Chapo Trap House - 438 - They Moved the Moon feat. Séamus Malekafzali (7/20/20)

Episode Date: July 21, 2020

R.I.P. Michael Brooks. Felix casts a protection spell on our sweet abuela Moon. Virgil breaks down Ilhan Omar’s “problem solving” primary challenger. Will administers Trump’s cognitive test on his cohosts. Then, Will and Felix talk to journalist Séamus Malekafzali about escalating tensions in Iran, Israeli training of U.S. cops, and the collapse of Lebanon’s financial sector. Support Ilhan Omar’s reelection campaign here: https://www.mobilize.us/ilhanomar/ and find Séamus’ writing here: https://www.seamus-malekafzali.com/

I really wish I was introducing this week's show under different circumstances, but about an hour after we recorded today's episode, we, as I'm sure like many of you, were peer, and a comrade of ours for a while. And I think we would be remiss if we allowed this episode to go by without acknowledging him and his life. So where do you want to begin? I guess I'll just say for myself, the Majority Report was the first political podcast I ever listened to. And this was years before I had met any of these guys. And it was him and Sam and Matt, without realizing it, really gave me the thought that I could do this.

And in small but profound ways, really did completely alter the course of my life. And just when I think about the senselessness of this loss of someone at 34 and just the work he's done, it's really hard to comprehend. Michael was, he was always completely straightforward.

He cared as much as you possibly can about everyone, not just who worked with him and worked for him, but just generally in his orbit. His callers, people who contributed, people who went on to make their own shows. He paid a special type of attention to every single person in his life. He's someone who

truly understood the meaning of life as the way that we affect others, not just politically, but in our own lives. He was something very rare in the business that we're in and in politics in general. Someone who, meeting thousands and thousands of people and dozens who worked with him or worked, I guess, in different podcasts, no one ever had anything bad to say about him ever i never heard it if they did i never heard it or anyone i've talked to has never fucking heard it he everyone just loved the guy and i'm not gonna act like i was extremely close with him but having done a show a few times and known him for a few years it's devastating it's absolutely devastating he has left a giant hole in the lives of thousands

um so it's is always painful to lose someone and there's an added blow when it's very unexpected. So we're all just terribly shocked. But, I mean, it's hard to say anything that people don't already know. He's a very sweet, kind, brave person. And he was very serious-minded, and he was a dedicated comrade. I mean, he was professional. He was very intellectually curious, and he had this authentic populist instinct.

He was motivated by this pure love of humankind. He just believed that we deserve better and that better is possible. Just a rare talent and a one-of-a-kind person. And it's a terrible loss and he will be greatly missed. And our thoughts are with his loved ones. he will be greatly missed and uh our thoughts are with his loved ones yeah michael was that definitely one of the smartest kindest uh funniest people that i knew forget about in politics at all and yeah i just think about what a big hole he's leaving and how how hard how impossible it will be to fill because of how how just great he was at what he did and how passionate he was about it and for all the right reasons. So you can't lose someone like that

without it being a real tragedy for everyone. Thinking about this, what comes to mind is obviously the huge outpouring of love and respect from his friends, but also fans and people who knew him only a little bit or only knew him through his show. And I mean, what I'm struck with is just the example that he leaves to the rest of us and the idea that the things that you believe in, the things that you care about, and the things that you work for are prayers in a way.

They're what we send out into the world and we have no way of knowing their effect on it. And we probably never will, but it really does matter. And it really does. I mean, like what we put into the world counts for something. And I think you're seeing that. And I hope Michael knew that in his life. And I really know that I hope his loved ones

and everyone at their majority report realizes that as well. I mean, I think we're all dealing with a time of great despair right now for a lot of reasons. And I think, uh, what Michael did on his show and the way he conducted himself is an example to follow,

uh, in not despairing or surrendering to it. And all I can say is just leave, uh, our thoughts and condolences with his friends, family, and all of his coworkers-workers at the Majority Report. Greetings, friends.

It's Chapo. We are back. In just a little bit, Felix and I will be talking to the journalist Seamus Malikavseli about what is going on right now in Iran with the MEK. to him about the Israeli military's connection to the militarization of a policing here in America and basically the collapse of Lebanon's central banking, government, and economy going on right now. It's a great conversation that will be coming to you shortly. But before then, let's discuss some domestic political matters. And joining me, of course, is Felix, Virgil, and Matt. Gentlemen, how's it going? Howdy. Great to be here.

There are domestic political matters to discuss, but of the utmost concern right now is really a global cosmic issue. I'm referring, of course, to the fact that baby witches on tiktok have hexed the moon god damn it there there there are witches out there who don't know what they're doing and they've put a hex on the damn moon this is the moon blowing up and this is me smiling don't they know how important i i know i i actually have been fixing it. Have you been? Yeah, no.

I have a strategic stockpile of candles that protect the moon. I mean, I was just going to use them for personal use, but I decided that now is the time to deploy my candles. So moon's okay for now, but I do need more candles uh the moon is under assault she is our mother our aunt our friend she controls the tides i mean i think people are sorrow boiler the moon the moon is an aunt hailey's comet that's an uncle the hell bob comet that's a nephew yeah no there is a there is a comet visible right now the moon is being hexed i mean these are these are this is powerful augury going on right now and i would just like to say to the the baby

witches on tiktok out there if you are going to put a hex on something just you know uh do the sun okay just stick to the sun or maybe some of the other planets. The moon you do not want to fuck with. Doing the little Reese Chief thing, but for baby witches. If I hear another motherfucker talking sweet about the moon, I'm fucking hexing their ass. I'm in the barbershop every day.

They're talking about the moon this, the moon that. Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up. Don't you know baby witches were cursing them? So, yeah. I mean, you know, we'll see what happens, but I'm just saying

you're playing with the tides here, people. You're playing with the tides. So, if you can do what Felix do, please, if you have an altar, please maintain the altar with the correct offerings to Luna, our wonderful abuela.

So now that that's out of the way, we've dispensed with that very dire warning to our listenership. Let's talk a little bit about, let's dip back into sort of mini Beltway Garage, because there is a congressional primary coming up in august that is heating up but is sort of snuck in under the radar and i'm referring of course to uh ilan omar and her district is being challenged by a uh a democratic primary opponent who has from between april and june of this year raised over $3 million to take her on in this congressional race. And he could make a go of it. And Ilhan Omar is obviously a politician that we've talked about before.

She's very popular in some quarters, intensely hated in others. And this is, I think there's a lot of people out there, certainly the ones who have coughed up $3 million to her opponent, who see this as a perfect opportunity to get rid of her and the politics she represents. Virgil, you've been following this? I have been. So Congressman Ilhan Omar, who had the courage to demand the dismantling of the rotten fucking Minneapolis Police Department, is facing a primary challenge from one anton

melton mux and last filing quarter as you said anton melton mux a total nobody raised over three million dollars of which nearly nine tenths came from out of state by contrast over the same period omar raised less than half a million melton mux is running on a vague campaign against divisiveness he said the staggering amount of money he raised from out of state is evidence that the race is Melton Mewks is running on a vague campaign against divisiveness. He said the staggering amount of money he raised from out of state is evidence that the race is, quote, becoming a referendum on standing up to the politics of division at the national level. Finally. I'm so sick of it.

According to Daniel Marins in the Huffington Post, Pro-Israel America, which was founded by two former AIPAC staffers, and NORPAC, which also tried to stop Jamal Bowman, have bundled over $400,000 for melt-in-mukes. The leaders of these groups pointed to Omar's views on BDS as the motivation for the fundraising. The president of NORPAC said, people are very motivated to get rid of someone who they feel is a racist against them and their families. So, I mean, what do you think are Anton's chances are? I mean, this election is in August. Obviously, Ilhan Omar, how popular is she in her district and how vulnerable do you think that this kind of money makes her?

