DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: “Senate Punts on Venezuela War”

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou updates you on the chilling US military base scare, a courtroom triumph for the nation’s most famous lunchmeat tosser, and a fierce congressional clash over war powers.Kazakhstan Joins Abraham Accords: President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signs up with Trump’s effort to bring together Muslim countries with Israel. This move reinvigorates the U.S.-led framework for Israel-Arab-Muslim cooperation, attempting to signal religious tolerance and regional integration—but there were no prior conflicts between the nations, so does this mean much? Trump is eyeing expansions to Saudi Arabia and beyond to repair Israel's Gaza-war isolation. Can he rehabilitate the Jewish state?Airline Chaos Begins: The FAA mandates airlines slashing thousands of flights starting today, grappling with air traffic controller shortages in the longest government shutdown ever. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and FAA head Bryan Bedford enforce 10% cuts at 40 high-impact airports, with carriers waiving fees and prioritizing long-haul and international over regional and domestic routes. As of 4:25 a.m. Friday, 815 cancellations and 504 delays mount nationwide, per FlightAware, while analysis shows delays surging to 25% at major hubs. What will be the economic and political impact?Airbase Terror Attack: A suspicious package containing white powder forces the evacuation of a building at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, hospitalizing multiple personnel yesterday. First responders and Hazmat teams clear immediate threats, handing off to investigators probing “political propaganda” inside, as the Air National Guard Readiness Center remains sealed. Trump visited the VIP-transit base Wednesday, heightening scrutiny on this unexplained illness cluster amid ongoing probes. Who is behind this and what’s happening?Submarine Hero: Sean Dunn scores a not-guilty verdict for tossing a Subway sandwich at a federal officer during early Trump-era DC enforcement surges. Videos capture Dunn yelling distractions to shield a Latin LGBTQ nightclub from raids before fleeing, symbolizing jest-laced resistance via posters and jokes. Jurors dismiss assault claims after debating the wrapped footlong's harmlessness, and prosecutors receive a clear message about overcharging. Is it open season on ICE?Senate Abdicates War Powers on Venezuela: The Senate defeats a bipartisan bill 49-51 requiring a congressional nod for Trump strikes against Venezuela, amid secrecy over cartel boat raids killing nearly 70. Sponsors like Tim Kaine decry expansive presidential powers lacking constitutional backing, urging Congress to reclaim war authority. Only two Republicans defect, as White House briefings on legal rationales sway most, despite frustrations over covert CIA ops and Caribbean military buildup. Will the White House read this as a thumbs-up for war?

Good morning. It's a good week for a people and a bad week for the oligarchs, Cheney, Mamdani, and now health care executives are luigiing themselves in the Oval Office. They don't even need someone to pop them in the street. Welcome to D-Program with Ted Rall and John Kiriaku. John, always good to see you. Good to see you, Ted. Happy Friday. Indeed.

It is Friday, November 7, 2025. Some housekeeping to take care. please like, follow, and share the show. We, as always, really appreciate your support. It's still a struggle here financially. We're moving in the right direction, but we always appreciate your donations. We're fully funded back on YouTube.

For those who miss that, we will, so we don't need the PayPal donations anymore, although we appreciate those of you who do them and did them. Also, you can still donate on Rumble. We are trying to, well, Robbie, West, our producer, is going to come back and make things bigger and better for us a week from Monday. He resigned from his position where he got doxed from, and he is coming where he, we're lifting him up where he belongs, if you know the reference.

He's coming over to work here on D program with us full time, which is going to be awesome, but we do need some help from you guys. So far, he has raised $570 of the $1,000 that we need. on his give send go.com account. So if we can, we'll stop asking at the end of, every month, as soon as we reach $1,000 for Robbie, John and I are each kicking in another $250. We figure between $250 for each of us

and the entire world, $1,000 is not asking too much. Givesendgo.com slash west glacier gaming is the URL, if you want to see the show go on. And also, fight backs against the doxers and tell them it's a way to tell them to fuck off that we don't need the, you know, they don't have leverage. They can't fuck over Robbie or anyone else. So let's leave that there. Lots to talk about today. Today we're going to be talking about the Abraham Accords, which we've never really got done a deep dive on the Abraham.

Not really. We should do that. Kazakhstan's the latest entry here. Big story of the day, I think, is the airlines. The delays are already piling up well over 1,000 cancellations as of airtime. 500 plus delays already as of 4 o'clock this morning. So today is going to be a nasty travel day. We'll tell you what's going on there and what to do if you're traveling.

The suspicious package containing a mysterious white powder, sickened some personnel at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. We'll get into what seems to be a terror attack, I would say, of sorts, right? A terror mail attack. The sandwich guy is free. He's free. There's the shock of the day that he was found not guilty by a jury of his peers. You remember, too, that he was initially charged with a felony, but the Justice Department,

the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia couldn't get an investigation. indictment. They couldn't find a grand jury that would agree to indict him. And so they charged him with a misdemeanor. He pleaded not guilty. They were like a dog, you know, on a bone. They wouldn't let it go. And Ted, we said right here on the show, no jury in Washington, D.C. will ever find this guy guilty. And sure enough, they didn't. Yeah, I mean, we can, and we should, maybe we should talk about, get that out of the way first. And, but, but, and just another thing. to heads up, we will be talking about Venezuela. I'm a little more

perhaps I'm very worried about the Senate vote and what it portends. I'm worried. Only two Republicans voted with Democrats to try to block Trump from attacking Venezuela. It's bad. Two. Let's talk about the sandwich guy, get him out of the way.

