DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - No Place for Mom | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss: • Poor staffing and conditions at American nursing homes is highlighted by an explosion that killed two people at a Bristol County PA facility that has repeatedly been cited for failure to comply with regulations. • Ukraine suggests a DMZ in the east. A 20-point US/Ukrainian plan includes NATO-style security guarantees and a road toward EU membership. Meanwhile, two Moscow cops are killed by a bomber near the site of the car bombing of a Russian general. • German lawmakers accuse far-right AfD lawmakers of spying for Russia. • Libyan general and 7 others die in a plane crash in Turkey.

Merry Christmas Eve. John, you're watching Deep Program with Ted Raul and John Kiriakou. Hi, Ted. It's Christmas Eve 2025, and happy Christmas to everyone. Lots to talk about, as always, a little housekeeping first. Please like, share, follow the show. if you feel like it and if you're able to. And we are much appreciating where it looks like we're hitting some good numbers.

We literally just overnight hit 10,000 subscribers on YouTube. So that's exciting. It seems like a benchmark worth celebrating. And we're going to be on not on the air. We're taking tomorrow off, although we do have a Christmas message for you tomorrow if you choose to tune in. and then, which we pre-recorded yesterday, and then we're going to have a live show, as usual, Friday, December 26th at 9 a.m. Eastern Time. So do tune in. Good way to break, good excuse to break away from the fam if you feel like it. And we will be here. It's going to be a two-hour call-in show. So the first hour is going to be the regular show. So I should say it's a two-hour slash call-in show, not a two-hour call-in show. The last hour will be call-in. So whatever happens, over the next day or two

we'll be discussing, and we will take your questions about anything and everything live on the air using the Discord server. Robbie will come on and explain how that all works a little bit later on in the show today and also on Friday morning. But that's the housekeeping, basically the big stories of today.

Among others, and anything that you guys want to talk about in the YouTube or the Rumble chat are the big apparent gas explosion at this nursing home northeast of Philadelphia. There's now a 20-point U.S.-Ukraine plan. Donald Trump would love to have everything in the bag by tomorrow. That doesn't seem very likely. But anyway, things are moving there.

We'll talk about the developments and what the Ukrainians have agreed to there. Also, German lawmakers are accusing their alternative for Deutschland colleagues of spying for Russia because they ask for a lot of detailed information about German defenses and so on. And finally, I'm glad that we're talking about this because it's the kind of thing that a lot of other shows are probably going to give short trip to, which is the death of this key Libyan general and seven other people, including crew, in this small plane crash in Turkey.

So, John, any preferences? Or should we just do some questions first? Yeah, let's just jump right into it. Let's jump into it. What would you like to talk about first? Well, first, is it rational? I asked if I got a haircut. I did not get a haircut.

I'm sorry to say that we got 11 inches of snow last night, which did something to the water, to the pipes, to the pumps. I don't know what the heck. And we have no water. So I was able to put together enough of a, a couple of droplets, make a half a cup of coffee. Thank God. And I decided that that was more important than taking a shower today.

Yeah, it's funny. I could ask sometimes if I have a haircut and, you know, when I haven't. And I don't know, my hair does transmogrifies and does strange things. Maybe it's an age thing. I never liked my hair. It's always been. I don't like my hair either. It's getting thinner and thinner and thinner.

I don't know. I've never liked my hair. It's always been like fly away. Right. Yeah. There was years ago, I had a review of my work in the New York Times, and it was kind of useless. You know, basically you're looking for like a great phrase or a sentence, like, you know, Ted Raul is the answer to, you know, everything, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, New York Times.

But, like, it was kind of like not written that way. And they said, at some point, they had mop-headed political cartoonist Ted Raul, like I was a member of the Beatles. And so my publisher was like, we, has a gag. on the back of the book, but mop-headed, New York Times. Anyway, we didn't do that. I kind of wish we had. I think it would have been funny. So, all right, yeah, what should we do first?

Nursing home, Ukraine? Let's do this nursing home. Okay, this is your neck of the wood, sort of. Yeah, sort of. You know, there's nothing you want more than your elderly parent to be safe and happy and, you know, warm and taken care of. And you go to all this trouble to put them in a nursing home that you find that if you can't take care of them yourself, that where there will be safe and taken care of. And then it blows up of all things.

So the fire chief of this took place in, I think it was Bristol, Pennsylvania, which is in Philadelphia, said, well, there was a gas leak and there was a this leak and that leak. And it was some kind of a problem with the piping and the place blew up. It was big enough for the governor to rush over there and make a statement. He said something that was a little bit scary. He said, at least two dead. These are old people, sick people. And, you know, this is going to be quite a shock to them that their home just blew up and killed two of their friends. But it goes to something deeper.

It's not the fact that it blew up. It's it's that we warehouse so many of our elderly in this cut. We don't take care of our parents. Ted, I know that you had a similar experience that I did where you're an only child, but you took care of your mom. And when my mom was sick and dying, my brother and sister and I actually fought over who got to take care of it. Oh, that's nice. Seriously. Good values.

Seriously. And what we ended up doing was my mom wanted to die in her own home. And so I would drive to Pennsylvania for a week, then my sister would fly in for a week, then my brother would fly in for a week. And then usually a fourth week, one of her sisters did it. And then we would repeat the whole thing all over again. But, you know, my ex-wife and I had an opair years and years ago. And part of the Opaire program was that they had to take a class, right?

