Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/21/23: Record Number Of Americans Identify "Independent", Amazon Postpones HQ2 In VA, Gen Z Says No Future In America, Drone Operator Theater Play, Insane Zoom Call From Millionaire Exec, Proof Every President Is Criminal, Failed Netflix LiveStream

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

In this episode we cover a Record number of Americans now identifying as "politically independent", Amazon postpones it's new HQ2 project in Virginia after receiving massive taxpayer subsidies, interviews from our partner Jordan Chariton show Generation Z kids feeling bleak about their futures in America, a new play in DC is opening about the trials and tribulations of being a drone operator, Spencer gives us a breakdown on the crimes every president could be charged with in light of the Trump indictment, and James Li from 5149 discusses the failed Netflix livestream of "Love is Blind" as a jumping off point for something bigger.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. I went through while I was down in prison for two years. Through that process, learn, learn from. Check out this exclusive episode with Ja Rule on Rock Solid. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Rock Solid, and listen now. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and I'm coming to you loud, loud and in color. Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is your girl T.S. Madison, and I'm coming to you loud, loud, and in color from the Outlaws Podcast.

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or wherever you get your podcasts, honey. Hey, guys. Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Some interesting and possibly good news. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. The share of U.S. adults who are identifying with select political affiliations has gone to an all-time low for Democrats and Republicans at the very same time that independence has actually increased. So in 2004,

35% of the American people identified as Democrat, 33% as Republican, 31% as independent. Today, in 2023, 49% of Americans identify as independent. Only 25% respectively identify as Democrat and Republican. So basically half of the entire country sees themselves as politically independent at the moment that approval for the two of the major parties is all the way at the bottom. And that actually raises a lot of questions around the way that we even run our political electoral system because we elevate people through primaries and then throw them at independence. But if the vast majority of people don't believe in those parties themselves, then why are we allowing hyper-activist bases

of people who we don't necessarily agree with us to surface people who are then thrown at us in terms of our two options? So I think it's really interesting the more that these parties collapse. I mean, I know why the system is the way it is. Yeah, I would love the sort of reforms that you're referring to to open it up

so there was more of an opportunity for third-party candidates that more accurately reflect perhaps the views of this group of nearly a majority of Americans who view themselves as politically independent. Underneath the data, what they say is driving this phenomenon is primarily young people. They quote a pollster who says it was never unusual for younger adults to have higher percentages of independence than older adults. What is unusual is that as Gen X and millennials get older, they are staying independent rather than picking a party as older generations tended to do. And I have no doubt that Gen Z also is disproportionately politically independent. Now, that's different. See, like the corporatist, centrist types like the no labels of the world would look at this data and be like, see, they're crying out for moderation. They're crying out for what we have to offer.

But don't misread the data in that way. Many of these people who are politically independent, you know, they may be people who were affiliated with the Bernie movement and are actually more to the left of the party on a variety of issues and just see the Democratic Party as like, you know, corporate shills as, you know, sort of like how I see them, or they may be to the right of the Republican Party. So the fact that they identify as politically independent doesn't mean they're like wishy-washy centrists, doesn't mean they don't have really clear or hard ideological or, you know,

even relatively extreme views or what would be conceived or perceived of as extreme in mainstream American discourse. So it's different than saying like, oh, everybody's in the center. It's just they're disgusted with these two political parties and don't feel like they're actually effective in getting things done for the back of people. Yeah, that's an important point. It's not that people want like lower taxes on corporations. They're not like Joe Manchin's stance, right? I think the political system is broken.

I think things that are all over the place, that are both simultaneously Republican and Democratic ideas, and I don't like the brand of the parties themselves. Look, how it manifests, at the end of the day, the vast majority of people still actually do kind of code right and left. Yes. That is actually pretty clear. Yeah. And unfortunately, most of that tacks onto then Republican and Democrat.

The question is whether those two vessels are the ones that should be the ones that attract those types of votes and maybe not something else. So look, I don't know how it works out. Yeah. The last time that we had a major political party, I have one behind me, the Bull Moose project or the Bull Moose party was really the last time it was, I wouldn't even say electorally viable, but at least won a decent amount of votes, I guess, outside of Ross Perot. It takes a lot for parties to crumble and for things to change. But, I mean, it can happen.

