like a dating app. Yeah, yeah. It said an app meant to be deleted. And I just thought about that. Like, oh my God, that is the essence of it all.

Starting point is 00:08:04 Like, we're not supposed to be doing this. This isn't, like, I mean, we should be caring for our community and our neighbors. That should go without saying. But also our taxes should be directed to serving our neighbors that are in vulnerable states. So I will definitely link in the show notes to like the Instagram and things like that. And for people who are, I mean, I'm sure. for some people who have seen the documentary, no other land, this is the same community that you all work with in Masafriata. But yeah, so I'm interested in a couple different

Starting point is 00:08:37 kind of directions, but would you say that a lot of the people who come to culture of solidarity and like volunteer and start to participate in your activities, do you think that that opens up the space to not only question injustices within the Israeli system, but how that's tied up with the occupation? Like, is that? kind of the path forward for people? I think that is the path for that we want for people. I think we are very forgiving in a sense in the way that like, not forgiving, but just understanding, you know, the journey that it took us to unlearn what we know. Like, that's a hard one. And I'm going to go pre-October 7th, you know, you're doing work to unlearn what you've been taught

Starting point is 00:09:24 isn't your entire identity. And, you know, post-October 7th, you just see everything, like, everything has become so much more pornographic. Like, you know, it's the amount of death, murder, the genocide, the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, you know, just this week, six communities have been pushed out of their, their homes by the army, by settlers, terrorists. And it's become much more immediate, whereas I think before October 7th, I mean, there didn't go a week in which we didn't have an event talking about the occupation and learning, but I think after October 7th, it became this like huge divide of like this kind of like protection over one's identity. So we did a lot of work to kind of dismantle that notion that to empathize

Starting point is 00:10:20 with another people comes on the expense of your own pain and trying to, you know, mirror the power dynamic to people. Like, yes, we all had family and friends and people that we knew that were murdered, that were taken, that were, like, abducted. And with that being said, Israel has been committing a genocide in Gaza for the past, still, it's ongoing two and something years. The other day I got a message on our Instagram basically being like, I love the work you do. You do really important things.

Starting point is 00:10:57 And you know, there is racism and there is poverty. But from there to say that there's ethnic cleansing, come on. Like, I don't know if I can support your work anymore. And basically also meet that with love as well to be like, I hear you. This is the policies that people in our government are advancing. This is who our army is protecting. this is what ethnic cleansing means. And in that situation, I can also turn to my community and my friends.

Starting point is 00:11:26 Like, I have a friend that what he does for work is kind of gathering all this information of articles and everything that's coming out to educate. So, all right, cool. I can use those articles to help teach this person that, yes, there is, in fact, ethnic cleansing happening in the West Bank. And, you know, it's not even like this like, oh, how do I say? It's like, no, actually our, like, our government officials are saying this. Like, Smolthly said it the other day. Right. So, yeah.

Starting point is 00:11:54 But yeah, it is this kind of like open door. Yeah. For Israelis that maybe not, they're not there yet also. Yeah, I think that it's like, it's hard. It's like really hard because you're at this point where it's like very far from where those people are that are like beginning. And also you have. sometimes resentment towards your society. And most of the sometimes, a lot of the time, you have, I mean, I'm always,

Starting point is 00:12:23 nothing with like in general, when someone wants to, is asking a question, I think that that is just like amazing and important and cool. Let's have a conversation about this. At least they're asking. Yeah, and they're wanting to learn. They're questioning something. That's a way forward. And with that being said, you know, the past two and a half years have also been

Starting point is 00:12:45 excruciating living in this society. Like, you're living in a genocidal society. And you're around people that could justify certain acts, certain war crimes. Yeah, you kind of find yourself not wanting to engage, not wanting to love,

Starting point is 00:13:02 not wanting to teach, not wanting, not that I'm the one teaching. Like, we're all learning together about this and hosting. But obviously, not wanting to have conversations sometimes because you're just like, well, you see what's been happening online over the past two years and you still can't comprehend what is going on,

Starting point is 00:13:21 then I don't know what I can do to help that. But then I have to remind myself that if I am here, if I am living here, I have a responsibility. And that is to, yeah, facilitate more meetings, conversations in which people will be exposed to the injustices, being committed in our name, And that's a problem with liberal Zionism as well, because liberal Zionists will be like, oh, my God, yeah, it's terrible what's happening in the West Bank, the settlers, blah, blah, blah. But they'll still send their, you know, their boys to go be pilots in the army and, you know, bomb children. And it's kind of like finding the way to kind of be like, no, no, no, you can't. Like, you can't be against that and then before that.

Starting point is 00:14:12 Right. Kind of demonstrate the cognitive dissonance to them. Like, there's kind of a contradiction here, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Sorry, I think of just a little, a little. No, no, not at all. This is extremely rich in thought-provoking content. I want to ask what kind of organizations,

Starting point is 00:14:39 does culture of solidarity engage with, whether in Israel and in Palestine, and kind of related to that. What role do you see an organization such as this, a mutual aid organization? What role do you envision for yourselves in Palestinian liberalism? like what role are you intending to play?

Starting point is 00:14:58 You kind of touched on it already in terms of like teaching and learning within your own society. Yeah. We work with a lot of different organizations because it is very important for us to, you know, not reinvent the wheel and kind of learn with our other organizations, whether it's Gisha who talk about the actual words of Gishah's access. And they talk about access in Gaza, the access to water to the country, to the country. the infrastructure in Gaza. And then we could host tours every time it's a different organization. This guy, Mani in our group, he runs these tours and he will do with breaking the silence in Massafriata.

Starting point is 00:15:39 They'll do one with the Zohort, which I'm sure, yeah, you can probably link all of these in the... Definitely will, yeah. It was in Manchia, which is the Charles Chloramunccia, which is literally down the street from where I'm out right now. And it's the beach of Yaffa and the village. that once existed there. Or even with a woman named Hilaharl

Starting point is 00:15:59 to go through a tour within the half-abandoned Israeli bus station. And they're all tied to injustices. They're all tied to something that was or was there and isn't anymore or atrocities currently happening. Obviously, also in the Negev

Starting point is 00:16:17 to learn about the different Bedouin communities and the injustices that they're experiencing. And then so that's, yeah, it's called. touring in solidarity. And then we'll have, I mean, honestly, probably any left, radical left or an organization that you could probably think of, we collaborate with them in some way or another. It's a pretty tight-knit community.

Starting point is 00:16:42 And this has been a beautiful thing of like trying to, you know, always there's always a nits and grits of blah, blah, blah. But I mean, uplifting each other and collaborating with each other is so important to not feel alone. as Israelis against the occupation and for an actual true democracy in the land or liberation. Yeah. Do you work with Palestinian groups within Israel and in the occupied territories? Yes, we do.

Starting point is 00:17:10 We worked with an organization in Gaza called Dignity for Palestine. And we did a big flower fundraiser last year. And we've worked with organizations that are like, you know, positions for human rights that are both, you know, Israeli and Palestinian-led. And then we have our annual Ramadan campaign that I was telling you about now. And that's with rabbis for human rights who are not Palestinian, but we do work with different groups within Palestine. One of the people that was, you know, the main receiver and distributor of these boxes was O'Dardardardardin, who was murdered in July by settler, Yin-Lévi. So, yeah, it's what we're a very. We're in a

Starting point is 00:17:55 working directly with communities. Second question was, what role do leftists Israelis have right now? Was that the question? Yeah, like what role do you envision either for yourself as you personally or for the Israeli left in Palestinian liberation? I know it's a big question. That is a big question. It's an important question. And I think as long as we are living on this land, it's our response.

Starting point is 00:18:24 I mean, I think it's everyone's responsibility to free Palestine and for the Palestinian people to have equal rights, to have access to whatever they wish for under a government that sees both counterparts equally and the obviously accountability and reparations that would need to happen in order to get there. I think that our responsibility as Israeli left is to keep fighting for that, is to keep fighting for that within Israel and within Palestine. So whether it's protective presence in the West Bank, protective presence is a kind of program where you sleep at different Palestinian homes every night, just in case settlers come in the middle of the night to attack, or the army comes in the middle of the night to attack, and you're

Starting point is 00:19:15 there serving as protective presence. You obviously have a privilege. You have an Israeli passport. You're Jewish. That is a privilege on this land. And to be there, you know, obviously, you don't decide what goes down. You ask each family how they want to deal with this. And you serve that. So I think protective presence is one of the most important things Israelis, Israeli leftists can do. Because, yeah, like I said earlier, it's just getting worse and worse and it's at a high. It's always been bad. But the past, honestly, I think since no other land, came out, I think... It's like gotten a lot of attention on them, essentially?

Starting point is 00:19:58 Well, there's always been attacks by settlers. Of course, yeah. But I think that, yeah, in the past year, it's gotten to an all-time high. Well, there's also kind of like the general impunity that the Israeli government and the settler movement, like... Exactly. Especially after Biden left. Like, not that he was holding them accountable, but certainly gloves were off after

Starting point is 00:20:18 that. For sure. No, no, exactly. That is very true. But basically in the last year, two years, it's gotten much, much worse. So I think Israeli leftists have a responsibility to serve as protective presence, for one, number one. I think number two, they have a responsibility to educate their society and to not only educate, but to constantly learn. I feel like so many people in Israel are in just like this constant victimhood of like the whole world is against us.

Starting point is 00:20:49 like everyone's anti-Semitic, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like, from that to what actually, I mean, obviously there's anti-Semitism. Obviously there are people not saying that there isn't, of course, but without any accountability for what we have turned our backs to over the past two and a half years. Like, there's so much work to be done. And I think, you know, the easy way, whether it's a Western or abroad telling you, like, well, why do you live in Palestine? You should leave, blah, blah, blah.

Starting point is 00:21:18 or whether it's a Palestinian in the West Bank being like, you can't leave. Like, we need you here. Obviously, it's an unnatural ecosystem to have, you know, leftist activists running through villages in the West. I mean, but that's the reality of things. So as long as I am here living on this land and where I'm from, I'm going to do everything in my power to resist what is happening and to learn together with other people. it's hard because we're not a we're a really tiny community like that you know there's people that again are against you know all the war blah blah blah like but yeah but not seeing how that is like interconnected with the entire premise of the state there's a lot of work to be done and

Starting point is 00:22:08 it's hard because you're also bitter like you know and you want to have compassion but then you're bitter and I'm like ah you're like you're like you've made so much work for you. us. Yeah. I mean, and also, I get it. I've been there. I wasn't raised in a left home. I know what it is to be raised up, conservative, right wing, you know, Zionists. And I'm obviously very far from that, but I know what it's like to have to leave everything you've been raised on. I know what it's like to have family not want to talk to you. I know what it's like to have friends, not want to be friends with you anymore, to have so many people around who're telling you that you're wrong, but you know that this is the right thing to do. And I get that and I have compassion for that.

Starting point is 00:22:54 But then there's also just like, sometimes you're just like, bha! Yeah. No, I can't imagine. I mean, it's a, it's a very difficult journey to travel through. I understand the sentiment that you've expressed that like the last two years should have been enough. Yeah. But also it's like, this whole identity is fragile. and people are human beings and like it's difficult for them to like yeah i'm not saying anything new just reiterating what you said about like unlearning like it's it's an extremely difficult thing to go through i think but do you understand like you know you're Palestinian and like me complaining about this thing that we're doing like it just feels like people know what's been going on

Starting point is 00:23:39 but on obviously Palestinians that have family friends that are subjected to this violence and that are themselves subjected to that violence abroad because of being Palestinian. And then what is happening here? It's like two different worlds. Yeah. And it's funny for me to even like, oh yeah, like to even try to explain that because I'm sure people will be listening to this and be like, oh, like, you know, why are they complaining? Like, but then you know your society and you know what they have or haven't been exposed to and you know what they've chosen not to look at to, not necessarily at this point what they have or haven't been exposed because I think. that's also a bit of a kind of forgiving card.

Starting point is 00:24:19 I think at this point, if you still call it AI, if you still call it, like, there's some deep reckoning to do there. Yeah. But anyways, I just feel like it's such, yeah, two different worlds. And I think that, I think as Israeli leftists that live here,

Starting point is 00:24:38 you know, pay taxes in this land, we have a huge responsibility, if not the number one responsibility to Palestinian liberation. And yeah, I think that's the very long answer to your question. No, no, I mean, I think it's, yeah, it's a fair answer. I just, you know, think to myself that, like, it's not coincidence. And it's not to take away from the agency of, like, individuals. Obviously, everybody has choices to make.

Starting point is 00:25:08 Like, Israelis have choices to make. They can choose to believe or not believe, or they can choose to turn their back, but at the same time, it's like systems have led them to a point where they dehumanize to this extent that they can see the videos and either make excuses or pretend they're not real, you know? And so it's like the work is to disrupt the systems. You know, I think in that way, I think about like structural constraints. That is more worthwhile in my effort. If I was in Israeli leftist, I'm not. But if I was in your shoes, like, that's more worthwhile in my effort than to be like, kind of demoralized by individuals, if you know, if you understand what I mean.

Starting point is 00:25:55 I guess that kind of leads me to my next question. I mean, I know that October 7th was such kind of like a breaking point, but obviously the Israeli left, like, was in the minority before as well. But what would you say kind of like in the last two years and kind of to think about moving forward, what are the biggest challenges that the Israeli left faces to continue in its effort? whether it's to educate or to be a type of protective presence, whether physically in the West Bank or in their presence in Israel. Well, obviously, it's our, you know, fascist government and fascist society. You know, anyone that is, like, actively oppressing every minority on this land,

Starting point is 00:26:38 and especially Palestinians. So I think our biggest threat is our government at the moment. But I think that our biggest, my biggest threat, if I could think of, like, what is the biggest threat is apathy, I think, like people not caring, people not getting up and leaving their houses and doing things and organizing and mobilizing, just letting this happen. And I think on paper, the biggest obstacle would probably be our government that are, you know, acting in such a fascist, fanatic Nazi manner. And I think, yeah, as an individual being a part of grassroots communities and seeing, you know, at the end of the day, there are people that are

Starting point is 00:27:20 going out there and actively, like, murdering Palestinians that are, you know, pushing for policies to deport children, Filipino children or children of migrant workers. There are so many injustices towards different people. And there are people that are, like, actively going out and, and like fighting for these like terrible terrible fanatic ideologies. And I think whenever we people don't, I said this in a podcast recently and someone told me like, wait, you have to take out that part because it sounds like you're like voting, like you're like rooting for the fascist to act. I'm like, no, no, no.

Starting point is 00:27:59 The fact is that there are people that are doing these really, really bad things. And when we're not countering them, when we are just letting them happen and be like, oh, yeah, that sucks. but not doing anything about it, not using our privilege or our voice or a microphone to resist that, then we're conforming with it. And I know that's not fun to think. That's not fun.

Starting point is 00:28:24 It's not fun to go or organize protests. It's not fun to do a lot. Even though actually there's a lot of things that are really beautiful as well, being in the West Bank, being with people, playing with children. These are beautiful, beautiful things. It's not like we're doing that, but I think when it's within Israeli society, when it's organizing protests, when it's joining a protest as a number, when it's, you know, learning and doing unlearning, it's not always easy and it's not always someone's first, yeah, decision to make. But I think that when you don't do that, I think that is the biggest threat. You know, in the Holocaust, in many different atrocities over the years, the thing that, like, stood out most was people that were silent.

Starting point is 00:29:09 and people that, yeah, didn't resist in one way or another. It's like that movie's zone of interest. Oh, my God, that movie, that movie just shaped these past two and a half years. Like, I saw it a few months after October 7th and I just, every moment that life just existed in Israel. And you saw war planes flying above you and you know what's going to happen. You hear, too, like you hear bombs falling. You hear. and everyone's just like gotten used to it.

Starting point is 00:29:40 And you're just like, we're living in zone of interest. Yeah, that's wild. Yeah, I think it's like a constant question of do I want to be a part of the society? Do I want to fight? Life would be much easier if I moved away and I was just like, fuck this place, which is not a bad thing to do. I have many friends that have done this and I understand it. It's really hard. you know, life would be easier if I just left.

Starting point is 00:30:09 It's not the, I don't want to say, it's not the sexy narrative to be like, like, look, we can both, you know, look, you know, let's learn. It's not fun to be talking in trying to reason with fascists, like, or people that are in deep denial of a reality you're really well intertwined with. But I think it's my moral responsibility as an Israeli to be here. and as long as I can

Starting point is 00:30:36 and help create platforms for our society to learn and resist. Yeah, no, I think, like you said, there are different pathways, but I can definitely understand, like, the feeling you have that it's like an application of responsibility, having been a part of the society to some degree to, yeah, throw your hands, essentially. One last question. I was watching the documentary Coexistence My Ass, which is an incredible documentary.

Starting point is 00:31:09 I really encourage people to watch it if they can. And it's filmed and it incorporates that moment of October 7th. And shows, I mean, I think implies, though, of course I don't know how widely this applies, but it shows and implies how parts of the left fell off, you know, after October 7th. Do you feel like now we're 2026, we're recording February 22nd, 20206? Do you feel like people are starting to like come back? I don't know. Or did just the left get smaller?

Starting point is 00:31:45 I think the radical left has become just much more tight knit. And yeah, whoever's a part of it is kind of a part of it. People are always welcome to join and be apart. But it's kind of, you know, you kind of have your usual suspects at this point. And I think the broader, like, I don't know, liberal Zionists that will call themselves left, and Israel just like isn't really left because they're talking about a democracy within an apartheid state. They are, like I said earlier, sending their sons to war. I'm not saying that's an easy thing, but at the same time opposing the war and not acknowledging Palestinian suffering.

Starting point is 00:32:25 And I think there's become many people. And this is from my personal experience that just are like, like I said, epithetic, kind of like looking forward with their hands on the sides of each of their eyes, trying not to see what's happening. You know, there are people thousands, tens of thousands in the streets protesting, you know, they'll be waving Israeli flags. That's hard for me. I don't feel like I'm in the group that would ever wave a flag. and I think they see themselves as left. Yeah, again, like I said, you can't be fighting for human rights, liberal ideologies within an apartheid state.

Starting point is 00:33:11 You can't fight for democracy in an apartheid state. Like, we have to touch the root of this all. Every injustice happening on this land, or in Israel, in 48, like, in my opinion, the root of it is the occupation. We've planted roots on rotten soil. We've pushed people out of their homes and took them as our own

Starting point is 00:33:34 and we're not really willing to reconcile what we've become, what we've done. And I think only when that starts to happen, there could be some sort of future here on this land for both people. But as long as we're not acknowledging the atrocities we are committing and the atrocities are silence

Starting point is 00:33:53 is allowing to perpetuate, then the left here is very, very tiny. And I say that not toot our own horn, you know, it's not in a way of like, it's not, we're not on a moral high ground. Like, maybe there was a moment where I did feel that way in a sense of like, I know and you don't know or like, but then, you know, very quickly,

Starting point is 00:34:16 in order to turn your activism into something sustainable, you have to remind yourself, this is what I believe in. This is love, and it's not from bitterness, and it's not from being on a moral high ground. Like, I'm doing this because I believe in it as me as D.D., and I really hope other people join, and other people also open their hearts to these injustices and realize that in order for everyone to have a just reality, a just future, then you have to fight for everyone to have those rights as well.