Each semester that they were living with us, they had to take a class. And so they all took this English as a second language class at the Northern Virginia Community College. Well, our first Opaire was from Thailand. Her English wasn't very good. And I went to pick her up after class one day. And I said, what did you learn? And she said, our teacher told us that Americans treat their pets better than they treat their parents. And I said, you know what, that's true.

It is true. It's true. Yeah. Yeah. I have a lot of feelings about this terrible explosion. And it's not just about the explosion. It's about the way we treat our parents. Yeah.

And people could say, well, you know, gas leaks happen. Gas leaks happen in private homes and businesses. And that's true. But this particular facility, like many, many others, has been repeatedly cited for violating. safety and other regulations, coding, and everything. It recently came under new management. And so, I mean, the thing is, okay, so there's a, the dark secret with these places is

that they are really radically understaffed. Yes. When you walk, first of all, anyone can walk in and out of them. There's almost no security whatsoever. So if there ever was a desire to do a mass shooting, that'd be easy. But aside from that, there's no one, when you need some. someone and you know like if these weren't people who needed people they wouldn't be there right my mom spent her last year in a in a nursing home i had to put her there because she had Alzheimer's

and she kept and she broke her her hip so badly that it separated from her upper leg and so she kept getting up and like you know obviously her whole body would crumble right so i couldn't deal with that there was no way physically i could handle it even if i just just made this my full-time job. There was just no way. She needed 24-hour care. So, you know, she, it was expensive. I remember it was, I think, $8,000 a month in Ohio.

That came out of my pocket. Yeah. You know, it was not good. And it was, you know, they were nice enough, but they were not well paid. These were minimum wage workers. documentation, maybe yes, maybe no. And like in terms of the level of care, when something happened and you needed someone, there's just not around. And it's because they just don't have enough people. This is a massive for profit business. And I mean, Wall Street loves this

business because it's low cost, high income, and it's growing. And, you know, because of demographics. And so I've got it. My first thought when I heard about this story, was, you know, if there was more staff, someone's going to smell a gas leak and is going to call 911 and the firefighters are going to come out and figure it out and they're going to turn off the gas before this happens. I mean, I don't know about you, John. I've lived in apartment buildings where there were gas leaks. Oh my gosh, yes. FDNY came out right away. Yes. They turn off everything. They evacuate the building. I mean, that's a lot of what firefighters do. And so, you know, it's about notification. The firemen can't do their jobs if they're not told. And there's no one to tell

you. I mean, you can wander the halls of these places and not find a staffer. It's just, it's bleak. So, I mean, you know, I've ranted on, you know, in other fora and here, and I'll do it again. I think anything that is an essential service should be something that the government should be involved in directly. You know, taking care of the elderly is an essential service. Americans need it. It's not optional unless we're going to start putting them on ice flows and sending them off into the great beyond. So, you know, obviously you and I are, you know, we could be 15 to 20 years away from needing these services. I, when I was there, the facility with my mom in memory care, there was a dude who was 58 in there and his wife had just put him in there. I mean, you'd look at him. You're like, wait, you're not. 58 years old, but he had early onset Alzheimer's. And it's like, so the point is this shit can happen any time. You know, you get a stroke.

I mean, that just happened to a colleague of mine. He got a stroke. He's younger than me. He's like in his mid-50s. And, you know, I mean, I don't know if he'll ever be quite the same. I don't know if he'll ever be able to, you know, really take care of himself. So, yeah, it matters. I mean, it would be great if one of the two major political parties would quit

sucking the teat of the nursing home industry that's worth billions of dollars a year and start helping us take care of our parents and grandparents oh my god i couldn't agree more um in greece my first wife's um grandmother uh needed she all of her kids had immigrated to the united states so she was in this village of 600 people all by herself and so what they did was um for the for the winter months four months of winter she was in a nursing home in the the capital city of the island kios town and then the rest of the time she was home and so she the nursing homes are different there it's not like warehousing it's like all your pals from the neighborhood spend the winter there you eat together you hang out together It's like a dorm. It's like a dorm, right. Yeah, it could be fun.

Yeah, and then you go back to your house when the weather warms up. But it's just because there are no heat in some. Her house was built in the 1600s. It was made out of stone, and it was in the wall. It was in the wall that surrounds the village. That's cool. Protect themselves from the Turks. Yeah, and there's, you know, the animals live on the ground floor and the people live on the second floor, that kind of thing.

So the first floor was dirt. God, that's where I spent my first honeymoon. Oh, my God. Anyway, that's a different thing. I remember that story. Oh, it was bad. But it's different.

It's not like warehousing like it is here. Yeah, it's warehousing. In the nursing home and forget about it. And some nursing homes are nice if you have the money. And some nursing homes are, you know, state run. And you're just as likely to be beaten and robbed in there as you are to be taken care of. And it's, by the way, the taxpayers do end up paying for this. I mean, there's so many dirty secrets about this industry, and I'll just share one.