So, John, what are there legal implications here? I mean, like literally, so by the way, I have to, I died laughing. So apparently, among the arguments that the prosecution made was that the subway sandwich had exploded all over the victim's uniform. Well, the cop or the INS guy or whatever they're called ice guy said that he smelled strongly

of spicy mustard. He said with a totally straight face in court, I smelled strongly of spicy. It's like, dude, you smelled delicious. And as far as I'm concerned, I might not have been. been able to resist licking his uniform, not something I would normally do for a cop. And then the other thing was that he claimed, but he also did allow the fact in cross-examination that he had gotten lots of gag gifts from his colleagues and that all of his friends and colleagues thought it was funny.

And the jury seemed to be very interested in the fact that actually the sandwich did not disintegrate. It was still in its original rapping and that it had fallen. to the floor. And so the narrative by the DA could not have been accurate because it didn't actually disintegrate. There was no, you know, no lettuce particle. No. So nothing. Nothing. By the way, I would say it's a true. If you're the night manager at the, at that subway facility, you have to give that clerk like an employee of the month for like a good wrapping job in that it didn't fall apart. Seriously. But legal implications. All, well, no, I'm not going to say all kidding aside, because it's all, it's ridiculous.

It's ridiculous. Except for the fact that this guy had to hire a lawyer that probably had to pay some money for, you know, I don't think the ACLU took up his case. Is he, is it now open season on ice in the District of Columbia? Can you now throw food legally at an ICE officer and there's now an established precedent? Well, I smile, but in all seriousness, the jury found this to be constitutionally protected free speech. So I think probably the answer to your question is yes, you can now legally throw a sandwich with spicy mustard on an immigration officer. And that is your constitutionally protected free speech. This is the resistance starts here.

next time anybody goes to mix it up with ice at a raid you got to come armed with food it's a food fight you've got to at least in the district of columbia this this will not apply to other jurisdictions yet right yet yet that's right but it's uh yeah and before we get into our before we get into our um official stories for the for the day real news um f you so F, you know, I can't, okay, I'm just going to say F, Huso, says Chris Matthews must be hiding under his bed now that New York City has gone commie, executions in Central Park. And that was one thing that I wanted to talk about, that I'm being bombarded with emails from right-wing friends of mine, like from childhood, from high school, saying things like, they're circulating false press releases that Mamdani is mandating that all women wear a burqa in New York City, that the gays are in the streets in New York because he's going to begin

executing gays because this is what the Muslims believe, right? Yeah. Okay, that's one thing. There was something else. Oh, yes, Ted, believe it or not, I actually have a source inside the justice. department. And my source called me last night for a friendly conversation and said, hey, I thought you would be interested to hear that there are two separate grand juries investigating John Brennan right now, which would account for the nervousness that he showed in that video when he was

poking the guy in the chest at George Mason University last week. But yesterday, subpoenas went out to CIA, former CIA colleagues of John Brennan's. They're serious about prosecuting John Brennan. He knows they're serious because his attorneys are telling him that they're serious. And that's why we saw that behavior last week. He believes he's in trouble. I believe also that he's in trouble. I agree.

Sorry, I wanted to get that out. And there's one just crazy thing. One crazy thing, Ted, and I apologize for wasting time. Apropos of nothing. A couple of weeks ago, Project Veritas reached out to me. And they wanted to interview me about this document that they have. It's a top secret personality evaluation of a CIA applicant. And she tested at 98.7 percent.

And they want to know, is this real? You know, is this really what they do? And I read this thing. And it was very well written. And I'm reading it and reading it. And I'm thinking, I know that name. So I Google the woman's name. I didn't Google it.

I put it in that and finder, you know, because it does everything all at once. Yeah. She's the wife of a guy that I know, like a guy that I consider to be a friend of mine. So not only was she a CIA applicant, she's currently a fugitive from justice because it says that she, was impersonating an attorney, an immigration attorney, that she embezzled $700,000 from desperate would-be immigrants. She was arrested by the FBI in January and immediately banished. I should add that she was born and raised in Brazil. So she's probably in Brazil, which guess what, has no extradition treaty with the United States. Oh, I didn't know that. Now, these people are

going to go on the lamb. There are worse places to go. Oh, listen, everybody in prison. used to talk about this everybody had a plan to break out and run to Brazil everybody I'm like you guys you have like three months left on your sentence what the fuck are you talking about you're gonna break out yeah um they're gonna come to my house and ring the doorbell any minute now and now my head is spinning I can't believe it sorry sorry to waste that time but so I mean I've got to ask this question so for people who don't know project Veritas is famous for those sting operations where yes have hidden cameras kind of like a la 60 minutes where they explore liberals saying stupid shit. Do you, did you worry that they might be trying to sting you? Yeah. Yeah, I did.

Yes. I mean, I don't know. I have nothing to say to them. Yeah, it looks like a legit psychological evaluation that literally every single applicant the CIA undergoes. I've read it twice now. It's undated, which is highly unusual.

