The Joe Rogan Experience - #1316 - Abby Martin

Episode Date: June 24, 2019

Abby Martin is a journalist and host of the “The Empire Files” — http://theempirefiles.tv The Empire Files documentary "Gaza Fight For Freedom" will be available soon. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG29FnXZm4F5U8xpqs1cs1Q

Three, two, one, boom. in that regard right because he's like this blockbuster movie maker guy but he's also a pretty radical guy and the way in his politics and when he supports and yeah he's kind of like the black sheep of hollywood for a while you know doing all the radical kind of the radical outlier of hollywood basically yeah but the you saw the jfk movie right yeah of course that was a weird one right it's like i kind of like it but i'm kind of like hey man that fucking general wasn't even a real person like you you made up a real person like you put him in there like that guy didn't exist like a lot of the movies really good yeah very good very very good but i get it he kind of needed to move it along for a 90 minute

or two hour movie whatever it was i get it kind of needed like this little character to like be dishing out the inside scoop that donald sutherland character yeah but in real life there was no guy i didn't know that yeah god damn it oliver if you knew would you tricked again would you be like hey motherfucker what'd you do why'd you add that guy because it's weird because like people talk about that they said hey you know in the Oliver Stone movie they detailed all these things that happened like yeah yeah but they also added a guy right wasn't a real guy right well I guess at the end of the day it's a fictional you know but how is it if it's a real president who was shot by someone and you're trying to explain who in your your movie and you have all these real characters.

But then you got this one guy you just kind of shoved in there. You had to fill the professor. What did he call himself in the movie again? The Donald Sutherland character? I do not remember. I haven't seen it in years. Yeah. I don't remember.

Because if I remember correctly, it was him kind of just filling in the gaps and kind of tying the narrative together. I believe so. Yeah. They used him as a tool to kind of tying the narrative together. I believe so. Yeah. Yeah. They used him as a tool to kind of move the movie together. Yeah. Yeah. Come on.

Yeah. Isn't there another way to do that? And then make up a dude. Brilliant ass movie though. Right? Very good movie. I don't know. What do you think happened?

The Oliver Stone. What do you think happened? Right off the bat. Let's talk about that. Fuck it. I don't know. I mean, I think that- But if you had a guess, if I gave you a hundred bucks, you said, all right, Abby, bet on red

or bet on black. Do you think Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone or do you think that there was some sort of conspiracy involving various nefarious groups? I think Oliver Stone's movie is closer to the truth than obviously what the official narrative is. I think that if you look at all those high profile assassinations in that era i think a lot of them are highly questionable i mean it doesn't just stop with jfk we're talking about rfk i don't believe that story at all um martin luther king you know i mean all of these people there's really really sketchy things about

all of them and if we were conducting, the CIA was conducting basically an assassination program around the world to expedite U.S. foreign policy and imperialism. Why would we not have been doing that here at home? You know, I mean, we know that Fred Hampton was killed outright, the leader of the Black Panther Party. So all of these things are kind of make more sense when you look back at history and see how kind of out of control the CIA was at that time yeah I mean it only makes sense that they would want to get rid of certain characters that were causing trouble right you know I had Mike Baker on from who used to work he was a CIA operative and he looked into the JFK or excuse me the Martin Luther King assassination and he said that one more than any other one that he looked into seemed like something was really,

because James Earl Ray was like a loser, just like the shifty guy. And then before the assassination, all of a sudden he had money. All of a sudden he, like he was, it looked like he was being steered. And he went into great detail about it. I don't remember all the details, but he was shaking his head about it. He's like, that one, out of any one that I looked into, had the fingerprints of manipulation on it. Well, you know about his family, obviously, Martin Luther King's family that had that civil trial and basically concluded

that the U.S. government had to have been involved for the circumstances to have happened the way they did. And if you look at how Martin Luther King at the time was considered the most dangerous, quote unquote, Negro in the country, that's what the government was saying about him. I mean, he was hated. He was loathed. He was trying to basically implement like a poor people's campaign to occupy D.C. to give poor people economic rights. That was really, really threatening, I think, to the establishment at that time. Also, you know, it's hard for us when we're thinking back about that era.

I mean, we weren't really, I mean, I was born in 67. You were born after that. It wasn't, we don't understand that era. That's 100 years after slavery. Just 100. A person's lifetime. A person's lifetime, yeah. Kind of crazy.

Right. You know, and things still hadn't been resolved. And then when you look at it now, I mean, Juneteenth, they had the congressional hearings. Right. in or whether or not there should be any sort of effort to rectify the obvious. If you look at the economic strife that's in these southern cities that are primarily African-American that are really from slavery. I mean, this is literally the remnants of slavery and it's never been fixed. It's almost like any other problem that would be in our infrastructure, any other problem that would be in anything with pollution

or anything else that people clearly did where someone did and fucked it up, there's efforts made to fix it. And there's discussions about it. But this is so much resistance. Right. Ta-Nehisi Coates, I think his name is, he was testifying there.

And he was saying that the argument is we had nothing to do with this, because again, it was more than a person ago. Why should we have anything to do with what slavery did? And it's beyond that, though, as you're mentioning, I mean, this was an institutionalized racism that we still see the effects of very starkly within the prison community within, I mean, all these things. And he said, we were still paying out civil war soldiers families pensions decades after that so like why why do that but not actually try to you know provide some economic justice to the black community it's a weird conversation because it's not just a conversation about whether or not something wrong was done but it's also a racial conversation like i've seen some weird posts like you know chuck woolery the guy who's

from the love connection we'll be right back in two and two remember that guy yeah well that guy has turned into this like serious hardcore right wing pundit and i think it was him that was tweeting about reparations for union soldiers for their families that died so he was saying fighting in the civil war like it was like how about these people and then like not saying how about the fucking people who's like brought over here from africa and chains and their great their great grandchildren are alive today in the same communities. Well, it's the basis of our capitalist society. I mean, that's why we're the richest country in the world, because it was predicated on the enslavement of Africans. Yeah, I don't know if you can fix it by giving people money today.

But I do think the money should be spent to try to fix those communities. And I think that can be engineered and done and i don't hear anybody talking about it other than tulsi gabbard talks about it and i think bernie sanders had made has made some indications that something should be done although i don't know if anybody has like a real definitive plan but when you talk to people that have like um michael wood who was a Baltimore police officer. I've told this story before, but it's a crazy story. When he was a cop in Baltimore, they found these papers that showed that the exact, it was papers from the 1970s, the exact same crimes in the exact same areas, in the exact same problem areas they were dealing with in the 70s, they were dealing with the 2000s and he was like what the fuck like wow imagine that feeling like here you are you're a

police officer right you're putting your life on the line literally and you're out there dealing with the same problems that existed in the same exact areas and no one's ever done anything to fix it all you're doing is just arresting people. Yeah, you don't get to the root. I mean, Tulsi and Bernie are the only candidates worth giving a shit about. What about Buttigieg? Buttigieg! I think that fucking town hall sunk that dude.

How many candidates are there now? I feel like two other ones just jumped in the race. Who else? I don't fucking know their names. Do you know anyone beyond Buttigieg? Beto O'Rourke. Beto. Now we have like 20. I don't fucking know their names. Do you know anyone beyond Buttigieg? Buttigieg. Beto O'Rourke. Beto.

Beto's hilarious. Jesus Christ. Beto's on the way out, though. He's too close to Beto. It's too close. He does look like he would be called that. But his dad actually just openly said in an interview, he's like, yeah, I called him Beto because I wanted him to get the Mexican vote because I knew he would eventually run for office. What? Yeah. His real name's like Robert oh Robert O'Rourke Jesus Christ that sounds like a

soldier people I mean these people are like a hundred shades of Hillary I mean every single one of them other than Tulsi and Bernie just seem like they're uh just like Hillary Clinton light well they've also done this weird thing where they're like no straight white men like okay like there's like straight white men we're not voting for straight white men that's just as bad as saying you're never voting for a woman that's just as bad as saying you're never voting for a black person and you'd need i mean i get it there's been a lot of straight white men they've been president i get it right you're right but to say no straight to disqualify someone based on something they have no control over whatsoever is a form of discrimination i know you don't think it's a form of discrimination because so many of these people have already had that job i get it it seems unfair you're right but you can't

say that because that's a shitty way of thinking it's's piss poor logic and thinking. It's discriminatory. It's identity politics. Yes. It reigns supreme. It's so dumb. And I saw there was like a combating supporters from Kamala Harris and Bernie at some rally or something. And they just kept shouting, we need a woman president. It's like that's like the only reason why you like Kamala Harris.

You know, I mean. That's like the only reason why you like Kamala Harris, you know? I mean. Kamala Harris, I saw this one speech that she was giving where she was talking about forcing children to attend school by holding their parents accountable, where she instituted a policy where if the kids miss school, the parents could be arrested. Do you know about that? It was super disturbing. It was super disturbing.

And she was talking about how effective it was. And that, you know, they had cops show up at the door of the woman's house who was a single mom who had these children. The kids weren't going to school. Like, hey, no. She was a cop. I mean, she's a top cop. Exactly. But that authoritative, authoritarian nonsense, like that way of thinking, you know why you

do that? Because no one's ever done that to you. Right. Somebody ever knocked on your fucking door and said, hey, we're going to lock you up in jail because you're a 16-year-old boy when you have three kids. Right. Listen, if you're a single mom, anyone who's a single mom who has a boy knows, and that fucking boy hits puberty.

If they run with the wrong crowd crowd good fucking luck trying to control them good luck it's hard it's real hard and if she's got a job or two jobs maybe because she's trying to put food on the table and keep the fucking lights on and you're gonna arrest her because her kid doesn't show up at school holy shit can you imagine looking at all the problems in our country and being like you know what we need to arrest parents if their kids are truant yeah it's it's insane i mean make sure i'm right about that i'm 99 sure i'm correct about that they're talking about her like regret about this policy and maybe because she's running for fucking president you should regret something like you want to hear

another insane policy going back to robert or ror it is the human cost of kamala harris's war on truancy The progressive prosecutor Wanted to transform how California Responded to students missing school Parents like Cherie Peoples Wound up paying the price I remember reading this article

I totally forgot about it There was a good reason Her kid was sick or something So Beto Let's not call him betto anymore his name is robert robert yeah um robert actually has a really great idea joe he wants to tax non-military families to pay for veterans health care what and pay for veterans yeah isn't that nice so punish the people who don't want to join the military what very smart robert 2020

the fucking people who make the weapons, who influence the politicians? Let's tax the defense contractors. Find out what the military industrial complex is really made of. Find out how much money they're really making and saying, hey, look at you guys. You made X amount of billions of dollars. And look at all these guys that we have to fund. We have to rely on charities and we have to rely on things like the wounded warrior project and all these foundations that are taking care of these veterans when you're the ones who are profiting and yeah i mean that that's where

the money should come from yeah it's not like they're poor that's insane these are fucking insanely rich organizations yeah their stocks have like tripled in the last four years they're they're doing real well when we had that situation where dick cheney who was the ceo of hal burton was giving hal burton no bid contracts to go over and fix places that we bombed it's like what yeah that that is like a doctor breaking people's legs so he can fix them it's so crazy and then driving around in a porsche i mean it's fucking crazy well, Trump was sitting down at some table with all the head defense contractors a couple months ago. And it was after the Khashoggi dismemberment in the embassy. And he was openly talking about how we cannot stop that $110 billion weapons deal.

And you should see just the glee on these people's faces. I mean, it's just unbelievable how transparent it is, especially under Trump. That was a weird conversation where, who was he being interviewed by? Oh, Steve, Steve Hilton, my friend. I know Steve Hilton. I've known that guy forever. We're actually family friends. Our families have gone on vacations together and shit.

It's a good guy. Is that the Hilton heir? Or is that just a? No, no, it's a, I don't know what the fuck his name is. Paris Hilton's dad? Oh, okay. No, it's... Paris Hilton's dad? No, he's British. But he was interviewing Trump and they were talking about...

Trump was openly discussing how these people want to go to war. The military industrial complex wants to go to war. I mean, Trump's saying that he didn't want to have anything to do with this, but that they want to go to war i mean trump's saying that you know he didn't want to have anything to do with this but that they want to go to war and it's like like it's trump is a weird guy because he's such a loose cannon that he says shit like that that you don't that obama would keep in his cards you know obama would hide his cards but trump hate him or love him he he gives you glimpses that you're not

going to get as far as like what kind of influence does the military industrial complex really have on policy change and decision making and whether or not they take action. And he was openly discussing it. He removes the mask. It's interesting because I think that he's talking out of both sides of his mouth because on one hand he says that kind of stuff. But then on the other hand, I mean, he hired all the most rabid war generals in his cabinet and also just John Bolton.