So, for example, let's just say you don't have, you're like, you know, you're listening and you're like, I don't have $8,000 a month. And it's like, well, don't you worry. Uncle Sam's got your back. So what they do is they say, okay, let's say, okay, you have $10,000 in savings. You can go into the nursing home, and Medicare will basically take. you will have to pay that first month, the $8,000, and then when you're down to $1,500 as your total net worth, in all of the entire world,

that's all you have left after an entire lifetime of work and savings, once you're down to $1,500, they call that the paydown level. Then Uncle Sam starts to pay, not you, so that you can have a decent life. They won't pay you so you could stay home or having a nursing tape. They pay a corporation to work. warehouse you. So that corporation wins no matter what. It's like they're getting the money either from you or they're getting it from Uncle Sam. They're doing great. And of course,

it's to their, you know, their profit incentive is to not really, to give you the bare minimum of care. And then, you know, and I have, I could go on and on about this, but it is a scandal. The French do it a lot better also. I mean, most of it. I'm glad we have an internationalist perspective on this show because we can sort of say, like there's a lot of things other countries do better than we do. This is one of them. And, you know, in France, my grandmother, she lived in public housing because her husband was a war hero in the resistance. So they paid for like everything for free, right? Like he never had to work after World War II, which was not so great because it encouraged his alcoholism. But the point is that she got, she was senile. And so

they sent, instead of having her warehouse, they sent a home care attendant to her house, house an increasingly number of hours as she needed it as she as she deteriorated but basically this lady kept her company brought friends over did her laundry cooked for her and guess what here's the here's the key part it's a lot cheaper to the french government to pay someone to do that and also you're provide it's a job right you're providing a job for someone so it's it's just like they do it better i mean there are people that you need to put into these facilities, but then there's, you know, a lot of times you don't need to. My dad had advanced Parkinson's disease. And I called him one day. I called my parents.

It's funny, we were just talking about this this morning. I called my parents every single day. Yeah, I was the same way. Every day. Just to say, well, I used to feel like my mom needed that. Like, yeah, I had to call like several times a day just to, so to keep her centered in her reality. So my dad had advanced Parkinson's. I called him one morning and he didn't answer the phone. And I thought, oh, that's odd. But okay, maybe he's in the shower. So I waited an hour and I called again and still no answer.

So I called my mom. She was a school teacher. And she knew I would never call her during the school day and, you know, interrupt her teaching. But she answered and she says, what's wrong? I said, I've called dad twice and he's not answering the phone. so she went to the office she said i have to rush home she got home he was on the floor of the kitchen he was not hurt but he had fallen down and because he had Parkinson's he couldn't get up so he was on the floor for four hours thinking well eventually somebody is going to you know notice

which is what happened so we hired a woman to come to the house Um, and she made his lunch and she, you know, helped him get to the bathroom and she played Monopoly with him and chess and they would sit and watch TV. And that's what he needed. He just needed somebody for eight hours just to sit there. I did one of those visiting angels things too, until before my mom fell. Um, you know, I was like, she wanted to die in her house too. And I wanted nothing more than that.

you know that that was you know if she hadn't I was just like don't fall don't fall yeah you know once you fall it's a real problem yeah yeah okay well yeah I mean it's a scandal and unfortunately it's not even recognized as such it's just reality it's not shame on us as a culture that we allow this to happen yeah yeah we it's not that we don't care it's that like it's our it's our rugged individualism that makes us take it all upon ourselves and think this is my problem to deal with with my family instead of thinking no this is a we all get old this is a societal problem obviously indeed i mean you know we're living in a fantasy here if we think this is just something we can like put sub behind closed doors and let you know wall street profit off up but

that's exactly what it is um few little things um thanks accident for the 100 Swedish croner um question for you from uh accident john do you have any tips on how to deal with a bit of loneliness when you're deployed overseas abroad over the holiday season. I have long struggled with depression. And Christmas is the worst day of the year for me. And so what I do is, and this is not the right solution for everybody. It is for me. I happen to be at my sister's house.

We're having an awesome time right now, except for the 11 inches of snow that fell overnight. but normally what I do is I buy myself something great that I can cook that day and I'll cook a special meal even if it's just for myself but frankly I pretend that it's a normal day it's not a special day so I do all the stuff that is fun for me and then I go for a very long walk and it's become kind of a tradition to go on this Christmas day walk you'd be surprised the stuff that's open on Christmas Day. I'm surprised. Chinese restaurants, always.

Chinese restaurants and movie theaters. Those are the go-toes for a lot of people. Yeah. But there I mean, there was a, there was a Pier 1 imports. Remember them? Oh, yeah. I miss Pier 1 for all of your wicker and exotic seashell needs.

Wicker and Rattan. Anything you need made out of wicker and ratan. And they were always open on Christmas, of all things. But I was always surprised at how many people were out just walking around on Christmas day. And so that always got me through it, you know, without, without sort of falling into that depression. Plenty of music, go out and treat yourself to a great Christmas, I mean, Chinese lunch and then cook yourself a great Christmas dinner, watch some TV, go to a movie, and you get right through it. Yeah.

Oh, God, I don't know what people with depression did without TV. I mean, I love, you know, we grew up with TV being considered, like, evil, like social media is today. But, man, I love living, I love living when TV is around. Yeah. Yeah. So we got a question here from, more like a several part question, from stressed telepath, appropriately enough. Thanks. I've been enjoying your show.

