It Could Happen Here - Executive Disorder: ICE Shooting in NYC, Russian Diesel and Ukraine, Protests Around the World

Episode Date: October 16, 2026

We discuss ICE agents shooting Oscar Belgal in the Bronx and the ensuing protests, live-streamed military execution, the raid on Ilhan Omar’s home, Trump taking Russian diesel, the situation in Ukraine, and the current wave of protests in India, Spain, and France.  Links: NYC Immigration Resources: Immigration Legal Support Hotline: [phone], or dial 311 and say "Immigration Legal."“Free, confidential, funded by the City. Interpretation in 200+ languages. Immigration status does not matter,” - Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs.https://www.nyc.gov/site/immigrants/legal-resources/moia-immigration-legal-support-centers.page Intake form for help from the Rapid Response Legal Collaborative: http://nyc.gov/RRLC Know Your Rights booklets, multiple languages: https://www.nyc.gov/site/immigrants/legal-resources/know-your-rights.page  “What to do if ICE agents approach you / what to do if a friend or family member is detained / Sanctuary City laws in NYC.” Sources: https://x.com/David_J_Bier/status/2108722293967073459?s=20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHE6Zfi-vUs https://x.com/hollypret/status/2108343537309990968?s=20 https://x.com/StatusCoup/status/2108344393958617221?s=20 https://www.dhs.gov/news/2026/10/09/dhs-debunks-new-york-sanctuary-politicians-lies-about-ice-shooting-illegal-alien https://www.amny.com/news/ice-shooting-detainee-bullet-neck-10122026/ https://x.com/DarializaforNY/status/2108564402756595758 https://x.com/nycDSA/status/2108539679452942837?s=20 https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/10/09/nyregion/ice-shooting-bronx-nyc https://www.thecityreporter.nyc/2026/10/08/federal-officers-shoot-man-in-the-bronx-nypd-says/utm_content=buffer39205&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=buffer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQA_BiDZH-0  https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/10/mayor-mamdani-directs-first-comprehensive-review-of-nypd-use-of-  https://x.com/IlhanMN/status/2109675562344087792 https://x.com/PeteHegseth/status/2108344900165263476?s=20 https://x.com/PalmerLuckey/status/2109454084961137040?s=20 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crx23qlnj27qo https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article317572876.html https://prospect.org/2026/10/13/militants-victory-uaw-shawn-fain/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96ogPwN9ykM https://nypost.com/2026/09/22/tech/seniors-struggling-worse-than-teens-with-screens-ai-and-algorithms/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/how-opinions-and-use-of-ai-differ-by-age/ https://brendonbeebe.substack.com/p/did-bot-traffic-drop-after-the-yandex https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/tech-companies/russia-s-yandex-bot-traffic-plunges-after-ukraine-drone-strikes-cripple-russia-google-data-centers/ar-AA2e0IjN https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9y7l0pm8jkko https://archive.is/2RtqI#selection-1999.0-1999.257 https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2026-10-10/russian-attacks-kill-20-in-ukraine-after-trump-strikes-diesel-deal-with-putin https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Russian-Strikes-Cut-Power-to-600000-Ukrainians-Days-After-US-Diesel-Deal.htmlhttps://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/india-shuts-down-iconic-delhi-024043716.html https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/france-student-protests-spread-scroller-9.7379099 https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articles/belgium-9-minors-arrested-clashes-055545941.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articles/spain-madrid-protesters-mourn-evicted-123225186.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articles/india-cockroach-leaders-jailed-protest-140533064.html See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. I'm Melissa Jeltson, host of the What Happened to Her podcast. We're kicking off the season with the Sandra Birchmore story, a case the police rode off as a suicide in a snowstorm. Her family never bought it, and the man they suspected wore a badge. You never know who that devil is because he's wearing in disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform.

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People wake up and go, oh, damn, wait a hold up. They change all of that. Yes. It's real. This is a wholesale attack. It is targeting black people in every federal agency. It's raw. White folks have never.

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and an all-star cast of co-hosts as we preview and recap every game. Listen to NFL Daily on the I-heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, everybody, it's me, Debbie Kumabelle. This season on my podcast, who's with me, I speak with Bruce Lee's daughter, Brandon Lee's sister, and my friend, Shannon Lee. Back to your initial point of stewarding my father's legacy and giving my energy to that.

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Today I'm joined by Mia Wong, Robert Evans, and Sophie Lichtenen. Not allegedly. Yeah, no, that's definitely Sophie. You can't prove it to me. I can prove it's you. Sophie. You have no idea where I am, Sophie, or what I'm doing?

I know exactly where you are. I know exactly what you're doing. This is the first episode where we're testing AI Robert. Oh, no. We're not tested. There's no AI Robert. Don't yell of you.

a blue sky It's been shit No you'll know there's no AI Robert Because they would have trained An AI Robert On like the subreddit And all of the different jokes

That I can no longer do Because people have taken it too seriously Like if I start talking about a child hunting island Like you'll know it's the AI me It'll pull like a bagel throwing reference From like nine years ago Yeah all of a sudden you start talking about Doritos Like you did 10 years ago

Yeah talking about Doritos I know it was like 10 years ago or talking about the Jamie Locke's murder thing which I don't do anymore because now there's a real serial killer in the area that people were making comments about and being like, oh no, is it Jamie? I'm like, guys, there's really people dead.

We don't keep the bit up at this point. All right. Here. This episode, we're covering the week of October 7th to October 14th and we're actually going to jump straight to our first main story. Last Thursday afternoon, October 8th, Ice shot a 28-year-old man named Oscar Belgall in the New York City neighborhood of Marble Hill,

which is physically located in the Bronx, but technically in the borough of Manhattan. Oscar was in a car with his five-year-old son. Per video released by the NYPD, around 4 p.m., just in the middle of the day, masked plain-clothes agents, some wearing yellow construction vests, ran up to a parked car with guns already drawn. The driver, Oscar, started backing away, and then an agent began hitting the car windows with the butt of his gun. Oscar then pulls into the street and drives off screen as agents point their guns at the windshield. The actual shooting itself is not captured on this video, but I'll play it here for us to reference.

This is security camera footage. Yeah, one of the things that was like noticeably unsettling besides all, of it was the fact that like these guys were dressed like crossing guards like construction workers crossing guards they had like on his normal clothes and then just like a high-vis vest yeah which you know if somebody in a high-vis vest and a machine gun comes towards me that's scary they look like like especially the guy with a long gun he looks like a mass shooter they look like fucking mass shooters like i would not assume those were police officers and i might take steps to defend myself in that situation

because they just look like fucking mass shooters. Correct. Mayor Zora Mammani said, quote, there was no reasonable way to identify them as ice agents. School had just gotten out. The street was crowded with families and children, unquote. So according to the NYPD, at least one agent fired seven shots. We do not have footage of the actual shooting. As I said, Oscar's five-year-old son was in the backseat of the car.

Thank God he is physically unharmed. But, of course, he still had to watch, masked men with guns, run up, shoot his dad in the neck. Jesus Christ. And drag his body away. Jesus Christ. Yeah. DHS Secretary Mullen said that agents were not aware a kid was in the car. Uh-huh.

Because they didn't care. They would check. Shoot first, ask questions later. The child's mother told Governor Hokel that her son is traumatized. Yeah. won't talk, quote, the child is not speaking. That's terrible.

Yeah, I mean, sure, of course. Jesus. That's horrible, you guys. I mean, I can't really think of anything worse that could happen to a child than to watch their parent shot on the neck at random when, like, in a normally safe situation like that. Jesus Christ.

