DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - Fake Gays in the UK | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

Editorial cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM Eastern time. Today we discuss:• Immigration advisers in the UK are charging up to £7,000 to fake asylum claims for Pakistani and Bangladeshi nationals to pretend they are gay.• Senior diplomats from Lebanon and Israel met in Washington as their host, Marco Rubio, tried to reach a ceasefire. It was attended by Lebanon’s ambassador to the US, Nada Hamadeh Moawad, and her Israeli counterpart, Yechiel Leiter. Leiter said they had agreed on a long-term vision that there should be a “clearly delineated border between our countries.” Trump says leaders of the two nations will talk today; Lebanon denies that.• The U.S. launches an online portal next week that lets businesses request refunds for tariffs ruled illegal by the Supreme Court. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), will boot up CAPE, for Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries — so companies can submit claims for up to $175 billion. Customs is putting the burden on the importer. Customs is not figuring it out. • In September 2024, Amandla Thomas-Johnson was a Ph.D. candidate studying in the U.S. on a student visa when he briefly attended a pro-Palestinian protest. In April 2025, ICE sent Google an “administrative subpoena”—not issued by a judge—requesting his data. The next month, Google gave Thomas-Johnson's information to ICE without giving him the chance to challenge the request

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Match with a licensed therapist today at Talkspace.com. Save $80 with code space 80 at talkspace.com. Good morning. You're watching Deep Program with Ted Rawl and Jamaril Thomas. It's Thursday, April 16th. Good morning, Jamaral. What's going on, man? How are you doing this morning?

I'm doing pretty good. Looking forward to our guest. It's not every day that you talk about the ancient Canaanite God Ball with an expert on ancient religions. So joining us will be Dr. Daniel E. Fleming of NYU. He's a seriologist. Okay. So he sounds like a dumb dumb.

Yeah. Went to some school called Harvard, whatever. Anyway, he's joining us at 9.30. So 29 minutes from now, looking forward to that. Please like, follow and share the show. We will take your questions for Dr. Fleming, as well as for ourselves in the live feed on Rumble and on YouTube in the 9 o'clock hour

if you're watching live, if you're watching later on streaming. Thank you so very much. And there are ways to actually get us questions if you're watching in the streaming. And we'll talk about that a little bit later on with Robbie. He can walk you through that. Our lead story today, although probably not the most important, but a funny one, is that immigration advisors in the UK

are basically asking straight, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis to pass themselves off as gay in order to be able to get political asylum in Great Britain and it's working. It's a scam. Yeah, it's a crazy scam. The serious news of the story besides Bal is talk, there's ceasefire talks that seem to be going pretty well between Israel and Lebanon. So that's some good news, but leave it, but you know, will anything come of it? Probably not because no one's talking to Hezbollah. And, you know, they're one of the main combatants here. You might remember that the Supreme Court declared a lot of Trump's tariffs to be illegal. So the good news for businesses who got dinged to a total of $175 billion with a B dollars is that they can apply to get some of their money back.

The bad news is it's going to be complicated and the burden is on them. It's so governmental. And finally, Google has promised not to release any information to law enforcement officials or places like ICE without first notifying you so that you can fight that request. Well, it turns out they're breaking that promise. So you may very well be that your personal data is being turned over by Google to ICE and other fascist government agencies. So that's basically it. again, post your questions. Let's get to it. I always, Jamal, why don't you choose what we talk about first. We need to do Lebanon. Because I don't

think it's positive, personally. Because what you're dealing with effectively is a passive Lebanese government that hasn't fired a shot in anger at an Israeli aggression that has been taking place continuously, remorselessly, and extrably, taking over. over aspects of Lebanon to create greater Israel. And so what you're getting is a US government that is trying to use the Lebanese government to create a civil war scenario in Lebanon. And they've been doing this.

I mean, Tom Barrett, the envoy, I believe you see the Syrian envoy, Lebanese envoy. He was very explicit about it in an interview, basically saying this is what we were trying to do. And so it's not like, because two things are happening right now. One, the negotiations isish, between the U.S. and Iran, and Iran saying whatever we come up with is linked to any kind of deal that we come up with, meaning Lebanon's linked to us. These things cannot be disambiguated from one another. Now, are they telling the truth? Who knows? Right? You may get to a point where they toss Lebanon over the side with some kind of sweetness in negotiations.

By the same token, they may also be right. And if they are right, then the negotiations, then the negotiations. has taken place between Lebanon and the United States are pointless or Lebanon and Israel are irrelevant. Reality of it is, it's not like the Lebanese government is going to do anything that's going to contradict Israel, per se. By the same token, what is taking place in regards to Iran and those negotiations makes to proceed whatever takes place between Lebanon and Israel. It's interesting. Give me a take on it. I mean, is there anything you disagree with me? No, not at all. I agree with you. I mean, I kind of wonder what this is. all about, right? I mean, so if there was no such thing as Hezbollah and no such thing as Iran, this would all sound very hopeful. You know, you'd have, okay, well, you know, Israel and Lebanon,

its neighbor is not being both sides agree that they want a well-defined border between Israel and Lebanon. Of course, Lebanon isn't the issue here. This is the Israeli. Israelis cross that all the time, and basically they look like they're on the verge of annexing Lebanon all the way up to and maybe past the Latani River. And then the other, I mean, this reminds me a lot of the days after, the months after the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, when the U.S. decided to impose, let the Afghans meet for Aloia Jirga and choose their new post-Taliban government.

