Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Mini Show #27: CNN Scandal, Kyrie Irving, Hunter Biden News, Global Food Crisis, & More!

Episode Date: March 19, 2022

Krystal and Saagar talk about the drama at CNN, Julian Assange news, Kyrie Irving covid insanity, media deception on Ukraine, Hunter Biden updates, a new law in Israel, White House meeting with TikTokers, and the global food crisis with Matt Stoller!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/Matt Stoller: https://mattstoller.substack.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org, brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. Hey guys, thanks for listening to Breaking Points with Crystal and Sagar. We're going to be totally upfront with you. We took a big risk going independent. To make this work, we need your support to beat the corporate media. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, they are ripping this country apart. They are making millions of dollars doing it. To help support our mission of making all of us hate each other less, hate the corrupt ruling class more, support the show. Become a Breaking Points premium member today, where you get to watch and listen to the entire show ad free and uncut an hour early

before everyone else. You get to hear our reactions to each other's monologues. You get to participate in weekly Ask Me Anythings, and you don't need to hear our annoying voices pitching you like I am right now. So what are you waiting for? Go to breakingpoints.com, become a premium member today, which is available in the show notes. Enjoy the show, guys. All right, guys, we are getting more details of exactly why Jeff Zucker was removed from CNN as their head. This comes from Rolling Stone. And basically, the details that we learn here of what was going on behind the scenes with Zucker and his mistress, Gallist, vis-a-vis the governor of New York at the time, Andrew Cuomo, are exactly what you probably expected. We just have some more specifics that we can layer.

Yeah, we've got some text messages and some specifics here that we can bring you. So let's go ahead and throw thisronies Manipulated the News. Texts, email exchanges, and 36 sources tell the true story behind the downfall of TV's ultimate operator. And before I give you some of the details reported out here, just recall that when he was pushed out as head of CNN, there were – Jake Tapper held a mourning at his, like a wake at his house. They were crying. They were in emotional distress. All these audio was being leaked. They were upset, not because of his journalistic malpractice, but because their protector had been removed.

So with that being said, let's dive into some of the details here. So one of the exchanges they got their hands on was on a day when in the morning Cuomo had done one of his press conferences and Trump had just floated the idea of potentially shutting down travel from the New York, New Jersey area. And so he gets asked about it. And at the presser, he gives this kind of like, well, we'll see what happens, rather milquetoast response. By that evening on CNN, he's coming out firing. He gets asked this question that they describe as seemingly tailor-made for him. What would this mean for the stock market? Would it have to shut down? And he says, oh, it would drop like a stone.

That would drop this economy in a way that wouldn't recover for months, if not years. So much more forceful response on CNN primetime that evening. What they uncover is that in the meantime, he had texted, Cuomo had texted to Alison Gallist and said, ask Jeff to call me, please. Then about 30 minutes before that actual appearance on CNN, Gallist had emailed a programming staffer copying Zucker and saying, hey, let's get the governor on as a last minute guest to talk about Trump's proposed quarantine.

Then he does the segment sort of breathing fire about Trump and the quarantine and the stock market and all of this. And when the segment ends, Gallus texts Cuomo and says, well done, Cuomo W. Trump L. This from the supposedly neutral journalist at CNN. There's more, though, in terms of Gallus' relationship with Cuomo. Remember, she had been for a short time one of his aides. They were apparently close buddies and kept in close contact.

She had asked him to help her friend cut through some bureaucratic red tape to open a birthing center in Manhattan. She also asked him for something involving Billy Joel, who'd once hosted a Cuomo campaign fundraiser. And she prefaced that request by saying, I never ask you for favors, but, to which Cuomo replied, yes, you do ask me for favors, and that's okay. It's mutual. One Democratic operative says it was clear she leveraged the relationship with him. There was a consistent exchange of favors between them. So there you go. I think all of this matters though, once again, because this is the veneer through which you are getting so much of your news and your information are the

people who ran these networks and do control empirically domestic politics to a very large degree. So the machinations behind the scenes and the way that they posture themselves, market themselves, create themselves into the story, it matters immensely to the information environment. And I think it matters even more because elite corruption, what's allowed and is okay and overseen and then what is reported on, supposedly scandalized and put in front of you, it's all selective. And when you look behind and you see how they're doing all of this stuff behind the scenes

in such a corrupt and ridiculous manner, it just taints all coverage, all of their editorial direction. And it also shows us how what they claim to be true and to not is very much suspect in and of itself. And I think that's why when we spend so much time on this story, it's you have to remember how important CNN is as an American institution. When you go abroad, like when I'm in India, CNN India and International is always on in a lot of people's TVs. CNN is one of the most trusted brands in news.

Even today, at an all-time low, it still means and it matters something, oh, I saw that on CNN. And to see how exactly that's all run and the background of it just pulls back the curtain as to who the exact people are who are delivering you this product that I think matters a lot. It just reveals, I mean, all their high-minded rhetoric about journalism. Yeah, I know. That's what I mean. That's not what they're doing there. It's a business, right? And they're just running it as like, however, they can sort of short-term profit maximize angle in their own little Game of Thrones internal posturing and power plays and those sorts of things. She points out in this article, the reporter that wrote this, that there was kind of actually a similar relationship between

Zucker and Trump originally when Trump first starts his campaign. I mean, they have a longtime relationship. They were kind of buddies going back and forth. And so originally, Zucker is, you know, kind of propping up Trump and certainly during the campaign, giving him tons and tons of exposure. And then when that flipped into this sort of like adversary relationship, well, that was also great for CNN. No one benefited more from the Trump years as they positioned themselves as part of the resistance. So, you know, even if you think about before the Trump years, the type of programming decisions that they would make under Zucker, they went all in on that. Remember that cruise ship that was stranded?

And the missing flights and that sort of stuff, which was more, it was tabloidy, not to say that it wasn't important, the lives that were lost, but in terms of global geopolitical affairs, there were certainly other stories that were worthy of coverage as well. And they spent days and days and days and days

going all in on these certain stories. Why? Because it's not ultimately about like bringing you the best journalistic product and helping educate you and inform you about the world. That's not the game these people are playing whatsoever. And so you see it very clearly exposed in text messages like this, that that's that's the least of their concerns. And then it shows you also in the reaction of their talent to this all being exposed, that're not, like, sad that there was all this journalistic malpractice going on and outright corruption. They're sad that the guy that was their guy and who was protecting them is gone. It's all just a fake team sport, and we should all just wake up to that reality.