It's happened twice in modern American history, you know, since 1860. So I don't know. I haven't lost all hope just yet. Yeah. Well, the other thing that has happened in more recent history is basically like revolutions within the parties themselves. You can think of in a very bad way, in my opinion, the way that Bill Clinton and the DLC took over the Democratic Party and really hijacked it and turned it into something different. You could think of the way the Tea Party changed the Republican Party and then Donald Trump changed the Republican Party again. You can think of the way that in certain states, you know, like in Nevada, the Bernie Sanders

wing of the party was able to basically take over the Democratic party and make it into something different than what it was. So there's more precedent in recent history for something like that happening. But I just look at this data and I see it as basically like an opportunity that people's eyes are open. And it's also somewhat contradictory with the fact that, you know, there are so many fewer swing voters. You know, even as people are saying they're independent, they're very consistently voting in a party line fashion. But I do think the fact that there is clearly this disenchantment with the two major parties creates an opening for positive change. And also, frankly, it's created an opening for

a different media ecosystem that's just not just like partisan cheerleading the way that the cable news networks are. So I see it as a good thing in general. Absolutely. So, all right, we'll see how it works out. All right, guys, got a little Amazon HQ2 taxpayer hustle update for you. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. We previously reported that, you know, there was this whole nationwide contest of Amazon just basically extracting as much tax money of jurisdictions as they possibly could before deciding to land in New York and Northern Virginia, places where they were going to go to anyway to start with, but now they get to do it with, you know, nearly a billion dollars in subsidies. So Amazon recently announced they're

postponing a lot of their development there. They're not even building what they said they were going to build. But guess what? They still want their money. They are kicking off a process that means they could receive more than $152 million in state money by the summer of 2026. All of the tax credits here are based on the number of jobs they create technically and not based so much on the construction. And so there's a couple of things going on here because it's not only have, you know, the dreams of development and shops and restaurants and hotels, those haven't come to fruition at all, in part because they aren't going forward with this

huge additional development, which of course would bring in construction workers and all sorts of additional work to the area. But also post-pandemic, their workers, even if they're creating these jobs, are not working in the office full time. So much like other places around the country, you don't have this glut of office workers who want to go to lunch and want to do whatever office workers do during the day and spend money in the region. So this has been a disaster for Virginia, I would say. And, you know, Amazon, in spite of it all, they still want their 150 million bucks. Yeah, I think this is why it's complete BS is that the government of Virginia showered them in tax benefits that they are now not fulfilling their obligations because basically the trade was like, well, all these people who have a lot of money will move here.

Small businesses and actually a lot of apartment complexes were going around in that area. I live pretty close by. A lot of businesses were opening and banking on the idea that these Amazon executives were going to be moving in. And now they're pulling out, which is already actually a disaster, you know, for the local economy. But then they want their tax benefits too. It's like, well, hold on a second. And actually this vindicates a lot of the fight about what was going on in New York, where New York at the time pulled its benefits. And, you know, that was the other point with that at the time, New York city doesn't need to shower anybody in tax benefits to get people to want to work and live. Like a lot of business, a lot of people like the network effects of it.

And, you know, especially on its face, it's a hell of a lot better place to do business than San Francisco or Seattle. I think if you take a look at variable crime rates, especially whenever we're talking about Manhattan. So they didn't need to. And then Amazon was like, fine, we're gonna go to Virginia, and then it didn't even work out for the state of Virginia. So it's actually very embarrassing. This was a shakedown. The whole thing was a shakedown.

They made this whole show, I mean, it's really embarrassing, I did a whole monologue. It's embarrassing when you go and look. It's sad at these little cities or places that are in long-term decline because, you know, they were deindustrialized or whatever. And they were like, I'll name my city after you. And making all of these promises

and putting together these pitch decks to try to lure Amazon with the thought that, hey, if they showed up in a mid-tier city, they could take it to the next level. They could revive a place that's struggling. They could go somewhere in the heartland and like Jerry would be good You know all like so many so much possibility for what it could mean and then at the end of the process They locate in the two places where by the way Jeff Bezos already had residences making it clear like this is where they were always gonna

Choose they just wanted to shake down the government's by doing this whole competition for as much as they were possibly worth. And by the way, Virginia, for all of the hundreds of millions that they ponied up in terms of tax incentives, nothing compared to what New York had offered them. New York had offered them way more, which is part of why the plug ends up being pulled on that completely because the price tag was just so insane and outrageous. But you can see, even for Virginia, this has not worked out. Amazon pulling the plug on development, still demanding their money. Arlington is quoted in this, Arlington County, which is where it's located, is quoted in this article saying, the hotels, the short-term rentals, all this stuff, none of this has shown up.

None of this has materialized whatsoever. And then there's also, this is typical of corporate incentives, Amazon was going to locate somewhere. And so it just ends up being this national race to throw a gigantic, extremely profitable company hundreds of millions of dollars that they don't need and that could go to any other number of state level priorities. So anyway, just the last grotesque, latest grotesque slap in the face from Amazon to Virginia taxpayers. Certainly right.

So our partner, Jordan Sheridan over with Status Quo has been on the ground. He was at a strike recently by students at Rutgers University demanding better pay, among other things. And he asked Gen Z about their view of America, about their view of the American dream. I should not even ask all of Gen Z, some representatives of that generation. And the response is quite interesting. Take a listen to it. In the next 10 years, factory jobs, truck drivers, all these simpler jobs will be automated. And then we're going to have more and more problems. Automation is going to kill a lot of these jobs. The market is dying and we're on the verge of a recession.