And all political parties were allowed to participate, except the Taliban, who had the biggest number of supporters in the country. That didn't work out great. And this is sort of like that. I mean, Hezbollah is the most potent political force in Lebanon. And they're backed by Iran. And they're more militant than ever, arguably, than they're now fully engaged as a combatant,

as a sort of distant ally of Iran. And so, you know, I don't know what the purpose of this is. One thing that Israel and Lebanon both say is that the two, both countries would like to, quote, unquote, expel Hezbollah. Well, I mean, that's like saying you're going to expel, I don't know, the Democratic Party from the United States. It's just too big. It's too many people.

I mean, and Hezbollah isn't just a political party, right? I mean, it's a cultural movement. They have schools, hospitals, clinics. You know, they are a government in the same way that Hamas is and was a government in Gaza. I mean, I guess the thing is, is this, what is the purpose of these negotiations? I mean, I know nothing will come of them, really. But what, but why are they, you know, I mean, presumably the powers that be feel that, like Rubio, they feel like something. There's a reason they're doing this.

I just came to figure out what it is. Well, I think part of it is that Iran made the point of saying Israel is part of these. parts of the conflict. They basically saying, look, there's no deal with us. We're not even going to negotiate with you as long as Israel is carrying out mass murder when an epic scale. I mean, they kill, they murder like 300 people in one day. I think it was like a couple of days ago. And so the U.S. can get nothing accomplished while this thing is taking place.

The problem is the government is not an honest reflection of the public, if that makes sense. because as you pointed out, a large part of the public supports Hezbollah in this case. It's a divided government in the most divided sense of the term government. But the U.S. has been pushing the government to go after Hezbollah, which is effectively a civil war. Right. And so it's like, you know, this government is not necessarily an honest reflection of Lebanon. In the most, in the clearest terms of the word, sisal word, everybody that are known on the ground in Lebanon point out, level of anger that's in the population itself.

There's a belief that Hezbollah may take it over. And there's even questions of why it hasn't up to this point. But the truth that a matter is, yeah, they're trying to get this the near of a deal done with full knowledge that Hezbollah is never going to go for this idea of giving up their weapons. Why would they? By the way, parenthetically, you know, the strength of Hezbollah and the fact that we're having this conversation and that they're still the dominant force in Lebanon. It serves as a potent reminder that you can't kill your way to a solution, the way

the Israelis and the Americans think. I mean, they had this breathtaking espionage success with the pager attacks against Hezbollah's leaders. It's just absolutely brutal. And in the long run, it just doesn't make any fucking difference. Yeah. I mean, you ended up killing kids. injuring random people, I mean, had nothing to do with Hezboa at all.

I mean, it's outrageous. But yeah, you can't kill you a way to a solution. I think it's that. So I guess, yeah, no, so, I mean, look, I think if I were the leaders of Hezbollah, I would be loath to take over the Lebanese government because then Lebanon faces Talibanization, right? Total isolation from the international community, delegitimization. I think it's useful to Hezbollah to have a Lebanese government that is not them.

And it's like they can sort of swim as fish through the ocean of the people, like in the words of Che Guevara, as opposed to needing to sort of have the window dressing of governance. And not to mention, you know, it's going to delegitimize them and make them less militant. and what's the purpose of a militant Islamist organization if you're not militant? You know, I mean, I think they might feel compelled to do that at some point, but I don't think it would be their first choice. What's wild to me is that the U.S. maintains a veneer of legitimacy at all.

Oh, God. True. That's mind-blowing to me. Like whatever people think of Hezbollah, the death talks. that the United States is inflicted on the globe is dramatically and radically higher than anything Hezbollah is that. And let's be honest, Hezbollah is a response. It's not like Hezbollah just came out of nowhere. It was a response to Israel's attacks on Lebanon with the idea that the Lebanese government wasn't necessarily doing this job in the fitting state. And so I understand. I feel you. I just

we'll see. We'll see what these negotiations come up with. And we'll see because there are a few unanswered questions, especially in the context of how fervent Iran is in, let's say, setting their objectives with the Middle East. Let's leave that there because we have a busy news day and we have the good Ball Professor coming on. Okay, so let's race through a few questions and we'll get to our next story. Sean Lewis, what do you guys think about the 10th scientists linked to the nuclear program that have turned up dead or are missing recently? Interesting. I don't know what to think about that. It was bizarre. They were saying a ton of nuclear scientists ended up dead.

Yeah, it's one of those stories. You know, I go into wait-in-see mode for things like this. Okay, so there's a question for the professor. We'll get to that later. Any questions you're all could get a Rumble channel and then just automatically join his show to deprogram as you do with the TMI show? Yes, there is. That's what we need. JT, offline, you need to coordinate with Robbie to take care of that. I will do, yeah. Yeah, Flaterina. What was with Hegset's repeated emphasis on how young our Navy decision makers are?

Is that supposed to be a threat or a brag? Wait, I don't remember this comment. I don't remember it either. Okay, so Hexuff made a comment about military leadership being young. Yeah, I think it's a brag. I mean, you know, he's a young guy. And, you know, I think it's this whole, like, we're young and we're virile. And we're not a bunch of old men who are afraid to fight wars.