And it says that, you know, she's very smart she's kind of introverted she scored 98.7% on such and such a test 96 and a half on some other test she would be a terrific economic analyst and then that's it okay i don't know and now she's a fugitive from justice and now these people are coming over to my house oh my god why do i get myself into these things because you never say no see that's my problem that's exactly what my problem is i never say no well i'm I'm kind of like you. I don't be asked. I don't get asked as much, though. So I'm going to go unlock my door. Give me literally 45 seconds. Okay. All right. So I will answer in the meantime. A question from U.S.C. Triple X-Arod 21. What do you think the end of the line will be for the GOP with Trump? This administration has killed foreign nationals and posted to social media. What's the break? point. Well, USC, I've got to sort of quote my mom here. My mom always says that the question

I'm answering, John, is up on top of the screen. You know, I don't think this, I don't think the breaking point for an American president will ever be killing foreign nationals or killing anyone with dark skin. Unfortunately, the American political system doesn't seem to hold people accountable for that ever. I think Trump is probably going to just expire with old age. I mean, you know, he's in his, he's, he's now 80, right? And he's going to be, you know, I mean, he's not in great shape. I think he's just going to retire, you know, at the age of, you know, he doesn't want us to think that. But I think on January 20th, 20, 29, he goes off to Mara Lago and golfs his way to death.

And I think that's it. I mean, I don't think there will be any accountability. I mean, you'd like to think there would be. But look at George W. Bush. She was a fucking madman, started two wars, killed over a million people. Nothing fucking happened. He's an eminence Greece of the GOP now. But let me ask you something.

He is the Eminence Greece of the GOP, but when we have votes like we saw in the Senate yesterday, Ted, that's not Donald Trump's ideology. That's Marco Rubio's ideology we saw yesterday. So is he really the Eminence Greece? well i mean that's you know that's a good question um i think he doesn't have the gravitas that a true i mean like he doesn't he's not what obama is in the democratic party right i mean right democrat Obama's still a king maker or at least a king vetoer if he if he wants to be um that's not who bush is and i don't think bush wants to be really um it's it's i mean Trump has such a lock on

the GOP at this point. Look, I do think they kind of have the same, the GOP has the same problem that Cuba had under Fidel Castro before he appointed Raul as his successor, where nobody knew what the fuck is going to happen to Cuba? Once Castro dies, there's no error. Castro belatedly finally got around to it, or maybe he always had a plan. And obviously Cuba goes on. But right now, it's like if Trump has a plan, I don't think, you know, it looks like J.D. I don't think J.D. Vance is really a very, is very likely to stick. John, Nicholas. I totally agree.

Nicholas Franco, thank you, has a question for us. Have we seen the news that the United States is planning to establish a military base in Damascus? Well, yesterday, the United Nations Security Council lifted all sanctions against this new Syrian president. So that does not surprise me. one iota i think actually that's the whole plan listen this is not for me it's for somebody out there but there's a book in this there's a book in this because i believe very strongly that this was a long-term CIA operation to place this guy uh as president of syria my guess is that he was probably a paid CIA asset i really believe it

Yeah. Can you explain the difference between an asset and an agent? Sure, sure. Well, it's the same thing. An asset and an agent are the same thing. The agent is the person that the CIA officer recruits. You know, I used to say, or I still say, Jim, Jim Pabbitt, my former. Because people think that the agent is like you were an agent.

No, I was not an agent, thank God. I was an officer. So I recruited agents. It's the opposite of people don't know. Yeah, of what, it's counterintuitive. is what I mean. Well, because it's an FBI agent, right? Exactly, agent or special agent or no.

But I, listen, this is just an educated guess. I have no evidence for this whatsoever. But I think they recruited this guy early on, probably when he was with ISIS. His name is Ahmadis Shahra. Probably when he was with ISIS. Or do you think this might have been earlier, like in the Al-Nusra front days, the free Syrian army, as they supposedly called it? Probably. That's probably where they came into contact with him. Like in 2011, 2012.

And he was willing to play the game and take money. And again, I'm guessing. And he said, you know, listen, I control X number of men. And they said, hey, how about if we try to arrange it so that so that you, maybe become the president of Syria. Presidents of the United States do not say on a lark while they're overseas, oh, by the way, I'm lifting all sanctions against Syria effective immediately. That's never happened in American history, ever, ever.

You don't send the Assistant Secretary of State, Barbara Leif, dear friend of mine, to Syria to meet with a terrorist leader, and then release the information to the media. It's not done unless the fix was in. Oh, the fix definitely seemed in. It might to be in. Who would have ever thought that, I mean, you know, Assad seemed pretty popular. I mean, it's the fact that they just like slid him out of there like yesterday's news. Or not unpopular enough to fall apart.

Yeah, to fall apart over the course of a week. It's not someone like Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan who was despised by every single person there. Exactly right. Question for you, John, from Fouac, 6624. I'm going to use the French pronunciation. Can you talk about intelligence in Brazil? Does the CIA spy a lot in Brazil? Did you ever have contact with the Brazilian intelligence agency?

