DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: “The Last Radical: Assata Shakur”

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou cover the startling spectacle of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s addressing a mostly-empty UN, the shocking indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, Russia’s military aid to China and its link to Taiwan, the Manhattan mass shooting linked to C.T.E., and the death of Black revolutionary Assata Shakur in Cuba.A Pariah Addresses the UN: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a tone-deaf, combative speech at the UN, rejecting Palestinian statehood as “national suicide.” Speaking to a near-empty hall, Israel’s growing diplomatic isolation as nations like Britain and France recognize Palestine is no longer a threat but a fact. Comey Indictment: An inexperienced Trump-appointed prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, files charges against former FBI Director James Comey for false statements and obstruction. The indictment, driven by Trump’s orders, sparks fears of politically motivated prosecutions. Why him and not fellow Russia-hoax liar Brennan?Russia-China Military Cooperation: Russia agrees to train a Chinese airborne battalion and share airdrop expertise, potentially assisting China’s capacity to seize Taiwan. Manhattan Shooting and C.T.E.: Shane Tamura, a former football player with C.T.E., killed four in a Manhattan office targeting the NFL, blaming it for hiding the disease’s dangers. The medical examiner confirms low-stage C.T.E. in his brain. Should football be banned?Assata Shakur: Black revolutionary Assata Shakur, a fugitive since her 1979 prison escape, dies in Havana at 78. Supporters praise her fight against oppression and critics condemn her as a cop killer. One thing is for sure: she is one of a dying breed of Leftist radicals.

Unless you're Bibi Netanyahu, welcome to D-Program with Ted Rowland, John Kiriaku. Hi, John. Hey, Ted. Glad it's Friday. Me too, although I don't think, again, I don't think BB is. No. He had a, he was definitely, he reminded me of those poor congressmen who give a speech on the empty floor of the House of Representatives. On Friday.

Yeah, because they want to be on C-SPAN and get it all recorded. you know, he got to give a speech. But if a genocidal maniac falls in the woods, does he make a sound? Exactly. Exactly. And you see these wonderful videos from the General Assembly of the United Nations. And the room is enormous, of course, and it's just sitting empty because everybody except the U.S. delegation and a handful of other quizlings just walked out. I mean, he had to know that was going to happen, right?

Yeah. And I don't think he cared. But I'll tell you what I'm far more impressed with, Ted, is when Netanyahu started speaking, the Mossad electronically took over every cell phone in Gaza and broadcasted over the speaker Netanyahu's speech. They also set up speakers all around the border. of Gaza and boomed in the speech. So if you're Palestinian, you had

to listen to that speech whether you liked it or not. Yeah, and you're in a place where getting electricity to charge your phone isn't easy. So the friggin Israelis are wasting your power. I wonder, it must not come through if your phone is off. Just another reason to

stay off your phone as much as possible. I hope you're right. You know, propaganda is one thing. It's like, okay, okay. Everybody tries propaganda. That was over the top. Over the top. I never even heard of such a thing.

But, you know, as soon as I read it, I was like, yeah, okay, I could see them doing that. Yeah, they also claimed those giant loudspeakers on the borders of Gaza to pipe in the same speech. That's right. And then he translated it from Hebrew. He did it in Hebrew. He did it in English. You know, you might have tried having a translation into Arabic, right? It reminded me very much of Netanyahu's his friendly talk to the Iranian people after the Israelis bombed Iran, Netanyahu delivered an address to the Iranian people in which he promised that if they would only just overthrow their government, that he would send water experts to Iran and they could all live like brothers.

Right. Yeah. You know, I mean, he is, I mean, the thing is that speech was an incredibly tone deaf performance, right? I mean, it was completely unrepentant. We're the 100% victims here. And I'm not seeing the Israelis haven't suffered at all, because that's not true. Sure, but, you know, they're not the primary sufferers here. No. But anyway, only we've suffered. We want nothing but peace. We're good, awesome people. But also, by the way, as you pointed out, John, a couple of days ago, right? The UN was set up as a peacemaking organization. Yeah. And he trots up there and stands in front of that Soviet-style green marble and says, he basically talks about all the places he's blowing up. We blew up the hoodies. We're killing, we're killing the, we're killing Hezbollah. in Lebanon. We're threatening Lebanon. We're going to come back for more. We took out the government of Syria. We bombed the Iranians. He's talking about all that shit. Yeah, these are brags. He's bragging. He brags. About killing people and about starting and risking wars. Yeah, it's exactly right. I mean, and I just thought, like, you know, there might have been

something to be said for reading the room. Well, it's hard for him to read the room because there was no room. No, everybody left the room. This was a good opportunity maybe for some, you know, for some of Trump's illegal migrants to come in and do a deep cleaning of the carpet while they're during the speed. But I mean, he could have, you know, gone up there and just said, because he knew he had the TV audience and said, listen, I'm not stupid. Israelis, we see the room here. And we do think this is really upsetting. And we don't like having these delegations walk out. and we do want to be friends with the rest of the world and we don't want to be hated and we're really upset that you guys don't understand what we're doing and why we're doing it

that would have been the approach amen amen hey we have i know we just started the show and all but we have a lot of people to thank got a lot uh olenios a 50 dollar gift thank you for your wow thank you generosity and and i did not know that carmen denunzio died um Carmen Dinozio was the head of the family in Boston's alleged organized crime family. I was in prison with Carmen, and I found him to be an absolute gentleman. 100% of the time got along famously with him, really great guy. And he says, hey, John, as a fellow Greek, I would like to know your thoughts on Trump's meeting with Erdogan. So, you know, I didn't even pay much attention at first to Trump's meeting with Erdogan.

and then the Greek media cut just the smallest little clip and the clip was Erdogan with his resting bitch face looking at the camera and Trump says the Greek Orthodox were here the other day which is true his all holiness ecumenical patriarch Bartholomew the first met with Trump two days ago, three days ago and asked him to pressure Erdogan to the let the Orthodox Church reopen the Khalki Seminary.