Not like us guys. You know, like, it's a, it's a, it's a flex. Is that even a flex? I mean, that's not a positive. Well, I mean, it's neither negative or positive. I don't care if my political leadership is or military leadership is young or old. I just want them to be smart and effective. So, yeah, I don't think it makes any difference.

Man child, thanks for the dollar. Hey, fellows, is the U.S. the best arbiter of peace between Israel and Lebanon in this day and age? Well, J.T. kind of addressed that. Why did Lebanon demand a more neutral ground? Because Lebanon is not a neutral country. Like, look, man, look at some of the decisions that the leadership of Lebanese have made.

And look at what, meaning they often are diametrically opposed to Hesbila. Hezbollah has even put out comments saying, hey, we want the Lebanese government to work with us to push back the threat of Israel. And the Lebanese government won't do it. Right. Let's move to the gay story. We have to talk about it. Adam 2.

Wow, fake gays. Life is getting far more complicated to even attempt to understand these trends and new ideas. Which life always has disturbing, but it wasn't for the internet. we wouldn't have known. Yeah, and before that, the 24-7 news cycle also made things crazy. You used to, you know, I'm old enough to remember when the news was something you got out of a newspaper and the evening news at 6.30 p.m. And until 6.30 p.m., you didn't really know if anything was going on.

Right. So as long as an air rage siren hadn't gone off, you figured you're probably pretty much okay. Yeah, so let's talk about this story. Basically, there's these immigration fixers in the UK, and they're charging up to 7,000 pounds in order to process their Pakistani and Bangladeshi applicants for residency in the UK. And so they're applying for political asylum, and they're basically telling them the easiest way is to pretend that you're gay and will help you do that. They literally will even get a person to attest that they've had sex with you, almost sexual sexual sexual. with you. And so, and they said,

this is the best part. They said, nobody checks to see if you're gay, right? Like, if you claim that you're being, you know, you need political asylum because your politics are in opposition to say the Bangladeshi governments and that you're being oppressed, they'll check that or they'll

try to check that. They will, but, you know, if you're like, yeah, you know, I like other dudes and that's how it is. And they're like, oh, yeah, okay, I'm not looking into that. You know, I mean, it is kind of hilarious. Look, I'll tell a story.

So, Scott Stantis and I, I talked many times on DMZ about like the wokeification of the Pulitzer Prizes. And we have, you know, we noticed over the years in the last 10 years or so that basically they're very clear about like, oh, you know, we want to give as many of these as possible to people of color, people who historically just. advantage, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, the names are becoming more and more obscure than Scott and I as old white guns are like, you know, I'm saying, I think I need to come out as trans.

I think, you know, I don't have to do anything these days to be trans. I don't have to put on lipstick. I don't have to like cut off the paper. I can just sort of just say, I can be exactly the same person. I can just say like, oh, I'm Cedina now or whatever. I'm transitioning. And so, like, we're both convinced that if I did that, I would go up to the top of the pile at prize time because it would be like, oh, that's super interesting. He's transitioning.

And this kind of reminds me of that. I mean, then I, the only reason I haven't done it, I mean, I love the prank aspect of it because it deserves to be pranked. But it's sort of like insulting to real trans people, right? So I'm like, okay, I'm not going to like take the fist on that. God, it's funny. I don't know if you saw this weightlifter. That was this weightlifter who was, he was protesting this idea that people can just declare themselves trans. And he has full beard.

Right. Like, I saw this guy. Like pushing like, I'm like, what's trans about you? Nothing except the word trans. Yeah, he just comes out, I'm a woman from now. from here on that. And here's me bitch pressing 600 pounds. Oh shit. Here's me big breast and it's like what are you going to say to him? Right.

I know I'm not the only thing the person has to do is declare themselves trans. Yeah so it's like so this is kind of like that right. I mean and I also have someone who I'm close to who recently kind of like had a hard time getting into college. And so he he checked the trans box. And I'll never know if he got there because he checked that box. Again, they don't check, right? Imagine them saying,

so Bob Remian ass. Yes, Bob Remian ass. And you're just lying. Right. You put out, who's going to check with Bob? Right. How do you know Bob can exist? Right, right.

I mean, yeah, and it's kind of like, I mean, I don't even know what to make of it. I mean, in some, in one, sense, it exposes some of the silliness of, like, identity politics. Yes. Yes. In another sense, it also is, like, people kind of get getting in it. It's like, I don't know, it's like sitting in there.

It's corrupt. It's corrupt. It's like, yeah. It's sort of like, I remember, I broke my wrist a year ago. And I was in a cast. And so when I got on the plane, I realized, oh, I'm like that guy who gets to go early on board the flight. because I really do need the help because I could not get my luggage up onto the overhead, right, for during, for about three, four months.

And so I won on early. And I'm like thinking, you know, any asshole could just say, like, hey, I need to board early. I mean, I didn't as soon as I was better, I stopped doing that. But there was all these people who do that. It's like the emotional support pets that people have, you know, they don't want to pay for their cat or whatever to be $150 on the plane. And by the way, it shouldn't be $150. It's ridiculous. It's animals like the size of a lunchbox, right?

I mean, it sides under the sea. It's like, anyway, so they're like, oh, that's my emotional support kitty. And remember there was the emotional support peacock at LaGuardia? Because we just travel without that. Or I'm sorry, that may have been JFK. It was a magnificent peacock, I have to say. It would be my privilege to fly next to it. Right.