ICE has still not released body cam footage of the shooting. And DHS has said that they were conducting a, quote, targeted enforcement operation and that Oscar quote weaponized his vehicle this is the thing they always say when something like this happens spoiler plate ass statement

DHS also claimed that after ICE shot and arrested Oscar agents quote rendered first aid and then took him to the hospital this is a lie this did not happen this is a plain

a plain face lie from DHS body camera footage released by NYPD from when they first got to the scene, when the cops got to the scene, show Oscar just sitting in the street, bleeding out with his hands handcuffed behind his back, surrounded by ice agents who are just standing in a circle around him, offering no assistance. Yeah, and they do this all the fucking time when they shoot someone, is they just like stand there and handcuff them. The NYPD rushes over in this footage, picks up and carries Oscar, who now appears to be going unconscious. They take

Oscar into a squad car, they render aid, put pressure on the wound, and drive him to the hospital down the street. Do you know how hard it is to have less concern for human life than the New York Police Department? My God. That's astonishing. That's, that takes some work. Jesus Christ. We're reaching average Los Angeles Sheriff's Deputy levels of empathy here. Like, it's shocking. It's like the CPD detectives they brought in to do torture after 9-11. Like, that kind of shit. We don't really know what would have happened if NYPD did not get to the scene as quickly. as they did. In the body camera footage of them,

of them carrying Oscar. Like, his body is fully limp. Like, he is, he's out of it. He looks like he's been shot in the neck. Now, NYPD had no involvement in the federal operation prior to this point, prior to the shooting. Quite frankly, this kind of shit isn't what they do. They do other bad things,

but they don't just, like, shoot and, like, charge people's cars with guns when they're, like, driving away from school with their, like, that's, this is so much. of an escalation about like our normal police bullshit is what I'm saying. DHS has tried to justify their targeting of Oscar, calling him a, quote, criminal illegal alien from the Dominican Republic. Great. And pointed to prior arrests and a criminal conviction for grand larceny and claim Oscars, quote,

associated with a gang. That's the word they keep using, associated or association. They won't even say he's like a member. they'll say he's associated with the guy. Yeah. I'll play a short clip here from the mayor's press conference later that evening, just down the street from this site of the shooting. There is no explanation for federal officers firing this many rounds into a car

that has a five-year-old in the car. There is no explanation. We are standing here so close to the site of where this actually took place and look at how many people live right here. This is a residential neighborhood. We are right here by a subway. And the pretext of ICE is, in their words, to keep this country safe. How is it keeping anyone safe to have, as you just heard from the police commissioner, individuals wearing construction vests in masks with long guns? Residents have no idea if these are law enforcement agents or if they are simply attacking someone on the street. And when it comes to ICE, it begs the question, what's the difference? There is no expert. explanation for this. After the shooting, soon-to-be DSA Congresswoman Dari Liza Avila Chavilla Chavier quickly went up to the Bronx and saw that federal agents were going door-to-door, quote-unquote, collecting evidence, and trying to question residents about the shooting, running down people's

names and numbers. So Dari Liza followed behind these HSI agents, informing residents that they did not need to speak to or answer questions from these federal agents. And meanwhile, soon to be former congressman, Adriano Espayat, and Oscar's own family, weren't allowed to see Oscar at the hospital. Jesus. Now, outside the hospital, where Oscar is being treated,

a few hundred New Yorkers gathered to protest ice and the shooting of one of their neighbors. Earlier in the evening, ICE vehicles were driving through protesters. But pretty quickly, NYPD arrived to do crowd control and clear the street for vehicles to enter and exit the hospital. This led to violent shoving matches, over metal fence barricades that NYPD was trying to set up around the street.

Darya Liza moved to this protest and she was trying to de-escalate conflict. But NYPD got very aggressive and Dari Liza was shoved to the ground by a community affairs officer, the NYPD blue shirts, the ones that are, you know, supposed to like, de-escalate conflict at protests. Yeah, like average example of community affairs is shoving Congressperson to the ground. I arrived at the hospital just after this first big clash over police barricades, during which NYPD arrested five protesters. After that, things seemed to settle down for a little bit.

The crowd got smaller, and about like a little over an hour later, just before 11 p.m., police rapidly cleared the street again, pushing protesters onto the sidewalk as a small caravan of feds departed the hospital at dangerously high speeds. They were zooming by. Ice just pulled away. The crowd chased them a little bit. It's 10.40 p.m. We've got a group of NYPD now leaving the area,

and the crowd is falling behind, yelling at them as well. Again, NYPD is putting off into two days. directions. Oscar was in one of these vehicles leaving the hospital. After the feds left the hospital, the crowd continued to dwindle to about 40 people who then marched up over the bridge to protest in front of Zoran's press conference. At the press conference, Zoran said that for the past two hours, he had been on the phone negotiating with President Trump and Secretary Mullen for Oscar's release, but that those negotiations

were unsuccessful. I think it is worth noting here that earlier this year, Trump did release someone from ICE custody following a request by Mayor Mammondani. With the cries of protesters heard in the background, the mayor reiterated calls for ICE to be abolished, saying, quote, ICE is rotten to its core, operates with impunity,

so it's chaos and terror across our country, and they have killed far more of our neighbors than they could have ever claimed to save. I stand here not just as the mayor, of our city, but as someone who is proud to be an immigrant in our city. And I know that these kinds of raids, this kind of terrorizing of this city, leaves the three million immigrants of this city asking if they are safe here, if they belong here, if this too can be their home here.

We will not normalize ICE's viciousness. We will not accept its cruelty. We know, and I have said this directly, whether to the president or to the public, ICE undermines public safety. It makes us less safe. New York City will not stand by while ICE agents shoot New Yorkers and we will not back down

from the demand that so many including myself have put forward time and again. This is an agency that must be abolished. Commissioner Jessica Tisch then gave some more details about the shooting, some of which I've already echoed, but also read off Oscars NYPD the rap sheet.

Average commissioner to move. Including two prior arrests, one for robbery, which he pleaded guilty to, and received probation, and another for drug possession. When Zoran got the microphone back, he again undermined ICE's legitimacy and said that while negotiating with the president and Secretary Mullen, he requested ICE agents leave the scene entirely and demanded that ICE stop its enforcement actions in the city. There is no justification for what we have seen today, and we know. that what we have seen today is but a microcosm of what ice does on a daily basis across this country.

How can that be how we describe public safety? It can't be. And I've shared that with the president. I've shared that with the secretary. This city wants ice out. We want ice out of our city, ice out of our schools, ice out of our hospitals, ice out of our streets, ice away from our kids. We want that because we want to keep the city safe. We do not need them to do so.

all they do is terrorize this city. Now, the people chanting outside the press conference weren't just protesting ICE, but also the NYPD and Zoran himself, with chance of, quote, Mamdani is complicit. Most of the I are directed at Mayor Mamdani was due to NYPD facilitating ICE's exit by clearing protesters in front of the hospital

off the street before the agents sped off. After leaving the hospital, DHS moved Oscar to New Jersey and then back to New York, where he's currently in federal custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center. On Monday, Oscar's lawyers released a statement, quote,

Mr. Belgall is living through an unimaginable nightmare. While he is currently in solitary confinement, a bullet remains lodged in his neck. The left side of his face is numb and he can barely hear out of his left ear. Fuck. Doctors have told him he urgently needs

surgery, unquote. Awful. Federal judge has also temporarily blocked Oscar's deportation. The day after the shooting, Dari Liza called for NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch to step down in a statement, quote, last night the NYPD and Commissioner Tisch violated the spirit, if not the letter, of our sanctuary city policies and fuel the Trump administration's attempts to demonize our communities. The NYPD's Strategic Response Group, or the SRG, must be disbanded as quickly as possible, and Commissioner Tisch must step down. New York City DSA also released a statement of which I'll quote a small portion of. ICE's devastating shooting of a New Yorker in front of his

child cannot stand. Neither can the NYPD's attack on New Yorkers who stood up for their neighbors. ICE is a terrorist agency that must be expelled from New York City and abolished. Jessica Tisch must get ICE out of New York and end NYPD complicity with these terrorists. If the commissioner can't put a stop to these injustices, she must be fired." Unquote. Now, initial reports claim that SRG, the Strategic Response Group, was deployed to handle this protest at the hospital. And this is notable because Zoran ran on disbanding the SRG.

And right now, any SRG deployment must get approval from City Hall, according to reporting from Politico. So the idea that Mamdani personally sent the SRG to crack skulls of anti-ice protesters, fueled a lot of the anger coming from protesters that night. The SRG, or the Strategic Response Group, is a specialized unit within the NYPD, which focuses on counterterrorism, but also policing protests.