Appreciate you taking the time to do it. curious about your opinions about this. I think it's undeniable that a disproportionate, oh wait, sorry, let me, okay, it's undeniable that the murder of two American servicemen and a translator by a lone ISIS gunman is a brutal tragedy. However, a disproportionate response akin to when you compare it to Israel's bombing campaign in Gaza, which can be used by ISIS as a jihadist recruiting tool, oh, for sure. it doesn't seem like religious zealots are capable of anyway i i take the point this is that old

that quote that's always attributed misattributed to Stalin about like you know the death of one person is a tragedy the death of a million people is is a statistic right but i don't know who we i think we really know who said that but no it wasn't Stalin but it is great quote it was not it was not Stalin, although everybody says it was. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a legitimate fear. Sure. Because we have to be, you know, Joe tough guy on the block. And we have to use the iron fist. And they kill two American servicemen and a translator. And then we're going to go out and kill 50 or 60 people, which I think we already have done. I don't think it was 50 or 60. I think it was a dozen or so. We bombed a whole bunch of different sites associated with ISIS. sites associated with ISIS

associated with yeah meaning some shack where some militant happens to be staying you know maybe maybe or maybe not yeah it's that it's well I mean it totally plays into their hands I mean whenever I hear about these

these strikes I always think about this story my grandfather told me so during in occupied France during World War II the Nazis the you know when the resistance got active starting in like 1941 The Nazi occupation authorities established a new rule. They put posters all over France and said,

if any German soldier is killed by the resistance, we will execute 50 French civilians. If any American, any German officer is killed, we'll kill 100. So the, so, you know, his cell got together. And they were all like, oh, fuck, what are we going to do? And my grandfather goes, this is it. They fucking played into our hands. Now we ratchet it up.

Now we kill more Germans. It's going to get all the fence sitters and the moderates off the fence. They're going to get serious about joining the resistance. They're going to hate the Germans more. There's not going to be any love for Pétain anymore. This is like, yay. And I always thought, God, like, so cynical, but so true. So true.

So true. And that's what the Germans did in Greece. I mean, we have these very solemn days of recognition where, you know, we recognize the massacre of Calavrit. that, for example, or the massacre of this place, the massacre of that place where, you know, during the Second World War, one German soldier was killed or one German major was killed. And so they took all 150 men and boys from the village and murdered them inside the church and then set the church on fire. Oh, yeah, that's like France.

They did that shit all over Europe, of course. We love that setting the church on fire thing. Yeah, they do. They burned a lot of churches. There's a famous massacre in southwestern France in Oradul, Sil Gran, which is the name where they They destroyed the entire, they killed the entire population of the village, 642 people. And they put them inside a church and set it on fire. And I think one person escaped, like basically got out through the roof and then rolled

off the roof and then managed to escape into a field. But my cousin, Mike, who just died, he's my dad's first cousin, lived in Silver Spring, Maryland for more than half a century. It's funny. He was my dad's cousin, first cousin, and his wife was my mom's first cousin. So we were related on both sides of our family. But anyway, Mike would proudly show me whenever I would ask when I was a little kid, the bullet wound scar from when the Germans shot him in Rhodes in 1944. There was a German soldier stealing water. of out of the family well and Mike was you know whatever he was 16 I guess and he was like hey that's our water you can't steal our water and it's dry in Greece that water is precious and the Nazi just pulled out of gun and shot him right through the stomach and he lived to tell the tale well who sewed it up do you know I don't because I mean I remember meeting guys in

Afghanistan who had like crazy bullet wounds and like basically it was like their buddy did it like field medicine. Yeah, with needle and thread. Exactly. Yeah. You can imagine. I wrote a piece years ago about my grandmother. My dad and his sister inherited from my grandmother two important pieces of property on the island

of roads. One was direct beachfront. And the other was a farm of about, a little farmette of about five acres above the village going up the mountain. And he sold that. And my dad and his sister sold them to another cousin in Rhodes. But the way we got that land was that my great-grandfather was the chauffeur in a horse and buggy. Was the chauffeur for a wealthy Greek Jewish man.

And when the Nazis arrived, he begged my great-grandparents to hide him. Of the 2,000 Rhodian Jews that were taken from what is now called the Skye. of the Jewish martyrs in the old city of Rhodes, 14 survived the war. They were all sent to Auschwitz, all of them. Two thousand of them, 14 survived the war. My great-grandparents kept him hidden in their two-bedroom house down on the beach through the entire Nazi occupation, which was three and a half years. And if they'd ever been caught, they would have been killed. Everybody in the family would have been executed. Yeah. And so when the war ended, he gave my grandmother

these pieces of property that were in our family until 1991. That's amazing. I'm very proud of my great money. That's like heart of money. That's beautiful. I'm very proud of them. You should be.

John, so this is from Venkatesh. Thoughts on R.A.W. Indian intelligence. Apologies for recent bitter experience with India and Pakistan. Hilarious. And by the way, also, thanks for Blindbar for the donation, much appreciated, and also, okay, we'll talk about that later. Anyway, go ahead.

I never worked with Indian intelligence. I never had reason to. I will say that I went to India three times while I was with the CIA. And the Indians were just asses to me. Just because it's their, I mean, we talked about this early in the week or the last week, whenever it was. Indians just dislike each other. They go through life just in the state of bitterness about who's better than whom and who's from a higher caste than the other.

I would imagine that it's higher caste people in Indian intelligence, no? It has to be. Yeah, it has to be. But I never needed to work with them. All right. Well, that's, and by the way, thank you very much for the, let's see. Oh, thanks for the tips for the 100. extra croner for accidents is thanking us um so thanks for the 20 bucks we have to thank mt 16 and 7 for

a hundred dollars oh shit happy christmas to you that is mike and nodding and thank you mike that's very generous thank you very much for that much appreciated uh good morning and happy holidays guys from soden john i was always intrigued by the death and career of william uh coby i think it's cold colby yeah colby uh and his death do you think his death with an accident what was your take on and what did you hear around the water cooler? I actually don't think his death was an accident. I think he was assassinated. Wow.