I mean, come on. This is like a maniacal neoconservative who's been vying for war with Iran since the day he was born. So it's like if you don't want war with Iran, I mean, he campaigned on it. So we know that he hates Iran. He campaigned on abolishing the nuclear deal with Iran. But then he picks John Bolton to lead all of these efforts. I mean, it's like starting a fire and then getting applauded and congratulated when you stop the fire at the last minute before it erupts and takes over the whole planet. And that's what would happen if we actually did bomb Iran. I think that people don't understand how precarious the situation is that trump and

these cronies have laid out not just is but came so close to being a reality just a week ago you mean you don't think we should go to war after for bombing oil tankers and um saudi oil tankers you don't think we should go to war over shooting down a robot yeah they shot our robot that's it i would die for saudi oil tankers and i'd be the first one to put my body on the line there was a lot of people that were saying this seems like the gulf of tonka too they're like i don't i'm not buying this at all there were so many people that were like really kind of credible people who are openly saying this stinks like it just seems staged it's it seems like some some bit like why would they do that it's total false flag shit going on over and over

and over again they're just trying so hard because they want to provoke iran to the point where iran will be forced to respond and this is after suffocating asphyxiating sanctions that have that are costing people's lives i mean what is it what for the folks at home that aren't haven't been paying attention to this what is it that makes them want to go to war with Iran? So we have to just look at what Iran is. I mean, Iran just won its independence less than 100 years ago in an era of a wave of anti-colonial struggles. And we immediately, the MI6 as well as the CIA, instigated a coup. So we always talk about how we want Iran to have democracy. They had democracy. They had a revolution, a people's revolution that was overthrown. We overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh and instated an absolute monarchy for decades. And at the time, it had the highest human

rights abuses documented in the world. It was pretty unique in that sense. And you can only imagine why Iran is the way it is today. And there was such a suppression of the left and of the Communist Party in Iran that the Islamic Revolutionary Revolution happened. And the Ayatollah was the leader of that political movement. And that's why Iran has the political system it has today. But it's about the oil, man. It's always about the oil and it's always about the foreign domination of the region. oil, man. It's always about the oil and it's always about the foreign domination of the region. They hate that Iran is an independent country and doesn't bow down to U.S. imperialism and U.S.

capitalism. And Iran also is allies with a lot of states that Israel and the U.S. and Saudi Arabia do not want it to be allies with, you know, Hezbollah, Hamas. And so that's a big problem for the U.S. and it's getting in the way of a lot of goals in the region. But it's really fascinating when you look at what actually happened because the nuclear deal was amazing. It was huge. I mean, Trump keeps belaboring the fact that Iran should not have nuclear weapons. They didn't have nuclear weapons. They never did, and they were agreeing to never have them. That was the whole Iran nuclear deal. But Trump just immediately rescinded that,

slapped insane sanctions on Iran. And now, you know, sanctions every month just continuing to constrict their economy and even basically sanctions on, threatening sanctions on China and India and other countries that actually do deals with Iran now too, which is totally insane. So once you do that, and then you say, you know, you're hitting yourself, you're hitting yourself, why are you doing this? It's like, no, you're doing this to them. And on top of that, John Bolton keeps saying, you know, there's all these unique threats coming from Iran, we need to surround them with all these warships. And they keep sending thousands of more troops, thousands more troops. So you're getting to a position now and now the drone right we're flying a drone into

iranian airspace and expecting that they're not going to shoot that down why the fuck are we flying a drone in iran the fuck would we do if iran flew a drone in here right i mean it's just unbelievable the chauvinism and arrogance of the u.s to be doing all this shit and then be like okay now you guys are a belligerent threat we We have to do something. It's like, no, you guys are the ones encircling them, enclosing all of their, you know, basically just encapsulating their entire territory and threatening them over and over and over again, basically hoping for something to happen. And if you look back at the Gulf of Tonkin, there was a guy who was actually on the USS Maddox, the ship that was eventually attacked and got us into the war with Vietnam. And he even said, my dad was on the ship and he said, we had no idea why we were there. And one of the generals

or captains on the ship just said, they want us to be hit. They want us to be attacked so they can get into a war that they want to get into. And that's exactly what's going on. And what's sad is whoever's in the Navy circling Iran, they're going to be the ones who fucking die when Iran does launch back. They're sacrificing themselves for these generals and defense contractors' profits. Now, there's some reason to believe that Iran is not being honest about its nuclear program, right? I mean, that was one of the reasons why. Wasn't that, what was the virus that the United States said?

Stuxnet. Yeah, Stuxnet virus that they put on the Iranian nuclear program to kill it while they were in the middle of doing whatever they do to uranium. Right, the centrifuges for the enriching uranium. I mean, yeah, that was also crazy. It's cyber attacks, right? Right, but the cyber attacks, weren't they effective, though, that was also crazy. It's cyber attacks, right? Right. But the cyber attacks, weren't they effective, though, in stopping the nuclear program? There was like a secret nuclear program that they were doing?

I don't know what exactly they – I don't think that there ever was a nuclear program. But I know that that was another crazy thing that the U.S. did was basically infect their thing and destroy all of this technology. But, I mean, basically all we need to know is that they agreed to not develop nukes. And it was all agreed from the international community. And then Trump gets in there and just unravels it all. And it's so dangerous because Iran would make Iraq look like child's play. It's not a joke. And I mean, it's literally so precarious at this point that anything can happen and erupt into a full-blown war and then when trump says oh i pulled back the airstrike because i wanted to save 150 lives no dude you're

starting fires all over the world and then you get applauded and you want to congratulate yourself because somehow he's still kind of appealing to this like non-interventionist line which is just fake to me because you don't appoint the most rabid war hungry people to surround you and to carry out these policies if you don't want that to a certain extent well it also created this really weird ideological rift where people were complaining that he didn't do anything and people were upset that he was going to take action he didn't there was even about the drone yeah well that he well about the drone and about the attacking of the oil tankers and that he was ready to launch, then he didn't. And wasn't one of the Fox guys that was talking about the consequences of taking no actions? Like, was it Brian Kilmeade or one of those guys?

The media is insane. The media has been attacking him. And the Democrats, too. The media and the Democrats always attack this administration from the right whenever there's some sort of military involvement. They always want him to bomb and go to war. It's pretty shocking. I mean, I guess not too shocking when you realize the corporate media is literally subsidized by, like, oil companies and banks and defense contractors. No, I know you didn't have to deal with that.

But it's pretty crazy. You didn't have to deal with that at RT. You didn't have to deal with that at RT, but what do you think happens when someone is a pundit and they're on a television show and they're talking about something that has these global implications? Do you think they get talking points? Do you think they're allowed to express their own personal opinions or are they informed that they're supposed to toe a certain line? I think there's varying levels. I think that it would be naive to say, okay, these people are paid to lie. I think that the vast majority of people working in corporate media are lackeys for the empire. They really truly believe that, you know, they believe that America

is the greatest country in the world. They believe that we're the world's policemen. They actually believe that these countries are evil and they need to be taken out to instate kind of global hegemony. I truly believe that they cater to the line of American exceptionalism. And that's pretty sad, but also pretty dangerous because they're the perfect mouthpieces for US foreign policy. I mean, they essentially are stenographers for whatever the government is laying out, which is really disturbing because the premise of journalism is to actually challenge power and challenge the US government, especially when you are working in America. You're an American citizen and there's all this destruction going on from on behalf of your government and

you're not challenging that, especially when it's war claims, especially when you have assholes like John Bolton claiming, you know, all of these things are happening in these channels and bodies of water and people are just like, okay. I mean, goddamn, you should see when fucking Mike Pompeo was talking about how Hezbollah was in Venezuela. And these people just just printed it. They're like, well, Hezbollah is in Venezuela now. It's like, what are you talking about? You're literally just printing what the Trump administration is saying without even questioning these claims. It's disturbing.

Do you think that the people that are talking about it on TV are just saying it because they really don't understand what they're talking about and this just seems to be a way to cover the subject in sort of a way that is acceptable to the network and acceptable to the party and acceptable to this sort of idea whether it's left or right whether whatever ideology they're they're participating in yes that there there is definitely that as well where they know kind of the line that they can't cross so even if you individually believe you know you think that climate change is an existential threat you think that the war in yemen is a serious thing that you should address i think that you definitely get kind of knocked down in the editorial meeting yeah before and you're just

like okay no I can't do that but what I can do is just you know talk about whatever that's it's so weird the advertisers will agree with in this day and age there's not like a really respected independent source of news right that you've got some the online stuff which is some online stuff is very good but some online stuff is so entangled with insults and and and bullshit and emotions and distorted perceptions and ego that it's like it sort of discredits whatever they're trying to promote whatever ideas they're trying to get across there's no walter cronkite there's no there's no one person who or no one organization who you emphatically trust with their perspective on the news everything is either left or right

everything is like flavored by an ideology right it's very i don't have a place that i go to that i know i can get clear unbiased emotion-free objective analysis of any international issue right it doesn't exist i don't mean unless you can tell me of one do you what do you go i mean i go to real news i go to democracy now and the only reason now super left-wing right left-wing leaning but you think left left-leaning i mean i go to places that are not this is the problem like with capitalism and trying to have an independent media is that you need funding and you need funding from like donors and grassroots sources because once you get funded by these right-wing billionaires and corporations and states and

governments then it becomes very ideologically driven and then you're kind of just catering toward what those interests want you to present and i um that's why the empire files does what it does it's we're basically based on donations now because trump's sanctions on venezuela shut down the show a year ago so we did a big donation drive and that's you guys on patreon patreon we're on gofundme and um just paypal but we're just trying to survive on a very minimal budget because i don't want to take you know i don't want to like lobby to corporations or states or or go that route because i don't want to i don't want to like lobby to corporations or states or go that route because I don't want to answer to anyone other than myself. But then you just come with a whole host of problems. You're not getting your message out there.

I mean, that's why it's incredible for you to have me on. But that's why the fake news mantra resonated so much with the Trump campaign because people are extremely disillusioned with the corporate media. You know, New York Times, Washington Post, these so-called beltway publications that pretend to be like the arbitrators of our objective reality, they are the premier advocates of fake news when it comes to US foreign policy, you know, American exceptionalism and corporations and like the corporate line. They're always the ones towing the things that basically prop up the system and so i think people you know became really really uh just attracted to that whole fake news mantra that trump was saying because people have an extreme distrust in the corporate media because of the iraq war

because of all these things that have happened but But as you know, and as you've talked about extensively, Joe, this wave of censorship that has happened in the lastside yeah um and you know people who have been propped up by right-wing billionaires and billionaires in general are not going to be affected at the end of the day but all the people who've been caught up in this censorship with the algorithms with the deplatforming um it's really scary it's really really scary what's happened it is scary to me because the internet in my eyes is this unique place where people can get information and distribute information and then on top of that you have this almost parasitic entity that is allowing you to distribute information and gather information through it, but also controlling the flow of information, and then controlling the flow in its own ideological bend,

to sort of match its own ideas of what should and shouldn't happen. And I think they feel justified by having a guy like Trump in office. Having a guy like Trump come into office and go, well, we have to do something about that. So what we're going to do is we're going to silence conservative voices, we're going to silence conservative pundits, we're going to silence, we'll call people alt-right and just change our algorithms to make it much more difficult for them to propagate their ideas. much more difficult for them to propagate their ideas. I just find that really distressing because I think that in the marketplace of ideas, you're supposed to be able to combat a bad idea with a better idea.

And this is how ideas evolve. This is how people get to communicate. You get to look at what someone's saying, look at how someone's dissecting what someone's saying, and then for yourself, figure out what you believe and what you don't believe. And there should be a free exchange of information so that you could figure that out. And when someone's shown to be a bad actor or a liar or have deceptive news, fake news, whatever you want to call it, okay, now we know, and this is a clear example of that. So now take it with a grain of salt whenever they say anything about anything else. But when you de-platform them and shove them aside, they say, see, they're trying to silence us because they don't believe us or they don't want us to be in power because they're trying

to prop up whatever left-wing socialist economy or dictator that they want to put into place and it's this weird sort of situation where you've got people dictating and almost engineering our culture right curating our reality you know what's going on in toronto with alphabet the parent company of google no it's a very disturbing thing to a lot of people where they're essentially setting up blocks and they're putting cameras in these places and they're gathering data and information and they're trying to engineer a utopian city yeah i was reading about it yesterday and i was like no like this is a terrible idea like what if terrifying what if these people don't want to be filmed what if

these people don't want information gathered about them? Like, they're doing it under the guise of, here it is, Alphabet's plan for Toronto depends on huge amounts of data. Yeah, we need more data collection, data mining. Their idea is that they're going to make it easier for people to get around and smoother. But how? I don't know. By, like, facial recognition?

I love how they always say, oh, people are being sex trafficked and this will help. It's like, no, dude, this is like.0001% of all the people that you're, you know, data mining. It says,

Sidewalk Labs released more detailed plans for Toronto, the site of Google's sister company's first attempt to bring its techified digital forward sensibility

to a full-scale development project. The Sidewalk Labs project dates to 2017 when the Canadian city welcomed the company to an undeveloped section of its waterfront. Now, after 18 months of speculation work, God damn these motherfuckers. Speculation work and backlash from local advocates, There's a proper best. Spectrally, you can work in backlash from local advocates.

The company has a 1,524-page master plan for the 12-acre lot called Quayside. First of all, I hate the fucking name. What is this? What is it, though? What is Quayside? Four-volume plan highlights ambitions and sometimes flashy innovations from Sidewalk Labs, which has pledged to spend $1.3 billion on the project if it goes forward. The company hopes to construct all the buildings with timber, which it says is better for the environment.