Right? Emotional support you got. I mean, look, man, the moment that in the Senate is created, that sin is created. Like, I mean, it is, it is, yes, it's corrupt. And yes, this idea that you kind of depend upon goodwill, like just an honest engagement with something. And so you don't necessarily abuse something. But let's be. Yeah, like on the train, on the train, I take the senior discount. You're supposed to be 65.

I'm 62. Fuck it. I'm taking it. Ask me for ID. Prove I'm not 65. Exactly. I guess that's my point, right? And instead of it's created, okay, somebody wants to get into the country.

Oh, hey, if you're gay, you can get in. Right. And then, of course, that prompts the question, right? Not begs the question, prompts the question. That, like, you know, what are the criteria that we're using to let people in? I mean, literally, joking aside, I mean, real asylum seekers, could literally be found out and killed because they were unable to get out

because, but meanwhile, if you were gay, even really gay, but you wouldn't have been killed. You know what I mean? Like a communist dissident in Bangladesh, and I know some people like that, literally, you know, they're in real jeopardy. And then, I mean, the whole, it's the system's fucked up. Yeah.

I mean, I guess they're looking at it as if you're in a Muslim country and you're gay or trans, you are at a higher risk for death. I guess that's the way to look at it. But as you point out, there are other people who are in a political sense, who are just as much, if not more, jeopardy. And it's like the criteria that they're effectively using

is very wokeish. That's a word. No, I feel you. Yeah. It's funny. It's corrupt. Rational act. If you can make it work.

Right. Yeah. And of course, I couldn't resist the, you know, any, any rhyming headline, you know, fake and gay in the UK. All right. Well, okay. So moving on here, because we do have, we do have, we do have a lot to cover here. Okay. Tariffs. You know, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, I'm not generally very sympathetic to business. However, in this particular, I'm going to make a, exception here. So Trump, of course, imposed massive tariffs at the beginning of last year. And it turns out the Supreme Court, you know, kind of did what we all knew the Supreme Court would do and say, like, the president can't unilaterally impose tariffs. And so there's certain classifications of tariffs that are worth a total of about $175 billion that the U.S. federal government has collected. So to acquiesce with...

with the Supreme Court ruling, and I will give them credit for this, Customs and Border Protection is opening up a web portal called CAPE, consolidated administration and processing of entries, catchy as always, so that businesses who had to pay these can apply for a refund. However, it's extremely complicated. The burden of proof is on the, and you know what this is also. This is, they know, They know that the vast majority of businesses will not apply. Right. And they'll get to keep the money. This is like, this is sort of like when business, remember you'd get like you'd buy something like 20 years ago, like at, you know, Home Depot.

And it would be like, oh, you know, you send in the coupon and you get the $20 rebate or whatever. And I was like, why don't they just fucking give you the $20 discount at the cash register? Because they know you're not going to do it. or they might send you like the debit card and they're even more sure most of those debit cards end up expiring sitting in people's you know in people's drawers because they don't really manage them or pay attention to them because it's extra work that's what this is it seems to me that the government knows exactly how much they got from every business and they should just turn it around and send it back without having to be asked for it.

Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, this is kind of like the voting thing, right? Like when they were doing the Voting Act stuff, and they would say, hey, man, well, the only thing you need is just to come down to get an ID, et cetera, et cetera. And it's like, okay, yeah, but there was no issue with it prior. And the only reason you're doing that is because you know there's going to be a percentage of people who just don't do it. And so you're able to basically get something for nothing. So in this case, you have the U.S. government, Trump doing something deeply illegal. It was understood illegal when Donald Trump was doing it.

And nobody said it- Exhibitably illegal. Yeah, you know what the Supreme Court had to do, or at least ideally what they were going to do, if they attended to any notion of law at all. And it's exactly what they did. And in this very specific case, Donald Trump who claimed that he had $17 trillion or $23 million

in tariffs or whatever the hell he was talking about, ends up being $173 billion. Not a small sum of money, certainly not a trillion dollars, right? The rub is that those businesses most likely increase the cost to us. Exactly. Where's your refund? Where's my refund? Yeah, what's my refund?

Like, you think of all the things that you bought over the course of time for those tariffs. And sure, you could say there might have been $200, $300. That's $300 that I would prefer to have in my bank account as opposed to not as a result of illegal policy. This is a windfall profit for the companies that manage. to extract their rebate from the government. Yes, because how much ever they increase? Let's say Amazon, do you remember Amazon put the thing on saying, the cost has been increased by this much because of the tariffs?

Yes, basically. Like, you're trying to make it clear. We call it Jeff Bezos and say, hey, Jeffie, you know, we need to, we need our money back. I don't think we're going to get very far with that. But now, you're absolutely right. The government knows that X number of people are not going to do this. Speaking of which, and then we'll bring in Dr. Fleming to talk about this, to talk about the Ball story. There is also news that the Trump administration quietly killed this initiative to try to make paying taxes easier.

So I'm a dual citizen of U.S. and France, right? So in the French tax, France is one of many countries that does everything they can to make tax, your income tax, a less heinous experience. So you receive a form that's pre-filled out. Like the government knows how much you earned, right? So they literally just have, they send it all out. And it's like, if you agree with this, sign it and send us what you owe the end. 99% of the time, it's exactly right. But if there's a modification, something they got wrong, then you put that in.