Well, the recent Omar internal poll showed her up by 37 points, and she may very well coast to renomination by that margin. But I would think there's a greater uncertainty when it comes to a congressional primary poll conducted in the middle of a pandemic. In 2018, Joe Crowley had an internal poll showing him up by 36 points just three weeks before Election Day. And he, of course, lost in a landslide to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It is currently three weeks until Minnesota's primaries. And, you know, you mentioned where all this money is coming from. And, you know, if this guy's running a campaign against divisiveness, he's running it on behalf of some of the most divisive people in American politics, which is the, you know, basically the pro-Israel lobby. You know, it's not exactly complicated why they're putting all this money into a challenger against Ilhan Omar. complicated why they're putting all this money into a challenger against ilhan omar because she's melton mux is also being bolstered by mailers from a right-wing super pack called americans for tomorrow's future which is a ton of money majority for israel another super pack which

spent heavily against bowman and bernie sanders according to min post other melton mux donors include john gray billionaire president of the private equity firm Blackstone Group, and Seth Klarman, another big finance billionaire. Amazingly, Blackstone, Blackstone, by the way, one of the most one of the largest and most evil private equity firms hollowed out and stripped for parts. Many iconic American companies also founded in part by Stephen Schwartzman, a large Trump donor. Oh, and also it was, wasn't it CEO'd by Leon Black for a while? I think that was a different private equity group. I think that was

Apollo Management. But Blackstone is right now... Pete Peterson, too. Pete Peterson was the other co-founder, and Pete Peterson was a... He started an awareness group for the the budget deficit yes and he and uh a current executive at uh at blackstone is hosting a big dollar joe biden fundraiser uh very soon now you know well it's already ending divisiveness i love

that but you know i mean like what does three million dollars get you i mean apparently if you are you know in minneapolis you if you turn on the radio or tv you will see this guy anton's ads non-stop like this guy if they're just massive tv buys they have blanketed the radio and airwaves with just like you know like sort of similar like how bloomberg did but from a guy who's like even more of a zero than Bloomberg. Where just again, like someone who is a nobody, who is just out of nowhere, has $3 million and is on every fucking TV and radio network in the Minneapolis area. For the past several weeks, voters in Minneapolis have also been receiving big glossy mailers

from the Melt and Mewks campaign and connected groups attacking Ilhan Omar. One mailer attacked her for having, quote, been to Africa three times. Omar is,rica three times a refugee from somalia while another touts melton mux's quote legacy of slavery and freedom and not so subtle way of reminding voters that omar is an immigrant as reported by molly hensley clancy at buzzfeed i mean so like what so like they're they're they're doing this very uh sort of dog whistle thing about um that you know she is not um like what? So like they're there. They're doing this very sort of dog whistle thing about that. You know, she is not like I guess what they would say, the ADOS, American descendants of slavery.

Like she doesn't have she doesn't like she has immigrant privilege based on the fact that she was born in a refugee camp in Somalia or grew up. And I'm sorry. Right. And obviously, after the murder of George Floyd, you know, Black Lives Matter is a key issue in this race. And you can imagine that, you know, for a certain type of white liberal, they might think, OK, well, this is this is giving me license to not vote for Ilhan Omar because she's not really black. That's what the mailer says from. And that's that on that. And that's that on that. I mean, yeah. So I guess this is just something to be aware of, especially if you are in Minnesota. But certainly in terms of the money being talked about here, the discrepancy between how much money these campaigns have on hand may be a good reason to kick into the Ilan campaign

if you'd like to see her continue to be in Congress. I know I did. Or if you'd like to continue to see her spread divisiveness in American politics and culture, that might be a good investment of a few extra bucks. If you hate awareness of the deficit... Interesting note, I can't figure out what Melton Mewks' job is. I've read variously that he's a lawyer, a minister, a D.C. staffer,

and a, quote, professional conflict mediator. It's the last one. Oh, a D.C. staffer, and a, quote, professional conflict mediator. It's the last one. Oh, my God. It's the last one that his campaign seems to be playing up. Rachel Cohen in Jewish Currents quotes the following. I live in conflict, and I know how to understand that there are very deep-seated differences that people come into a situation or dispute with. What is amazing to me is that even with those differences in mind,

people can have honest conversations and you can really create powerful solutions that didn't exist before. Love that for us. I love a powerful solution. It's my favorite thing. Melton Mews was also a partner in the, as Vanessa B pointed out, Melton Mews was also a partner in the union-busting law firm Jackson Lewis. He's got the perfect CV for a Democratic candidate.

You know, I mean, he's against divisiveness, but for resolving powerful conflicts with, I don't know, discussion and, of course, getting rid of unions and taking money from the Blackstone group. If Joe Biden falls into a toilet between now and the convention, I know who's replacing him. Here's one interesting exchange about Biden. Aaron Kiak, Jewish engagement director for Joe Biden, hailed the news that Nazi

Steve King lost his primary, saying, first and foremost, good for the USA. Okay. Some right-wing D.C. shithead whose bio says, quote, passionate about my team's politics, food, wine, and Sinatra, replies now.

That's actually, that's Robert Davi's account, actually. It's great when a 32-year-old is really into the Rat Pack. Every time I buy a woman out of a catalog, I take her home and we look at those Dean Martin roasts where

all the guys just accuse each other of having mistresses and punch each other in the shoulder. It's my favorite thing to do. I admire his passion for his teams. He replies, now support Anton and beat Ilan. Talk is cheap. Kiak replies, sure. I thought I've been clear where I am, but just to be

clear, I've already donated and support Anton. He's a WashU grad nonetheless. That's a team. They root for the same team. Yeah, I know. And that guy was, as you said, Joe Biden's director of Jewish outreach. Yeah, Jewish engagement director for Biden.

Jewish engagement is the most important engagement. Wow, Elon got so much back for endorsing Biden. Yeah, no. See, see, progressives? It's all a big team. We're all working for the same thing. I suspect that people assume that Omar's district is majority minority with an outsized Muslim population, since this is a district whose current and previous congressmen are both notably African-American Muslims. But Minnesota's fifth is a majority white and relatively higher income district, more like Carolyn Maloney's than AOC's.

And there are plenty of self-described liberals champing at the bit to get rid of Ilhan Omar. So, I mean, this is not something that anyone should take for granted, despite Ilhan's sort of national profile. I would not say so. And certainly with so many people being inside right now and a lot of people, frankly, with the experience of volunteering for the bernie campaign uh if you have nothing to do you can actually volunteer and make calls for ilan omar you can do virtual canvassing we'll put the link in the description of this episode very good but i mean i think this is a perfect segue if you're telling as long as you're talking about uh the biden campaign and

their various outreaches uh perfectly it was announced today that the Democratic Convention this year, they have announced that they will be having a large pie cool on the window so that its fumes just sort of like beckon through the nostrils, almost pulling inside the convention arena. John Kasich. Go and see the big rock candy mountains. John Kasich. Go and see the big rock candy mountains. To give an address as an anti-Trump Republican on behalf of Joe Biden.

And honestly, I can't think of a better convention speaker for this, for the Joe Biden Democratic Party than John Kasich. And, you know, a lot of people are mad about this, but I just feel it's like, well, I mean, like, what is there to get mad at? You know, like they won. This is who they are. And it makes absolutely perfect sense that Kasich would be their guy. Cause I mean like John Kasich and Joe Biden,

like are basically the same guy. Isn't this perfect for them? That's just it. It's like, of course they are. This is what they do. They want their, their,

we talked about it on the last episode. This is the culmination of the project of swallowing the entire non-psycho middle-aged white person. Yeah, that's the thing, though, is before Kasich was an anti-Trump Republican, he was one of the psychos. Yeah. He's virulently anti-union. I mean, one of the reasons Kasich sort of made a moderate tilt is he lost a big anti-union fight as governor. So he was like, no, actually, I'm not a Tea Party guy. I'm a moderate.

But he decimated Planned Parenthood in Ohio. But, I mean, I don't think, like, the upper management of Planned Parenthood itself even gives a shit about this. I don't even know what fuss they'll raise with Biden about this, if any. I mean, I think, like, you know that you could justify it being like, look, Ohio is always like one of the most important states in the electoral college. You know, if this will get us a couple of points over, it could be justified. And I suppose you could make that argument from a pragmatic point of view. But I think what's really going on here is that like, you know, this is this is a signal

of what to expect from a Biden presidency, where it's just sort of like they're telling you before even any vote is cast or before Joe Biden even technically wins that, like, look, you know, we can only do things and approach policies that will appeal to the John Kasich voter because, you know, that's just the way the American political system is. And, you know, that's who we are. That's it. You're stuck with it. I don't think anyone is going to decide their vote based on John Kasich's endorsement. I don't think anyone is out there getting robocalls from a can attached to a string. I don't so I don't really see a net benefit for Biden. But, you know,

I mean, I mean, they could they could invest heavily in billboards that are just done in sort of like hobo symbols to let you know that Trump is a dishonest man and Joe Biden offers good vittles and a warm bed. You know those gift baskets they give you? The swag bag.