You know, the answer to the first part of the question is, I don't know. And the second is I never encountered a Brazilian intelligence officer. I was so far removed from Latin America that I just never. in fact that's why when I got married the second time my my second wife of course was a former was at the time a current CIA officer we decided to go somewhere where we had never been where we had nothing to do with the politics or with intelligence or anything else so I remember sitting there looking at a map of the world when we were engaged like where do you want to go on our honeymoon we're looking at this map and I said nowhere in the Middle East and nowhere in Europe, because we've been to every European country and every Middle Eastern country, almost. And I said, what about East Asia? We go to maybe Thailand or something. She said, no, I don't really have any interest in East Asia. And I said, actually, neither do I. And then we just ended up deciding on South America. So we went to Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile.

and then for a week we took a steamer ship to Antarctica. Those all sound awesome. How was it? They were awesome. I can't wait to go back. I mean, I've been saying that for 25 years. But yeah,

that was like the best vacation a person could ever have. I'm curious about the Galapagos. A question for you, John, again from Ray. What's the relationship between the Global Strategies Group and the CIA heard that the agency as a client? Thanks for the two bucks, by the way. Thank you.

I've heard the same thing. I've heard that there's a very close official working relationship with Global Strategies Group. Yeah. You know, I've been out of the CIA for a long time. I've been out for, it's 20 years this year. And a lot of things change. But one thing that was sort of on a, what's the word, what's the word I want to use? Anyway, it was the path on which things were moving.

was that they were outsourcing more and more and more post-9-11. And so it makes sense that rather than reinvent the wheel, they just hire all these contractors to do the heavy lifting for them. Gotcha. John, what do you make of this situation at Joint Base Andrews? Yeah. A package arrived, mysterious white powder. We've heard these stories before, a mysterious white powder.

Sometimes, more often, there was the anthrax scare after 9-11, a bunch of them, right? And nobody was ever prosecuted. Right. So we still don't really know who that was. There was one doctor who was arrested. He swore he was innocent and then he committed suicide. Yeah, he was innocent. And then he committed suicide.

But nobody was ever prosecuted. Now here's the case where somebody sends a package to Andrew's Air Force Base. And it's got white powder in it and it sickens, what, seven people last night? Yeah, that's serious. That's serious. Now, that's happened in the past, and the white powder turned out to be flour, or in one case, it turned out to be pancake mix. How can that sicken people? Because it was hysteria.

Really? So do you think it's sort of like my, you know, like you and I both are on the same page about Havana syndrome? Right. Do you think it's hysteria? I don't know. I mean, you're not supposed to be able to send something directly to a military base. It's supposed to go to some off-site facility. where they have detecting machines to see if it's anthrax or fentanyl or, you know, whatever.

Do they open ever? I mean, their military bases must receive thousands of pieces. Yeah, they don't open. They don't open anything off site. For the House, the Senate, and the White House, they open everything offsite, like far offsite, like 20-something miles off-siding Greenbelt, Maryland. But for bases like this, no, they don't open them, but they didn't scan them. How could they determine from, I mean, could a scan catch anything if it was, you know, wrapped in aluminum foil or whatever? Just like a drug dog.

Sure. Yeah. You just need like one molecule in the air. But can't like drug dogs be like, you know, these are old Frederick Forsyth books, right? But like wrapping the drugs in like coffee and stuff like that doesn't do the job. Listen, I'm a faithful viewer of Dragnet. And I know that Joe Friday invented the drug dog in 1969. I know that because he said.

so. But anyway, no, that's all been tried. You wrap it in coffee. You put it in plastic bags and then put the bags inside containers of ammonia, for example. And the drug dogs can still sniff it out. It's craziest thing. That's nuts. Well, the dogs can sniff out cancer, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's sniff out cancer. It's pretty impressive. So what do you think we're going to find out here that it was flour? Because that's usually what turns out to be the kiss. I hope it was flour because this is, yeah, this would be really bad. Although, you know, Ted, I hate to be wishy-washy, but sometimes things like this, sometimes things like this happen. When Bill Clinton came to Greece in 1999 when I was there, and I've talked about his trip to Greece,

he's on the tarmac. He and Hillary are waving, right, blowing kisses at everybody. They climb up the steps into Air Force One, the phone rings on Air Force One. As the president is getting on board, one of the hangers on answers the phone. It's a bomb threat on Air Force One. Somebody had the phone for the private classified phone on Air Force One and called in a bomb threat. So crazy things happen. People have access. They can get around security. You just never know. Thanks for the donation over the five bucks over on YouTube, 7371 Mojo Rison. John, have you ever spoken with your publisher about another printing of reluctant spy? I'd like to read it, but it's hundreds of dollars on the world. How in the world that is possible? I have no idea.

Yes, I reached out through my former literary agent, and I asked her to get in touch with Random House because, listen, not a single day goes by that somebody doesn't ask me, why isn't the reluctant spy still out there? So, yeah, working on it. And Nick Bratia, thank you. You can always self-publish it. Yeah. If it's out of print, it's the rights belong to you. Yeah, the rights revert to me. Nick Brutchea, thank you for the $10.

And Sotan, thank you for the $20. The first question is my friend and former roommate was the late journalist Michael Hastings. God bless. Number one, John, did you know him? And number two, what did you think of his work specifically, the McChrystal piece and the book? He was a giant. I had never met him, but I have a good friend who's a journalist who worked closely with him. She has doggedly pursued the storyline that John Brennan had something to do with his death through a remote takeover.

of the of the car um i thought michael hastings man michael hastings was going to be you know he he was headed to greatness in investigative journalism the guy was a giant and the country's a lesser place without him in it john and ted what do you think of this administration's handling of africa's heavy china and russian influence is it getting better or worse and your thoughts Abraham Charet Oh, okay, yes. Worse. Worse.