It also catches fire. And build an underground pneumatic tube system for garbage removal. It wants residents to lean on public transit, walking and biking, rather than personal vehicles. Good luck. It's fucking zero degrees in Toronto, you assholes. And plans to build streets with autonomous vehicles, perhaps from his sister company, Waymo.

Listen, delivery robots... Waymo. Waymo. Do you know what Waymo is? No. No, I don't either. Delivery robots might trundle down its wide sidewalks. Strategic use of very large umbrella-like coverings

might make outdoor spaces comfortable all year round. No small feet in Lakeshore, Canada. Sidewalk wants to designate 20% of the apartments as affordable and another 20% as middle income. So they're engineering a city. Yeah, right. This is by people who are really just openly social justice warriors. really just openly social justice warriors. I mean, these are the people that censored that James Damore guy and fired him for having this memo that really kind of discussed women in tech

based on evolutionary biology, based on studies. And they said that he was highlighting harmful gender stereotypes, which is not true. It's not accurate. If you look at what he actually said and what he actually wrote, he even had a page and a half dedicated in that memo trying to come up with strategic ways to encourage women to get into technology the study that the paper that james demore wrote has no relation to the way he's been framed in the way people talk about him

this is a direct result of google and google's social justice warrior um sort of ethos like the way they operate as a company well google pretends to be you know don't be evil this is this seems like some algorithmic shit that they don't be evil they took that down which why the fuck would you ever take that down they're like okay we're evil now but this this just seems like they like plugged in some shit in an algorithm and they're like, all right, this is our city now. They're creating Sims. It's control. I mean, Google, I agree with David Pakman's kind of depiction on Google. I think that they're a giant corporation.

They have billions offshore in tax havens and they are not liberal. They appear to be liberal because that's capitalism. You're trying to basically adapt to where society is at and you want to pretend like you are socially conscious but when you look at their actual policies they're conservative as fuck i mean they actually fund a lot of crazy like coke brother um alec they fund um a lot of right-wing organizations the federalist society they've given huge grants to so I think that they're kind of playing both sides. Deregulation, to lobby for kind of the deregulation of their industry. So I think that all of the perception and the mantra of Google and YouTube and catering to the social consciousness and what you're talking about, I think is honestly just to make more

money. Well, I'm sure they're going to make more money in the process of doing this. But the idea that they're going to engineer a city to me is terrifying. That's insane. I just don't, I don't like it. You know, there was a great podcast that Sam Harris did with a guy who was explaining what Google has essentially done and what they've done with data. The data is essentially a commodity that we didn't know was a commodity and we all gave up our rights to this commodity and this commodity turns out is worth billions and billions of dollars and no one had any idea and they just took it and now they

have it and they have it and what are they giving you for this right they'll let you search things like what are they giving you for this so let you use their email like it's it's kind of crazy yeah they search your email for certain keywords and all of a sudden you know you're looking for Search things? Like, what are they giving you for this? They let you use their email? Like, it's kind of crazy. Yeah. They search your email for certain keywords, and all of a sudden, you know, you're looking for a patio chair. You know, like, I'm looking to buy a patio chair, and all of a sudden, your fucking Google mentions are filled with patio chairs because you sent an email to a friend. It's really, really creepy.

Or just talk about something, and it just, yeah. Talk about it. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. My guest yesterday, my friend Will Harris, he was talking about trading in his car, and he got a fucking text message, a text message that said,

hey, I hear you're looking to trade in your car. That is so goddamn scary. You know, here's a link as to what you could get for it. And he goes, I'm not clicking that fucking link. Like, a text message with a link showed up on his phone because of something he was talking about he wasn't even talking on the phone that's what's crazy really really scary it's fucking insane yeah no that's that's terrifying how does that happen does anybody know how that happens right like if

you and i were talking right now and you said uh i need a new laptop and you started getting laptop ads in your google feed what is happening is your phone listening to you say that yeah yep is that legal no i mean it combs through everything i mean that's what's so fucking scary and apple is the best at it in terms of like not giving up your data it's one of the reasons why i still use an iphone and support apple apple goes out of their way to not share your data when you use maps that's why apple maps suck it's one of the reasons why it's not good there was a fucking great article that was written about it uh they called apple maps the bing of uh of of navigation tools it's like you know bing the search engine for who the fuck uses that i use a windows laptop i don't use bing the fuck out of

here with that yeah yeah because google's yeah. Because Google's better. Right. So you just go automatically use it. But Google's just constantly collecting data. No, and Google's fucked. I mean, no. And all the, going back to this whole like tech censorship thing, they preemptively change the algorithm. That's what's so scary to me is that there wasn't even a law.

You know, like China, we all know that China censors the internet. We've done the same thing here, but people just think that we still have, you know, freedom of information, that we can all access all these things. No, I mean, Google, YouTube, I mean, because YouTube is owned by Google now, but they preemptively changed the algorithms. They backpaged all of this progressive media,

independent media. So it wasn't just about what they're saying. It's about, I mean, this was targeted to basically all extreme views. Everything that they felt like was too radical. I going back to the dni report which is where this all started from this kind of conclusive report that they said these 17 intelligence agencies you know here's here's all the evidence of how russia colluded and and cost the election for hillary they cited my show on breaking on breaking the set that you did it yeah they said i was part of the conspiracy of russian meddling did you russian medal abby martin are you a russian i just did

what putin told me to do man i mean i'm sorry someone's gonna take that and use it as a snippet but in but in the in the report it said um she fomented radical discontent and when you look at what all this is, sowing discord, all of these, you know, the black box algorithm from Hamilton 68 dashboard, like this U.S. government funded Twitter crawler that just like determines what's Russian propaganda, what's fake news.

And then you have, you know, Facebook working with the Atlantic Council, which is an organization stacked with literal spooks, cops, CIA heads, and defense contractors, UAE, US government. That's who's like curating our reality now. And it's all about expunging the most radical views on the internet to prop up essentially the system and the establishment.

And that's why I know it's not a liberal or conservative thing. It's literally just extremist thought and radical thought that challenges the the status quo um because sowing discord just means disagreement that's what they said this was about these websites so discord joe i mean that's i thought that was a fundamental thing about american democracy is that you talk about what we disagree on and when you look at what the report says of what breaking the set covered dmt i mean that wasn't in the report you were on there talking about dmt but we talked about aliens but because i talked about things like inequality and and occupy wall street and hillary clinton that was all part of this grand conspiracy to sow discord on behalf of the russian

government so it becomes very comical once you you know kind of poke at the underlying narrative driving this wave of censorship are you aware of uh renee di resta's work did you ever pay attention no she was on my podcast and she detailed what the ira did the internet research agency did in russia And it was really fascinating. They set up like a fake Black Lives Matter account. And then they would talk about how as black Americans, we can't vote for Hillary Clinton because of this. And they started, they developed these communities, these really large online pages, whether it was on Facebook or Instagram or whatever it was, where they spoke as like a Southern separatist or as a Muslim. Yeah, I mean, they had dozens of them

and they developed these communities and they developed these communities and they would set up these organizations and then they would have events where they had one where they had a Texas secession event directly across the street from a Muslim pride event, and they did it on purpose so that they would fight. They put them across the street from each other. They organized these Facebook pages and these events, and these people show up. These people that are Texas secession, we should leave the union. You know, we can.

Texas is a republic. And then they have these other people online that want, like, Muslim rights, and they want the Sharia law, and they put them right next to each other yeah they're they're literally engineering argument and they're engineering fighting and the idea was that someone wanted this to this idea of promoting discord right they wanted arguments they wanted to fuck with our democracy and then they could shift it just a little bit by doing this by having these arguments by pretending that they're there for lbgtq rights but they're really not but they're really just some russians are just you know talking shit and that this is what we need to do we need to radicalize they had antifa groups they had all right right i mean israel and saudi arabia do the same thing except we do that i'm sure we do it

yeah so i'm sure the government's doing it right now it's fascinating that we just focus in on russia when my god this is happening on every front i mean look at going back to pete budaj i don't know the fuck you say his name but he has like hundreds of sock puppet accounts that are all like propping each other up on twitter oh my god i just saw it's like blacks for pete budaj gays for pete budaj it's like blacks for Pete Buttigieg, gays for Pete Buttigieg. It's like all these. So who's making these? I mean, I guess he thought that that was, I don't know, injected with corporate money that he's just like, all right, make a hundred sock puppet accounts. It's like everyone does this shit.

But when we focus in on just Russia and then, of course, you have the removal of, you know, Syrian accounts. You have the removal of pro maduro accounts on twitter why is it only that we're talking about our so-called enemies that these are the people who are sowing discord and fomenting radical discontent what about all the other countries that you know we do it all over the world what about all the other countries that are doing the same thing so if he really does have these sock puppet accounts that are doing this that are pretending that these are just fans you know that's that's some sleazy shit yeah it's sleazy as hell i mean that's as sleazy as it gets in my opinion that's dirty shit you're pretending you're a person who's just an independent person who's supporting you

when really just is an employee who's there for some propaganda purposes and especially like the identity politics thing like all of the different groups you know marginalized groups support you yeah it's all fake well the crazy thing is you saw that um town hall after the the shooting a cop shot this guy and they're everyone's saying how the fuck are you gonna run for president right you can't even run a city right yeah doesn't he have a job this is what i'm confused about these people like have jobs right why are they running for president giant who's who's running the city right well he's there what's going on yeah imagine right if i just said hey during this i'm not gonna do this podcast anymore uh i'm gonna go get uh brian callan he's gonna be me from now on and uh i'm gonna run for

president yeah just jump in the race joe you might as well this is brian callan from the joe rogan experience like like what people be like what the fuck is happening here like bill de blasio it's like you have a fucking city to run yeah why are you running for president how can you the fucking metro's falling apart dude how much time do you spend actually being mayor you piece of shit get that money back dude they just want the book deals they want to go on the view they want to have a reason to be relevant of you it's disgusting It's pretty gross It should be illegal Meghan McCain It really should be

If you really want to do it You should quit your fucking job Whatever you have And dedicate 100% of your time to doing that If you think that you could have that First of all, everyone knows What a grueling thing it is to run for president It is a fucking time consuming

Massive commitment to your energy How can you do that and also be the mayor of south bend yeah you just have to be on the phone begging for donations when you're not you know jumping on tables like robert o'rourke is all over the country it's a lot of work yeah there's no way you're running that city right and how fucking crazy are these people's egos i mean they say that trump is this existential threat that he's the next hitler he's mentally incapacitated yet they all jump in the race because they think they're the smartest people in the world so it's like i mean don't oblaseo it's like really yeah i don't know they're pulling so low drop out dude this is

all to try to prevent bernie from winning does it really is who who makes sense to you does bernie make sense bernie is my guy bernie's guy through and through, and I'll tell you why. Because, A, we need Medicare for all. We need to abolish student debt. And that shit, you just tax Wall Street gambling, done. Medicare for all, cut the military budget, done. I don't want to live in a country where people are rationing insulin. I don't want to live in a country where half of the GoFundMe campaigns are because people are going to die if they don't get donations for health care. What is wrong with this country? But back to Bernie, I mean, you look at the last 30 years

of political advocacy. This is a guy who's been saying the same thing for 30 straight years, no matter if it's veterans rights, about Gulf War syndrome, about just a political revolution as needed. I mean, he's been talking about that since he won the Senate seat initially. And you can't really say the same thing about any other candidate. And I do like what Tulsi Gabbard is saying. And I do like some of the things Elizabeth Warren's saying, but it seems like she's just making it up on the fly

and adopting kind of Bernie-lite policies. And I think this is all a strategy to siphon all the delegates away from Bernie because we already know this third way corporate wall street funded organization that's like corporate democrats have said they want anyone but bernie bernie is the biggest threat to the establishment by far did you see when uh charlemagne called elizabeth warren the original rachel dolezal oh my god to her face see she's not she doesn't have a chance not she doesn't have a chance. Not with that. She doesn't have a chance with the Trump shit.

No. All Trump has to say is Pocahontas over and over again. And she's toast. What's hilarious to me is they say Pocahontas is racist. It's a fucking Disney movie. How can Pocahontas be racist? Elizabeth Warren fucked up. She really, really screwed up.

That's a big fuck up. It's a really big screw up. She wound up getting the DNA test. I am 200 times more african than she is native american i'm 1.6 african people man the ego of these people it's like she's just so upset that trump yeah i mean i so nuts that she went and got jobs saying she was native american i mean yeah it's one thing to say i have native american blood it's another thing and i don't know how much you know ancestry native american ancestry she has but i do know that she was you know that was on like her harvard yeah bio and all this stuff and it's

just like what is going on well james is going on james talked about it he did he thought he was a lot of people thought he was my wife thought she was my wife thought she was a part native american so she got her dna done she's like oh fucking bunch of fucking liars you know what warren's more native american than your wife that was the thing i think my wife's still more native american she's a little bit but that was the thing where um people were like they wanted to be spiritual they would say they were part native american they wanted to be extra cool well my native american blood oh i could i smell when wolves are coming you know like you put your ear to the ground you know when it's gonna rain they felt like they were more connected in nature it's like some weird thing i remember in high school like when kids wanted to be cool they would say they were part

native american you're like oh wow well the native american community came out after she got the dna test and they said this is not this does not make you native native is much more than like whatever percentage of your blood i mean native is a you, it's a way of life. It's a culture. And it was really kind of gross. That whole thing was just bizarre. What was gross is even after the testing, she was trying to use that as proof that she was correct. And then people who analyze the data, like, are you fucking crazy? You know how small this percentage is?