Yeah, swag bag. I like the idea of Biden's people giving him a swag bindle after the DNC. Well, I also feel like they would be on opposite sides here because, you know, Biden was famously a lifeguard at a public pool. And a lifeguard is basically like the cop of a pool. And also Biden loves riding on trains, but he has no time for filthy box jumpers. Biden buys tickets. No, yeah, his son was the executive of Amtrak yeah yeah he's the he was the head railroad

bull yeah natural enemy of casick yeah casick steals the pie on the windowsill uh joe biden sexually harasses the housewife cooking it they are polar opposites well i mean this is like we were talking about ending divisiveness um but yeah like you know this this is what a united front against fascism looks like you've got the america's chief real rail yard bull against john kasich who is the emperor of the north pole which is for those unfamiliar this is the sort of ceremonial designation given to the leader of hobo america yes this is true the best hobo in america the guy who hopped the most trains, the guy who made it around the entire route. Yeah, he's not a man without accomplishments. I'm just saying when you hear

Hunter Biden's signature train whistle, you know it's time to get out of Dodge or else you might wind up in a stew. All right. Well, lastly, the thing I want to talk about is Trump gave an interview to Fox News over the weekend to Chris Wallace that has been clipped relentlessly. A lot of good highlights in that. But the main thing people were talking about is an argument that Trump got into with Chris Wallace over this cognitive test that he took, that he said he aced and was very proud of. And Chris Wallace brought up the fact that, you know, the questions asked on this test are not exactly like, you know, the SATs here.

And Trump, of course, angrily demanded that, you know, Chris Wallace, you know, if he took the test, he would be surprised. Like, the last five questions are really tough. So, you know, I think I'd love to see how you'd be surprised. The last five questions are really tough. So I'd love to see how you did on it. So I actually have a sample of the same kind of cognitive test that Donald Trump passed. And by the way, he passed this test two years ago. This wasn't administered over the weekend. So it's not exactly the most up-to-date measure of his mental acuity. So I would like now to administer to my co-hosts

a cognitive test to just see how well your brains are functioning. So, I mean, this is a little difficult because a lot of the questions are visually based. So I'm going to endeavor to do my best to administer this test in an audio format to you three gentlemen. Are you ready to get your brains touched? I am. Always. Okay. The first question, I would like you to imagine a clock, not a digital clock. This is a regular analog clock with two

hands or three hands, I guess. But okay. So it's a clock. Picture it in your brain. There is one long arm of the clock is pointed at the number two. The slightly shorter arm of the clock is pretty much aligned with the number 11. What time is that clock telling? A, 11 minutes past 10. B, 10 past 11. What time is that clock telling? A, 11 minutes past 10, B, 10 past 11, C, 10 past 10, or D, two minutes past 11? B.

Virgil, your answer is B, 10 past 11? I'm guessing B here. Okay. Matt? Yeah, that sounds good. Think hard about it. Picture it in your head. If you were looking at your watch,

what time would you tell someone if they asked? I don't have a watch. And I've also not seen an analog clock for several years. Okay. Well, I mean, this is part of the test, though. This is what's flexing those brain muscles here. What else is part of the test? How to turn on a phonograph?

How to dance to Charleston is one of the questions. It's a diagram of a man with his hands on his knees. And it was like, is this the Lindy or the Charleston? Felix, what time is this clock telling? Look, I don't really know how to read time unless it's in military format. That's the only way I can do it. It's the way I was taught.

So I'm just going to go with B. I'm going to go with what everyone else has. Okay. 10 past 11. You are correct. The clock is saying 10 past 11. But you have to be like, you know, it's a little difficult, though, because the hour and minute hands on this clock are sort of similar in size.

You know, it's kind of hard to tell which one is the long. That's what my parents always told me about clocks watch out they try to trick you this is where it gets tricky okay moving on to the next question right this is this is getting a little this is getting a little bit more difficult now certainly for me to administer uh this is this is a visual test that asks what animals are shown in this picture so So I'm going to describe to you without giving too much away these three animals. The first animal. It's covered in fur.

Dog. You've got to wait. It's covered in fur. It has a tail. Four legs. Walking on four legs. It's got a tail. It's got a lot of fur. It's got a very big head. It's got a very big head, but it has a head that is made to look much larger

because it has more hair around it than the rest of its body. Tiger. What? Tiger. The head is made to look larger? I mean, it has a large... I'm not trying to give away the game here.

It has a large face that is accentuated by the large amount of hair that surrounds the face. That's a lion. That's a lion. It has hair and fur? Yeah, well, it has fur, but it's covered in fur. Oh, it's more fur. It has more fur around its head.

That's absolutely a lion. A boy lion. Yes. It's a boy lion. Matt, your brain is fucked up as hell. You said tiger? Dude. Unbelievable. You don't know how to think.

Oh, no. Unbelievable. It also sounds like a yak. Actually, you know what? We're not complicating this. It could be a yak, Felix. You don't know. Yaks have very furry heads. You're right.

If it's one of those mule ox. I know the people who made this test. They hate yaks. They really despise those wretched creatures. Okay. Animal number two. Okay. This animal is gray and multi-animal to the intelligence test. The ACTs only have two animals on them.

This is like bullshit. Okay, animal number two. It is gray all over. It is very stout and kind of sort of tank-like in its body. It has a sort of a long face. It has two pointy ears, but it crucially has a very sort of large, long, curved object coming out of the front of its head. Penis.

This is a... That's not an animal. That's ridiculous. I'm going to say a rhinoceros. Okay. Elephant? I have to recuse myself because I heard i heard the the interview so i know which one this is okay virgil where's your guess uh i kind of zoned out a little is it an elephant

you said a pointy ears and it has a protuberance from its head yes from the very front of its head it has a very curved protuberance coming out of the front of its face so no one elephant has has one of those it's gray gray? Yes, it's gray. Elephants are primarily gray. Yes, they are. They can be white or pink, but, you know, primarily gray. Depending on how much you drink. I'm noticing a lot of cultural biases in this test.

So I also have to kind of, I have to do double work here because I've got to anticipate the various biases of the people who crafted the test. And I imagine that they would be more familiar with the gray kind of elephant because they're Philistines. I don't know. I do admit I have a privilege coming to this test. My parents got me all the wildlife books growing up. I am able to identify a rhinoceros, a lion, all types of jungle beasts just from simple words. Well, Felix, you are correct. This is, in fact, a rhinoceros, not an elephant.

My IQ, I'm probably at about 100 IQ right now, and I've only two questions in. Okay, this is the last. Wait a minute. A rhinoceros is a type of elephant. No, it's not. You could argue that, actually. I'm sympathetic to that argument.

Hear me out. It's in the elephant family. You've got the big hippos, the big boys the big guys any you got the rhinos uh you know what you're winning me over because these are all large african mammals that are gray sort of tank like and have really just like wild funny ass-ass faces. Yeah, the rhinos are primarily gray. Elephants, like half of them are gray. Well, there are white rhinos too, but they're not really white.

It's just a light gray. That just die. They just do that in the factory. Oh, actually, though, I'm checking into it. There actually aren't any white rhinos anymore. Yeah. They were poorly made. They got recalled. We need to re-skin these rhinos anymore. So, yes. No, they were poorly made. They got recalled. We need to reskin these rhinos. Yeah.

After all the CSGO skin bedding websites went down, no more white rhinos. All right, this is your final animal. Okay. Okay. Now, with this animal, I guess I'm giving it, it's, okay, it's not a horse,

but imagine a horse-like body. You've got four skinny legs, but now imagine that the neck of the horse is elongated and its face looks super fucked up. If you took a horse and made its face look ugly as hell, stretched out the neck, and then crucially made the body sort of big enough so that there's no saddle on top of it,

but instead sort of like a, I don't know, another kind of large, hairy protuberance. This test is absolutely childish. A giraffe. No, that's a fucking camel. I'm insulted by how fucking easy this test is it's i'm getting my ass kicked over here i don't know this is an insult this is an insult to everyone who's spent their life categorizing wildlife i don't like uh the insinuation that a camel is an ugly horse

it's also western standards of beauty that I don't subscribe to personally. Well, I'm playing the meta here. I'm going by the bias. I mean, you're right. The way I'm describing it is culturally biased because I am looking at a camel like a sort of more absurd horse. But, you know, I mean, try to cross the desert in a horse

and see how far you get. If all it takes to not be insane is to know your wildlife well let's call me joe raker so indeed uh the animals that you are looking at are indeed a lion a rhinoceros and a camel so fucking unbelievably easy okay we're going to do right here here's the next one this is this is less visually based so this one has to do with math. Okay. All right. Subtract 7 from 100. Based on the result obtained, subtract 7 once again.

Keep taking away 7 from the obtained result three times. Identify the correct series of numbers. So let's go. Real quick. All right. So after 90. Give me five numbers in sequences of seven subtracting from 100. 97.

That's the first one. 93. 93, Matt. 93. You are trying to get committed. You are trying to get us to send you to a funny farm. We are sectioning Matt at the end of this. Okay, correct.

93 is the first one. After 93, you're obviously going to get 87. After 86, you're obviously going to get 79, a classic number. Then 72 comes next. After 72, yeah, you're looking at 65.

