The Young Turks - Costs Of War

Episode Date: March 5, 2022

Russian troops have seized the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe after a middle-of-the-night attack that set it on fire and briefly raised worldwide fears of a catastrophe in the most chilling turn in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine yet. Three commanders in Russia’s army have been killed after moving up towards the frontline in an apparent attempt to restore momentum to the invasion of Ukraine. President Biden wants no-strings-attached bailouts for profitable microchip giants that spent billions enriching their shareholders. Bombshell footage shows Roger Stone railing against Trump and planning to challenge the 2020 election as early as July. Students at the University of North Texas shut down a speech by an anti-trans legislative candidate seeking to make it illegal for children to begin transitioning, yelling “F#ck these fascists!” and “Protect trans kids.” Hosts: Ana Kasparian, John Iadarola, Ramesh Srinivasan Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Big my feet. Bexie! Three-a-teen, three-o-d-chee, three-lach-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h... Drop it. That's right, it's the power panel.

I'm here, John Orolet, nobody cares. Anna Kasparian is here, okay, now you're getting excited, but importantly and shockingly in the studio near me, Ramesh returning. after how long has it been? I mean, look at this gray beard here. Look at this gray in the hair. It's been growing the whole time. Two plus years.

Really? Since I've seen you in person. Yeah, yeah. It's been a while and it's been a crazy time. I know Anna and I have done a lot of shows with you. So we're very excited to have your turn. We're also glad to see that you've weathered the pandemic so well and everything. It looks like you guys were both looking at me when you were looking at each other.

It was pretty cool. Exactly, and our shoulders sort of blend together. It's getting weird in here, but anyway, very excited to have you back. And can't wait to hear about your perspective on a lot of these things, especially. We're gonna be talking about the coming tech bailout. I have a feeling you'll have thoughts about it. I've just been chomping at the bit on that one. Okay.

We're definitely, we've got that, we've got kids heckling, a transphobe, we've got Roger Stone's secret tapes, not those ones. are legal things and and a lot more besides that. So thank you for joining us as always on the show. We're gonna do our best to give you an awesome show. Also, this is the first hour panel. Anna, you're gonna be staying on for the second hour as well. What else can people expect in that second hour? Well, Tucker Carlson tried to present himself as someone who's humble and willing to graciously admit when he's wrong, particularly on the issue of Ukraine. But he's going to blame Kamala Harris for why he was wrong because of course. That's that's how he takes personal responsibility for his terrible analysis on the situation in Ukraine.

It's it never gets better. Can't wait to talk about that. It gets different but not better. Okay, well we will we will get to that soon enough. First though, we do have to start with incredibly serious updates on what's going on right now in Ukraine. Thanks to the Russian invasion, we'll be starting with this video. It's obviously very serious video there, what appears to be something like cluster munitions being used in a residential area. It would hardly be the first time during this invasion. It is obviously wrong.

In this war and in others, the US of course as well has used those munitions, but we've seen a lot of incredibly damaging, risky bombardment of areas where civilians have been killed in a number of different cities throughout this week. And so the number of Ukrainian debt in both the military and the civilian side has been rising. Let's take note though at the same time that the Russians are hardly getting through this thing without suffering any losses, despite the overall unwillingness to admit it back in the home front. So we've got some info on how they're faring. The deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army, Major General Andrei Sukkevsky, whose death from a probable sniper bullet was revealed just yesterday is currently the highest ranking member of the invasion force. A division commander and a regimental commander have also been killed and what was described as a surprising development resulting from a breakdown in command and control systems.

Now, outside of the military leadership, getting a clear idea of exactly how many Russian soldiers have died in the week plus of the war is difficult. Different groups put out different numbers. I would advise you as with every other fact being spread about this war to take them with a major grain of salt. When the Ukrainian government lists a number of dead and the UN does, and especially when there's a very big difference between them, it is hard to know exactly who to trust. But the Russian defense ministry has confirmed some dead.

They said at one point earlier this week, 498 Russian troops had died and about 1,600 more had been injured, to which I say I trust their numbers no more than any other groups, of course. And there's been a great amount of analysis throughout the week of some of the reasons that the Russian effort hasn't worked as well as it was perhaps intended to, the aforementioned breakdown of command and control being a big part of it. But we have a lot more on this, including a few concerning developments that might have an impact over the weekend. But I wanted to give the panel a chance to discuss first.