I'm just kind of waiting at this point. We're not going to be able to buy a house. I honestly believe that the American dream is dead for our generation, frankly. Our purchasing power is one of some of the lowest in history compared to prior generations, compared to millennials, compared to baby boomers and Gen X. Our purchasing power is some of the lowest combined with some of the highest costs of living ever.

Ever. So fears about technology, American Dream is dead. I won't be able to buy a house. And they made a number of comments about how their parents, their grandparents for Gen Z, they're like, they were able to achieve these things. I have no hope of that in my lifetime. The only thing I would disagree with him is he was like talking about truck drivers. I don't think truck drivers will be irrelevant in five years, but I do think, unfortunately, a lot of the white collar jobs that college

graduates are doing may not, may be a lot more irrelevant than truck driving. I've been hearing about truck driving for a long time. Now I would chat GPT, and though it seems like what really is under threat is business insider journalism entry students. So that's the only place I would quibble. But look, I hear this all the time, you know, from people who are my age, from who are younger. A vast majority of our audience is either millennial or Gen Z. So we see the things that resonate the most.

Housing. I told you I've been on this kick. I ever stood to that Dame Ramsey monologue of just listening to these horrific calls of people who are like, I have $600,000 in student debt. I have a million dollars. They're all my age or younger who have a million dollars. Can you imagine having a million dollars in student debt?

And it's one of those where like, yeah, he makes a quarter mil, but after tax and all that, it's going to take him 10 years or so to pay that off. That's the only thing that he does. And these are like the lucky people. Yeah, these are the lucky ones. The ones who quote unquote did the right things and made it who are in this position. And yeah, you go try to buy a house in any major metro area, forget about it. You know, unless you have the whole cash down payment from your parents or, you know, another source, you're going to be priced out of that market. And I think what was

stunning to me is the awareness and recognition that these two individuals had, but just how much things were stacked against them. That is a real indictment of our society. I mean, the thing that you always hoped is that like your kids would have it better than you. And for most of American history, that has been the case where it's just like continued upward trajectory. You can expect more leisure time. You can expect, you know, a better house. You can expect a better education. You can expect better health care. No longer the case. And if you think that's not going to dramatically upend our politics as millennials and now Gen Z come into power, into voting age, into increasing political awareness? You know, you got your eyes closed because this is a real reckoning set to happen. People are not just going to sit back and accept

this. This is why you already see the bubblings of, you know, the Starbucks workers movement, the Amazon workers movement. You see them taking matters into their own hands. And I think in some ways, you see Gen Z, they're super woke and they're into all this identity stuff. But you also see some throwbacks to an older type of material politics, which was really ascendant in America at a time when people couldn't take for granted some of the basics of like food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, et cetera, that a couple of generations now have been able to basically take advantage of. So yeah, it's going to change everything.

I think 10 years from now when 40 year olds have never had a house, have no assets and are still in debt, I think that's when things are really going to be weird. Cause that's when you're going to have almost a majority of the country who is both had no upward mobility for their entire adult lives and are now on the bad side of middle age whenever you look at life expectancy tables. If there is a flippening, I think it'll come sometime around that. Not being able to have kids, not being able to buy a house, having zero assets, having no retirement, knowing social security may not work out for you or at the very least is not going to tide you over for the next 20 or so years. What do you do in that situation? That's when I think things will get weird.

Yeah, I can definitely see that. A new opera is coming to the Kennedy Center, and boy, oh boy, is it something. Thanks to our friends over at Responsible Statecraft for flagging this one, along with producer Griffin. Put this up on the screen. Killer drone opera lands at Kennedy Center this fall. It's got tears, drama, and F-16s. Grounded is explosive fun for the whole family, brought to you by General Dynamics. Let me read you a little bit of the details here.

They say this fall, D.C. denizens will be treated to the world premiere of Grounded, an opera following an Air Force ace named Jess, whose unexpected pregnancy forces her to leave behind her beloved F-16 and join the, quote, chair force. Throughout the show, the hotshot pilot wrestles with the mental impact of firing rockets from a drone in Afghanistan from a trailer in Las Vegas. As Jess tracks terrorists by day and rocks her daughter to sleep by night, the boundary between her worlds becomes dangerously permeable, an ad tells us. The production is brought to you by presenting sponsor General Dynamics, one of the world's largest weapons companies, and oh, by the way, wouldn't you know it, the maker of Jess's favorite plane. Apparently, Sagar, this is like a spinoff or like a redo of some one-woman play that Anne Hathaway starred in by the same name,

which actually had somewhat of a critique of drone warfare and hard to imagine the same sort of dynamics occurring in this opera, given that General Dynamics is the sponsor. So I watched this Ethan Hawke movie, which is vaguely similar. It came out in like 2014. I just looked it up.

Good Kill was that movie. It was fine. It wasn't particularly good, but they were trying to make the same point. And it's, again, it came more to like an anti-drone, more humanistic message. This one, I'm just gonna guess, doesn't have that. Just really odd.