The Greek Orthodox Seminary in Khalki, in Turkey, is the only seminary that the Turks permit to turn out new patriarchs. And our patriarchs are all in their 80s now. But they closed the seminary in 1972. So if there are no patriarchs that can become the first among equals, the ecumenical patriarch, the ecumenical patriarch goes to the Russian church and that's going to destroy

international orthodoxy. And obviously the Turks know what they're doing here because the same shit happened to them at the end of World War I when the caliphate which was based in Istanbul which was basically the papacy of Islam went away and Islam has been reeling

from that ever since. yeah it's like a decapitation strike it's a slow motion decapitation strike that's exactly right but this is not the first time or the second or the hundredth that an american president has asked the turks to reopen the khalki seminary um my guess is that erdogan's not even going to bother responding he won't say no he just won't even bother responding um chrism z t I meant to answer this the other day. Thank you for the $5. What was my beef with Francis Ford Coppola that I mentioned the other day on the show?

Okay, in 20, I guess it was 2017, I won one of the most prestigious literary awards in the country for my second book, Doing Time Like a Spy. I won the Penn First Amendment Award, which along with the Penn Faulkner, the Pulitzer, and the Edgar Alan Poe is one of what's called the big four, the big four literary awards. And so it was a big deal. The ceremony was held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills. And they gave away a lot of awards that night. They gave, you know, best poetry, best children's book, best translation, best this, best that. Photography.

And people are, you know, very politely clapping. But there were three at the end that were big. So there was an honorary award for Ed Snowden. They just sort of made one up, created one for Ed Snowden. And Daniel Ellsberg accepted it on Ed's behalf. Dan was sitting next to me at my table. And I won the Pettin First Amendment. And then the last one in the evening was Francis Ford Coppola,

who won the Lifetime Achievement Award. so the last set of speeches were Dan Ellsberg went up to accept Ed's award then Jared Leto introduced me I was his high school history teacher he later won an academy award for best supporting actor for Dallas Byers Club and then I gave my speech and I will admit that my speech was very fiery now I kept it a tight seven minutes they told us not one one second more than seven minutes and i usually wing these things i didn't wing this i wrote it out i practiced it over and over and over and i kept it to a tight seven minutes then a showrunner from hbo got up to introduce francis ward coppola and then coppola goes up to the uh to the podium so

he pulls his he pulls his speech out of his jacket pocket and he holds it up and he says i came here tonight to talk about my exploration of the human soul in my films and then he throws it down on the lecture and he says where's the CIA guy and I said right here and he says how dare you criticize my president it was Obama what yeah I just I wailed on Obama for seven minutes oh good So he says, how dare you compare my government with pre-World War II Nazi Germany? I didn't. All I said was that- Like I like to say, if the jackboot fits. That's right.

All I said was at the Justice Department, they're telling us, well, if you haven't done anything wrong, then why don't you just answer our questions? And I pointed out, I said to the crowd, do you have any idea who the first person was to pose that question? in a public venue, it was Joseph Goebbels, because that is the road that we are heading down today in the United States. I got a standing ovation, the only one of the night. Anyway, everybody thinks that this is part of the schick, because the MC was that gorgeous blonde lesbian from Saturday Night Live, Kate. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Gorgeous. Hilarious. So The one who played Hillary on SNL. Yes, the one who played Hillary.

Kate something. So everybody thought that this was all part of the joke. And so as he's, is he's yelling me or yelling at me and pointing at me. And I'm just sitting there staring right at him. Everybody's clapping and laughing and hooting. And then he says, I shouldn't say he says, Dan says, Dan was wearing hearing aids at the time. And the room was huge.

It was holding a thousand people. So Dan says to me, what's he saying up there? And I leaned over and I said, he's insulting us, Dan. And Dan says, what? And I said, he's insulting us. And so Daniel Ellsberg, the great Daniel Ellsberg, stands up. Mr. Pentagon Papers. One of these thousand people.

And he goes, fuck you, Coppola. And Kofa looks at us. I turned to Dan, and I just start laughing. Kofalo looks at us and he says, he says, I've said enough, I'm not saying anymore. And he walks off the stage. And Kate, what's her face? Kate McKinnon, that's right.

Walks back onto the stage and she says, she goes, well, drive safely, everyone. And they turned the lights on. It was only then. That's fucking epic. I realized, wait a minute, this wasn't a joke. This wasn't like on national, was this on national news? Oh, my God.

That's part of the story. So before I answer that question, the pen people literally ran to my table. And the head of Penn USA says, I am so. sorry. I apologize on behalf of Penn USA. I said, no, no, no, no, don't apologize. I have been insulted by men far more powerful than Francis Ford Coppola, who, by the way, hasn't made a decent movie in 20 years. That's true, actually. And then behind her, there's this guy. And definitely a very overrated director. No question. For every hit he has, he has five bombs that nobody comes in all. that's true so then there's a guy behind him who hands me his business card he's an agent for

c a creative artists of america and he says are you represented and i said no he goes you are now walked down and dan's like what the fuck just happened oh my god so i said to my brother my brother was also at my table i go oh my god this is going to be in the new york time or the la times tomorrow and he said oh no it's not he said before he even gets to his car francis ford coppola is already going to have had two phone calls with his press agents so the next day nothing and i looked at the lea times people variety us everything the day after they all had exactly the same article and it said lifetime achievement award winner francis ford coppola departed from his prepared remarks to comment on the current political situation in Washington.