Starting point is 00:34:47 Yeah, thank you so much for that. I always say, like, I mean, I think this is applicable, lots of places. I say it here in the United States, like when there was a crackdown on pro-Palestine protesters and just the complete reversal of freedom of speech and everything like that, because they happen to be pro-Palestine. I said, you know, this is eroding the tenuous democracy you have. It's democracy for all of us or none of us. And in Israel, it's like you can be liberal or you can call yourself the left and advocate in this way. But unless, like you said, you realize what the construction of the state and its continuation, kind of like this endless ethnic cleansing

Starting point is 00:35:28 project that's happening in the territories, it's like, unless you address that, it will bleed into you. So it's, you know, for a variety of reasons, moral reasons, of course, but also self-interest. Dahlia Shindlan has an interesting article about this and an interesting argument about this that I'll link in the show notes. And I would say she's a believer in maybe a confederation or something like that. But her analysis is the occupation ruined the potential of Israeli democracy. Like I said, she comes at it from a very kind of different angle, I think, than you do, but still is a reasonable argument at the end of it. But yeah, thank you so much, Danielle. This has been a really rich conversation, and I think that the listeners will benefit a lot from having

Starting point is 00:36:13 this laid out. And of course, I'll include everything in the show notes about the groups that we mentioned. Thank you so much for inviting me and yeah, I hope I didn't talk your head off. No, not at all. This is great. Thank you so much. Canadian women are looking for more. More into themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart and I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women, entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers. all at different stages of their journey.

Starting point is 00:37:00 So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first Bachelor to ever have his final Rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it all I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show?

Starting point is 00:37:28 made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search warrant.

Starting point is 00:37:47 This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is love trapped. This season, an epic battle of He Said She Said. and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. Listen to Love Trapped on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Next Monday, our 2026 IHeart Podcast Awards

Starting point is 00:38:18 are happening live at South by Southwest. This is the biggest night in podcasting. We'll honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative talent and creators in the industry. And the winner is... Creativity, knowledge, and passion will all be on full display. Thank you so much. much iHeartRadio. Thank you to all the other nominees. You guys are awesome. Watch live next Monday

Starting point is 00:38:40 at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific free at Veeps.com or the Veeps app. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. My latest episode is with Hillary Duff, singer, actress, and multi-platinum artist. Hillary opens up about complicated family dynamics, motherhood, and releasing our first record in over 10 years. We talk about what it's taken to grow up in the entertainment industry and stay grounded through every chapter. It's a raw and honest conversation about identity, evolution, and building a life that truly matters.

Starting point is 00:39:13 You desire in family like this picture, and that's not reality a lot of the times for people. My sister and I don't speak. It's definitely a very painful part of my life, and I hope it's not forever, but it's for right now. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the I Heart Radio, app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is It Could Happen here, I'm Garrison Davis, reporting from the New York State

Starting point is 00:39:59 Capitol. In the early, early morning of Wednesday, February 25th, I rode on a bus from the snowy streets of the financial district in Lower Manhattan, up to Albany, the New York State Capitol. The bus arrived at the Armory Arena shortly before 10 a.m. Inside, there was coffee and breakfast, signs and posters, tax the rich embroidered beanies, and over a thousand New Yorkers gathered to tell Kathy Hokel and the New York State Legislature that it's time to tax the rich. After recovering from the morning bus ride, a rally was held in the Armory Arena, hosted by New York City Councilman Chi Ose. With speakers from local unions like the Nurses Association, 1099 SCIU, the Taxiworkers Alliance.

Starting point is 00:40:49 immigrant justice organizations, child care, housing, and education advocates, as well as the co-chair of the New York City DSA. Following the speeches, the crowd practiced chants and protest songs ahead of the march to the Capitol. The rally at the armory just wrapped up. Now a thousand or so people are marching on Washington towards the state Capitol building in Albany. The crowd is now in front of the legislative building. There's some New York taxi cabs honking outside, the New York DSA marching band. We are the future what? We are the workers.

Starting point is 00:41:56 A little bit louder. We need funding for our future one. It is 1230 and the crowd is now approaching the New York State Capitol building. The crowd is stretching halfway. around the square in front of all these government buildings and still marching forward. I'm about to enter the state Capitol building after about a 25, 30 minute march and some chanting outside. A steady stream of people are now flowing into the Capitol. All right. You guys are going to have to exit. We cannot take it anymore.

Starting point is 00:42:39 Okay. I have made it inside the Capitol building. barely, the last person admitted in the top security section by the main entrance. But now I'm down at the lower level, the concourse. And as you can hear, a massive crowd is approaching the security gate in the lower concourse, taking up the entirety of that corridor, and just now have entered the security gate area of the capital. We'll return to socialist January 6th later this episode, but first some context on why this protest is happening and what it's hoping to achieve. On January 1st, Democratic Socialist Zoran Mamdani was sworn in as mayor of New York City.

Starting point is 00:43:28 But you don't magically get your social democracy paradise once a new mayor is sworn in. Getting elected and taking power is just the first step. Governor Hockel has been resistant to raising taxes. and Zoran has said he's open to other funding avenues, but that a small tax increase on the wealthiest New Yorkers and corporations would be the fairest method of funding his agenda. Since taking office, Mayor Mamdani has decided to focus on governing and fostering a working relationship with Kathy Hokel,

Starting point is 00:44:01 rather than directing energy towards another uphill electoral battle that would create a purely adversarial relationship between the mayor and the governor, making any concessions much more difficult in the interim. But external pressure still must be applied to Governor Hockel in order to secure the funding for the Mamdani mandate that voters delivered in the 2025 election. So rather than discarding the grassroots organizing apparatus that got Mamdani elected,

Starting point is 00:44:32 after the election, that apparatus and its network of volunteers spun off into a new organization called Our Time, which, in coordination with the New York City DSA, organizes door-to-door canvassing, phone banking, community events, and rallies to win an affordable New York City and help enact Mamdani's policy agenda. Achieving Mamdani's campaign promises was already going to be a tall task. But then, early into the new administration, the mayor's office and comptroller discovered the city was facing an unexpected financial crisis

Starting point is 00:45:09 in the form of a $12 billion deficit left by former mayor Eric Adams. This budget crisis was due to years of financial mismanagement and the under-budgeting of essential services like rental and cash assistance, shelters, health insurance, and special education. While in office, Eric Adams covered up this massive budget deficit, leaving the gaps grossly understated, gaps that were made worse by divestment in New York City by the state, under former governor Andrew Cuomo.

Starting point is 00:45:42 Since the financial crisis of the 70s, the New York City mayor has been required by law to have a balanced budget. So rather than sweeping this under the rug by continuing to cook the city's books like his predecessor, Zoran chose complete transparency about the crisis he has inherited

Starting point is 00:46:00 and how his administration will attempt to solve it. Zoran signed an executive order to designate chief savings officers in every city agency to quote, streamlined processes and eliminate waste, unquote. Through his relationship with Governor Cathy Hokel, the mayor secured $1.5 billion in state aid last month. That money, combined with higher than expected Wall Street revenues,

Starting point is 00:46:26 new savings measures, and eliminating inefficiencies in bureaucratic waste, have shrunk the deficit to $5.5 billion. Still, a painful gap to fill. In the preliminary budget unveiled February 17th, the mayor laid out two paths to close this gap. The first is a 2% income tax increase on New Yorkers making over a million dollars a year, as well as a tax on the most profitable corporations. If that doesn't happen, the city will be forced to use the limited tools at its disposal by rating the rainy day fund and raising city property tax by 9.5%.

Starting point is 00:47:06 Mayor Mamdani says this second option is one of last resort. As the property tax is the only mechanism for revenue, the city has complete control of. The preliminary budget has faced criticism for falling short of promises to increase funding to parks and libraries. The library budget is 0.11% less than Mamdani campaigned on, and the park budget remains flat, rather than boosting it to 1% of the total budget as hoped. though this is still preliminary and subject to change. This budget does contain $500 million for new programmatic spending, including new funding for shelter services, mental health care, and the emergency food program,

Starting point is 00:47:49 and cancels an Eric Adams plan to add 5,000 more NYPD officers, though, as promised, their budget remains effectively the same. Mayor Mamdani says that funding for his proposed Department of Community Safety will be covered in the executive budget later this April. A number of Momdani's key policies don't relate to the city budget. For example, making buses free will require deals with the state and the MTA. But Mamdani just appointed six new people to the rent guidelines board, making a rent freeze more likely. In his second week in office, Mamdani announced a partnership with the governor to provide universal

Starting point is 00:48:28 child care for kids under five in New York State. and in New York City, expand pre-K, the free 3K program, and free child care for two-year-olds, which the state will fully fund for the first two years. On top of the city budget crisis, the tax-the-rich protests are also in the backdrop of Trump's tax cuts and the dismantling of the social safety net. Calls to tax the rich or calls to fund local social security. services and whether the massive cuts to snap food stamps and Medicaid in Trump's one big beautiful bill. The tax the rich campaign writes, quote, if we don't tax the rich, millions of New Yorkers will

Starting point is 00:49:26 lose health care or go hungry. New York can afford to stand up to Trump's agenda, unquote. At the Albany rally, city councilman Chi Ose spoke about how New York state has over 100 billionaires. And New York actually gained 13,000 millionaires in 2024 alone. This fight to tax the rich is a fight that the unions are united on, as demonstrated by the attendees and representatives present at the Albany rally. This coalition went up to Albany pushing for a handful of bills currently under consideration. The first is a progressive state income tax bill, which will create new tax brackets to start starting at $1 million, so that as people earn millions more dollars in income, they pay a

Starting point is 00:51:26 slightly higher share in taxes. This would raise an estimated $21 billion annually. The second bill is called the Fair Share Act, which seeks to address how New York City essentially charges a flat income tax if you earn $50,000 or $5 million, where you pay practically the same rate of roughly 3.9%. The Fair Share Act seeks to add a 2% surcharge to those with incomes of over $1 million per year, which would raise about $4 billion annually.

Starting point is 00:52:03 The third bill is a tax on the most profitable corporations. A corporate tax bill ensuring companies doing business in New York State with over $2.5 million in profits pay what they owe in taxes. this proposal would raise $7 billion annually. And finally, a bill which could be funded by some of the former tax bills, is the Universal Child Care Act, which would ensure free year-round full-day child care without means testing and guarantee that all child care workers are paid a genuine living wage. As of now, 22 New York City Council people have signed on to tax the rich by supporting the Fair Share Act,

Starting point is 00:52:45 Only four more council people are needed to reach a majority. So with that context, let's return to the Albany protest, both outside and inside the New York Capitol building. I was the last person, billionaires, make them pay. We pay taxes, why don't they? Billionaires make them pay. We pay taxes, why don't they? Billionaires, get them pay.

Starting point is 00:53:11 I was the last person to, be allowed into the Capitol building. There is hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of people outside now trying to get in to tell the politicians, representatives, and the governor that they want to tax the rich. I am in the lower concourse of the Capitol building, barely getting through security on the top floor, because there's so many people, not because I was inherently dangerous. But now, a A large group of people are coming in via the lower concourse about to reach the main security gate at the lower level. Looks like a few hundred down this corridor about to enter the capital, holding signs,

Starting point is 00:54:03 taking up the entire passageway. It's the Cooney Group. It is the public university union that has appeared. Later that day, I interviewed someone with PSC, the Cooney Staff Union. I'm Liz Stevenson. I am an academic advisor at City Tech, which means I'm a member of the PSC CUNY Union. Why is a PSC here in Albany today? So, PSC, I'm on the legislative committee of the PSC, and many folks from our committee

Starting point is 00:54:39 as well as other PSC members have come to Albany because we really want to see fair taxation in New York State. You know, right now, a lot of Millionaires and billionaires are not paying their fair share, especially as a result of Trump's tax cuts. And that means that we're not seeing the services we need, and certainly at CUNY, we're not seeing the funding that we need to make our schools, quality schools with safe and healthy facilities. Students are not getting the services that they need. Class sizes are large. So we want to see more full-time faculty. We want to see more academic advisors.

Starting point is 00:55:14 We want to see more mental health counselors. and just generally we want to see better facilities for CUNY. And we know that the only way that we can get the funding that we need for many services, including CUNY, is by taxing the rich. We really need to raise revenue in the state. So there's the three tax bills, the income, the corporate, and the New York City specific one. But on the PNC flyers, it's also another bill or act that is being pushed for specifically

Starting point is 00:55:42 to help Cooney get more funding. Could you talk about that aspect of the fight here? Sure. A little known former state legislator named Zoran Mamdani wrote this bill called the Repair Act. And what the Repair Act would do is allow the state to collect property taxes from NYU and Columbia. And then use that money to fund public higher education like CUNY. So right now, you know, as technically as non-profits, NYU and Columbia do not pay any property tax. In many places around the country, there are similar institutions that still make what we call pilots,

Starting point is 00:56:20 so payments in lieu of taxes. NYU and Columbia don't even do that. So it would take a constitutional amendment at the state level to require them to pay property taxes, and that's what the Repair Act would allow us to do. It would have to go through multiple legislatures in order to get a constitutional amendment that would require them to pay property taxes. That's another way to raise revenue for CUNY. Liz also told me that PSC is fighting for a quote-unquote new deal for Cooney

Starting point is 00:56:49 because for the past few decades there's been divestment in public higher education across the country and especially in New York under Cuomo Cooney suffered from defunding and is now currently suffering from chronic understaffing and facilities in decay all while student enrollment has increased. Teachers have resigned or retired and not been replaced. And so PSC is fighting. for a renewed investment to hire more full-time staff and repair and maintain facilities to improve not just their working conditions, but their students' learning conditions.

Starting point is 00:57:25 A part of the New Deal for Cooney is also fighting for the first 60 credits to be free for all students. Once the crowd outside managed to find a way to enter the Capitol through the alternative entrances. Groups split off to march around the interior perimeter, while others lobbied legislators. Lunch was set up on the third floor. After a quick bite, even more people dispersed through the Capitol complex to hand out flyers to legislators and their staff, while small groups lobbied door-to-door in the legislative office building, and organizers attended private meetings. The action was timed to catch politicians and Capitol staff while they were on their own lunch break,

Starting point is 00:58:23 as they walked around the Empire State Plaza and eventually back to the chambers by early afternoon. As a grand finale, hundreds of people packed the corridor from the legislative offices to the assembly and Senate, lining both sides of the hallway with chanting union members and organizers handing flyers to politicians and staff who hurried through the corridor. Supportive assembly members cheered on the protest as they walked through the table. tunnel. That is the current state of the rich. Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Tax the rich. Which side are you on? Count of the home. Taxiote. Which side are you on? Tax the rich. the crowd left the corridor, boarded buses outside the Capitol complex, and rode back to New York City just in time to catch the sunset.

Starting point is 00:59:39 Meanwhile, at a press conference on pre-K and 3K enrollment, Mayor Zoran Mamdani was asked about his absence from the Albany Tax the Rich rally. Hey, Mayor, how you doing? There's a Tax the Rich rally today. In Albany, you're not there, obviously. even though taxing the rich has been one of your consistent calls to raise revenue for the city. So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about why you decided not to be there, were you worried about irking the governor on this issue? And secondly, do you think it disappoints people in this movement that you've called for that,

Starting point is 01:00:14 but you're not necessarily at this rally? So I make it clear time and time again that I believe in the importance of taxing the wealthiest New Yorkers that little bit more as well as the most profitable corporations, and doing so while also ending the drain that has long characterized our city's fiscal relationship with the state. And I've said this both because it's important to create a fair tax system and also because of the fact that we're facing a $5.4 billion fiscal deficit at this time, the likes of which we haven't seen since the Great Recession. And my not attending one event does not change in any way, the strength with which I believe this, the urgency with which I believe we have to respond to it.

Starting point is 01:00:50 And I'm thankful for New Yorkers who continue to make it clear that, that they too want to build a city that everyone who calls at home can afford. The governor and I are in constant communication, and we are always looking to build a healthier, stronger city. I'm appreciative of her partnership in that, and I know we have a long budget process to go through, and I'm encouraged by the beginnings of it. Rally attendance was lower than organizers hoped. The early morning start and blizzard a few days prior likely affected turnout. Though, as already discussed, many unions did sign on to the action and send representative members.

Starting point is 01:01:25 Organizing on a grand scale right after what's perceived as a huge victory, like winning an election, can actually be difficult, even for a group like our time that's working to use the organizing apparatus that got Momdani elected to help enact his policy agenda. Not as many people will be keen on canvassing right after spending six months canvassing for an election, even if the election was a victory. Our time aimed to send 25,000 tax the rich letters to state legislators by the end of January, but as of now, the website lists under 7,000 letters sent. But the Albany takeover protest was just the opening act.

Starting point is 01:02:10 The state budget is set to be finalized by March 31st, and there will be tax-the-rich events across the state leading up to the end of the month. This next week and a half, New York City DSA and and our time will host a week of action or a week of tax shun to increase pressure on the legislature and the governor as they head into budget negotiations. Proving the diversity of this coalition, confusingly, there are two different time spans listed for the week of action across the social media and org websites, March 5th through the 10th or March 7th through the 14th. But regardless, between the 5th and the 14th, there are organized actions happening across the five boroughs and statewide,

Starting point is 01:02:58 in Buffalo, Hudson Valley, Ithaca, Rochester, Sarah Cruz, and Westchester. There will be door knocking, phone banking, collecting petition signatures, and a kickoff happy hour social at Solus in the East Village on Thursday, March 5th. To quote from our time, quote, what happens in Albany this winter will shape Zoron's first year in office and determine whether working families get the relief they need. We have until March to build enough pressure to win a state budget that funds free child care, backfills the cuts, and secures resources to do so much more, unquote. Beyond running the biggest city in the country, as a secondary goal,

Starting point is 01:03:42 Mamdani seeks to provide an example that left-wing politicians can resource. responsibly govern, and that left-wing policies can make people's lives better and more affordable. And New Yorkers are organizing to make that example as strong as it can be. Happy Hohol, where you are at? New York is under attack. Where are you at? Median women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are of them.

Starting point is 01:04:41 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart and I'm Catherine Clark and in this podcast we interview Canada's most inspiring women entrepreneurs artists athletes politicians and newsmakers all at different stages of their journey so if you're looking to connect then we hope you'll join us listen to the honest talk podcasts on iHeart radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts I'm Clayton Eckerd and in 2022 I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor unfortunately it didn't go according to plan He became the first bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him.

Starting point is 01:05:19 If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom, with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search warrant. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before.

Starting point is 01:05:47 I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of He Said She Said, and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. Listen to Love Trapped on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Next Monday, our 26 IHeart Podcast Awards are happening live at South by Southwest. Since the biggest night in podcasting.