It's especially odd that General Dynamics is sponsoring it. It's like, I don't know, whatever. Look, I think it probably is genuinely traumatic to kill people in a video game and know that it's real. That's kind of what the movie was about. I guess at its best, that's what the play is about. But I think that at their worst, like what we're doing here,

is trying to turn it into some human drama story and miss the actual implications of what it means to do this abroad as part of a broader, like, campaign of war. Yes. Yeah, I don't know. There's also, you know, this is, like, a particularly flagrant,

in-your-face example of this type of thing. I mean, we also talk about the way that, like, General Dynamics and these other military industrial complex behemoths sponsor, like, Politico Playbook and all these other DC insider tip sheets and media organizations but then there's also this interaction between the Pentagon these weapons makers and Hollywood as well which frequently is a lot more under the radar which you know is very like seldom picked up on the way that the Pentagon works with

filmmakers to make sure that war is portrayed and that these battles are portrayed and their weapon systems are portrayed in a way that sort of like, you know, plays up their version of what the American military is all about and what American foreign policy has been all about. So here we have in the nation's capital, no less, General Dynamics actively sponsoring an opera about drone warfare. Pretty extraordinary. Maybe we should go. Pretty in your face. I was thinking about that.

We should go. We could go and do a review of it. I'm not sure I could take it. I don't think I can sit through two hours. Opera's not, I don't know. Opera's not really good either. First of all, I don't even like opera. Have you ever been to an opera?

I have. I've been to one. It was okay. If we're gonna go, I'm not even that big of a musical guy, but I would much rather go to a actual fun musical. Like Book of Mormon. Watching Book of Mormon, for example, is like a blast.

This just sounds like fun. Yeah, I guess it's a taste you have to cultivate, but I have not cultivated that taste. I think it's a taste for when TV didn't exist, that people were willing to subject themselves to all kinds of things because life was boring. You know, people were dying of typhus and they were like,

well, this is more interesting than that. If you are a singer, maybe there's more to appreciate. Like I love the ballet because I grew up dancing. So I can, I like really enjoy it and appreciate it. But I totally understand how someone who didn't come up with that wouldn't be their thing. So anyway, maybe I'll go to the opera and I'll let you guys know.

Let us know if you like the opera. Quite a bit of attention being paid to the Miller-Knowles CEO who's gone viral after she gave an internal rant to employees in which she told them to stop worrying about why they weren't gonna get a bonus and to start working harder and to lead by example. We'll tell you a little bit about why that's so hypocritical

after you see the video. Let's take a listen. Questions came through about how can we stay motivated if we're not going to get a bonus? What can we do? What can we do? Some of them were nice and some of them were not so nice. So I'm going to address this head on. The most important thing we can do right now is focus on the things that we can control. None of us could have predicted COVID. None of us could have predicted supply chain. None of us could have predicted bank failures. But what we can do is stay in front of our customers, provide the best customer service we can,

get our orders out our door, treat each other well, be kind, be respectful, focus on the future because it will be bright. It's not good to be in a situation we're in today, but we're not gonna be here forever. It is going to get better. So lead, lead by example, treat people well, talk to them, be kind and get after it. Don't ask about what are we going to do if you don't get a bonus? Get the damn $26 million. Spend your time and your effort thinking about the $26 million we need and

not thinking about what you're going to do if we don't get a bonus. All right. Can I get some commitment for that? I would appreciate that. I had an old boss who said to me one time, you can visit pity city, but you can't live there. So people leave pity city. Let's get it done. Thank you. Have a great day. Okay, so psychotic really all around. One of the reasons- There's like weird energy from this lady too. Stone cold crazy, absolute craziness. You could see it in the eyes.

And what do we learn about her? She herself received a $3.9 million bonus in executive compensation on top of her $1.1 million fixed salary. Now, what she's referring to, the $26 million, is the overall sales goal of the company as to why the employees won't be getting a bonus and or a raise. Here's the thing. If everybody in the company is not getting a bonus, as a leader, you could be like, listen, I'm not taking a bonus. No, I'm not taking a bonus. That's how it is. as a leader, you'd be like, listen, I'm not taking a bonus. No, I'm not taking a bonus. That's how it is. You know, this, we're, we're going to get

together. You make money. I make money, period. I don't even think people would care then if she got paid 4 million. She's CEO of a company based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Uh, it's got 11,000 employees. Okay. Reasonable, I guess. But when you are paying yourself and then you're lecturing these people who make way less than you. And if you're assuming here that people work in sales, a lot of them live and die by bonus. It's not just about their base salary. It's whether you can literally feed your kids and you're saying, stop – the pity city thing is perfect. I've watched the video 15, 20 times at this point. I just can't get over the narcissism, the way in which she, like, thinks that she's better than everybody else.