They were going to, there was a law that was an initiative afoot in the IRS to do the same thing here. But, you know, obviously H&R Block and all the other tax prep companies didn't want that. to happen, and Republicans in Congress didn't want it to happen because they want us to hate paying taxes. So it's this, I mean, it's the same sort of thing where, I mean, I think we need a constitutional amendment that the government should have to try to make life, make bureaucracy as simple as technologically possible for the American people and for businesses here. Great. I mean, but that requires public will. That's the rug. Right.

Like, it's what like, and a more functional and a more functioning political system. And a more functioning political system, unless the government is terrified of the population, then they don't look here. That needs to get consequences. Couldn't agree more. All right, shall we bring in Dr. Fleming? Let's go ahead and do that. Dr. Dan Fleming, thank you so much for joining us.

Daniel E. Fleming is the Edelman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at the Skirbald department at New York University, a leading biblical scholar and a Syriarch. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1990. He's taught at NYU after that. His research explores the Hebrew Bible in its ancient near-eastern context with special focus on second millennium Syria, including the sites of Marie and Imar. He's the author of several influential books on early collective governance, Imar rituals, and the interplay between Israel and its neighbors. And the reason we're bringing you in, Dr. Fleming, is to talk about something that is not usually in the news, the Canaanite, God, Baal. So, Bal, as I remember Baal from reading my Bible, he's kind of like, you know, Yahweh's competitor in the Old Testament, and like he's the other guy. And then, but he suddenly popped up in these Iran protests where the state, the pro-government protests have, have effigies of Baal, you know, adorned with stars of David and Trump and Jeffrey Epstein pictures. being burned and destroyed.

And they've turned up in these Lego Iran propaganda videos, conflating the Statue of Liberty with Baal. What do you make of all this? What are we to make it all right? What's going on? So you brought me in not as an expert in any of this new stuff. So I have no idea. But I mean, what I know about is the actual ancient stuff.

Great. Well, tell us that. Please tell us who is and was Baal. I mean, I'll try to bridge a little bit between the actual thing and what people seem to be doing with it, which is that, I mean, on one hand, the name Bail simply means Lord. And so it's a perfectly good title for God. It's a great title for a God in a world that had lots of them.

And so there are all sorts of gods who were called Val, in whatever, like, exact form. And so he's not a specific, so he's not necessarily a specific God. Yes, there's not one thing. That's right. So, I mean, there are gods going back, you know, a couple thousand years before the Bible that had that title. and the I mean there are two particular bad guys that ended up being potential competitors for the god of the Bible and the people of the Bible. One is just the local storm god who had names that varied from something like Hadu to Hadad, which is at Damascus. They would have called him that and he's the storm god.

And so he had a kind of special right to the title. of Baal. And so in the area around Israel, you know, before the Bible even was starting to be written, if you said Baal, the odds are you meant the storm god, who was a very powerful sort of young warrior god type in a world that had lots of gods. And then the other like bad guy that has the same title, but in a different related language, is that, the head god of Babylon, whose name was Marduk, was also called Bail in the actual pronunciation that's slightly different from BAL. And so when the people of Judah, Jerusalem was destroyed, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah came to an end, the Babylonian Empire took over and Babylonian

empire took over and Babylon became like the great bad guy. Then the title was attached to the lead god of Babylon. And so, but I I mean, it's a different God, but somehow, like, it's the question, like, which name they were thinking of when they used the title. But the one other piece of this, I suppose, is that, you know, the Bible is, like a library. And it's almost like Wikipedia or something. And they kept getting worked on. And so it's not as if it has one author and in one moment. And so in the Bible itself, there's a kind of process where when, when, you know, when, you're a little.

you want to say that the people of the bible have gone astray then you say well they've worshipped other gods and the leading god that or name of a god that they are supposed to worship is bail so okay so so that's where you get what's happening today right that if you go if people go to the bible and in this case like the the hebrew bible christian old testament um and they think like who is is the chief bad guy God, then that's the name that's at the top of the list. And was there anything? So the Canaanite version of this Storm God, what were the characteristics that were attributed to Ba'al? I mean, one of the funny things is there's a Psalm in the Bible, Psalm 29, that just it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's,

It's a hymn to Yahweh, the God of Israel. And it just says, like, how great Yahweh is, and Yahweh thunders, and the mountains shake, and the lightning bolts come down. And there are scholars who have said that this was originally a hymn to bail, the storm god, bail, and that pretty much you just substitute in the name Yahweh, and they've co-opted the storm god. So one way to say what the characteristics would be is to look at that song. I mean, it's a god of the storm who brings rain. When rain doesn't come, then he's responsible for drought and famine.

He's a young warrior type who's powerful. And then, of course, you know, it gets interesting when you're studying history of the religion of the Bible because the names of God in the Bible originate in more than one actual. deity. So what happens is that, like in particular, there's the personal name of Israel's God, which is given four Hebrew letters, which would be Y HWH usually pronounce Yahweh. But then there's the name that's usually just translated as God. And that actually originated in another God, who was kind of an older, like head of the group of God's boss God, sort of God. And so in this sort of scheme, the Canaanite storm god was the young warrior god underneath the sort of

senior judge-like god. So like Mars under Zeus kind of thing? Yeah, actually. Yeah, it works, right? I mean, because if you think like, where do we go for thinking about a world with multiple gods, then Reese and Rome are like at least one familiar place. But in the world around Israel and Judah, everybody thought that way. And so, I mean, what then is really interesting about the title. So this is, I don't know, what familiarity your listeners have with religion, but one of the kind of classic ways to read the proper name of God, Yahweh, in the Bible, if you're reading Hebrew, is Adonai.