They don't know what the fuck they're doing. No, they're winging it. There's a massive power vacuum that's been opened by the French and the Sahel. The Americans could have walked in there with some money and bought some goodwill or rented some. Nothing. I mean, we just don't learn. We don't know how to do this. The Chinese are eating our lunch.

Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. John, we have a big question. This one, College 51. Thanks for the five British pounds. John, do you think that your whistleblowing had the desired effect in the government? It was very weird that people didn't react much to the Snowden thing.

Also, Michael Gardner, thanks for the $1.99. It was very disappointing that people didn't much react to the Snowden thing. You know, Snowden, I see Snowden as a plane above anything I ever did. Just because what he revealed had a direct impact on all of us, right? The government is spying on all of us. But so many people whose opinions I respect consider him to be a leaker, not a whistleblower, and thus a criminal, that I don't know. Am I missing something? Well, I think it depends on what you, you know, what you prioritize.

I mean, you know, do you prioritize the need? of the government to keep secrets, which obviously the government has a need to keep some secrets, not nearly as many as they do. But the, or do you prioritize the American people's right to know, or more to the point, the American people's right not to have the fucking law brazenly broken against them every single day. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the issue here. I mean, it's like, you know, this is, this is about lawbreaking. It's not just about spying on the American people. They're not allowed to do what they're doing, and they're doing it anyway. And that gets, that thread gets lost all the time. So true. Yeah, you're exactly right.

Oh, we have a, this is a good segue for our Kazakhstan story, Central Asia. Ben Ross 6,400. Thanks for the five bucks. What can we say about the new Aga Khan? Did you know about the last one? You know, my mom liked the Aga Khan, the last Aga Khan. The last Aga Khan. time. And I never understood this. My mom was not one to really think through these issues, but she would say, well, he's so generous with his money. He gives away all of his money to these humanitarian causes. And then I remember thinking, where did he get the money in the first place? Well, there's that. On the backs of his people. If he's supposed to be a religious leader, I mean, why is he have billions and billions of dollars? But in the end, you know,

everybody who knew the guy said he was a great guy and he gave away so much money. So I don't know. I did note that there was a new Aga Khan named, but I apologize that my understanding of the situation doesn't go beyond that. Yeah, so for people who don't know who the Aga Khan is, he's the head of the Ishmael. I'm probably mispronouncing that, John, you please fix that for me, branch of Islam. And he throws a lot of money throughout the Muslim world, but particularly in Central Asia, Central Asia University in southern Tajikistan is one of his big projects. And it's very impressive.

When you go, you're in the ascent of the former Soviet Union, you know, right there by the border with Afghanistan. And these are people who would never have a shot at a high quality, you know, post-secondary education. Absolutely. And there it is. And if it wasn't for him or for his foundation, that shit would not have happened. That is true. See, that's the thing. But then, you know, he lives in a, he lives in a $25 million, lived in a $25 million condo in Geneva and drove Rolls Royces everywhere. It's how I feel about the Dalai Lama while we're out it.

You know, it's like, I don't have a lot of respect for him. I'm like, if you really think you're going to be reincarnated every time you get killed, what are you so fucking afraid of? go back, go back to China. You're like whack-a-mole. Oh, you killed me. I'm back. Killed me again. Back!

It's true. Anyway. It's true. No, I mean, it's just like, I mean, like, what a pile of shit, you know, like, oh, I happen to just like really nice watches. Yeah. Okay, so do I. Fuck you. Go be with your people.

I don't believe for one minute that if he pulled a, you know, a keynote and just showed up at the airport in, in Khashir, or, sorry, or, you know, Urumuchi or down there in Lhasa, that anything would happen. It's not like they're going to gun him down on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the tarmac. It's just not going to happen, but whatever. You know, and I remember hearing one thing, Ted, tell me if this is just nuts, but I, I heard that followers of the, of the Aga Khan, just ceremonially, when they were getting married, they had to offer their brides first to the Aga Khan to de-flower. before they could, yeah, I don't know if that's true or not, but I have read that. That could be, you know, that could be, that could be, that could be, that could be, that could be liable, right? I mean, it's sort of like, there's always this sort of tendency to libel people like that.

Like, you know, like, like Marie Antoinette never said, let them eat cake. That didn't happen. Yes. And if she had, no one would have known because she didn't speak French and she was in French court. John, we've got an ad. Let's go ahead. Yeah, sounds good. Don't eat breakfast until you learn about caloric bypass.

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All right. So we, you know, since we're talking about that. Di Aga Khan and he has a Central Asia connection. Let's talk about Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan always had close relations with Israel. I think they've normalized relations 30 years ago, which pretty much means like after independence from the Soviet Union. You know, Kazakhstan is being portrayed as this big Muslim country. And technically, yeah, I mean, certainly Muslims live there. But it's not Muslim in like the way like Oman is Muslim, right? I mean, it's a secular. Muslim state. It's very, I would say, kind of like Turkey, sort of, maybe less,

Turkey of the 1980s. Right. Right. Pre-Urdawan, certainly. And so, you know, basically it seems like, I think my take on this is that Donald Trump is desperate for a win to renormalize Israel's status in the world. So, and that Central Asian republics are always desperate to be paid attention to because everyone ignores them diplomatically. No one gives a shit about them except Russia and China. But even then, they're kind of like a, you know, a secondary priority. So anyway, they signed up for the Abraham Accords. Trump says it's the first of many.