Well said. Got an update for you on the case against Julian Assange and the attempt to extradite him to the United States. Of course, you guys know the background here. This prosecution was started under the Trump administration and has been continued under the Biden administration. Julian has been going through and trying to exhaust his appeals to stop this extradition. The very latest is this. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen from Kevin Gastola, who has been following this very closely. He says, UK Supreme Court refuses to hear appeal from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in extradition case. It goes to British Home Office for approval. No statement from Assange's defense, but it's

likely his team appeals prior district court decision, which could keep him in the UK. Kevin wrote a longer piece on this. I'm going to read from a little bit of it because the legal mechanics are different from here and they're a little bit complex. So he says the Supreme Court maintained that the appeal did not, quote, raise an arguable point of law. That means they sent the case back to the Westminster Magistrates Court. That district court initially blocked the United States government's extradition request on January 4th, 2021. By refusing to grant Assange a hearing, the U.S. government effectively won their appeal. Prosecutors convinced the British courts to

disregard concerns that he may be subject to treatment in a U.S. jail or prison that would be oppressive to his mental health. Now, there are additional appeals that Julian can engage in. We'll see whether those ultimately pan out. In particular, what Kevin points to here is, you know, the question that was at play here was just this question of whether the conditions in U.S. prisons were ultimately too cruel. So according to Kevin, he has an opportunity to submit an appeal on issues of freedom of the press that have not been addressed by the high court yet. So that's likely the next

direction that his legal team goes in. We were talking about this before. Brits, your legal system is whack. I'm sure ours is equally confusing from the outside. We're more used to it. I will display my U.S. chauvinism. Ours is not based upon a thousand years of British common law. Ours is not based upon a thousand years of British common law, okay?

Ours is rooted in a much better legal tradition. Ours is inspired by a thousand years of British common law. Yeah, we've evolved past their idiocy. So Brits, get your stuff together. I'm sure you'll get a bunch of hate mail for that. That being said, there are still some avenues through which this could go. But I think that this still, at this perilous time, just highlights the threat to press freedom. If you prosecute him, then you set the standard that

releasing classified information in and of itself, which is an act of journalism, is a crime. And we can't have that, especially at a time like this with Russia. What kind of Pentagon papers are there inside of the Pentagon that could leak eventually five, six years from now about the real intelligence assessments or whatnot? Would they criminalize that? Because it's certainly possible. And if that's true, then I'm against this 100%. And by the way— Take the merits out of it.

WikiLeaks, we obviously focus a lot in the U.S. on what has been leaked about the U.S. But WikiLeaks has leaked on major governments all around the world. They really don't discriminate in that way. But WikiLeaks has leaked on major governments all around the world. They really don't discriminate in that way. But even putting aside how you feel about what they put out and how they put it out, the Obama administration, they wanted very much to go after Julian. They hated him too. But they could not see how to build a case that did not also implicate other publishers, New York Times, anybody. And so they said, we can't do it. Trump under Barr took this much more aggressive stance and posture,

reportedly even, you know, considering assassinating him, these insane plots. They decided to prosecute him. That was the wrong move. And now the Biden administration is continuing it and continuing to push for his extradition. And the toll that has been taken on Julian as a human being, on his family, is insane and outrageous. And they really do. I mean, we've obviously talked to his brother here a number of times. They really do fear for his well-being and his life. If he's extradited to the U.S., his mental health is extraordinarily precarious. So, you know, on a personal level for them, this is outrageous. But obviously, you know, there are massive implications here for freedom of the press. And I think, as you said, Sagar, as we see the crackdown on all sorts of media and the bans and the censorship and that direction moving forward with increasing velocity

among the American public, that makes this particular case even more vital than it was before. Yeah, I completely agree. At this time, we need to do everything we can to set the standard on press freedom. And this is a case where that's just simply, it's antithetical to that. And unfortunately, a lot of the people crying about the Russia law, misinformation law, they're not going to say a word about this one. You can't be consistent in that regard. Yeah. No, that's exactly right. And, you know, your adversaries will throw this right back in your face.

And we've seen it done before to point out your hypocrisy. All right, guys. We'll continue to stay on it. Definitely follow Kevin Gastola, who has been really keeping track of all of the developments here, and we'll have more for you later. Interesting story for you at the intersection of basketball and politics. So for those of you guys who are NBA fans, or even I was aware of this one.

Yes, I was aware too. There's been a whole situation this season with Kyrie Irving, star player for the Brooklyn Nets, who can't play in any of the home games at the Barclays Center because he is unvaccinated. So this has been ongoing. Well, the very latest is Eric Adams, the new mayor of New York City, has loosened some of the vaccine restrictions, but not all of them. So now you have this really bizarre, stupid situation where Kyrie can be there at the game, but he can't play in the game and apparently also can't be in the locker room. So his fellow player on the team, Kevin Durant, had some things to say about that. Let's take a listen. It's ridiculous. Like, I don't understand it all.

I mean, as it, there's a few people in our arena that's unvaxxed, right? Like, they lifted all of that in our arena, right? So what's the, I don't get it. It's a second mandate that says he can come in but can't play. Yeah, I don't get it. It just feels like at this point now, somebody's trying to make a statement or a point um to flex their authority um but you know everybody out here looking for attention and that's when i feel like

the the mayor wants right now some attention you know um but he'll figure it out soon he better um but it just didn't make any sense like it's unvaxxed people in this building already we got a guy who uh can come into the building. I guess, are they fearing our safety? What? Like, I don't get it.

So yeah, we're all confused. Pretty much everybody in the world is confused at this point, early on in the season, you know, people didn't understand what was going on, but now it just looks stupid. So hopefully Eric,

you, you got to figure this out. Yeah, he's right. I mean, right. So he's gets fined fifth. They got fined 50 grand for letting him in the locker room, but he's allowed to sit there on nearly courtside and allow them to play. Yeah, so the deal is, this is so silly. And just shows you, I mean, just like the theater around this that Kevin Durant is pointing to there, like,

this makes no sense. You're trying to protect our safety, but he can be here, but he can't be in the locker room. How does this make any sense? So apparently the reason that they're drawing this distinction is because he's banned from anything that would be considered a workplace. So being on the court or even, I guess, on the bench is workplace. Locker room, workplace. Come on now. Two feet away on the sidelines there, sitting courtside, is not workplace. And so that's how you end up with this ridiculous, utterly ridiculous situation. I mean, the other piece of this that I think is interesting

is there was all this kind of right right of center excitement about Eric Adams. Like, oh, because, you know, he was very against defund the police and he sort of like stood up in these certain ways to the left of the Democratic Party. But then not only does he, as we've covered with Ross Barkin, like just shamelessly weaponized the most hollow form of identity politics for his own ends. But he now has maybe the dumbest COVID policies in the entire country right now. Yeah, this is insane. It's ridiculous. Especially in the days of Omicron and given where we are right now, enough.

This is the thing about the MLB, whenever we're considering laying off opening day, or sorry, not having opening day. It's like, let people just be. We have been through a bad time. It's not great. The price is high. Let people play and enjoy basketball.

I just cannot get over the fact that we are not allowing, these guys are also some of the healthiest people on the planet. If they feel comfortable letting Kyrie play, then let it be. You know, it's just the absurdity of this policy just really gets me. And it's ruining sports for no other reason, as Kevin Durant says. It's just silly and arbitrary. Silly and arbitrary. I will say, I mean, listen, the other side of this,

I wonder if there's been tension in the locker room of his, because Kyrie's a really important part of that team. And they, at least a little while ago, I was looking at their record. Normally, of course, teams play better at home than they do on the road. And it was the opposite for the Nets because at home, they don't have the benefit of Kyrie.