They're sort of the city's de facto riot cops. The unit has been long criticized for violently suppressing political protest. The SRG did not respond to that protest, though. Instead, NYPD sent officers from community affairs, as mentioned, and the transit bureaus quote, anti-terrorism unit, which doesn't need city hall's direct sign-off. So while Zoran did not personally send the SRG to crack down on this protest, the violence from NYPD demonstrates that this issue is bigger than just one specific unit. But there is this larger question of, like, crowd control.

at these protests. And I think this question demonstrates the diverging interests on the part of protesters and city hall. Some protesters want no NYPD crowd control. People want to directly fight ICE and they're willing to put their body on the line. Even if that means they might get hurt. As we've seen in other cities, physical confrontations against ICE could result in DHS sending more troops to New York, possibly triggering a political crisis, which some on the left also does. desire, there is a sort of like acceleration to spend towards some of these protests. They kind of want this political crisis, and they want to directly fight and oppose ice. On the other hand, for someone in Zoron's position, there's a desire to prevent ICE agents from hurting more people,

whether by running people over or shooting more New Yorkers. I think all these questions definitely exist in the shadow of Minneapolis. And furthermore, the mayor wants to limit the amount of DHS and ICE agents deployed to the city. So to that end, NYPD may end up doing some level of crowd control to limit protesters' interactions with ICE to avoid provoking a larger deployment. So even if protesters and Zoran have similar ultimate goals vis-a-vis ice, their respective positions lead them to contradictory impulses. Zoran has said that he will not justify the use of force against protesters on Thursday night and told MS now he'll be conducting a review of the entire 24-hour period,

quote, from the ICE shooting to the NYPD response to the incident and the ensuing protests to ICE's use of a privately owned parking lot as a staging location, to every tool that we have at our disposal to keep New Yorkers safe. Unquote. And on one of those last parts, AOC has also mentioned this, that ICE has been using the rooftop parking lot of a target in the Bronx to stage before going out to do arrests. And that's something that electeds are looking to crack down on. if they can.

But Zoran has said that there are no plans to replace Commissioner Tish, pointing to her history of uprooting NYPD corruption in the later Adams administration and the record low number of murders shootings and shooting victims. But Zoran has reiterated multiple times this week, his intention to disband the SRG and said he will provide an update on that timeline in the coming months. Also to the dismay of the police union, the mayor announced this week that his administration will be conducting the first comprehensive review of NYPD use of force policies and practices for the first time in a decade, and will crack down on officers getting out of misconduct proceedings

by retiring before disciplinary action can take place. After this was announced, there was a very angry statement from the police union about this. And because New York has already ended qualified immunity, the biggest thing City Hall could do to undermine police power is to move certain public safety and administrative rules outside of the NYPD, which Zorn wants to do with the Department of Community Safety, but that has faced budgetary constraints, especially following the discovery of the $12 billion deficit left over by Mayor Adams. Now, 10 months into his administration, Zoran has not been eager to spend political capital taking on the NYPD. Where he has been spending political capital, it's mostly been to strengthen labor, investing in the Department of Consumer and

Work of Protection, creating and enforcing a new click-to-cancel. rule to crack down on impossible to end subscriptions, winning hundreds of millions of dollars for delivery workers, fighting to pass the Delivery Protection Act to strengthen Amazon workers' right to unionize, and partnering with labor unions to modernize the process of applying for city jobs and launching the mayor's office of worker power. This is in addition to universal child care and the rent freeze, which just went into effect earlier this month. But after attending protests this week, my general sense is that when it comes to NYPD and ICE, protesters want more than just well-worded statements in these reviews. They want to see more actionable change,

whether that's using his position as mayor as a sort of bully pulpit to rally the masses against ICE or employ more direct measures to protect New Yorkers from ICE. What those measures may be is not entirely clear. And if the left wants to be effective in agitating for larger social change, beyond making just general demands of electeds, it may be worth closely considering why an elected is taking certain actions,

the constraints of their power and the contradictions inherent to holding office, so that those not in office can apply targeted outside pressure to counteract the pressure coming from the federal and state level and just the pressures of governing itself. Though firing Tisch may please some of Zoran's left-wing base, more broadly it is politically risky and could damage Zoran as he tries to enact his economic agenda while contending with a centrist governor and a very hostile federal administration.

From City Hall's perspective, choosing to go to a war with the NYPD right now could undermine Zoran's ability to protect New York from ice, whether by limiting the scale of ICE operations or ideally keeping ice out of the city in time. Of course, none of this means that people should stop protesting. The protesting is the crucial thing that could apply pressure here. But it's also going to have to be more than 400 of New York's most left-wing protesters. It's going to have to require, like, mass engagement. But the thing I wanted to emphasize here at the end is that, like, a socialist elected to an executive position and a protester and an organizer, outside of government, are very different kinds of political actors,

whose positions strongly influence the actions they take or may be inclined to take. Protests supply an important pressure on city leaders to pursue certain names, but our political analysis must take account of the balance of forces within the state. Is anyone else have any thoughts on this? I'm sure Mia does.

Yeah, well, I think part of what's happening here on a broader scale is that, like, one of the reasons the ISIS has been successful over the last, call it like three or four months in significant escalations of raids. And we've talked about this a little bit on this show, but there have been huge escalations in raids in Texas and raids in Florida.

And there's also been kind of beneath the notice of people who aren't there are really significant escalation in places like Minneapolis, but they're doing it quietly. Yeah. Like they're not fighting with protesters. They're going in, they're grabbing people, and they're leaving. And I think this is one of the things the protesters are thinking about to some extent, which is part of what their calculus is different in the mayor's office, because, you know,

one of the things that's been allowing all of this to happen is that ICE has been able to do this smoothly. Yeah. The fact they've been able to do it smoothly, quietly, and without disturbing, like, the broader public order is a big part of how they've been able to really ramp up rates without the kind of mass resistance that we saw earlier in the year. And, you know, but this leads you to like a structural problem with, you know, like with the position of someone of someone holding office, which is that like, A, holding office in the U.S. does not give you a monopoly on violence because the police are effectively a semi-independent force. And, you know, you can do oversight on them to some extent. but, you know, as long as you're sending them there, even if you tell them, hey, don't beat up protesters,

like they're going to go beat up Congress people. And then you have a secondary problem, which is that, like, if you're running the government of New York, your job is to maintain public order. Yeah. And the way that you defeat ICE is through breaking public order. And this puts you inherently in tension with the state itself in a position

where Mondani ends up being aligned, like structurally with the, the police trying to do protest control, right? And this is just sort of like the structural limits of what kind of power you actually hold in the United States when you are elected. Because, yeah, like, no, like we're keeping on fucking Adams era police commissioner

because if you want to try to have the body that's nominally enforcing your legitimacy on violence, like you have to go to war with people who can fight you. And that's, that's just like a huge structural problem with power in the American government. Yeah. And Tish was also, like, retained essentially following requests from Hockel as a sort of like signed to Hockel that like Zorn will still be like a competent administrator essentially. It was it was assigned to her to kind of get her on board during the general election. Yeah. And then also, you know, extract economic wins and revenue from the state. So that,

mom donnie can have the funding for things like universal child care and it's that was one of the calculations that was made and he did like announce his intention to retain her during during the campaign so this was it is it this isn't necessarily one of his campaign promises the way abolishing SRG is yeah and which he seems to be still trying to work on and you can apply but as we see from you know NYCDSA's political home a pressure can still be applied on both of these things yeah and and and should be and that pressure is necessary even if that means you're going to be going against someone who is like, you know, an economic ally, right? In terms of in terms of how he's trying to run the city. But there's, they are going to,

there are going to be these contradictions that part of the left winning power in these places means we have to deal with those contradictions. You have to go through them, not just avoid them. You can't just avoid conflict here. You have to pursue it with like focus and determination. I think sometimes at least in conversations in New York over the NYPD aspect, I definitely do not want to distract from, you know, the ice angle here as there is a man with a bullet still literally in his neck. Yeah. And I hope that that gets some more focus in these next few days. Yeah.