Sure. I mean, just a few thoughts on this. I think the, and I know TYT, you all have been covering this. I've been watching your coverage. And I guess it's just very, it's astonishing to me the double standards that are mainstream media. And generally speaking, our politicians are taking toward these issues. Look, I recognize the savage invasion that has occurred. But I also recognize that what we did in Iraq is eerily similar to this, yet also much more vile. And just sort of recognizing how NATO's militarization, the buildup of NATO and the potential militarization or inclusion, into NATO of Ukraine is pretty predictable that this. I can't say that I would have predicted. It would have occurred on this scale. But Russia, Russia's major identity, Putin's main political

capital lies in being a foil for United States and NATO level expansion. That's all he's got. So we were playing right into his hands as we did this. And I think we're not looking at our own role within all of this in a more systemic way. So I think I'll just. start by saying that, but there's just so much more to say. And I look forward to talking to you. Yeah, and we will definitely be diving into that a little bit later on as well. But Anna, what are your thoughts? Well, you know, my my views on Russia's claims of feeling that, you know, Ukraine joining NATO was a security risk and all that have evolved. Considering I really think that Putin was going to invade no matter what, I mean, days before the invasion happened, Vladimir Zelensky dropped, you know, his efforts to join NATO and he was pretty clear and transparent about that. And if Putin's genuine

concern was really NATO, which again, I'm calling into question at this point, what he has done through this invasion has been a complete and utter disaster for his own objectives because now you have other European countries calling to join NATO, Finland being one of them. President Joe Biden met with the leader of Finland today on this very issue. And so this, this This has been a complete and utter disaster for the Russian economy, for the alleged objectives that Vladimir Putin has in regard to NATO. And while I'm definitely ready and willing to do extensive coverage, and we have been doing extensive coverage of some of the atrocities that the United States has committed across

the globe, the fact of the matter is what Putin has done is beyond reprehensible, deplorable, absolutely disgusting, especially when you consider the fact that he's now indiscriminately firing rockets and cluster bombs in civilian areas. There was a positive development yesterday in regard to these corridors that are supposed to allow for civilians to leave the country safely. I'm obviously very, I'm skeptical about whether or not Russia is going to keep it's part of the deal in that regard, considering the brutality that civilians have already been facing in Ukraine. But this is just an absolutely devastating story. And I wish that things would get better. I wish that they would really sit down and genuinely engage in these peace talks and make all this

pain and suffering end. I mean, the people who are still in Ukraine, the civilians who are still in Ukraine, they're dealing with a shortage of food. I mean, it is really a humanitarian crisis at this point. Well, and it's actually funny that you mentioned that because they are having some of the the same sorts of problems on the other side. So I want to give you a little bit of analysis of some of the things that are hampering the Russian war effort. Again, bearing in mind, this is coming from an actually, in this case, anonymous Western officials. So bear that in mind. But their analysis is the reason why it's happening, why Russia is having so many problems, why they're moving slower, while they're suffering more casualties,

is that commanders feel that they have to move further forward to get greater impetus and control over operations. And so difficulties sort of breed more difficulties. you sort of go like the effect like the equivalent of going on tilt, that seems to be what they're indicating here. They've had a range of challenges in the execution of the plan, all of which we know were fragilities in the Russian military system. But they have somehow managed to have all those fragilities play out simultaneously, which has led to the lack of progress. And so some specifics there, the failure to achieve air superiority, meaning that their movement of troops, and in particular the convoy, which we've been talking about, has not been free from attack from the Ukrainian

military. They've been moving slowly and that has also led to problems with supplies of food, fuel, other like necessary components of an invasion. I mean, as people always say, like soldiers are significant but wars are won through logistics and they're having a problem maintaining their logistical capability. Also pointing out that a lot of their forces are young and untrained, which I find it be very surprising. We had heard in advance that it's obviously in advanced military in terms of its technology, but many of their forces were supposed to have been getting some equivalent of experience in the disputed territory. So I'm a little bit surprised by some of this. Yeah, and I want to speak to that. Even the term oligarch itself has a genesis

and a basis in Russian history, in recent Russian history. And I think what we need to look at more carefully when we look at Putin, outside of all of his brutality, which I totally agree with Anna around are the ways in which there has been a great amount of corruption that's occurred within Russia itself, where the military budget is so massive, but so much of it has been siphoned off for various sorts of special, you know, sort of special pocketbooks, right? It's basically what that is. And I think what I was trying to speak to earlier is the larger history by which we constructed Putin as an antagonist, right? We constructed him as a foil for us, And actually that kind of served our own purposes, the United States and NATO's.