After 65, yeah, you know what? We're at 58. Felix, they haven't even asked for 58 and 51. I feel like that was another flawless victory by Felix. He's showing off. Just rattling off how to subtract 7 from 100 and just keep going. If you are a financial firm out there and you need someone to deal with the number 7, I am pretty good at dragging it from things.

My base salary will be $7 million a year with a bonus. I have to say, I am beginning to get a little disturbed. I thought I was pretty clear about subtracting 7 from 100, and Matt's first answer was 97. He's throwing. He wants to go to a sanitarium. He wants to live there. It's like a Homer where he tries to get put in the old people home. Matt just wants

to be fed all day and change. Watch TV. Watch his program. I like that. Matt wants to go to the sanitarium you'd have in 1915. Oh, yeah. I'd like to get one of those yogurt and graham cracker enemas. He wants to be in the

movie Road to Walvo wellville yeah that sounds great all right next question this is sort of like a this is like an sat analogy question if banana is to orange equals fruit then what does train is to a bicycle equal car a means of transportation or be a road hey fuck i thought it was a car see matt the key to the key to passing these cognitive exams is uh waiting for the entire question to be asked before blurting out an answer okay that's actually what the test is you know these the questions seem easy but what the test is actually testing is how much of a cantankerous old man you are that you just sort of start answering and pestering the person administering the test with things that you're thinking of.

So if banana is to orange equals fruit, then what does train is to bicycle equal? Either is it A, a means of transportation, or B, a road? A. You are correct. It is a means of transportation. or B, a road? A. You are correct. It is a means of transportation. There you go, Virgil. A banana and an orange are both pieces of fruit. A train and a bicycle are not both roads.

They're not, you know, a train doesn't even go on a road. They're both means of conveyance. They're means of going somewhere. Okay, last question. Based on this quiz, can you recall what the first question was about? That's very easy. No! It's incorrect.

Completely incorrect. It was about a clock. Yes, indeed. The first question was about time, not animals. Ah, shit. This is very interesting results. It looks like we're lobotomizing matt i am

matt has bought a one-way ticket to the funny farm ladies and gentlemen i i i've cemented my place as the most sane member of the show once again and virgil has revealed the cultural biases of these you know sort of cognitive exams. Yeah, knows very little about elephant law. I'd say we walked away with this knowing a lot more and in a way better position than we were. I agree. No, this is...

We should do this way more often. Yeah, I would like to give way more... We'll do a personality quiz next episode, and we'll find out which one of you gets to date me okay oh okay i think i'll win that one too i'm pretty good at these i've always tested well uh hey i i got one uh donald trump passed an intelligence test what was it the stanford bidet just that that's the sound of that passing as above my head as a plane, which is also a means of transportation.

Okay. Let me give this one a shot. I'm going to try to punch it up. Yeah. Trump, especially, is part of the cognitive test where he had to find the capital of Nambia. Trump was so nervous for the test that he drank a full pot of kafiti beforehand uh trump banana banana is to orange equals small hands okay yeah now we're fucking

cooking with gas uh trump is good at identifying animals because he um he enjoys um having sexual intercourse with them he likes putting his putting his dick inside them for sexual pleasure. So there we go. We are about as functioning, mentally speaking, as the president, except for Matt, who just absolutely shat the bed on that really, really extremely easy test. You know what? I'm fine. I'm fine with it. Whatever. I don't think we got it at this point.

As a doctor, I diagnosed Matt with cretinitis. Sounds good. Whatever. Just keep that grill going, buddy. You'll be fine. Actually, that would be a test I'd like to administer to Trump. Cook something on the grill. Oh, that would...

Turn on a gas oven. Do you think he's ever... What do you think the most complex thing he's ever cooked is? He might have made a sandwich at some point in his life, but that's it. I don't think he's ever cooked anything. It would have been fucked up in some way. Oh, yeah.

The lettuce was too wet, and it soaked the bread. Just absolutely soaking wet lettuce. I would say he's never made a sandwich. I would say the most complex thing he's done is put a packet of ketchup on a burger and I think he fucked it up in some way. Made a big mess of it. I don't know. I would like...

Do you think Donald Trump would die if he tried to cook a souffle? I think it would end up like an episode of Fawlty Towers. Yeah. There would be some pratfalls. Well, there we go. I mean, if... Here's my test for the president. You got a steak.

You got a Weber charcoal kettle grill. You got a bag of charcoal. Cook the steak. That's it. I would like to see what happens. Zero percent chance. No, never. Never be able to do that.

No, yeah, he wouldn't get it done. I would also love to see him fire a handgun. Into his own... No, well, parody. Joke. I'm joking, obviously. I would love to see him make out with me.

Sexual intercourse with my asshole. Penis style. Felix has been very baby crazy on the last few episodes. He wants Trump to dump a dairy farm inside him. I would love Trump to put my ovaries into overdrive. I'm ovulating, Mr. President. Just annihilate your back wall.

Sorry, Mr. President. My IUD poked the tip of your penis. Felix's biological clock is tick, tick, ticking. Yeah, I don't have many eggs left. Unlike, let's say, for instance, a lion, rhinoceros, or camel, Homo sapiens are capable of sexual reproduction year-round. There's no cycle of estrus or heat among

human beings. There's no limits here in terms of when you can put a baby in someone, be it Donald Trump or Felix Biedermann. One of my favorite apes, Genke, recently had a child. Oh, congratulations. Mazel tov. Congratulations. And guess how old Genke is? 34. Oh, congratulations. Congratulations.

Yeah, and guess how old Genke is? 34. There you go. It's never too late. It's never too late. So congratulations to Genke. Congratulations to Donald Trump. And cheers to Matt Christman for his fucked up doo-doo brain.

That's good enough for this work. All right. brain. That's good enough for this work. Alright. That does it for this segment. On to our Felix and I's conversation with Seamus Malikupso. Cheers, guys. All right. Joining us now is journalist Seamus Malikovseli to discuss a few foreign affairs issues that's going on right now

in the world beyond our wonderful country. I'd like to begin by talking about how recently in Iran, there has been a spate of sort of mysterious explosions, fires, things like that, that could be sabotaged. The Iranian government's blaming it on weather and other accidents. Just to begin, I'm going to read here from the New York Times account of it. It says a large fire broke out at a shipyard in the southern Iranian port city of Bushehr on Wednesday, burning seven ships and sending plumes of black smoke.

This fire has followed dozens of recent fires and explosions across Iran's forest factories and military and nuclear facilities in the past three months that have rattled ordinary Iranians. But officials have said that some of the episodes may have been active sabotage, but blame weather, accidents,

and other equipment malfunctions for the others. So, Seamus, you've been following this story. What are we to make of the timing and this just sort of proliferation of these accidents and fires happening all over Iran right now? Yeah. Is it okay if I put some context in?

Yeah, absolutely. No, no, please don't. No, absolutely not. So back in, it's been a pretty bad year for Iranians in general, I think. Back in November, working class Iranians came out onto the streets to protest austerity policies and general government oppression. They were met by a deadly government crackdown that killed hundreds at the very least. In January, Qasem Soleimani was assassinated by the United States and Iran came closer to war than I think at any point in

recent history. Um, February coronavirus came in, uh, and has killed thousands. Um, in June, uh, hyperinflation has hit, uh, really, really, really badly. And now, um, there are mysterious explosions happening everywhere. Um, and the most likely candidate is Israel. Um, that's what the Israeli media has been saying, uh, pretty, they used to be much more coy about it, um, a couple of days ago, but now the general consensus, um, across media outlets and politicians is that Israel is behind it and that it's to stop Iran's nuclear program. Sorry, Ashim, as you shared an example of an Israeli TV star who I think did a TikTok and she stars in a TV show called Tehran that is about this very thing. And it's like a TikTok of

her watching the news about these explosions in Iran and like doing her nails and like looking slyly at the camera. Y'all, the kids are all right. Y'all, the kids on TikTok are all right. So everything that I've seen about this seems to suggest that a lot of the reason for these strikes is both the belief that Trump is probably going to lose in this fall and the sort of thin ice that Netanyahu is on. Do you agree with that? I would absolutely agree with

that. My friend, Sina Tusi, who works at NIAC, he made the assessment that Israelis trying to do this because, as you said trump there's a possibility a high possibility that trump will not be in office in november uh come november and if israel can start this cycle of escalation uh where things are constantly blowing up where the the onus becomes on the ir Iranian government to respond in some way, especially since they retaliate against Soleimani's killing. If they can start that cycle of escalation up, then even if Biden comes into office, then there might not be a way for him to make things simmer down to stop that process.

