DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - Another Israeli Settler Attack on Journalists | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

Episode Date: October 8, 2026

• Israeli settler-terrorists attacked and fired at two Agence France-Presse journalists as they were reporting on settler violence against Palestinian olive farmers in the West Bank. Photographers Jaafar Ashtiyeh and John Wessels were taking pictures of an IDF soldier detaining a man when a driver on a quad bike opened fire with at least six other colonists and stole their camera equipment. Ashtiyeh tried to escape into a car marked “Press,” but two men assaulted him and beat him with the butts of their rifles.Editorial cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM Eastern time.Today we also discuss:• María del Carmen Abascal, the 87-year-old woman whose eviction from her home two weeks ago prompted widespread protests in Spain and spurred the prime minister to call national elections, died.• Italian lawmakers approved a law that awards bonus seats in Parliament to election winners, a move supporters say will help prevent governments from collapsing and that detractors denounce as unconstitutional and antidemocratic. Championed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who had threatened to resign should the legislation not pass, the new law gives a bonus to the winning party or coalition of an election: 70 seats in the lower house of Parliament and 35 in the Senate, provided the party or coalition reaches 42 percent in both houses. Italy has a 600-seat Parliament, with 400 seats in the lower house and 200 seats in the Senate.• Krista Pike is talking and walking. Maj. Nidal Hasan will be executed by firing squad at Fort Hood, Texas, on Dec. 3, for fatally shooting 13 people and wounding 32 in 2009 at the same base. Gov. Gavin Newsom is seriously considering whether to spare the lives of all 563 prisoners on death row in California as one of his final acts in office.00:10 Opening Rundown on Settlers, Abascal, and Death Row 03:39 María Abascal and the Eviction That Killed Her 18:17 Christa Pike, Nidal Hasan, and Newsom’s Death Row 38:15 Collective Guilt from Nuremberg to U.S. Wars 43:51 Can China Change Course Faster Than America? 49:23 West Bank Settlers Attack AFP Journalists 55:35 Meloni’s Bonus Seats and Italian StabilitySUBSCRIBE on YouTube/Rumble: $5/month$10/month on YouTube: Get a Closing Credit$20/month on YouTube: Exclusive Monthly Hangout with Ted and Jamarl (Rumblers: contact [e-mail] for details)MERCHANDISE: DeProgram.MySpreadShop.comLIVE ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@DeProgramShowLIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShowhttps://x.com/tedrallhttps://x.com/JamarlThomas#tedrall #jamarlthomas #news #politics

Good morning. It's Thursday, October 8, 26. And this is the program with Ted Raul and Jamaral Thomas. Here's what we've got for you this morning. Another attack by Israeli settler terrorists in the West Bank. This time, the victims are photographer, journalists of Agence France Pess, also known as AFP. We'll get into that. Also, we've got the death of Maria del Carmen Abascal. You'll remember. remember, we covered this on the show. She was an 87-year-old lady who was evicted from her home in Madrid, prompted widespread protests in Spain. Her landlord backed off and promised to reduce her rent rather than jack it up as they were planning after they evicted her. She was looking forward to going back home, but I guess the stress was too much and she succumbed to the stress of that. Old people are fragile, man. She's a water. She's going to be a mortar.

She is a martyr. I hope that the people are going to have her face as a rally and cry. They killed her. That's going to be a rally and cry. Well, they murdered her. I mean, they did objectively. That's what they're going to use. They killed her. Remember the whatever name is. Just like they should remember the main. They said remember this. So far. Abascal. And she had a nickname that like jammed all her names together. So Italy, Prime Minister Georgia Maloney has introduced a new law that she's hoping would make Italian politics more stable. At least that's what people who are in favor of the law say.

Other people say it's anti-democratic. We'll get into that. A lot of death penalty news. Major Nadal Hassan will be executed by firing squad at Fort Hood on December 3rd. Krista Pike is not only talking to her attorneys, she's also walking now. and Governor Gavin Newsom is a term limited, and he's preparing to wrap up his term for a probable run for the White House, and he's thinking about commuting and all 563 death row prisoners in California all at the same time, obviously with an eye toward balancing the politics of it, you know, either way.

Obviously, I think this would be a good idea for a variety of reasons, but I think it's, you know, I think it's, you know, obviously it would be, it would open him up to a certain line of attack from law and order Republicans. So that's what we've got. It probably would help him get the nomination, though. He should do it. Yeah. I mean, it falls in line with democratic politics. It doesn't. Agreed.

Yeah. Yeah. He should do it. He agreed. All right. So with that, please like follow. and share the show. Today's a Thursday, which means we're an hour show today. We go until 10 a.m. Eastern time. If you're watching Live, put your questions into the live chat. We appreciate and

prioritize the superchats and the Rubble Rants. Those are paid. We please ask you to subscribe to the show if you're not already doing so. And you're able to afford it five, 10, or $20 a month, different levels. We have some, by the way, in the next two weeks or so, we're going to have some interesting author guests. We'll tell you a little more about that, but it is a short show, so we should just get to it. What do you want to talk about first? Let's talk about Spain since we kind of dipped into it already. Cool. All right. So, oh, and by the way, F.U. So says, thanks for the dollar.

West Craven's, the hills have settlers. The hills have eyes. That's a little bit more terrifying. By the way, I love West Craven. Yeah, no, that's true. Okay, so, yeah, so the lady in Spain is named Maria del Carmen Abascal, and I apologize for my Spanish mispronunciations. She's 87 years old. She was evicted from an apartment that she lived in for about 50 years in Madrid. So, I mean, she lived there under fascism, under Francisco Franco, right? She was in a, she was paying about 500 euros a month. Her landlord tried to jack it up to 1,650, which is more than her retirement. No way she could have afforded that. So she was evicted for non-payment of rent. There was a national outcry. Rallies in

Madrid and other cities. People in Spain are really furious about this coming at the same time as the French student protests in a way. Things had calmed down because the landlord had said, okay, okay, our bad. We'll let her back in and we'll cut her rent from what she was paying before to 450. But apparently the stress of the eviction and everything she went through, was too much for her and she succumbed and now she's gone. And I mean, you know, she's a, she's a martyr to gangster capitalism. It is time to burn stuff down in her name. Yeah.