And that was it. That was the story. It's so hard for me to believe that the hometown paper in Los Angeles might not have given fulsome coverage to, I personally can't even imagine them doing something like that. So that's, I have a lovely picture of myself on the red carpet with Francis Ford Coppola, which I usually don't show anybody because I don't like him at all. I'm sorry, I'm like a ride. But I have another picture of myself. myself on the red carpet from that night with Daniel Ellsberg. And that one

I'm proud of. So that's not likely to be a night you're going to forget anytime soon. I would say we could just do the show just on stories like, you know, we could just literally just do a riff on like you know, being dissed by prominent people, you know.

Yeah. That's true. Mine would be Condoleezer Rice. I have several. Okay. Actually, Bill Clinton. Condoleezza Rice was at a, so a friend of mine, he was married to the PR flack for Laura Bush. Wait a minute. So a friend of yours is married to the PR flag. Oh, boy, oh, boy. Yeah, while she's first meeting. Laura Bush, who ran over and killed her best friend when she was a beautiful. Yes, that's correct.

Yes, that's right. So I guess, well, if you do that, you kind of need a PR flag. So she's a Laura. So, so anyway, so she. So, so anyway, so she. And then later she was the PR flack for the twins, right? The twin girls, the two bushy girls. So anyway, so he tells me this story, my friend, who will call Keir, because his name was Keir. And he, so he's sitting at one of these, like, reception, one of these big hotel banquet halls where you have eight people at a big round table with a white tablecloth and listening to speeches.

I don't remember what the event was, but of some kind of, you know, political watch. Washington thing, Shindig. He's at a table, he's at the table with a bunch of bushes. There's Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, God, who, Donald Rumsfeld, like those people. And there's like four or five of them. And at one point, the subject of political cartooning comes up. And he says, and Kier says, you know, yeah, you know, I'm good friends with a cartoonist.

political cartoonist, his name is Ted Rahl. And they all stop talking, and they all look to Kandi, and Kandi looks right at him and says, we fucking hate fucking Ted Rall.

And I just thought that linguistic construction was fascinating. And I'm like, wait, she said it like she was the Borg speaking for all of them. Wow, that's that Stanford University education she had. Yeah, she said. And he said, oh, and he was a very precise man.

He said, oh, yeah, that's exactly how she put it. And I just thought, he goes, congratulations. The entire Bush administration fucking hates your guns. And I'm like, I'm simultaneously honored and absolutely scared shitless, you know, because this is not good. But, you know, anyway. And then there was the Bill Clinton story. my friend was worked in the West Wing as one of Clinton's speechwriters, Jeff Schiesel.

He went on to become an author of some repute. He's a historian. He did a really good book about the relationship, which you probably have read, between LVJ and RFK. Oh, great. I know that book. Yeah, you know that book. Yeah, yeah, sure. Anyway, so he's a speechwriter for Bill Clinton.

And this was in the 90s. And at one point, I used to appear in the Washington Post, and Bill Clinton walks over to Jeff, throws a copy of the paper on the ground, with my cartoon, and he goes, you tell your friend Ted Rall to go, fuck himself. Oh, my God. Are you kidding me? I'm totally serious. And I was like, again, the president hates me personally. Like, little Ted. I was like 30.

like what the fuck is happening um yeah i i am proud to say that the day that the that the new york times wrote on the front page that rudy juliani tried to shake me down for two million dollars for a party yeah that's great he told he told his director of business operations that fucking kiriaku ratted me out that's like that's like what uh the mayor of dc said when he was busted for crack like yeah the bitch set me up oh it's good to be hated sometimes oh yeah no you are you are judged by your enemies you really are you know and if you've earned some good enemies oh god i mean yeah

that's fucking oh my god the coppola story is to die what a jerk he was javid moseni has a question, do I still speak fluent Arabic? La. Nassit all the loggha. Kabbal a shirina and bad adelaik. I've forgotten everything. I've forgotten everything. I will say I've been hired by a member of a Persian Gulf royal family

to mediate a family dispute. And I was going to go to London. I think I mentioned this yesterday the day before. I was going to go to London to meet with everybody. And then they emailed me today and said they don't mean to meet in London. Now they want to meet in Beirut. I'm not sure I feel so safe in Beirut. No.

Are you kidding? The Israelis own the skies and every pager that was ever in Beirut. It's true. I think I'm going to just leave myself home. Yeah, I think this is like a place. Beirut is not a place you should go. I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to practice my Arabic before I go. It's passable, but it's not fluent anymore.

It's just due to lack of practice. Yes. Yeah. So let's see. There's so many questions. Let's see. Okay, there's that. We have lots of questions we have to catch up on here.