And here's the best part. If you want her LinkedIn profile, she's all about diversity, equity, and inclusion and, like, feminism and all that stuff. Of course. But not for just being a decent person to your employees. That's the crazy part. The thing that gets—there's a lot that gets me here. But you can tell she's kind of, like, keeping it together at beginning and then it just becomes increasingly angry and unhinged she's clearly like personally hurt that people are wondering if they're going to be able to get paid and feed

their families or whatever miller noel their primary products is apparently office chairs and so post you know during the pandemic and post pandemic with people not being in the office as much, the demand for office chairs has plummeted. So she's still doing OK, getting her four million dollar bonus. No worries about her. But the thing that actually Yegor is the person who flagged this clip for me initially. And he made the point that, you know, for the boss class, it's totally expected and understood that they'll be out for the money, that they'll be looking at their compensation. They'll be maximizing their compensation package. They'll be locking in their golden parachute.

If they screw up the company, they should be in it just purely for noble reasons, about the family, about the project they're engaged in. How dare you even worry about what your compensation is ultimately going to be? How could you not be just committed to this team of selling office chairs? So it's incredibly psychologically manipulative, too, and I think revealing of a tactic that is deployed all the time in corporate America, trying to sell people on this like deeper mission or this family that you're a part of in lieu of expecting actual compensation for the labor that you're committing to the profits of the business. Yeah, it also bothers me. You and I now have people who work with us. And it's one of those things where I cannot, I wouldn't, you can never cut somebody's

pay and take more money yourself. Oh, I would be, I could not live with myself. I can't imagine talking to someone like that. Never, never. It's a city city, but unfortunately, yeah, most people who are, but I've worked with people like that. I'm sure you have to, everybody's had a boss. There's something about when you beat, when we are boss for a lot of people, maybe they just like have amnesia about what it was like to be treated like shit by your boss. But that one, it really struck a nerve. Not just me. I think a lot of people out there.

Because all of us have felt it a little bit, man. It feels so small when these type of people rule your lives. Yeah, well, there's this cultural narrative that Feeds people like this that they're they deserve to be in this position of power and that causes them to truly look down on the the workers that you know that they're in charge of and so it creates this disgraceful like power trip like Psychopathy as you see displayed in this video. Very true. All right. We'll see you guys later So Donald Trump was indicted and arraigned. No one is above the law depending on the law because there are certain laws that the entire US is above and that includes Trump. Now he may or may not see consequences for this batch of charges but there are other offenses that he will definitely not go down for

and there are the kind of offenses that have been committed to varying degrees under every living president from Carter to Bush to Obama and today I want to talk about some of them. Welcome to Breaking Points. If you've seen this video you've heard the story. In 1974, in East Timor, this new government took over. The Frediland Party. A democratic socialist, pro-independent party. They want self-determination for East Timor. So obviously, no one was into it. Australia, the UK, the US, and Indonesia all agreed that East Timor should probably just become part of Indonesia. Self-determination was off the table.

In December 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor. Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger go over to Indonesia to see the president there, and they tell him that they're totally cool with this. Now Indonesia at the time held more political prisoners than anywhere else in the world. Ford even warned the president there, if you want Congress to keep approving aid packages for you, you should probably let some prisoners go. And so, after a lot of negotiating, Indonesia announced plans to release 30,000 political prisoners over three years.

So that quieted Congress enough. 1977, Carter's inaugurated. Meanwhile, Indonesia is committing atrocities in East Timor, reports coming out alleging 50,000 to 100,000 civilians dead. But the State Department basically dismisses this. The goal was to improve relations with Indonesia, not have them be a pariah state. So the National Security Council, they recommend downplaying East Timor, you have people saying,

just focus on the 30,000 political prisoners being released instead. National Security Advisor Brzezinski, father of MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski, is saying that these Southeast Asian countries, like Indonesia, provide a hospitable climate for our investments. Also, the assumption by the Carter administration and others was that East Timor becoming part of Indonesia, that was an inevitability at this point. At the same time, the CIA is saying

Indonesia is running out of weapons and they can't really control the countryside of East Timor. In 1978, Vice President Walter Mondale goes on this tour of the region. He goes to Indonesia and offers them 16 Skyhawks. Now fast forward to 2006, the East Timor Truth Commission concluded that 1977 to 1979 was the worst humanitarian crisis in East Timor's history, and the key to Indonesia's assault was aerial bombardment by OV-10 Broncos, F-5s, and Skyhawk A-4 airplanes. By 1981, between 108,000 and 180,000 people died out of a population of 600,000. Massacring civilian populations, wars of aggression,

we're talking about war crimes and crimes against humanity. And aiding war crimes, say by supplying fighter jets, can be a violation of the law of armed conflict and also a war crime. On August 20th, 1998, President Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack on a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. The Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant was the target. This plant supplied half of Sudan's medicines and a lot of their veterinary medicines. Now, is there a good reason to blow up such a place? I mean, maybe, but that would be an extraordinary set of circumstances. By the way, do you know who owned the factory? Maybe they were manufacturing chemical weapons. Maybe they're manufacturing