Whether she would want it or not is secondary to the point. Yep. I mean, like it's outrageous. For one, she should have, they thought that they could. Yeah, we can increase the amount of rent and they do this over and over again. There wouldn't have been protests if this wasn't something that other people in the country experience. Yeah, it's one thing to say, oh, that sucks for her.

But if it was an isolated case, I don't think you would have gotten that light and her response from all of the people in France saying, last straw, right? Spain, yeah. Yeah. And I don't believe for a moment that it just stopped in other parts, meaning just because they lowered her rent doesn't have anything to do with anybody else in Spain whose rent have been jacked up in that particular way.

And so, God bless. them for their protests. It shouldn't stop until this is something that is across the board. And, you know, Sanchez, Pedro Sanchez, Pedro Sanchez, the prime minister, called snap elections. Those snap elections are probably going to be on this particular issue. And I would say that it calmed down probably because of the snap elections, like meaning it looked like the government was responding to what the population was effectively doing. I think the population calming down, it's not good. You don't supposed to stop. You're supposed to keep it going to keep the pressure on. Look, it's the kind of Russian. Those protests are just war. It's a low-level war, just like the

political space is a low-level war. In the same way, the Russians kind of made the point of saying, what is the point of a ceasefire? We are going to keep the war going until we have a negotiation that results in something. Same thing with Vietnam, right? We are keeping the war going until we get a deal to end the war. Same thing with Iran, right? Meaning I'm trying to point out that these nations have realized you don't stop until you get a deal and until the deal was signed, you have no deal. The political space is exactly the same way.

Letting the pressure off doesn't help in regards to them getting what they want, keeping the pressure going on until they get what they want is the way to do it. And then after you get what you want, you have to still. you have to be vigilant, you know? And that's the price of liberty as eternal vigilance, right? And so that's the price of all hard one rights. She's, yeah, I mean, it's a horror. You know, my father-in-law, you know, he's gone now,

but he was, my former father-in-law, I should say, he was a landlord. And I remember he was like always asking me because I used to work in banking for investment opportunities. And he was really, because he was a man of the people and a leftist, even though he was a landlord, he was very sensitive to anything that smelled of exploitation and profiteering at someone else's expense. I remember he was like, please look for a brownstone in New York City for me to invest in. I found a few. And I remember one had a couple of rent-controlled tenants in it on the upper floor.

And so, you know, I was like, he's like, well, it's really expensive. And the rents, the revenues are so low. And I said, yeah, well, you know, I mean, the Donald Trump approach would be to come in and probably evict these people or buy them out, you know, give them a few hundred thousand dollars to get lost. And then you could maybe make the numbers work. And he was like, didn't want to hear of it. He's like, I absolutely will never do that.

That's someone's home. Like, you know, I don't care if there's millions to be made. I just won't do that. And he was always like that. It was just, and I'm like, he was so unusual. I mean, I mean, it's hard. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I'm just saying, like, that's, he is all the credit in the world for that, because that's hard. And it was like, it wasn't for public consumption. You know, this was just him in private having a conversation with me. You know, I mean, sometimes it went to the point of ridiculousness. Taxe medallions, there's a set number of them over 10,000. And you have to have this stamp that goes on the hood of the yellow taxi in order to be a licensed yellow cab in New York. And they can be very expensive. When I started out as a cab driver, they were about $30,000.

At one point, they went over $2 million each. Then the price collapsed because of Uber and Lyft, and that's what led to a bunch of New York cabbies committing suicide, right? But the point is at one point when the medallion was about $75,000, he was asking me, about this. And I was like, well, this is a good investment, man. I mean, they go up. Back then, there was no Uber or Lyft. I'm like, you know, you can't go wrong. And if he had followed my advice, I mean, he would have, you know, increased his money like 10, 15 fold within a few years. He's like, I don't want to exploit cabbies. And I tried to explain to him. The cabs, you know, the cabbies get paid what they get paid regardless of the value of the medallion. It's a separate

economy. It has nothing to do with it. You know, your making money is not going to come at the cabbies expense, which is true. And he, I mean, maybe in a very abstract, indirect way, but not generally speaking. And in fact, actually, the more that the cabbies make, the more the medallions are worth and vice versa, because the income is, you know, what gives the value to the medallion. But even so, even in that abstract way, he was like, no, it just, it feels like exploitation. I just can't do it. And so, I mean, that's really unusual. And it says, and I think, you know, when you're evaluating, like, why am I a socialist as opposed to a capitalist?

It's because the incentive structure under capitalism is to be cruel and ruthless and to evict 87-year-old women to make a few extra euros. The incentive level, the incentive structure in other economic systems isn't that brutal. And that's why I prefer them. question for you, Ted. Your former father-in-law, he was all about Taiwanese independence. Yeah. Well, Taiwan's a capitalist country. So if he was against the exploitation of workers, why would he be for independence for an island nation that's founded on the concept of exploiting island workers? Well, first of all, he would have been very, I think he would have been very happy to see Taiwan become a fully socialist country, a free republic of Taiwan.

But he was also, you know, there was also an indigenous rights aspect to his independence. He's, he's, he was ethnically Taiwanese. So he wasn't Han then. He was not, he was, he was part Han, but mostly Taiwanese. So, you know, so he viewed the, the KMT government at the time as being like, you know, invaders from the land. I mean, from the mainland. And so there was that aspect, too, because these are, these people are suppressed. Gotcha.