Oh, yeah. Mr. Rall, does Carl Rove hate you as well? I don't know, but he must know who I am because when I run in the Wall Street, journal just to take the piss the the journal always runs me right next to him so that that's fucking hilarious but you know i remember reading something about him i think carl robe is probably calm yeah i i think it's actually worked with carl rove on on a campaign that i worked on in indonesia in 2008 nice enough guy um i never really saw what other people saw

in him that he's some kind of electoral genius when he barely i mean he first of all he lost the 2000 election it really he lost uh in 2004 he barely beat john carrie and carry was a weak campaigner so i don't know how much of a genius he is um okay here's a good question for you and i i would i'm giving you permission not to answer it suda not not suda is asking if you're pardoned and access your $700,000 worth of retirement money, would you have to pay your attorneys over a million bucks? What other benefit will you have if you're pardoned? Again, feel free not to answer that question. That's a legit question. I'm happy to answer it. Thank God that my 11 attorneys, six of whom I was actually paying, are really, really great people. Because we

What they did is they told me just recently they decided to write off that debt over the course of 10 years without telling me. So every year they would take a loss on their income taxes of $115,000. And last year, it wiped the debt out. And so I don't owe them anything anymore, only because they are really great. fine people. And the other changes would, I'd get the 770 back. And with Social Security and whatever little I'm able to save between now and my death, I'll be able to at least retire and not have to worry about moving into the backseat of my 14-year-old car. And I would also get my gun rights back. And that's more of a, well, how should I say? If you can bring your gun

with you to Beirut, maybe you can go. Yeah, right. Yeah. I'm joking about that. They still own the air. Mr. Athenia wants to know. Bibi is finished. He himself knows that at some point. He will end up like Sarkozy in the Iron Bar Hotel. From your lips to God's ears.

I actually have to say, though, I don't think the odds of that are zero. Yeah, I agree. That could happen. I mean, it was a flailing performance. I mean, it was also like really dead. and desperate. I mean, you know, it's like that famous scene

in the German movie Downfall that's always, that became an internet meme. You know, Hitler finds out and, you know, it's all that, I mean, I even did one of those memes. But like, it's like Hitler finding out that basically there's no more line of defense,

there's no more reserve forces, the Russians are coming, you know, the bunker will be overrun within a matter of days. That's, I mean, Netanyahu had that, vibe this morning. I mean, it was like, basically, I'm going to go in here and rage because it's my last hurrah. Yeah. You know, one thing I don't understand, though, and maybe it's because I've

never focused on, on Israel, like really focused on Israel. I don't understand why, number one, nobody's taken a pot shot at him, like not even tried that we know of. Number two, you know, we were talking you and i were talking yesterday ted about no no it wasn't you and i it was i was on the jimmy door show the other day and he was talking about isis in syria and al-qaeda in syria and all these other you know different machinations in syria why have those groups never been an honest-to-god threat to israel is it that they're controlled by western powers they're not allowed to threaten Israel? I mean, I find it hard to believe that you've got like some of the most dangerous people in the world in Syria, but it's hands off Israel. I don't get that. Yeah, no,

that's a good point. I mean, maybe it's just that like the Syrians keep their people down. They tell them not to, they prevent that from happening because they know that the Israelis will come down on them like a ton of bricks. In a weird way, Syria, even under Assad, kind of was sort of a vassal state light of Israel. They kind of had to do what the Israelis wanted. See, that's why I always predicted that the Israelis would not seek to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, because the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. Well, they shouldn't have.

From their own point of view, it was bad, it's a bad move. This was bad policy. Yeah. Because Assad was no threat to Israel. He was one of the weakest leaders in the world. Yeah. Not to mention, they could pick off the phone and talk to him about shit. Which they did. Yeah. You know, the last time I was in Damascus, you know how Damascus is built on these hills, right?

And at the top of one of the hills where the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is, there's a palace there that was built for Hefezal, Assad. But because it was such an easy target for the Israelis, Assad never moved in. Well, when I was there, I haven't been to Syria in a long time. two Israeli fighter jets, I don't know what they were, F-18s or whatever, just flew side by side over Damascus, turned around, and flew back. Why? Because they can. Just to say hi.

That's it. Just to say hi. Remember us? Don't fuck with us. And Assad said, okay, I won't. It's terrifying. Another version of the Epstein files have been released. this time by the Dems, according to Reed S.

I would have to look into that. Houdini says, because ISIS and Syria is on the U.S. payroll, well, they certainly started out that way. Yeah, I agree with that. Yes. No question about that. I thought this story about Taiwan was interesting. The Russians are training a Chinese battalion.

on how to do air drops, something that, you know, China is a contiguous nation. It doesn't have any little overseas territories, like, well, I guess you can count Macau, right? But, you know, why would you need that? So obviously, people who are concerned about Taiwan are naturally wondering if the Russians are basically training the Chinese how to invade Taiwan. But I don't think the Chinese need help invading Taiwan. If they want to, they can. And they will win.

And it'll be over in, like, days. But we're the ones who keep saying that the Chinese are going to invade Taiwan. The Chinese aren't threatening to invade Taiwan. No. Although there's this sort of ongoing, like, it's ours, and we'll get it back someday. And we have every right to get it back. And frankly, they have a good claim. Yeah, they do.

They have a good claim. Yes. Yes, indeed. I mean, to me, this is just more of a sign of increased, Russian-Chinese cooperation and, you know, the alliance growing closer. To me, that's the real takeaway. I don't think Taiwan's really the takeaway here. Yeah, agreed. Agreed. Hey, can we talk for a second about Asada Shakur? Yes, I want to. But first, can we talk about, I want to address, I like it when you get the negative comments to. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

George Johnson saying, and thank you for your comment in all seriousness, because we're not just here to, it's not an echo chamber. We're not just here to agree with our own asses. Talk about tone deaf. Why do you guys hate Israel so much? And, you know, one of the questions I got asked by my friend Scott, the other day, Scott Stantis is, you know, why are you so much harder on the Israelis than, say, other countries when they violate human rights, like, say, the Myanmarese, or however you want to call them, and what they're doing to the Rohingya or, you know, whatever, the Chinese with the Uyghurs and so on. And for me, the answer to that question is because Israel is the number one

source recipient of U.S. foreign aid. There are a super close ally. We are their bitch. They are our bitch. And so whatever they do is on us. So when they blow up Palestinians with bombs that say made in USA, they're blowing up Palestinians with my tax dollars. So I take it really personally in a way that I don't take it when the state law and order

Restoration Council of the former colony of Burma does the same thing. I actually would disagree with the premise. I don't hate Israel. I've been to Israel a number times. I hate Benjamin Netanyahu and the criminal extremists that he has surrounded himself with in government. I've been to Israel a bunch of times too and had a good time. Yeah, me too. I liked it.