So I wonder if there has been tension in the locker room like, come on, dude, just get the freaking vaccine and let's be done with this shit. It's possible. But I will say, Kyle and I went to a Wizards-Nets game here, and Kyrie was very, Kyrie was very sweet how he interacted with the fans. So that kind of,

with like this one little boy. So that kind of like warmed my heart towards him. Congrats, Kyrie. Made me forgive his weird anti-vax obsession here. Got some new polling that breaks down

how Americans really feel about a no-fly zone when it's actually explained to them. Yes. What that really means, let's put the tweet up on the screen, I think this is extremely important. So this new poll from Yahoo and YouGov includes a split form test of no-fly zone and support plummets

when respondents are told no-fly zone means, quote, the U.S. military would shoot down Russian military planes flying over Ukraine, possibly triggering a war between the U.S. military would shoot down Russian military planes flying over Ukraine, possibly triggering a war between the U.S. and Russia, which is just an accurate description of what a no-fly zone actually means. So keep this up on the screen so we can see the numbers here. When you just say, hey, do you support a no-fly zone, you've got a plurality support. 40% say yes, 25% say no, the rest are unsure.

Then when you say the whole thing of, hey, this could mean war, support plummets. Only 23% then support a no-fly zone and 43% are opposed. So once again, I think this exposes that the media has done a very, very poor job of educating people on the consequences of the actions that have already been taken and the actions that are ultimately being proposed. Everybody's instinct, as created by the media, is like, do more, do more, do more, no fly zone, jets, whatever, sure, let's do it. But then there's no explanation of what that actually means. And when you provide it, people are like, oh, hell no, no thank you to that. People are like, wait, what? No, I don't support that at all. I just think this is, again, comes down to education. And look, these things are complicated. I do not blame people for not knowing. It's not your job. It's our job to accurately explain it to you. That is why when we talk about no-fly zones,

we say World War III, because that is what it means empirically. If these are situations or these are policies we're going to put into place, it requires a war between the United States and Russia. There is no other way in order to describe that. It's just something where I find that we've massaged language to not mean what it really means. And this is all stuff that comes from our hawkish past. You know, when was the last time that the United States implemented a no-fly zone? Most people probably don't know this. It was Iraq and Saddam Hussein. In order to say, oh, well, Saddam Hussein can't, you know,

use chemical weapons against his people. Sound familiar? Look, these were a noble policy. He was massacring individuals. But that no-fly zone and all the resolutions and the hawkishness and the posture towards regime change and an outright breaking the seals, so to speak, in terms of use of force against Iraq set the stage to box the U.S. lawmakers in for the 2003 invasion. A lot of people forget that, which is that it was a bipartisan support to institute this no-fly zone, and it actually caused Clinton a lot of problems. There's a famous quote where Clinton says, quote, I wish I could just call the son of a bitch and talk it out to Hussein, but he couldn't because he knew he would be crucified by the press and that the bipartisan hawks would destroy him because Iraq had actually shot back.

I think they might have even shot down one of our planes. It triggered like a whole international crisis. People forget all of his history, but that's how it happens, right? Think back to if Clinton could have just called him. Not a nuclear power. Yeah, exactly. This is a non-nuclear power. Yeah.

So, you know, I think cable news is just, in a certain sense, they are built for moments like this because they got the reporters on the ground and they go live and it's breaking news all the time, all day, every day. But in the most important sense, they are not built at all for an actual discussion that is serious-minded, that educates people about what our possible directions are right now, the actions we've already taken, and, you know, what the consequences might be. There's just none of that. The only direction is in favor of escalation. And so, I mean, it's in certain ways heartening to see how little support there is, only 23 percent, although that to me is still too high, but only 23 percent when people actually are told what it means. But it's also very depressing that you have such a large percentage of the population that obviously doesn't know the term no-fly zone. It's very passive, right? It doesn't

indicate no-fly zone. It's just like a thing that exists. It doesn't indicate any of the actual activities that would have to be undertaken in order to create that no-fly zone. And so you end up with numbers that look like this. Some breaking news here on the Hunter Biden investigation. So a couple of top-line things from the New York Times. Number one, a federal investigation into Hunter Biden continues. Let's put this up there on the screen. He had a significant, nearly $1 million tax bill that he had to take a loan out in order to pay and squash some IRS questions about some of his financial liabilities. were authenticated by the Justice Department and are being used in this federal investigation for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, of foreign lobbying, and all sorts of shady stuff that he was up to. Here's the thing.

Everybody knew, everyone who had a brain knew this laptop was real. And yet, during the election, I know it's been two years, I don't like talking about it, but guess what? We have to because now the president's son is under federal investigation. The reason is that whenever they never denied that the laptop wasn't real, that's how you knew it was real. Yeah, you knew it was real. And yet the media, this has all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation. I'll never forget that one. Oh, the hallmarks. Hallmarks? So it looks like a Russian disinformation op, except that the underlying material is true. And now the Biden's Justice

Department has authenticated that laptop and using it as part of their investigation. Now, the really interesting stuff here, as recently as last month, a federal grand jury heard testimony in Wilmington, Delaware, one of whom was a former employee for Hunter Biden, in regards to money that Mr. Biden received from a Ukrainian energy company, the investigation, which began as a tax inquiry under the Obama administration, widened in 2018 to include possible criminal violation of tax law, as well as foreign lobbying and money laundering rules. Now remember, we already know from the Ron Johnson report out of Congress, which again was never denied, as well as open source information, that Hunter was taking money from all sorts of shady regimes.

The Romanians, the Ukrainians, the Chinese, all of these very convoluted tax structures clearly designed to skirt U.S. tax law, which is also, it shows us another thing. If he needed a loan to pay his bills, he could be broke. That's another issue that he's had, which may explain why he was auctioning his fake art for hundreds of thousands of dollars. He pulled in some cash on that, didn't he? I love how we all just brushed over that, right? Which is the president's son is selling high-dollar art in a clear corrupt move where we don't get to know who the buyer is. Yeah, but he does. But he does. That whole show of like, oh, it's going to be anonymous. And then it totally wasn't. It was anonymous to us. It was not anonymous to him.

So actually the worst of transparency. Look, I I'm not saying it's the most important story in the world, but it's very clear here that the mainstream media is going to ignore this one completely. And if one of Trump's kids was under investigation, which given Jared probably should be, it would be front page news. And instead, all of this is buried, at least at the very least, props to Ken Vogel, who is such a down-the-line reporter at The New York Times. He doesn't give a crap what people in the Democratic Party say about him or vice versa. And he's a true—I would say one of the last true dogged reporters in Washington who cares about corruption. He follows corruption, and it doesn't matter if it's this president's sons or the last president's daughter. It doesn't matter.

He really does stay on top of it. I mean, I think everybody's expectations in terms of whether there will likely be charges out of this, probably not, you'd have to say, because it's difficult to prove these sort of FARA-type charges. So, you know, I don't want to have like a Walzer closing in on Hunter Biden. Right. Yeah, we're not saying that. Kind of a moment, but it's extremely newsworthy and noteworthy that the president's son is under investigation. Someone who has admitted to basically trading on his family name in his shady-ass business dealings. And then the other part of it that we should not let go is the way that the media treated this information at the time.