I call bullshit on that unless he has another one or two Central Asian republics. What do you think? Maybe possibly. But the only one that anybody cares about at this point is Saudi Arabia, you know? everybody else that's going to jump in has jumped in. But who cares if Sudan recognizes Israel or Tunisia or Morocco? And Morocco only did it because then the United States recognized Moroccan hegemony over the western Sahara. So I don't know. I will say, Ted, I was a little bit surprised to learn that Kazakhstan didn't have relations with Israel because Kazakhstan was a

Soviet Republic. The Soviet Union had longstanding diplomatic ties to Israel. I just assumed that they inherited that relationship. Well, I think they did, but you know how things went tits up in 91. And Central Asian republics, you know, they got expelled from the Soviet Union, right? It wasn't Like they were like, fuck you, like Latvia, we can't wait to be free. We're chief, where you chief under the Soviet yoke. So I think things, I mean, you know, I don't know about you. I was there a lot during that, during the 90s. And it was chaos.

You know, I think, I mean, the Tajik still had a Soviet plenary into like the mid-90s. When I was there in 2001 and I crossed the border in from Tajikistan, across the piange to Afghanistan. They still had the Russian 201st militarized detachment guarding the border, and they all wore Soviet uniforms, and they were still flying the Soviet flag, not the Russian flag. It was like you were in the Soviet Union. In Turkmenistan, as late as 1999, people were still had Soviet passports. You know, the Turkmen hadn't printed any. Things were, I mean, I think it's hard to overstate just how chaotic it was.

You know, I remember when I first moved to Bahrain in 1994, I was the economic officer at the American Embassy. I got into a conversation with the director of economic affairs at the foreign ministry. I don't even know why this has stuck in my mind, but we got onto the talk. topic of printing money. And he said, oh, we print all of our money in Switzerland. And I said, oh, that's interesting. We have the Bureau of Engraving and printing and we just print all of our own money. And he said, yeah, but you guys are like the only ones who do that. Everybody else goes to Switzerland. And I said, I said, why? And he said, because the Swiss control, that very high quality paper that you can't get anywhere else in the world, like the security paper,

So everybody just prints their prints their money in Switzerland. He said, except these new countries in Central Asia. And I said, what do they do? And he said, nobody knows what the heck they do. I remember he said, I don't think they know what to do. I know what they do.

They don't expect to be a country. They print their money in Russia. They must. They do. And it's like, in fact, when I cross the border from China into Kazakhstan in 1997, bear in mind six years after independence. They literally had never seen an American passport before

at the border, and they were really confused. So they made me cool my heels, and they faxed it, a copy of it, to Moscow. And I was like, aren't you an independent country now? And they were like, well, the Russians, our Russian brothers will know, like you know whether this is legit or not so yeah hey we've we've got a thank you um mustang renegades for ten dollars what's your take on cia officer bob bear working with the

holbrooks and their media operation in telluride colorado um i think this is bad bad bad the holbrooks listen we can all we can all wax philosophical about the career of richard holbrook who wanted more than anything in life to be Secretary of State and never quite got there. But the Holbrooks and the Clintons, by extension, did some really bad shit out there in Colorado. You know, Bob Bear, I knew Bob Bear when I was at the CIA, of course. And then when my first book came out, Bob wrote a blurb for me, which I'm grateful for. but but this is bad bad you know um i i think that um there's actually a story behind it it's it's far too detailed and long to to say but but the the whole brooks the clinton's and

even even bob bear um were involved with these mining companies and and they're gonna they're just going to strip mine Colorado and befoul the environment and do all kinds of terrible stuff. Lovely. Yeah, it's bad. Thank you, Lemon Curd One Sandwich for the comment. We need to see your cartoons of the week. You guys can watch DMZ America, which the latest one came out yesterday, and Scott Stantis and I, and we interviewed Chip Bach, the conservative editorial cartoonist, formerly for the Akron

Beacon Journal, and we show our cartoons there. Excellent. All right, we got stuff to cover here. Let's probably, so anything more to say about Kazakhstan? By the way, Kazakhstan is a country we should pay more attention to. Absolutely. They have all the oil from the Gaspian Sea oil rush. All of it.

Yeah, I mean, it's like by some accounts, they have more oil in at least unproven reserves. You know, there's there's a, what is it? There's proven reserves and then there's believed reserves. That's not the right word. unproven reserves. But basically, geologists estimate, guesstimate how much they think there is. And then it's basically kind of like civil court versus criminal court standard of proof. And proven reserves mean they're 90% sure. But at the 50% standard, it's believed that they have a lot more than the Saudis have. I mean, it's a total game changer for the world. And, you know, it's funny to be that Donald Trump, who likes to be hip to everything,

doesn't seem to pay attention to this. I mean, you know, Almadi, which is the former capital in southern Kazakhstan, is a oil boomtown. You know, when I, first time I went there, the average income was 20 bucks a month. Oh, my God. Abject poverty. They couldn't keep, literally the lights weren't on at night. They couldn't keep the traffic signals on. So people were always hitting each other at the intersections.