He was fishing in a boat. And, you know, let me look up the details. So I don't sound like an idiot. So here's Colby. Colby was very, very controversial because he was the DCI, the director of Central Intelligence during the church committee hearings.

And for example, when Senator Church ordered him to preserve to preserve all of the MK Ultra documents, he literally went back to headquarters

and ordered that all the documents be destroyed. He was charged with contempt of Congress. He was convicted. He was find something like 150 bucks or whatever it was and um not even a slap on the wrist no and members of the senior intelligence service all donated money and and made raised many times the 150 and paid his fine for him so in 1996 it says here april 27th 1996 colby set out from his weekend home in rock point maryland on a solo canoe trip his canoe was found the following day on a sandbar in the

Comico River, a tributary of the Potomac from about a quarter of a mile from his home. On May 6th, Colby's body was found in a marshy riverbank lying face down, not far from where his canoe was found. After an autopsy, Maryland's chief medical examiner ruled his death to be accidental. The report said that Colby was predisposed to having a heart attack or stroke from severe calcified atherosclerosis and that Colby likely suffered a complication of the atherosclerosis, which precipitated him into the cold water in a debilitated state, and he succumbed to the effects of hypothermia and drown. Maybe.

It's killing me right now. There's some spy movie that came out like maybe 15 years ago that has an allusion to that, where the dude, the corrupt DCI is found like dead in a canoe in the countryside somewhere. Well, I'll tell you, in 2011, I remember this coming out. Colby's son came out with a documentary called The Man Nobody Knew. And he says that his father felt so guilty for the crimes that he committed as the director of CIA that he committed suicide and that he threw himself into the water. And maybe the church committee would have helped him see, put, you know, basically confront his guilt, you know, whether he wanted to or not. Sean thanks for the money

we appreciate you too as well and thank you very much for your kind words so let's see let's talk about since you mentioned a suspicious death let's talk about the death of this Libyan general in Turkey so you know whenever

someone like Paul Wellstone or or someone like that dies in a small plane crash you know you kind of go into two different places one is like small planes be falling out of the sky that does happen yeah on the other hand uh you know it's it's also true that this is very convenient for certain people in this case i would say this general his reputation was that he was trying to unify reunify basically stitched Libya back together again it's got like

three or four governments it's a it's a failed state it's uh the east is basically controlled by radical jihadis the west is basically controlled but by the rump of the successor, central government of what used to be the Qaddafi government, sort of. I'm being giving very rough sketches. And so he's on this plane trip. The plane goes down. He's the notable guy. It's certainly very convenient for those who have an interest in seeing Libya remain in its current state.

On the other hand, small planes fall out of the sky. And of course, it happened on Turkish territory. I mean, I know we don't know what happened here, but, you know, what are your thoughts on this, John? You know, quibono, right? So who benefits the most from this? I'm saying this tongue and cheek, but in all seriousness, the Greeks benefit the most because this guy was the driving force in in the rump libyan states very very close relations with turkey and it was all about the natural gas that is off the coast of cyprus and so the the turks declared a 200 mile economic zone and the libyans declared a 200 mile economic zone which allows them to take as much of the gas as they want nobody recognizes this except those two countries the greeks benefit the egyptians benefit

because they hated this guy. The Israelis benefit because it throws the whole Turkish-Libian anti-Israel gas exploration thing into question. So I think there are a lot of countries and a lot of people who are very happy today that this plane went down

and killed not only him, but six of his top aides. And now the Turks are back to square one when it comes to the gas exploration. Libya stays in its current state for the foreseeable few. That's right. I think there are a lot of people very happy about this. Yeah, no doubt. Glasses are clinking in the corridors of power. DJ 928, thanks for the money. John, do you remember there

was a secret Chinese police station in New York last year? I would take issue with calling it a police station, but a facility, let's say. How common do you think that may be with other countries on U.S. soil or even black sites? I think that it's common for countries like Russia, for example. Well, we know for 100% fact that it's common for the Russians. The Chinese have been doing it for at least 20 years, maybe longer than 20 years. The Israelis absolutely positively are doing it. But you know, there's a danger there in that these people, if caught, would be considered non-official cover. They would be considered knock officers, which means they have zero diplomatic immunity.

Right. And they can be prosecuted to the. the fullest extent. So the Chinese, the Chinese were taking a real risk because not only were they non-official, but they were going out threatening people. Yeah. You know? And of course you're going to get caught. Somebody is going to go to the authorities. They're going to go in the middle of a major city. In the middle of a major city in in Chinatown of all places. By the way, the Taiwanese do this too. Oh, that doesn't surprise me at all. Yeah. Yeah. So there's kind of like it's kind of like the shadow wars that happen on, you know, we think of, I mean, it's surprising to Americans to think

that it happens on American soil, but it does. I remember back in the 80s, my, my, my father-in-law told me about this story, but some, one of his Taiwanese independence activist friends living in Colorado, I looked this up, I verified it. He was, he was a pro-DP guy. He got captured by basically a KMT assassin, came to Colorado. Oh my God. And killed him and chopped his body into little pieces and left all the bits and pieces on his front lawn. Oh, my God. That's encore. I know.