You will recall, I mean, there was a mass censorship of the original New York Post reporting on this laptop, which was completely insane. Not only could you, you know, not only was New York Post, they were taken down off Twitter. You couldn't link to the article. It really was completely overwhelming. And you could see the way that the Democrats and the Biden administration basically threatened them within an inch of their life to make sure that this information was pushed out of the public square. Now, ironically, I think it actually made it more of- Oh, yeah. There was a big strides and effects, for sure. Yeah. It got more attention because of that reaction. But this also likely led to those new

Twitter rules about using hacked materials that they've implemented under their new CEO. So this continues to be extremely significant in terms of how social media handled these claims and how the regular press ultimately handled these claims. So anyway, President's son under investigation. We should definitely be keeping an eye on it. And the other thing that they say here is that it may help his case that he was able to pay off the tax debt because juries tend to look favorably on people who have paid their bills. Even though he had to take out a loan. Here's the next question. Where did that loan come from? Where did the money come from?

Based upon what asset? Great question. What was the underlying thing? Was it your art? Yeah. Who was it? Did they have any business in front of the Biden administration? Who were the business people? So was it a bank or Was it your art? Yeah. Who was it? Did I have any business in front of the Biden administration? Yeah, who were the business people? So was it a bank or was it an

individual? So these are all great questions that the Justice Department should ask. Anyway, that's the latest on Hunter Biden, and we'll keep you guys updated. So Reuters has a really amazing article here. Let's go through this. Israel's Knesset passes law barring Palestinian spouses. March 10th, 2022. That's the date that this came out. March 10th, 2022. Let's go through some of this. Israel's parliament on Thursday passed a law denying naturalization to Palestinians from the occupied West Bank or Gaza married to Israeli citizens, forcing thousands of Palestinian families to either emigrate or live apart.

The so-called citizenship law passed just before the Knesset disbanded for a holiday recess by a 45-15 majority vote that crossed coalition opposition lines. 45-15, man. Holy cow. It replaced a similar temporary order that first passed during the height of a Palestinian uprising in 2003 and was renewed annually until it expired last July when the Knesset failed to secure a simple majority needed to extend it. Proponents say the law helps ensure Israel's security, their security, their security, and maintains its, quote, Jewish character. So think about that. They're saying this is to maintain our security. Well, wait, it's just a matter of logic then to say that your argument is Palestinian spouses are by definition

a threat to security. They are undermining the security of Israel. Well, how are they undermining the security of Israel? Does every single Palestinian spouse pick up a gun and try to go attack the Knesset? No. So what are you talking about? Well, they admitted in the next sentence there, well, we're worried about the, quote, Jewish character of our nation. Oh, are you? Oh, are you? So let's draw a parallel here. What if in the U.S. somebody said, I'd like to maintain the European character of the United States of America? You'd be like, whoa, that's weird. That's like ethnostate-y, right? Or if somebody said, you know, I'd like to maintain the Christian character of our nation. So, you know, we'd like to ban any American citizen from marrying a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Jew, etc.

You can only marry Christian. So we're dealing with admissions here of an ethnostate, or at the very least some sort of a religious theocratic state. So this is without a doubt not a belief in freedom, democracy, human rights, equality. It's a it's spitting in the eye of the idea of equality. You know, hey, if all people are equal, you can marry whoever you want, and it is what it is. No. They're saying, you're not allowed to marry a Palestinian. We're going to ban that. They say some Knesset members said it was intended to prevent a gradual right of return for Palestinian refugees who were

driven from their homes or fled during the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation, all while Israel prepares to take in thousands of Ukrainian refugees. Wow, would you look at that? The state of Israel is Jewish, and so it will remain, said Simcha Rothman of the far-right religious Zionism party, a member of the opposition who brought the law forward with Interior Minister Ayelet Shakid. Quote, today, God willing, Israel's defensive shield will be significantly strengthened, he told the Knesset hours before the vote. However, critics say the law discriminates against Israel's 21% Arab minority. You don't say who are Palestinian by heritage and Israeli by citizenship by barring them from extending citizenship and permanent residency to Palestinian spouses. This is okay. This is like anry. We're against intermarriage. That's what this is. They're saying, look, an Israeli and a Palestinian, a Jew and a Muslim can't have it.

Not going to allow it. And again, what's astonishing to me is, so, you know, I saw this article on Twitter, talking about it now, covering it. This gets like no reaction. You know, like I don't see much outrage over this. I don't see much talk about this. People are just like, yeah, that's Israel doing Israel things. Yeah, but maybe that's a problem, especially when you have Israel and the U.S. and the West in general. We love to suck ourselves off and talk about just how much we believe in democracy and human rights.

I mean, they say only democracy in the Middle East. Does this look like the action of a democracy that believes in freedom and equality and justice? Is all this look like the action of a democracy that believes in freedom and equality and justice? Is that what this looks like? No, this is laws that exacerbate the current state of apartheid that we have there. I mean, we're talking about second-class citizenship. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about you don't have the right skin tone. You don't have the right religion.

You don't have the right ethnicity, background, and upbringing in order to be considered an equal here. And so we're going to codify that into law. Into law. So I don't want to hear anything about, you know, the U.S. and Israel and the West sucking itself off about just how high and mighty we are when this stuff is happening right underneath our noses and basically nobody's talking about it. We're the only people who are talking about it. And understand something, guys. Because they frame it all from security and a defensive posture. That's how they talk about it. Every single aggressive, excuse me, I just hit the camera and shook it. Every single aggressive and imperialist and

offensively violent nation in history always plays the victim as they're doing it. Always. It always happens. It always happens. It always happens. In fact, that's one of the only ways you can mobilize to get people to back such atrocious things. Because if you look at them for what they are, it makes you feel like you're a piece of shit. So you cloak everything in, well, we have to do this for defensive reasons and for self-protection reasons. And that's why we have to be disgustingly against equality. And we have to support modern-day anti-miscegenation laws. Because if we don't do that, we won't survive as a people. Again, any authoritarian nation, any fascist dictatorship, they always cloak themselves in this language of justice

and being defensive, when in reality, this is an aggressive thing to do. So, it's just incredible. Just absolutely incredible, man. It doesn't get any worse than this. And again, I don't see much talk about it. Hey guys, our friend Marshall Kosloff, he's going to be conducting interviews with experts and newsmakers for us here on the Breaking Points channel. We're really excited.

Yep, here it is. Hey, Breaking Points, Marshall here. We are joined by Jules Terpak. She's a TikTok creator who last week was invited to attend a briefing the White House put on for TikTok creators to talk about the war in Ukraine, disinformation, and all those broader topics. This got a little controversial after the fact because some people thought on the one hand, it's a little silly to talk to TikTok

people and not people in the news media. On the other hand, some defended the idea saying, hey, we should talk to people who could talk to different audiences. As the breaking points people know, not everyone is watching CNN. So Julia, let's just start by what did you think about, at a background level, the idea of talking to TikTokers about a literal war? Yeah. So when I got the email, honestly, it was less than 24 hours before the meeting. There were no security measures and there were no much vetting. So when I got the email, I mean, to me, it was a no brainer. I am on TikTok a ton of hours per day. I know that's how my siblings are. I know that's how people within our generation are. It's kind of like the first general media source, to be

honest, that's where it's become that a lot of young people click first when they unlock their phones. So to me, it was a no brainer, But the headline to those who don't have that is definitely more sensational than people, younger people consider it. So but to me, I think basically what you saw, maybe the SNL skit or Tim Dillon did a conversation about it. People have this preconceived notion of what TikTok is. Maybe it's prank videos or maybe it's dance videos. But every single person of the 30 there, except for maybe two, are those who are doing commentary or reporting content on current events and culture. It wasn't 15-year-olds there, even though age doesn't necessarily matter. I think the median age was probably closer to 30. And there were freelance journalists there who utilized TikTok. Probably 10 to 15 of those were freelance journalists who utilize TikTok.