And Adonai, actually, so Adon is equals Bail, like Baal. It is a synonym, a total full synonym. And the fascinating thing is that they were so determined to avoid using bail lord as a title that they said, okay, we'll use adon. Like that works because it's not tied to a competing God. So bad guy. He was competing with their god, not because ball was a bad guy, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. No, that's exactly right.

Like, there's no, you got it. Like, I mean, there's no world in which bail is a bad guy, like in their actual religion. But he was a competitor. So he's not, I mean, so like in contemporary Christian circles, he's often kind of viewed as like a demon, like Mollock. But that's not the origin. No, not by any means. So, yeah. I mean, what happens, of course, when you get, I mean, it's very interesting, it goes beyond, I studied more ancient things, but if you go into the period when Christianity was born in early Judaism, then, you know, what happens when everybody is used to a world with many gods, many powers? And you'd think, okay, monotheism, get rid of them all. But the answer is actually no, like they don't get rid of them all. Instead, they have angels and demons, you know, like Dan Brown.

And so what happens is you get like angels who are all the deities who are in heaven and are allowed to be kind of good guys, more or less, and work for God. But the origin of those is like the mass of gods. But then it's interesting that in that world you sort of then cut away then another set of gods, if you call it that. and you make them demons, like bad guys, and bail becomes that. But this is all, like, really, like, it's thousands of years after the origin of the title, and it's even hundreds of years after the use of the name. And there's nothing demonic about the name, even in the Bible, like it's, or the Hebrew Bible, the Jewish Bible.

What's the main, I mean, what's the main? What was the main impetus towards monotheism, as we understand it today, away from polytheism? I know. I mean, this is a whole sort of scholarly enterprise to try to figure it out. I'll give you a slightly unexpected answer, maybe, which is empire. And the reason I go there, I'm not the only one, is that it appears that real kind of centralization of divine power begins not just in Israel and Judah, but also in Babylonia and Assyria, which were the places of the first, like, really big empires in, you know, say the 700s, 600s BC.

And so it appears that it didn't occur to people to try to organize all divine power under one head, like as if it were in one grand, you know, Washington, BC office or something, until like you had all that federalization of actual human power. And it's more complicated, of course. So, I mean, so, yeah, I mean, so in a world of empire, right, which empires are basically small kingdoms, whatever,

that are cobbled together through conquest, usually. And so, and if you rule, if kings and emperors rule by divine right, doesn't necessarily follow that an emperor would want like the biggest Trumpian god of them all, as opposed to just the favor of a bunch of a whole hierarchy, like most Americans would be familiar with the Greek and ancient Greek and Roman gods. And there's different ways kind of to handle the existence of lots of gods. And I mean, sort of famously among, I don't know, at least that students have religion, there's a guy named Achanaten.

I don't know if you've ever heard the name. Like it's an Egyptian king from the 14th century BCE, the new kingdom when they were kind of at their strongest as a kingdom. And this guy decided, okay, like I'm getting rid of the worship of all other gods. And he focused on sunlight, like not the sun god even, but light as the only, but as the only, it's, sort of the disc of the sun, the light of the sun. Ra was the sun itself, like so, but what's interesting is that it, he wasn't doing it probably for empire building so much as to get rid of competing political powers, right? Like so, so one motivation for really centralizing down to one god is that you could have one temple and you, the king, could be the one who is

responsible for contact between humanity and the gods and you're the central of your people and your center of religious power and everything one thing about that method is that when you die it's over like that uh i mean it just evaporated after he died and the priests came back to power with their different temples um what happens in mesopotania where where actually there's a little bit of a one godizing uh i don't know current there as well is they thought great, like keep the temples open, let everybody worship what they want. Everybody's all in one system. But they're all under, like the big god on the top, who's the god especially associated with the empire.

And in some ways, like this was probably a more effective way to do it, sort of bring them all in under one big tent instead of trying to wipe them out. But of course, like this is what's fascinating about the Jewish people, that that in having lost their political independence, then one, like, central, crucial part of maintaining an identity that could somehow survive not having a political center was through religion. And so in a funny way, like the very lack of political power

became a kind of way to define a monotheism than was detached from political power and almost became greater than anything. Like the great, the brilliance of this solution is that you can lose every battle, you can be crushed, you can be, you know, scattered around the world. And you say, look, I mean, our God does what he wants. And he works in mysterious ways. But I mean, like, because if you tie your God to your political success,

then when you lose, then your God loses. That's so interesting. Professor, I know you said this Iran stuff's not your specialty, but I'm going to ask you to speculate. Why do you think, first of all, why do you think the Iranians focused on this Baal thing? And then, by the way, can you address this idea, this conspiracy theory on the internet that this outbuilding on Jeffrey Epstein's island is a temple of all? Just based on the architecture? So, I mean, you're actually. asking me to talk about two topics that I don't know anything about. Like so the Epstein thing I know

zero about, but I could tell you like what a an actual bail temple would have for architecture. I've never, you know, seen the thing that you're describing. Oh, okay. The Iranian thing is interesting. That in just in that presumably it's coming to them by way of the Quran and and, you know, Muslim religion. And this is way beyond my expertise. But in general, I mean, the, so the birth of Islam was a kind of intended course correction on Judaism and Christianity. And so there's an embrace in many ways of the scriptures of Judaism and Christianity, of for sure, the God of Judaism and Christianity with an attempt to kind of refine the character of that God to kind of take out any potential sort of complications.