Yeah, that's hard. So. But that's not the, like, when you're in a company and the company has a mandate to maximize this profit. Yeah. Then by definition, exploitation is just kind of. You can literally be sued. If you're an officer or a board member of a publicly traded corporation and you fail to maximize short-term profits for your shareholders, you can be sued in an American court for bail. failing to maintain your financial your what's it where the god there's a term for this but anyway you have

you have an obligation you have a fiscal obligation to the shareholders right you're by usherry responsibility yeah yeah yeah do share responsibility meaning kicking that woman out was the job right it was an american company not a bug it's a feature that's a feature kicking her up that would be something that they were supposed to do because the system tells them that that is your job to do and the moment you get a machine with a machine doesn't really care right um that's exactly it i mean even i mean what's crazy is like even the cops who showed up to evict her may have felt personally awful about what they were doing but felt felt that this is just part of you know i follow a job i just yeah it's like in uh in v the sci-fi series um there's a scene where the cops or you know local cops are operating under

alien, you know, enemy alien control, space alien control. And they're like, I don't know, I don't want to, one cop's like, tells the other, his partner, I don't really want to do this. And he's like, dude, this is our job. We just follow. They give the orders. We follow them, no matter who's in charge. And that's true.

Yeah. Yeah. What he was doing is hard. Yeah. Everything in you tells, meaning every mechanism of the system tells you to do it. And the only thing that tells you not to do it are values. Right. And most people are not going to make that decision, you know.

No. So FU. So says, thanks for another donation. About 146,000 older adults experienced homelessness, according to HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development. That's an increase of about 6% from 2003. older, older adults, many, many. Not in this country. We have millions of vacant housing units, including in luxury neighborhoods where people are just warehousing units that are completely unoccupied 365 days a year.

I mean, no. And we spend billions, like just giving money for wars. Like, take Ukraine by itself. Let's pretend for the moment the Ukraine war didn't happen. And let's say the hundreds of billions of dollars that we've invested don't get invested in Ukraine. What would they have used the money for? Or what could they have used it for? Right.

I'm saying what would they have if the war for Ukraine? Tax cuts for the rich. Yeah. Right. Or they would have found something else to put it in. It would have never gone into homelessness. No. They would have never said, hey, let's just give it of homelessness.

Right? Let's make people. And you could. Yeah. You could. There's about half a million people. There's about 700,000 people who are systemically sleep outside every day in the United States. There's many, there's several million more who are functionally homeless,

couch surfing on their friends and relatives' houses. You know, but there's, you could absolutely, if you crunch the numbers and it's in my book, What's Left, you can totally solve homelessness overnight in this country. Yes. And I'm just making the point of saying, we spent hundreds of billions in Ukraine. and if the war hadn't taken place, they would have found something else to use the money for. And the war hadn't taken place,

and people would have made the argument, why don't you use $10 billion, $20 billion to get rid of homelessness? They said, we don't have the money for it. So Mr. A. Lee, who I do respect and usually agree with his comments, but he said there's no such thing as Taiwanese. Those people are from mainland themselves. They didn't spawn from the soil.

Well, it is an island, so obviously they came from somewhere else. and many of them did come hundreds of years ago from the mainland. But ethnically Taiwanese people are also substantially descended from Polynesians. They came in dugout canoes from the South Pacific. They are ethnically distinct. They look different. If they die and you find their bones, the cops can tell you this person was Taiwanese as opposed to this person who was Han.

They are ethnically distinct. They have different DNA. It's not the same. Everybody comes from somewhere, right? Everybody comes from somewhere, yeah. Okay, the dead meme club. Did you all see the UPS accidentally sent China an F-35? The UPS, like a United Parcel Service?

I feel this is too ridiculous to be true. Oh, why are we using UPS to ship military tech? I guess it is UPS. The big brown truck showed up with an F-35. I want an F-35. I'm going to order one. Don't you want an F-R-R-R-R-E? 35 tomorrow? I want to have 35. Hell yeah. It's a lot faster than the subway. I'm going to say that.

Gas is expensive enough pass. I suppose, I mean, but it sounds ridiculous, but it could be true. I mean, the UPA, like meaning we use private industry for all sorts of stuff military-wise. Yeah, that's true. The mail service. It's true. It would be shocking. No, it wouldn't. It's not shocking at all. All right, we have a lot to talk about short show.

What do you want to talk about next? Do we talk about the death penalty stuff? Yeah. So I, and just you can present it one more time just for the audience. Okay, so basically death penalty and capital slash capital punishment is really in the news right now, largely because of Krista Pike, who in the modern era is the only person known to have survived a serious execution. execution attempt by an American state. Other people have certainly done that in the past. Krista Pike in Tennessee is now in hospital. She's talking to her attorneys. She woke up confused

and a little peeve that no one she knew was there. She had a tube stuck down her throat. Her arms have been inflated up like a surgical glove blown up. She can't, her esophagus is swollen because she's, you know, can't, and so she can't eat. Anyway, they, at one point, they were thinking about pulling the plug on her on the ventilator, but then they're like, no, no, no, not dead yet. She's not dead. And so now she's up, she's walking around and talking to her attorneys. The judge seems to be ruling in the hers, in her favor on pretty much anything.

And now Governor Lee of Tennessee has to decide whether he wants to take a third. third stab at the apple, or whether he's going to, like, you know, commute this to life and without parole, which is what her attorneys are asking for. It seems like not a big ask. I think personally, they should, I agree with you, Jamar. I've been thinking about it since you said it yesterday. Let her go. Let her fucking go. Anyway, major Nadal Hassan is going to be executed at Donald Trump's personal order by firing squad. at the same base Fort Hood in Texas where he killed 13 people and wounded 32. This was back in 17 years ago in 2009.

I feel awful about that, especially because this guy, he basically suffered PTSD by proxy. There's like very little doubt about it. He was a Army psychologist who was treating, or Marine psychologist, treating, returning Afghan and Iraq war fighters, as Hague Seth would say, who were coming back from the war messed up and relating their experiences. It is, I'm sure that, like, in, you know, psychologists are supposed to have supervision, but you know the military didn't provide him proper supervision. And he's kind of lost his mind and became catatonic and psychotic, according to his before this incident.