VX nerve gas. As a matter of fact, a soil sample was taken nearby containing two and a half times the normal amount of EMTA, which is a chemical used in VX nerve gas. This was the main evidence showing that the factory produced the nerve gas. They also thought the plant might be linked to Osama bin Laden, but as George Tennant said, that wasn't ironclad. Also, get this, one piece of evidence was that unlike the websites of other known pharmaceutical manufacturers in Sudan, this company's website did not mention any products. Only terrorists have bad websites. The State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research put together a report for Secretary of State Madeleine Albright before the attack. It

basically said, our evidence isn't really enough to justify this. But it was a foregone conclusion. This plant had to go. Wait, who owns the factory? Officials are raising concerns up to the night before the attack. But August 20th, they blow up this pharmaceutical plant that was maybe making VX nerve gas. No they weren't, they were just making medicine. Also they still don't know who owns the factory. It ends up being a Sudanese businessman named Salah Idris. Conveniently though, he turns out to have an indirect connection to Osama Bin Laden. They freeze his accounts at various Bank of America branches.

They kinda got it right, by accident, maybe, but at least this wasn't all for nothing. Oh no, except Idris denied that he had any connection to any terrorist group, he sues the government, and the US unfreezes his assets. It was all for nothing. Can we at least learn something from this though? Probably not. Someone from the State Department wanted to draft a report outlining the issues with the

evidence. Obviously it got killed by higher ups, and Albright apparently was not interested in having that debate rehashed. Case closed. The month after the attack, Human Rights Watch comes out with an open letter to Bill Clinton saying, International Humanitarian Law says that you have to do everything feasible to make sure you're hitting a legitimate military target.

And it really seems like you didn't. Which would mean you're in violation of the Law of Armed Conflict, or LOAC. But funny enough, blowing up Sudan's primary source of anti-malaria drugs is not the scandal Clinton is remembered for. Okay, so Bush is an easy one. For one thing, the Bush administration authorized an international torture program. After 9-11, black sites popped up in places like Afghanistan and Romania and Thailand.

The CIA's secret detention program, entailing prolonged incommunicado detention without trial, violated international legal prohibitions against enforced disappearances. Disappearances violate or threaten to violate a range of rules of international human rights and humanitarian law, including arbitrary deprivation of liberty, torture, and the right to life. Waterboarding is torture. Bush endorsed waterboarding and admitted to using it. This covers Bush, Dick Cheney, former CIA director George Tenet, and Condoleezza

Rice, who apparently gave the first known approval of waterboarding. I haven't watched their master classes, but if they have sections on running international torture programs and never facing consequences for it, I mean, they are the experts in that. There were over 500 drone strikes during Obama's two terms. Let's go over some of the legality. Simply put, these strikes have saved lives. Moreover, America's actions are legal. We were attacked on 9-11.

Within a week, Congress overwhelmingly authorized the use of force. Under domestic law and international law, the United States is at war with Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces. Okay, so paraphrasing Yale Law and Policy Review, the associated forces Obama's talking about are essentially co-belligerents. That's the relationship between third-party states and warring parties. This is controversial, and it is far from clear that the groups at issue are sufficiently organized and associated with al-Qaeda to render them co-belligerents under international law. The claim was essentially that the laws of war enable the US to kill anyone, anywhere.

That position is highly legally contested, and to accept the idea that anyone anywhere in the world can be killed, even if civilians may be killed too, would in effect mean recognition of the concept of a global battlefield. International human rights law is the generally accepted framework for dealing with acts of terror in the international community, and under that, there is no right to pre-plan intentional killing, and there is no tolerance for the death of bystanders. No state has the right to consent to US violation of these rights." Also, drone strikes aren't even necessarily productive in their goal.

Strikes in Yemen had apparently increased support for Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Okay, so on to Trump. Trump did watch Shark Week with a porn star in a hotel room, but his sins as president actually get much worse than that. Yemen is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world because since 2015, Saudi Arabia has been bombing them into the Stone Age. There have been about 20,000 civilian casualties,

in part because the bombing raids target infrastructure and schools and hospitals. Now, Obama had asked Saudi Arabia pretty nicely to try a little harder to not kill as many civilians, and Saudi Arabia keeps forgetting that he asked. So the thing is that targeting civilians is a war crime, which makes selling weapons to Saudi Arabia also a possible violation of international humanitarian law. this war started under Obama. And this fact was not lost on the administration because at a certain point, people in the Obama administration said, hey, we might be doing war crimes over here, we should maybe

stop this. State department officials who shepherd arms sales overseas are worried enough to consider retaining their own legal counsel and have discussed the possibility of being arrested while vacationing abroad. So even though Obama initially supported Saudi Arabia, he ended up blocking a shipment of bombs he had originally okayed. But then Trump came in and sent the bombs anyway. But it is very unlikely people like this will ever be held accountable for the real crimes they commit where people actually die. In fact, the US has been so hostile toward the idea of international

justice and the International Criminal Court that the United States preemptively sanctioned ICC officials for opening an investigation in Afghanistan that might reach U.S. personnel. And like Obama opting not to investigate anyone from the Bush administration, every incoming administration offers that professional courtesy to the outgoing administration. I mean, if Biden went after Trump for violating the laws of war for giving weapons to Saudi Arabia,

how could he, under any circumstances, justify also selling weapons to Saudi Arabia. And with that, that'll do it for me. If you found this video interesting, make sure you are subscribed to Breaking Points. You can also check out my YouTube channel where I talk all about media and politics and things. Link in description.