And especially even if Trump were to stay in office, if Netanyahu gets nicked by this corruption trial or otherwise gets ousted in some, I guess, fourth election that might happen, that could also put a hamper on it, depending on who might come into office or who might not. Yeah, they just – the courts denied Netanyahu's request to move the corruption trial back another six months. So I guess it may actually finally happen in January. I mean, don't hold me to this. Yeah. If you kept suggesting that, that they were finally going to hold it, you'd be wrong. But it's got to happen someday, right?

Yeah. He appeared in court yesterday, but that was after just an ungodly amount of delays to it. And I'm guessing he won't see another day in court until God knows how long. It's going to keep being drawn out. Well, Seamus, I mean, if you're looking at this like, you know, the Israelis aren't even being coy about the type of sabotage they're doing. And if they're doing it to kind of initiate a cycle of reaction which like the Iranians feel compelled to respond and then like that ratchets up tension and they're trying to get sort of get in under the, you know, at the finish line in the off chance that Trump won't be in office.

But like on the other hand, it's not like Biden is some great dove or friend of Iran or, you know, anyone who Israel is currently currently has their sights trained on. But I guess it's really more just about starting it now so that Biden, regardless of his shitty foreign policy views, will be essentially straitjacketed by events that preceded him being in office. Absolutely. Absolutely. Biden, again, we agree. Biden is not exactly a dove when it comes

to Iran, but he's not as much as much as Trump and Biden might be similar in practice in terms of how they might deal with Iran. Biden is not going to tweet about how he's going to strike 82 cultural sites in Iran as revenge for the hostages in 1979. He doesn't have that. I don't even know what you call it. If Israel can move that overtone window so that Biden is forced to deal with Iran on Israel's terms rather than even attempt to do some sort of at least faux diplomatic solution, that would be preferable to them. But as far as the Iranian government and their response to this, as far as that New York Times article goes, it seems like they're saying, yes, some of it's could be forest, some of it might be forest fires or just accidents or things like that. It seems like they're trying to keep the powder dry. Like I'm certainly, they're aware of what's going on here. And if you mentioned, you mentioned the Soleimani assassination, like they did retaliate to that, but they retaliated in such a way where they like, you know, fired a bunch of missiles at a US Air

Force base in Iraq that was essentially empty. So like they were, they had to make a show of some symbolic response, but it's not like they went all out, right? Hmm. I would disagree on it being entirely empty. There was 106, I believe the number is 106, U.S. Marines received traumatic brain injuries from that base attack. So it was a bit more, traumatic brain injuries from that base attack. Um, so it was, it was a bit more, it was, it was, it was less symbolic and more, um, in actuality, but, um, in, in terms of, uh, trying to keep that, keep everything, keep the powder dry, as you said, yeah, Iran is trying to desperately keep things under control. What with coronavirus and what with a new conservative parliament that's in power. And also, there was a protest in a city in southwestern Iran a couple days ago, and they shut down the internet to stop that from spreading.

If there is any escalation from more conservative members of parliament that might push people to that, that might push Khamenei or the IRGC to retaliate in that way, that's bad. If there is more unrest in Iran that might push the government to do another deadly crackdown, that is also bad because that might invite more foreign interference. Iran has no good options, at least on the government's terms to respond to this israeli sabotage it really doesn't so it just kind of has to keep it down until you simply can't and you mentioned at the beginning that this is also happening um at a time when iran is dealing with their own um sort of like protest movement and like uh like civil unrest regarding what is going on right now about i think three young men who have been sentenced to death for their participation in protests that happened in november they did um they did cancel the execution of at least two of

those men though if i'm not incorrect i saw that today uh i i'm not i'm not sure if it was canceling but i do know that they they put a stay on the execution. So it's been delayed indefinitely. Yeah. But yeah, the executions really rattled people, I think. The wounds from November 2019 have not been healed in any significant way. Reformist politicians got behind it. Sports stars got behind the movement to stop the executions

um and then unfortunately uh the the those waters got muddied by uh trump weighing in uh from overseas in persian for whatever reason uh then there was uh he's been practicing oh yeah yeah he's been going to schoolarsi school. He would go to Farsi classes at NYU after filming The Apprentice. He's very proud of how far along he's come. He actually watches Iranian TV dramas. Oh, good for him.

I'm a big fan of Cherry. Love the way it tastes. The Tehran Film festival is no longer hot i went to the fajr film festival who won the best jihad award who so uh like but but as far as like you know tensions between iran and then like i guess like the sort of coalition of amer, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, excuse me, it does seem like it's this game of brinksmanship where the Israelis, of course, backed by America and Saudi,

are really trying to goad them to do anything that will end up killing even even a single american because if that happens then it's going to be really really hard to stop like and you know like this is also in the context of like uh american neoconservatives are like you know they like playing coy about these latest acts of sabotage too because they're they're like they're saying well oh like we don't know who's doing them but it's good that they're happening because now we can negotiate a better deal yeah the the uh the eli lake uh opinion piece just uh i still think about it it's so awful in what it's trying to argue because then the inevitability is okay well well this even though even though we don't know what's happening

it's good but then it'll become there should be more explosions in iran um there are uh there should be rebel groups that we should be supporting in the country. There's a general cycle that these things all take, and I think that's the inevitability. Just the issue is that they originally – you heard about the homeland cheetahs, right? No. Oh, okay. right no i'd like to know oh okay uh well uh the natan sorry uh the natan's nuclear site um was uh that was bombed uh early on in this kind of phase and one of the interesting things about it was that the original suspicion was on israel because they have that there's because

there's a real infiltrated nuclear facilities before. But strangely enough, BBC Persian received a letter of taking responsibility from a completely unknown group called the Homeland Cheetahs, whose logo is not a cheetah, it's a leopard. But they had... Oh, come on. Everyone's a critic but no one had heard of this group before no one had even it was completely new but they had a video they had sent it out before um the news of the explosion hit iranian airwaves so clearly they had had some advanced knowledge of it. But in the statement, it was aggressively pretty non-ideological, which is unusual for an Iranian opposition group, because that's kind of what they're known for,

of being just kind of painfully ideological, saying that Iran had become like the Shah and that it needed to be overthrown, and this explosion was the first of many explosions. that it needed to be overthrown, and this explosion was the first of many explosions. But the general feeling, at least for me, is that this is a pretty clear front group, I think, for Israel to kind of take the responsibility off their shoulders at least a little bit, that there might be this homegrown opposition group native to Iran, obviously not foreign-backed in any way. They're just trying to take down the government. But outside of that area

of responsibility, there's been no other messages. There's been no information about their leadership, what they want. It's just this shell that's been sent out into the world. A leopard's paw, if you will. Well, as long as we're talking about Iranian opposition groups, there's always the

mek out there and uh right now they're having an actual legitimate opposition group compared to these false fronts i mean like so it's like right now they're having their their global summit and like you know these guys they always turn up more because for some reason they have some unbelievable purchase over american politicians and people like well-known figures in this country who always end up speaking on their behalf but let's just start with like who they are to begin with because they are they are quite they have quite a story i i love them like they're they're they're obviously terrible like cynical murderous people but they're awesome truly the most bizarre people i love like i love i have a soft spot for any group where like

they're like yeah actually it's crazy the guy who's in charge of our group is uh god basically that's my favorite thing that people do that's like the coolest like even laro even lyndon laroche would never be like yeah i'm actually jesus christ like he may have at some point in the 70s but generally the laroche movement's operation didn't do that like would you like actually have cia backing and you're like yeah i'm uh i'm actually the Messiah. It's so cool. Okay. I will, by the way, like, talk about, you know, fuck COVID-19. I was, I want, like everyone,

I was looking forward to going in person to the MEK conference this year. I mean, I'm glad we still had it, but to have it on Zoom, I was excited to see Professor Dershowitz there. Oh, yeah. I mean, you brought up Alan Dershowitz is a keynote speaker. Dershowitz is a keynote speaker this year at the MBK. That's awesome. That's awesome that they're like,

no, why would we not have him? Hold on. Hold on. Can I send? I have access to the Zoom chat here. Can I send the photo of what Dershowitz looked like while he gave his speech to the mbk yeah yes oh yes okay i love seeing the photo that they have of him for whatever reason uh in the intro he looks much better he looks very very very clean shaven um but for whatever reason

in the speech that he gives uh in vertical mode on his phone. Oh, wow. Oh, my God. Wow. Holy shit. The texture of his skin looks like a potato chip. It's so fucked up. He looks fucking grotesque. He now looks like the LA Valley illustration of himself. He looks like the LA Valley illustration of himself.