So definitely the things like SNL and Tim Dillon's take were, they're funny, but it's definitely not the situation of the crew that was there. And like you said, there were 30 people who were invited. So what do you cover and what do you think interested them about your coverage and perspective that made you worth inviting to this? Yeah. So what I do is mostly commentary content and it's on digital culture as a whole. One of my most recent videos that I think was really got me into there was about Gen Z misinformation. Something like infographic Instagram is really tied to how Gen Z consumes basically world news and current events. And kind of, I did a take on that about how that's harmful in a lot of ways. It's, you know, a lot of high schoolers behind

these accounts who aren't vetting the information and how still, even though we are digital natives and think that we know all when it comes to how we intake information on the internet, it's definitely not the case exactly. And that was my biggest point there is why I went. It was wanting to hear their takes on misinformation, disinformation, and how to approach that. Yeah. Speaking of that, what was the White House's take that they gave you and who from the White House actually spoke to you? Yeah.

So the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, was there, as well as the National Security Council advisor, Matt Miller. Jen Psaki wasn't originally supposed to be there. She was like, I heard about this and I wanted to jump in, which of course, that's pretty cool. So there wasn't as much of an emphasis. I mean, of course, there was on misinformation and disinformation, but throughout the entire thing, they were actually kind of going to three key points, circling back within every question kind of pushing them so the first was of course that they want to de-escalate the situation and that basically all decisions are

being made based off of the want to put an end to this war as soon as possible the second was more so that um 250 million dollars in aid has been sent over the past two weeks so that's economic military humanitarian and that's economic, military, humanitarian, and that's going to continue. And the third point that they continue to push was that Russia is obviously having a tougher time than they anticipated. That's one due in part to Ukraine being better equipped than they thought, and also just fighting harder, just much in part due to their partners and allies. Also that Russia is having their own problems in terms of logistics, mechanics, and also even, which I found really interesting, soldier morale, because they don't necessarily understand why they're invading fully. And also it's a friendly neighbor that they're

invading. So there's a nice human level. Basically, it's just a mess on all human levels. And they were kind of really pushing those points. In terms of misinformation and disinformation, there was definitely a question on that, and they were basically just like, that's kind of like why we're talking to you guys. They weren't giving us any information that wasn't necessarily already on the table. Like, again, they didn't vet us.

There were no security clearances. Everything's public. There's a recording of it that people can reference, but they're basically like, we want to equip you guys with this information. It was an open and casual question answer. They're like, ask us what you think your audience wants to know and what we can equip you with that information. But like I said, they kept going back to those three key points. And did you get a chance to ask a question? I did not have the chance to ask a question. My question was going to very much be on the disinformation on TikTok.

So what happens on TikTok is, and a critique that I think it was like Hassan Piker had a pretty good critique is that even if you're meeting with 30 of those who are kind of have a bigger platform in terms of the commentary and reporting realms on TikTok, there are still issues in just the nature of the platform when it comes to a random user who has never had a viral video can still get a viral video on TikTok within hours. That's true on every platform, but on TikTok, it happens like hour by hour. That is the norm. And there's a lot of dangers to that. So he's like, even consulting with these 30 TikTokers isn't going to have much of a impact. But I would critique that with the comment section on TikTok is a huge thing. Like if you're watching more than three seconds of a video on TikTok, you're looking at the comment section. So when it comes to the comment section, the people who are at the top are those who

you follow, just how the algorithm works. If you follow someone and they comment on a video, you're going to, they're going to show up at the top of the comment section. So if there's these viral videos that happen hundreds, even like 50 K views, a hundred thousand up to a million views, even more, it kind of gives us more confidence. And like, we can comment on these and our following is going to see them. Honestly, it can be even stronger than us posting a video because if you post a video, the algorithm can only get to a small percent

of your audience. You know, if you comment on that video and if your audience is seeing it, they will all see your comment because they will be at the very top, whether it's this like referencing them to a more valid source or you straight up knowing and saying like, this is an out of context video. It can be really, really powerful to be honest. And something I'm curious about, this is the breaking points audience. So when people hear

the words, disinformation, misinformation, it's probably going to trigger thoughts of, wait, this is like when they said from the White House that Spotify should fact check Joe Rogan or engage in other acts of censorship. I know that you have like thoughts on that specific issue too, but are a little like, I think separate from how the White House sees the issue. How would you differentiate misinformation and disinformation in a war context from the U.S.-centric culture wars that we just wrapped up last month? Yeah, so, and it kind of ties into the last question you asked, because I didn't, hadn't fully answered, but like, on TikTok, what I see as the biggest problem are these videos of violence that are out of context. These aren't, you know, these aren't takes

necessary. There definitely are those, and, but what it seems to be the biggest problem as all this is unraveling online, and we're all learning to deal with seeing a war unravel online are these videos of violence that are kind of framed as if they're happening within this war, but they're actually from a completely different timeframe. And so there's not a question of really subjective, like morale in these videos. It's like, is this actually happening or is it not and this is actually a huge problem on tiktok right now and then the comment sections of course the demographics are more so young even though on tiktok the users are are definitely the the age demographic is growing but at any age even freelance journalists journalists as a whole are

kind of like how do we decipher what is real and fake? The comment sections aren't really helping with that right now. And that's the biggest misinformation, disinformation that I am concerned about. There are definitely takes on it too, but I would say that's the biggest problem on the platform that we need to hit. Another question is, and this is a controversy that I'd love for you to talk about. How do you get access to White House resources, which is genuinely important? I think this is a huge step for independent media slash independent creators. How do you prevent yourself from just being used as a talking point receptacle? It's easy to say, oh my gosh, Jen Psaki's here.

I'm just going to repeat whatever she says about skepticism. So I hear there's been some controversy about that. Could you explain the controversy and then say, how do you personally think creators or just anyone in general should think about that? Yeah. I mean, we all need to use our critical thinking. We went in with wanting to represent our audience in terms of the questions. I think the answers that they gave us were, again, they weren't very subjective. It's like, we sent this much money and this is what it is for, for economic, military, humanitarian aid. They made very clear that they just want to deescalate the situation and maybe more subjective in terms of why Russia is having a tougher time. Maybe that was a more subjective approach, but at the end of the day,

how all of us approach are, I mean, I can't speak for everyone, how I observed many of those that were there who approached the content is that we're putting hours of research into a lot of these one to two minute videos that we're putting up. Not everyone, I will say that,

and I don't know everyone, but I would say I know half of the people there and all of these people are very much, I don't know if I want to say like independent thinkers, but very critical in their content. You know, you have a responsibility of an audience and at the end of the day, like just still approaching this White House briefing and the information we learned there as you would every day with your content on the platform because yeah, you have a responsibility to your audience. And it also of course pushes back on you if you are not putting correct information out there as it should. Yeah. And just to wrap this with something bigger, look, I, you know, we know each other in real life off camera and you're exciting because you

are a seemingly random person who's just started putting up TikToks. And then a few years later, because you're doing well and you have a real audience, you're getting briefed by the White House. So that's exciting for me. It's exciting that independent people could be there. At the same time, we're recognizing that, hey, it's helpful that cable, I know breaking points, you might not like this, but the cable is there and they're actually filming on the ground. You know, reporters are actually literally dying and being injured covering the story. How do you think the proper mix of independent persons like yourself or by themselves, people like me at breaking points slash the realignment who are slightly more resourced than you are, but are still, once again, not credentialed, but then actually the CNN and the extra press, how to see all this mixing together in a way that can maybe be healthier for us as a society. Cause I think that's what the optimistic point would be.