I was like, that's like Afghan style. Yeah. You know, the Indians do it too in Canada. There's no evidence that they do it here in the United States, but they do it in Canada where they'll have, you know, these Indians just like running an Indian restaurant and then doing hits on Sikhs after hours. Yeah. Yeah, there was that whole.

Yeah, there's that crazy. that Canada was up in arms over this shit like a couple of years ago. They considered breaking diplomatic relations with the Indians. The Indians are murderous when they're overseas. They're perfectly happy just to go fly around the world and do hits. Yeah. Yeah. We don't spend a lot of time thinking of India as a like a super now, a power or anything

like that, but they think of themselves as one. You know, I'll add a little secret here. And I know I'm going to take shit for it later, but I don't care. I'm saying it anyway. in the seven years I worked at Sputnik the only time Moscow ever called my boss to slap me down was when I said what I just said that the Indians going around the world and killing political opponents which they do especially in Canada it's well documented

and they were like you can't criticize India we have good relations with India and I said my contract says I can I can criticize anybody I want And so the whole kerfuffle just lasted a day and then it went away. That's funny. So, okay, so let's see. Some comments. What's our interest in the Ukraine war? We can segue to Ukraine.

What's in it for us being that Ukraine is not a NATO country and not really an ally? Is it rare earth minerals? That's part of it. But for me, John, I think this is really just an opportunity. It's Cold War 2.0. It's an opportunity to fuck with the Russians. It's like right on their border. It's the same. It's as if the Chinese or the Russians had the opportunity to corrupt Mexico or Canada and turn them against us.

It's disruption. It's about that. It's about like, hey, this will fuck with them. It's like Brzynski and fucking with the Russians in Afghanistan, right? I mean, is there anything more to it than that, really? I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. And see, this is where I fear the next Democratic president because the Democrats just as a matter of party policy now don't want to improve relations with Russia. No. And the Russians don't care one way or the other because they're they've made it all up by. They're okay. Yeah, they're okay because they've they've so vastly improved their own relations with China and India that it doesn't really matter for them.

They've turned east rather than west. So I guess while we're talking about this, shall we touch upon this, the latest in the Russia-Ukraine negotiations. So it's so funny. The U.S., basically, now there's a result, the 20-point plan, which is not the result of Russia involved in this at all.

This is the negotiations between the U.S. and Ukraine. And so anyway, among the highlights of this are a road toward EU membership. Talk about pushing on an open door. Putin has said for years he's totally cool with Ukraine joining the EU. In fact, it probably would benefit Russia to have an EU trading partner right on their border. There would be NATO-style security guarantees, which the Russians may or may not be okay with. And then the real news here is that the UKEs have agreed to create a DMZ.

The exact details are not 100% clear, but not only in obviously the area. that are occupied by Russia, but including in the eastern part of rump Ukraine, basically the lines would be, as you and I have talked about forever. The lines are going to be frozen, you know, wherever, when the combat ceases, that will be like the equivalent of a Pakistan-India line of control. There it will sit. And then, but whatever is, you know, the remaining 80% or so of Ukraine, that's still under Kyiv's control,

the eastern part of that would be a DMZ, which, again, you and I have talked about how that would be a likely outcome. I think Russia probably will be okay with that. What do you think? Yeah, I think so too. The truth is, eventually there's going to be a deal. Eventually, there has to be a deal because the Russians are winning the war. And so the Ukrainians have a real necessity for some sort of negotiated settlement. we all knew we've all been saying since the day russian troops crossed the border that the deal would have to include some sort of territorial concession so after all these deaths after all these months here we are at the point of territorial concession you know john this we're so we we don't we are not smarter than than the ancients right like like the hittites and the assyrians and those ancient people they got tired of this kind of bloodshed and like at a certain point there's at a least, there's several incidents in which they decided, okay, what we're going to do is instead

of all having the battle, what we're going to do is we're going to line up in the field of battle as if we were going to do the battle. And then we have auditors from both side, count the number of weapons, count the number of men, look at the terrain and say, oh, you know, okay, so the Hittites would have won this one. Okay, all right. So you Assyrians, you give the Hittites this town and we all go home and no one dies. That's, you know, and there are countless examples of this in the Bible, right? I mean, this is even in the Bible, they're smarter than we are. They were smarter than we are. Thanks for the Christmas greetings, $50 from Lorraine Frost. And I'm sure Robbie shares your Christmas wish. Tariq, Ted, it's a socioeconomic issue, but do you believe it's also a cultural

issue in Western countries regarding taking care of elderly parents? 100%. Yeah, we have this whole, like, I mean, even the idea that, like, our kids turn 18 or 21, and then they're on their own, my father gave my step-sister, you know, what was her 18th birthday gift? He gave her luggage, you know, like, like, basically, like, go, fly free. I mean, basically, we, you know, the multi-generational thing is just not a thing in the United States. You know, the Waltons is dead. And it's like, it's cultural. Like, we feel that we, we don't have to have any ties to our families. It's really toxic and foul. I mean, I'm so against it. I would love to live in a house with like four generations and in a compound where we all take care of great-grandi and