I have to say politically, I have increasingly, increasingly come to the conclusion that my previous idea of, you know, supporting a two-state solution was really naive and stupid. And that basically it was always like up to, you know, it's basically the state, the state of Israel is illegitimate and they've proven that with their behavior. You know, they don't want to share. They want it all for themselves. All of it.

Every inch of it. Yeah. Every inch of it. is a violation of international law. If we're going to criticize the United States for all the things that it does, torture programs, rendition, secret prisons, all this criminal behavior, violations of international law, violations of wartime laws, then we're going to criticize Israel when they do exactly the same things.

No doubt. Yeah, it's not like I wake up every day with a hard on for Israel, right? It's more just like, it's just that they keep pulling shit. And I mean, even before October 7th, obviously. There's been no end to it from the very, very beginning. Thank you for the $20 donation, MT16N7. Thank you. From Mike in Nottingham, wondering what our thoughts are about Tony Blair,

potentially heading a transitional Gaza authority. He's absolutely despised over here. And only someone who's totally despised would be considered for such a job. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm ashamed to say that when Tony Blair was first was in his first

I can't say was running for prime minister because you don't really run for prime minister anyway when he was in that first campaign after which he became prime minister I actually went to Blair Party headquarters

I was in London for meetings with MI6 and I went to Blair Party headquarters and made a one pound donation so I could buy a Blair button and I thought wow the new Labor Party it's incredible

I had lived there in 1985 and the minor strike and Arthur Cargill and it was just hideous. Big splits in the Labor Party. Man, was I wrong? Yeah. Blair was, Blair was. He was Bill Clinton. Jake said at the same time. He was Clinton.

There was nothing labor. There was nothing socialist about Tony Blair. And then when push came to shove, starting in 2000, he did exactly. as George W. Bush told him to do. That's, that's right. That's totally correct. Yeah. The minor strikes brings back memories.

Man, I had many points with the minors. My minors from, my friend in college roommate, he was a, his father was one of those minors in England. And he and his former colleagues, they would still get up and get dressed and go to work, even though the mine had been closed and just, gather in the cafeteria and just sit there and hang out all day because they had no other place to go and there were no prospects of another job and they didn't want to just sit at home

with their wives feeling depressed and broke. I mean, the thing is closing those minds was gratuitous. There was no reason for it at all economically. It was literally like a Trump kind of move. We're just going to do it because we can. That's right. She did it just to Fuck with the other side. That's it. I mean, the mines were making money. There was no reason not to. They were.

They were making money. Is it true that the queen told Tony Blair to do as the Americans asked? I don't know. I don't know if the queen has that kind of authority. Yeah, it was always my understanding that the royal family tries to stay out of the day-to-day. business of government. I mean, yeah. I mean, if you watch the Crown, if you believe any of that, and I

think I mostly do, it's very well researched, you know, the royal family will sort of subtly chime in when asked with some gentle advice, but they're not supposed to be running the country. They're supposed to, they're more like your consigliary. That's exactly right. I have

actually, I have a question for any of our UK viewers, when I was living in the UK, I was a junior in college and I lived with a wonderful family, the Tilly's, in Bramon, just outside on the south of Manchester. And my host father was a member of Parliament. He was a member of the Liberal Party back when the two Davids were liberals and SDP. So it was kind of an exciting time. But they all always told me that then Prince Charles was what they called a wet, that he was, if the royal family were allowed to publicly join political parties, he would be a conservative, but he would be a lefty conservative if that makes any sense. And they called them wets. Is that true? Do you think

that's true? I often wondered, or if it's just that Charles was always good at sort of masking where he stood on issues. I'm going to go with part. I'm going to go with, I'll take B for $100, Alex. Yeah, I just don't think, I guess I'm dating myself, $200 is the lowest thing on Jeopardy now. He is, yeah, I mean, look, we know he's small C conservative. I mean, there's that whole thing that he does about promoting quote unquote traditional architecture. Yes. Something that the neoclassical, something he has in common with our present, you know, and, you know, I have some sympathy for that because I hate a lot of modern architecture. But, I mean, culturally, obviously, but I also get the, I mean, you know, I just don't think we know.