And it was his colleagues reported, nobody gave a shit. Finally, he snapped and carried out this dreadful mass shooting. on the air base and now he's going to be executed. He's in a wheelchair. He was shot that day by the MPs. So they're going to have to either figure out whether they're going to shoot him in the chair or pull him up, I swear to God,

pull him up and tie him to a post and hang him there like crucified while they shoot him. So that's great. And they have to figure out the last time the Army killed anyone by firing squad was that guy Ernie Kovic. Right. That was during World War II, he was a deserter who basically had what they used to call, what was they called that like, what was it, not trench fatigue, but like basically. Now it was like it's like PTSD. But anyway, what the early, what they used to call P. Shell shock is. Shell shock. Yeah, that's it. He had shell shock. And he had shell shock, which is now PTSD. And anyway, there's a, there's a movie about. I mean, he was just a fucked up broken kid and they executed him.

And it was just, that's the last time the Army did this. And finally, Governor Gavin Newsom, almost certainly running for president starting next year for 2028 for the Democratic nomination, is contemplating doing the same thing that Jerry Ryan's ex-husband did in Illinois, right? He, when he left, there kept being one, the Innocence Project kept finding that one Illinois death penalty, a resident after another was actually innocent. And he got tired of the whole thing and he ended up commuting every death penalty sentence in Illinois to life in prison. And that's what Newsom is thinking of doing in California.

California hasn't executed anyway in 30 years anyway. So it's kind of like stupid to be maintaining the gas chamber. and the and the whole infrastructure at San Quentin when you're probably never going to use it politically. I mean, I think the death penalty in California is dead anyway. But he's worried that this will, you know, that he'll get criticized, not that. So, yeah. Yeah, Newsom, I think should just do it. I mean, it's California, right? I mean, supposedly it's a liberal space. It's a super majority Democrat. Democrats tend to be against the death penalty. So there's nothing. Meaning, even if he runs for president, you can make the argument about why you didn't do it.

You can make that argument. That argument will work for your particular side or the political space. I don't think there's a hedge against him from doing so, especially, as you point out, it's not like they've executed somebody in 30 years. And so you're spending all of this money. If I, correct me from wrong, death penalty is more expensive than life in prison. Oh, much more so. Yeah. Yeah. I know it's, it's, what's the word for?

Countertud. It sounds contradictory, but it sounds weird, but it sounds weird because you would think that the life in prison would be longer just because a person is living longer. But no, the death penalty is more expensive. So, yeah, this, fiscally, I guess you can make the argument ethically and morally, not to mention the idea that you can't necessarily always know. that the person you're killing is guilty, despite the fact that they went through the justice system. Even that is a little bit weird, right? It's like the justice system knows that he gets things wrong,

and yet it executes people anyway. There's that. What's her name? Let her go. You've had two bites at the apple. She was in prison for 30 years. You've tried to execute her twice. Let her go.

You don't know what you're doing. And you don't know what you're doing. I mean, the state of Tennessee earlier this year had another botched execution. And the guy, after they administered the fentobarbital or whatever it's called, said that he was screaming. He's like, God, it hurts so bad. It's burning. I mean, that's not what this is supposed to do, right? That's not the process.

And again, I want to reiterate, Christa Pike couldn't have been more helpful. She spent an hour trying to point her killers, her executioners, to the right vein. Please, you know, try over here, try over here. You might have more luck here. She had asked to be shot by firing squad. Maybe, you know, they could have a twofer down at Fort Hood and do them both at the same time. You know, hey, you've hired the training. You've trained the firing squad.

like, hey, you know, maybe we can work something out. Tennessee is not so far from Texas. You know, or, and, oh, she also asked if she could be hung. It's like, oh, there have been botched hangings, too. I take the firing squad. I don't want to happen. I think the firing squad seems more. And by the way, the other guy, the Fort Hood shooter, I don't know why this is complicated.

And I don't know why the state makes these things complicated. Shoot them in a wheelchair. And I know that I'm not trying to be brutal here. It's so outlandish, the whole thing. Yeah, the thing feels so outlandish. If you're going to do it, this seems straightforward. He's in a wheelchair, shoot him in a wheelchair. You have all sorts of snipers and everything else.

What's the issue? I don't see the issue. Well, maybe they think that if they stand him up in the afterlife, then he'll be standing for all of eternity. So they're kind of giving him his legs back. I think there's issues we don't want to shoot a man in a wheelchair. What's the issue? I mean, me personally, it's not going to get far if he escapes.

It's certainly not, that's not the concern. Right. Crawling away slowly. It's like somehow you got away. I mean, listen, I mean, if you're going to get taken out, being in a fire squad with five guys with 30-odd-six rifles is about the fastest, most efficient way that you could possibly go. You'd never feel a thing.

Yeah. The anxiety is before you get shot. Death is fast. Yeah. And then you get to decide, do you want the blindfold or not? That's the choice. It's so funny because we're sold, you know, we're always sold on these new fan-filled high-tech approaches, right? And it's always like, oh, this will be better. I mean, you remember this tomorrow when we were young.

It was like, you know, hey, we're going to do something. We're going to try lethal injection. It's going to be far more civilized. They just go to sleep. It's not as cruel as the electric chair, which can take time and, you know, and people are screaming and their flesh is on fire and everybody's like puking in the witness room. It's going to be much better than that. Be better than the gas chamber where that's also apparently like really horrible and there's a gruesome mess to clean up afterwards for the guards. And then there's poison gas that's floating around that has to be venting. it out, right? So that's really awful. It's like, I mean, death is just awful, basically. I mean, hell at this rate, they could just do what, like, the Chile, you know, Pinochet's Chilean dictatorship

did, where they would take leftist students in helicopters and just fly them over the ocean and throw them out. They could just do that. Well, some might go wrong with the helicopter. I'm serious. I'm not, I'm not going to be just throwing them out, but just throwing them out the helicopter several thousand feet above the ocean. I think that pretty much always did the job. I don't think anyone ever survived. Yeah, but you got to pay the jet fuel. The helicopter may have a mishap.