Starting point is 01:06:19 We'll honor the very best in podcasting. casting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative talent and creators in the industry. And the winner is... Creativity, knowledge, and passion will all be on full display. Thank you so much. IHeartRadio. Thank you to all the other nominees. You guys are awesome.

Starting point is 01:06:35 Watch live next Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific free at Veeps. Or the Veeps app. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. My latest episode is with Hillary Duff, singer, actress, and multi-platinum artist. The theory opens up about complicated family dynamics, motherhood, and releasing our first record in over 10 years. We talk about what it's taken to grow up in the entertainment industry and stay grounded through every chapter. It's a raw and honest conversation about identity, evolution, and building a life that truly matters. You desire in family like this picture, and that's not reality a lot of the time it's for people.

Starting point is 01:07:18 My sister and I don't speak. It's definitely a very painful part of my life. And I hope it's not forever, but it's for right now. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Chetty on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone, and welcome to the show. I'm joined today by Gordaín, who's a journalist from Kurdistan, who's based in Germany, and we're going to discuss the bombing of Iran. How are you, Gordian?

Starting point is 01:07:49 Hello, thank you again for inviting me. And yeah, I'm ready to talk about what's happening in Iran right now. Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot. A lot is happening. I mean, we should begin, I suppose, by if someone happens to have been avoiding the news and has somehow managed to avoid learning what is happening. Can we give like a small summary of the events that have happened since Friday night, US time?

Starting point is 01:08:19 So, yeah, it was early more. morning around eight, nine in the morning in Iran time that the Israeli army attacked the center of Tehran, where Ali Khamenei's house, which is known as Beaterha Berid leader's house, was located. And apparently the Iranian officials were having a very important meeting there. And following that, there were more attacks across Tehran and other cities. And by night, as the attacks were going on, as the strikes were going on, Beniam and Netanyo came on TV and he said that I have some news, I have some information that confirms that Ali Khamenei is dead,

Starting point is 01:09:05 which caused a lot of panic and excitement among the people. And everybody was really excited and they were waiting for this to be confirmed. And then some people came out and said, no, it's not true, but after some hours, the Iranian state media, the TV channels all started confirming that. So following that, the attacks did not stop. They were still going on, and then the American Army also joined.

Starting point is 01:09:38 This is a completely coordinated cooperation between US and Israel. So as they were attacking different IRGC bases and the facilities belonging to the government, the Iranian government started attacking the neighboring countries. They attacked UAE, they attacked Qatar, they attacked Bahrain, they attacked Iraq, and they attacked also Iraqi Kurdistan region. And they were just mainly targeting the U.S. bases or facilities belonging to the U.S. But soon after they started attacking civilian buildings like hotels, like just randomly attacking different directions.

Starting point is 01:10:19 And at the same time, they also started sending. missiles and drones towards Israel, which majority of them were intercepted. So they've been attacking these neighboring countries since the beginning of this war. And they have been specifically targeting Iraqi Kurdistan because, first, the U.S. has a lot of big military bases there in Iraq and Iraq-Uristan region. And at the same time, there are the Kurdish parties from Iran who are based there and the regime has been seeing them as one of the major threats since decades. So since the beginning of this whole war, they have been targeting these Kurdish parties a lot. And they also attacked, there is a refugee base that the families of the Kurdish forces basically live there.

Starting point is 01:11:10 They also attacked there. But luckily, nobody was killed or injured, but some buildings were damaged. and they attacked Airbill with drones and missiles several times, which were all mainly intercepted by the U.S. air defense systems because of the remains of the missiles and the drones that were falling down from the sky. Some people were lightly injured or some buildings were damaged. But still, it's a crazy thing to see because previously in the past years, Iran had attacked Erbil several times and also other regions,

Starting point is 01:11:45 but the U.S. or the other countries that were there, they didn't really intercepted the drones or the missiles. It's also something new that we're seeing. It's also important to know that Iran has also attacked Cyprus, like British military bases were targeted there, but the drones or the missiles were sent from Lebanon. What's going on right now is the full-scar war, and I think when you look at it,

Starting point is 01:12:13 it's nothing like what we've seen before. If you want to compare it to what happened in Iraq, the U.S. invasion, this is completely different. I think it's even larger than that because Iran is a very big country. And there are hundreds or maybe thousands of points across the country that have been targeted with heavy bombings inside Tehran, around Tehran. It's also really incredible to know because the amount of intel that you need for this is also, really a lot. I've seen videos, I've seen footage, I've seen reports that some random checkpoints on some remote places, especially in Curtis on were targeted. So this is also something that shows that how really coordinated and well-planned this attack and this war is. I want to jump

Starting point is 01:13:06 into something else. A lot of people are mostly focused on these major attacks, major developments, like, yeah, they're attacking Dubai, they're attacking Doha. These are all happening. And of course, the civilians, they're also in danger. I think somebody in Doha was killed in the first day. It was just a civilian that was killed by the remains of a missile or a drone. And this has made things really hard for the people on the ground. Many people are trapped in the airports, on the borders.

Starting point is 01:13:35 So this is something that's happening to the people outside of Iran. But inside Iran, there is massive bombings. everywhere wherever the IRGC or the intelligence service has a facility. And at the same time, the regime has cut off the internet. Even the normal phone lines barely work. And it's just so hard and almost impossible to get really precise information about what's happening in the cities and the towns around. Just like what happened in the early January, like during the protest,

Starting point is 01:14:09 only a few people have access to the internet. It's very limited. Yeah, they share some videos with channels and like with news agencies, but it's very limited. For example, in my hometown today, some of the major IRGC bases and intelligence facilities that were some of the most important ones in western side of Iran or as we call it Iranian Kurdistan or Rochalat, they were all bombed. And I've been trying to contact people to see what happened exactly. I'm sure that there are civilians killed. because the regime also has put all these bases inside the cities, near parks, near hospitals, near just random houses in the city.

Starting point is 01:14:53 So a lot of people are possibly killed, but we don't know how many, who are they? So this is also like not just in my city, in other cities too, it's the same. This is also something that a lot of people are not talking about. But again, this is war and the bombings are. so heavy and they're all being carried out with really advanced weapons and it's just so hard. And when I talk to the people outside of Iran, the people in Europe, like some of my friends, relatives, everybody's worried that what if one of my relatives, what if one of my friends get killed randomly on the street? But because of this, that people are seeing this also on the

Starting point is 01:15:37 news, at least I know this from my family because I was able to talk to them to 9.5. ago. Everybody's staying home. They have enough food for a few weeks and they're just watching the news. They don't go out. They're just trying to stay safe. But at the same time, in major cities like Burmia, for example, the people who have a house outside of the city or in a village or if they have relatives outside of the city, they have moved out because it's generally safer. There are not many IRGC bases or like government buildings or whatever in the villages and it's smaller towns.

Starting point is 01:16:18 So this is also happening and people are trying to stay safe as much as possible. And yeah, this is something that's going on and at the same time when I talk to the people, I mean I haven't been able to properly talk to anyone because

Starting point is 01:16:33 the internet is really bad, but like I talked to my family and they told me that the food prices are really, really, really high and it's really hard to buy food now because everybody's panicking and there are shortages. Like there's some items cannot be found. Some like essential items like, I don't know, oil, meat and rice and things like that. It's too hard to find in the market.

Starting point is 01:16:57 Yeah. And a lot of people are going to the gas stations to get some gas and to be prepared if something happens. But yeah, so this is also something that's going on and people are worried about that. what if it's going to get bigger, if it's going to scale it? So, like, how are they going to deal with all these shortages? Yeah. There is one more topic that I want to talk about. I also wrote about it a little bit earlier. I published some text. It's the topic of ordinary soldiers. Yeah, explain that to people. The civilians who are forced into the military service. This is also, like, a very sensitive topic because there are probably thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of

Starting point is 01:17:46 young men who are about 18 years old that are forced into the military service because it's mandatory in Iran and they are forced into the service and they are also in these military bases and the military bases are being targeted non-stop and there is a possibility. I mean, not the possibility. Of course, it's surreal today. One person, a young man from Curtison, was confirmed that he was killed. But I'm sure that there are more because we don't have a proper internet connection. So we cannot get all the information. But these military bases are being also targeted.

Starting point is 01:18:23 And of course, I think a lot of them might get killed or injured. And just from my own family, one of my cousins who is 24, he was also forced into this because he wanted to open a business and like in Iran a lot of people also maybe I should give a little bit context like in Iran if you want to open a business if you want to have a passport or things like that you have

Starting point is 01:18:46 to serve in the army and we'll give you that so yeah he was he just he was listed like I don't know about five months ago or so and then he was in a military base between Tabriz and Urumia and their base was targeted

Starting point is 01:19:01 luckily the sleeping quarter were not targeted. It was just where the commanders were, I think, staying. And I mean, I couldn't talk to him, but he told my cousin, who I called like two days ago, he said that the moment that it was bombed, everybody just ran out.

Starting point is 01:19:21 And then everybody went back in and they took all their belongings and backpacks. And they just left the military base and they went home without telling the supervisor or something. Oh, wow. And they were not, they're not going to go back there. anyways. So this is also something that I am personally worried about all those young men who are forced to be in the military bases and they are absolutely not a part of the regime. There are just

Starting point is 01:19:48 civilians who are forced into this. So that's also something that I think it's not really discussed because the whole focus right now is just on the major attacks, which place was targeted or like which I don't know commander was killed or things like that yeah let's take a little break for advertisements and we'll come back because I'd like to discuss more of that like the structure of the Iranian state

Starting point is 01:20:12 and who is and it's not like part of it okay we are back so I think that will be a really good place for us to do some deep dives would be but people understand this part of the world through the lens of states because they understand the world through the lens of states because they have been raised in a

Starting point is 01:20:42 state system. But I don't think that it's particularly, it's not useful to see everybody who lives in the Iranian state as part of the Iranian state. It doesn't actually give us a good grasp on reality. So perhaps you could explain, first of all, perhaps explaining the structures of the Iranian state when it comes to like there are pro-regime militias, right? There are the IRGC, and then we have like the leadership, many of whom are now dead, some of whom we know. some of whom we think are dead. But then we also have, and I know you and I have spoken about this before, but it's worth explaining again, right?

Starting point is 01:21:19 Like, Iran is an ethnically diverse country. So we have people who are ethnically excluded from power. We also have people within the majority ethnicity, Persian people who are not pro-racian. So could you perhaps explain like those structures that exist? And then you and I spoke about this a little bit before we were recording, but many of the facilities of the regime's armed forces and repressive forces are right in the middle of town, right, right next to civilian building. So perhaps we could explain the consequences of that for civilians as bombs are falling on these facilities. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:21:55 So if I want to explain how the Iranian state system is, I would simply compare it to a full monarchy, but with a different label. Yeah. There is king who owns all of the power, and there are the people who are around him that also share some bits of power with him. And there is the army that is in full command of the leader or the people around him. So this is simply something like that, if I want to make it very, very simple. But the Iranian state structure is actually quite complicated, you know. They follow some sort of religious hierarchy that the supreme leader is the representative of God on earth, and he is leading the Muslim nation until the Imam Mahdi, the savior of the world, comes from the skies and saves the world and brings peace.

Starting point is 01:22:59 So this is what they actually believe. So the supreme leader is actually the person who approves everything. Yeah, there is normal parliament with the representatives. of the people, but at the same time there is another type of religious parliament that decides on the interests of the regime, which consists of some high-level clerics or the molars who are on a higher social level. And at the same time, there is also a council of 12 people, six of them are Mullahs, six of them are like lawyers and jurists that they are monitoring the, let's say, the whole political process in the government. But whatever happens when you see that,

Starting point is 01:23:50 yeah, this is on paper, in theory, this is a system that could possibly work. But all of these organizations or these parts of the regimes or layers of the regime that I mentioned, all of them, they follow the supreme leader. And whatever they do, do has to be approved by him. Yeah. I mean, I'm not talking about, like, I don't know, the things that are decided in a city council or, like, very low-lil. I'm talking about the national interests or things like that or who's going to be the next president, for example. But basically that parliamentary system or those councillings are basically non-functional. They're just there

Starting point is 01:24:28 for a show. And at the same time, especially in the past decades, the IRGC, it's not only a military force that it's not a militia that follows the leader. It's a whole organized and complicated structure that owns the economy, owns all the institutions in Iran, and controls all of them. We're talking about the oil sector, we're talking about industry, we're talking about agriculture. I mean, almost everything is owned by them. And IRGC is a network of countless high-level commanders or even, let's say, non-military

Starting point is 01:25:14 person that are all working together and they are running the country somehow. And of course, even if the leader is dead, they still have some structures to continue to carry on. And this is how the structure is in Iran. and I think this is what makes Iran very, very different from other states and in the Middle East. And it's something that makes Iran also very different from what, for example, if you want to compare it to Saddam Hussein system or in Libya or in Syria, it's very different because the IRGC has put its hands and roots everywhere in every institution. We're talking about schools. We're talking about universities. We're talking about hospitals.

Starting point is 01:25:58 we're talking about anything that you can imagine, even in a post office. We were talking about this earlier, so that there is like in every governmental institution, from universities to schools and hospitals, IRGC always has a specific office in every facility. It's supposed to recruit people to join the resistance, but in fact, it's just a,

Starting point is 01:26:27 it's just an office to observe the people who are working there or the people who are going there for their daily matters. So they have control over everything. And that's what makes this regime very, very structured and very hard to just topple in two nights. So that's why they are still resisting. They are still fighting back. They are still, even though Israel and America

Starting point is 01:26:53 have destroyed majority of their military bases, and facilities, but they're still fighting back. This is also important to understand, I think, yeah. Yeah. And, like, with it being a little bit unclear, like, who is still alive, especially in that top end of the pyramid, right? Like, we know Haminae is dead, or we know we're pretty sure he's dead. Iran has announced he's dead.

Starting point is 01:27:19 We know that other people within that religious leadership and political leadership structure are dead. We know that they struck the assembly of experts today, which could have removed a good number more of those religious leaders. What they did in Venezuela was that they found somebody who was no less repressive but was amenable to doing what they wanted, specifically with resources, specifically with oil. We run the risk of a similar thing happening in Iran, right, of someone within the IRGC being like, we will do what you need us to do with oil as long as you allow us to continue.

Starting point is 01:27:54 murdering the Iranian people as much as we wish. Like, that's a real worry. They will find someone who they think they can do business with. That's what they wanted in Venezuela, right? Iran and Venezuela are different. They are both allied, but they're very different countries. Yeah. But that's a real worry for people.

Starting point is 01:28:15 Yeah, I think it's also, like, with Venezuela, it's completely different right now, because with Venezuela, America had like a clear person, as you said that, yeah, he or she is going to be the next leader or whatever. Yeah, Delsey Rodriguez. But with Iran, it's not really clear yet.

Starting point is 01:28:37 You know, the so-called prince, Pahlavi, he is always on TV, always on his social media saying that I'm going to come back, I'm going to do this and that. But it's not really clear. if USA and America have made a deal with him because he doesn't really have that social base that he claims to have. Yeah. And on the other side, there are the ethnic groups, especially Kurds, Baluchis and Awasi Arabs.

Starting point is 01:29:06 They're like better organized compared to other ethnic groups. And then today we just saw that Trump has made phone calls with the Kurdish leaders of these parties. And the other parties in Iraqi Kurdistan, this means some. something. So, yeah, it's not really clear that they're going to have a similar plan like Venezuela or they're going to have something completely different for Iran. We're just waiting to see what's going to happen in the upcoming weeks because it's just a few days that the war is going on. Yeah. The entire region is in a shock. It's still not clear that how people are going to decide on their future now, because the war is still going on. And it's on.

Starting point is 01:29:51 very, very high level. Yeah. So, of course, it's also like, even when I was talking to my family the other day, they were telling me, I mean, most people in Kurdistan, I would say majority of the people in Kurdistan, they don't want monarchy back, of course. They don't want another form of dictatorship. And they would say, yeah, we want anyone to be installed, but not this guy, not this Rosa Pahlavi.

Starting point is 01:30:17 We don't want him. Anyone is better than him. Yeah. So this is also something, and I think probably if they want to install resapala, the ethnic groups will not accept it. And there is going to be more resistance and therefore more wars. Yeah. Let's take another break and we'll talk a little bit about maybe specifically the Kurdish situation.

Starting point is 01:30:40 As I know, it's of interest to both of us. We are back. So, yeah, you mentioned this piece, right? There was an article. It was a very poorly written article, I will say. For instance, it seemed to think that Talibani and Basani were Iranian, but nonetheless, the central thrust of it was correct that Trump has communicated with the KDP and the P UK. I understand this is like a lot of acronyms coming at people. So maybe we can just say like political parties in Iraqi Kurdistan, southern Kurdistan.

Starting point is 01:31:22 But that doesn't necessarily tell us anything. I think it's very easy, again, like there's this American media. frame of analysis, which sees groups in the Middle East as monolithic, right? The Kurds, as if they are, like, an entirely homogenous entity with one political interest, which is not the case. But, like, for America to fully remove this regime and Israel, it needs either a partner force or to be willing to commit thousands of its own soldiers to fight and know that hundreds of them will die, right, like did in Iraq. I guess, like, knowing what we know and knowing that there are these groups, right,

Starting point is 01:32:04 and maybe it would be good to give people a primer on the Eastern Kurdistan resistance groups and the alliance that they've recently formed. Like, where are they standing right now? I know they released a statement yesterday, but can you explain that a little bit to people? There are several parties across Eastern Kurdistan or, as they say, Iranian Kurdistan. And, of course, they're very diverse and each of them have a, different ideology. That's very normal. Yes.

Starting point is 01:32:33 What happened in the past few months was that it's also a very great development for our people, at least, because they have been also calling for a form of cooperation between these parties, and they finally announced that, of course, two parties like the Komala and another branch, they did not join it because they had some disagreements. but that is also normal. So the thing is that these parties would definitely work together if the things are going to escalate more. For example, if I want to say about a week ago,

Starting point is 01:33:09 the Rosabalavi published a statement and he threatened Kurdish people that if they think about autonomy or I don't know, thinking about taking quote-unquote parts of Iran's soil, we're going to use the army against them in the future. It's incredible that the first Kurdish official who answered to that statement was Abdullah Muhtadi from the Kumala, who was not a part of the coalition. So that means that even though they have disagreements, but they are still trying to work together

Starting point is 01:33:41 and help each other, I have talked to some people in the Kurdish parties. They are fully prepared for anything that could happen in the upcoming weeks or days or even month. I don't know. They're fully prepared. And what I know is that they are telling me that they are prepared that the Israeli army and also the American army would bomb or destroy the military bases on the border and also the checkpoints so that it would be easier for them to enter. And probably if it's going to be bigger than that, then maybe they could take over the controls of the cities. And what's really interesting is that they yesterday, these five parties, the coalition published a statement.

Starting point is 01:34:27 And there were several points, but one of the points was that was really interesting for me was that they were calling on people to not damage any public buildings like banks, schools, I don't know, offices. And that means that probably there is a movement that they want to come back and take over all these buildings. and try to control the cities better. So this is also something, and there is a lot of discussion on social media, and people are all saying that, yeah, we are ready that if something happens, we will go in.