This is an insanely small percentage but she was saying that trump need to give her a million dollars because of the fact that she did take the test like it was insulting to the native community it was embarrassing all around and it was also just weird that she even did it at the behest of trump like why did you do that he got you he got you but he had she had to do it because he kept saying it over and over and over again i feel like she's a politician and i and i say that in the most unflattering of terms i feel like she's one of those people that just says what needs to be said in order to get elected that's what it seems like where i don't get that impression from tulsi at all i don't i don't feel like that's who she is i feel like she's a a veteran who did two tours in the Middle East

and who's a congresswoman from Hawaii who really wants to do good. I mean, I really do think that what she's and she doesn't take any corporate money. None. She wants this she wants this job because she thinks she can do a better job than what has been done before and the other people that are running for it.

I really believe her. I mean, she's she makes sense to me. What do you think about Bernie? I like a lot of things. Bernie says, you know what? I think it's interesting. Now that people are mad at him,

he's rich. Right. That he made a lot of money off his book. And he said, you go write your own book, make your own money. I mean, and there's a lot of, you know,

criticisms that people lobby against him. What I like about him socially is that what he is standing for is the downtrodden. He's standing for the people that don't catch a good break. When he starts talking about things like income inequality, I'm like, okay, I understand what you're doing and why you're saying it. But what is the cause of income inequality? That's what we need to find out.'re saying it, but what is the cause of income inequality? That's what we need to find out. We need to find out what's the cause. Why are these poor communities the way they are?

That needs to be helped. That needs to be fixed. There's so much that can be done that's not being done. be he seems to be calling out to the people that are that are ignored that you know right aren't aren't being served by wall street right i mean a big problem is when automation happened um wages stopped going up with inflation and then credit subsidized all of the wages and that's why people are just indebted to credit, credit cooker companies were, you know, up to our ears in debt and that, and he does talk about that and he talks about the solutions to that,

but you're totally right. I mean, what other candidate of these 25 people are discussing things that are going to reach like a populist, you know, have a populist message that are reaching people. Andrew Yang is, I like what Andrew Yang is saying.

And I, he, again, like Tulsi does not seem like a politician. I believe him. I like what Andrew Yang is saying. And he, again, like Tulsi, does not seem like a politician. I believe him. He's an entrepreneur and a businessman. And he's warning everyone. He's like the fucking Paul Revere of automation.

He's like, look, artificial intelligence is coming. And you're going to be out of jobs. The fucking half the country is going to be out of jobs. And we can actually figure out a way to get through this. And there's a bridge that we can make. And through this universal income, universal basic income, you can develop a bridge where you can give people their basic needs, food, water, shelter.

Give them food. Like make sure that no one's starving. Even though people are out of jobs, make sure that their needs are met so then they can go and find a way through this mess and then figure out a way to contribute and make an income and make a living and adjust. But to have nothing, to have nothing, like what is that? You can't just have people out of work because of automation. And people go back to the industrial age.

Well, hey, that happened during this and that. Yeah, okay, it did. But it didn't work out well for all those fucking people that lost those jobs back then. We shouldn't have to go through that massive, chaotic situation again if there's a way to engineer a better way through it. I don't know if universal basic income works. I've talked to a lot of people that think like Naval. He was on my podcast recently. And his perspective is it doesn't give people meaning.

And it's not a good idea because you need a life if you want people to be happy and you want to be able to do something they need to have meaning in their time and what they do just to give people money it's not going to make people happy i think it's a band-aid yeah i think it's a band-aid i i agree with the concept that yang proposes about ubi but yeah i think that if we give people like health care and and have their basic needs met then that it's going to give them the ability in them like to maneuver to find their passion and yes to be able to have that space where they can fulfill their lives yes and and i i think there's a way to do both there's a way to find meaning and have your needs kept i mean the idea is that you know it's I don't think that people should get free money

to the point where they could live a full, rich life and go on vacations and have a nice car and a nice house and never have to work again. It doesn't make any sense. You should contribute, right? Everyone should contribute. But if you're in a job that's going to be completely annihilated by automation and artificial intelligence it makes sense that as a community

as a culture we should figure out a way to give people money so that they can have a place to live and food and then try to come up with and sort of engineer some sort of a program to help people find new ways of income new ways of making a living i don't know what that would be you know and and when i talked to tulsi about that she didn't know what that would be either this idea of trying to promote new jobs people say that we're gonna we're gonna create new jobs like i hate that expression like what does that mean if there's not a job how are you going to create a new job well look at our infrastructure i mean god damn i mean good god we've been giving an f like every year by the Army Corps of Engineers saying, shit's falling apart, dude.

I mean, look at the New Deal. Look at what FDR did. And that's what Bernie keeps saying. He's like, I'm literally instating an economic bill of rights that FDR did 100 years ago. Why am I considered a radical extremist when I'm just trying to give people basic economic rights and trying to propose jobs to rebuild this country yeah what happened to that promise that trump levied during the campaign we want to you know he talked about our infrastructure crumbling what the hell's been done on that front nothing and also the that was

the the big one is the economy like the the debt rather like how much we're in debt we're in debt more oh my god yeah crippling 1.6 trillion for student debt alone. That's insane. What do you think about the people that are calling out to try to eliminate student debt? I'm 100% on board. You think that's possible? Absolutely. And you just tax Wall Street gambling. Literally, that can do it alone. You do not have to pay. What do you mean But Wall Street just makes billions of dollars. I don havens. It solves all of these problems pretty quickly. And it's not a matter of how can we do it. It's a matter that we have to do it because

students are totally crippled. There's no opportunities in this country. Inequality is the highest that it's been since the Great Depression. And that's a huge problem. We're not going to be able to get people opportunities at all or a better life. It's also so crazy that you do that to people that are 17 years old. They don't have any idea what it's going to be like to be 35 and be a quarter million dollars in debt. Did your parents have student debt? Yeah. They did? Yeah. My stepfather was in debt when he graduated from school. It just seems like it's getting so exponentially worse. But not bad. Yeah, I mean, he handled it.

But it's what you have today. If you don't have any grants and you just try to go to school based on loans, Greg Fitzsimmons was here. What was he saying? His kids were – it was $60,000ons was here what was he saying his kids were it was 60 plus thousand dollars a year for each one of his kids two thousand i think a year yeah and then there's each one of his kids then there's no jobs once you go and you know right go to school right i mean especially if you have anything technologically related the idea that at the end of four years the technology is going to be relevant it's it's crazy right exactly and then here's the crazy thing like we all know that kids and human beings their frontal cortex doesn't even fully develop by the time they're 25 until they're 25 wow i smoked way too much weed before then

i'm so lucky that i always smoke weed like maybe six times before i was 30 i get super late yeah yeah when i was 30 I became a stoner. I was not a pothead at all. I thought it was for losers. I thought it just made me. And a lot of people that don't smoke pot think that. They think it just makes you lazy and stupid. But being lazy and stupid, it turns out, makes you lazy and stupid.

Right, right. It's not actually a pot. Right, right. Turns out it was not the pot. Turns out it's not the pot. It was you. But yeah, I tell everybody, just don't do it when you're a kid. Or if you do do it, don't do it often.

Right. I mean, if you, I don't think it's, you know, like if you're fucking 18 years old, you smoke weed once in a while with your friends, I don't think you're going to get fucked up. But, but like everyday stoners, it's terrible for you. It's just, you're, you're in a fog. Like you need to be able to deal with reality. But what, and it, like I always say, it's a tool. Use it. Use it correctly. Don't, don't, you know, don't try to do everything with a fucking hammer. you need to be able to deal with reality but what and it like i always say it's a tool use it use it

correctly right don't don't you know don't try to do everything with a fucking hammer sometimes you need a screwdriver sometimes you need a saw don't just batter your fucking life with weed right but occasionally you smoke a weed smoke a joint rather and you know you have a meal with a friend you feel like more close to them the communication's fun you're warm and friendly it's like it's a great i don't want to call it a drug because i don't like that expression this blanket that we throw over amphetamines and sedatives and all these different things and you throw marijuana in there it's it's a sacrament and i think it should be used in the most general and lightest use of that term as a sacrament i like to use it

i like to use it for certain things but it's definitely not something you should use all the time it's just it's definitely not something you should use as a kid you know and i see a lot of kids that are smoking every day yeah like man i don't think that's a good idea yeah yeah yeah i mean it's used as a crutch more and more because i think people are just trying to numb out what the hell's going on but hey better that than pills right you know better that than alcohol oh my god dude i just read something about how death by suicides is going up in the u.s and it's going down in almost every other country in the world it's like what is it really uniquely fucked up problem everything I mean, it's the same reason why so many people are. It's all Trump.

It's the same reason why people are dying on, you know, ODing on prescription pills. It's like America is uniquely fucked in so many reasons. And I think it can be the lack of health care. It's that we're, you know, the center of global capitalism. I mean, there's a lot of reasons why. It's also the empty pursuit. Materialistic. Yep yep yeah yep it's an empty pursuit right and when you get there it doesn't doesn't feel good you're just like you just keep trying to chase in more and gather more things just like that study that shows like there's a cap on happiness it's like it doesn't make you happier

when you have more money at a certain point right yeah i 100 i'm in agreement with that doing something you love is what makes you happy having good friends and having family and people that you love that makes you happy doing things that you find rewarding you know and helping people that's the weird one like helping people makes people happy and that's it's so kind of like people like yeah you yeah, you got to look out for yourself. You got to take care of business. Turns out, no, no, no. Looking out for other people is like super rewarding. Like it's a selfish thing to be generous and kind. Selfish in a lot of ways, because it really helps yourself. Well, that's the whole mantra of growing up in America is you need to help yourself and you're

a loser if you don't get rich and all this shit. It's all these impossible, um, you know, goals that we can't do without actually help from each other. You know, the biggest losers, rich people who are sad,

right? God damn. Right. You're rich and you're still depressed. You're super successful and you're still depressed. Like, wow, you,

you built a shitty house. Like your foundation sucks. You know what I mean?, like, wow, you built a shitty house. Like, your foundation sucks. You know what I mean? Because, like, your foundation, like, who you are as a person, like, the way you treat people, the way you view the world, the way you love your friends and your family,

like, that's your foundation. And if you become successful and you have that foundation, I feel like you can still be happy. But if you become successful and you just shit that foundation away because you just wanted to make it, I'm just going to make it fuck all that stuff. I don't need that.

I don't need love. I don't need any of that. And then you make it and you just sit in there alone. Yeah. It's just like a fucking tomb. That's why I think that's why a lot of people like Trump because they think of him. Like I've actually heard this term,

like a blue collar billionaire. And it's like, what? He was given a million. If everyone's given a million dollars from their pappy. It's a couple million. Yeah. A couple million from their daddy. Yeah.

You'd probably have it a lot better off. A small loan of a couple million bucks. No big deal. Unbelievable, dude. To him, that is a small loan now. That's what's really bizarre. Yeah. He's someone i think

matt taibi described him best he's like what a stupid poor person thinks of as a rich person oh my god yeah and and his and his idea is just to throw money at everything like the palestine israel thing did you see jared kushner's whole layout of like this is the new peace plan no oh my god it's literally just let's give them jobs meaning let's have corporations like basically profit off the occupation what's interesting to me is that even right-wing trump supporters in particular should say right-wing trump supporters do not seem to like them do not seem to like jared kushner or ivanka they don't like the fact that his daughter is working at the white house and that the son-in-law is there running things like they're very disturbed by that they don't like that yeah nepotism i mean well what's weird

is they just blow it the fucking wind man i saw fahrenheit 11 9 totally recommended to everyone who's listening michael moore's newest documentary oh my god it's amazing but the first 20 minutes just shows like how hillary lost and it shows that jared kushner actually lobbied to have sicko in theaters all across the i mean he was for socialized medicine and he was like working hand in glove with michael moore to roll this out it just shows you how fickle they are and like how they just have no actual values trying to make money yeah just trying to make money he was like this is a great idea you know his voice is really high he's like this is really good we should have it's weird yeah it's super weird i would say the two of them together it makes it's very

strange i can't believe they have sex you think they do no i think he jerks off in a cup she gets a turkey baster and she squirts it in there and she kicks him remember how in in fair night 11 9 he shows uh just how bizarre and inappropriate Trump is with Ivanka but there's this one talk show where the host is just like Ivanka she's like what are what what do you have most in common with your dad and she's like real estate and golf and she's like Trump what do you have most in common with Ivanka and he's like well I would say sex whoa yeah it's like what what father says that well imagine that like what do you have most in common with your baby sex we have a lot in common we have a lot of that in common that's it just in

common just in common what that's super just freudian like i want to fuck her but i can't because she's my daughter he just says so many crazy things I just I think that guy is just always talking you know and when you're always talking you never get a chance to really contemplate what you're saying you're just always just talking and then once you're talking like so many times during the campaign trail it just seems like he would say things and then you would just have to like justify what he said you know I've done that when I was younger I would would say something stupid, and then I would have to try to figure out how to make that stupid thing make sense.