And if you're doing that on an industrial scale. There's a greenhouse gas effect. Yeah, all sorts of things. No, a bullet is very straightforward. They don't want to do that because people, it looks impolite. I mean, they don't want, like meaning. What if the firing squad guys miss? You can't miss.

Yeah, but you got five guys. They're not going to miss. I mean, you can't miss. What do you mean you can't miss? I mean, you can miss it. You've been to the firing, to the shooting range and not hit the target, right? Ted, the next time that you come here, we'll take you out shooting. Now, I'll have a 30 out six.

I have a mott in the gap. But the point is, you're 30 feet away. You aim at a chair. You're saying you're saying you just aim at the general direction. Unless you point the rifle in the entirely wrong. Unless you point the rifle in the entirely wrong. direction it's impossible you cannot miss in that range you can't do it the only way they miss is if they intentionally miss yeah this is the only way but listen i mean the

guillotine is the most ecologically sound way to do it's reusable there's no i mean there's no waste there's no let there's no i've never heard of a botched guillotining i mean if if you're going to do it just comes down to it just comes down to what is that you want to do me personally being a red-blooded american i would rather get taken out by by our firing squad. That being said, a guillotine works just as well. Problem is, I don't have much hair up here, so pick up my head putting into a box, it would be a little bit harder. Yeah, that looks very impolite. I mean, it's easier, because Robbie is right.

You can put a box under it, head goes off, close the box, nobody sees the head, moves the body. Like, they see the basket, just done. Yeah, but that looks bad. And also it's a lot of splurdy blood. right? I mean. That too. Well, I mean, well, evidently, Tennessee, they have lobotomists who can do needles,

so pick your poison, literally. It's insane. So, yeah. The issue is the drug companies don't like their product of being used to kill people because that's not the point of drugs on normal circumstances. And so the prison system had come up

with something they concocted that they thought you do the job. That's right. obviously didn't. But we also need, you know, or maybe we could go like, you know, Sophie Scholl, she was the German resistance person executed by the Nazis during the, in the, I think, in the 40s, the white rose, she and her brother were in the white rose resistance movement. You know, she was executed if memory serves by double-headed medieval acts. So. What? Yeah, I think, I think that's probably what they need to do. They also, there's also a famous

abortionist in Vichy France under Marshall Petin during the occupation who was executed by axed also. And I think single-headed axe that time. Double-headed axe seems like it would be dangerous to the executioner. I don't know. I mean, I don't know. You have to be handy with it. Looks like it would be harder. I mean, the neck is only so big.

Yeah, yeah. I know. It's true. It looks like they were just finding ways of entertaining themselves during executions. By the way, SEAL Team 6 does stuff like that. Like canoeing. Have you ever heard about this? Canoeing?

No. Like they got bored with regular killing. And so they would try to find ways of making it interesting. So trying to shoot the person and hit him in the head in a way where it splits the head. Directly open with a brain. My God. Lovely people. Yeah.

It's like you've gotten so, but I think anybody would do that. Like meaning you get, it's almost like you play a game and you get so. good at the game, that instead of doing the regular things of the game, you're trying to do other stuff in the game. Like my friend of my, we used to play chess, and we'd be like, okay, let's pretend the king can move multiple squares. Okay, well, obviously, that's not chess, right? It's making, it's changing the rules. It's changing the rules because you're so bored with the regular rules. And so it's like, okay, we can kill people. We've gotten very good at that. But what if we see if we can split the head off? It's the human way, right? Like, let's step it up.

Let's step it up a notch. Yeah. We're talking about something very horrible, but if you are doing that on a daily basis, that's just your life. Athcally says free Nadal Hassan, true American hero. I have no idea whether this is sarcastic or not. I'm going to guess probably not. I mean, in a way...

I hope he's been sarcastic. Pardon? I hope he's been sarcastic. I mean, look, I think honestly, Nadal Hassan is a victim. of American imperialism because of the stories that he had to process. And you look at the pictures of him. I mean, this is a man who is deeply distraught. He looks worse than most of the paranoid schizophrenics that you see,

you know, talking to themselves out on the street in major cities. I mean, he looks just like it's a thousand miles stare. He's just not home. I mean, that's the thing. I hope fucking Donald Trump and Republicans. who are making jokes about this online. I hope they fucking are proud of themselves. They're killing an empty, they're killing a husk.

They're killing a guy who's already been dead for years. You know, they're fucking, they're pathetic. I think they're pathetic for a different reason. I think they're pathetic because they created this man. Yeah. Like meaning iteration of iteration of U.S. president that has been in office that effectively had people. killing other people abroad for money, basically, paying poor people to go kill other poor people

and other countries, which is effectively what we do when we pay a military to go out. Poorly paid a thousands. Yeah, it's like the rich guy said, I forget the name, I could pay one group of poor people to kill another group of poor people. Well, here we have it. It's called our military. It's called the U.S. military. And militaries around the globe, right? And we pay other countries, people in other countries to do the exact same thing, the terrorists that we're trying to get now to go into Saudi Arabia in order to fight on Sourala, paying poor people to kill other poor people, even though they're troglades, they're lunatics.

Point being made, for all intents of purposes, he's sitting there listening to the stories of these people who are coming back, talking about the people that they killed when they were abroad. And maybe it's the case that he couldn't take it. I don't know what it is. Maybe he was already psychotic. Maybe the stories pushed him in a particular direction and radicalized him. Let's assume for the moment he's.

he was radicalized by the stories, then that should tell us something about the things that he was hearing. Right. Like, meaning the stuff that we don't particularly hear, that U.S. troops come back and tell him that has put him in this particular position where he's looking at us as the enemy because in some respects we are the enemy. But that's secondary to the point that he murdered a bunch of people. Yeah, he did. And obviously, that can't necessarily be. Again, many people. Not cool.

Yeah. Because, I mean, you can look at people in this country. as being on some level abused also. Like, yeah. He, how can I say this? He's still responsible, right? You've just killed a lot of people. And many of these people consider the U.S. military a job.