Yeah. So, I mean, I grew up watching like NBC nightly news with Brian Williams, like an elementary and middle school, like with my dad every night. And then I think it's like, when I got into high school and like social media started growing more, I kind of died out. So like when I was watching NBC Nightly News, it's like I always associated with Brian Williams, with an individual. I was always referring to this individual. And then as social media grew and how these legacy media, legacy media use these platforms was interesting because it was less of uplifting individuals. And even just like um yeah just like when news articles come out they weren't really tagging the individuals it was just like to me i was psychologically was looking at all this information is coming from the washington post

not like i was kind of dehumanizing the the process and not really thinking about all the yeah hard-working journalists day in and day out that go behind this. So once people were, individuals were able to start growing more of a platform on social media, it was really interesting because it humanized the experience more for me. And yeah, I was flocking more to individuals for my information as we're seeing most do now. And there's good and bad to this. So like algorithms kind of make it good in the way that, yeah, like me, someone random who I didn't go to school for journalism, but after college really figured out I a field like this. It's kind of beautiful that social media can allow this for people, breaks those barriers. the barrier that is actually good when it comes to checks and balances, which is a lot of those, whether it's on TikTok or on YouTube or on Twitter, whatever, don't necessarily have those checks and balances. And it's good and bad. Mostly, I would say good. It can be bad in the

way that there's authenticity taken out throughout the course. There can obviously be politics involved, especially with legacy media and those who own it and like all maybe the ads and everything. But I still see those issues are prevalent within independent media when it comes to trying to play into an algorithm. And also, yeah, like you have to get sponsors as well to sustain yourself and it can be tough. So to me, I think when you want more relatability and approachability, these individuals are great, but you also have to remember that these entities with resources are still very, very important because they are more so on the ground, really experiencing these things and also going through the very harsh checks and balances, which again can be good or bad, but

it's complementary to each other really. And I have been getting a lot more respect for legacy media over the past year. Not that there's still a lot of mess within all areas, but I'm looking at it more as a complementary relationship rather than it has to be one or the other. And before this past year, I was more so like only individuals. But again, I think it's complimentary for sure. Well said. Jules, thank you so much for joining us on Breaking Points. Can you just shout out your social media handles?

People should go take a look at. I'd love for you to reference the Google Doc you put together of the actual call out if people want to learn more. Yeah. So you can find me at Jules Terpak on all platforms. And yeah, I have a Google Doc of all the notes from the White House briefing. You're able to comment on it. So if when people are reading, they consider, can consider your point of views, no propaganda, don't want like those narratives pushed. Like if you feel that

way, comment on the doc and, you know, correct what anyone said. So yeah. Thank you for having me. Yeah. We all remember the Arab Spring, which happened a little over 10 years ago. It started in Tunisia, but really it was supercharged when an Egyptian street vendor burned himself alive to protest police corruption. The protests spread, the U.S. was sort of involved, and by 2012 there were new rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen. There were protests that had rocked a dozen more countries and really kind of changed the politics of the Middle East. It was, you know, it was

hopeful. It was tragic. It was also cynical all at once. And the war in Syria that came out of it is still going on today. So it was, you know, a lot of optimism at the start, but a pretty ugly ending and really quite disastrous, in fact. Now, the Arab Spring had a lot of causes. There was, you know, there's like an angry new generation. It's basic stuff we understand, like people wanted a more responsive politics. Frustration with corruption. But one, I think, really important factor often goes unmentioned, which is food, and in particular, food prices. So in the second half of 2010, global food prices

increased by about a third, and there were a lot of reasons for this. So in food-producing countries, there were a bunch of problems. Like there were fires in Russia, heavy rains in Canada, Australia had floods, Argentina had a drought, and all of these things drove down crop yields, which in turn drove up food prices, including food prices across the Middle East. The consequence was the Arab Spring. Food matters. So that's what I'm going to talk about today. Food prices, the geopolitics of food, and the food business. I'm Matt Stoller. This is another Big Breakdown.

Now, I want to start with a quote from Lester Brown, who's the president of a think tank called the Earth Policy Institute. If you want to predict where political instability, revolution, coup d'etat, or interstate warfare will occur, the best factor to keep an eye on is not GDP, the Human Development Index, or energy prices. If I were to pick a single indicator, economic, political, social, that I think will tell us more than any other, it would be the price of grain. He's an old white guy, so you know, you should listen to him. Seems very authoritative, right? Actually, if you want someone more authoritative, you can pick Henry Kissinger.

Now, that guy was super cynical, and he actually knows how to wield power in a pretty brutal way. My theory is actually that he's immortal, but he was an enormously powerful influential guy in the American and global foreign policy establishment. And he said that – is reported to have said that if you want to know how to run a country, run a region, to wield geopolitical power, he – let me just give you a quote. Quote, if you control food, you control the people. So that's Henry Kissinger. When people don't have food, they riot and governments fall. We've noticed that Biden's polling ain't doing too well, and that's with just slightly higher prices for food and gasoline. Most countries produce enough calories to feed their population,

but some are actually reliant on imports. So it's not always just prices. Sometimes there's a deficit. Now, the largest wheat importers, and wheat, of course, is bread, right? Makes bread. These are Egypt, Indonesia, Turkey, China, Algeria, Bangladesh, Iran. These are big, important countries. Egypt controls the Suez Canal. China is the world's factory, and Iran has a lot of oil and is in a very important geographic position, and it has the ability to basically shut down oil flows from the Middle East if things get really bad.

Now, food rights in these countries can be pretty dangerous, and that's, of course, not to speak of the suffering that will go on when people go hungry globally, especially in poorer countries. So with that, let's talk about the war in Russia and Ukraine. And that war has driven wheat prices to a record high. Ukraine is known as the breadbasket of Europe. The European Union gets over half of its corn imports, around a fifth of its wheat imports, and almost a quarter of its vegetable oil imports from Ukraine. Vegetable oil goes into lots of processed foods, so it's pretty important.