Right, right. And Trump's just constantly going, yeah, but he's 20. You're not like a seven-year-old man. Let's hear this. Yeah, let's do it. Ivanka, what's the favorite thing you have in common with your father? Either real estate

or golf. Donald, with your father? Either real estate or golf. Donald, with your daughter? Well, I was going to say sex, but I can't relate that. That's the crazy thing is he thought about it and decided he wasn't going to say it. I was going to say sex. I was going to say sex and everyone's like, oh, shit. Maybe that's because he's on Wendy Williams and he wanted people to scream. It's just a good opportunity to say sex and everyone's like oh yeah maybe that's because he's on wendy williams and he wanted people to scream he wanted to say it's just a good opportunity to say sex like oh it's

a wendy williams show he went crazy he's out of his mind but there's a whole montage of creepy shit that he said like he would date her you know when she was a baby he was like she's gonna grow up and hopefully have big tits or whatever. He said really insane. And he hates Tiffany. He hates Tiffany because she's not attractive. Oh, that's the one he had with Marla Maples? Is that the other daughter?

Good point. I don't actually know who Tiffany is. I think he had her with Marla, who's very attractive. So it's weird. That is weird yeah something happened some sort of chaos cross inbred reading lightning storm but he just pretends like she doesn't exist it's kind of sad well what are you gonna do he's look i don't know how the fuck you can pay attention to anything other than i don't understand how a president is still a job i mean it was a great job when lincoln was running things you know and probably extremely chaotic but with today's

economy when you're dealing with all these different threats to the environment cyber threats the economy all the shit they have to deal with the idea that one person is supposed to be the general manager of the country the company it's absurd absurd it's completely absurd and the pardoning power usually that's supposed to be like sympathy pardons for people like chelsea manning yeah not for war criminals who have killed a bunch of civilians yeah like what is i mean that's basically saying has he done that yet is he is he's he's talking about it this is the seal yeah this is like more than just the seal i mean he's he's contemplating actually pardoning the nassar square massacre blackwater employees it's like what the fuck is going on here but that's to me that's like sending a message to soldiers like

act like isis and you'll be fine i'll pardon you meanwhile look at what he's doing to julian assange yeah this is like going beyond the julian assange thing is weird because i thought that he would be a guy that would want julian assange out talking out of both sides of his mouth he said how many times during the campaign trail wiki leaks i love wiki leaks yeah but then you look back before the campaign and he said julian assange to get the death penalty on fox and friends back in the day but again i think he probably thought about that a microsecond before he said it and then had to justify it. Right, right.

You know what I mean? He's just like, he's just talking crazy. Probably had eight cups of coffee, four Red Bulls, two diet pills. He just went out there and... So scary though. I mean, Assange, it's beyond the pale because now you're not just prosecuting whistleblowers with the Espionage Act. You're actually prosecuting publishers.

just prosecuting whistleblowers with the espionage act you're actually prosecuting publishers that's like a whole level of a direct assault on the first on journalism press i mean he's a legitimate journalist in that regard right what he's doing is he's distributing information that people that is literally going to change the way people view the way the government and the military oh my god works it's i mean it's incomprehensible how much the world has changed and what we are aware of because of WikiLeaks revelations in the past 10 years. I mean, even just the film that I just made, Gaza Fights for Freedom, I cite a WikiLeaks cable about how Israel wanted Hamas to win in Gaza and they said that they were strategizing for that to happen

so then they can regard Gaza as a hostile territory and then just relentlessly bomb them. That was because of WikiLeaks. I found that out because of them. I mean, I can't believe what is going on because people, I don't think that people really knew that Trump would take these powers and become so authoritarian with them. Well, what's disturbing to me is WikiLeaks used to be something that people on the left would cite as evidence that the military was out of control or that the military industrial complex is out of control. Then, because they feel like somehow or another WikiLeaks was involved in helping Trump, they became a Russian mouthpiece and a traitor i mean like the left over the last few years in particular since the since 2016 wikileaks has been sort of re sort of redefined they're conflating julian assange's personal politics and i don't know what those are i know that he had those private dms with trump jr

which looked bad but what did he say to trump jr he was talking to him about you know we need your tax returns so then people don't think of us as like a biased organization and it would look good and kind of like you know a little too buddy buddy with trump jr but that does not take away from the importance and you know validity of what wiki leaks is as an organization it's also a person very crucial to another person giving their opinion opinion, which makes sense. People just really don't like Julian Assange as a person. And it doesn't matter how much you hate Julian Assange. This is completely beyond the pale what's going on to him.

And he needs to be defended. His rights need to be defended. But very few people are defending him. That's what's even more interesting. What's crazy is these charges that just got unveiled with the Trump administration, they're trying to extradite him to the u.s of course and he'll just be sitting in a cell for the rest of his life if he doesn't face the death penalty but the charges have nothing to do with the 2016 election at all they all have to do with the um the massacre the collateral the collateral murder video that's what it has to do with it has to

do with the same thing that chelsea manning was in jail for releasing to him and so they've just trumped up all these charges based on him publishing war crimes and that's really what this is it's publishing war crimes and embarrassing the u.s empire and what is the what what are they saying what are they calling it like what is the the actual they're saying that he helped chelsea manning hack into i i forget it's like some sort of charge that it's basically concocted um they're saying that he helped chelsea manning basically release the information to him and that's how he's part of the conspiracy it's total bullshit completely concocted he he's a political prisoner and he needs to be freed and it's absolutely astounding that the trump administration is doing this and that people are going along with it i see people

applauding this it's sick it's weird it's weird it's weird the shift in how people used to defend him and now no longer do and nothing really has changed in terms of what he's actually done it was a traumatic election and people's reptile brains got activated hardcore. And they think everything is Russia. And they think Julian Assange is Russia. And they think anyone who's talking about U.S. foreign policy is towing the Russian line, towing the Kremlin line. It's not about the people who control this government. It's the dark evil forces behind your friends and family and the people who are talking about sowing discord and shit. And it's a disturbing time because it's hard to relate

and actually have these discussions with people. Yeah, I think you nailed it when you said the 2016 elections have sort of, they've awakened this reptile brain. Because that's what it seems like. You're seeing so many people that think that there's a war going on, like a war in this country. Right. Instead of discussing things, they don't want any discussion.

They want to shut things down. And that's part's part of i think some of the motivation behind this and justification for deplatforming people and wiping them out like remove them get them out you know we we're at war right now we have to fix this we have to get a woman president we have to get a gay man we have to get you know it's like this kind of shit that you see like they they feel like they're in an ideological war that's why identity politics is so fascinating, it's like this kind of shit that you see, like they feel like they're in an ideological war. That's why identity politics is so fascinating because it's just been adopted by the establishment, by the liberal wing of the establishment to try to like trick people that were somehow a progressive society that it's all just like corporatism with, you know, under the flag and the banner of like social politics and identity politics. And it's completely absurd i mean with barack obama we thought that we were in a post-racial society because we had a black president right and we know that that's absolutely a falsehood so i just think that we're just going

down the wrong path here and um neoliberalism has really uh done a number on this country in the world and we're gonna see kind of more authoritarian fascist policies take root because people are really down and out with how capitalism has morphed and has strangled basically the economy. It's really disturbing because, you know, you're looking at like left identity politics, but it's under the banner of capitalism. So really, it's just about privatization. Neoliberalism is just about privatization. So it's not about like leftist, you know, socialist politics. And even you look at someone like Bernie Sanders, he's not a socialist, he's a democratic socialist, which means that he just wants social democracy. He's not talking

about abolishing private industries, not talking about nationalizing anything. He's not talking about abolishing private industry. He's not talking about nationalizing anything. He's just talking about having workers have a seat at the table and getting the fair share. So we're just kind of, we've gone off the wayside of like rhetoric and we just have no idea how to talk about these things in like a fair way because things are so heated and ideological and people are just blinded, I think, and don't really understand these issues well enough. And it's really disturbing because we're at a point in our country where we need to have conversations. We don't just want soundbites. But going back to the censorship stuff and the consolidation of corporate media, people don't have the platform, they don't have the voice to get these ideas out there, which is why your show is so important. I mean, having people like me, like Tulsi, I mean, bringing out these concepts and shifting the consciousness is very, very important.

over and over and over again from one side and then an opposite view over and over again from another side it's it's very difficult to have an understanding of what the fuck is going on it's it's very confusing to most people and i think they tend to either just give up or they tend to just find whatever side seems to get them the most social credit or the most most reasonable perspective in their terms like whether it's left wing or right wing and then just support that just just give into that and then just have this pattern that they adopt this this conglomeration of opinions they adopt and then they're so busy with their jobs they're so busy with their family so busy with their life and then all this other shit when when you're seeing deregulation, all this other shit you're seeing, the stuff that caused the banking crisis, all this stuff is going on, and it's going on without their knowledge.

It's all happening underneath the surface. And then something erupts, like the economic collapse of 2007, 2008, and they're like, what the fuck is happening? How'd this happen? I didn't see this coming and now the economy crashes and then we have to buy out all these fucking banks and then and then it rebuilds back up and people are still doing the same goddamn thing they're still working and trying to get ahead and trying to and then all this is happening behind the scenes and it's so incredibly difficult to pay attention to all of it of course to really develop a nuanced perspective of what the problems are, how to fix them, and then who is actually going to support a real tangible solution versus who's just

saying some Elizabeth Warren type shit to get elected. Well, that's why we need a real mobilization in the streets, because there's no person who's going to change this. There's no top down, you know, implementation that's really going to revolutionize society and get people living wage and get people healthcare. Even Bernie said, I'm not going to be able to do this. I need you to come out to get my back. But yeah, I mean, there's nowhere in the country that you can live if you're living on minimum wage and actually afford a two-bedroom apartment. I mean, that's the reality here. But when we bailed out the banks in 2008, no one had fretted about how we're going to pay for that.

I mean, it was just kind of understood. Okay, we're going to pay and give the banks the bailout. What about fucking us? Don't we deserve a bailout? What about the people? Yeah. Bank's too big to fail. If failed and the people fail it's unbelievable man and all this shit that we're spending i mean the venezuela shit all these sanctions uh it is the venezuela coup i mean were you following that that was insane well i was following it as much as you

were sort of putting all as much you were putting a very alternative view as opposed to like what we're seeing in either left or right wing publications. And you faced a lot of resistance because of that, right? Right, right. But you were there. Yes, yes. I was there and that's why I knew with my own, I mean, I saw with my own eyes the reality on the ground and what do you think is happening over there so what is happening over there I mean if you pull Venezuelans themselves they will say that their quality of life has lessened because of US sanctions so back in 2015

Obama declared Venezuela national security threat very random there was no threat obviously opposed to the US but it was just to kind of start the sanctions on them. What was the justification? Who knows? Who knows? Pressure? I mean, there's always been pressure because of course the U.S. has always hated Maduro and hated Hugo Chavez and the U.S. empire doesn't forget and it doesn't forgive. And, you know, going back to 2002, Bush tried to engineer a coup against Hugo Chavez. That didn't work. And so what we've done with these civil society organizations is try to foment radical discontent on the ground in Venezuela to try to, you know, get some sort of uprising. from obscurity who was just well known in Georgetown and Washington, D.C., much more well known there than he was even in Venezuela. So, you know, this was completely engineered. It was totally concocted. No Venezuelans really knew who he was. I think like 80% of Venezuelans had no idea who Juan Guaido was. But, you know, the economy went into a spiral because oil prices

dropped and they would have been able to pick back up their economy but unfortunately the sanctions were so debilitating that it went to complete freefall um venezuela is not a socialist country that's actually the vast majority is private industry and a lot of those um private ceos are very anti-government um long story short is that the coup was initiated you know during the trump administration after he slapped like 70 sanctions on venezuela and we're talking about medicine food all the things that they're saying that they need right that they're trying to stage these fake aid caravan deliveries that was all bullshit what they're doing is actually preventing the delivery

from food and medicine from getting to venezuelans and this coup was a failure because the resilience of the venezuelan people they believe that they have a democracy. They do have a democracy. It's actually more free than our democracy. There's not a dictatorship there. Maduro won a presidential election last year. He won a presidential election. The U.S. lobbied the opposition candidates to not run against him so then they can say it was illegitimate, that it was a dictatorship. And so he won. He won the popular vote and they tried to implement all these things and they've been blocked. And the opposition keeps crying to the US that they need help, that they need to be invaded. It's pretty disturbing when you have opposition candidates

saying, slap sanctions on us, invade our country, help us, Trump, help us. I mean, it's absolutely ridiculous. But when I was on the ground, I saw flourishing democracy. I saw dozens of people, hundreds of people who said that they love the process there, that they believe in the Bolivarian movement and that they're Chavismo till death. And we don't understand because those people's voices are totally censored from corporate media. The only Venezuelans that we hear from in corporate media are rich opposition, either, you know, expats or people who just have fled. And what do we hear from corporate media? What is what is the corporate take? So this is even Elizabeth Warren.