The state art museum was selling off its work. in the streets for a quarter each. Are you kidding me? Oh, totally. Yeah, no, I have some really cool. I picked up a couple of really cool socialist, realist paintings. My favorite one is called, it's from the 1950s, a Soviet painting that says, and I've got to get it framed right, because I had to cut it out of the frame to move it.

But it said he has been criticized. And so it's a Soviet family. And he's reading, it's a factory work. and he's reading about his poor performance in the newspaper. And outside, you see the factory where he works through the window. And then there's his wife looking at him with great disappointment. And the best thing is the dog is looking at him with great disappointment, too. You know, one of the most wonderful things that I've ever found on my travels around the world,

and I'm so glad I bought it, is I have a Soviet, Academy Award. Oh, wow. And I didn't know what it was when I bought it. It's on a beautiful black marble base, and it's a man and a woman, Soviet realist style, looking up like this. The man's holding a sickle, the woman's holding a hammer. Oh, I got to have that.

So I bought it. I brought it back. Of course. And I liked it just as a Soviet realist sculpture. And then I was taking a tour. of Francis Ford Coppola's vineyard. And he's got a little museum to himself. Like he's got the Marlon Brando's desk from the godfather's there.

And all of his, all of his Oscars are on display. And he's got one of these awards. So fast forward to 20, excuse me, 2017. I won the Penn First Amendment Award. And he won the Penn Lifetime Achievement Award. So we're standing there talking. And I said, hey,

I got to ask you, this award that I saw in your museum, and I described it. And he said, oh, yeah, that's a Soviet Academy Award. I won it for the Godfather. And I said, I found one in an antique shop in Bulgaria. And I bought it. It was unaworted. It was unassigned. So it doesn't have the plaque on it.

You should give it awarded to yourself. I know, right? I love it. Get someone who can engrave in Cyrillian. Cyrillic. There's got to be someone in the greater D.C. metro area who can do that. Hero of the revolution. I love it. That is great. Frazmataz has a good question for us. Have we ever considered that Snowden's leak was very bad for the NSA, but very good for the CIA, which he left three years before. Vault 7 was also bad for the NSA, but CIA bragging.

I agree with both of those points. You know, it's odd. The CIA, it, it, it, it appears that the CIA has some kind of parallel, um, parallel tech something with NSA. Time was when the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology did stuff like, um, disguises, wigs, uh, little wires that I could, you know, put under my shirt and walk into a meeting and record the meeting. Now they're doing, you know, Vault 7 stuff. Do you want to explain what Vault 7 is? Yeah, Vault 7 was a series of revelations made apparently, allegedly, by Joshua Schulte, who was a CIA software engineer. The CIA says he was a disgruntled employee who then leaked all of these revelations to WikiLeaks, which published them in 2017.

the crown jewels of of CIA slash NSA. And it taught us things like, well, like with Michael Hastings, that the CIA can remotely take over control of your car and force you to, you know, drive off a bridge or drive into a tree or whatever, that the CIA can hack into other countries' systems and then leave little, little nuggets of information, but written in, you know, Cyrillic or written in Farsi to make it look like Russians did it, the Iranians did it, the North Koreans did it. Things like they can turn the speaker of your smart TV into a microphone. So even with the TV being off, they can still listen to everything that's taking place in the room where the TV

happens to be. We didn't know any of that stuff until 2017 when Joshua Schulte told us through WikiLeaks. Unfortunately, Joshua Schulte, made the catastrophic mistake of representing himself in his trial. He was convicted on all counts, all espionage charges, and he got 40 years in a maximum security penitentiary. So I think Fresmetaz is making an important point here that the CIA never did this kind of thing 10 years earlier. So why are they doing it now?

why are they in parallel with NSA or why are they in competition with NSA? In the end, I agree that it was NSA that was embarrassed by Schulte and by Ed Snowden. The CIA doesn't appear to have been knocked off the rails in any way. Although, I don't know if the NSA has been knocked off the rails either. No, well, that's true too. Sadly, Vienna, 1998, thank you. you very much for the five dollars hey john hello from vienna austria thanks for the show i love you maybe explained why andrew busamante is not quote unquote legit or did i get this wrong

okay i'm just going to come out and say it um andrew bustamante in my personal view is a fraud Andrew Bustamante was never, in capital letters, he was never a CIA case officer, never an operations officer. He was called, for most of his career, most of his seven-year-long career, he was called a Sue, a special operations officer. So what's a special operations officer? That's my assistant. That's the guy where I say, Andrew, I'm too busy working this officer. do my accounting paperwork for me or Andrew I'm going out on a high threat meeting tonight

put together a security team to protect me that's what Andrew did and then he left that and became a targeting analyst targeting analyst not an operations officer but then he'll go on podcast like Danny Jones and and Julian Dory and they will say things like Andrew Bustamante, he walked the walk. No, actually, he didn't walk the walk. He made it all up. And if he was so great at the CIA, why did he quit after seven years and just go into business with himself and grow, you know, side show Bob hair to make himself stand out on the internet? Another beef that I have with Andrew Bustamante is that he just came out with a new book in which he claims that he and his wife