Liking and sharing always helps. Please do that. Thank you to Breaking Points. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one. Hey there, my name is James Lee. Thank you for Breaking Points. Thank you so much for watching. And I'll see you in the next one. Hey there, my name is James Lee. Thank you for tuning in to another segment of my show, 51.49 on Breaking Points, where I talk about topics related

to business, politics, and society. Now, who here tried to watch the Love is Blind season four reunion on Netflix last Sunday and was met with an absolute debacle of a live stream? Netflix was just absolutely roasted by everyone in the chat and online, Twitter, everywhere. Maybe a few of you guys tried to tune in. I know Crystal and Sagar had season two alum Nick Thompson on the show last year, so there's probably at least a little

bit of overlap or crossover between fans of Breaking Points and fans of Love is Blind. Now, it's not lost on me, despite the online roasting, that the societal impact of Netflix's technological blunder on its own is probably not consequential. But I do think the decisions that the Netflix executives made leading up to that live stream is a telling microcosm of everything that is wrong with America. If you remember, early in 2022, Netflix made headlines all over the tech and financial news in a bad way for losing subscribers for the first time in a decade. Let's just say the shareholders were none too pleased. Some even sued the company, alleging Netflix had misled investors about declining subscriber growth. This is a bit of an aside, but does it not seem like shareholders win no matter what? You know, when the stock goes up, the market's working perfectly. But when the stocks go down, they cry foul. Anyway, predictably, Netflix very quickly abandoned all of

their previously held company values by raising prices and instituting new password sharing restrictions that can only be described as convoluted and confusing, so much so that they've had to walk back and amend their policies several times. I suppose at this point, we really shouldn't be taking too much stock in a company's purported values. You know, every corporation, big and small, they have one of these. If you go to their website, they have a mission statement

and a company's values page. By now, we should all know that is all BS. Hi, you said it was an emergency? The live stream isn't working? Like the live stream code base for my intern project four years ago? Are you guys airing another Chris Rock special? Love is blind?

You're using that for love is blind? No, I can't allocate more resources. It just runs on my laptop. Yes, that is supposed to be funny, but it does get at something very real. This is reporting from the Wall Street Journal. Quote, Netflix is hiring more junior employees from interns to recent college graduates as part of an expanded emerging talent recruitment initiative. People familiar with the program said previously the company had generally recruited experienced staff, particularly for engineering roles. Wow. Emerging talent recruitment initiative. That is a new one. What a euphemism

for a directive that I imagine is nothing more than corporate speak for let's hire people who will work for less. Continuing on, quote, Netflix is trying to better control rising cloud computing costs with longtime cloud partner Amazon Web Services, according to people familiar with that work. Netflix has long spent heavily on cloud and network infrastructure, viewing the reliability of its service as a key selling point. Yes, that's totally how you get more subscribers. Hey, you want to pay 20 bucks a month for Netflix, but sometimes it won't work because they don't want to invest in the infrastructure

it takes to run their platform because shareholders are whining and the executives are all turning to their McKinsey buddies for these genius ideas. Well, with all these tech layoffs, it's good to know that somebody's getting paid. New Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters is set for a big raise with more than $30 million in potential stock options and bonuses on top of a $3 million salary. Look, I went to business school

and I get the realities and economics of running a business, I do. Sometimes you gotta make hard decisions to save the company. But it is interesting, is it not, that time and time again, executive compensation is oftentimes completely divorced from company performance and unimpacted by these restructuring plans. And more often than not, executives would rather hollow out their own company to the point of putting the entire company's operational infrastructure at risk than reduce their own company to the point of putting the entire company's operational infrastructure at risk, then reduce their own pay. I'm not trying to come super hard at CEO pay, but you do have to acknowledge this is a conversation

that is occurring. And there have been ongoing questions for years because CEO pay has increased many, many times faster than wages, which have been stagnant for 40 years, right? CEO pay has increased 1,322% since 1978. CEOs were paid 351 times as much as a typical worker in 2020. So CEO pay is up 1,300%. That kind of makes sense to me. The average American wages have been flat for 40 years.

The value these individuals, these elite executives provide is even more valuable than the percentage more they're getting paid. The average employee at Amazon versus Andy, if he gets paid 350 times what they get paid or even a thousand times, I'd say he's 10,000 times more important than the average employee. His ability to do that, just like Steph Curry. Yes, just like Steph Curry, totally the same thing, running a business and playing basketball. But in all seriousness, the impact of Netflix gutting their infrastructure and bungling the love is mine live stream is more or less inconsequential when it comes to society as a whole. Probably some would disagree with that. But my point is Netflix is not unique. That's how all companies operate.