Because that situation is not resolved itself. Yeah. In the episode description, I will link New York City's immigration resources, the immigration legal support hotline, the intake form for the rapid response. legal collaborative for people facing the threat of detention or deportation, as well as the Know Your Rights booklets that the city offers in multiple languages. It's time for us to go on an ad break, and then we will return for more news because it has been a busy week. You've heard the chaos.

Now you can see it. Do we want to jump right in? Watch all your favorite podcasts from start to finish right inside the free IHare radio app. Make some noise. Wooee! Catch every laugh and eye roll. Shows like Bestie Listen, Hey Jonas and Los Culturistas. Now with full video. I'll just leave that there. It's the same hosts and the same chemistry with all the hilarious moments you've been missing right on

your screen. Open the free IHR radio app. Search video podcasts and tap watch. I'm Melissa Jeltsin, and in my new podcast, what happened to her, I'm bringing you new stories and conversations every week. Stories about women whose deaths were too quickly ruled a suicide. She was starting to get worried and get scared for her safety. Stories of survival. The only difference between me and her, frankly, was a little bit of luck, because by all rights, I should be dead. Cases that everyone else called closed.

They can't convict her, right? Like, she has so much evidence. These stories all start in the same place, with a woman failed by a system that didn't believe her, that didn't protect her, that didn't see her. No child should ever experience that. And we were babies. She did all of these brave things and came out and spoke about it and he got a year.

You never know who that devil is because he's wearing in disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform. Listen to what happened to her on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hamza. And I'm Martin. And we're the hosts of Out of Character. It's a podcast. I know.

There's a lot of them to listen to these days. How are you going to get to us? Well, there's a specific reason why you should listen to us. We are the best podcast in the entire world, I swear. I know, bold. But why don't we list some of the things we might talk about on a regular episode? So sometimes we'll talk about, I don't know, the Uber driver we just had. And how nice they were, or if we tipped them or not, come and find out.

Sometimes we'll talk about that weird news story from last week. It's the one you're thinking about, trust me. Or maybe we'll talk about music and what's happening in the underground or drama in music or TV shows or the Met Gala and what the actors wore. What we're saying is we're not afraid to talk about everything under the sun. And if you want to see what that's like, come join us. It's a place where everyone can hang out, anyone. Wherever you're from, whatever you're like, you're welcome.

Listen out of character from Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Pods, or wherever you get your podcasts. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast? Here's what you missed. And the argument is, do you? you want to win? If you don't win, you have no power. It's real.

Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interest, and they complain about the very thing to receive. It's raw. I knew that the issue of transgender athletes was not going well with a lot of black men. Roland Martin

unfiltered. I went off, I said, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Y'all going to scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same vein. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network. Twelve seats. Those are moving south.

So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 2030, you better be hitting the ground going hard in the south now. And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts. Wherever you get your podcasts. A decade ago, the ethanol kingpin of Iowa became the king of corn in Brazil. So we met with a lot of larger farmers, went from Bahia to Tokatines to Madagroso. And he brought a team of executives. They were going to help the country get in on a gold rush.

Carbon and its derivatives are going to be really the next great commodity that the globe's going to trade. But back home in Iowa, trouble was brewing. If you live in Iowa, your land, your water, and your voice could all be at risk thanks to a man named Bruce Rastetter. Now, people are questioning if his climate solutions have been. anything to do with climate at all. You gotta give Bruce and the guys credit. They're Republicans. They don't give a shit of money. It's now.

On this season of drilled, Carbon Cowboys, the story of how the ethanol kingpin of Iowa became the king of corn in Brazil and what it tells us about the limits of technology and markets to solve the climate crisis. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

your podcasts. We are back. Let's now go through some of our small things here. Mia, do you want to start us off? Yeah. So speaking of the filmed shooting of people in America, Pete Hegseth has announced that he is, yeah, planning to live stream the execution by firing squad of the 2009 Fort Hood shooter. He announced this by quote tweeting a CBS News tweet about the Pentagon's plan with a quote tweet that says, quote, correct. And that's how it was announced by the U.S. government that we were going to execute a man by firing squad, a thing that the military hasn't executed someone in 65 years.

And live streamed. The live streaming part specifically is, that is 30s lynching shit. That's crazy. Like, to be honest, I don't support the death penalty for the military. Like, the state shouldn't be doing that, in my opinion. But among death penalty options, I don't care about like a firing squad. I actually think that's more ethical than the fucking lethal injections they're doing,

but live streaming, it's depraved, it's sick shit. Yeah. That also just more so points to the brutality of lethal injection, despite it being this thing that's marketed as like peaceful and like civil. I'm not saying it's nice to shoot people.

Yeah, it's also horrible. It's much worse than shooting them. Yeah, the fact that lethal injection is by all accounts actually a more horrific way to die. It's a nightmare. Then a literal firing squad is it self crazy? If you know what you're doing, a bullet's quick.

But, I mean, the live streaming thing is insane. Yeah, it's horrible. Like, obviously there's been widespread condemnation of this. The people who have been really in support of this have been a bunch of the worst Silicon Valley fascists. There was a quote from Palmer Lucky, who is one of the founders of Andriel, which is a Silicon Valley weapons manufacturer

we've talked about. They make drones. They make a bunch of other shit. you said, quote, and then there are those who suggest any revel in the death of those who truly deserve it is an indicator of a broken or diseased

mind to the contrary. It is normal, good, and aligned with our natural order that it has not been done here in 60 years as an indictment in and of itself. And the thing I would say about this is to everyone who wants to do this, like, are you sure you want to live in the world where you've opened this door?

Yeah. Like, are you sure you want what follows? Do you want us to talk about live streaming executions? Because I will tell you, I don't think a lot of Americans want to watch this execution live stream. But there are some executions. I can imagine a lot of Americans would want to watch on a live stream. Read up on your Chochescu is all I'm saying about this. Look at your poll numbers and read about Chichescu.

Yeah. You can't help but think of, like, when our term comes, we shall make no excuse for the terror. Like, I'm there, baby. I've never understood those words so much as I do now. Yeah, it's like, I would prefer that that door remains shut because I don't think you should be publicly executing people. I don't think you should be publicly executing people on live stream. But, like, you're opening this fucking door. If that's what we're doing.

And like, it's like, I can, I can agree perhaps the country would be better if everyone couldn't buy an AR-15. But you open the door, so I have like six. Right? It's also, it has been reported that Trump is debating, canceling the live stream only after he learned that the shooter was paralyzed, which is very interesting. My God, every now and then you get like a little insight into the fact that Trump does have some kind of moral schema in his head. And it's always baffling when you get a hint of how it really looks. I think it's always just completely unhinged. Yeah.

I mean, that just might be an optics thing too. Like, yeah, yeah, that is an optics thing. But like, it's showing his awareness of the moral component and the optics. Yeah, exactly. It's just nuts. It's just like, that was your line, huh? Maybe. Like, okay.

Oh, God. All right. Quick update here. On Thursday, President Trump did, in fact, cancel the planned live stream of the Fort Hood Shooters' execution. Moving on, on Monday, DHS and HSI Homeland Security Investigations raided the DC home of Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar. This follows confirmation at the midterm RNC from Secretary Mullen that there is an investigation into the allegations of immigration fraud made against Omar

based on a years-old racist conspiracy theory. After the raid on Monday, Ilhan made a statement, Quote, I'm okay. Make no mistake, this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. For 10 years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation. I will not be silenced, unquote. It's also worth noting, like, we're coming up on the elections, and this is the shit that's happening right now. Quick update here, shortly after recording the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration's investigations into Representative Omar is specifically

aimed at building a case to strip her of her U.S. citizenship and ultimately deport her. We will likely talk about this more next week. I do want to take us a little bit further from the United States to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There's a long ongoing conflict there between the Congolese government and the rebel group M23, which is backed by the Rwandan state. Eric Prince and his mercenary corporation Vectus have been contracted by the Congolese government to fight against M23. What I'm talking about actually happened on September 17th, but we just found out about

it within the last couple of days. During intense fighting in the Menemwe Highlands, a group of princes mercenaries were ambushed, and roughly 20 of them were killed or injured. This came after a clash earlier in September, in which several Colombian contracts, tractors were killed during this most recent ambush, a New Zealand military veteran was killed. And an American named Tim Kennedy, who was a former Green Beret, and then after being a green beret, a former UFC fighter, was badly injured. I think he got shot three times in the leg.