And so what's interesting is that it appears that Iranian Muslims are taking the idea that bail is the chief antagonist to the real God from the Hebrew Bible. Interesting. I mean, and it's in a sense, like totally logical, right? like that it's um and i don't know it's like a god off and it's like it's it's it is a god off um professor we have a question some questions from our our viewers uh prasmatasis is asking um does your area of study include zoroastrianism or mithraism and could you speculate if mithraism and ball worship are two elements of modern freemasonry that's pretty funny um it's only funny to me because the first answer is no, like my area doesn't go to Zoroastrianism, but, and certainly not to

free masonry. But, but I mean, the, the thing I guess I'd say just as a starting point is that Zoroastrian religion is more or less like ancient Iranian religion, especially going back to the Persian Empire. And the reason it was such a big, a powerful thing is because the Persian empire was probably like the first really great empire like durable. I mean, the Assyrian Empire would have been the first, but the Persian Empire was so much bigger. And so Zoroastrian religion is really not anchored in even the ideas that generated bale worship. Like it's not tied in any way to the stream of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It's its own thing. It's, it's its own thing. And it's what stands out about it is that they have this idea that the powers, the great divine powers were really split between good and evil.

And sometimes people say that the influence on, say, early Judaism and Christianity toward breaking up divine power into good and evil as opposed to just them being out there responsible for everything in the world, that may have come from Zoroastrian thought, like a kind of influence. of it. But if so, like the actual notion that there were evil power, that there was evil power and darkness in Zoroastrian thought had nothing to do with Dale. That's that sort of mishmash, like of the two. Well, speaking of Connect, another question from Aryan Gordy 1220. As a Hindu myself, I wonder if a connection between some of the ancient religions like Christianity or another theology be have might have existed 10,000 years ago. There seemed to be many parallels to Hinduism. Yeah, I mean, at a certain point, like, what do we know about ancient religion?

Like, so for one, if you want names, if you want descriptions, like, if you have to have writing in texts, although, I mean, there's people excavate what are identified as temples, and then there's art and objects that seem to. suggest religion. And so if you're talking 10,000 years ago, year before writing, it's really hard to know how to make comparisons. But one thing that is true about South Asia is that they also start with a kind of baseline of lots of divine powers and, you know, a sort of simple society with a lot of the same building block ingredients. It wouldn't be so surprising. One of the things, when I'm teaching classes that have East Asian students,

you know, sort of China, Japan, Korea, is that in Western Asia, there's a centrality to watching out for the dead, considering your ancestors a continuing part of your family that is still more familiar to East Asian societies than, you know, to anybody else in some ways. And so this is not because there's some kind of direct influence of one side to the other, but they probably go back.

They're really, really ancient, just trends across Asia and that people tended to treat family as a thing that went backward and forward in time before and after your own existence. But overall, like I think there's no line of influence or something like that. And partly, I can't answer the person's question because we just don't know enough. But it's not surprising that there

would be a lot of things in common. Professor, really appreciate this. I found it fascinating. If nothing else, you've sold a book or two to me. I'm going to go online and buy one of your books. Thank you so much for joining us. I hope you'll come back. I'm sure.

If it's not Ball, it'll be some other ancient dating. I can tell you range wildly, widely. And Jamari, I don't know anything about you, but thanks for hanging around. like why would you want to hear all this so absolutely i mean i was fascinated by it i mean the religious thing is interesting in general especially in the context of how it deals with today's world well i'll sign off and let you get on thank you very much professor uh thanks for watching and uh we'll we'll be in touch thank you uh that was uh dr daniel e fleming he's the edelman professor of hebrew and judeic studies at the skirball in the skirball department at

YU. He's a leading biblical scholar and a serialologist. He has a PhD from Harvard from 1990, and he has a special focus on second millennium Syria. I don't know. I did find it fascinating. So the Bible is the first propaganda document. He's not going forward. Theism is tied to empire. That's cool. That is very interesting. I mean, that means that there's a correlation between the religious elements and political elements and it's kind of out there's true totally i've got to bring rabe on roby what do you think of all that um i don't know i mean no it was interesting i did not know that ball

was a title so that was something that new that i learned yeah i guess just all just comes down to to faith of what you believe right i mean i'm a nationalist christian and i believe what i believe i believe i believe that the Bible is the is the word of God is the perfect preserved word of God and it just comes down to faith at the end of the day totally yeah I mean the Bible says no there are no other gods beside me I am that I am and so if you believe that if have these other gods then that means either a they're false or B even worse they could be demons well that's that was always that that's for me where my faith fell apart as a teenage nature was when I realized when I read that there were other gods and other

and it's like well I was like all these people believed believed that there's Eru or Zeus or whoever that those were real and they were real to them so like how could it be that I you know I got it right and they got it wrong like what are the odds of that and that's what Sure. Well, that's where I don't, I mean, ultimately, I mean, that's the crust of it, right? And one thing, and I firmly believe this, like, the Roman and Greek gods are basically just the adaptations of the old Egyptian gods. I believe that they were real spiritual beings. I believe they were actual demons that they did works, that they did know they did things. They had agency. And they still exist today. They just work in different ways. I think that's one of the reasons. So what the professor, sorry, sorry, so sorry, I mean, but what the professor said also, I thought it was fascinating. I wanted your thoughts about this culturally. So Baal's not really a big deal to Muslims, right? So this is like we talked about how the Iran propaganda videos, the Lego videos and the other ones, those are a lot of it is the connection happens because the Iranians are talking to us in our language, toys, Legos, pop culture, disc tracks.