Like, they don't look at this as we're going out and killing people in a military capacity and function, etc. I think many of them looking at it as this is kind of like me driving a truck, right? Right. Right. Right. I think that's right. I think that is really true. Yeah. But those are different things. Yeah. So I mean, yeah, he's guilty. He's guilty of sin. Yeah. I mean, I think he's crazy and should for that reason should walk. But most people who do who are crazy and kill when they're crazy don't walk. But see, I don't think you should walk. You still killed a bunch of people. Look, I guess the question boils down to are we are we culpable for actions, especially when we're talking about vine? violent actions. Not if you're out of your fucking mind.

Unless we're trying to make the argument he's Nate Turner, which I don't accept. No, I wouldn't make that argument. But see, I would there are certain crimes or violence. I would justify. This isn't one of them. I think if the same guy

had done the same thing at a joint session of Congress, it would be different. And I would be inclined to say he's Nate Turner then. That's fair. That's fair. I get that argument. It's sort of like on 9-11,

the only murders that were justifiable was flying, we're the ones in the Pentagon. At the military basis, right. They are the ones decision they consider. Not the people on the plane that hit the Pentagon, but like, yeah. It's a military target. It's the ultimate military target.

I mean, look, a lot of the stuff boils down to whether you believe that the American population is culpable for the crimes that it commits around the globe. Right. That was the argument that. I mean, well, I have a cartoon about that this, you know, this week about like basically at the end of World War II, the U.S. prosecutors at Nuremberg argued that the entire German nation was collectively responsible, collective guilt, because they failed to overthrow Adolf Hitler. And like overthrowing Adolf Hitler would have been arguably much more difficult than going to protest against a war here in the United States. And yet we don't, the same country that made that argument for the people, had this very high expectation for the people of Germany, has very few expectations of its own people when it comes to its own crimes. Yes. And it was true for Germany. It's true for us. Well, it can't be true for one and not the other, right?

Right. And they were right for saying in the Nuremberg trial, just like it's true here. Look, whose responsibility is if it's not the American populations? Right. Like, there's literally a constitution that doesn't separate the government from the population because the people in the government are made up of people in the population. We pay tax dollars for this stuff, right? It's representative government.

But even if it's not, right, even if it's an authoritarian regime, even if it's a totalitarian state like Nazi Germany, you still, I think the whole point is that you still have that responsibility, especially, I think, when that your government is killing people overseas. You know, it's one thing if you decide, like, you know, it's kind of like if, you know, you're being abused as a spouse and you decide you're going to put up with it. But it's another thing to let your kid be abused by your spouse. That's worse. You don't have that right. And similarly, we don't really have the right to let our government kill people in other countries. If we want to tolerate them killing us, we're stupid and wimpy.

We can do that. But we really don't have a moral right to let our government kill anyone outside of the United States. Right. And when they respond to us by doing to us what we do to them, we can't act like, oh, my God. What the hell is this? They hate us for our freedoms. Why do they hate us? Why?

Why? It's amazing. We're so nice. it's such bullshit, right? And it's aggravating bullshit because it's like, now we need to go murder more people in a more direct sense. It's like, dude, you had already been killing people. And that's why you were hit. And you're acting like, oh, my God, I can't believe we were hit.

Why are you shot? Why are you shot? No, I, yeah, it was shocking, but not surprising. Right. Thanks to Sean for the 99 cent donation. Tara Prida Wild, representative government has been utter fiction since 1789. Well, that's why I said it doesn't matter about the term form of government. I don't think we have representative government because we have two parties that basically don't represent the American people.

But that doesn't absolve us from our collective responsibility. No. Okay. So. But people choose. They allow it. Yeah, we do tolerate it. We could bring it to a number.

end. Let's talk a little bit about some of the killing we're doing overseas. I don't think we can. I don't think we can because you don't think we can overthrow the government. No, you don't think they're talking like elections matter. They don't. Basically, I'm not talking like elections matter. No, here's the here's the comparison that I would make. I'm saying we can have a we can have a revolutionary overthrow of the state is what I'm saying. Yeah, but people are too drugged up for that. So I mean, let's just, people, people can, keeps trying to go on the, well, you know, you have the government that you, and I've said this, though we have the government that we deserve. And in some way, that's true. The issue is,

the only difference between the United States and the Soviet Union is that we have technically two parties, but they have the exact same platforms. It doesn't matter who you vote for, you always get John McCain. That's the system that we have. I never said elections. No, I either. You cannot vote yourself out of this mess. No. As Robbie said, you're in a two parties, capitalistic state. You're an oligarchy.

Is it even two parties? I mean, that's the brand. It's Coke or Pepsi. But technically, it's two parties, but they're offering very similar things. It's not like these are radically different parties, right? And either party, you get, you're still in a

capitalistic system. Like, it amazes me that they always say, communist China. And they use the term communism, almost as an allegory for authoritarian. As if your two parties are somehow, you know, it's like they have one party and we have two and that's the, you know, the height of democracy. Look, I'm going to go further here.

Let's just say we had two parties that offered as distinct a choice as let's say Bernie Sanders versus Trump as we talked about yesterday. Still, that would only be two parties. That wouldn't really be a real representative democracy. It would not be able to represent. the hopes and aspirations of 330 million Americans. We're just too big and diverse. So, I mean, two good parties would still be bullshit.

And we don't have one good party. So I have a question. And I'll go away because we have a show to go. But I've been thinking about this a lot. In the United States, I'm going to get your own opinion on this. In the United States, we have the ability to change the party, but we don't have the ability to change the system. In China, they can change the system, but they can't change the party.

It seems that the Chinese system is superior. Or am I just, am I wrong? What do you mean by we have the ability to change the party? So, no, we're able to, we're able to vote in Democrat or able to vote in Republican, but the infrastructure never changes. Always changes the same. Whereas China is not the country that Mao Zetong built. They have the Communist Party, but it is not the country that Mao Say Tong starved millions of people with.