Starting point is 01:35:04 And I think right now the situation is really complicated, and we don't know how people can actually enter yet. And you said that, yeah, if there is going to be a force that's ready to sacrifice thousands of its members, I think there are, the Kurds are ready to fight, they have been ready to fight for forever, for decades. Yeah. So this is also like something that the Kurdish people already know

Starting point is 01:35:30 that if we want to get rid of this regime, we have to sacrifice more. For me, it's very painful to say this, but I think our people have to sacrifice a little bit more, more than that they have been sacrificing for over 150 years. and I think maybe they have to sacrifice more. But one point here is that when I see what's happening, when I see that what is being said

Starting point is 01:35:56 that Trump is talking to the Kurdish parties, to the Kurdish organizations about the situation, one thing that I think about is that given the history of at least 15, 16 years of cooperation between America and the Kurds in Rojava in Syria and the fight against ISIS, which was a great opportunity for Kurdish people. But at the end, Trump just let Kurds down and didn't really support them against Turkey against all these jihadist groups that are supporting Syria.

Starting point is 01:36:31 So the question is that what if we fight against this regime, we destroy the regime? I mean, it's not just us. I have to mention that the other ethnic groups are also ready. But what did all these ethnic groups fight? this regime, they destroyed this regime, and what if Trump just brings someone really bad and someone really useless like Reza Pahlavi or other Iranian figures that, of course, are not after Kurdish people's interests? What if somebody like that comes in power and then the same situation goes on and then we have to fight that system over and over again? So this is also something

Starting point is 01:37:14 that I also think about it, but we still don't know what will happen. Is America's exact plan. It could be something like Iraqi Kurdistan, which could benefit the ethnic groups a lot. Of course, there's still going to be civil war, probably there's going to be instability,

Starting point is 01:37:35 but at least the ethnic groups might be able to self-determine, you know, like might be able to control their areas and get rid of that Iranian control to some extent. Maybe not fully, but that is also something that could be possible. And of course, there's going to be killing. There's going to be a lot of civilians killed. And we know that already during all these bombings, many civilians are killed. We don't know how many exactly because there is no internet connection to make sure about the numbers

Starting point is 01:38:07 or to investigate that. But of course, all these Iranian government buildings are, basis, intelligence offices or facilities, they are all located in civilian areas in the cities, in the city centers all over Iran and also Kurdistan. So there's always going to be some civilians who are living there, who are walking around there and they get killed. So this is also something that's really painful. But I think our people really have had enough and they were ready for this and they were, they knew that this is, this was, this was going to happen and yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's, uh, it's such a difficult thing. It's like, it's what, four, five weeks

Starting point is 01:38:54 ago that we saw the STG and groups affiliate, Syrian transitional government and groups affiliated with it, like live streaming them killing and mutilating the remains of captured Kurdish men and women in Derizor, right? Like a place where maybe it wasn't a desire to liberate Kurdish people that took the SDF there. It was the battle against ISIS and this idea of brotherhood of peoples, right, that they would liberate the Arab people who live there. Obviously, that has resulted in these horrible things that we've seen over the last month. And then the thought of like, oh, well, won't you just send 10,000 more of your children to die so you can liberate people in Tehran and then we'll leave you again?

Starting point is 01:39:38 Yeah. I was just thinking about like a couple years ago I was in Soleimani. And I went to the museum, you know, that they have the red security building. And they have, like, a very good history of the unfal, the genocide against the Kurdish people committed by the Ba'athist state. And then they have the 1991 uprising. And then they have a lot of commemoration of the battle against the Islamic State. And, like, for my entire life, like, the Americans have been leaving Kurdish people to die. and then urging them to rise up again.

Starting point is 01:40:16 And it's just, I don't know, it's an incredible, like, revolutionary capacity and capacity for sacrifice, but it's also just very sad that Americans constantly expect Kurdish people to continue to sacrifice and then never fill up their end of the bargain. Yeah, that's unfortunately true.

Starting point is 01:40:34 And, yeah, this has been evident in the past few years as well. Like in Syria, when, when, when, when, America gave the green light to Turkey to invade Rojava and also recently that how they just abandoned Kurds. Of course, they're still saying, no, we didn't abandon Kurds, but they did. And we basically lost almost everything that we had gained in Rojava. And there is also like a threat against Iraqi Kurdistan region right now from Turkey and also from Iraq.

Starting point is 01:41:08 And it's just a bitter truth that, yeah, apparently Kurds are not considered as a long-term partner for the U.S. and also the other Western countries. But like all these horrible things that have been happening to our people in the past 100 years, I mean, a part of it is, of course, the result of the Western countries and colonization from the European countries, Great Britain, Russia and also America. But at the same time, it's really important to not forget that majority of this tragedy that our people are living in is also caused by Turks, Arabs, and Persians. And by that, I just don't mean the state. I also mean the whole structure in the Middle East that has been prosecuting the Kurds. It's been centuries that our people are trapped between these powers, the Turks, Persians, and Arabs that are also fighting each other. but then they bring all of their wars inside our homeland, and then our people get killed and displaced and face all the tragedies.

Starting point is 01:42:18 So yeah, this is also our situation right now, and I don't know if it's going to be changed to a better situation, because it's just so unclear that how the superpowers, how the major powers, the original powers are planning for these things, and how their interests actually matter. Like, we talked about Rojava, if America, if Turkey or NATO and other Arab countries were not backing the new Syrian government,

Starting point is 01:42:51 I would call it Syrian Arab government, because that's how they identify themselves. Yeah, it's still the Syrian Arab Republic, even a year and a bit later. Yeah, if it was only Kurdish forces and the new government, trust me, they would not be able to end, all the territories controlled by SDF because SDF is way more advanced and more powerful than then like military-wise, but SDF was left alone and there was so much pressure on SDF from

Starting point is 01:43:19 all the Arab countries, Turkey and also Western countries in America. So this whole thing, like maybe this is a little bit unrealistic, but a lot of people ask me that what's going to be next. I think the next is going to be what America and Europe and Europe. Europe want. Like, I'm sure that they don't care about what the people in Kurdistan or the people in Iran want. They just want to do whatever they want, whatever that benefits them. And of course, the neighboring countries will also follow from the Arab countries and definitely Turkey. They will follow the plan that benefits them. So the people are trapped between these decisions. If the Iranian

Starting point is 01:44:02 structure also remains, probably they would also change. course and then cooperate with America or Israel or NATO or Arab countries only to remain in power and maintain their interests. Yeah, it's a really difficult time. If people are looking to stay informed on this, right? Coverage in the U.S. has been poor, in the English language. Where would you suggest, where could people follow your work and where would you suggest people, people look to stay informed on what's happening? Yeah, I personally don't post a lot. I'm just trying to gather information and be up-the-date and then share it with other media that are asking me about and other journalists. But there are several pages that I can suggest. One of them is definitely our organization, Hengau Organization for Human Rights. I would also suggest to follow news channels like Rudolf, which they have been working really good on this war. It's a Kurdish TV channel based in Iraqi. Kurdistan. I would also suggest to follow the social media pages belonging to the Kurdish parties like KDPI or Komala, just like their official pages on Twitter or X, for example, they post a lot of really good information. I would also suggest, I think I also suggested in our

Starting point is 01:45:28 last talk, there is this person called Vahit Online. He is an independent journalist and he has like some really big platforms and he posts a lot of reliable information and videos about the locations and the things that are happening. And I would also suggest to follow some other journalists like Ali Jawan Mardi. He is the manager and supervisor of the Voice of America. He also like he has several platforms and they post, he posts a lot of updated information about what's happening. But here's all. also something that I want to warn about. I would suggest people to not really believe in what they see on TV channels or media like Iran International, Manato TV, BBC Persian, because all these

Starting point is 01:46:17 media have turned into a platform to do the propaganda for the monarchists. And they have been posting a lot of fake news, a lot of AI generated content. And it's been really damaging the whole course of the, if I want to call it, revolution or the war or whatever, like that's happening inside Iran and Kurdistan. So yeah, these are the things that I can suggest so far. Yeah, there's a great suggestion. Thank you. Well, thank you very much for joining us today. We'll get this out as soon as possible because I know people are very interested to know more about it. Thanks, Gordi. Yeah, thanks for inviting me. Until next time. Canadian women are looking for more. More into themselves, their business,

Starting point is 01:47:13 their elected leaders and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast and IHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Starting point is 01:47:39 I'm Clayton Eckerd. and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first Bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it all I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom, with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal.

Starting point is 01:48:09 The media is here. case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search for it. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped.

Starting point is 01:48:25 This season, an epic battle of He Said She Said, and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. Listen to Love Trapped on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Next Monday, our 2026, IHeart, podcast awards are happening live at South by Southwest. This is the biggest night in podcasting. We'll honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative talent and creators in the industry. And the winner is...

Starting point is 01:49:02 Creativity, knowledge, and passion will all be on full display. Thank you so much. Iheart radio. Thank you to all the other nominees. You guys are awesome. Watch live next Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific free at veeps. Or the Veeps app. Hey, I'm Jay Chetty, host of the On Purpose podcast.

Starting point is 01:49:20 My latest episode is with Hilary Duff, singer, actress and multi-platinum artist. Hillary opens up about complicated family dynamics, motherhood, and releasing our first record in over 10 years. We talk about what it's taken to grow up in the entertainment industry and stay grounded through every chapter. It's a raw and honest conversation about identity, evolution, and building a life that truly matters. You desire in family like this picture, and that's not reality a lot of the time it's for people. My sister and I don't speak. It's definitely a very painful part of my life, and I hope it's not forever, but it's for right now. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Chetty on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 01:50:12 Welcome to Xap and hear a podcast about the consolidation. of capital into increasingly centralized forms and how it's ruining your life. I am your host, Mia Wong. And with me today to talk about how the consolidation of media monopolies has ruined many, many, many, many, many things for many years, is Vicki Osterbile, friend of the show, author of Fourth Coming April 14th, 2026, The Extended Universe, how Disney killed the movies and took over the world. Vicki, welcome to the show. Thanks. It's so great to be back. Thank you, Mia. I'm excited to talk about something a little less depressing than the things we could be talking about.

Starting point is 01:50:52 Slightly less depressing. Very mildly less depressing. You know, like, this is a story, obviously, the story that we're talking about here foremost is Paramount's acquisition of Warner Bros. Or forthcoming acquisition since Netflix is backed out. It technically still could fail, but seems very, very unlikely to. And, you know, you could tell things are going great. in the news where this is the fun one and the fun one is us before we started recording talking about who we think the sort of Nazi commissar they're going to put in charge of CNN is going to be

Starting point is 01:51:25 like who's their very wise so things going very good as you can tell oh my God you had the most cursed name that I've heard so far oh yeah Tim pool I think is probably the most

Starting point is 01:51:43 cursed oh yeah yeah that would be the most It's a dark horse candidate. I don't know. What are the numbers on Polly Market? Should we look? Who's a front for

Starting point is 01:51:51 CNN? Should you pull it up? I think they've probably that's probably up now. I hate. I refuse to check polymarket even if I could know facts ahead of time.

Starting point is 01:52:01 I simply will not. They can't make me. Oh, God. But we're not talking about insider trading war crimes. We're talking about insider trading intellectual property. So that's pretty good.

Starting point is 01:52:12 Yeah. Yeah. Woo! Okay, so to start, let's go back a ways, and do you want to talk about, I guess, sort of the beginning of the history of what we're talking about here, which is the consolidation of all media into a handful of increasingly large conglomerates? Yeah, absolutely. So, in a way, like, consolidation is the entire history of the movie business. So, obviously, what's happening here with Paramount, which is one of the oldest, one of the oldest, one of the old. five studios merging with Warner Brothers that leaves

Starting point is 01:52:47 Disney and Paramount Warner Brothers and Sony. That's the three companies that release movies. Is this good? It's only three. 824 will exist. 824 is going to get bought like three weeks from now. Oh, God.

Starting point is 01:53:04 And Netflix and Amazon are the other studios. And Netflix was in competition for this and withdrew. As you said, anyways. But one of the things that the very beginning of the Hollywood system, Hollywood starts because Thomas Edison, so now we're going way back, right? The 1890s. Oh, God. Yeah, yeah, speaking a dude who ruthlessly consolidated their power. He's like, we're of intellectual property. Precisely. Dear God. So Thomas Edison is credited

Starting point is 01:53:31 in the U.S. with inventing the movie camera. He is one of five or six people in the world who came up with technology around the same time. It's just not linearly possible to name any of them as the inventor of the movie camera. But he gets that credit because he's sued the shit out of everyone who tried to make a movie for 15 years. Jesus, right? So he puts patents on the movie camera. He puts patents on his stuff. And this is in New York.

Starting point is 01:53:56 He's in New Jersey. Menlo Park famously is where his lab is. And what he starts doing, other than making really, really boring movies, he's a mid-film producer. His movies are not that exciting. And at this point, a movie is 15 seconds to about a minute, often seen in a Nickelodeon, like in a really small screen, or like in a small room, these are short films.

Starting point is 01:54:19 99% of them are lost of time. We can't even watch these movies, right? But one of the things that he would do is he, because he had the patent on movie cameras, anyone who tried to film a movie, he would sue them. Jesus Christ. It was eventually too hard to maintain this. So what he did is he teamed up with the other large independents and Eastman Kodak, and they formed a thing, I think it's called the Motion.

Starting point is 01:54:41 Picture Company, which is I'm referred to as the Trust, quote unquote, and The Trust just did this at scale. So now, instead of it just being him fighting against his competitors, it's all the leading movie filmmakers, all the leading filmmakers, and the literal film company

Starting point is 01:54:56 will come down, sue you, sometimes even beat you up and, like, and shatter your cameras. If you, if you try to make a movie without their permission, without a license from them, and without their equipment, right? This is such a good system, by the way. Like, I just like, Like, the system of property rights is so good.

Starting point is 01:55:14 No problems here. Exactly. Never been an issue. Exactly. So what happens? So what happens? A bunch of filmmakers move to this new land development out in California

Starting point is 01:55:25 called Hollywood. You know, it's 1907. They're really far away from New Jersey lawyer at Edison Goons, right? They're as far as possible. So Hollywood is founded by a bunch of movie pirates, basically, right? That's incredible. Who are violating...

Starting point is 01:55:41 you know, Edison's copyright because they're sick of his legal harassment. So it's some real the mountains are high and the emper's faraway shit. Yeah, I mean, exactly. Literally, how far can we get away while still being on the continent? Like, that's, you know, let's do it from New Jersey, which is like many such cases. Many people. Yeah, yeah. Go ahead and get that far away from New Jersey before.

Starting point is 01:56:00 But, you know, so jumping forward into the classical Hollywood period we're more familiar with, there are sort of five major studios. And one of the ways that the major studios worked is that they had something called vertical integration, which is something we should all know about as we are living through Times and monopolies. Amazon is a classic example of vertical integration, as is Google. What vertical integration means is that you own everything in the pipeline for movies. You have the offices where the producers work. You own the soundstage. You employ all the people who work on it. You employ the actors. You also then own the film that gets made. You own the cameras. You own the company that produces

Starting point is 01:56:36 the film sometimes. Although there's instances they didn't always own those companies, those chemical companies, it's important. But you know, and then you own the movie theater where it's shown, right? So like movie theaters before the 40s, you would go to a RKO pictures house. RKO is one of the early big ones, or a United Artists Theater, and they would only show United Artists' movies. Jesus Christ. So there would be an active competition with one another. So your neighborhood would have, you know, there'd be an MGM, there'd be an RKO, and you would go based on what movie it was where. Then there's antitrust action done in the 40s that breaks up these studios. The studio systems sort of slowly

Starting point is 01:57:11 collapses. They also then loses a lot of market share to television. This is a really potted history, but I'm trying to give it as much as possible. So basically, so by the 60s or 70s, what you have is a lot of independent producers. So the studios just become a brand and a sort of pot of money, and often

Starting point is 01:57:27 a sound stage. They keep the sound stages, right? But then, like, distribution becomes independent, actors and, like, directors. They all are independent. They all have agents, right? It used to be that they would be hired by a company and they would just work for that company. That's why, you know, classical Hollywood directors would make like 60 movies because they

Starting point is 01:57:45 would just churn them out. They would just be like directing them. Show up, do it for two weeks, show up on the next one, do it for two weeks, et cetera. Just the studio system. So then by the 60s and 70s, it's starting to look more like what you have now, which is the studios are basically they are the homes of all the producers, the producers of people who connect the money and the talent, you know, and put it all together and package a deal and market it, right?

Starting point is 01:58:08 and that process, it seems like it's sort of a losing proposition. The business isn't doing super well until the emergence of the blockbuster with Star Wars, right? So Star Wars and Jaws and a bunch of other movies in the 70s, we're going so fast right now. I'm trying my best, but I'm sorry. No, you're all. Yeah, this is like, I was like, here, let's talk about like 150 years of history. So anyways, with the emergence of the blockbusters, one of the other things that happens is that the way Blockbuster's work is that they are released everywhere in the country at once.

Starting point is 01:58:42 Film comes on, used to, come on, literal physical objects. And you can only have so many, and they can only be so many places at once, right? So the way film used to work is they would make a certain number of film reels. If they thought it was going to be big, there was a star. But the studio was always gambling on how many, how big it would be, how many people would pick it up. And then they had to sell it to the movie theaters, right? And then the films would circulate. When they did well, they'd print more.

Starting point is 01:59:05 So movies would circulate for like a year, right? two years sometimes even. But with Star Wars and the day-end date system that we have now, what they started doing was just putting it in every movie theater in the country. You also get the emergence of multiplexes, white flight in the suburbs. I'm really going fast here. I'm trying. But the result is that movies get both more potentially valuable,

Starting point is 01:59:28 but that value gets more and more concentrated in the early period of the release, right? In the early window. Opening weekend was not very meaningful until the 80s. really, you know, late 70s, early 80s. As that happens, you suddenly need more financing and you can make more money off of bigger gambols. Simultaneously, the rest of the economy is going through financialization, right, which is a process that you've talked about on the show before. I can't get into that. But yeah, we can't. And then Reagan deregulates everything, right? Reagan, Reagan reps apart at the FCC in many ways, deregulates media ownership stuff. This is a big move. Then across the 80s,

Starting point is 02:00:06 the home market opens, so you start getting VCRs. And this completely transforms the business another time, because movies can flop in the theater, but you can guarantee rentals, right? So for like the 80s and the 90s, the big studios kind of could print money because it was pretty hard to lose money on a movie. Now, the people who lost money on movies

Starting point is 02:00:27 were like, you know, dentists from the Midwest who they'd get to invest and they'd be like, oh, yeah, sorry. Like there's arcane deals. People still got rinsed, obviously. It was Hollywood. It was shady as hell. But with the deregulation and with all this money flowing and with the integration of the home market,

Starting point is 02:00:43 suddenly technology companies like Sony and the emergence of Lucas films, they also get really into computers. George Lucas famously is into the computer side of the business. All these different technologies get brought into the cinema at the same time as it gets deregulated. So companies start snatching up these other film studios, right? And so once there were five studios,

Starting point is 02:01:05 and then the 60s and 70s, you actually have a ton of independent studios. A lot of really small ones. And they started getting dobbled up by these bigger conglomerates. You know, Sony is the one that was also a megacorp in the 80s already, that that would eventually go on to own to buy out a bunch of movie companies. The same thing is happening, though, with radio, with TV. The main thing that happens under the FCC regulation stuff is that they loosen up whether a movie studio can own a TV studio.