I was going to say, his mouth looks a little bit like that photo that was going around on Twitter this week of the fish with human teeth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, he looks really fucked up. I mean, I like to imagine that he's giving a keynote address over Zoom, but also takes time out to explain that I only visited Little St. James with my wife. Yeah. Okay? Literally, yeah.

He's supposed to be talking about Iran, but it starts out with... I've only gotten massages from members of my family. This is... Jerry. Yeah. Okay. All right. We've so all the good luck here what an awesome con I mean like so like they're able to like they're able to attract you know a-list talent you know you got your Dershowitz's your Rudy Giuliani's your Howard Dean's I don't know if Dean is speaking at the uh the convention this year but like just going going back, for anyone who's not aware,

who are the MEK? Where do they come from? What do they believe in? And what do they want? Okay, so the MEK, I'm going to keep this as brief as I can because there's so much that I could say. But the MEK has a really interesting history

in that they started out in Shah-era Iran as an Islamic Marx um militia group an opposition group um the communists in iran had been known for being very theory-minded very upper class uh very out of touch with iran's population but the mdk was able to um really connect with the working class because they're able to synthesize a religion with socialist characteristics they really speak to that um but after um khomeini came to power uh they were out they were ousted from all their positions and the new government and they were forced to flee alongside with the first president of iran who was himself an islamic socialist um but then rapidly after they were

expelled from iran it became a cult of absurd proportions uh the uh the ousted president of iran left and masoud rajavi and uh who he would soon take Masood Rajavi, who would soon take one of his own members, wives as his own, uh, Marleyan Rajavi was the current leader. They would create, um, an opposition movement, uh, that would rival metal gear. Uh, there, there is, there are so many goddamn weird beliefs that they have. Um, one is that you can't have sex, but you also can't have any sexual thoughts. You have to divorce your spouse, but not Maryam Rajavi, the leader. She can be married, but also her husband, Masood Rajavi, hasn't been seen since 2003. But also, he's still alive, but we don't know where he is.

Sounds like Shelley Miscavige. still alive um but we don't know where he is sounds like shelly miscovage uh oh it is it is actually it's amazing how many parallels there are to scientology yeah and mek yeah and then uh i there were there was there was also stories about um children being sent away to be adopted elsewhere because they couldn't focus on you know children uh friendships are discouraged um and then since then they've completely abandoned islamic marxism as an ideology because no foreign government wants to uh promote that obviously so they've become essentially like uh like washington examiner conservative pragmatist types um they have no ideology other than power getting power uh vague freedom democracy women's rights uh but what is behind that except for the right to get married have sex or friends

that's what i love about mbk after the war they can get married but now okay okay okay so it's like sexual feelings and friendships those Those are deferred until the current Iranian government. Exactly. It makes sense. It makes sense. That's what I love about like under Maryam Rajavi. Like the I get like the people are she and the people around her are very savvy. They notice that a lot of like sort of interventionists. Their favorite thing to do is, like, jack off to pictures of, you know, like, telegenic either Kurdish or Israeli female soldiers.

So she's definitely made overtures towards that. But it's still, like, absolutely no dick. You can't get—the list of people they get, though, is amazing. Like, Ed Rendell, Michael Mieczny, Louis Freeh. get though is amazing like ed randell michael easy louis free like this this is like this is every guest on the john stewart daily show has spoken this is fucking awesome so like so but like shame is like at these summits right like so like you got you got you got your dershowitz's you got your rudy giuliani's and i'm sure they're like they're giving their boilerplate talks about you know how dangerous and awful the you know the Rudy Giuliani is, and I'm sure they're giving their boilerplate talks about how dangerous and awful

the Iranian government is and how much the people yearn to be free and we need to support them and their efforts to... Do they have actual MEK people talk alongside these people to the same audience? Or do they try to hide that stuff? That's the thing. I have watched

a couple MEK summits, almost in full. Truly one of the most deranged experiences I've ever subjected myself to multiple times over. And in every single time, the only MEK person that really speaks, aside from maybe a couple more than a couple couple minutes is Mario Marajavi. She speaks for a big speech, but another than that, it's just every single former politician that needs a paycheck, the MEK will send them $20,000 to come speak at their conference for maybe five minutes. And this goes on for six hours at a time.

And it's this endless of the same speech by the, the faces start to blend together at a certain point about who's speaking. But occasionally you see like a big name, like Stephen Harper or, um, uh, Ben Cardin from Maryland or something. Uh,

but, but yeah, it's not a show for any case supporters really to show off Iranian native voices. It's the show that the world is behind them and eventually they will use that worldwide support but they're smart enough to have like basically created like just just sort of seamlessly shifted into like the the sort of dc like lecture speaking circuit where like you just cash out 20k to like give a 20 minute talk to

anyone and you don't care who the fuck they are that is that is their savvy though because it's like you can't i mean you i guess you could if you really wanted to if you were if you were very good at the tradecraft do sort of edwin p wilson payoff of ford officials but the legal way to pay these people is through the bullshit speaking circuit. That's how you make these guys rich. It does show an incredible read of how people are paid in DC. You could call them a bunch of cranks, and they are,

but they truly get how to line these people's pockets. A good contrast, though, as long as we're talking about um cults with absolutely bizarre cults with a suspicious amount of influence over dc politics the people who did the exact opposite of this move were the moonies and one of my favorite one of my favorite clips of all time is footage from it was like a gala dinner in dc that was uh thrown to commemorate like an anniversary of the Washington Times newspaper, which is like, you know, the conservative, you know, alternative to the Washington Post that is, of course, all a front for the Mooney Church. So at it, they have like all these Republican luminaries like George H.W. Bush sent in like a video recorded message where he's like, always reach for the Washington Times every morning.

Love to read it. Very prudent. Sort of like playing off the Dana Carvey impression of him. And it was a ballroom full of the bow tie conservative set. But because it's the Moonies, they had to have the Reverend Moon address the crowd. And it's just like a standard

DC boilerplate about we need an alternative to the liberal media you know we love the washington times and then the reverend moon gets up there and starts talking about how like our eternal war is against fornication and that like none can be like when you stop fornicating none can oppose me he just says who can oppose me and like there's a shot that cuts to the crowd that is so fucking funny of these people just looking around going what the fuck oh okay yeah two things two things uh one um there is a connection there is a clear through line with the moonies and the mek um the washington times is the most pro mek paper um out of all

the pro mek outlets that are in the united states uh which is all of them yeah but there there was a there was a 34 page paid for spread in the washington times last year for their summit and was just like a section of the sunday paper a 34 page ad what the fuck like this full coverage of the the freedom summit that would bring finally bring iran uh to heal uh next year i guess and that this is constant uh feedback loop of m.e.k. saying something washington times reporting it and then the m.e.k. reporting on how the Washington Times takes them seriously. And to go past that, Mariam Rajavi is very pragmatic in that her speeches are not that insane. They're extremely bland, very boilerplate.

It's all platitudes directed towards Washington elite so that it sounds good and that they seem palatable and that they seem competent and organized and that they could take power in Iran the second that the government's overthrown. If they did the Mooney thing where they talked about how sexual thoughts will destroy the revolution, I think Rudy Giuliani would maybe think twice before taking the money money but he'd still take the money but even oh he'd take them he would still do it in a sense yeah yeah yeah it is yeah no they you have to respect the moonies for like even when everyone's there staying themselves but uh i don't know you also have to give MEK credit for being just very smooth operators.

I mean, you got to figure that, I don't know where the husband is, but Maryam, she's kicked up nowadays, probably. I would assume she has a very nice house. In the giant military compound in rural Albania, probably. She's probably got a nice place there. Well, I mean, it's kind of like New Yorkers moving to Missouri. giant military compound in rural Albania? Probably. She's probably got a nice place there. It's kind of like New Yorkers moving to Missouri. Imagine how far a dollar goes. Oh, man. You can get a bunker

for dirt cheap over there. I'm moving on from the MEK, the last thing I want to talk to you about related to this is you recently wrote a piece about the role that this foreign exchange program between cops in America and Israel has played into the militarization

of American policing. And certainly in light of what's going on in Portland right now, where you've got DHS, Border Patrol agents dressed as troops, essentially doing civilian law enforcement in response to these protests. And I think Trump has been pretty clear

and his Justice Department has been pretty clear about how this is basically a pilot program for the rest of the country. Now, I don't think there's a one-to-one connection between those two things, but this kind of training of American police by the Israelis has been going on for a while, certainly after 9-11. And you wrote a piece based on the labor shadow education secretary, Rebecca Long Bailey, just got axed. She just had to step down for referencing this fact and sharing a Facebook post, I think.