And Baal is part of that, right? Ball has resonance to anybody who's ever read the Old Testament in the United States. Or watch Target SG-1. Right. That's how I know. I know him as Stargate. So this is about Iranians using our language to connect with us through propaganda. And I would argue very effectively, compared to, for example, the Chinese videos, you know, with like the Persian-Cath.

and all that, which I love, but they make really no sense to me at all. I don't think they connect to Americans in the same way. The Iranians definitely did a better job, honestly. And one thing that I'm going to get this to the Mullahs in Iran for free. If you really want to take this up to the next level, lay off on ball and look at Rimfan, whose old name was Moloch, because the very first time that the word, Jew is ever used in the Bible is in first kings if I remember right and they were fighting the Jews. The Jews of Judea were fighting against Israel in Syria because Syria allied with Israel to attack

Judea, tried to conquer Jerusalem. That's the very first time that the word is used. And one of the recurring themes through this is that you pass your children through the fire. You pass your children through the fire in honor of your star god. Well, who's the star god? RIMFAM, the star of David, has nothing to do with David. It is the star of RIMFAM. So if the Iranians really want to tie this back in to how devilish religion,

Judaism is, that's all they got to do. Robbie, do we have time for an ad or not? We are like, we have another story to cover a couple of questions. We better skip it. All right. All right. Thanks, Robbie. Okay, so we want to talk, I want to talk about, well, so there's a student,

he's a dude, Amanda Thomas Johnson, there's a PhD, student studying in the U.S. back in September of 2024, he went to an anti-Israeli pro-Palestinian protest briefly. In April of 2025, in retaliation, I sent Google what they call an administrative subpoena, which is not a real subpoena. It's bullshit. It's just something, it's a piece of paper that they write out. A real subpoena is issued by a judge. This was not asking Google to send his personal information. Google 10 years ago said, we will never do turn over your data to the cops before first telling you the cops have asked for your data and giving you a chance to fight that with a lawyer or otherwise.

This time they didn't do that. They just turned it right over. How much should we care about that, I think we should care a big deal about it. I mean, well, two things. Google, whether you talk about Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, et cetera, et cetera, these are American companies. And in the context of American companies,

they're working hand-in-hand with the U.S. government. If you think I am being over the top on that, go back to a few years ago when Joe Biden was trying to create this kind of system of engaging these companies in order to get information on various Americans or, if that matter, shadow pan or block various Americans, depending on the content that they were putting out. We know that because they killed our network in general, but they were also going after these companies in order to either get information or get them to behave in a particular way. You should assume that if you're using one of these products, that you are effectively using something that is an extension of American imperialistic might in a propaganda sense. And so, yeah, I'm not shocked in the lease that a company that was shadow banning, blocking and passing off information to the Biden administration is doing the same thing under the Trump administration. That's too good to add to. I'm going to leave that there. And let's take these questions.

Manchild, that was fascinating. Is the bowel imagery a little too highbrow for us American goobers? Yes. Maybe, although ball is very, very cool looking and wild looking. It's bad. Thanks for the dollar. There's one truth and it has a thousand names. Stay true to yourself and don't let religion divide us.

Good, always a good idea. And Scott Coe, thanks for the fiber, Carlos Martinez would be a great guest to discuss Chinese socialism and their communist government. Okay, well, let's see if we can reach out. Really? What's the one truth? Oh, I don't know. It's like, you know, we have a minute and a half left, really? That's the truth. The truth is we have a minute and a half left.

100%. Oh, my God. Let's see. So, yeah, well, we do need to talk about. Okay. Adam 2, Bal, Boyam, and Jewish versus Israelis. Please decipher that for us. Are we all going for the Israelis and why? Thank you. Yeah, all non-Jews are doing. Right.

Was, let's see. There's a question. Oh, sorry, we didn't get this as Frasmataz. I apologize. I didn't see it while I was talking to the professor. Can you do the guest to do a quick mention on Shia Islam? Does have a Mithric and Zoroastrian element? Or was it simply to avoid taxation?

I would talk to him again. So maybe we'll get him back. if we could talk about these things. Anyway, thanks everyone for joining us, much appreciate you. Really appreciated that discussion about Val. We'll look out for Carlos Martinez, see what we can do there. Please like, follow, and share the show. The show always can use and appreciates your support.

Stay tuned for TMI show with Neil Chin and myself coming up right now. And there will be no DMZ America podcast today. to a death in Scott's family. We hope you're having a great day. Have a great Thursday. See tomorrow, Friday, 9 a.m. Eastern Time. Bye, Jamal. Have a good one, guys. Thanks. Bye.