Sounds like there's a good chance to lose a leg, but I don't really know or certain. And was evacked and wound up eventually at a U.S. military hospital in Germany. So there's a couple of things about this. First off, I've seen people being like, why is the U.S. military? paying for the health care of a mercenary because he's a veteran. It's not weird that he went to a military hospital, right? He's entitled to health care of that kind. The bigger issues that Eric Prince has a mercenary corporation that's active in the Congo.

Things do not seem to be going well for Prince or for Vectus in the Congo, although, again, we don't know, like, we just know 20 injured and killed. I don't know how many killed. I don't know what their nationalities were. They're not a real military, so they don't have to tell anybody. That's shit, right? Yeah. Once James is back, I'm sure we'll put together an episode. covering in more detail like what's happening in the Congo because that's important and it's not

really a topic. We've covered a lot on this show. As a little bit of a fun note, because this really pissed off a lot of people on X the Everything app, like a lot of right wingers who are angry that turns out U.S. Special Forces guys aren't nearly as badass without air support. Yeah. They can just be killed in the jungle like anybody else because bullets don't discriminate on how much training or whatever you have, how cool you look in pictures. So this started a discourse that ended ultimately with a poll and a week-long discussion as to whether or not all of Europe in 1939 could conquer modern 2026 Africa, 78% of X voted that they believe in 1939 Europe. Let me tell you something, folks. This is objectively true. Anyone who knows anything about modern 20% century warfare will tell

you it wouldn't take all of Africa. Egypt alone could wipe out 1939 Europe to the man militarily without a single soldier landing in Africa. They have Raffal fighters. They have a 1100 Abrams tanks. Even if you were to take somehow and magically transport all of the tanks in Europe in 1939. And remember in 1939, none of the cool shit from World War II existed yet, by the way. The German army, I mean, it ended the war horse base, but it was really horse based in 39, right? Yeah. And we'd take all of the tanks, every armored vehicle, and put them against just Egypt's Abrams tanks.

And by the way, there's 600 T90 tanks or something like that in Algeria. I don't know how many Abrams tanks fucking Morocco has been a lot. But if you take just Egypt's Abrams tanks, there was not a single manner vehicle portable weapon on the planet that could pierce Chobham armor in 1939. The battle would be over in seconds. Anyway, one of the more amusing pieces of derangement online lately. Oh, God.

I just love it when people are crazy. That's what I got. One of the other things that James, I assume James, I want to talk more. once he gets back, is early this week, J.D. Vance, as part of his fraud task force, announced big crackdowns on H-1B visas at Microsoft and J-1 visas at universities. So this is something that does deserve more dedicated focus in a future episode. Netflix this week has laid off about 1,000 employees.

It's roughly 6% of their workforce. Oh, it sucks. Before Paramount acquired, Warner Brothers. Netflix was trying to acquire Warner Brothers. In election news, but an even cooler kind, Sean Fane and his left-wing slate

at United UiW just swept the United Auto Worker elections. We are the incumbents now. Yes, yes, yes. It's totally demolished. And look, do some of us find it entertaining that his name

sounds a lot like the Irish political party Sinn Faye? Of course. That's all I have to. To say? How much did he win by Gary? Sean Fade won with 67.97. 0.98% to runner up Rich Boyers, 14%. Nice work, Rich.

I'll glitter it. Nailed it. You really hit the zeitgeist there, my man. You think that like regular politicians have incumbentcy advantage? You have never seen a union election. Oh my God. Especially union election for a guy who like made things better in the union. Like, damn. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's just a Catholic school in Oregon that fired

their football coach because he like won by too much. Oh yeah. He was like scoring points when it was just kind of like mean. I feel that way about Sean. It's like, okay, man, did you really need 67% of the vote? Four details, by the way. That that guy ran an on-site kick before half time up 57. So that's some sick oh shit, but also. I did not know Sean had game like that. Yeah. Starting this week, the White House has a new press secretary, Katie Zachariah. And I'll be the first to say, she's doing great. She's amazing work, you know, no notes. I think we can move on, right?

I adore my family. I love them. They are my priority. I love being with my kids. The idea of not spending evenings with my kids is completely unacceptable. So my president, excuse me, my husband. That's a good one. My husband is out here.

Incredible. Oh, my God. Incredible slip. Oh, my God. Incredible slip. Oh, my God. Is she the one that was, like, claiming to be a lawyer? Yes.

Yes. In China. She passed the bar in China. Which, let me, let me be clear. No, she did it. Like, I would bet my life. I would bet my life. She did not pass a bar in China.

Like, I am that certain. Wow. Like, I am as certain of that as I am certain that 90% of people who write about Taiwanese politics can't name three Taiwanese cities. Like, I don't know, Mia. She seems to have a pretty solid grasp of foreign policy. Let's say her Mandarin. Here's her talking about Venezuela. He had a historic one-day war.

And now we have a booming economy and a great relationship with Venezuela. Incredible. I'm looking forward to covering her. I don't know. you're talking about. This is going to be great. By the way, for people who can't see this clip, the amazing part, when she stops before she says

Venezuela, she is looking down at the page. She looks down at her notes. To remember what country she's talking about. Incredible stuff. We could do a whole episode about this first press conference. There's some great clips going around if you want to

have fun. God. Less fun. On the afternoon of October 7th in Sacramento, a day after the county began mailing out ballots. An SUV pulled up to a USPS mail truck. A masked man got out of the SUV and stole trays of mail from the truck. Residents have reported their mail and ballots are now missing. Great stuff happening here.

Love this country. A few days later, the National Guard were videoed standing in front of ballot drop boxes in D.C. they claimed that they were not legally guarding the boxes because that's illegal. But they were meandering in front of ballot drop boxes. Yeah. God. Not great stuff just a few weeks before the election.

Lastly, while addressing a mega crowd in Tennessee, Trump made this very accurate comment. No, it's true. No, there's such love. Like, like, I mean, it's amazing. When you stand up here, it's just like the love, I could say the stupidest things and you clap, you know, I love yourself. I'm sure.

But we don't say the stupidest things. We say things of common sense. There's so good clapping to that. He knows his fans. What could you say? Certainly does. And speaking of fans, I have a segment here. for us. It is sports season for me. With the WMBA and MLB playoffs going on and the NBA season

starting, it's exciting. I have not approved this message. Fuck off. It's exciting for me, but it also means I'm exposed to television commercial advertisements besides the... It's so bad. Besides the alarming number of sports betting ads, a new trend I'm upset about is AI ads targeting seniors. Let's take a listen. Can you go to my calendar and find me a half an hour tomorrow so I can mail some of these cookies to my grandson. I've added a post office trip at town. All right, S.J., we're ready. Chatchipit boys.

Chatcheebt boys got a whole lot more useful. It's no longer just answering questions. It's better at getting things done. Let me show you an example. Can you go into my finances and let me know if you see any duplicate charges? Jesus. Check in your accounts. Okay, it looks like you're paying twice for a magazine.

called sound and stereo. Well, that's odd. Can you cancel the duplicate and send an e-refund? Of course. So you're just giving it access to your bank details as an old person. That doesn't seem like it'll lead you to getting scammed anymore. Yeah, I was pretty angry when I first thought. And then I thought I was being irrationally angry, but now I think I'm just rational on that it sucks.

I can't think of any way in which a chat bot that pulls for its answers from places like Reddit and the social internet would spread like bad advice on what old. people should do with their money once it has access to their bank accounts. I can't imagine that causing a problem, so I don't see what your issue is, Sophie. From the New York Post quote, it's very concerning, says Dr. Stacey Wood, clinical neuropsychologist and professor at Scripps College. Older people are maybe less aware of the algorithm's power, like how they work. It's really hard for them to discern what's credible and what's not.