I mean, it is a fundamentally different. I would actually go as far as to say that China is a true fascist state in that they have, but they have business merged with government, but business is highly regulated by the government with the cost. If you don't play by the rules, we put a bullet in your head and bill your family. Yeah, but the objective is different. Yeah, so I would say that China is a true fascist state.

I don't know what you mean from an economic fascist. Yeah, it is a true fact. If you feel like the term fascist, it is, a merger of business and government. That's what China is. You can't change the party, but they change the system. Here in the United States, we can't even do that. We can't we can't kill some lady. It does have elements of Mussolini's fascist economic theories. But it's certainly not full. It doesn't go all the way. I mean, look, I think right now, no doubt China is a far more vibrant, expanding, forward-looking, optimistic country with, you know,

obviously serious challenges like birth rates and all those things. But still, they seem far better poised to handle their challenges than we do. Like they were generating greenhouse gases like nobody's business 20 years ago. And they're like, yeah, we'll just stop doing that. And the order goes out and they pretty much stop doing that, right? We can't do that. We can't, you know, they have a bigger country, but they seem more able to turn on a dime than we are. They're nimbler than we are. But I think there's a lot going on. I think there's, you know, there's cultural differences like Confucianism. There's also the strength of having 5,000 plus years of recorded history that you can draw upon. You have a far more, you know, also it's a more, you know, also it's a more,

It's a far more ethnically varied country than Americans give credit for. I mean, I remember when I went to China the first time, and I looked at the currency, and there's like, I don't know, 12 different alphabets on it. And it was like, oh, this is such a reminder. I mean, right? There's like people who read Arabic in this country. There's people, you know, there's Uyghurs. There's people from all sorts of different ethnicities.

We're like, oh, they all be people with black eyes and black hair. but that's really just not true. It's an empire. And, you know, it's, it's, it's just, I think there's a lot going on. I think it's a good question, though, Robbie. I think it brings into question the defects of what we consider to be representative of government. I think it's that. I mean, because it, you know, this is not a rah-rah for authoritarianism or anything like that.

But it does make the point of saying a government that can say, All right, enough of this. Like the defects of that sort of government is, obviously, if they're incompetent, it makes it that harder for the, you know. But if you have the mandate of heaven and you seem to have a competent government and you're doing what you say you're going to do, then the population tends to be more so in line with what you're doing, providing you're doing it.

A representative government, we're just getting gamed. Mr. A. Lee points out, the government in China controls the resources and owns the infrastructure, not private business, although it does have very, if private business gets spicy, it can step in and control it in ways that we don't. They're far more directly controlling. Tara Prado Wilde, also the party utterly prohibits corporations from involvement in rulership. The only workable solution in the face of the oligarchs, in my opinion.

Yes. That's a really good point. It's that part. It's not that I would want to give up the democratic governance part. It's just I don't entirely believe we have democratic governance. The Chinese have government supremacy of corporations. It needs to be, there has to be some level. And separation.

It has to be. Because otherwise what you get is this kind of infection into the democratic process of the capitalistic system. What we call democracy, it's not really democracy, it's a capitalistic system with a democratic overlay on it. The veneer of democracy, yeah. Yeah, it's just a veneer. A very thin veneer. Like you would need full control of that stuff in some kind of way. But we conflate democracy and capitalism.

They act as if, or the capitalists act as if, well, I mean, we have private enterprise. And private enterprise is democracy in some way. Nonsense. No, you can, sure, you can vote between Coke and Pepsi. Yeah, that you can do. Yeah. As long as you have the dollars to vote with. Yeah, but I can't do anything about what Coke and Pepsi puts in their product.

No. Good catch, by the way, with that cap. with a dream. All right, let's talk about Israel, right? So two settler terrorists have launched another attack. I shouldn't say two. A group of Israeli settlers attacked two Agence France Press reporters. One, a Westerner, John Vessels, another Jafar, who appears to be a resident of the West Bank, long-time journalist.

Anyway, they were shooting pictures of an IDF soldier who was detaining. a dude when a guy, a settler came by on a quad bike and shot at them. And one of them was shot in the foot. Six other colonists also shot at them and stole their camera equipment. The Palestinian journalist tried to escape into a car, clearly marked press, but two guys assaulted him and beat him with the butts of their rifles. both of the journalists are in hospital. Obviously, that's happened before and will happen again.

I just wonder, I just think it's worth noting. I just want to just mention it so that people know, right? There's no difference between the West Bank, quote-unquote, settlers and the IDF military. There's no difference. Agreed. And I get that some people who say, well, clearly there's different. How is there a difference?

when the IDF military often protects the sellers. Say for the moment that they had security with them and they got into a fight with the West Bank settlers. With the IDF have gotten involved. Now, in some cases, if the IDF is there, the answer is yes, the IDF often patrols and is overwatching West Bank settlers as they beat or kill and steal property from people in the West Bank. Yeah, they sit back and they're smoking and laughing and watching. Right. And the moment that those people fight back, the IDF most likely get involved. Meaning they're there as security for the West Bank settlers, these lunatics as they go about committing violence and mayhem. So it's like, okay, is there a technical difference?

Sure, there's a technical difference. But if they're playing security for them, can you really make the case that there's a difference, especially if they'll continue, they'll get involved. Now, I don't normally, you know, like I've spoken about this in other media. You know, whenever I've traveled to conflict zones, I really strongly believe that the best, you know, especially when you're traveling in Muslim countries, where there's a cultural stricter, you know, in favor of granting hospitality to the unarmed traveler, that it's wise to be unarmed as a journalist and just show up and explain that you're there to tell the truth and stuff. I'm going to make an exception when it comes to dealing with the settlers on the West Bank. They're literally,

they target journalists as, you know, in a way that the Taliban never did to me and my colleagues in Afghanistan, even the Northern Alliance never did. I mean, if they were after journalists, it was basically to rob them and steal their money and their equipment. It wasn't really like, we just want to kill you to stop you from reporting. The settlers are clearly trying to drive all the journalists away. I think, you know, if I were asked to go report in the West Bank, I would need an armed security detail. And I would say, and I only want badass motherfuckers who are willing to open fire

and shoot these fuckers and kill them if need be. I want hair trigger goons with me. Yeah. I need five good goons. Give me some of those seals. Give me some of those SEAL Team 6 veterans. Right. Yeah.