Could you explain what happened there? Yeah, Rebecca Long Bailey, I mean, it wasn't even like a Facebook post specifically about that. It was an interview with an actress who was a labor supporter, and it was buried very, very, very deep into the interview where she mentioned that. But even so, even though it was buried very very very deep into the interview where um she mentioned that

but even so even though it was this small mention uh kirsten or the new labor uh leader felt it was necessary to completely eliminate her uh from the labor backbench and assumedly a future labor government um yeah it was a pretty severe response to it because of the the labor anti-semitism allegations that have been dogging the party for a while but the is that the training of police officers by israel has existed since 2002 it's also severe in the sense that like they're they're not shy about advertising it it's not like this is some secret fact or like a conspiracy theory that's being shared like in another context if you were proud of this fact it wouldn't have been controversial but just mentioning it you know yeah well that is that is

sort of the mo of israel almost it's to just do things right in front of you and then call you insane and it's isometric for noticing it. Right. Yeah. Uh, that back in 2002 when this all started, uh, obviously the year before,

um, two jetliners had crashed into buildings in New York and there was a, Oh, fuck. I forgot about that. I'm just saying, I'm just saying there was some context needed. Uh,

and, uh, people were afraid, I guess, in small police departments across America that terrorists might blow up a bomb at their pumpkin festival or something. And thus, tons of small police departments, including the big ones like NYPD and LAPD, were sent to Israel to receive training in counterterrorism operations. And the trainers that they received were very explicit in the lessons that they wanted police officers to take home with them. Israel had fought in a defaulter back in the 20th century. And in 2002, they were finishing up with the second defaulter. And Israel had you can see they stopped the suicide bombings.

They managed to pacify the Palestinians. So obviously if we were able to do it here, we can take, we can transfer these lessons to the war zones that are happening in the city streets and prevent terrorist attacks. So they started with a very, very small program there, but then it eventually exploded into scope. There was an itinerary by one of the organizers of these trips, the Anti-Defamation League organizes one of these trips. And throughout that itinerary, police officers meet with officials from Shin Bet. They meet with IDF leaders who are in charge of occupying palestine occupying certain cities in palestine they talk to people who are quite literally

responsible for war crimes like personally responsible for war crimes and they're supposed to learn lessons from them um and then uh the the main point of contention is that these organizers claim that they don't learn any, they claim that they don't learn any specific techniques. But even if that is the case, which I somewhat doubt, but even if that is the case, they're still being taught how to respond to people. They're taught to treat protesters in the states of Portland or Chicago or New York or whatever. They're taught to treat them like you would a Gazan trying to cross the border or a West Bank protester throwing a rock at you. They're supposed to respond with some sort of overwhelming force against them to make sure that there's no insurrection or something.

Yeah. And I think what's going on here is like, look, it's certainly when it comes to policing in America, it's not like U.S. cops need like it's not like it's all Israel telling them to do this because it's like I don't think they need any like extra motivation to pretend that they're troops or brutalize, you know, urban populations or anyone really under their boot. But the thing is, like you mentioned, like this became popular after 9-11 and the sort of color-coded era of the first Bush administration where literally everyone in America thought Al-Qaeda was going to do another 9-11 in their town tomorrow, potentially, or that terrorism would just be in our streets.

And the weird thing is that now, in our current moment, that fear, I really feel like, doesn't exist that much anymore in America. If it does, people are very quiet about it. They're not obsessed with it. Instead, I think what's happened is that like originally what would be advertised is like, oh, like, you know, in Israel, we know how to deal with terrorism happening in our cities. But I think what's happening now is like they're selling it as like no no what we know how to deal with is i don't know how should i put this uh restive urban populations who uh are not happy with the way they're being um ruled over yeah it's it's switched from i mean it's still it still works within that kind of wider israeli political context it's moved from

trying to counter some equivalent of Hamas terrorists coming into your city and blowing those up. And now it's shifted to trying to keep down a West Bank town population that doesn't particularly like Israeli control of other cities. It shifted those kinds of tactics. But even so, militarization of the police has continued to go up and up and up and up and explode in its scope, despite the fact that we're not talking about trying to stop a pressure cooker bomb going off every single five minutes. They're buying bearcats. They're buying anti-mine vehicles. Ostensibly to deal with people in red and black bandanas on the streets protesting racism. Apparently, that's something that's needed.

Well, apparently, the people with red and black bandanas did assault the Border Patrol agents with lasers. Oh, I must have missed that. They were firing lasers at the police. I saw a post about some police officer who got hit with a slingshot and he was bleeding a little bit. I hope he didn't have to break out his automatic assault rifle in order to deal with that. But we're praying for him.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's like the thing that people, the videos everyone saw of them just snatching people off the street, throwing them in a van without identifying themselves or even having any like official identification or insignia of what branch of the government they were. And like the other thing is like the city and state, the city of Portland and the state of Oregon did not ask the federal government to intervene. are men under some rubric of civil unrest. The federal government is under Trump and William Barr seizing this authority for themselves

to deploy federal troops basically to US cities and then it turned out that these guys are from the Border Patrol Service, which is even greater because they're going to become Trump's own personal sadhu car made up of people who were too fat or psychotic to become

regular cops. It's pretty fucking bleak and like they're and they're being very clear about how like they want to do this in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, elsewhere. It was very, very satisfied with the results of what has been happening in Portland. Yeah, this

there was I think Ken Cuccinelli came on TV and said that, that they want to expand all those. Yeah, Cuccinelli, by the way, is very, I don't know if any of you guys remember this, but in 2016, Cuccinelli famously, he was a big Never Trump guy. He was a big principled conservative Never Trump Republican and famously, in a pathetic display,

ripped off his own lanyard and threw it on the floor when Trump secured enough delegates to become the nominee formally at the RNC. No, that was more than happy. Literally, literally just brutalizing people for Trump now. Just, yeah, I mean, I would like to just give that example to anyone who's very into the Lincoln Project. Yeah, there's no moral backbone to it. He just, Ken Cuccinelli wants to see this program that has essentially been going very, very well in Portland, I guess.

He wants to see it expanded to the entire place. And there is a concern, I think about what is, what is the next step here? I don't think that, I don't think that the border police, uh, at least according to the ACLU, um, only has jurisdiction over that, um, that a hundred mile border, I think is what they used to call it. So they can, they can probably do it in Chicago. They probably do it in Portland because it goes over that, but you know, they're really going to expand it to goes over that, but are they really going to expand it to Kentucky? Are they really going to expand it to Missouri? Are they really going to try to expand it to all of these places?

I don't know. It's just depressing to see, I think. Felix, you had some questions about Lebanon, correct? Yeah. I'm just going to give a little background on Lebanon for the listeners

who I presume haven't really been keeping up with news of Lebanon's central banking catastrophe. Oh, God. Just for background. Do better, listeners, please. Fucking morons. had, I'm going to say had because I don't think they're going to go back to it after this, a very interesting banking system. And what it was, they pegged the Lebanese pound to the dollar. And the way they did this was by keeping high reserves.

And the way that they kept high reserves was that the banks would pay massive, massive interest on large deposits in order to keep the pay, like sometimes 15 percent. This caused a huge black market inflation. and that they were just using these deposits they would sometimes pay double-digit interest on to service existing outstanding debt, incredible amounts of debt. They started pulling it and the Lebanese pound to the dollar has been in free fall. But I was wondering if we could get an update on sort of the economic and political collapse of Lebanon. Jesus. Okay.

This one is a lot of personal experience wrapped up for me. In January, I moved to Beirut with a spring in my step and a great desire to study at the Harvard of the Middle East, the American University of Beirut. It's a beautiful place. I remember being very excited for you. I was like, let's fucking go. Have a great time.

I wish I could have gone to college there. Not now, but... Yeah, okay. Then three months later in March, I was summarily told by the university that I would have to leave the country within two days. Since they were going to lock down the borders.

So Felix summed it up beautifully. The economic system is basically collapsing on itself. Then the lira has been trading at around 9,000 to the dollar. Previously, in November, it had been trading at 1,500 to the dollar. The inflation rate at last I saw was 487%. It's basically wiped out everyone's savings that they previously had. Um, and it's getting to an increasingly desperate position, um, which was intensified a couple of days ago by the decision by the, by AUB, my university, which is the largest employer in Lebanon to lay off over a thousand people without telling them first.