Starting point is 02:01:32 They used to be fully separate. And then, and broadcast rules changed. Broadcast rules changed so studios could own a movie theater, or you could own a movie company, a radio station, and a TV station. Oh, good God. And as you can imagine, that is how things started to accelerate. You get like the ABC Disney merger in the late 80s, NBC Universal, mergers and acquisitions become the big thing.

Starting point is 02:01:57 You know, the stock market is booming. Then you get other big corps buying them out. And then we're just in the classic phase of consolidation, where bigger and bigger fish eat up the smaller ones. And this is how, I guess, importantly for this story, suddenly, like, all of the television news media is owned by these giant-ass movie companies, which surely nothing will go wrong. Well, yeah, and we come to you hear from IHeart Radio, which, you know, is a lovely

Starting point is 02:02:22 brand of... Kind of me speaking, we are IHartMedia. Okay, sorry, sorry, excuse me. A technically distinct company, I think, actually don't ask me to explain exactly how. that whole, I hear media, I hear it radio split works, but, you know. So media consolidation, this is, you know, consolidation is the story of capitalism famously, right? Like, you know, an industry builds, lots of new entrepreneurs come into the space, people figure out what's possible with the industry, has more and more money flows in,

Starting point is 02:02:53 a few winners come and consolidate, we've seen it happen in tech as well. But yeah, it has particularly perverse effects when we're talking about the visual culture, the audio culture, and the news media, the way information is spread. Although I would argue that the effects are still pretty perverse from the way social media and tech giants have controlled things. I think it's pretty obvious. Oh, yeah. It is extremely bad, some would say.

Starting point is 02:03:19 You might say it's extremely bad. You know, a lot of people are very upset about the news that David Ellison, who is the Nepo baby to end all Nepo babies, because he's not a Hollywood nepo baby. he's not the son of a previous, he's just the son of a rich guy who wanted to be in movies. So he bought his way into like acting roles

Starting point is 02:03:48 and then he like just threw money around until he got Skydance Global, which is this company that, you know, he's been in Hollywood for 10 years. Technically, he's like an experienced producer. This man is 43 years old, which for like, you know, the CEO of a billion, you know, he started with a generous loan from Daddy Larry,

Starting point is 02:04:05 let's just say. And, you know, I think people are very upset, obviously because he's a Trump ally, right? The Alisons are Trump allies. He has literally said, I'm going to make more right-wing movies, you know, like, you know, the Daily Wire, you know, they were all washing out, but now

Starting point is 02:04:21 they'll probably have contracts or whatever. You know, who knows? Like, it's going to be money. But a lot of people are also saying that this is just for CNN, and that's actually not true. Yeah. So a thing that is important to know is that the cable part of this deal, Netflix was going to spin off the cable, the Discovery Channel at CNN,

Starting point is 02:04:37 was going to spin off all the cable. So if he just wanted CNN, he could have waited for the Netflix deal to go through, and he could have just bought it on the market for a steal. Because the thing about cable is, it's losing money. If you look at, okay, this is a really dark fact, and I apologize to everyone, but if you look at the rate of cable subscription costs, if you look at a meta-aggregate data of it, the price of the annual subscription to cable goes up by the distributed amount of the previous year's subscription cost. that were lost by boomers dying. Jesus Christ. So basically it is a literally dying, it is a literally dying market.

Starting point is 02:05:16 The only people who still pay for cable other than institutional forces are like people above 60 and they're just literally dying and the price goes up as more and more of them dying. It is over as a business, cable. Even ESPN. Disney is trying to get rid of ESPN, right?

Starting point is 02:05:31 Even sports are valueless now. Not valueless. I mean, so billions of dollars, obviously. But to these rules, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You know, if you look at what ESPN's like trying to do about this, they're like just turning into an influencer factory. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:05:43 With just like Rich Eisen and like all of these fucking unhinged dipshits. Exactly. So anyway, so people are pretty like despairing about it because I think it's about CNN. But if it was just about CNN, like I said, they could have just waited and gotten it for a song. David Ellison really thinks he's a, he's cosplaying as a movie producer, but because he has so much money, he's succeeding. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:06:05 Of the movies he's produced that you might like, although I didn't like it, but a lot of people like Top Gun Maverick. Like, it's fun, I guess. Everything about that movie suddenly just like clicks into focus. It's like, oh! I just want to know that Top Gun Maverick is the greatest work of art that he produced by some extreme margin. This guy's responsible for Terminator's 5 and 6. That would be Dark Fate and Genesis.

Starting point is 02:06:28 Oh, no. He produced Geostorm, which you may remember came too late to capitalize on the disaster thing in 2017. he made the Gemini Man movie, which was when Will Smith fought Will Smith with weird aging technology. Oh, I visually remember seeing TV commercials. It kind of killed Will Smith's marketability as a star. Like, that was kind of the film.

Starting point is 02:06:51 Like, after Earth did bad from Chon, but he's responsible for ending Will Smith. He did the Spy Kids reboot, which Spy Kids Armageddon from 2020. Oh, no. This guy has made just really bad movies. All of these. right-wing people are all like the thing they want to do is make movies. This is like what's like

Starting point is 02:07:12 killing the daily wire. Is it they decided to be a movie company and it turns out they can't make movies? But it's like this guy is like what if you had that but backed by like the entire tech capital apparatus and your dad was fucking Larry Ellison, the Oracle guy like one of the richest test fascist who's ever lived? Then you can do it. Then you can just buy yourself a movie studio and you can do it because the thing movies need is money. And then you can keep buying other movie studios. But, and this is a bit contrarian, I'm

Starting point is 02:07:43 not sure that this is worse for movies than Netflix getting it. Because Netflix would have likely sabotaged what was remaining of WB's theatrical business model, right? Like, Netflix

Starting point is 02:07:59 doesn't like the theater. Now, they've been trying to get into theatrical, because it's like, you know, it's cash on the table. You know, it's how you build. It's the greatest marketing on earth, right? And you, when you have a big hit film, then that's a franchise, you get TV shows, you get theme parks, you get, you know, lunchboxes, you know, toys, t-shirts, you get resales, you get a reboot 10 years down the line, right? You get licensing. So they want that, but Netflix is really, I mean, they hate movies. Netflix literally has a production design, a design philosophy

Starting point is 02:08:30 of making movies that are designed for people who aren't looking at them. So that the characters say what they're doing. I mean, there was this big article that came out about this a few weeks ago. Like, Netflix is a nightmare company. So it's a real, it's a real Silla and Carbidist kind of situation, right? Like, you've got this fascist creep, but at least he, like, really thinks he likes movies? You know, like, I don't know. Anyway, the point being, people are very upset about this news because it's happened new,

Starting point is 02:08:55 because he's a Trump ally. There's this political angle. They were making all this noise. They were begging Trump to do it. Y'all are 30 years late to this being a problem. Like, I'm not trying to be like that, whatever. We're like, no, yeah. Like, we are well, but like, having three movie studios instead of two, like, you're already doing pretty bad.

Starting point is 02:09:15 Like, in the 30s, as I gave you in that little pot of history, in the 30s, Hollywood was so brutally integrated that they literally, the federal government literally broke it apart. At the height, at the height of the studio system, the biggest company at the time, which I believe was MGM was the big studio, controlled 18. percent of the market of the film market, which is massive. I mean, the market of anything, 18 percent of a market is obscene. Hidious. Disney, in a bunch of the past years, has run 40 percent of the market. Worldwide. Worldwide, not due to domestic. Jesus Christ. So, like, we are already at this level of concentration.

Starting point is 02:09:55 Like, the fact that it keeps going, like, yes, it does mean there will be fewer and fewer movies. It does mean more layoffs. It means things are getting worse, but you know, we've been here. You know what I'm saying? I think it's 37. I think it's actually only 37%. Oh, wow, wow. Yeah, 3%.

Starting point is 02:10:14 Sorry. I'm huge difference. I rounded up. I'm sorry about that. Yeah. Well, and this is something I think gets back to, one of the sort of political answers

Starting point is 02:10:24 that I've been seeing to this is like, you know, this return from kind of like the left of the Democratic Party to being like, oh, we should talk about like anti-monopoly and we should do like trust busting again. It's like, probably

Starting point is 02:10:36 yeah, but we did this. Right? Like, we did this. We got rid of the monopolies. And then they came back. And it's like, this is, you know, this is, this is basically a structural problem of capital. Is this kind of consolidation? And you can break up

Starting point is 02:10:52 the monopolies, but they'll just reform. It requires you to win the battle forever. And all the monopolies have to do is get like one fascist elected or get like, like all they need is one Ronald Reagan and you just lose everything. And it's like, okay, like this is a problem that can't be solved just by tinkering on the edges of the system. You have to actually destroy the conditions that make it possible,

Starting point is 02:11:15 and those aren't regulatory conditions. Those are hold on, why are people allowed to own this shit? Yeah, and I think that's exactly right. And I think, you know, one of the things about monopolist nation, which is famous, one of the things that even capitalists don't like about monopolies is that the quality goes down famously, right? Because you don't know. You don't have to compete, whatever. There's literally no reason to try and make the product good. But like one of the things about the concentration of IP,

Starting point is 02:11:45 and like one of the things that's like sort of scary about its consolidation in general, and this is a fact that's really important to understand, when you own a bucket of intellectual property, let's say you own Sesame Street, right, which is one that's not owned. So it's a good example to use because it's weird. When you own Sesame Street, and if you start to make products of Sesame Street. It means that every idea that isn't Sesame Street but threatens to become more

Starting point is 02:12:09 popular than Sesame Street is a threat. So it is, if you own, if you own enough IP, it is in your logical material interest to stop new ideas from being made. Because every new idea is competition. If you own the back catalog of Bob Dylan as like some of these investment firms do you, I think he has sold to hypnosis or one of these big, there are these, big music investment firms that own the rights to all of these old songs. If you guys, if y'all remember in 2018, 2019, all movie trailers suddenly started having weird sad girl covers of like 60s and 70s pop songs. Do you remember this era? Oh, yeah. Yeah, like a sad guitar girl. And I was just like, what happened in like Hollywood? Was there like some weird trend? No.

Starting point is 02:12:57 What happened was these investment firms got hold of it. And if they can release a new cover version of the song Oh God, they get to keep the copy They hit the property rights twice So they get it on the new They get it on their new play And then people go back to the old ones They're reminded of it

Starting point is 02:13:12 Yeah, because it's worse too Because the new ones are all shit It's like, oh god And and This is only possible because of the way The streaming services got consolidated And that they pay per play Because pay per play

Starting point is 02:13:27 As everyone knows Completely screws artists There's just no way To make any money off that Yeah But if you are own a massive library, like the UM, like the BMG or Sony Universal. If you own a library like that, you do nothing and you make billions a year. Right. So it becomes just permanent, perfect

Starting point is 02:13:44 rent that you never have to worry about. So all you have to do is buy enough musical IP and then try and get new artists who are hot to cover your old IP. So this is like this really weird esoteric seeming, you know, it's based on the division between particular recording copyrights and the copyrights of like individual song of the songwriting. It's like built on the sort of weird esoteric structure of intellectual property law, which like when you start talking about it, people's eyes literally like roll into the back of their head, right? Like the daisy, they like fall over and a daisy pops up there like the cartoon. They're just dead. That's not interesting. But like, because of that, for five years when you went to the grocery store, you would be in a weird

Starting point is 02:14:24 uncanny valley where you were hearing a song that you thought you recognized but was like slightly different. Yeah. Right. So, the entire material structure of the world. Like the psychic structure of the world gets transformed by these weird exploits over like financial loopholes by the worst people on Earth whose goal is to never let you hear a new song. Right? Like they never want you to hear new music again.

Starting point is 02:14:49 They just want the boomer tracks to play forever with like new versions by, you know, they just want Charlie XTX to record fucking Jefferson Airplane. Like that's their, that's their wettest dream, you know? And all that shit is going on in the background of your life, right? Like, I mean, it's not, it's, it's, but it's affecting the psychic atmosphere. It's producing nostalgia. It's producing all these affects that are rife for fascism. It makes people want to go back.

Starting point is 02:15:14 Yeah. It's like, okay, what happened the last time we saw like the completely unhinged, like, concentration of all capital to monopolies? It was like, well, all that capital was liquidated by World War II. Sure was. And World War I was one as well, too, right? These were both to a large extent. This is something that, you know, if you go back and read anyone who's doing any political

Starting point is 02:15:34 analysis about World War I in the lead up to it and as it's happening. The thing everyone is talking about is the consolidation monopoly capital. And I think you can argue maybe that the early 1800s had like a larger consolidation just in the sense of like, I'm questionable as to whether this is just because it's too expensive to literally run a country. but we haven't quite returned to like the East India Company has an army and they conquer countries periodically. But like I think it's just because that's too expensive. And you'd rather just outsource that to the state. But it's less far than you think. It's close.

Starting point is 02:16:09 Because the part of the way that it outsourced us to the state, and this is in, this is all stuff for my upcoming book, which you can pre-order now. That's true. The World Trade Organization, one of the things that it did when you joined the WTO, and this was done by lobbyists, mostly film and pharma and chemical lobbyists from the U.S. If you join the WTO, you have to accept, you don't not only have to accept their copyright and piracy law, you have to agree to build copyright courts and copyright police in your country. Jesus Christ.

Starting point is 02:16:43 So that if, say, Apple sees you making a fake iPhone, they have a literal legal procedure domestic to your country to force you to stop to smush those. Paises. Jesus Christ. Major corporations can get police in Vietnam to go in and light a warehouse on fire because it's full of fake goods, like, without ever leaving the U.S., right? So, yeah.

Starting point is 02:17:08 Yeah, the company's more indicative through these world trade organizations. Well, they did the ordo liberal thing of where we're using the supra state apparatus to negate the sovereignty of the state by creating the super state, which we run. Yes. So, I mean, I'm obviously interested in the IP and the cultural angle. this is the only law like this in any of these agreements. All the rest of the trade agreements, they can negotiate. But part of what's so obscene about Trump's tariffs is that the U.S. already had this.

Starting point is 02:17:37 It was called the priority watch list. They just had this list in the White House where they could just say, you're not doing a good job enough stopping piracy. And it gives the White House unilateral capacity to create trade embargoes on people without going to Congress. Like, this was all the tariffs, which also hurt your. economy, obviously, but even if they worked the way Trump imagines they do, like, he already had that power, and, like, other presidents have been using it for decades. Big visible sanctions, like what they put on Iran or Venezuela, are a much more dramatic upscale. But the priority watch list,

Starting point is 02:18:11 they can just threaten to upgrade you from on the watch list to a priority country on that, and you will watch countries fold entirely on trade policy. Like, it's crazy. So, like, one of the things that's interesting about this moment and about the Trumpist moment is that they're ripping apart their own infrastructure. Because they literally just don't understand how it works. No, it's like you headed them an aircraft carrier and they're ripping out the copper wires just trying to sell it. And it's like, you have an aircraft carrier.

Starting point is 02:18:34 What are we doing? Oh, God. Exactly. You know, so again, like, I think there is this talk about the consolidation of culture. And I think, like, you know, people like the Ellisons are just, they're just vulgar at it. Yeah. Like, the thing is, like, Mike Eisner was better at it.

Starting point is 02:18:52 Like Bob Iger, who is the CEO of Disney, currently, although he's about to step down. Bob Iger saw them through the acquisition of Marvel and Star Wars and all that. He is an incredible, I mean, you know, whatever, his team, even he himself is a pretty unimpressive guy. But, like, you know, like, other than that internal politics, which is what all CEOs are good at. Anyway, you know, like, these companies were already good at this. And, like, what has happened is that a wing of the capitalists who are really bad at it and really resentful, because they're all sort of like

Starting point is 02:19:21 the David Ellison's in the world. They're all the resentful, fail sons of wealth who, you know, they want more power and more respect and they don't appreciate how much their shit

Starting point is 02:19:32 is already built on the very thing they claim to want to do. Yeah, well, and I guess it is, to some extent, a kind of funny, like, the election of Trump

Starting point is 02:19:40 and also just sort of Allison just, like, devouring. This is why it's, like, third studio that he's eaten in, like, five years.

Starting point is 02:19:47 And, like, all these forces being devoured by this is like, well, yeah, like, this is what happens when you set up a system like this. Eventually, there's going to be a bigger fish who's just going to devour you because they have, for example, Oracle behind them, which is just an amount of capital that, like, outside of, like, Disney, you can't have that kind of capital. Right.

Starting point is 02:20:08 And, like, with Trump, it's like, yeah, you finally created a monster that is large enough to shatter the extremely delicate and complicated system that you did, and is also just doesn't understand it? Yeah, exactly. And I think, like, if you want to see what the future of Hollywood looks like, I mean, you know, you can go worse than to look at China, right? China is the most dynamic film market. It overtook the U.S. as the number one value of the box office in 2022, I think.

Starting point is 02:20:36 I think it did in 2021, but that was still COVID shutdown affected. Yeah. 2022 or 23, China became the actual plurality of ticket sales in the world by dollar, if not by number. By number, they've already long surpassed the U.S. Yeah, yeah. But the way that Chinese film companies work is like they're all pretty nakedly financial companies.

Starting point is 02:20:55 Like Tencent and Alibaba, right? And like these are companies, they're just already from other sectors. And they're just like, we have cash. We use the cash to make a movie. Yeah. Which is what the studios always did too. Right? I want to be really clear.

Starting point is 02:21:09 Like I don't want to romanticize. But like, you know, that's where it always was. Right. And it's just that like in the turn of the century when Hollywood was being made, industries were just more divided. Yeah. The reason to talk about all of this business stuff on some level, I mean, it's interesting on its own as history, it's interesting as critique of capitalism, but I think it's also

Starting point is 02:21:40 interesting because it affects the aesthetics, like, of what the movies that get made, right? And I think when we think about, when people think about fascist propaganda, you know, we think about the Nazis, right, obviously, because the Nazis had the longest running fascist propaganda machine in the world. They had the Ministry of Culture under a Girl. And I think when we talk about Nazi propaganda, we think about Triumph of the Will, and we think about stuff like Judensus, right? Like extremely horrifying anti-Semitic bullshit. Extremely horrifying anti-Semitic movies, there were two of them in the 10 years that

Starting point is 02:22:14 Gerbils ran the UFA, which is the film company that made movies for Germany. The vast majority, the vast majority of films under the Reich were frothy comedies and musicals and adventure stories. because the principle that Gerbil's operating on was called the orchestra principle. And he believed that you should just actually, art should just be reduced to creating feelings. It should be totally de-intellectualized. And then very little of that art remains. Those movies are mid, you know?