Even Bernie Sanders has been terrible on this. I mean, it's it's really bad. I mean, their take on corporate media. If you're looking at like Fox News, they'll say we need to overthrow maduro and you know everyone's starving and it's a failed state um they never mentioned the sanctions they never mentioned the fact that u.s sanctions just from 2017 alone has killed 40 000 venezuelans this was just a study out by seeper 40 000000 Venezuelans have died from Trump's sanctions, from insulin shipments not getting there, primarily. A lot of other things, medicine-wise, that people have not been getting, and they are dying. So that is absurd. We like to think of sanctions as kind of like the soft power

that just targets elites of the country. No, it's an act of war, and that's exactly what's happening to Iran, and Trump's implemented sanctions all over the world in a really devastating way but but the corporate media will say we need to overthrow them they're a failed state they're you know they're a dictatorship um and reality no they're not they're a democracy and they we don't like their politics that's really what it is we don't like the fact that their politics their politics are that they nationalize the oil. And that's really where it comes from. This fake ambassador that was trying to get into the embassy here, Carlos Vecchio, he's an ex Exxon lawyer. And you see all of these people who were involved in ExxonMobil

and all of the oil industries that were flourishing in Venezuela before Chavez got elected. And they just want their profits back. They want their money back. They don't like the fact that Chavez took the profits from the oil companies. That's what the crux of the problem is, Joe. And it's amazing. It's amazing how transparent it is. So ever since these failed coup attempts over the last decade, the U.S. has been fomenting regime change through the civil society organizations, USAID offshoots in the country, and basically trying to foment violent unrest. Violent unrest to the extent that they burn down streets, there's lynch mobs. I mean, when I was there during the height of the violence in 2017, like 200 people died. And the news just kept saying, like insinuating that Maduro was

going out there with police forces and actually gunning down people in the streets. It couldn't be farther from the truth. We looked at all the deaths, we broke them all down, we looked at death records. And we found out that the opposition lynch mobs were actually responsible for the overwhelming majority of deaths in the streets. So that's happening. People get lynched for being black, they get lynched for being black. They get lynched for being Chavismo. These people are targeting maternity clinics, hospitals, basically any enclave of government services, because that's what this is really about. It's about a kind of a fascistic bent of the opposition wanting to take back the power from the poor.

The poor people got power and they didn't like it. And that's what the crux of the problem is. But when you're looking at the corporate media, it's an absurdly cartoonish brush that's being painted. And then if you look at the liberal media with Maddow and all these other people, they either don't talk about it or they say, Maduro needs to let the aid in. You even saw Bernie and Elizabeth Warren saying, Maduro needs to let the aid in.

Let the aid in, Maduro. The aid was the coup. The aid was a trick. They're getting aid every day from countries that are not trying to actively overthrow them. But we staged this big stunt on the border of Colombia. And by the way, Colombia is actually suffering more than Venezuela.

Colombia is in dire poverty. There's people getting assassinated every week who are labor leaders and teachers. I went there and I talked to a teacher who's living in exile because he's scared for his fucking life. But we don't hear about that, right? Because they're allies with the U.S. So it's a cynical stunt to try to get this humanitarian international outcry to say,

oh my God, people are dying. People are hungry. It's not a matter of that there's no food. It's that food is very expensive because there's an actual economic war being waged by massive corporations in the country and just external entities whether it be the trump administration or u.s multinationals that are asphyxiating preventing aid and food from coming in and the aid that they're they're claiming that they need to accept is basically a hoax. It's a stunt to try to get regime change to happen.

We just saw Richard Branson stage some ridiculous big concert on the border of Colombia. And they had like what they said were aid trucks on this big bridge. And you had CNN on the ground being like, all right, they need to let the aid in. Why don't they let the aid in? And the aid was, it was fake. It was just a truck full of like, I don't know, like very minuscule things, but they wanted to try to ram these trucks through just to get the soldiers up in arms and to try to get them to defect. It hasn't worked. They've been trying over and over, going to try to get something going. And basically at the end of the day, what happened was just a giant money

grab. It was basically a money laundering scheme. You look at these people who are the opposition leaders now, Juan Guaido, Carlos Vecchio, they've just stolen all the money back. Maybe they realized the coup wasn't going to go forward, but they basically ended up stealing at least $70 million and just putting it right in these people's bank accounts it's pretty shocking i mean you have international it's an international conspiracy to try to take the money back from from the people whose money was was basically um administered by maduro for social services is nationalizing the oil nationalizing the oil is the root of it all and also just uplifting the poor i mean poor people got a voice and they never had a voice in that country their entire lives and that country was you know it was a colonial holdover and so the bolivarian movement started this pink tide all across latin

america and it was scary it was a giant threat to the u.s establishment and actually that's why telesor was founded telesor the the the organization that I used to sell the show to, it was started as kind of a counter to this global hegemony and this corporate narrative trying to overthrow these democratically elected leaders. But it's shocking when you see like the Bank of England seized all of this gold that was rightfully Maduro's. They seized it illegally. All of these banks and international bodies just stole all this money and they just gave it to these opposition leaders so even though the opposition leaders weren't able to take you know take the power back in the country they still have taken all the money and no one's

talking about that and everyone's just acting like this is some crazy dictatorship that needs our saving how dare you who the fuck do we think we are we're uninformed right yeah is that what it is yeah you should check out everyone should check out our empire files um youtube channel because we've done extensive coverage on the ground really going into the nuts and bolts of what the economic crisis really is and my partner mike preissner did this epic takedown of john oliver you know the liberal media is just as bad john oliver did some fucking absurdly false kind of like analysis of the whole venezuela situation and we just went through and debunked every single line of it i mean it was extremely disingenuous i bet he had someone who

wrote all right right so i bet he probably has no real knowledge of it, nor could you really, unless you extensively studied it the way you have. And especially if you have feet on the ground. Right. I think that most people just, in order to understand a complex, nuanced problem, like some sort of an international conflict that we're involved in that has to do with nationalizing oil, like, God damn, you got to do a lot of work. You do. You do.

And if you're running a show like Last Week Tonight or whatever the fuck that show's called. Right. You have producers doing everything for you. Yeah. Someone else is doing that. I mean, you find that with a lot of these so-called online experts. When you talk to them one-on-one and you get them off the record without notes, like, they're just people.

Well, there's this guy, this UN human rights investigator namedfred de zayas that i did this big interview with and he said he tried to propose this to the un saying there is no humanitarian crisis there this is all fake yes people are suffering and dying but it's not because of maduro's policies and corruption this is because of u.s sanctions that have asphyxiated the economy and prevented any sort of recovery from taking place. And the economy is still in free fall. They can't work with international bodies. Again, we have the threats of sanctions with institutions that now work with Venezuela. So they've been isolated.

They've been isolated from the world. So is the idea that they just put these sanctions in place, allow this political unrest to take place, support the opposition, and then just have a slow burn until it all collapses and they're coming and swoop in and fix everything and make it a part of the united states government and then these people will not have a voice any longer and um another thing that they hate is that maduro's given two million free homes to people that's something that's completely unheard of to maybe americans But that's one thing that Juan Guaido said that he would do. He immediately implemented a new hydrocarbons law, or he was proposing to implement a new hydrocarbons law, which is again, you know, reprivatizing the oil, and also just immediately privatizing all of the social services that Maduro and Chavez did. So it's pretty shocking what would

happen, and pretty devastating what would happen if Guaido's coup did succeed. And the whole Trump administration, I mean, it's not just Venezuela. It's Nicaragua and Cuba, too. I mean, we can't go to Cuba anymore. Yeah, it's a new one, right? When did that happen? Just a couple weeks ago, right?

What was the purpose? I mean, what was the rationalization? Because socialism is terrifying, and we can't just let this small island nation just live its life. We have to create some genocidal blockade that prevents food and medicine from getting in there too. But what was the, was there a justification? Did they say why they were doing this? Why they're imposing these new laws? No, it's just John Bolton's bizarre speech about the troika of tyranny.

Remember the axis of evil? Remember that? Now it's the troika of tyranny. remember the axis of evil remember that now it's a troika of tyranny nicaragua cuban venezuela it's like wait i thought that i thought that we were fighting a war on terrorism we're going after nicaragua too yeah because of ortega yeah they hate anyone who leans left they want to crush crush it's pretty fucking nuts what's happened. The Cuba one is a weird one, right? The Cuba one's... Because what has happened over there?

Nothing. No, they're not. They haven't done anything to us. The only thing they just did was actually give out free HIV prevention pills. And they... Well, that's where they fucked up. Big pharma. Yeah, that's where they fucked up.

We're not into that. Yeah, no, it's... The Venezuela thing's a mess. It's so difficult because it's so nuanced, but I encourage everyone to maybe check out Venezuela Analysis and Empire Files and Telesor if they want to learn more about that situation. Have you encountered any demonetization of your channel

from discussing these complex issues? Yes, we have. So we actually stopped monetizing altogether so we are ad free but we would we would have been demonetized i'm i'm absolutely sure and we also are slapped with age restrictions and sensitive content bans on almost every single video that we put up whether it be israel palestine or venezuela really and then what would cause you to get an age restriction or a sensitive content ban like is there anything that is like a fairly innocuous video that you guys have put out that has also gotten age absolutely like mike's video about john oliver was just literally taking clips from john

oliver and then critiquing them and they said that was sensitive content ban it's like well what do you mean why is that sensitive content ban um but i think it has to do with an issue because you're criticizing an hbo show uh no no because it's happened with with almost every single one of our videos and so you have to make sure that you're logged in that you prove your age just all these different steps and gatekeeping methods to prevent people from from getting access to our channel and another crazy thing about it is if you just search like empire files venezuela like it will take you a really long time to actually find our work even if you type in the channel name abby martin and these subjects it's it's really difficult to find and they've made that difficult to find on purpose i have no doubt well it's also weird like how they determine

what is trending right you know because it's not real like right what is trending is not really what is trending like uh alex jones freaked out he's like they're keeping because the video got millions and millions of hits like they're they're censoring us from trending i'm like dude i got news for you i've never trended ever really zero oh you know that's fake that's where it's fake yeah right, right. Zero times. That's ridiculous. But shouldn't they be building your channel up? No. Some people like it.

Some people over there like it. I think it's too fucked up. You know, I think, like, they don't know what I'm doing. Like, there's not, it's not, you can't put it in a clear box. And there's too much, too many comedians on, and there's too much weed, and people get and there's too much weed and people get drunk and they you know they talk crazy shit and it's uncensored i just think i don't it's a very complex thing this sort of but you know it's happening there's you know you know someone has made a choice to never have it trend there's's trended zero times. How many views have we had

total? You're talking about that one report the guy did? That said zero times? We have trended, but it's been like a very few amount of times, like over five years. That report was like over a one year period. But we haven't trended in years. The main channel hasn't. Our Clips channel

pops up there every so often. Your Clips channel? It's a weird thing. I wouldn't use that trending page. The only one that's up now is ours. That trending page isn't a good gauge to mark stuff. I don't like, it's not like this is the news of the day kind of page. But it does help people like see people that are trendy.

Yeah, my friend, I know that he's your friend too. Peter Joseph, who's been on this show before, you know, Zeitgeist and the zeitgeist trilogy was like one of the most popular videos online and that was totally fucking censored yeah 100 well you can barely find that anymore this is the issue that people have with facebook and google and any of these gigantic online corporations that are deciding what is and isn't popular and and and using algorithms to steer people in directions you know one of the more fascinating discussions that's happened over the past few years is this understanding that their algorithms favor people arguing about things they're like if you want to have a subject like like say abortion, and you put up a, you know, if you're a pro-choice or a pro-life person, you're going to get steered towards things you disagree

with so that you engage with them more because that's where the money is. The money is in you being upset and engaging. And that's where people really get into it. So the more you engage, the more profitable it is for Facebook, and the more they encourage that type of behavior. So their algorithm actually encourages pissing you off. And wants you to stay on YouTube and just go down the rabbit hole. Yeah, particularly Facebook. Facebook. But with YouTube, that was one of the, that weird New York Times piece, the radicalization of some soft-minded child who got online and was turned into a right-winger and then was subsequently

turned into a left-winger by another video. And they're like, finally, he was saved. Like, are you sure? I didn't read it. Yeah, it's just nonsense. Because it sort of connected a lot of people that aren't even right wing including me with the radicalization of this young man and they did link some websites that or some youtube channels that are right you know that are right leaning and and even far right but they also threw in a bunch of other ones that like philly d right who's not right wing at all me and a few other folks well that's the algorithm yeah you know the algorithm just takes you down down down yeah but they were new york

times article was suggesting that we all were right wing because it was a sloppy article it just wasn't wasn't really well done but what's interesting is the conclusion ultimately he was saved by this by their algorithm so yeah it's like their algorithm led him got him down and then got him out yeah led him to an opposition of that i bet he was like left-wing person youtube employee wrote it or some shit but this idea that this is the thing that drives me crazy say you believe something right and then if you go online and you read something else and that something else is contrary to what you believe and you start believing in that something else somehow or another that's bad this is one of the great arguments against censorship is like you have to figure out what the fuck makes sense the only way

to figure out what makes sense is to read all kinds of things to engage with all kinds of content the idea that we're supposed to protect people because we know what's right. We know what's correct. Well, who are you? Let me talk to you. If you think you know what's correct, you're the arbiter of free speech,

you're the arbiter of logical discourse and common sense in this world, let me ask you things. Let me talk to you. Let me get to the heart of how you feel. How do you feel about trans kids transitioning when they're six how do you feel about all sorts of crazy weird things that have just been propped up as logical and make sense how do you how do you feel about war how

do you feel about abortion how do you feel about ghosts how who are you who are you and you just you just get to choose whether or not someone or information that comes to them leans left or right. I think it's preposterous. I just think it's incredibly dangerous because you have to have an unbelievably complex and nuanced perspective in order to be able to dictate what makes or does not make sense. And you have to have a lot of information at your disposal you have to have a lot if you're talking about something like venezuela let's look

at that for example look at what you know and then look what you see in what you would call progressive left-wing media that to your knowledge is incorrect and is basically propaganda points that's being redistributed in this way that is palatable now imagine if people decide that you abby martin are somehow another part of some right-wing conspiracy now and they they're going to censor your voice and censor your because it doesn't fit in to this narrative that they're but because you need so much information to be able to really understand what's happening in this one part of south america that we're talking about exactly it's so complex well they treat us like children um and they think that we're not smart enough to actually discern what is um information that we need i mean i i want the russian perspective i

want the venezuelan perspective i want the russian perspective i want the venezuelan perspective i want the chinese perspective because i feel like we're smart enough to really determine our own reality based on all the available information but this is where we're fucked is that we don't have a reliable independent source that's not filled with hyperbole and emotion and and and dunking on people and screaming and insulting. And I want someone who can break things down logically and clearly with no ideological bend. You're not leaning left. You're not leaning right.