the great-grandkids are born. I'd be like, I love that. You know, in Greece, and this is very much a cultural thing, Greeks build multi-generational homes. Like, they'll build, they'll buy a small piece of land and they'll build a four-unit apartment building. So the parents are on the top floor and the kids, when they get married, they have kids their own, whatever, they have the three apartments underneath. You see that absolutely all over the country, including in Athens. When I first moved to Athens in, what was it, 1998, I stayed in an apartment building for the first three or four months. And we were the only non-family members who were in the, in the apartment building. So the owners, the old folks were up at the top, their kids had the other floors,

and then we had one. We have an ad, I think, huh? Yeah. Yeah, I think, oh, we have an ad? Okay. Is it, okay, so Robbie, whenever you want to put that up, let me know. M.T. 16, again, thank you, John already thank you for the hundred bucks, but could I send you some blue chew. I had to look up what that is. Did you know? It's ED medications. I did not know. And John, how much do you love gold? L.O.L. It goes to go to john lovesgold.com. That's john lovesgold.com for your free booklet. Do you have gold in your IRA? Actually, I'm not against owning gold as part of your investment portfolio at all. I think it's not a bad part of the mix. But anyway, here we go. Still haven't tried 1775 coffee. Now it's your shot.

The 1775 starter kit just dropped. Only a thousand units. You're getting the bold, dark roast. It hits hard. The smooth medium roast and the vitality mushroom coffee for clean energy and laser focus. No crash. All single origin, small batch, toxin free and mold free. Plus, you're also getting a gold spoon clip because freedom isn't scooped with plastic. A fraud, they're strong enough to stir up your coffee and your mother-in-law's opinions and a black 1775 tumbler. bucks worth of coffee and gear. You're for 99. This is for the ones you've been watching 1775 blow up on Rumble. Wondering if it's actually worth it. Spoiler, it is. Robbie drinks it and likes it. Go to 1775coffee.com slash studio and grab your starter kit before they're gone. Bold

means, clean fuel and a morning routine that stands for something, just like Rumble does. Okay, a few more comments to hit and then go back to the, um, thanks for the five bucks to Rieke. Um, to thank grateful for you. We are all in the show. I get more informed and gain perspective of every show. Can't get enough of Ted's East Asia anecdotes, Central Asia. Merry, Merry Christmas to all celebrating. John, what do you think the future is of Greece? That's a very ordinary question by 2030. Oh, yeah, that's on the one hand, I'm optimistic in that they really, really have pulled out of the economic collapse of 2008 to, you know, 2000. Yeah, they're no longer one of the pigs, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain. So they've pulled out of that. The Prime Minister

Konstantin Mitsotakis, while conservative, has just worked miracles economically. They've even digitized, computerized the land registry, which is just going to change life in Greece. Taxes are a little too high compared to other European Union countries. Those have to come down. But But the real problem that Greece faces is one of population shrinkage, not population growth. There's been a just devastating brain drain with educated Greeks. I know a lot of them. Educated Greeks going to the UK, the U.S., Canada, Australia, Germany, even Turkey. 1,500 Greek doctors over the last 10 years have emigrated.

to Turkey in search of how do you're treated there do you think it's like it's okay it doesn't matter or do you think they get you know discriminated against uh no i'm i'm told that it's been okay i'm told that it's greek americans that um that keep these conflicts going who knows i could see that you know i mean i will admit that it's sort of like israel and it's sort of like uh israel and palestine before two thousand you know you could see them you know they went into business together They knew it. They were friends with each other. Yeah.

They're so similar. They eat the same food. I mean, you know. Yeah, it's true. So if they can bring, if they can lure Greeks, educated Greeks back to the country, I think things are going to go very, very well. Pest and Menace 2020, thank you so much for gifting subscriptions to the show. Much appreciated.

and let's see I add one thing long time listener just just wrote Greece is becoming an Airbnb for rich tech bro remote workers that is true and that's also a problem there was an article in

Gatimani which is like the New York Times of Greece just a couple of days ago saying that in Athens Greeks are buying almost none of the real estate the good real estate it's all being bought by

Israelis, Russians, Chinese, and they make all of it Airbnb, which then prices Greeks out of the rental market. Well, that's happening globally, right? I mean, there's in the 10022 zip code, which is the lower, upper east side of Manhattan, and I know that sounds like a conflict, but basically, if you just think of some of the richest, like, Fifth Madison Park Avenue in like the 50s and 60s and 70s, that's that zip code, it's astonishing. It's basically luxury blight.

The vast majority of these units in those neighborhoods are empty being warehoused by foreign investors, Israelis, Russians, Saudis, people like that. And no one really lives there. I mean, it's kind of like hard for a business, like a dry cleaner or a hardware store or a deli to keep going there. Even, you know, a fancy boutique can't really make it because there's really kind of like no foot traffic. Yeah. It's bizarre. I've got to ask you about this alternative for Deutsche Land, AFD. Oh, yeah. They've been winning some elections there in Germany. There's a bunch of far-right lawmakers. And basically, the long and the short of it is that the centrists in particular, not really the lefties, but the centrists are accusing the AFD guys of asking for too many questions.

Basically, they have the prerogative. They have the right to say, listen, can you tell us about this and that, about our defense, tell us about our drone capabilities, tell us where exactly are our facilities, what are they doing, what are the strategies, what are the tactics, and they ask the Ministry of Defense for all this stuff. And so it's a roused suspicion on the part of the centrists, whether it may be legit or not, that like, why are you asking all these detailed questions? And of course, me, I'm thinking, wow, wouldn't it be nice to have lawmakers who actually, like, did their homework and wanted to know the details of their jobs, unlike ours who, you know, signed the USA Patriot Act without ever even having read it.