Starting point is 02:22:40 The movies made by Utah are not good. Like, even the ones that are not offensive. They're just mid. But they all do the same thing. They all work together around a principle, certain principles around family and romantic love and domestic life. Most of it inoffensive in and of itself. And so I think when we think about Ellison taking over, I think we imagine, you know, as we were joking about in the beginning,

Starting point is 02:23:05 shit like the Daily Wire anti-woke Cinderella or whatever the fuck. Yeah. Am I allowed to cuss? I'm doing so much of it. Yeah, I swear all the time. Okay, thank you. We are not regulated by the FCC. No, let's go.

Starting point is 02:23:17 No one is these days. I mean, I guess we technically are, but we're not under the radio regulation, so we can say whatever we want. Perfect. Love that. But, like, fascist filmmaking has not looked like that, for the most part, in the history of it. Fascist filmmaking looks like family adventure fair often. And I think we have been so blinded to the way that this happens that we imagine that

Starting point is 02:23:45 Allison taking over is suddenly going to mean that now there's going to be fascist movies and theaters. But, like, have you all been to the movies? Yes. Like, have you all seen what Warder Brothers did with J? like the Snyder verse? Like, yeah, like, did you, did you watch The Beekeeper? Right. Speaking of Netflix, like, that was, that was the most fascist movie I have ever seen.

Starting point is 02:24:03 Exactly. It is literally, it is a movie that is just a guy shooting a bunch of people. And then the background superstructure is an explanation of what the furor is, which is, like, the force that is outside of the order that is able to violate the rules of the order in order to, in order to create the order itself, except it's a guy called the beekeeper. and he just shoots people. Like, it's...

Starting point is 02:24:26 That's pretty bad. That's pretty bad. Yeah. I did not watch that one. And I like Stathie. It's really unhinged. I watched it with my family, nightmare.

Starting point is 02:24:33 Holy shit. It's going insane. Yeah. Things are so bad that like, there was a movie Nobody with Bob Oden Kirk that came out in 2019. And it was basically a parody

Starting point is 02:24:44 of those like Liam Mason, you know, the John Wick movies and like Liam Neeson, like dad men to take and stuff, right? Yeah. And it was a parody, maybe you could be clued in by the fact that it was

Starting point is 02:24:53 Bob Odenk, and it was filled with comedians. Maybe you could be clued in by the fact that he's fighting because they took his daughter's Hello Kitty bracelet. Like, there's a pretty clear, but it's dry, but it plays it very dry. Yeah. Every single professional film critic reviewed it like it was dead serious. Like Bob, when he first cutting to become the next Liam Neeson. And part of that is because they shot good action sequences.

Starting point is 02:25:18 Like he did a good job with satire. Yeah. But then what happens? What happened next? is that now there's a nobody too and it's completely forgotten the joke and it's not good either. Jesus fucking Christ.

Starting point is 02:25:29 Yeah, and Bob O'Nickirk just like he had this one window where he could really sell that he couldn't sell it in the sequel. It doesn't matter. No, it's the Jard head sequels. Right, exactly. But like, we're just in a time of extreme literalism

Starting point is 02:25:42 where like everything is really, really like script-driven. It's really on its face. It's really textual. Everything is just selling something else everything can possibly be sequel. Nothing really changes. Politics only exists as bureaucracy.

Starting point is 02:25:58 These are all deeply fascist concepts. They're just more subtle than goose-stepping. SS uniforms, you know? Yeah. Part of what's so funny about The Daily Wire is it's like, like, they come for Disney. Like, you can't do anything to make a more fascist. Like, Disney entertains people and makes a fascist populace.

Starting point is 02:26:16 Like, they're just bad filmmakers. And that kind of matters. Yeah. I think there is a change. chance that like, I don't know, Ellison is such a dumbass that he just tries to do it anyways. Like, he just tries to be like,

Starting point is 02:26:32 fuck, well, even then, like, he hasn't really made, like, a stereotype of Nazi movies. He's made, like, actual Nazi movies. Just to say, fucking Top Gun Maverick. Yeah, exactly. And people love Top Gun Maverick. People were like, I guess it's maybe

Starting point is 02:26:48 kind of problematic, like, but we love, you know, it's like, that movie is, like literally propaganda for the Air Force. I thought it was fun. Don't get me wrong, but like, people have been really trained to not see that stuff. Yeah, and it's like we're like now fighting the war

Starting point is 02:27:05 that that movie was propaganda for. Yes, exactly. Like, we literally are fighting, we invaded a rod, like where we bombed a riot at all. F-15s went down for the first time of the Gulf War. Yeah, because they got shot down by her own, by our own allies, air defenses.

Starting point is 02:27:21 You know what? We didn't have Maverick. We didn't have Tom Cruise training them. And that's what Allison's going to do. That's why I'm happy he's merging it because our brave boys in the skies are going to be safer. God. So yeah, anyways, I don't know where I'm going with this

Starting point is 02:27:36 because obviously things are bad and anyone betting against things getting worse over the last 10 years has lost their pants, right? But things can get worse. But also there is the actual object. the actual film object exists and part of what has been hard about Hollywood the reason they've built these monopoly structures

Starting point is 02:27:57 the reason they've built these IP structures is because audiences are fickle and that's annoying and you can't just like force stuff down their throats and they're not going to just like buy something for sure every time and you have to sort of seduce them right like it's you have to make something they want to see the MCU was unstoppable until it stopped

Starting point is 02:28:16 and now no one likes it and it's really annoying right and they still make their money back on the MCU you. They're doing fine. Do not play a violin for Kevin Feige. He's doing fine. He's crying on his third shot, you know. But like, so I guess what I'm saying is that like, is it like, as we enter into more and more naked versions of this, what it should help us do rather than think, oh, my God, all is lost is to reflect on how we got here already, how often we were already here under liberalism, under Biden, under just regular capitalist conditions, how often we've already been here. re-evaluate the way we think about what good culture could look like and then start to move.

Starting point is 02:28:55 Yeah, I want to come back to something I said a few years ago when we did a show with Gare about the People's Joker and... I saw the TV glow. Yeah, I saw the TV glow. I was about to say the one about the egg who has the bad ending and never transitions. Yes, the horror movie about not transitioning. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:29:14 I think there is an extent to which, you know, there was a really brief... attempt to sort of sublimate transness into film for like one year. But, you know, like, we're the people who've been spat out of this, but also trans people are making movies at a rate that has never happened before, like ever. There's never been anything like it. And, you know, like the Wachowski's, like, have a studio now where they're pumping out a bunch of trans movies and, like, you know, we're getting like Man Hunter and we're getting like a whole bunch of other stuff. And The thing I said a few years ago, I think it's even more desperate and true now is that, like, trans film is one of the last things fighting for the existence of film as a medium and not as a way to sell you toys and, like, $15 popcorn.

Starting point is 02:30:08 Hey, they also sell you all expenses paid vacations. You have to go into debt for it. Okay, Mia? It's really funny when we're good. Yeah. Support trans film, support local film. And the thing about movies is that movies are bad. But the other thing is that movies are good.

Starting point is 02:30:22 So it's hard. This is the dialectic in motion? Yeah, yeah. Look, and I will say this, there has been, for many thousands of years, a second dialectic operating, and then it's a dialectic between labor and capital. That's probably, I'd probably backdated capital too far, but, you know, fuck it. I don't know, we can resolve, we can resolve movies good and movies bad by resolving the other dialectic of capital and labor

Starting point is 02:30:49 by simply destroying the categories and ending the class system. I believe in us. We can make movie good again. Movie has never been good. There can be a new future. We're a movie good. Yeah, that's right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I believe. One final thing. Vicky, where can people find your book? Yes. It's being put out by Haymarket. Um, so you can go to their website. I also have a link to my bookshop page via Blue Sky. I'm Vicki A-Kab on Blue Sky. So if you want to watch me posting through it, you know, come hang out, I guess.

Starting point is 02:31:24 Yeah, pre-order it, talk to libraries about it, ask a local, if you have a local bookshop, asking them, that stuff really helps. It make a huge difference. And, yeah, I would really appreciate any of that. If you're interested in how Disney destroyed the world and in the ways that we've been talking about here today, can read way more about it. Yeah, and I don't know, Vicki's books good, can confirm, have read. They are good. Oh, thanks, me too. Canadian women are looking for more.

Starting point is 02:32:01 More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on I Heart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Starting point is 02:32:29 I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first Bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it all I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand. and ended in a courtroom with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal.

Starting point is 02:32:59 The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search for it. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of He Said She Said, and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. Listen to Love Trapped on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 02:33:35 Next Monday, our 2026 IHeart Podcast Awards are happening live at South by Southwest. It's the biggest night in podcasting. We'll honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative talent and creators in the industry. And the winner is creativity, knowledge, and passion will all be on full display. Thank you so much. IHeart Radio. Thank you to all the other nominees. You guys are awesome. Watch live next Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific free at veeps.com or the Veeps app.

Starting point is 02:34:06 Hey, I'm Jay Chetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. My latest episode is with Hillary Duff, singer, actress, and multi-platinum artist. Hillary opens up about complicated family dynamics, motherhood, and releasing our first record in over 10 years. We talk about what it's taken to grow up in the entertainment industry and stay grounded through every chapter. It's a raw and honest conversation about identity, evolution, and building a life that truly matters. You desire in family like this picture, and that's not reality a lot of the times for people. My sister and I don't speak. It's definitely a very painful part of my life, and I hope it's not forever, but it's for right now.

Starting point is 02:34:51 Listen to On Purpose with Jay Chetty on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We should have kept working on that bomb that they thought would turn the entire enemy army gay, which was the thing they really put money into. This is it could happen here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans.

Starting point is 02:35:21 This episode, we are covering the week of February 25th to March 4th. A House committee just today on Wednesday has subpoenaed A.G. Pambonied to testify on her handling of the Epstein investigation with five Republicans joining all Democrats in the vote. Hillary Clinton was asked about Pizza Gate and UFOs during her congressional testimony on Jeffrey Epstein. More on that next week in a special episode. God. And Netflix declined to raise their offer to buy Warner Brothers, resulting in Paramount winning the bidding war. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr held CNBC that the Paramount deal

Starting point is 02:35:57 would be approved quote unquote pretty quickly and that Netflix quote would have had a very difficult path saying the Paramount deal is quote

Starting point is 02:36:05 a lot cleaner does not raise all the same types of concerns unquote more on that in the episode before this one it's insane

Starting point is 02:36:14 he just said that out loud on hinge yeah on Thursday February 26th almost a year after Mahmoud Khalil was first detained, ICE agents arrested another Columbia student in the early hours of the morning. Shortly after 6 a.m., five plainclothes agents from the Department of Homeland

Starting point is 02:36:35 Security showed up outside a Columbia apartment building without a warrant demanding to be let inside. The agents gained entry by falsely telling the building's superintendent that they were police searching for a missing child, even bringing pictures of this fake case. kid. The agents used this lie to enter into the apartment of 29-year-old student Ellie Agaheva, where she was then arrested and taken off campus. After being detained, Agaheva posted on Instagram, quote, DHS illegally arrested me, please help. This same day, Mayor Mamdani happened to be meeting with President Trump in the White House regarding federal funding for the Sunnyside Yards housing project. During this meeting, the mayor voiced opposition to ICE raids and concern about the

Starting point is 02:37:26 detention of the Columbia student earlier that morning. I shared my concern with the president about ICE's detention of Columbia student Elmina Agayevah yesterday morning, as well as the detention of four additional New Yorkers in relation to the university. Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, Yunseo-Chang, and Nqa Kordia. I ask that their cases be dropped. I'm grateful that shortly after our meeting, the president called me to inform me that Elmina would be imminently released, and indeed she was. The mayor also discussed the release of Akeheva in a question during this press conference. During your advocacy with President Trump, what do you think the winning argument was?

Starting point is 02:38:07 And did they reverse course? All I can tell you is what happened, which is that I shared directly with the president a list of names of Columbia students and those who've also been detained because, because of their activity on Columbia campus, and that these actions do nothing to advance the cause of public safety. And I asked that these cases be dropped, and the president said that he would look into it. Soon after the meeting, I received a phone call from the president saying that he was going to imminently release her. At 3.45 p.m. Agaheva posted on Instagram that she'd been released and was, quote, unquote, safe and okay. On Thursday night, a DHS spokesperson told the reporter

Starting point is 02:38:48 that Hagaheva's student visa was terminated in 2016 for failing to attend classes, and that, quote, ICE placed her in removal proceedings, and she's been released while she waits for her hearing, unquote. The current state of her case is unknown, with neither her lawyers nor DHS providing any follow-up statements. That last part is very confusing to me, right? Because if she had lost her student visa for non-attend, that can happen, that would have shown up in service, right? And that was a decade ago. That part confused me. I just saw I was scanning it right before we started and I figured I'd just ask you in the episode. But yeah, I mean, she has no pending cases with DHS in their system or no pending appeals. It's very unclear what happened here or the exact cause of why she was arrested and the state of whatever visa she's on. Right. Yeah. She could have been on a completely different visa. Yeah, it's very unclear. There's a lot here that I'd like to know many such cases, I guess. So to start with a couple of immigration things. Do you want a Senate hearing yesterday? That's Tuesday.

Starting point is 02:39:52 Christine Nome doubled down on the claim she's previously made about Alex Preti, which are, as far as we can tell, false, right? Saying his actions were, quote, the definition of domestic terrorism. She's in the House testifying today. So I will try and summarize both those testimonies in next week's ED, just so we don't end up covering this twice, and we've got a lot to address today. This is breaking news right before we really. release the podcast, Christine Nome, the Secretary of Homeland Security, is going to be leaving that

Starting point is 02:40:24 job at the end of March, and she will be replaced by current United States Senator for Oklahoma, Mark Wayne Mullen. Noam will be moving into another job where she will be the special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, which is a security initiative for the Western Hemisphere that Trump is planning on telling us more about this weekend. Mullen, for those aren't familiar, is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He has been in the House of Representatives for 10 years before he was in the Senate for the last three years, and he used to be a professional MMA fighter. Secondly, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty has announced an investigation into potential misconduct by federal officers in the state.

Starting point is 02:41:10 In response, DHS has claimed that, quote, federal officials acting in the course of their duties are immune from law. liability under state law. This isn't true. In legal terms, right, federal officials can be prosecuted if their actions weren't necessary or proper or were not in the course of their duties. So this pertains to the supremacy clause of the constitution, right? And there's a two-part test for supremacy clause immunity. A, the federal officials' actions are authorized under federal law and B, that they are, quote, necessary and proper in the execution of their duties as a federal officer. I will link in the sources of our document to a 10th Circuit case on this. The case was about some federal wildlife officers who had crossed onto private land during a wolf-collaring

Starting point is 02:41:57 operation in Wyoming. And then Wyoming attempt to prosecute them for trespassing, right? So we can see, like a previous example of this. But it's not true that they have complete immunity from state laws, which is what's important here. I want to move on to Iran. just like most of the U.S. military has done. But thank you. It works so hard on these. Yeah. So we made a whole episode about this,

Starting point is 02:42:25 which came out on Wednesday of this week. And I don't want to recap what we said there. That is why we make lots of episodes so you can go into depth on things. So I will, for the most part, be picking up on that by updating people on things that have happened in the 24 hours since we recorded that. Firstly, it seems that the attacks are at Easter timing was heavily driven by Israel,

Starting point is 02:42:49 who were likely acting on intelligence about the whereabouts of Homania. The attacks occurred in the daytime, which is pretty unusual. Like, normally they want to time these things with moon phase, they want to do them at night just to make them safer for any of the piloted aircrafts that they're using, right? I also wanted to point out, so the source for this Israel claim, let's start there, comes from the Rapid Response 47 account. I guess I describe that as like a White House-affiliated Twitter account.

Starting point is 02:43:21 I can't think of the... Yeah. It's one of the accounts that it's not White House, but it's one of the accounts that the Trump administration runs. One of the accounts the administration uses to disseminate information. Yeah, it's quotation here from Marco Rubio. Quote, the president made very wise decision. We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action.

Starting point is 02:43:39 We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched their attacks, we would suffer higher casualties. It seems like the initial push came from Israel, right? I'd also like to add that Tehran is getting bombed very heavily, as we record this. Something I think is missing in that discourse,

Starting point is 02:44:00 we were actually going to have an episode about the water crisis in Iran this week. Yeah. For obvious reasons, we made another Iran-based episode. But Iran is critically low on water, right? Lake Umea, which is, was the largest lake in Asia, is essentially gone now from damming, from draining of aquifers. And Tehran is sitting on top of an empty aquifer, which leads to a greater potential for damage, I guess, with some of these large bombs that we're seeing drop there, right?

Starting point is 02:44:30 I mean, it also means that absent even any of this military aggression from the U.S. that we're seeing right now, Iran was in realistic danger of becoming a failed state. because of the sheer lack of water. That is an existential threat. When your capital city is running out of water, like there's no other way to look at that scale of problem. And the fact that now they're dealing with this massacre of the people who had been running things as well as mass destruction via the air of a lot of civil infrastructure,

Starting point is 02:45:03 this is just so much more of a problem. And it makes the odds of the end result of all this being a failed state in the region that leads to a humanitarian crisis on scale of the refugee crisis we saw during the early stages of the Syrian Civil War, much likelier. Yeah, especially when you consider that there are millions of refugees already living in Iran from Afghanistan. And Iran has been deporting them on a massive level. But, like, yes, the chances of this being an absolute humanitarian disaster are waringly high.

Starting point is 02:45:33 Tehran received one millimeter of rain last year, according to some Guardian reporting, I read. They were already, as you said, very close. to people turning on the taps and nothing coming out. Yeah. They say it's not helping that. I want to move on to these claims that we have seen in the past 24 hours about a Kurdish partner force in eastern Kurdistan, right? In Kurdish, that will be called Rogulat.

Starting point is 02:45:59 That would be Western Iran, right? Right. Like, Kurdistan, the broader region, is Western Iran, Northern Iraq, northeast Syria, southern Turkey. Yeah. Right? You can draw kind of a big glob. around all those parts of the world, that's Kurdistan.

Starting point is 02:46:13 Yeah, exactly. You can like draw up a lot that encompasses all of those things. Yeah. Obviously, Kurdistan is not a state. It is an area. It's not at all. That is part of the issue at stake here. Kind of a big deal. Kind of the thing. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:46:27 So Axios has reported that Trump called Bufel Talibani and Masud Bhazani, who are the leaders of the two biggest factions in Iraqi Kurdistan. Yeah. Southern Kurdistan, northern Iraq. The piece was written by Barack, Rer, This is not Barack's first time joining us on executive disorder. Brenda the Bard. Yeah, regular guest baragher.