Older people are also taking up AI in mass. Hugh data from February found that a full 23% of senior cynicies use chat bots, and 42% of those aged 50 to 64 to the same. And, you know, like, keeping up with tech is not necessarily a bad thing. But Dr. Sisi Wood says it's slippery slope. As people age would note, they also tend to be more likely to believe something is true because it is simply repeated to them over and over and they're generally more susceptible to sensationalized and highly partisan content. I can say the dubest things, and you people would clap for me. Yeah. One of the issues, as you stated, Sophie, is that, like, it's actually

more important, I think, for the elderly to be aware of what AI is capable of than a lot of other groups because they're being targeted so relentlessly by different kind of AI-based scams. Unfortunately, that usually gets translated into you should be using AI, which is going to make a lot of these people more vulnerable to scams. Yeah, I mean, like, I don't like that there's this, like, trend that AI can, can replace, like, human-to-human contact for our seniors. No. You guys, Gair and Robert, you saw a number of products at the series CES that were, you're

targeting seniors in that way. We saw one or two reasonable ones and a lot of bad ones. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I guess slippery slope, but this commercial comes on a lot with different versions of seniors, almost always seniors that are women doing things and, you know, the Chad GPT or whatever AI helping them. I just don't see a reason why Chad GPT should have access to these people's calendars, finances, that kind of a thing.

I don't see this ending well for so many folks. It lacked security and I'm angry about it and I wish it wasn't a trend that I see increasing, but that seems to be the path we're going on. Yeah. That's all I had on that. I just felt it was worth mentioning because it was on my mind. Yeah, yeah.

Another story that's come out this week is that a bunch of anthropic researchers are now, or at least there's been stories in San Francisco. And you should always take this stuff with a grain of salt, This is consistent with a lot of internal conversations that a lot of them have been taking up smoking because they're like, AI will cure cancer, right? And this has been occurring alongside,

like there's just an interview with an AI researcher on the Delphi podcast for Anthropic, who said he's enjoying his last six months. Part of the issue here is that if you try to engage with what these people are saying, then you wind up sounding to a lot of folks like you're just like ignoring the potential of AI and the things that it is actually capable of doing

but you have to engage with what the people making it are saying. And everything that the company's making this stuff is saying, it's nuts. It's bullshit. It's lies and it's insane. And that doesn't mean that these are not incredibly powerful and very dangerous tools. They are. They are extraordinarily dangerous because, among other things, they have automated the ability of small groups, of nation states, of non-state actors to carry out massive digital attacks

with a level of penetration and speed that was not possible before. And that's a huge problem. These things are very capable tools. It's just that everything being said by the people making them is insane bullshit. And it makes it very hard to have reasonable conversations about what should be done. Anyway, that's a really good point. Fuck these guys. Yeah.

Let's go to ads real quick. Enjoy these hopefully non-AI products. Yeah. You've heard the chaos. Now you can see it. Hello. My gosh. Watch all your favorite podcasts from St.

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Open the free IHR radio app. Search video podcasts and tap watch. I'm Melissa Jeltson and in my new podcast, what happened to her. I'm bringing you new stories and conversations. every week. Stories about women whose deaths were too quickly ruled a suicide. She was starting to get worried and get scared for her safety. Stories of survival. The only difference between me and her, frankly, was a little bit of luck, because by all rights, I should be dead. Cases that everyone else called closed. They can't convict

her, right? Like, she has so much evidence. These stories all start in the same place. with a woman failed by a system that didn't believe her, that didn't protect her, that didn't see her. No child should ever experience that. And we were babies. She did all of these brave things and came out and spoke about it and he got a year. Never know who that devil is because he's wearing in disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform. Listen to what happened to her on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Hamza. And I'm Martin. And we're the hosts of out of character. It's a podcast. I know there's a lot of them going around. But why should you listen to ours? Well, we're only the best podcast in the entire world. And we talk about pretty much everything under the sun.

For example, music we're listening to, underground music, trending music, drama in music worlds. Yes, sometimes we even talk about just everyday mundane situations in our lives, like the cool Uber driver we just had. Or the food we just say, that was surprisingly delicious. Or we'll talk about the Med Gala and the looks that they wore. Are they awesome? Are they trendy? Come find out.

Because our opinion matters. And so does yours. And this is a place where all of our minds can come together and connect. So what are you waiting for? Come connect with us. Listen out of character from Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Pods, or wherever you get your podcasts. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast?

Here's what you missed. And the argument is, do you want to, win. If you don't win, you have no power. It's real. Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interests and they complain about the very thing to receive. It's raw. I knew that the issue of transgender athletes was not going well with a lot of black men. Roland Martin unfiltered. I went off. I said, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Y'all going scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury. company in the same vein.

Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network. Twelve seats. Those are moving south. So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 2030, you better be hitting the ground going hard in the South now. And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the IHart radio app, Apple Podcasts. Wherever you get your podcasts. A decade ago, the ethanol kingpin of Iowa became the king of corn in Brazil. So we met with a lot of larger.

farmers went from Bahia to Tokitines to Montegro. And he brought a team of executives. They were going to help the country get in on a gold rush. Carbon and its derivatives are going to be really the next great commodity that the globe's going to trade. But back home in Iowa, trouble was brewing. If you live in Iowa, your land, your water, and your voice could all be at risk thanks to a man named Bruce Rastetter. Now people are questioning if his climate solutions have anything to do with climate at all. You got to give Bruce of the guy's credit.

They're Republican kids. They don't give a shit about it. It's doubt. On this season of drilled, Carbon Cowboys, the story of how the ethanol kingpin of Iowa became the king of corn in Brazil and what it tells us about the limits of technology and markets to solve the climate crisis. Listen on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back.

And I think it's time for us to head south. of the border, that is south of the Polish border, to talk about Ukraine. I don't know why I decided to lead in that way, but I did. Baffling. Things have unfortunately been very spicy in Ukraine over this last week. Last Friday, President Donald Trump announced that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, and he had made a deal to release 300,000 tons of Russian diesel fuel to, quote, the American and global marketplace immediately.

This came as a massive surprise to everyone, because last month, Trump signed a massive sanctions law to stop Russia from making money sell. selling oil and gas to feel their war against Ukraine. The midterms crunch is really hurting. It's really making strange, not strange, but I guess normal bedfellows. All of this seems to be in response to continuing disastrous polling numbers of Republicans in the midterms. An APNORC poll published on October 1st showed that most Americans disapprove of Trump's war with Iran

and blame him personally for higher gas prices because he's why we have higher gas prices. He has destroyed a generation. of work. It's trying to tell people the president does not control gas prices by finding the only possible way to actually increase gas prices. This is the first time that's been true.

This is like the first time we've been in what is effectively a recession. You can say no, it's directly as responsive to the current policies. Like literally direct. Like, I mean, obviously the 2008 crash Bush did a lot to do with it, but most of that didn't hit until anyway.

You know what I'm saying, right? I did that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So Trump's goal was to make a deal with Putin to lower. diesel prices in particular, as diesel prices have been debilitating to American farmers who tend to support Trump. And I think also just a lot of the ads that have been running with farmers being like, Trump fucked me, are really bad for Donald and for MAGA. In addition to the immediate 300,000

tons of diesel promised to be released, another 500,000 tons of Russian diesel were to be released by Russia in November, and one million more tons were to be released immediately hereafter. It's not actually clear if this is any kind of formal deal or if any of this is like actually promised anywhere what these numbers are based on a lot of what trump says is just like nonsensical like so he says that like in november we'll get another half million and another million immediately hereafter and then three million more tons within a short period of time like that's not what what are you how much fuel is supposed to be released this might just be market manipulation genuinely this might just be market manipulation it's entirely possible as that probably lead you to

leave their serious doubts as to whether anything like what Trump has promised is possible to get out of Russia right now. And I will talk about the ethical and like Ukraine stuff, but I'm just talking about like, can they do this? Right. Like, do they even have the ability to get this fuel on the marketplace? Per an article in the LA Times, quote, Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski questioned whether Russia could deliver at all. Citing his embassy reports a fuel shortages, even in Moscow and serious sources saying Ukraine is damaged about half of Russia's refining capacity. He asked on X, So where will the surpluses for export come from? Now, well, he says half of Russia's refining capacity has been damaged, that doesn't necessarily

mean that, like, they're down by 50%. The IEA, the International Energy Association, estimates that Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries have cut Russia's diesel output by 30% or so. That also could mean that their like gas fuel output is by more on an average is to 50. I don't fully know. I don't know anyone has other than the Russian government exact numbers on how much Russia's like refining capacity has been damaged. Russia's deputy prime minister has tries to repost claims like what the Polish deputy minister

said or foreign minister said, arguing that Russian exports would rise in November and December as previously damaged refineries returned from maintenance. And obviously, I don't doubt that the Russian state is actively repairing and refurbishing damaged facilities and some of them will come back online periodically. But they also will continue to face targeting from Ukrainian drone strikes. This current phase of the war is largely focused on deep-ranging drone strikes into Russian territory with retaliatory drone swarms and missile attacks from Russia into Ukraine as the front remains locked in a relatively stable position. Ukraine's hitting 1,500 miles beyond the line of contact now with drones, which is nuts. Like that's air power levels, right?