Where is that? And why doesn't that exist? I think it's because it's not necessarily human. And people have opinions and they have biases and either they couch those biases in like these think tanks and pretend like they're these unbiased journalists or they just kind of wear it on their sleeve like I do with Empire Files and Media Roots, which is my, you know, my news organization that I do with my brother, Robbie. But I mean, we try to lay it out, but we also don't hide where we're coming from. I almost

appreciate that more than a lot of these journalists, so-called journalists who are really kind of stenographers, who pretend like they are unbiased. And they're like, I'm just giving it to you straight. And at the end of the day, they're really not. They're trying to toe a line and they're trying to push a certain perspective, but it's just not obvious. Yeah. It's just we live in such a strange time where we are overwhelmed with data. I mean, overwhelmed. You cannot get away from it. And there's no way, there's not a fucking human alive that understands all of it. It is impossible. It really is impossible. And it's so hard to find out what is true and what what is bullshit right oh my god what you posted about how you can now change people's like you can make a picture talk yes isn't that crazy we're in for a wave a wave of lies i know i was like oh that's what the

mona lisa looked like cool if she's talking's talking, I like dick. It's crazy. It's unbelievable. I like to do coke and I like to fly planes, even though they haven't been invented. Like you could have the Mona Lisa say anything. It's really disturbing what we're in for. What, like what's coming.

Buckle up. Buckle up. Yeah. Right. Imagine the fourth, fifth and sixth generation of this technology being utilized by government, you know? Oh my God.

And then being utilized by someone to sort of i mean you could easily justify assassinations if you can prove that someone's saying something fucked up you kill them and then you release a tape of them saying something fucked up totally this person was trying to overthrow the government yeah sure for sure for sure oh my god just drone strike anyone what i'm hoping is that if you look at what this technology is doing what technology in general is doing particularly like information technology internet cellular phones and smartphones and all these devices and and and all the the various new incarnations that are coming out what they seem to be doing is they seem to be creating portals for which information is more quickly accessed it's more and more transparent like ideas are getting to people quicker there's and i think this is one

of the things that these companies like google and facebook and twitter and also they're trying to like figure out a way to manage this like well this is just too crazy we have to figure out how to manage information and get it right people things that they want to see but i think ultimately it's going to fail and i think ultimately as technology as all these innovations keep coming down the pipe we're going to get closer and closer to this time where everyone has an instantaneous and equal access to information and i think that when that time does come, lying will be virtually impossible. I really do believe that

because I think we're probably a decade away from implementing some sort of a device or an ability to read minds. I really believe that. That's kind of terrifying. I think they're going to develop some sort of technology that allows us to link up together and through some some sort of some new way of communicating that we didn't we don't foresee now but if you just look at this trend like what is the trend

the trend was oh you go to the library and get a book well now you can get a book online well now you get a book on your phone well now you could have that book read to you on your phone. I mean, it's all this. An Australian accent. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It keeps getting closer and closer to you. And I think there's going, I mean, when Elon Musk, he's being very vague about it.

He won't really discuss what he's doing. But this neural link thing that he's doing, that he thinks is going to radically increase bandwidth between human beings and information. And he thinks it's going to literally change humanity i don't know what the fuck that means but if he's working on something like that he's not the only one and if you're wearing some sort of a device that allows you to access information at this radical pace what what the next step would be was to is to make it so that you can tap into some sort of a universal language and this universal language would not be dependent upon like these various languages that we use where

spanish or chinese or whatever it is but some sort of a new language that kids learn and a new language it's a universal language that's distributed through online platforms and have this all go straight to your fucking brain. Wow. It's going to happen. We're becoming cyborgs in some sort of a weird way. And that's the other thing that Elon said. We're already cyborg.

We're just carried around with us. And that's what your phone is. Right. We're so dependent upon these devices. It just seems to make sense that the general direction that all this is going is becoming more and more invasive and more and more inclusive, more and more invasive in terms of the way it's sort of ingrained in your body and becomes a part of your life, becomes more and more a part of everyone's life. And then more inclusive in terms of more access to this information and more access to thoughts. And I just think we're just a few years away from someone making a breakthrough. Wow. I think in some ways it's probably.

Joe Biden says he's going to cure cancer. Have I shown you this before? This thing is called alter ego where he can talk to it without moving his mouth and it communicates with a computer. This is over a year old, so I don't know what the developments they've made since then. Yeah, I sent this to Elon and he says it's just a trick. He said this is basically like a trick. He said, yeah, this is giving you information. You don't need to talk to it.

But he said what he's doing is far more complex. And then I asked him questions and he went radio silent on me. i was just going this has got to be the first step first of all look at that guy he looks like a dork wearing that thing he's at my team scientists so big he probably figured it out himself yeah probably but that looks like some iron man type shit he's gonna wear a football helmet that does that if i just go one step this is like then the next thing they get this on a bluetooth thing just touched your ear that like everybody's already been walking around with for the last 25 years so he's essentially calculating his groceries as he walks around yeah he's just this is just probably connected to his phone i was just sort of showing you this this is already maybe available and like they're showing

this as proof of concept well back this up because it was let's read the narration because it just said something there so without it right there without any voice or just go back to where it is okay leave right there without any voice or discernible movements enabling the user to communicate with devices just let it play um so ai assistance applications or other people in a silent it's moving too fast yeah yeah so bad video wrote yeah how will the fucking read that fast i'm reading it pretty good or other people in a silent... It's moving too fast. Bad video. Yeah, who the fuck can read that fast? I'm reading it pretty good. Yeah, it's like, okay, I need to wear one of these.

Persons can translate queries simply by vocalizing their eternally subtop... Yeah, come on. What the hell? I didn't even get to that. I mean, who's reading faster than me? That's insane. You need to be wearing one of these devices to tell your brain. They're trying to tell you you're stupid.

You're stupid, you need this. Please buy it. So, could I play... We have a little trailer for the film. Could I play it really quick? Yeah, sure. Where's it sure where's it check out empire files and it's the most recent thing how long have you guys been uh independent like ad free basically a year um since i came on right after i came on last year um the sanction shut down our show and so we had to do this giant fundraiser and it was just absolutely um very difficult to yeah here it is yep let's check it out empire files gaza fights for freedom

and this is this is the little trailer for our film that just came out this is our eldest daughter she was my my first joy. She was killed. She's a medic. You want to read this? First young female, the field volunteer. As a girl, she was the first to go to the march encampments. And everyone participated. I, too, participated. The whole family did. My husband, my children, my neighbors, my siblings did, too.

All Palestinians participated. Our march is peaceful. We do not carry weapons. We go there with our bare chests. We stand before a huge force of a fortified army with tanks, gas, and warplanes. Our march is peaceful where we ask for our rights. I have the right to have a country. I have the right to have a home. All those refugees have the right to return to their homes. So during this protest, is this when these people were shot?

Mm-hmm. What we're seeing here? Yeah. So it's a lot of people who are getting carried out. Including little kids. Yeah. And they're shooting at them. And this is...

Isn't it time yet, she says? Everyone around the world is sitting there watching us, and they're all comfortable with their lives. Here we are under siege. We have no borders, no life. Where are we supposed to go? So this is coming out in a couple of weeks. We're fine tuning it, but we just had a big theatrical release in downtown and it was really cool.

That's where you saw the Oliver Stone. Yeah. But yeah, it's sick. I mean, you texted me that video of the kid, you know, another medic was just shot. Yeah, there was something that balal muhammad who's one of the ufc fighters had on his instagram and uh i texted you that it's we it's so again this is another thing right it's so difficult to understand what's actually going on there's so many pro-israel people that put their head in the sand and don't want to look at some of

these atrocities and don't want to look at some of the videos that you sent me of soldiers shooting at people that are not doing anything right i mean yeah i mean their whole argument is that it's all hamas and their human shields i mean we looked through hundreds of hours of footage that these people gave us and it's mind-blowing footage it looks absolutely cinematic and epic but the footage is harrowing and I didn't see one weapon I didn't see one militant not one weapon it was literally people with slingshots throwing rocks at tanks it's kind of a rite of passage it's very symbolic they're not trying to hurt anyone no Israeli soldiers have been hurt or killed you know during 2018 which is what the the film looks at is through 2018 of the Great

March of Return. And there's not any weapons, there's no militants. Hamas has nothing to do with the march. And it's just shocking. I mean, it's shocking how many war crimes were committed on camera. And it's just amazing the propaganda that's just told to us about what this is and why they have the right to kill people that pose no threat to them. When you were on last time and you talked about this, one of my email accounts was flooded with literally a chain letter, the same letter, like denouncing you and your lies and your anti-semitic perspective and your anti-israeli perspective it was it was weird because it was the same email astroturfed yeah it was fake yeah you know that's a campaign you know that that has a lot of money behind it yeah there's a lot of money behind that i mean the film is mind-blowing go to gightsForFreedom.com if you want to check it out when it gets released. And it's just really incontrovertible, Joe.

I mean, even if it were a war between armies, all of these things that Israel has done are still documented war crimes and very grievous violations of international law. And we're talking about direct targeting and assassinations by israeli snipers of disabled people of children press and medics um and that's what who razan was she was a medic and and as you mentioned another medic just passed away um was killed rather i hate to use the passive voice because you always hear palestinians died no they were murdered they're all being murdered by snipers and and they pose no threat to them. And so the film looks at this UN investigation, basically during the March in 2018, and documents all of the grievous crimes and atrocities conducted by the Israeli military. And I mean, you know, Palestine has a right to defend itself.

And this isn't even what that is. But if you look at the UN Charter of 1978, they say that, you know, occupied peoples and besieged peoples have the right actually for armed self-defense. And the fact that this is not even what that is, that there's literally people going out there in peace with their bared chests, holding flags, and they're getting killed and sniped. There's so many amputations. I mean, just in 2018 alone, there was 35 kids who were killed. 900 shot. Jesus.

Yeah, that's children. And, you know, some of these stories are harrowing. A kid hiding behind a trash can who was sniped. A kid who went up to the fence and just put a Palestinian flag, and she was shot in the head and died instantly. It just, it goes on and on and on. And so, you know, we're just trying to document this to really kind of push the needle for accountability because these laws have been agreed upon by the international community, some of them a hundred years ago. And to have kind of a rogue state acting with complete impunity, knowing that it has total protection from the

U.S. empire and given more freedom than ever under trump with this goal on heights thing and the moving of the jerusalem embassy or the moving of the embassy to jerusalem i mean it's just it's abysmal and it needs to be stopped and um you know they can't control the narrative any longer because we're seeing this with our own eyes and that's what this film does is really lays it all out abby you concentrate and focus on so many different fucked up parts of the world but you're so you're very friendly and upbeat like see like you're laughing at this how do you manage to maintain your sanity because i i i have a hard time if i just watch one of your pieces right i. I watch one of your clips and I just go, what the fuck? And I just want to cry and I don't know what to do and I want to hug my kids.