Ukraine and Russia account for about 30% of the world's traded wheat. Now, that's not all the wheat in the world. A lot of countries grow wheat domestically, and then they consume it domestically. But some wheat is traded for countries that have a calorie, net calorie deficit in terms of what they produce. That is traded wheat. And that traded wheat has been taken off the market. Now, it's not just that sanctions and war are stopping the purchase of these crops. It's also that ships just can't move the crops with a war on. The ports are closed. You know, people are shooting at ships. It's a problem. Now, aside from wheat, Ukraine is a key

exporter of all sorts of grains and basic foodstuffs like corn, sunflower oil, barley. And Russia is a significant producer of inputs to food, fertilizers like potash as well as natural gas, which is a large input for nitrogen fertilizers. Producing fertilizers is almost like refining natural gas. Now, the U.S., for example, we import about a fifth of our nitrogen fertilizers and 11% of our potash fertilizers from Russia and Belarus, and Belarus is an ally of Russia. It recently announced that it won't be exporting potash for now, thank you very much.

There are alternative sources of supply for food and for these fertilizers for countries that import it. Russia and Ukraine aren't the only exporters of grain. You know, it's 30% of traded wheat, but there are others. There is the U.S., Canada, Argentina, Australia, India, Brazil. They all grow a lot of wheat, as does China, though China is actually a net importer. But across the world in a bunch of these grain-growing regions, there are problems. Everyone's dealing with high fertilizer and energy costs. Obviously, Russia and Ukraine are in a war. Argentina's in a severe drought, which causes problems both for growing crops but also transporting them through rivers.

Canada's recovering from a drought, and it's tight on reserves there's a dry conditions in Kansas which is sort of the important wheat growing region in the US and this is not a headline that you want to see right now China is having trouble with its winter wheat production And you don't want to see news like this either. Basically, we're headed for high food prices and potentially even shortages. But all is not lost. China, for example, has stockpiled 150 million tons of wheat, which is about half of the global reserve. And that's enough for 18 months of demand or to satisfy 18 months of demand. Now, to just give you a frame of reference, because these are just big numbers and if you're not in agriculture, they seem sort of random. But the USDA projects that the war will only take

4 million tons of Ukrainian wheat off the market. So, you know, that's 180, there's 281 million tons of global reserves. China has about half of them. So the Chinese could actually distribute some of that reserve if there is a famine. And other countries have reserves as well. We have reserves. Canada has reserves. Also, I mean, let's not forget about this,

and this is probably the most important part of the story. Other nations, including the U.S., can actually put more land under the plow to grow more grain. The U.S., we're a big exporter of grains, the number two exporter of wheat after Russia, and we can put a lot more land under cultivation if we want to do that. But it's not clear that that's happening. First of all, the winter wheat plantings are largely done. Winter's over. But more importantly, farmers are beset with high costs. And so they know when they plant that they have to pay for a bunch of stuff. But, you know, a season takes a while. And though prices might be high now, they don't know how long those high prices will last. The war could end tomorrow and

prices could tumble. So to really increase land under cultivation, we'd have to take on some key challenges. We'd have to fix this financial problem. And notably, we'd have to address the reason that farmers have trouble making money these days by farming and growing food. And that is something that I think a lot about, which is corporate consolidation. Over the last 40 years, American farmers have been just killed by the roll-up of power in the American economy. So to give a quick stat, and this is kind of a broad stat that encompasses everything from Uber to peanut butter to food to technology. So this isn't just agriculture, but 75% of industries have gotten more concentrated just in the last 20 years. Corporate markups, which is, you know, the amount of money that firms make

when they're above cost, have gone from about 20% to 60% from the 1980s to today. And this is largely concentrated in large businesses, businesses with market power. So it's not a function of technology or anything like that. It's small businesses and labor have been suffering, and small businesses include farmers. So the consolidation crisis is as bad in agriculture as it is anywhere else. So for example, Iowa's lost almost a third of its farms since the late 1970s. Missouri had 23,000 independent pig farmers in 1985. It has just a few thousand today, if that. Broadly speaking, in 1990, smaller farms accounted for about half of all agricultural production. Now it's less than a quarter.

And smaller farms, you know, they can be a little more flexible. They can put more land under cultivation pretty quickly. The basic problem is that the profit that used to go to the farmer for growing food now goes to the middleman corporation that manipulates the farmer. So to give you some stats on how consolidated this whole space is, and I'm not even getting to the retail sector, which supermarket consolidation is out of control, and that kind of sits on top of everything. But four corporations supply 75% of the nitrogen fertilizer in the United States. Two corporations supply all of North America's potash, which is the potassium-based

fertilizer that you also need for growing crops. So the number of fertilizer producers in the U.S. has dropped from about 46 to 13 since the 1980s. Four chemical firms control 60% of the world's seeds. This used to be like Monsanto, but Monsanto got bought by Bayer. And there's just been tremendous roll-ups of power in that space too. For grain trading firms, this is, you know, Cargill and ADM and firms like that control about 90% of grains. These dominant corporations are, of course, immensely profitable, and they are doing really well. ADM stock, for example, just to pick one, and I like ADM because they were caught for price fixing years ago, and they actually made a movie with Matt Damon on it. Not that great a movie, but people know of ADM for

that reason. Archer's Daniel Midland. So ADM stock has gone up by about 20% this year alone, and that's largely because of the war in Ukraine, which is about a $10 billion increase in value. Agribusiness giants make money by selling to farmers, or they make money by buying from farmers, or both. So basically, farmers are surrounded on all sides by firms with market power. Whether farmers are trying to buy seeds, chemicals, herbicides, fuel, fertilizer, or farm equipment, or whether they're trying to sell wheat, barley, cattle, pigs, other forms, other types of commodities. Now, it's true that the price of what farmers are selling is going up, but is it going up enough to cover the cost of what it takes to actually produce these crops or animals?

Or are the monopolies in the middle taking all the profit margin that should have gone to the farmer? I'm gonna put my money on the monopolists because they have a lot more information about the market and they have a lot more bargaining power. So with high costs for what it takes to produce crops it's hard hard to make it, even with higher prices. The middleman with market power is taking all the margin. Now, farmers are responding in a number of ways. Some are experimenting with ways of producing crops that use less fertilizer. Like, there's something called precision agriculture,

which involves taking very detailed maps of their farms and very specific ways of applying chemicals. Of course, this relies on, you know, buying data from dominant firms as well. So there, you know, there's monopoly or market power involved here. And farmers are increasingly trying to grow cover crops. These are plants that maintain fertility in the soil. They can kind of be a little bit of a substitute for using lots of fertilizers. But the thing is, these sort of stopgaps probably won't be enough. We have, like it or not, an industrial food system. And you just need fertilizer and pesticides to grow the food that we need. And it's really expensive to buy the inputs to do that right now.

The net effect is that some farmers are losing money even at the extremely high prices they are getting for their crops. And that's a problem. High prices should be a signal to produce more. And if you're losing money despite high prices, you're not necessarily going to produce more even when we need it. So the Department of Agriculture expects farm income to drop 7.9% this year. That's down $9.7 billion. That's basically off of $130 billion, something like that, in total farm income. And that drop is happening because,

among other things, higher fuel and input costs. So even though you would think that farmers could put a lot of land into growing food to stop starvation with high prices, monopolistic business practices means that it sometimes isn't worth it for the farmer who is trying to figure out what to plant. And while I've talked about the U.S., these agribusiness giants are global, so the story isn't necessarily that different in other countries. Now, the final problem has to do with not what's on the farm, but getting that farm product to other countries. So it's shipping, the supply chain mess that we've been dealing with for the last few years.