Yeah. There's a lot of quetching about like, oh, A is going to change warfare. We've already seen the biggest change in warfare that I think will occur in my lifetime. Maybe I'm wrong, but it's drones. Careful what you wish for. Yeah, I may be biased because a drone tried to kill me once, but I have trouble imagining something altering the experience of the regular soldier on the ground more than drones have. Robert, I'm so excited for the plague weapons.

We'll see. Obviously, I'm not counting the possibility of, like, currently illegal weapons, like biologicals or nuclear weapons becoming, like, regularly deployed, right? Yeah. Immediately after Trump announced this deal, Ukrainian President Zelensky issued, a furious statement on his nation's behalf. In Kiev, a protest gathered at the memorial to fallen soldiers in the Maidan to express their anger. Within a matter of hours after Trump's announcement, Ukraine hit the loading terminal to Russia's Novosakhtink oil refinery, causing a massive fire.

For weeks prior, Trump had begged Zelensky to halt strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, even as Russia has continued to hit Ukraine's energy infrastructure. When news broke of this new Ukrainian strike, Trump reacted with fury, telling Ukraine that it needs. needed a new president and blaming Zelensky for losing 30% of your country. He claimed two million people had been killed in a war that never should have been started. I agree. Putin shouldn't have started the war. Trump has repeatedly stated his belief that it wouldn't have occurred if he'd been president, you know, when Biden was.

I think that's nonsense. By the way, his numbers also wrong. Russia currently controls about 20% of Ukraine's territory, not 30%. We don't have official death tolls for this war. We know Russia has lost at least about 500,000 soldiers killed. So it's reasonable to assume Ukrainian civilian and military fatalities would be somewhere in that ballpark. I should also note that Trump made this announcement, you know, complaining about Ukraine hitting Russian energy infrastructure and promising to buy Russian diesel directly after 20 civilians in Ukraine were killed by Russian strikes, including three children. Russia has continued to devote significant effort to striking Ukrainian civilian property and infrastructure.

On October 13th and 14th, Russian strikes cut power to more than 600,000 Ukrainians. This came just four days after Trump licensed imports of Russian diesel. It also came after an energy ceasefire that Trump unilaterally announced during the weekend in response to Ukraine strike on that binary. Trump was like, there's an energy ceasefire now. Nobody's striking. And then there were strikes. And he was like, well, nobody's striking diesel.

And then there were more strike. Yeah, right? And Zelensky pointed out on a Monday that Russia had already violated the ceasefire. Since his announcement, Trump has escalated his efforts to defray blame for the high cost of gas. and his current strategy is blaming high diesel prices in the States on Ukrainian resistance. In speeches, he is saying, like, Ukraine is why your diesel is so expensive, which it's not. And again, they've been fighting in Ukraine for years. Diesel prices didn't skyrocket until Trump decided to fuck with Iran.

Yep. On October 11th, Ukraine also struck a facility belonging to Yandex, which I would casually describe as Russian Google. This facility hosted a massive supercomputer, two massive supercomputers actually, used to train neural networks. It also part of like the Yandex facility there was like a military research facility. By any term, this is a valid target in war, by the way. Just I wanted to make that clear. The strikes caused massive disruption to Yandex services across Russia. Yandex is an interesting company. The founder, Arcady Vola, was not willing to fall in line and support Putin after the expanded invasion of Ukraine. He went so far as to condemn the war. This forced his exit from working

in Russia and a deal was arranged in 2024 to put Yandex under criminal control. This is why Katie wins my least problematic Russian billionaire award. The strike on that Yandex hub was Ukraine's third major hit on Russian tech infrastructure in four days. It cut access to huge numbers of services for Russians and people, not just Russians, right? A number of countries that border Russia, including countries that are worried about getting invaded by Russia, Yandex is still like an important service for them. And this was not just like they lost access to Google.

They lost access to like ride sharing apps and like AI app, like all their AI apps. Like it did a bunch of damage to just like people being able to use the internet the way that people are used to in the 21st century, not just in Russia, but in bordering countries. This has caused confusion online. In the immediate wake of the strikes, reports began to spread that Yandex going down had cut bot traffic to huge portions of the internet. That is objectively true. What bot traffic means is often misinterpreted. Specific claims were made that traffic had plunged for off day, the German far right party, that like their people, people commenting and like pro off day boards and stuff had like fallen off a cliff and that the

conservative subreddit, you know, was also down that there were no more magabots online, that the Russian bots were had declined. And evidence for these claims was posted in the form of cloud flare graphs that purported to show plunging bot activity. And again, some of those graphs were real, some of them weren't, there is plunging bot activity. The problem is that, and I made a joking comment about like this is why we should keep airstriking data centers and and then tried to follow it up by claiming like, with guys, no one has to abide by the truth and politics anymore.

Like, why should we? Right? But the reality of the situation is that bot traffic did drop precipitously as a result of this attack. Cloudflare reported that Yandex bot traffic is like 0.4% of the max number of HTTP requests that had been reported over the prior two weeks. But that doesn't mean there are fewer Russian bot accounts on the internet, right?

I'll refer to an analysis by Brandon Beeb, that he put together on his substack that does a good job of explaining the disconnect in many people's understandings. The bots that dropped are mostly Yandex's own search engine crawler. They aren't troll accounts. No primary data shows that Russian social media bots went offline. None shows that engagement reform UK,

the off day, or MAGA accounts fell because of the strikes. Here's what matters. In Cloudfair's language, a bot is any automated web request. Nearly all automated traffic from Yandex's network is Yandex bot. It's search crawler, which is Russia's version of Googlebot, right? So that's what has declined. Now, while the people who were saying, like, no, it's wrong that, like, Russian bot, you know, influence operations collapse as a result of these strikes, that's also led some people

to say, like, there's been no impact in Russia's influence operations as a result of these strikes. I can't imagine that's true. It's just not true in the way people online assumed it is, right? Like, they lost a massive access to a massive supercomputer center that the military used, right? This has certainly done some degree of damage. It's certainly frustrated some to some degree some of the shit that the Russian government does online. It just hasn't gotten rid of all of the bot accounts because that's just like not how any of this works.

No. Like there's not like a death star you can blow up that like make Russian influence operation go away. Like no. It's bad for Russia that these got struck. Right? They prefer that not happen. And that will presumably have impacts that are broader ranging and that are probably kind of obscure to us on a number of their operations. but it's not as simple as all of the bots went away.

That's just not what happened. Interesting. Interesting and informative. So let's close with a segment I am calling dispatches from a world in revolt with the starting claim that, yeah, we're kind of back, by which I mean we're kind of back in what appears to be at least the beginning of another global era of mass protests along the lines of sort of 2011 or 2019, 2020. We have talked about some of these protests on the show.

going to be going through a few areas that have seen large protests here. Today we are mostly going to be focusing on India. Now, previously on the show, we've talked about the massive wave of student protests in India under the banner of the meme cockroach Janta party, which is named after a Supreme Court justice calling unemployed use their cockroaches. So it's a play on the BJP. It's like the BJP, but it's the CJP because it's cockroaches. Okay. With that out of the way, those original protests from a few months ago have sort of won. The CJP declared victory recently after forcing the resignation of the Minister of Education after government officials leak the answers to standardized tests.