And that's why I'm talking about this today. Because for the most part, business executives aren't held accountable for anything. So business strategy 101 would simply be to make as much money as possible while cutting as many expenses as possible, legally, of course. I'm sure there were a number of Netflix engineers who were like, I think this is a bad idea, but we're told to just push on. And in the case of Netflix, we could all have a few laughs at their expense. But what if we're not talking about a live stream that crashed? What if it was a train that crashed carrying dangerous chemicals and toxic materials? Not a hypothetical, obviously, and not a one-off occurrence. According to publicly available data, you could pause this

video if you want to read these four charts, but the data shows train crashes are commonplace in the U.S. Accidents, fatalities, derailments, and damages all on the rise over the past decade. Remember, everything is an expense. Safety is an expense. It's all a big ruse. Nothing is coincidental. Just like Netflix engineers were told to sacrifice reliability, there is a clear mandate for rail engineers to skip safety checks because doing those tests would cost the company money. I'm using train crashes as an example here, but industrial accidents of all types are happening at alarming rates all over the country. We talk about conspiracy theories, right? Here's one. Safety costs money. And if we

can downplay safety, that means we can cut costs. And even if a train crashes, people won't care. I don't think it is a coincidence that the media, corporate media specifically, will sometimes downplay these types of stories for as long as possible if that story will make corporations look bad. Because if they report what's actually going on, their advertisers will get mad and pay them less money. Like a lot of the early coverage I saw of the East Palestine train derailment was reporting not from cable news or any of the legacy outlets. The real information on the ground was coming from TikTok. I don't think it's a coincidence either that the Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg continuously drags his feet when it comes to taking on these powerful industries he's supposed to oversee, whether it be trains or planes.

Like this headline suggests, the truth is that there are decades-long financial arrangements in place between rail companies, lobbyists, and lawmakers. Pete Buttigieg's doing his job will necessarily threaten the millions of dollars that flow in all directions. To tell you the truth, at this point, I can't even tell you where the military or corporations end and where the government begins. And when that happens, it becomes very clear to the people, the public, how rigged the game is.

And naturally, people become disillusioned and society will naturally become increasingly more unstable. There was just another mass shooting in Kentucky. Why not? Why the f*** not? You know what? I get it now. It's not about pronouns.

It's not about the left. It's not about the right. They're not gonna ban guns. They have set the field. People are f***ing hopeless. Why wouldn't they just... What's the... There's no point. You're giving people no point to live.

You're giving people nothing to lose. People getting violent on airplanes, mass shootings, riots, insurrections. These are all interconnected, right? When the whole of society exists on top of an economic structure built upon a failed and outdated economic maxim, and that is shareholder primacy at all costs, this is the expected result. When institutions, whether they be governmental, something like the Department of Transportation,

or private, something such as the media, institutions that are supposed to function as advocates for citizens and report on abuses of power, end up as extensions of those corporations, this is the expected result. When rules have been crafted that allow for the legal exploitation of large swaths of the country's population, this is the expected result. So let's end legalized bribery in this country. There are at least three amendments that have been proposed, stuck in Congress. House Joint

Resolution 1, known as the Democracy for All Amendment, House Joint Resolution 1, known as the Democracy for All Amendment, House Joint Resolution 48, known as the We the People Amendment, and House Joint Resolution 21, known as the People's Rights Amendment. Write to your members of Congress, prioritize this issue. We are due badly for a constitutional amendment

that will return the country to the people. And that is how you get from Netflix's Love is Blind to corporate malfeasance to trade derailments to insurrections and mass shootings. What do you think? Do you agree, disagree? Share your thoughts in the comment section below because I think this is a very important discussion to have. You want to explore more like this, I'd encourage you to check out and subscribe to my YouTube channel, 5149 with James Lee, where I break down a ton more topics related to business, politics, and society. The link will be in the description below. Thank you so much for watching Breaking Points, and thank you for your time today. What up, y'all? This your main man,

Memphis Bleak, right here. Host of Rock Solid Podcast. June is Black Music Month, so what better way to celebrate than listening to my exclusive conversation with my bro, Ja Rule. The one thing that can't stop you or take away from you is knowledge. So whatever I went through while I was down in prison for two years, through that process, learn. Learn from me. Check out this exclusive episode with Ja Rule on Rock Solid. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Rock Solid and listen now. I think everything that might have dropped in 95

has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better.

Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide listen to we need to talk from the black effect podcast network on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast this is your girl t.s madison and i'm coming to you loud live and in color from the outlaws podcast let me tell tell you something. I've got the voice. My podcast, the one they never saw coming. Each week, I sit down with the culture creators and scroll stoppers. Tina knows. Lil Nas X.

Will we ever see a dating show? My next ex. That's actually cute, though. And Chaperone. I was dropped in 2020, working the drive-thru, and here we are now. It's a fake show you tell Beyonce. Is madison on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast honey this is an iheart podcast