And now that's blowing back at us. That both benefited Putin and at that time benefited ourselves. And we have to just look at the history of how we essentially liquidated Russia during the Yeltsin time and essentially turned it into a neoliberal state without any sort of social safety net. So my compassion, my heart, my sort of political spirit lies with the people of Ukraine and the people of Russia. and the bravery, I know you guys have been reporting it, of the people in Russia itself. So all of these, you know, they are the, they are the ones who are being brutally victimized by these awful decisions that have been made by many of those in power across the board. Yeah.

Yeah, and I wanted to speak to what you were mentioning earlier, John, in regard to the troops. You know, when you really think about the propaganda that the Russian people and the Russian troops have been consuming as a result of like state sponsored media in Russia. You know, there was one independent news source left and that has been shut down by the Russian government. But the troops were fed complete and utter lies about what they were going into Ukraine for. Remember, Putin refuses to call this an invasion. He refuses to call this a war. He keeps alleging that this is just a military operation. And the troops were under the impression because of this propaganda that they were going into a country to liberate the people of Ukraine. The thinking was that these are individuals who,

you know, want to be part of Russia. These are individuals who feel that they're being held back, held down by the current Ukrainian government. And when they invaded, they were a little surprised by the type of response they received from Ukrainians. And so there is a lack of morale. I think that Putin certainly miscalculated how this invasion would play out. And if you all can notice, in the sixth day of this war, Putin just became a little more, not a little more, much more brutal, especially when it came to these strikes in civilian areas. You can tell that he's kind of acting impulsively out of frustration and rage because things haven't really played out the way that he expected it to. Now with that said though, the situation on the ground still

appears to be very scary for the Ukrainian people. You know, especially when you read stories about Russia now taking control of the Europe's largest nuclear power plant. That's certainly scary. And there's of course still many questions in regard to why Putin's doing that in the first place. You know, there's the pretty scary concern regarding, you know, using the nuclear power plant as a threat, essentially, you know, causing some sort of meltdown, which would honestly be destructive not only for Ukraine, but several countries, including Russia. I don't, I don't think that's a good idea. But I mean, who knows what Putin's capable of doing? He seems like a person who honestly has made decisions that make me question whether he's a rational

actor in all of this, you know, because he's done things that go against his own objectives in the short term and in the long run. And then final thing is, you know, the nuclear power plant issue. It's to make, if Russia has control over electricity and energy in the country, it could really use that to put more pressure on the Ukrainian people, make them suffer more. And they're already having issues with power outages and things like that. So it's just a devastating story. And I want nothing more than for these peace talks and a more diplomatic approach to continue because really innocent people are going to continue dying otherwise. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I very much agree with that. I think that, you know, any form

of de-escalation is absolutely necessary right now. And maybe there are some ways in which negotiations can occur to sort of de-escalate some of NATO's own activities that might be some sort of exchange here. But I think your larger point Anna is well taken, which is what is Putin's end game here? That seems extremely unclear. I don't think, I think it seems like the assumption was that the Ukrainians would merely lie down and take this. But if anything, what's occurred, you know, very much unlike what happens in Iraq is the entire world has been supporting the Ukrainians, which I'm grateful for, and it's not clear what's going to happen as a result. Also just to note that the people of the Donbass as well as Crimeans, many of them are ethnically

also Russian, and also that there was a puppet pro-Russian government that was installed and that the revolution about a decade ago got rid of a democratic revolution. And then just one final point, Putin has claimed that one of his ridiculous reasons for this invasion, brutal, a war crime on every level, I agree, was the denotification of Ukraine. That's sort of bizarre given that apparently the president of Ukraine himself is Jewish. Yeah, so. Yeah, yeah. And it's been sad to see some who generally are pretty critical of propaganda used to justify

wars accepting that when literally every government that invades a country says it's to stamp out radicals in that country. It's the most, like we've done it so many times. times. And the parallels are so robust. Anna talking about the propaganda that was told to the the soldiers about they'd be greeted as liberators and all that. Well, we were told that by all of our leaders in the run up to the war in Iraq. And yeah, there's just a lot of that. But there is one other aspect of the story that I want to talk about. We know that Russia is at least now admitting that there have been some casualties, even though it's