The thing about Charles is he's a very cool, like sort of, you know, I don't know if cool is the right word. I mean, cool, as in cold, like he's, like in the Marshall McLuhan sense of the word, he doesn't, you know, I think he views his job and his mother, Lord knows he had enough time to watch his mother do it while he was waiting to step up. That's right. We thought it was never going to happen, I'm sure. You know, he kind of felt like, I think he just feels like there's power in people not knowing. And I think that's true. I think he's right. Yeah, yeah. I think that is right. Yeah. Yeah, so let's talk about, let's talk about Asada Shakur. I mean, the reason I really wanted to talk about her is besides

the fact that her story is interesting as shit, you know, for people who are wondering, as Trump and his acolytes say that the radical left is a huge problem in contemporary American politics, Let me just say Asada Shakur is what a radical leftist actually looks like and we haven't had one of those in a long time I mean, you know, she is the last radical like the thumbnail to today's show says

I mean there's really kind of like and I'm not saying she did everything right but I mean she's a wild woman I mean you know she is 78 years old black lady she was born as she was originally not born but she was Joanne Chesimard and she was she split

off from the Black Panthers because she thought they were pussies and joined the Black Liberation Army you know she got arrested 10 and tried 10 times for like bank robbery armored car killed a cop apparently

though that she was she probably didn't kill the cop she was with a group of guys who did kill the cop but by all but it's I think it's credible that she was down on the ground with her arms up at the time, but because she was with them, she was convicted of doing it. It looks pretty likely that the prosecutors lied about her actions in that incident,

but there's no doubt that she was with a bunch of dudes who did kill a cop. So that's not really great. A New Jersey state trooper pulled him over for a broken headlight. But anyway, all-white jury found her guilty. My favorite part is her prison break. Yeah, she got out and they never found her. No, she got out and then they basically she got smuggled out via Barbados. And then off Cuba, and the Cubans kept her all these years.

I mean, she's, I mean, by the way, I love the obit in the Times. It's so snotty. Here we go. I'm going to read this one paragraph. In 1987, she published an autobiography, Asata. a name she had assumed in 1971, forsaking what she called her, quote, slave name, end quote. The book was replete with spellings and locutions

that were standard in radical circles, like references to America as small case America with a K instead of a C, and to the police as, quote, pigs, period, close quote. Hey, New York Times, I still call them that. She routinely used a lower, case I as a first person pronoun to take away from the egotistical connotation of the word, she said. Maybe she's just like E. E. Cummings. I love me, E. Cummings. Me too. I mean, you know, it's like totally just this, you know, it drips, the times can't help themselves. They find people

like that incredibly fascinating, but they have to be snotty. Like, John, when you die, you will get a time so bit, and it will be partly snotty. I just I'm just hoping the local Newcastle news notices that I've died otherwise that's it's all about the Newcastle news nobody's going to care but yeah and I mean the point is she's been also she was the godfather of Tupac yeah godmother yeah that's true I mean that's cool funny thing too Ted you and I have a lot of the same friends we're friends with like Medea Benjamin from Code Pink and Andy Shal and all these people in

sort of peace circles in Washington. Sure. Not only were they friends with Asada Shakur, they used to visit her when they would go to Cuba. Well, why not? And I always thought that was funny. Funny because that's not really

my world. The black liberation world was not my world. It was slightly before my time and I'm not black. So I always kind of wondered about those friendships, just thinking in the back of my head, I thought she killed a cop and then escaped. She did. Yeah, well, I have problems with pacifists.

I mean, if they had their way, D-Day would never have taken place. If they had their way, my grandfather wouldn't be a war hero. That's right. I don't know. I mean, I think my philosophy is don't start violence, finish it. I interviewed an author Fred Burton today about his book on William Buckley, the CIA Station Chief, who was kidnapped by Islamic Jihad in Beirut and tortured and executed. And he said something about Buckley's personality.

He said, at the first sign of danger, he ran right. to it. And I thought, that's, that's cool. That's a stand-up guy. That's, that's very cool.

Yeah. I'm liking that a lot. Yeah, that is cool. So yeah, pacifism, while I understand it, pacifism is not,

you know. I think it's, look, I think, and I hope people don't take this the wrong way. I mean, you know,

I have this, these, I've had these arguments with like our friend David Swanson and people like that. It's like, it's a childish ideology.

I think, because, and I mean, and it's being childish isn't always bad. I mean, you know, innocence is important. Childhoodness and remembering who you, what you were, what it felt like to be a kid. It's super important. And kids are wise in many ways. They're pre-corrupted. So we need to learn from them a lot. But, I mean, I think it's true when you're dealing in the world of real politic and ideology,

pacifism isn't the thing. I mean, how would you ever overthrow a violent, oppressive state, like, say, the state of Israel, or ours, if you are a pacifist? The answer is you couldn't. You could just write firmly worded letters. Yeah, that's exactly right. That is exactly right. Oh, well, I know you wanted to talk about your best friend, Jim Comey, and the very bad no good day he's having. having been indicted yesterday, after we went off the air, that he got that news at the last

possible second that he could be indicted. I guess he probably saw that one coming. He's not stupid. But you had an angle about this that you wanted to talk about. Yeah. Listen, for me personally, I don't really care if Jim Comey's indicted or not. I lost not one second of sleep over it. If he committed a crime and a grand jury thinks he committed a crime, crime, well, then he can defend himself just like he made me defend myself. With that said, there's an angle to this that I think we're not really focused on. The obvious question is why hasn't John Brennan been indicted? Or why are we not hearing about a pending indictment for John Brennan?

And I think the reason is that two weeks ago in a fit of peak when Donald Trump, ordered Tulsi Gabbard to fire literally everybody at the CIA who was involved in writing the national intelligence estimate on Russia Gate. Most of those people who were fired would have been the ones to testify against John Brennan because they were involved in Russia Gate. and so now all of a sudden there are AUSAs at the Justice Department saying while we think John Brennan probably violated the law and important laws like conspiracy we may not have enough to charge him now that's so that's just it'll just be so he gets away with it. He's been really unrepentant, too. He just can't stay away from the cameras. He just

keeps repeating the same shit over and over. I'm a little tired of it. Frazmataz, for you, John, I don't know if it's popular, but I kind of compare Buckley and Charlie Kirk for some obvious reasons. I sort of despise Buckley for his persona. Cool to hear he wasn't all bad. And another question for you from Peruse. Did you hear stories? I love this story about Alan Dulles or did anyone remember him or talk about him while you were there?