But, comma, protests in India have continued, and they have continued over the BJP's attempt to remove 130 million people from the voting rolls. Now, Mia, I've never done a number before. is that a lot of people? That would be the 12th largest country on Earth. That is larger for the population of Japan.

It is slightly, slightly less than the population of Mexico. But they are trying to strip from the voting rolls. The rhetoric coming out of the BJP is, in a lot of ways, very similar to the rhetoric you see from fascist parties around the world. They are screaming about, like, illegal Muslim aliens casting fake votes. And so, like, basically they're doing on the scale of 130 million people, thing that, like, you see in the U.S. where they go through the voting rolls and, like, purge everyone

with a non-white name and a heroist, like, yeah, they're purging people with Muslim names at the scale of the 12th largest country on earth. So, in response to this, India's, I would call them largely feckless opposition parties, actually finally did

something, and they deployed their, so Congress, which is like the main, the INC, are India's main opposition party. They are the, like, they are the party that is like, the party that did Indian independence, and they have connected their legacy to Gandhi, and so they deployed their one strategy,

which is throwing Gandhi at the problem. So they staged a protest outside of the electoral commission. That's not honestly an enjoyable mental image. I'm just savoring that for a second. Literally physically it is what they're doing. They threw a rule gondi. How many Gandis we got? Get them out of it.

They have a lot of Gandhi descendants. Like, they got a lot of his family tree. Pick on the ground the gandis are these days. that's good to know. Yeah, so they, Raul Gandhi and his sister, who's also in the party, and is like a high-ranking party.

Official Raul Gandhi is like the opposition leader. They went and were, nominally they were trying to, like, they went to the Electoral Commission, we're trying to talk to the guys in charge of the Electoral Commission, and they got arrested, like, multiple times. There's a bunch of scenes of, like,

Raul Gandhi trying to, like, crawl out of a bus that he was being held. This is like, this was like a week ago Wednesday. Yeah, on October 7th, or maybe, I was probably like six or seven. Basically, it was last week from when we were recording this. And this has led to a bunch more protests, including the CJP, like the Cockroach Party,

like going out against these electoral purges. But it's also led to a sort of astonishing level of repression in India, and particularly in the capital of New Delhi, that has turned it over the last weekend into effectively a fairly overt police state. On Saturday, Indian police arrested the founder of the cockroach party as an attempt to try to stop the protest. There was a huge militarized police deployment in New Delhi itself, trying to stop anyone from being able to assemble and form protests in the first place. They've also shut down the mile-long road to Junter-Munter, which is basically there's a road there that has been a massive site of protests since, like, the 90s, basically, whenever someone's doing a protest in the capital, you show up here and you do a protest down the street and you like occupy the... street for a while. And this was also a huge hub of the car crash movement. It was a giant sit-in

here. And like the entire street has been declared like not a valid site of protest by the police. And the police have been trying to funnel protesters into other sites around the city that are like significantly further from the center of the city. Oh, man. Sometimes the the, the, the just international like reflexive solidarity between police officers is just really beautiful, you know, it's always the same, the same move. No, no, no, you can't do it there, though. Can't do it there. Sorry. This is just free speech zones. Sorry, sorry. This is not a free speech zone. Yeah, it's a free speech zone. Yeah, they always do this. Like, oh, but there. No, it's fine what you're doing, but not there. Yeah. Yeah. Like, over the weekend,

there were these massive attempts to stop the protests, and that did kind of cut down on numbers. But on Monday the 12th, the Congress party, the terminology is mildly confusing to Americans. But yeah, like a lot of like Congress political leaders and a bunch of protesters were able to take the streets again on Monday. On Tuesday, Cockroach protest leaders, like, tried to retake that street, and a bunch of their leaders got arrested after trying to take the main square. The protests do not seem to be slowing down as of now. Congress has been trying to turn this into a sort of sustained attempt, the challenge Modi's

rule. I think even as he's trying to, you know, purge 130 million people from the voting rolls, which would be the end, if anything, even remotely, like, democratic in the Indian system. this is a real moment of weakness for him and the escalation of these protests has been very damaging for the regime even after they were kind of able to like slow down

and stop the original cockroach protests now that's been reignited and Congress has been throwing their base into it so we're going to continue to fill you in on what's going on there do they have any like specific demands when it comes to the voter role purchase Yeah, the main one, obviously, like, they want everyone put back in and they want the chief of the electoral commission to resign.

Okay. Those are the demands that everyone seems to agree to, basically. Congress and the cockroach protesters aren't one-to-one overlapping political bases, right? So, you know, it's a bit complicated there. But, yeah, those are the main demands that we've seen so far. I want to turn to Europe where we've also seen continuations of. while both the protests in France and Spain there were large French student protests

over the weekend I've seen numbers that suggest it's down to about 160,000 down from like 300,000 the week before you know and obviously the police have continued to attack student protesters things are still really bleak there's like a horrifying picture

of like a kid getting crushed by a gate that a bunch of like a giant metal gate that a bunch of cops are pushing yeah so they're still doing absolutely horrific stuff there we did a larger episode about this earlier this week. Now, the student protests have also begun to spread, although kind of in small forms as it this week.

We've seen versions of them break out in Greece, Albania, in Belgium. Greek protesters, student protesters put up tents in Stigmata Square, which is another historic protest site that was, I mean, it's been the core of a 100 million protests, but it's notably was one of the places that was the core of the protest in 2011, which, you know, I think links back in a lot of ways to the ways that the protests in Spain have been reoccupying a lot of the, like, 2011 historic protest sites. The Albanian ones, I think, have been pretty small so far. The ones in Belgium are interesting because there have been kind of multiple fairly large protests going on.

There was a student protest on Monday, but then also earlier in, like, last week, there was a giant anti-austerity protest. There's about like 10,000. Well, it's about like 10,000 people. pretty large, much smaller than the sort of full-scale stuff in France and Spain, but also, yeah, similar cops have been attacking them fairly significantly. The cops arrested 10 people, like nine of whom are minors. So the student protests have a very similar sort of composition of like, it's like these high school students going into revolt that you see in France.

Meanwhile, in Spain, there was like another massive round of the giant protest they've been having, a bunch of the occupations are still going, we're probably going to talk to James next week a bit more in detail about what's been happening there. I think it's also fairly notable that there's been a pretty significant attempt by the... Okay, so this is where we have to make a distinction between socialist party and, like, socialist. The socialist party government of Pedro Sanchez, with the caveat that in Spain the socialist party has been kind of the equivalent of the Democrats for like many, many, many years now. The Socialist Party was like one of the two parties that like the protests in 2011 were like against, which led to the formation of Podemos. That's a whole other story.

But Pedro Sanchez has been trying to use these protests to save his government, even though it has also been his government that like has been presiding over the sort of the housing crisis and these evictions. But he's been attempting to co-op the protests in order to save his flagging electoral things, which like obviously, yeah, it would be worse if the far right took power. and that's kind of what things have been looking towards. Yeah, because the far right killed two like pro-tenant bills in parliament like earlier this month. Yeah. And then he's kind of used that and the protests to call for an election. Yeah, but this is also been paired with attempts to sort of like directly co-op the protests

themselves, which there's been a whole bunch of stuff around that there that we can get into detail with later. But that's a dynamic that we're going to see frequently here. I mean, you don't often. yet one as blatant as the like, hey, this is the government that did this that's like now trying to use your movement to do something. But yeah, this is a very common dynamic in protests like this. And yeah, we're going to be seeing it more and more as protests continue. And we will let you know what other places start having mass protests. Like, I'm just going to briefly note there

were some like also education protests a little bit before this in Chile. There's been anti-Belsenaro protests happening all over Brazil. But yeah, we will keep you updated as we get more, like, really large protest waves. Yeah. All right. That doesn't, for us here at It Could Happen here. If you want to send James a marketing email, you can do so at Coolzone Tips at Proton.com. He will kill you.

He will hunt you down with predator vision. Do not send marketing emails to do this. That email is actually for news-related tips and information. and put a trans girl on your couch. We reported the news. We reported the news. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media,

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