Starting point is 02:46:49 People remember last time that we talked about Barack, it was in the context of a leaked proposal for peace between Russia and Ukraine that appeared to be essentially a list of Russian demands but was presented as a US proposal. I will try and remember what week we talked about that and insert that link in case people want to go back, right? Like, I've spent a lot of time pointing out on various websites how bad this piece was. It was atrocious in its understanding of Kurdish movements.

Starting point is 02:47:18 For instance, it listed Talibani and Basani as leaders of Iranian Kurdish factions. What? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no. I think it's important to note at this point that, like, media perceptions of the Middle East are often formed by people whose understanding is eclipsed by the introductory part of the Wikipedia article on a given topic. vastly. Like, that's not an exaggeration.

Starting point is 02:47:43 Yeah, like, this is, this is, like, saying Macron is the leader of, like, the Quebecese separatists. Yeah. Like, like, that kind of shit. Like, yeah. And I see that, I do believe, actually. But, well, if that's a separate episode, I will be actually doing that in partnership with Info Wars, France.

Starting point is 02:48:00 Very excited to see that get off the ground. Info Wars, France, it's a frightening concept. Genuinely. Hey, baby. They're turning the frogs gay. We got to do something about that. That was a French. Yeah, the French joke.

Starting point is 02:48:15 Very good one. Excellent. Sorry. The, they also kind of didn't understand that SDF and Peshmerga were distinct entities that appears. Jesus Christ.

Starting point is 02:48:23 Wildly different entities in combat efficacy, too. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Just like, unless they're talking about the Peschmega Roj, I guess, which like exists largely in Telegram rumors these days. The piece does line up with the strategies that we are seeing, though, right? There has been.

Starting point is 02:48:40 significant bombing of IRGC and police facilities along the border with Iraq. There have been and continue to be many Eastern Kurdish groups who are based in Iraq right now, right? There has been significant bombing along the road from Halab to Kamuncha, right? Which would be like a road that you would use if you're planning to move some people in that way. In theory, the KDP and the P.U.K., so they are the two major Kurdish factions in Iraq, have unified their Peshmerga. Peshmerga means those who faith death. They're the armed forces that are affiliated to the two Kurdish political parties. This is really kind of a rhetorical construct because they have regional commands, which effectively mirror the areas where the KDP and the PUK are in control anyway.

Starting point is 02:49:32 but they have unified payroll, which is interesting. It is also worth noting that pro-Iran groups inside Iraq have been targeting Peshmerga with drone attacks. Both sides in this conflict are bombing Iraq for H now, which really does suck for people in Iraq. Yeah, I mean, like, this conflict has been ever present. Obviously, after the Iraq war, Iran exerted a significant amount of influence. They brought explicitly formed penetrators to the Shia militias in the region, the cleric, Mottal Sada. who was probably the most successful political figure of the war years and was very heavily involved with Iran.

Starting point is 02:50:10 During the fighting in Mosul, you had Peshmerga, you had Iraqi army soldiers generally from around Baghdad, and then you had the PMFs, the popular mobilization forces, and these were all Iran-backed militias. And traveling, especially as I was with periods, you had to always be really careful in the PMF positions because you never knew what would happen, because, again, they are enemies.

Starting point is 02:50:28 They were tied together fighting ISIS, but they are not allied forces, and they have a history of fighting each other. Yeah, that was a wild time. He had a lot of people who had a lot of beef on the same side of that particular contract. It's also probably worth noting at this point that, like, it was the Department of Defense,

Starting point is 02:50:43 not the CIA that was really driving the boat when it came to, like, supporting the Kurds in Syria. Yeah. The CIA went with the TFSA, right? The Turkish Free Syrian Army, which does not have a great record as far as not doing war crimes goes. I also received confirmation today that Barzani and Talibanis spoke with Iran's foreign minister. So they've spoken with both Trump and the Iranian foreign minister.

Starting point is 02:51:11 Kuban Taliban, who's the deputy prime minister of Kurdistan, not the same person as Barfell Talibani, the leader of the P.U.K. Made a statement to say that the Kurdistan region was not involved in the conflict. I think it's very unlikely that we will see large Peshmerga groups from northern Iraq, than Kurdistan entering Iran in the near future. Yeah. I do think it's interesting that Ravid got this piece leaked to him because things don't generally get leaked because one person has a crisis of conscience.

Starting point is 02:51:43 It does happen sometimes. But in events like this, it is normally a choice. And this particular story leaves Kurdish people in a very difficult position because it puts a target directly on them for the Iranian regime, right? and they can fight or not fight, but they have been singled out as a group that is going to be the ground forces of this Israeli and U.S. aggression. And what that means is they will be singled out for oppression at home, whether or not they fight that leaves them in a place where they might have to choose to fight, right? Or they might fight, but not through their own choosing. There has been for some time an alliance of, for some time, I think 22nd of February is when it was made of five Kurdish groups, five irons.

Starting point is 02:52:28 Ukrainian Kurdish groups. These are, rather than saying them, like, phonetically, I just read out the initials. People want to look them up. P.J.A.K. P.A.K. K.K. KD.I. And then these two groups have names, not initials. There are two of the three parts of Komala and Habat. It is more likely that these groups, specifically KDPI, will be willing to engage. We do know that Trump spoke to Mustafa Hedri, that he's a KDPI leader. I have had sources that suggest that some Kurdish and some non-Kurdish groups have at least the intention or desire to enter Iran and fight. I'm not really comfortable naming particularly which ones. I'd want data sourcing on that.

Starting point is 02:53:10 What they plan to do is a little unclear, right? None of these Rogilati groups are massive. Like, numerically, they don't have the manpower. However, ITV reported that weapons have been stockpiled in eastern Kurdistan for a while. And as we saw in Rajavar, as we saw in southern Kurdistan and the Islamic State Times, like their ability to scale up their forces pretty rapidly is something that the Kurds have retained for a long time. Yeah, an advantage they have over. So obviously, it is true that in the months preceding this, there were uprisings in Iran,

Starting point is 02:53:47 and tens of thousands were killed by the government. And that represents the people who in normal Iranian civil society would have been kind of best positioned to be active and a part of any sort of government that were to follow if the current government collapses under the onslaught being directed against it. A lot of those people are dead. That's not really the same case with the Kurdish movement because at any given time three quarters of the Kurdish movement is not, you know, more or less is outside of Iran. Physically present. And this is what happened in Syria too. When you had other parts of the country massively depleted by the slaughter fighting Assad, in northeast Syria, you were able to

Starting point is 02:54:25 have Kurds from southern Turkey and from northern Iraq come in and provide a lot of the backbone of what became these large and effective fighting units that were able to defeat ISIS. When you're talking about, like, well, what's going to happen if the government of Iran starts to crumble, there's a pretty good odds that you wind up with a sizable Kurdish force and it would very likely be supported by Western, at least initially by Western munitions in that chunk of Iran. Like that's a very possible outcome. Yeah, I think it's probably if we do see like continued air strikes, for the Iranian state to disappear in its current form, there needs to be a ground element. Right.

Starting point is 02:55:04 Yes. And these are among the most likely people. It is, of course, important to include the context that the U.S. is less than a month of abandoning its Kurdish allies in Syria. Yeah. And you should never, if you're listening to this and a member of like a foreign militant group that the U.S. is talking to, Don't ever trust us. Yeah. Bad friends.

Starting point is 02:55:28 Yeah. Bad friends indeed. Yeah. They're not friends at all, but allies. Not friends at all. Guys that will fuck you the second we can. Like the second we can. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:55:40 I will say that the Americans in Syria was specifically there to fight ISIS. They weren't there to aid in the Kurdish freedom struggle. Right. Right. And they have been very inconsistent about not aiding. The other thing about Roe's, Java was it was very explicitly not a state and not an attempt to carve out a separate state. And they were always extremely emphatic about that. So it's a very different situation than anything

Starting point is 02:56:04 you're seeing with the regime change the Trump administration is working on. Yeah, yeah. Let's take a break here and then we're going to talk about boats. Hazzar. All right. We are back and it's boat time. James Stout, Ph.D. Yeah, you can't see, but I'm wearing my little boat hat right now. I've got one of those stripy shirts on. So the United States has sunk a submarine and a total of 17 Iranian ships, it's claiming. In a briefing, St. Combs said they were going after the entire Iranian Navy. At the current time, they claim there are no Iranian ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the Arabian Gulf, or the Gulf of Oman. This briefing was interesting because they explicitly made the comparison to the invasion of Iraq. Not an invasion.

Starting point is 02:57:05 not a war that has the greatest rep in recent months and years. Even among conservatives at this point. Yeah, Trump has made a thing of, well, I mean, Trump wasn't strongly opposed to the war in Iraq, right? But I think he has acknowledged it was a mistake or the way it was conducted was poor, at least.

Starting point is 02:57:24 What they said here was that the scale of this bombing campaign was twice that of the shock and all bombing campaign that we saw in Iraq. They have so far used cruise missiles, air strikes B2, B1, and B52 bombers. Right, baby. Long-range precision of strike missiles for the first time.

Starting point is 02:57:40 They call them prisms. And something called Lucas drones, which are kind of interesting to me. They are the result of the United States capturing and reverse engineering an Iranian Shaheed drone. The Shaheed is like a – sounds like a lawnmower. Very distinctive sound. Like I've heard them flying over. Yeah. But they're a one-way attract drone.

Starting point is 02:58:00 They're essentially a sort of guided munition. They're very cheap, and they've been very effective for Iran and for Russia, who now has licensed production of these drones. So it's interesting that the U.S. is openly just saying, yeah, we saw that and we copied it. It's one of the best ideas in warfare of the last hundred years. It's an incredibly effective platform that seals up an enormous number of holes that have always existed in modern militaries, like the capacity gap that it allows particularly a country like Iran to seal, right?

Starting point is 02:58:31 because with enough Shaheeds, you effectively can mimic not just the assassination capabilities of like bigger drones, but something like close air support in a way that's very hard to interdict with traditional air power. Right. Yeah, that's a real sea change. And they seem to be being used effectively right now. Yeah. They're cheap.

Starting point is 02:58:51 There's tons of them. Ukraine, they've used like intercepted drones to intercept them, right? But that requires a lot of time, technology and like human effort. Yeah. So I think this is probably a good time, James, for me to talk about munitions. Because as you noted, we're using a significant amount of high-position projectiles. We're using, like, advanced weapon systems that are made to allow us to hit targets very precisely that could not be hit with dumb musicians or with less intelligent munitions.

Starting point is 02:59:19 The downside of this is that it's hard to make enough munitions to maintain on a war footing in peacetime, because in peacetime, it's kind of a waste of money as an industry. And so capitalism doesn't tend to, unless there's a war on reward companies for producing the kind of like munitions and number, and the kind of number you would need to fight a modern war. And so whenever one does start up, you wind up with this situation. We're seeing this. We saw this with Russia and Ukraine. We're still seeing it in Russia and Ukraine.

Starting point is 02:59:48 And we saw it in World War I, too, where very suddenly everyone runs out of ammunition, right? And prior to the United States, going to, I'm going to say, go into war with Iran. again, like literally about a week before, there was an article that dropped in the, I think, the Wall Street Journal about how Trump's top generals were really worried that the United States did not have enough munitions to sustain a conflict with Iran for any significant period of time. And there's immediately been reports as soon as this started that that is, in fact, exactly what's fucking happening. There's a good piece on CNN politics written by Sean Lindgast, Kylie Atwood, and Isabel Kershudian. And it,

Starting point is 03:00:29 describes, or at least it talks to conversations with someone at the Pentagon saying that the United States is burning through long-range precision-guided missiles at an unsustainable rate. And this is not just to attack Iranian positions, but also to stop Iranian ballistic missiles. A quote from that source, each intercept represents hundreds of hours of training, readiness, and technology, all coming together to work is designed. So that means you don't have an infinite number of these, whereas Iran is capable of producing a significant number of the ballistic missiles and the drones that these precision munitions are needed to shoot down. Iran's producing something like 100 ballistic missiles a month

Starting point is 03:01:07 and had a stockpile going into this. We can build six or seven interceptor missiles in a month, right? So obviously, we're going into this with stockpiles, and Trump has claimed that U.S. munition stockpiles have never been higher or better, and that the war could go on forever, very successfully just using these supplies, but he didn't specify what munitions he was referring to. And all of the information coming out suggests that we are, like the 7th Fleet has basically burned through its supply of advanced munitions. There's been confirmation because the IRGC claims they took out two THAAD batteries. And I don't take the IRGC at their word, but we did get local confirmation in at least one case that one of those batteries was disabled. And it seems very likely based on some

Starting point is 03:01:55 satellite imagery that both were damaged. How damage they are is very hard to say. We're talking generally the radar array that you use for the missiles has been hit. But we've only got like eight of these things. These batteries are like not just our most best protection we would have from like submarine base nuclear missiles, but our best anti-missile systems, period. And we're in the process of peeling away the fat batteries that we've got in Korea to bring into the Middle East, to continue to protect Israel and to protect our forces.

Starting point is 03:02:25 And the fact that any of them may have been seriously damaged or lost is a serious problem for the United States. I want to continue from that CNN piece here. They're interviewing a Colonel Mark Gunzinger, who's a retired military colonel and the director of future concepts and capability assessments at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. He basically made this claim that, like, since the United States has established air superiority early on in this conflict, quote, there's not such a need for the higher end, very long range standoff. weapons. I don't know that I agree with him on this because it seems like we're using some of those munitions now, but he's primarily talking about we don't need to use as discriminating of weapon systems now. Instead of using our like super advanced precision guided munitions, we can use stuff like J-dams, which we have a lot more of. We have a huge stockpile of J-dams of

Starting point is 03:03:17 various sizes and small diameter bombs. The problem is that these are not nearly as advanced in terms of their guidance capabilities, and the civilian casualties related from using these are much, much higher. So we're hitting a point where we're running out of precision munitions, and it seems very clear that at least among military thinkers, the attitude is that's fine, because we'll just use these bigger weapons that kill more civilians. And yeah, that's what you should look forward to in the next stages of this conflict. Yeah. Talking of, I guess, the next stages of this conflict, the military religious freedom foundation, reporting that it's been flooded with complaints, from troops whose officers believe the operation

Starting point is 03:03:59 will bring about the end of days as foretold in the Bible. Oh, there you go, yeah. Yeah. Here's a quotation from one of their non-commissioned officer clients. Quote, this morning, our commander opened up the combat readiness data's briefing by urging us not to be afraid as to what is happening with our combat operations in Iran right now. He urged us to tell our troops this was all part of God's divine plan. and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the book of Revelation,

Starting point is 03:04:27 referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ. He said that, quote, President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth. I am not a big Bible understander, but Garrison Davis was a regular resident Bible person. Please comment if you want to. I don't think this is good.

Starting point is 03:04:53 It's my take on that. I don't think it's a great way to be going around foreign policy. No, it's not a good foreign policy blueprint. It might be kind of made biblically accurate, though. I mean...

Starting point is 03:05:04 That's the thing, is that... Yeah. It is a good blueprint. It is accurate, though. Trump does, in fact, match a number of descriptions of the Antichrist, and it is possible that what we're doing in Iran

Starting point is 03:05:16 ends in the apocalypse. So, you know, My understanding is just hinges on a certain color of cow. Oh yeah, the red hyfer. This is a whole thing. We had a breeding program. We made it. We made it in Texas.

Starting point is 03:05:29 It's good. Yes, yes. This is one of the first, the first, like, American, like, subculture things I ever in case. When I got the internet at school and you could go into the computer lab and look at stuff, I learned about these people trying to make a red heifer, right? Like, yeah. That will bring about the apocalypse, this cow.

Starting point is 03:05:45 Yeah, fascinating stuff. Very normal. Very normal. That's all I've got. hopefully send us pictures of your cattle if you've got one of the appropriate color, and that'll be a sign that it's all over. But things in Iran do not seem to be winding down, if anything, they are holding or ramping up.

Starting point is 03:06:02 Yeah. On Tuesday, Mark Rubio said, quote, in the next few hours and days, you're going to really begin to perceive a change in the scope and the intensity of these attacks, as, frankly, the two most powerful air forces in the world take apart this terroristic regime and defang it, unquote. That, by the way, was also

Starting point is 03:06:22 preceded immediately by him saying, we're going to unleash Chang, which is a completely unhinged thing from the old, old anti-communist far right, where they're like, we're going to unleash Shankai Shack and he's going to retake China and kill everyone. So that's great.

Starting point is 03:06:38 That's fun. Extremely normal. Yeah, that's a John Bircher right there. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And after a closed door, Senate hearing, briefing the Senate on action in Iran, Senator Blumenthal said, quote, I am more fearful than ever

Starting point is 03:06:54 after this briefing that we may be putting boots on the ground. Yeah. We have to. You can't actually stop the regime without doing that. Yeah. Even the like Trump model, which is the Syria model, right, of a relatively limited footprint with a partner force. Yeah. It's still like American people died in Syria. Well, and unfortunately, I think they're also looking to Libya, right?

Starting point is 03:07:19 initially. We're hoping it would be something like that. But the thing is, in Libya, you already had a situation where there was a massive army, a raid against the dictator who was holding them back via air power. So being able to stop the air power was able to, was enough to sign the regime's death warrant. And obviously, the failure of NATO to do anything to help Libya in the wake of that has been awful. But it's totally different in Iran. Like, it's, the Iranian, people, the Iranian, like, resistance, the Iranian protests had not taken territory. They had not, like, swung large chunks of the Iranian military. The military and the regime were still in control of the country, and nothing has changed in that regard. So if you're going to knock out

Starting point is 03:08:06 the regime, you have to send in the fucking Marines. That's the only way the, and that's, I think, what's going to happen at some point. Yeah, it's going to be the next few days, probably by the time you're hearing this. By the way, just as we're recording this, hopefully this has left the news cycle. Several news outlets have published that Kurdish paramilitary forces are streaming across the border into Iraq. That's not true. Each of those groups who they're claiming are doing that, have denied it. There is going to be a lot of misinformation in the next few weeks, and you should be very careful about where you are sourcing your news. Yeah, I just wanted to make that very clear. Yeah, this is the first war, potentially major war, that started

Starting point is 03:08:52 while already in place, was an entire system that monetized people getting disinformation about that war to go viral, right? Yeah. Obviously, that has impacted things in Ukraine later. And Palestine. And Palestine, too. Yeah, yeah. But when the invasion started, those were not, like, it really, it came into being over what happened in Palestine. You're right, Garrison. Yeah. But it's now in completely full form at the start of the conflict. Yeah. Yeah, there's a whole like industry, you know, across many different countries. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:09:23 So misinformation to win money via the blue check system on Twitter, which is still used for, you know, news sourcing across the world in the case of breaking events. So speaking of industry. So one of the other consequences of this war has been effectively the end of trade in passage to the Strait of Formuz, which is an extremely critical lifeline for the world economy. I'm going to quote here from Al Jazeera, quote, A commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Monday that the strait was, quote, closed, and that any vessel attempting to pass through the waterway would be set, quote, ablaze.