I mean, they would have had to have been really old. There was nobody there when I was there who had worked for Alan Dulles. To tell you the truth, you know, as long as Alan Dulles was the CIA director and it's the second longest CIA tenure in the world nobody ever really talked about him

that was that was a period to be ashamed of rather than a period to be celebrated because we were off overthrowing governments all over Latin America for example and Iran which was even worse for still paying the price for helping the British overthrow the Mossadik government in 1953

you know there's there's a story that I like to tell too that I found just my own research on the Dulles Brothers. And that was about the United Fruit Company. I'm sure, Ted, you know about the United Fruit Company. Oh, yeah. So the United Fruit Company was, well, what it sounds like, it was a gigantic fruit conglomerate.

But it started off as a railroad of all things. And they got a contract in Guatemala to run a new railroad line from Guatemala City to the coast with the idea being that a port would be built and they could make money transporting the cargo from the city to the port and back to the city again. So every day the railroad workers would take a lunch break and they would just pick these fruits off the tree. It was a fruit that the CEO of the United Fruit Company, under its earlier name, he had never seen before. And he asked, what are these fruits that the workers keep eating? And he was told those are called bananas.

He had never seen a banana. He'd never heard of a banana before. So he asked to try one. This is in the 1890s. And so he tried a banana and he's like, oh, my God, these are the most delicious fruits in the world. So. And those bananas are a lot better than our bananas. No comparison.

So rather than just build the railroad, he bought up the line. land on both sides of the tracks and started, started cultivating bananas and picking the bananas and shipping the bananas first to Boston, because that's where the company headquarters was. So Boston was the first place in America to get bananas. Well, they ended up selling so many bananas and cultivating so many bananas that the company became the largest landholder in Guatemala. and not just Guatemala, but Costa Rica, Colombia, the biggest landholder. And it was all about fruits.

Well, in the early 1950s, the democratically elected government of Guatemala said, why should we be sending all these bananas to the United States so this United Fruit Company can get rich on our bananas? Our workers don't even have enough money for shoes, but all the bananas are going to the United States. So they said, what we're going to do is we're going to raise the price of bananas, And maybe we should think about reclaiming some of the land that the bananas are planted on. That president was overthrown and replaced with a military junta chosen by the CIA.

Why? Because there were three powerful members of the board of directors of the United Fruit Company, John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State, Alan Dulles, the director of the CIA, and President Eisenhower's secretary, brother. And so the United Fruit Company

never gave up its bananas, never gave up its land. This military dictatorship in Guatemala killed thousands of people just because the United Fruit Company wanted them to. And the rest goes down in infamy.

And I mean, to me, it's still kind of fucked up and weird that you know, we have a mall clothing company called Banana Republic. Full confession, I wear their clothes. And that's where the term Banana Republic came from. Yeah. Yeah, the early, I remember, I don't know if they were in other cities earlier,

but the first Banana Republic store in New York sort of harkens to that tradition. Back in the 80s, it had like all these displays of like, you know, jeeps and like all the mannequins had those safari hats and that kind of gear, that kind of, you know, hearkening, trying to romanticize the Banana Republic idea. It was a colonialist aesthetic, and obviously they don't do that anymore, not quite woke enough. I should point out, just for the sake of the chat, that Bill Buckley I'm talking about is CIA Station Chief William Buckley, not William F. Buckley, the conservative.

Right. Which is a very, very common mix-up. Very common. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Houdini says, didn't we send troops down there for that situation? Absolutely, yes. Over and over, as I recall. Oh, yes, we did.

Yeah. Do we want to talk about the shooting that took place a little while back here in Manhattan where the former football player came in to look to the NFL office, shot the wrong people, basically pulled. up walked inside, opened fire, killed four people. He claimed in his manifesto that he was suffering from CTE. Medical examiners just, this was very reminded to be a lot of the story of the Texas watchtower shooting, a clock tower shooting, right? Is it watchtower or clock tower? I don't know. Anyway, but back in the 60s, a guy went up to the Texas watchtower, shot a bunch of students

and other people on campus. And after he was killed, they found a statement where he said, please have my brain examined. I think that I'm hearing voices telling me to do things like this. I think I must have a tumor pushing on an important part of my brain. They did, and he did. And so now this guy said, I have CTE. It's fucking me up.

It's making me insane. That's why I'm doing this. Please investigate. And they just did. They confirmed that he had low-stage C. John, do you think football, I think football should be banned. Now, full transparency, I'm not a fan of football. So, but I don't know. I think hardcore contact sports like football and boxing, I think are too dangerous. I think they, there's, there's been so many injuries, so many people

get fucked up. The helmets aren't making enough of a difference. I think the sport should just be abolished. I am a diehard football fan, Pittsburgh Steelers all the way, but when you look at it with clear eyes, you're right. I mean, there's no upside to this. There's no cure. There's no treatment. And if CTE, with the technology that we have today and the redesign of football helmets that's supposed to prevent CTE and so far it appears to have done nothing, even even changes in the rules on on I they call it helmet to helmet contact or roughing the pass or whatever we haven't seen any improvement in CTE then yeah I think we're I think we're going to get to the point where we're going to have to have that conversation about football

just being too dangerous and I think we're going to move in that direction anyway I mean because the feeder system into it is going away I went I my kid went to a very small town public high school on Long Island, and they couldn't get enough recruits to form a full-fledged football team. They had to basically just have intramural team, which was shocking. You know, you have this big playing field and all that. But too many parents were just like, you can't have my kid for this. And so that's got to be happening all over the country, maybe not in Texas yet, but it's going to get there. You know, people are just like, no, you can't. can't bash my kids brains what about big boss bob ross makes it an important point here you don't

have to ban it just make flag football the standard form of play i like that i like that it's very entertaining it is it isn't and just as athletic yeah and you know what it's wrong with that's fine with me you know what it would do it would make for higher scoring games because it would be a lot more passing and a lot less running I remember as a kid being bored watching my father watch, you know, football when I would go and visit him. And I remember one time my father gave me a stopwatch. And so I was walking around timing everything. How long can I hold my breath underwater, you know, etc.