captured a mole, a foreign intelligence agent embedded in the CIA. Listen, newsflash, there's an entire directorate at the CIA called Counterintelligence. And their job, like all 250 of them, is to make sure there are no moles, at the CIA. What Andrew would have us believe is they were, hmm, perplexed. We may have a mole. None of our 250 people are qualified to hunt this mole. So we should ask this obscure analyst

and his wife if they can come in and they can find the mole. And then they did. And so Andrew's a big hero. But beyond that, I think if there had been a foreign intelligence service running a mole inside the CIA that maybe, just maybe we would have heard about it in the Washington Post or the New York Times. So I don't know what the fuck he's talking about. I will say also that what little training he had, because like I say, he was only seven years into his career when he resigned, what little training he had, he has tried to duplicate and to sell as services. He runs this website where you can can sign up for surveillance training or red team training or, you know, special thinking outside

the box training. Maybe we should invite him. We should invite him on the show. You can come defend himself. Yeah. Andrew, come on over. We'll, uh, you know, you're welcome. I debated Andrew, um, I debated Andrew on, uh, the Danny Jones podcast.

And when I got home that night, Alan Dershowitz called me of all people. and he said, you gave that kid a master class in the Constitution. I said, thank you. It's the only time Alan Dershowitz has ever called me. That's a good comment. Hey, we've got some comments. We've got to talk to. Two topics to get through in the next five minutes.

All right. This is a comment from yesterday. You can't beat someone with no one. Forget about the right or the left. I want a roof over my head, food on the table, safe streets and a good paying job. That was about the Mamdani thing. Michael Thick's 41

Ted is a communist Do you reckon AI will be able to shoulder the burden of a centrally planned economy? Well, it could. It could. I mean, that's the whole thing. Under capitalism, all the benefits of increased productivity

from new technology always devolves to the owner class as opposed to the workers. Alexander Loitius says Robbie should move into some fort too. There are probably droves of radicals who want to Charlie Kirkham. Okay, anyway, I don't know what that's all about.

Anyway, thanks for those comments yesterday. Those were in the sort of comment thread as opposed to the live chat. Phil chats, anything new with Mexico? It's been quiet lately, and then we've got to talk about the FAA. Yeah, yeah. I'll tell you what, I'm going to fly. I'm scheduled to fly. Yeah, I was going to say.

Yeah, you know, this is like, it's like when I flew on Air Turkmenistan, they sold twice as many tickets as there were seats. And when you got on board, there were no assigned seating. There were fistfights over the seats. And I remember turning to my, I mean, I'm a pretty big guy. It's like, I got to sit. But like, all these songs, silent fighting and punching. I remember turning to my friend Alan, who now is at the New York Times. And I said, you know, I really miss Delta.

where it's like do do do do do yeah anyway and I was like on air Turk Minnesota you don't buy a ticket you buy a chance at a ticket that's how it's going to be now for you John I I didn't really have you don't have a ticket to fly no chance to fly a chance to fly I was going to I am expecting to go see my son in Cincinnati on Tuesday and I you're lucky I love Cincinnati I actually do too my New Orleans of Ohio it is my daughter goes to the University of Cincinnati and my son goes to Miami of Ohio, which is just 35 or 40 minutes north. Beautiful. Oh, my God, in the fall, the most beautiful campus.

And I'm going to take my telescope because it's really, really dark there. But, you know, the newspapers yesterday and the day before, and this morning, there was more detail. Makes me think there's no chance that that flight is going to take off. There's no chance. Yeah, I agree, because we're not seeing. I mean, look, let's be serious here. Is the shutdown over next week? I predict November 15th, but not next week.

So by next week, the entire system is going to be collapsing. Agreed. By the way, I just bought a ticket for my son. And it was like for later, the prices have fallen through the floor on future airline travel. So if you want to buy tickets, get them now because they're cheap. Yeah, nobody's flying. The algorithms are all based on supply and demand. Everyone's out of here.

So, I mean, what a fucking way to run a country. Venezuela, I mean, I guess we're going to have to talk about this Monday. Yeah. But the Senate punted on war powers. Yeah, I would say. Only Murkowski of Alaska and Rand Paul of Kentucky voted to not invade Venezuela. And Susan Collins, as usual, like waffled and like, well, I might. And then, you know.

I can't stand her. I hope they throw her ass out. I hate Rakowski, too, though. She just, she did the right thing this one time. Yeah. Grand Paul's the only decent one. Yeah, but he's, yeah, sure. Well, you know, he, and also he's fighting the valiant fight against his neighbors.

Like literally physically fighting the fight against his neighbors. Although his neighbor won. His neighbor beat the shit out of him and hospitalized him. That is true. Oh, my God. So please help. All right. Housekeeping.

Please help with Robbie Aid. Go to give send go.com slash West. Glacier Gaming. We have $580 raised. We need $420 more. This is don't, all you potheads can take that as a message over the weekend. We're here Monday through Friday at 9 a.m. Eastern Time. We'll be back Monday at 9 o'clock Eastern Time. We'll get in, we have to do Venezuela in and do it correctly. We didn't get to it today. Thanks for all your questions, your comments, et cetera. We will, as always, check those out. Please stay tuned for the TMI show with me and Manila Chan coming up right in a minute, right at 10 o'clock Eastern time. That's also Monday through

Friday. And we will talk to you later, John. Always have a great weekend. And see you Monday. Bye. Bye-bye. Thank you.