Starting point is 03:10:05 Now, per CNBC, there's about 13 million barrels of oil a day that flows through the Strait of Formuz. It's 31% of all seaworn crude flow. The total, like, impacted oil production and distribution from this is about, it's about a fifth of the world's oil supply total that is being impacted by this. Liquefied natural gas is also being massively impacted because of, yeah, the places where a whole bunch of natural gas and oil are produced. This is a very, very significant blow to the world's energy. supply and one of the reasons why even if you don't care like the U.S. doesn't about, you know,

Starting point is 03:10:48 obliterating Iranian schoolgirls with bombs, this war is a terrible idea because you're suddenly losing access to a fifth of the world's oil supply. Now, Trump has repeatedly said that the straight is not open. The IRGC has repeatedly said that it is closed. Trump also yesterday, that we're recording us on Wednesday, said that the U.S. will escort tankers if necessary through the strait with U.S. Navy ships. The other major issue here is that no insurance company will insure any ship going through this because why on earth would you do that? And Trump has also ordered the government to insure these tankers. And this has stopped the massive rise in oil prices a little bit that was happening at the beginning of the beginning of the conflict. However, I don't know why it stopped the rise in oil prices because this won't work.

Starting point is 03:11:42 You can't just escort oil tankers through the straight with American battleships and have them not. Do you know how big an oil tanker is and how slow they are? There's no way militarily that you can actually move oil tankers through here. You just can't. It's too easy to hit with literally any munition. So the sort of American markets don't seem to have figured out that you obviously can, cannot escort oil tankers through the trade of Fremuz. Where people have figured this out are the Asian markets, particularly South Korea and Thailand,

Starting point is 03:12:15 where both of their stock indexes had their circuit breakers triggered, which is the emergency system they have in place when the market is collapsing too fast, all trading halts. South Korea's index lost 12.06% yesterday, which is the single largest drop that the market has ever experienced. Yeah, it's really bad. The Chinese indexes have been okay, but both Japan and Taiwan were down between 3 and 4%. We're still also quite bad.

Starting point is 03:12:46 Now, South Korea and Thailand specifically, the reason that these two countries are having just sort of apocalyptic market collapses is that these two countries are extremely reliant on imported oil. And, you know, there's this tendency to think about oil as just liquid money. And it's not. you do actually have to use it to power things. And a significant portion of both the Thai and the South Korean economy are sort of heavy industrial things that require this oil. These countries are now in very dire straits.

Starting point is 03:13:17 And the only way that this could stop is if somehow Trump wins the war very, very quickly and is able to reopen the strait, which I don't think is particularly likely. So this is probably just going to intensify. Yeah. You could call it a dire strait. Ah, Garrison, you've brought up my favorite band of which I am aware of one of their songs. Great band. He heard the one song of theirs, I know. One of their songs that has a slur in it.

Starting point is 03:13:45 There are better songs. Hey, no, but they stopped using the slur and more recent updates. But also, the slur was never, it was never a slur directed at the audience. They were talking from the perspective of a bigot insulting them. It's a thing that happened to the band. So, I think, I think, Anyway. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:14:03 In terms of songs with slurs, not the worst. Speaking of dire straits, I'm cutting the white people off talking about slurs here. Cutting it off. Speaking of being in dire straits,

Starting point is 03:14:16 Spain in a... When I wrote this script, I said a rare moment of bravery, I should give them slightly more credit than that. But in a moment of genuine bravery in principle, the Spanish government

Starting point is 03:14:28 has refused to allow the US to use its air bases. to conduct the war on Iran. Yeah. These are American air bases in Spain. This has led to a bunch of assets being moved out of Spain. Trump has responded to this by...

Starting point is 03:14:43 I'm just going to quote Al Jazeera. Quote from Zira. He said he had told his... He had told his Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bested, to, quote, cut off all dealings with Spain. We're going to cut off all trade with Spain. We don't want anything to do with Spain,

Starting point is 03:15:00 the president said. The Trump is... taking away your Yomone Barico. Like, you have to, we have to stop this. There will be no top us in America. Where else are we going to get the highest quality smoked meats? Yeah, your Torizo will that forever be worse. It's not really possible to do this, right?

Starting point is 03:15:17 Because Spain is in the EU and we don't have internal borders. Yeah, it shouldn't be possible to do this? Who knows? I think it's like probably, I'm leaning towards about 95-5 that Trump just forgets about this, and there's a 5% chance. there's some completely hitherto unused national security power that was passed by John Wu specifically. But I don't know. We're back to Calvin Ball trade policy.

Starting point is 03:15:43 He's just saying stuff. I was wrong last week. They're just making shit up. Well, here's the thing, like, that this shows that's maybe optimistic is how different the climate is, like the social climate is in the United States, as opposed during the Iraq War, where, like, if this has happened during the Iraq War, you would have had people, like, renaming Spanish dishes Freedom,

Starting point is 03:16:04 fucking Payao, whatever the fuck. Freedom fries. Yeah, yeah. You would have had, there would have been like a social, there's not, there's been no cultural backlash

Starting point is 03:16:10 against Spain in the United States that I, that I've seen that has any kind of Jews. And, you know, and to say like one series then before we wrap this up, like the approval rating for this war

Starting point is 03:16:19 is sub 50% right now. Yeah. Yeah. It's only going to get worse because wars or borr approval ratings are always the highest when they first starts. It's already sub 50.

Starting point is 03:16:29 Everyone hates this. I want to, wrap this up before we go to ads by saying the administration had also claimed that Spain had because of the threat of economic pressure, whatever had agreed to cooperate and the Spanish government immediately said, no, we didn't. What are you talking about? Yeah. So they're just lying about stuff again. It's great. Yeah. Woo. Woo. Fantastic. You know what else is great? What's that guy? America again? This brief ad break before we return for even more news. All right, we are back Two final stories to cover this episode.

Starting point is 03:17:16 Last week, the Kansas State Legislature passed a new law, overriding Governor Laura Kelly's veto, invalidating state-issued driver's license with updated gender markers. Requiring, quote, Kansas issued driver's license and identification cards reflect the credential holders' sex at birth, unquote. After this law was passed, the state sent letters to trans people informing them

Starting point is 03:17:40 their license was now invalid, effective, immediately, including to at least one trans person who did not change their gender marker, but recently changed her legal name. State officials say about 1,700 license holders were affected. The law also invalidates updated birth certificates and prohibits anyone born in Kansas from updating the gender marker on state-issued birth certificates and driver's license in the future. this same law also prohibits trans people from using the public restrooms on government property that aligns with their gender and allows private citizens to sue someone suspected of being trans in the quote-unquote wrong restroom in a government building for damages totaling $1,000.

Starting point is 03:18:27 Two trans-Kansans and the ACLU have filed a lawsuit claiming the new law SB 244 violates the Kansas Constitution's protections for personal autonomy, privacy, equality under the law, due process, and freedom of speech. Yep. Not great. No, it obviously is a violation of all those things. Yeah. I mean, I think it's also just we're noting that this is part of a trend we've been seeing of just, this is basically what used to be a whole bunch of different bills, like compiled into one, right? This is like a bounty bill. This is like a ban. This is, instead of having legislative fights over all the different elements, they're just pushing them all through in one package, which has been a way. working for them. Very clear, like, egregious violation of rights. And now there's a,

Starting point is 03:19:13 now you have people in a situation where they could have their passport being invalid, their birth certificate being invalid, and their state driver lessons being invalid. Yep. It's a very precarious situation. Yeah. That we will watch to see the follow-out of in the next few weeks to months. Finally, the Texas primary election that happened on Tuesday. Some big news coming out of that. The Republican Senate primary was going to advance to a runoff election between incumbent John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton, though this runoff could be disrupted because Trump just signaled that he will endorse Cornyn, leading many to suspect that Paxton may drop out of the race. This is still unclear, but it was a very close race between those two and one other

Starting point is 03:20:02 person that was going to go to a runoff. Due to redistricting two Democratic incumbents, House representatives Al Green and Christian Menifee, battled over a new district in a close race that will now also go to a runoff. The same goes for Representative Julie Johnson and former Representative Colin Alred, who dropped out of the Senate race to run for this newly redrawn district. Neither of these two were able to reach a majority, so that race will also head to a runoff. Incumbent Dan Crenshaw, the primary. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:20:34 Toe the Republican challenger Steve Tooth, who was backed by the party's far right and Tucker Carlson, is significantly to the right of Dan Crenshaw. Yeah. Jesus. As fun as it is to see Crenshaw go down, he's getting replaced by someone that is actually worse. It's not good. It's just kind of funny.

Starting point is 03:20:52 Yeah. We've replaced Hitler with Hitler, too. Yeah. Great things happening. He specifically had spoken out about some Trump policies, right? Like, yeah, he had gone more independent. on some issues rather than like teetoeing to the bending the knee to the current republican line and that opened him up to attacks from the right yeah but the big story of the night is the

Starting point is 03:21:14 democratic senate primary in which texas state house rep james telerico is projected to be to us representative for texas jasmine crockett who previously told tellerico that she would not run for the senate before entering the race late in december crockett did not concede the night of the election has since conceded, but did not concede election night, citing issues at voting precincts and dueling court orders that sowed confusion come election day. Republicans in Dallas County and Williamson County switched the rules from county-wide centralized polling locations to an assigned precinct system where voters can only cast their ballots at one specific location. After reports of people being turned away from their regular polling locations

Starting point is 03:22:02 on Election Day and being told that they had to travel to their assigned precinct to cast their ballot. Both Crockett and Tala Rico advocated to expand voting hours in these counties to compensate for the confusion and ensure all votes intended to be cast on Election Day would be counted.

Starting point is 03:22:18 Judges in Dallas and Williamson County extended voting hours to 9 and 10 p.m. respectively. But later that night, in a ruling just before 8.30 p.m., the Texas Supreme Court, blocked the lower court's order and instructed Dallas and Williamsman County to separate

Starting point is 03:22:37 any ballots cast by voters who entered the line after 7 p.m. and marked them as provisional ballots. After a request by Attorney General Ken Paxton, who claimed his office was not properly notified of the extended voting hours. Paul Adams, the Dallas County Election Administrator, confirmed that the separated ballots would not be counted pending further legal challenges. At her election night watch party, Crockett said that she had, quote, no idea how it is that clerks are going to know who was in line by what time. I can tell you now that people have been disenfranchised, unquote. On Wednesday morning, Crockett did concede the race, but told the New York Times,

Starting point is 03:23:19 quote, the Democratic Party should absolutely prepare for the worst and get some things litigated right now. People will not turn out because of what's happened, in my opinion, especially if no one fights for their votes to be counted, unquote. It does feel a lot like the first decade of the century again, like we got wars in the Middle East. We've got people arguing about votes that should be counted and not counted. It's great. So the total number of votes cast in the Republican primary that are tallied so far at 95% of the votes in is 2,142,211 versus the Democratic primary. that's 2,308,836.

Starting point is 03:24:02 Slightly more Democratic votes counted in the primary. Texas has open primaries, apparently. Texas has open primaries. Yeah. Okay. Talarico was up nine points among white voters, up 22 points among Hispanic, while Crockett was up 23 points among black voters. Crocker was up eight points with Biden voters.

Starting point is 03:24:26 and Talleyico up 32 points with Sanders voters, if you look at the 2020 presidential primary. That gives you a little bit of a peek into kind of what these two candidates represented. With Crockett serving on the Kamala Harris campaign, definitely more of a K-Hive-esque candidate. And Tala Rico, a little bit running off of the kind of Bernie Sanders progressive coattails

Starting point is 03:24:51 a little bit, not coattails, but using that sort of playbook as more of like a relatable, working class guy, less of like an establishment Democrat, like Crockett sort of branded herself as. Talley Rico is a former school teacher who served in the state house since 2018. He fought against Christian nationalism and a bill mandating the Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms, calling the bill unconstitutional, un-American, and deeply unchristian.

Starting point is 03:25:18 And his past legislation lowering the cost of prescription drugs, he's like a progressive Christian. That's kind of, I guess, the best way to describe him as. He frequently went viral the past. three years for clips of him, you know, arguing in the Texas state, a house, you know, arguing for progressive points of view while like quoting Bible verses, that sort of thing. For this campaign of his, he was running on affordability and cost of living. That was the real focus of this campaign targeting the richest 1% in giant corporations, making billionaires and corporations, quote

Starting point is 03:25:45 unquote, pay their fair share of taxes, raising federal minimum wage to $15, expanding child and earned income tax credits. He's opposed to state legislation restricting gender from health care, including for people under 18. In September, right after he announced his Canada Sea, Tala Rico, who is a member of the LGBTQ caucus, responded to a question about trans athletes like this. I think it's interesting. I've been in this race for five days, and I've had a lot of interviews with national media. No one's ever asked me about the cost of housing. No one's asking about the cost of prescription drugs. No one's asking me about the cost of child care. The only thing the media wants to ask me about are trans athletes.

Starting point is 03:26:27 And so what I would say is that the only minority destroying this country is the billionaires. Trans people are 1% of the population. Undocumented people are 1% of the population. Muslims are 1% of the population. We are all focused on the wrong 1%. Trans people aren't taking away our health care. Undocumented people aren't defunding our schools. Muslims aren't cutting taxes for themselves and their rich friends.

Starting point is 03:26:53 it's the billionaires and their puppet politicians. And so we need not only the media, but all of us, to focus on the real problem at hand. Hey. It appeared like this was effective messaging. That's a good response, yeah. Yeah. The only dangerous minority is the rich. It has consistently actually been a popular messaging that Democrats have nonetheless shied away from.

Starting point is 03:27:18 Yeah, because that's who donates money to them. Yeah, because they like the money. It's the only minority. They like. Because many of them are, Rich. Yeah. And others wish to be. Tell Rico supports regulating AI, universal health care, term limits for Congress and

Starting point is 03:27:32 Supreme Court justices, halting Israel's illegal settlements, restoring the talking-only filibuster, and banning gerrymandering and establishing independent redistricting. Tala rick participated in the Texas Democrats' protests against redistricting both in, like, 2021 and last year in 2025 where they fled Texas. Yeah, they ran on a holiday for a while. On his campaign website, he talks about advocating reform to make legal immigration easier in creating pathways to legalization for undocumented immigrants already long present, as well as spouses and dreamers.

Starting point is 03:28:08 Part of his immigration policy reads, quote, prioritize the deportation of criminals, gang members, and human traffickers, not our neighbors who contribute to our communities, pay taxes, has imposed no threat to our safety, unquote. Part of where this sort of language, I think, falls apart is that when the Trump administration claims that it's deporting gang members and criminals, like what we saw with people sent to Seacot,

Starting point is 03:28:35 that also includes regular people. That also includes our neighbors. And I think that is one slight fault in this messaging. It's going to be interesting with him running in the general now, you know, in Texas, where the border is a big issue there. and a lot of his immigration stuff definitely is not going to, at least currently,

Starting point is 03:28:53 is not as far to the left as as some other progressive Democrats. And this is something that he is currently being pushed on, especially after winning. Progressive advocates are pushing him on ice specifically as well as some stuff on Israel and Gaza. Telerico is advocated

Starting point is 03:29:09 to stop the sale of quote unquote offensive weapons to Israel while still funding the Iron Dome and defense weapons. talked about trying to find a way to make sure that defense weapons cannot be used offensively. But he does recognize that Gaza is an extremely important issue and said in an interview, quote, one of the primary reasons the Democratic Party lost young voters, in particular last election, was our party's failure to recognize the moral disaster in Gaza,

Starting point is 03:29:35 and I hope that we have leaders who recognize that mistake. I think that's all I need to say regarding that. The general is not until November. And if it is Cornyn, that will be a much, a much harder race, considering he's an incumbent versus, you know, Paxton, who has a lot of, a lot of avenues for attack for someone like Tala Rico, who can lean on his, like, Christian charm to attract voters, both in rural areas, as well as lean on his support among Hispanic voters, as demonstrated in the primary. Mia, you have one final thing to add based on the primary

Starting point is 03:30:06 elections in North Carolina? Yeah. Yeah, there were a bunch of primary elections in North Carolina. And I'm mentioning this because there was a series of North Carolina Democrats who voted with Republicans to pass anti-trans legislation over a veto from the governor and also voted with them on really horrifying, like, pro-ice legislation. And those people lost by cartoon margins. We are talking margins that start at 30%, go to 40%, and one of these people lost their race by 50%. Jeez. So the anti-trans candidates and the like, I am pro-ice racist candidates lost by like bath party numbers, which I think is actually very encouraging because I think it's a sign of where people are right now,

Starting point is 03:30:52 where people are going even as the state is trying to do anti-trans repression, this has become a thing that is enough where if you are willing to like vote for this shit and make a bunch of trans people suffer, you will you will lose by, you will lose by 40 in a primary. Unbelievable. Primaries tend to include more informed and politically engaged voters, and that is one of the things that engages people most right now, specifically the ice stuff.

Starting point is 03:31:24 It's also more ideologically motivated voters, and the far right has made use of this for decades to push the more moderate actual politician stuff for the Republican Party for their right, because you can't win primaries without getting, like appealing to the most extreme of them. And there has not, up until very recently, been that kind of success with like far left positions.

Starting point is 03:31:49 Not that I think basic respect for trans people ought to be far left, but it's clearly not a centrist dim position. Yeah, yeah, apparently. And I think that this is good. I think it's a smart way to influence the direction of the party. Yeah. Yeah, I want to close with there. There's a slogan from Chile that gets used in social movements constantly

Starting point is 03:32:08 that goes roughly like Chile is where neoliberalism was born and we're going to kill it here. And I think this is sort of the start of potentially that in North Carolina where, well, this isn't the start, but hopefully we're seeing like the culmination of a whole bunch of ways of activism and organizing and mobilization that can kill this kind of anti-trans politics in the place where it was born, the first bathroom bill. So if you would like to email us with some tips on stories, You can do so at CoolZone Tips at Proton.me. That is not the email address to plug your book or ask if you could be on behind the bastards.

Starting point is 03:32:47 And if you do that, I will block you. Put a trans girl on your couch. We reported the news. We reported the news. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, Coolzonemedia.com,

Starting point is 03:33:15 or check us out on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources where it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. I'm Clayton Eckerd. In 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. But here's the thing. Bachelor fans hated him. If I could press a button and rewind it all I would.

Starting point is 03:33:39 That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young.

Starting point is 03:33:57 Listen to Love Trapped on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Next Monday, our 2026 IHeart Podcast Awards are happening live in South by Southwest. Since the biggest night in podcasting. We'll honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative talent and creators in the industry. And the winner is... Creativity, knowledge, and passion will all be on full display. Thank you so much.

Starting point is 03:34:25 Iheart radio. Thank you to all the other nominees. You guys are awesome. Watch live next Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific free at veeps. Or the Veeps app. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Let Be. we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story?

Starting point is 03:34:47 I would have just been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Lettby on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Joe Interesting, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast. where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life.

Starting point is 03:35:14 And today I'm talking with my dear friend, Krista Williams. It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change, dance with the breakdowns. The embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves. So I'm like delusionally proud of my chart. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.

Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 222

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.