But you're in this, you're in the trenches every day and you go to these places all the time. How do you do it? Well, I think that, well, first of all, I go and camp a lot. I get into nature a lot, which is also kind of depressing knowing that, you know, climate change and blah, blah, blah. But I try to get out and see the beauty of the world and understand my privilege, especially as an American citizen, because I don't have, we can't afford to not be aware. And we can't afford to not be educated in talking about these issues, especially when our government is subsidizing this around the world, $10 million every day with our tax dollars. I mean, this is going on and it's so close to home and we have to acknowledge our privilege and acknowledge the situation, which is we have

agency. We have agency to lobby our government to change this and to stop these criminal acts. But do you ever feel that it's almost like you're absorbing too much because you are looking at all the problems of all the people, seven plus billion around the world and all these different horrific injustices? I try to focus on what I can do and what I can do is challenge my own government. And as an American citizen living in this society, I think that the US empire and the Pentagon is the source of a lot of problems around the world. I look at the world as complex. I mean, you have to understand the issues that are going on, especially with foreign policy in terms of the colonized and colonizers, the oppressed and oppressors, and the US's role as well as other previous empires role in shaping the world as it is today. And a lot of the problems that have

arisen are because directly US foreign policy, whether it be the global war on terrorism, whether it be terrorism in general, I mean, that, you know, drone strikes basically cause terrorism, whether it be the environmental crises, the Pentagon is actually the largest polluter in the world, more than 140 countries. That's essentially every country in the world, almost a.S. is the world's largest empire that's ever existed, and it needs to be stopped to save humanity. And so, as an American citizen, I look at all of the problems and I understand that there is like a very common root, and I can do something about this common root. And if you're looking at domestic problems, the lack of healthcare, the lack of education, I mean, Martin Luther King called it decades ago. He says, you know, a nation that spends more and more on military spending is facing social death. I probably butchered his quote, but that's essentially the spiritual death, I think is

what he said. But I mean, that's exactly what's happening is when we're squandering all of our money, bolstering up this huge global empire. We're not taking care of our people at home, our brothers and sisters at home. My empathy extends as an internationalist all around the world. I feel for my brothers and sisters in Palestine, Yemen, everywhere. But I can only do what I can do based on what my government is doing. And it's doing a lot. It's doing a lot of horrible things. And it's time for us to really acknowledge what those horrible things are, because we need to reinvigorate an anti-war movement in this country. And when you're saying that drone strikes create terrorism, what you're really saying is that, well, what people, if they don't understand, drone strikes primarily kill civilians.

Right. 98%. Overwhelming. Yeah. It's a really crazy number. And it's this very strange, sanitized way of handling an issue where if you had a person and you had some Rambo character, you send them overseas, you said, hey, I want you to go get this ISIS terrorist and in the process kill everybody the fuck that you see. Right. Everybody that's in front of them. That person would be a war criminal. Right. If you had a guy and he knew that some ISIS guy was in an apartment building, so he just started gunning down men, women, and children in that apartment building

until he got to the terrorist, that guy would go to jail. But if you do it with a remote control and you launch hellfire missiles out of a drone and it blows up the apartment building and kills all these innocent people, but also gets the terrorist, it's mission accomplished. And it's crazy. It's crazy that we're signing off on that. What gives us the right to kill people? It's a thing because we're not there where there's this weird sort of a just a there's a bridge that we're

allowed to cross into this really sickening act it's a very when you have anything that's ineffective to the point where most of the people it kills are good people or at least are innocent people we should say that's great i, this is not saying that there's not terrorism. It's not saying there's not horrible people in ISIS. There is, absolutely. Look, I'm a pro-military person. I think we need military. And I think just like the same, we need cops.

But to deny that cops sometimes are bad is fucking crazy. To deny that sometimes when you allow the military industrial complex to do things like have drones that launch missiles into wedding parties because you think one of the people might be a terrorist and are often incorrect often to the tune of 90 plus percent yeah it's crazy yeah and you look at you know the last 10 years you look at some of these terrorists who have conducted terrorist acts you look at actually what their intention was. And a lot of them, the vast majority, literally cite U.S. foreign policy. Revenge.

U.S. foreign policy. I mean, every time you kill 98% innocent people, whoever survives, if you lost your whole family, you have an incredible amount of motivation to get back at whoever did it. Right. And that whoever did it is the United States. We need to stop normalizing this. And, you know, militarily speaking, Trump actually, you know, it's not just Trump. I mean, this is a bipartisan effort throughout the entire Congress. If there's one thing Congress can agree upon, it's to make nonviolent BDS efforts against Israel legal.

It's to make nonviolent BDS efforts against Israel legal and also to just keep ramping up the military and egging on whoever is sitting in the Oval Office to be more militaristic. And that's exactly what's happened with Trump in a bizarre way. I mean, Congress approved like a seven, a near trillion dollar defense budget. And the increase alone in the last year was basically Russia's entire military budget, more than Russia's entire military budget. That's how much this shit's ramping up. And then you have the Space Force. I mean, it's just like, how far is this going to go? The society is collapsing.

If you looked at the argument against this, you would say, we need this in order to keep people safe here that would be the argument against it my question would be what are we what threat is there isis when has isis ever done anything here other than i mean there was like a truck i mean come on we already know the statistics on terrorism in this country. And they're very low, right? I mean, you're basically more likely to die from furniture falling on you in your apartment. Yeah. And the whole ISIS thing, I mean, as we know, ISIS arose out of U.S. foreign policy. The failed state in Libya, the Iraq war that's still criminally ongoing. I mean, Trump announced this indefinite extension of the criminal occupation of Iraq.

It's just crazy how normalized this is you know far longer than vietnam we're in afghanistan fatalities that aren't all time high all of these things are a direct result of u.s foreign policy and look at the refugee crisis look at immigration the honduras coup all this shit's connected and that's what we need to start like expanding our consciousness and our empathy worldwide to understand all of these things are linked and the struggle is all linked and our world is shrinking really rapidly what candidate speaks in this way like what candidate do you think understands and recognizes all these things that you're talking about i mean mike ra gravel is the only

one who's like we need to end the u.s empire bernie and tolsi microvel was uh he was the guy who basically read the pentagon papers into record he he's a good guy he has yeah yeah he has like this online campaign that's really awesome but i mean tolsi's speaking a lot about regime change wars which is extremely important but she still believes in drone strikes. She basically has a little bit of Obama's foreign policy that I don't agree with that fundamental understanding. Limited drone strikes, like maybe if there's an ISIS camp somewhere. I mean, I can't believe that she believes in some sort of just broad brush use of it. just broad brush use of it.

I haven't looked into the nuances of that, but I do think that no one is saying what I want them to about U.S. empire, about, you know, scaling back the U.S. empire and stopping all of the civil society movements because it's not just about invasions anymore. It's about, you know, usurping the democratic processes of all of these countries, like what we've done in Venezuela, what we're doing all around the world to try to foment unrest. All

of this needs to be stopped. Do you foresee a time where our dependence on foreign oil is radically reduced to the point where it doesn't justify these regime change wars and our dependence on these resources that these people have. I mean, this is almost every conflict in the world. You can boil down to the acquisition of resources. Right. And also the protection of capital. And that's like what a lot of it is now is actually just capital interests needing to expand and grow and continuing to up and increase the profit structure of these corporations.

And that's exactly why we've seen imperialism, you know, kind of go out of control in the way that it has. I don't know. I mean, I thought that we were more independent oil wise. I don't think it's good. I think that climate change, yeah, I think that, and it hasn't stopped, you know, it hasn't stopped the imperialist misadventures of the US government. So I think that, and it hasn't stopped, you know, it hasn't stopped the imperialist, um, misadventures of the U S government. So I think there just needs to be a really big shift in consciousness and people to stop thinking that it's our right and that we have, you know, the right and the duty to do this around the world. It doesn't give us the right. We don't have, it's not right, man. It's really not. And, uh, we need to really reinvigorate the masses here

because again um society is collapsing that's pretty fucking obvious well if it is if it's not obvious what is obvious is that we're not evolving right in terms of if we're still involved in drone strikes that kill 98 of people if we're still involved in regime change wars we're still involved in drone strikes that kill 98 of people if we're still involved in regime change wars we're still involved in these unnecessary military actions against iran it's these things that people are freaking out about this is all the same kind of shit that people have been fighting against forever that we don't want our brothers and sisters and husbands and wives to die for nonsense we don't want them to die for some people that live in these air-conditioned rooms that are making billions of dollars that are profiting off of the actions of these these

noble people who think that they're doing it to protect america i mean this is the narrative that they're being served this is what they're being told and when they're going to these that they're doing it to protect America. I mean, this is the narrative that they're being served. This is what they're being told. And when they're going to these places, they're not going to those places to act as evil, as the boots of some empire. They're going over there because they think they're protecting freedom. They think they're protecting their family

and their loved ones back home. That's why they're doing it. If we're still doing that, we're not evolving. Well, I mean, that's what's so scary about the we're still doing that we're not evolving well i mean that's what's so scary about the iran thing because the people who are surrounding iran and being directed to go out there they're the ones who are going to be the sacrificial lands for these defense contractors and i i don't think that you can argue anymore that this is for freedom i mean how can you what threat does iran pose to the united states it's a tough sell i don't i don't

understand what threat they serve either and what what benefit would it be for them to start some shit with us and this that is the craziest idea ever i mean it's like my you know a nine-year-old kid trying to pick a fight with mike tyson it's fucking crazy it doesn't make any sense like what are you trying to do trying to get killed i inevitably, we're trying to get to the global confrontation with China and Russia, I guess. I mean, that's, it's scary to think that we only have a couple independent states left to knock down to be under complete subjugation from the U.S. military and global capitalism. It's pretty nuts. nuts well not only that even if we do move into some sort of a some sort of a situation where we're in control then we're a bigger target and with the amount of nuclear weapons that are possessed by these countries that were i mean just what north korea, just this one small fucked up country could ruin life on earth.

Just this one country. And forget about Russia. We could literally annihilate each other. That's a possibility. I mean, if someone chose to launch an attack, if they decided that they have the justification to launch an attack, and then all of a sudden we're in a real war, like a fucking war war where people are invading us.

Shits get knocked down, buildings and bombs blow up. I mean, over what? This can't be avoided? This is the only way? The only way is missiles and bombs? Like you said, we're not evolving or devolving. I mean, it's unbelievable. We have the capacity to provide for everyone.

We have the capacity to cooperate, to innovate. And we're stuck. We're stuck dehumanizing the other. We're stuck with this mass conditioning to basically perpetuate these injustices. And it's really a shame. I mean, we have all the information at our fingertips, but we still keep reverting back to what's the myths, the myths that underpin our society.

These conversations I have with you are so depressing because I always leave going, what the fuck? What can be done? What can we do? Where does it end? Where does it go? These are the big questions. And then also what we discussed before, it's impossible for anyone to really have a deep, nuanced understanding of all these different issues.

Right. I mean, I think focusing on what you can do, we can only do what we can do right and you have to understand that you know you can't get debilitated or disillusioned with you know the the influx of information or just the complete you know the heaviness of it all you just have to do what you can do you're doing what you can do you have me on to to help spread awareness about these issues and that's my annual free cap and you're about to get you're about to get spammed with a lot of Hasbro. They don't have my real email. It's okay. But that's what we can do, Joe.

And you just have to live your life and provide for your kids and love what you have. But also just understand your place, you know, and just extend the empathy that you can and just, yeah. I mean, it's hard because I don't have the answer. All I know is what's needed. And what's needed is we need a movement of the masses. It's not going to come from the top down. It's going to come from a grassroots mobilized effort to try to change these policies.

That's the only way things have ever changed in the past. And I absolutely have hope and optimism that we're going to change things and that we're going to correct this horrible path that we're on. Do you think that the 2020 elections can have a real significant impact of any of this? Do you think that whoever gets into office can really have an effect on the kind of policies that we're talking about with the kind of influence of the military industrial complex of all these lobbyists of wall street of all all these like monstrous machines that this pure good old-fashioned democracy can actually step in and and turn this ship away from the rocks bernie i really do think that he's one of our last chances not because i think that he's going to completely do some revolutionary upheaval

from the top down. As we know, Congress is stacked with a lot of terrible people who will block a lot of these efforts. But I think that he's going to mobilize the masses and reinvigorate the labor movement and reinvigorate unions and help workers understand that they need to fight for these rights that have been eviscerated over the last hundred years. One thing that does inspire me as well as seeing people like Ilhan Omar. You know, she is incredible. She's a Somali refugee. She advocates BDS against Israel, and she does not fucking back down. I love that woman. What an incredible woman. She got viciously attacked for retweeting one of my episodes from Empire from empire files and i think it just shows how

scared people are of of her and her ideas and you saw how hard everyone came down on her for just saying that israel has an influential lobby in dc yeah well they she's also wearing religious garb so people are scared of that right right away the job and then um there was something some hit piece on her yesterday they're saying they think she married a brother oh that's ridiculous yeah they think she's ridiculous to get into this country that she had a religious marriage but then she had another yeah i don't know she's the only one in congress other than tlaib and of course aoc and um you know some other very few people but she's out there every day speaking

against the military industrial complex, speaking against the wars. I think as a refugee, she understands the effects of US policy. And I'm really excited that she has a voice in there. But again, I don't think that the hope is going to come from within Congress. And the system is way too far gone with the electoral college and the gerrymandering and the voter rights you know that have been rescinded it's it's a lot and it's an uphill battle but that's why someone like bernie i think will turn to the people and say i can't do this alone you have to come out and get my back and we have to have millions of people in the streets demanding these things that's the only way it's going to work all right abby you freaked me out

thank god andrew santino's going on later and we're going to get high and get high get high check out empire files media roots radio eyes left my partner mike's podcast and donate to keep us alive man goza fights for freedom goza fight donate go to goza fights for freedom. Go to Gaza fights for freedom.com. Go to the empire files.tv and check out our Patreon. Go fund me in PayPal. Cause we got to keep independent media alive and keep addressing these issues. And you truly are independent. You are one of the very rare ones out there.

Thank you, my friend. Love you, Joe. Thank you so much, man. Abby Martin, folks.