How long can I hold my breath? And I remember just thinking one time like, football, let's see, how much do they actually play? Well, the answer was they play about six seconds per minute. So they're 60 seconds in a minute. So they're walking around patting each other on the ass 90% of the time. I mean, it makes baseball look like a fast-moving sport. Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow.

Yeah, before that, I would say yes. Thumbs up. DFC 91 says, They read that helmets are designed for impact injuries so players don't bleed. CTE helmets would negate that, but bleeding injuries would be more common, and there would be in-gore. Is that true? Interesting. I hadn't heard that.

No, I've never heard that. I'm not saying it's not true. Oh, that's very interesting, though. Is it Rational? Says there's a lot of research about electrocranial stimulation. Some of it has potential, like the work on PTSD. That's also super interesting. Adam Poiter, the guy who named the sport, football, for sure, had CET.

It's true. There's almost like no kicking involved, right? Yeah, that's good. I mean, I guess you probably say the same. I bet rugby causes a lot of CTE. It must. I remember when I was living in, when I was living in Northern England, they were very, very, very proud of rugby.

And I said to my host father, I said, why rugby? What's the thrill about rugby? And he said, are you kidding, mate? It's one of the very few sports you can actually get killed while playing. That's true. That in football. But John, if we're going to talk about violence in sports, we've got to talk about Bushkashi. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You ever see Bushkashi? Yes, yes. I covered for Gear Magazine, if you remember them. Oh, I remember Gear Magazine. I covered the international championship of Bushkashi in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. It takes place every Navruz, which is the Spring, Persian Spring Festival, like March 21st, 22nd. And so in Dushanbe, at that weekend, they have Bushkashi players, come from all over the world.

They literally walk their horses from places like Chechnya and took Menistan all the way to Dushanbe. Are you kidding me? No, it's fucking insane. Is the head fresh or do they, they don't bring the head with them, do they? So what happens is, yeah, so, no, so the, so people, basically, they meet in Dushanbe, and there's, the year I went, there were over a thousand contestants. And basically, the way it works is that you, they're so, you cut out, you, you, you, you

decapitate a goat, you throw the, the headless carcass, you, oh, they soak it in, in salt water overnight, and they throw it into a field, and then basically you have to, it's, you're on horseback, and you have to reach down, grab the booze, which is goat, and, and drag it over a line. That's it, that's the entire, now the thing is, you're like, what's so exciting about this? So other people can try to stop you from getting across the line. and they can steal it from you. There are no rules at all in terms of how they can stop you. They can punch you in the face.

They can stab you with a knife. What is very common is standard, the whole game, they use their riding crops to whip each other across the eye to try to blind each other. You will see eyeballs pop out of people's faces if you watch this long enough. The line of ambulance is a sight to behold. The year before I went, it was muddy, so people were falling. 26 people died over the course of two days.

Oh, my God. It's a bloody fucking sport. And, I mean, Afghans are kind of known because sometimes they shoot each other. There's no rules. And so, in fact, I did talk to the head of the International Federation of Bushkashi. And I was interested in setting up a meeting to see if there was a way that, like, ESPN2 or something, would air it. I think it would be hugely popular in the United States. I bet it would.

I mean, it's also a very exciting sport. I mean, the horses sometimes go up into the crowd. Everybody has to part of the way that you might get trampled. Not everyone who dies is a participant, active participant. They wear old Soviet tank helmets. That's how they protect their heads. That's a dangerous sport, but it's awesome. Oh, my God.

It should be banned, of course. Yeah, I took a liking to Snooker, which bears no resemblance at all to Buscashi. Wait, what is Snooker? Oh, Snooker is, it's kind of a billiards game that's played on an enormous table, but it's all about the strategy of positioning the ball so that the other guys can't... It's the bigger table, yeah. I've seen that. Like, the Kong Kong guys play that.

Yeah, yeah. It's a thing that the Brits took with them to Hong Kong. Yeah, the Hong Kong guys who play it are sharp dudes. They always, they dress great. They carry themselves great. It's a sophisticated game. Huh. All right. Well, I guess, I guess are we, let's see, do we cover everything we wanted to cover? I think we did. Is there anything else you want to? No, I hope everybody has a great weekend. We'll be back on Monday. Five o'clock, Eastern Time. Don't forget to like, follow, and share the show. Thank you very much for your donations and your comments, as always.

And Tuesday, the show will be airing, but it will be pre-taped, but you will be able to get on the chat. You know, we interviewed Reality Winner. I think that's self-explanatory. It was a great interview over an hour, wide-ranging, very smart, so you don't want to miss that. But we'll be back live on Monday. And then on Wednesday, we'll have a change of time.

We're going into the 9 a.m. Eastern time. And so poor John has to be doing this at 6 in the morning. At least you know you'll be awake. That's true. All right. Thanks for watching Deep Program with Ted Rollin-John, Kirooku. We will see you later. Thank you.