And be willing to shoot. Yeah. No, like, yeah, no, don't, don't wait. Like, you know, ask questions later. Shoot first. Yeah, air trigger. Air trigger. Yeah, because that's what those, I mean, those is really, those West Bank sellers don't deserve any other consideration.

No, they're coming to commit balance. Yeah. When you see them, you should think they are coming to hurt me. That's what you should think. Yeah, I always think of in, there's a, in four days after D-Day, June 10th, 1944, there was a massacre by the SS of all the residents of a town called Orodurz to Glan. 642 people were killed. There were only about half a dozen survivors,

just basically mostly people who were out of town when it happened. And one of them was a little boy who was in town. And he was from Alsace, which is on the German border. And he had heard all the stories from World War I.

And he looked out the window, saw the German tanks approaching, and he said to the people he was staying with, Cilis Alman, it's the Germans. They're bad. And he jumped out the second floor window.

ran out jumped off the roof and ran into a field and lived out to his natural days as a result right it's like that's how it is with these west bank settlers they're settlers they're bad you know like run away or shoot them that's that's he had a like gut gut understanding of what was happening yeah i've a question ted your anti-death penalties so why do you support uh well wasting settlers i'll get me wrong i'm right there with you i've fully support venerable the bastards like every last one of them. Well, you know I'm not against vigilanteism. Yeah, this was what to say.

Ted is off. I'm against the state. I'm against the state carrying this out in a cold-blooded way. That's the difference. But you're a communist. I mean, the communism was kind of famous for that. What do you mean for killing people? Oh, yeah.

Like, they're good at it. Look, if there were. I guess that's a difference. If I was in a leadership position in a communist revolution, I'm well aware that would be people counter-revolutionaries who would have to be killed. Ted's box of spikes. You know, maybe we'll bring in those Tennessee guys to like shoot them up incompetently. Those hospitals need work too, you know.

That's true. Okay. So I don't know. This is, it's really. Oh, oh, Italy. We've got to talk about Italy in the time we have left, which is only a few minutes. So Prime Minister Georgia Maloney, she's a right winger. She's threatened to resign unless there's a new law passed, which basically it's a winner-take-all kind of system.

So basically if the, yeah, like we have. If the election, yeah, in this country, right, if you get 50.1% of the vote in a state, you win the elect, all the electoral college votes in that state. So it's like that. So the winning party or coalition in a parliamentary election would get 70 bonus seats in the lower house. That's like the House of Representatives and 35 in the Senate, provided that they get a minimum of 42% in both houses. I don't know how they came up with 42. So Italy has 600 seats in the parliament, 400 in the lower house, 200 in the Senate.

So roughly speaking, you would get 70 out of 400 as a bonus if you achieve 42 and two, and you'd get 35 out of 200 in the Senate if you achieve 42% in both houses. So obviously this is self-serving. She thinks that, you know, we talked to him yesterday about changing the rules to benefit you. And basically, but Italy has a long reputation of having, you know, it's hard for government coalitions to stay together. I mean, there's been periods where every six months or every 12 months, the Italian government has collapsed. It's kind of a feature, not a bug of the Italian system. I don't know. I thought it was worth noting. It seems a little bit, I don't know

how I feel about it. I can argue this one either way. Maloney has been there for a while. She's been able to keep a stable coalition. This seems to be a way just self-serving. I mean, I could be wrong, but this seems very self-servant. Like, what does the other parties think of this? Well, they're against it. They think it's anti-demic. They're saying it's anti-democratic, that it's just meant to solidify her coalition and lock them out. And obviously, the other thing is overwhelming bonus seats, like an overwhelming majority begets an overwhelming majority, right? Like you have, you control the narrative, you control the dialogue, like in the same way that the Republicans have been controlling the narrative in this country for the last few years because they control so much of the government. So it would be the same thing in Italy if you just give people these extra seats.

I mean, it's an interesting approach. She said she'll resign if she doesn't get her way. I mean, it's effectively saying like for example, so she runs in the election. She wins a governing majority. She has to work with another party to get that governing majority in parliament. Okay, but that's just representative government, right? I mean, that's the representative government in a real sense. I would be against this proposal.

You might have 10 different parties. You have a certain percentage of those political parties going into office based on the political distribution of the people within the country itself. And she has to figure out how to deal with these other groups and these other parties in order to govern. That is parliamentary elections. I mean, correct me from wrong. That's just a parliament. You're right. And personally, I would not.

I would vote against this reform. Yeah. I mean, like her issue is, well, I need the power to do what I want when I'm elected. That's what she wants. Right. So make alliances. The whole purpose of parliamentary democracy is that you're forced to make deals with smaller parties that normally under our system would never be heard,

but they do get heard for some issues sometimes in a parliamentary system. And they have to make deals with those political parties, meaning the people who are part of those political parties who represent elements of the government, they may not necessarily be in the lion's share, still get something. Like, I'm piecemealing what I do, and I'm giving this to this particular party.

and this to this party, this to this party, and I'm getting what I want in order to push forward in government, meaning everybody ideally gets something that is being represented, as opposed to her just wanted to get her way. Yeah, exactly. I understand why she wants to get her way. She's very beautiful. She is not an ugly woman.

Of course, there are not a lot of ugly Italian. Get away with me. But the government is different. Right? That is different. And with that, that's it for today. Please stay tuned for the TMI show coming up right now on YouTube and Rumble live. We will be back tomorrow with a full two-hour show.

It'll be Friday. We'll be doing that from 9 to 11 a.m. Eastern time. DMZ also tomorrow at 11 with guest Steve Breen, former cartoonist, from the San Diego Union Tribune. Bye. Have a good one, guy. Bye.