Um, and then they, and then they were so afraid of a riot breaking out that they called in the army in order to prevent them from protesting, uh, their layoffs. So that's, that's, that's one aspect of it. Um, on another one, uh, uh, Iran has been, has been trying to buy Lebanese oil in Lebanese pounds, which is rapidly depreciating. And the Lebanese administration is not buying into it for whatever reason. But they also are losing money very, very rapidly. They're burning through the foreign reserves. I'm not sure what's going to happen because somehow, in a truly bizarre development, the IMF bailout

is not going forward because the IMF does not trust the Lebanese government to pay up even a little bit. The IMF famously, exploitative 280, burning out African countries and Middle Eastern countries across the board with loans that they cannot pay. But when they see Lebanon, they are so cash strapped, so absolutely fucked that they look at it and say, OK, Lebanese aren't serious about this. This this really can't go forward in the way that it is now. So that's what I was like. What are they? What are they like? You know, these people, they love to haggle. You know, it's just such a pain in the ass. Well, that did that did surprise that did surprise me because, you know, when this was happening in October, I expected like, oh, yeah, okay, IMF is going to expand the racket. They're going to have another group of people that will pay protection to them.

They'll give them some like, you know, in the deck of billions bailout. And, I mean, they said corruption, but that's not really stopped the IMF before, as long as they get their debt serviced. But that really did surprise me. I mean, I guess that means either the right people didn't get paid off, or Lebanon is deeply, deeply

fucked, or both. I mean, their financial system is... It's fucking insane. It's insane that it went on for this long like when you say it when you explain it out loud it's like everyone is just okay with this like holy shit it is i don't i by everyone i don't mean like the lebanese people i mean like just like if you worked in the central bank and you saw that you were doing this, you at no point were you like, this is like any like little a butterfly flaps its wings on like the Chicago Board of Commodity Exchanges. We're fucked.

Yeah. Oh, my God. It is. It is. I mean, we could talk about this for like five hours, but just listeners at home, it is difficult to overstate how comical the level of corruption is in Lebanon to the point where it defies imagination about why anyone would even do it. Because it seems like nobody's even getting paid anymore. it because it seems like nobody's even getting paid anymore like uh the lots of bankers they took billion dollar billions of dollars out of the country before the financial crisis hit um politicians are being paid in currency that is slowly becoming worthless and now

what is there what's the next step step? Nobody seems to really know. And nobody has a plan. Right now, the prime minister of Lebanon is suing also my university, suing his former employer for a million dollars for a contract dispute because his salary is worthless now. It's just completely going off the rails. And also a coronavirus is a problem on top of that. So, yeah, when you add up that and like the collapse of the economy and banking system in Lebanon, I mean, obviously this doesn't augur well for the future. But what are some of the ramifications for both Lebanon itself and the broader Middle East? I mean, that's a tough one. Lebanon is going really into, unfortunately, it's going

into abyss that I'm not sure it can pull itself out of, at least not in a timeframe that you can really plan out. It's going to, I think, inevitably become even more under the heel of regional interests like Saudi Arabia and Iran than it already was. If you recall back in, I want to say 2016, 2017, Lebanon's prime minister, the previous one, he was kidnapped by Saudi Arabia and flown out, forced to resign. And then when it became evident that they couldn't really kidnap him anymore, they just flew him back and he unresigned. This is already a country that is very much. Did they send him to that hotel where they keep like half of the royal family? I don't know, but I think that's probably right. I know.

I remember a hilarious photo of him at some hotel. I don't know if it was the Hilton that they were keeping all the other, yeah. Was he doing the Trump-Terry Richardson double thumbs up? He had a really, well, Sadr hariri always has he has just like one of those weak faces i mean you've have you heard the uh rumor about him i think i've said it on the show before is it is the one where he's the son of uh the saudi yeah yeah i've heard that one before yes yes that's a popular one that's a popular one that's yeah so for people who don't know uh there is a rumor that uh when

rafiq kareeri his billionaire father went to saudi arabia to make his fortune the deal that the saudis made with him well i think it was personally it was abdullah right was it fad or abdullah it's been a while i think i think it was i think it was fun i think it was fun yeah fad was king fad was like well uh yeah we'll help you make your billions in telecom and construction but uh there's what can you give me prima nocta basically and fucked his wife and had him raise his child as his son sod again this is a rumor this is a rumor i will say that sod does have that weak weak chin that fad had but i digress um saad always has this very sad broken look on his face yeah it's really palpable uh there's an

interview that he gave when he was kidnapped by saudi arabia and it's on his own television station and he's looking like over the corner to like someone like i guess like a minder and he's crying and he's just like on the verge of tears constantly when he's not crying um just a man who has clearly been broken by something um yeah so if you if you want to if you saw that and you think can it get worse get worse for Lebanon in being controlled by foreign interests? It always can. And I think that's what's going to happen because recently in a lot of Saudi media, like Arab News, which is their big English newspaper for foreign diplomats, they've been really promoting investing in Lebanon's future, in AUB more specifically, trying to make it so Lebanon is ostensibly, quote unquote, a future bastion of liberal thought in the region. But of course, it's Saudi Arabia.

Liberal thought really isn't in its canon. It's just to increase that kind of influence. cannon uh it's just to increase that kind of influence uh iran is trying to make that same play by paying for uh oil in their own currency which is probably depreciating but they don't really have that same uh massive in that saudi arabia as at least with the main government but uh in that that's for lebanon specifically um and in the in the major region as a whole, things with Israel are also starting to pop off, unfortunately. At least during my time in Beirut, I never heard any drones. But once coronavirus happened and everything shut down, you could start to hear it, the drones circling overhead. um the drone circling overhead um at just yesterday there was a there was a drone uh flown by hezbollah that got intercepted flown over the border into israel then shot down um then there and then there was there's been like uh the leban one of the lebanese ministers

said that israel has done a thousand violations of the southern border uh since the beginning of this year or something like that. And Israel's been saying something similar about Lebanese border guards. We're not on the verge of war as it might have been in 2006, but it's not, considering the

administration that's currently in power in Israel, I would not bet against something horrible happening and then another conflict emerging in the near future i mean and yeah and to sort of wrap it all up and make it go full circle what better way to delay netanyahu's corruption trial than to have another war yeah yeah uh oh god israeli politics uh i talked about this on a previous podcast interview that I did. But Israeli politics seems to go always in this cycle of, oh, I'm having a big scandal right now.

I'm going to start a war that's going to kill like a thousand people. And then we're just going to handle it a couple months later. And then, poof, it's out of the news cycle. poof, it's out of the news cycle. Yeah, I mean, the last Lebanese war, I mean, that was one of the most comically corrupt Israeli leaders ever, even by their standards, Ehud Olmeir. Just fucking, yeah.

I mean, he actually got convicted, which is, think how fucked up you have to be. Yeah, I mean, there are two Israeli prime ministers that have been convicted for entirely different, obscene crimes, but even then, other prime ministers don't get convicted for the shit they do. To broaden the

horizon even more, I mean, back to the issue of mysterious explosions happening in Iran, and this sort of deadly game of provocation that's going on right now, I mean, a lot of people are speculating that Trump down in the polls, he might just feel the need to start a fucking conflict with Iran right in the fall to get people on his side or just distract people or hype them up

or just do something to seem like a leader at the time when the coronavirus and how fucking awful it's been in this country is really dinging. when like the coronavirus like and how fucking awful it's been in this country is really dinging even if you're like inclined to like the guy or want to support republican policies it really is like a as good a demonstration as you can get of like the just fecklessness or just inability to be an authority figure in the face of a crisis and nothing better than a war to fucking get you know uh get back on that side yeah yeah i yeah. I mean, Trump has been, Trump has somehow pulled us back from the war front with Iran more times

than I think any other president in history, but also he has brought us to that front more times. Yeah, it's a weird paradox. It's a really bad paradox, you know? It is insanely stressful to think about, but also considering how malleable trump is that depending on what general comes in uh they can be for or if you want or against it he will listen to that person as long as they're the last person that he talked to

i mean like i've said it before i just think it's like the the the calculus is like you know does if someone pitches it to him like does he think he will be he will come across as a winner rather than a loser or like will look presidential? I think that's basically it. And if someone can convince him that there's also adding on to that, the onus of wanting to wanting to force Iran to make a deal with him. But Iran isn't like North Korea where they kind of want that legitimacy. Iran already they don't they don't want that. If there is an escalation, they will meet that escalation. Seamus, good times ahead all around.

Lots of reasons to look forward to the fall this year. Should be great. But I want to thank you once again for coming on the show. It's been great. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

And if people want to find your writing, where should they go? Oh, well, if they want to find my writing, they can go to Seamus-Malikafzali.com I have all my writing there. S-E-A-M-U-S hyphen M-A-L-E-K-A-F-Z-A-L-I If you don't want to remember that spelling,

I'm sure the good folks here will put it in the description. It will be in in the description. It will be in the episode description. Seamus, thank you so much. No problem. Thanks for having me. To see me through I was counting on you They moved on While I look down When I looked away They changed the stars around

I'm so confused Don't know what to do Don't know which way to turn I was counting on you Then you blew While I look down When I looked away They change the stars around Thank you.