But, but anyways, so there's no evidence to be clear here whatsoever that any member of the AFD is spying for Russia. But the accusations are you must be, you're giving this and you're asking these questions because you're going to download this to your Kremlin cronies. you um thoughts yeah i think that this is this is just what we face today anytime somebody doesn't like your politics and listen i hate the politics of the afd i really do i think it's a new nazi organization but but it's so easy just to point the finger at your political opponents and say russian agent i mean you and i get that all the time all the russian agent it's like no or asset which, you know, I wrote an op-bed one time when Hillary Clinton called Tulsi Gabbard a Russian asset.

The word asset has a very specific meaning in intelligence. It means you have been formally recruited and by a foreign intelligence service and you have agreed to accept money for information. That's treason. It's treason. It pisses me off. It's a death penalty offense. You and I both know what litigation is like, but it pisses me off that Tulsi Gabbard didn't. do the right thing and sue Hillary Clinton for libel. She should have sued and that's what I said

in the op-ed. Tulsi Gabbard had been defamed and she was filed a lawsuit. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I get why you don't. You know, it's a pain in the ass. It becomes your life. You know, it's like you're just like being asked the same fucking question thousands and thousands of times. I sued Louise Minch and, uh, and she settled as fast as she possibly could for the same reason. She called me a Russian asset and said that I was, I had been convicted of espionage and treason. And she was throwing out all these red meat words. And man, I sued her so fast, she didn't know what happened. And then she's begging my attorney.

But what's good here is when you sued her, right, she had competence counsel. So her lawyer advised her appropriately to do the right thing and come out of the boxhole with her hands up. That is right. Your biggest problem as a plaintiff, if you have a great case, is if your defendant is represented by assholes and fools. And they're like, we can fight this or they're just trying to get the hourly billables. And they just, and so they keep feeding a line of shit to their client. And there you are, you both are bleeding out financially and in terms of your time and your energy for nothing, for something that could have been resolved quickly. That's right.

It's not talked about a lot. I mean, I always want my opponent to be well-advised, you know, in any kind of legal battle. I do not want them to have a stupid lawyer because that's the worst. Merry Christmas to you, too. Sean, Pat, thanks for the $20. Greece is becoming an Airbnb for Rich Tech Bros. It says, long-time listener, sounds like we're number eight on Rumble. Thanks, everybody.

Oh, great. And let's see. A long-time listener also says Trump calls those Democrats treasonous and the liberals freak out. HRC calls Tulsi treasonous and the liberals run with it. Yeah, that's true.

Exactly. Well, because Tulsi was not a member of a protected class. I have this whole thing. I wrote a couple of weeks ago in my op-ed in my syndicated column. It's like there are protected classes. You and I don't belong to a protected class.

Then there's people who are in a protected. Hillary Clinton is in the protected class. She, Prince Andrew, until recently, in a protected class, nothing bad can happen to them no matter what they do. You know, Jeffrey Toobin, protected class, nothing bad can happen to them. It's weird. Yeah, agreed. So, I mean, so I guess, you know, I don't know what German libel laws are like, right? But, you know, the AFD guys, they have that option.

And I really regret that I've never availed myself of this. Next time someone fucks with me and it's on the internet. internet. I will sue them in England where the libel laws are good. That's an easy win. Yeah, it's an easy win. So the AFD guys, they could go to the UK. And I mean, these accusations have appeared online. So therefore, they're in the UK. So they have jurisdiction. Yeah, that's right. I should have sued the LA Times in England. Yeah. And I should have sued them in federal court. My stupid lawyer told me to sue in state court, which was a mistake. You know, when you were telling the story, I was thinking that.

I was wondering myself why you didn't file in federal court. He said he was after the money. He thought he thought this was going to be a $20 to $50 million lawsuit. And apparently federal court civil court judgments are much lower than California's state court judgments. So he just thought, you know, he's going to buy a super yacht with, you know, with the money. That's what it was. But we opened ourselves up to the California's anti-SLAPP statute. you when we filed in California Supreme Court and or Superior Court or whatever it's

called Superior Court and that was the that was the fuck up it was a major fuck up but you know if they just if they I always part of me part of me's happy it's over because it was five years of my life you know yeah it's a long time it's a long time and you just get like I remember before I sued my first thought was do I want to be talking about this exact incident like for the next 15 years and you know so that's that's always the jurisdiction of the question here all right so everyone it's 9.59 a.m. on here on the east coast which means it's done for this hour but we will be back Friday the day after Christmas boxing day the 26th I can say that a million different ways 9 a.m. Eastern time be here or be square we are here Monday through Friday

this will be a two-hour show one hour of regular news and commentary then we're going to do Collins. It's going to be the same format as last time. I apologize. I didn't bring Robbie on because we were moving so quickly. I lost track of time. But Robbie, so tune in on, tune in on 9 o'clock, and we'll explain the whole thing. You'll be able to call anytime after 10 a.m. Eastern time on Friday. TMI show with Ted Rawl and Manila Chan. That's me coming up right now. Just stay tuned. If you're on Rumble, you'll just slide right in. John, have a happy, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Have a good time up there.

avoid the snow. Thank you. And I will talk to you later. Bye, everybody. Bye.