The big shipping firms who control the export and import trade don't think it's profitable enough to carry food from the US to other countries. It's so bad that steamship lines simply refuse to carry food. Boxes of agricultural commodities aren't moving, and that's angering farmers and food processors. Now, why wouldn't carriers want to bring U.S. exports? I mean, that's what they do. That's what a carrier is. They move things, and they charge a fee for it. Well, this also has to do with consolidation. The ocean carrier industry is insanely concentrated, and just three carrier alliances manage 80% of global container ship capacity and 95% of the pivotal east-west trade lines.

That's basically going from China to the west coast of the United States. of this consolidation, prices for carrying containers are extremely high, up to $15,000 to $20,000 per container, particularly on the lucrative route from China to the west coast of the United States. And that's because the value of what they're carrying basically determines the price of the container, of moving the container. So carrying electronics or other forms of high-value machinery from China to the U.S. is quite profitable. But carrying bulk commodities from the U.S., bulk commodities like food, isn't actually, you know, it's not that profitable. Exporting a box from the U.S. full of grain is just $1,000, $500, something like that. Now, normally

this wouldn't be that big a deal, right? I mean, if the price is different, who cares? You have to both import and export. If you take a box from China to the US and then you unload it, you want to take that box and load it full of something when you're carrying it back. And if you make less money carrying it back on the export side, it's not that big a deal. But the asymmetry is so big right now. It's so much more profitable to bring something from China to the U.S. than these bulk commodities from the U.S. to the rest of the world that the time it takes to turn these ships around and move these containers out to the Midwest and load them

full of grain, it's just not worth it to do it. So these carriers have been turning around immediately after dropping their cargo in Los Angeles, Long Beach. And they just take a bunch of empty boxes to get back to China as quick as possible so they can grab another load of electronics. And the net effect of this is that the U.S. can't really export the food that we're growing. This is also actually true in Canada. It's basically an integrated market in the U.S. and Canada. If there were a bunch of smaller steamship lines, you would assume that some of them would have expertise and they would differentiate themselves by being agricultural

bulk commodities exporters. And they would use some of the smaller ports and maybe smaller ships to do that. And this is, in fact, what we used to have. We had different steamship lines that did different things. But now we basically just have three alliances, and they all want to do the same thing, which is bring electronics back from China. So this is actually a fundamental problem with the structure of the industry. It's also a problem with regulation, which I'm going to get to. Now, here's the good news. Policymakers are actually noticing the problem and they are starting to act. And I would say actually these series of problems, not just one problem.

The USDA, for instance, just put $250 million into grants for new fertilizer production. So they want to, you know, one way of getting more competition is just to finance new competitors. And that is actually similar to what they did a few months ago, where they said, we're going to provide grants for new meatpackers to challenge the dominant meatpacker oligopoly. They also put out a request, and this is where actually you come in if you want to help. The USDA put out a request for input from farmers or anyone else in public on the consolidation problem. So the USDA said, tell us whether you think there's a problem with retail, with seeds, or with fertilizer. Now, anybody can comment. It doesn't matter who you are. You can be a farmer or not. Whatever you do, you can eat food. If you eat food, you can offer a comment.

I've put a link to the USDA request in the description of this video. And you can just follow that. And there are instructions on how you can weigh in. So if you want to give the government some of your thoughts, you want to give the government a piece of your mind, you should go ahead and do that. Don't be shy. And on shipping, there's legislation in Congress that would actually fix this situation.

It's called the Ocean Shipping Reform Act. There's a couple of pieces. That's kind of the main one. And this law would mandate that carriers have to carry both imports and exports. It's already passed the House. It's sitting in the Senate. It'll probably move in some form or fashion. Everyone kind of knows that we have a really big problem with our supply chains. And so it's kind of like behind the scenes, not behind the scenes, but it's one of those bills that isn't a culture war soccer ball that people can kick around, but it's super important. And so no one's paid attention to it, but it is moving. Now, there are other like really obvious things to do. Like, for example, we could stop turning

corn into ethanol, which is stupid, expensive, and it's wasteful. It's especially stupid right now when you can make a lot of money selling corn, right? Like ethanol is kind of a subsidy to farmers, particularly in Iowa, but they don't need the subsidy right now because they could just sell their corn. But more broadly, we actually need to look back at our food supply system and, you know, kind of in total and find ways of making sure that family farmers get reasonable prices for crops without having to deal with agribusiness monopolists interfering in the market and creating so much volatility. We need to make price signals actually mean something so that when prices go up there's more land put under cultivation. Now during the New Deal we had such a system, so this was in kind of the 1930s to roughly the 1970s. Before that, we had a similar dynamic where the agricultural

system wasn't particularly rational and we had overproduction and underproduction, lots of waste of land. So in the New Deal, we created something called supply management. And supply management basically had the government manage swings in commodity prices and make sure that farmers could make a reasonable return by putting land under cultivation but wouldn't overproduce and wouldn't actually, like, they would have incentives to make sure that they managed the land so it could continue to produce crops. And we can return to models that worked like that. We know how to do this. So to summarize, the global food supply problem, we're in a really dangerous position right now. And in the next year or two, we actually could

have famine all over the world. Maybe political instability as well. Certainly political instability if you have famine. Now, it's not going to happen in the U.S. We'll face higher prices, but elsewhere, it could be really awful. And as we know, elsewhere often doesn't stay elsewhere for that long. But the thing is, none of this is inevitable. We don't have to let millions starve or see political instability due to food shortages. We don't have to see farmers go bankrupt when they could make a lot of money growing crops. We know how to fix this. We don't have to see farmers go bankrupt when they could make a lot of money growing crops. We know how to fix this. We know how to prevent famines. We have reserves. We can also produce more food. And if we break up agricultural monopolies and make it profitable

for farmers to grow crops, they will. If we make it possible to export more food instead of sending ships full of empty containers that could otherwise be carrying grains, then that's what our ocean carriers are going to do. We'll export food. It's really addictive to imagine catastrophe. I see this a lot, right? There's going to be huge famines. And on the brink of what could be nuclear war, with scenes of shelling and chaos all the time, it's easy to imagine catastrophe. And social media doesn't make it any better. It makes it a lot worse. It's polarizing. If it bleeds, it leads supersized, times a thousand. Remember, though, throughout history, things always seem

to be falling apart, right? In the 50s, people were, you know, little kids had to hide under desks and drills to see if there was going to be an atomic war. So it always kind of seems like things are falling off the edge. But, you know, we always seem to be able to muddle through. In fact, often we're able to address problems before they become catastrophes. We're a fantastically wealthy country with magnificent technology and enormous state capacity. So we can address really bad situations like the one we're in today or the one the globe is in today. And that's what I think about the food situation. It's really dangerous. It's not looking good, but we don't have to panic. We should just use this moment to grow more food temporarily

and more broadly to look back and think about how to fix our food systems. If we do, then we won't have a famine over the next couple of years. And besides that, we'll have flourishing rural towns once again. If we don't, well, you know, it could be like the Arab Spring, only this time, it's not going to even be with the optimistic beginning. Thanks for watching. If you'd like to know more about big business and how our economy really works, sign up

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