almost certainly a massive intentional undercount. You combine that with the lack of will to be honest about the goals of this or even the extent of it, referring to it as a special operation rather than as a war. That's hardly unique. The US hasn't declared war formally in many, many decades, but there is definitely a lack of honest flow of communication by the Russian government about what is going on to their people. And if you had any hope that that would change that policy, recent developments do not imply that that's likely. They've passed this new It's being referred to as a fake news law. Russia's lower house of parliament has passed a law punishing fake news with up to 15 years in prison,

meant to penalize people who quote distort the purpose, role and tasks of the Russian armed forces, as well as other units during special military and other operations, including people who spread information about Russian war losses. The chair of the Duma says literally by tomorrow this law will force punishment and very tough punishment on those who lied and made statements which discredited are armed forces. Well, not everyone who lied. The leaders who lied are going to be perfectly fine. I don't think they're going to be spending 15 years in prison. But if you're a person, if you're one of the Russian celebrities who's been trying to rally the Russian people against

this, if you're a Russian activist trying to spread information, if you are some last lingering vestige of independent media there, they're, I mean, it's hardly new that they're cracking down, but amidst the special operation, they're doing it as well. I mean, I think that's it's quite, please Anna, go ahead. Yeah, no, I was just going to say, I mean, it's the least surprising thing. I mean, I'm actually kind of shocked they didn't implement this policy from the get go. As I mentioned earlier, Russia got rid of shut down the one remaining independent news source in the country. And so the propaganda and the censorship was already there.

But now they've taken it a step further by implementing insane penalties for anyone who dare go against the propagandistic narrative coming from Putin. So again, I'm not surprised. But, you know, there are censorship issues in many countries, including democratic countries like our own. And so it's a debate, how to really deal with things like fake news and propaganda and all. of that. But I think censorship usually ends up being pretty counterproductive. Yeah, I completely agree with that. It's, I think that's, it's ironic that they are putting forward and quite predictable, a so-called fake news law when the state is the one pushing the fake news. And the state has pushed extraterritorial, including here in the U.S. and other countries disinformation operations, including from the St. Petersburg-based internet research,

agency that I had off the record contact with when I was writing my last book. So I was learning a lot about the tactics of disinformation that were being employed by the Russian state, both domestically and internationally, but also really to your point. And again, disinformation, you know, I mean, so much of this actually resonates with what we all suffered through during the brutal previous administration in this country, right? The sort of claim that any position that is not my own is fake news, and that became a rhetorical standpoint. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what.

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And I think, you know, we just got to fight it on every single level. I've been talking to Russian friends, Russian bloggers, and so on. But we're contacting one another on signal and telegram. Who knows how safe that is. But at the end of the day, I mean, this is the nationalist, authoritarian, oligarchic capitalist state that Russia is. And it's it's it's it's the enemy of democracy on that level and it's the enemy of the Russian people. Yeah. Yeah. And it's honestly, we were referring earlier to the massive protests in Russia. Like it's it's all the more impressive not only because of the stakes, the likelihood that you'll be arrested or brutalized.

But doing it with so many obstacles to actually getting the information necessary to know what it is that you're protesting. I mean, thankfully there's been a democratization through in no small part some of the tools you're talking about. But as much as possible, the state has been clamping down on social media and those sorts of things. And now, I mean, God only knows the sorts of people that are going to, what sorts of people are going to be targeted by this? It's really scary to think about. Now that said, there is a lot of other news out there that we will turn to. We're going to take a quick break. Don't go anywhere when we come back.

We're going to be talking about the coming tech bailout referred to in the State of the Union. Is it all it's cracked up to be? We'll give you the details after this. Welcome back to the first hour of the power panel, everyone here with Ramesh and Anna having a lot of fun as much as can be had in these times of war. But with that said, we're to do a little bit of zooming out and reflection on the discourse, on the rhetoric around war in these particular times. And launching us into that will be John Stewart. These types of stories, Ukraine, a war, this is what they're actually built for, and when they are matched with their purpose and there is a story equal to it, boy, do they deliver. So that is a brief excerpt from John Stewart's podcast, the episode coming out just yesterday.

He is very impressed with the media's ability to provide information about what's going on in Ukraine. I think it makes for a very interesting jumping off point to a discussion. But I want to give John just a little bit more time to make the case. So here's a bit more of the podcast. And they have done a magnificent job of bringing this story, the reality of this story to the public. I have been wildly impressed. And it just shows you what they are capable of when a, when a story is at the level of urgency that they pretend everything else is.

And boy, it's almost, it's a little heartbreaking because you see just like how talented and how committed and how involved they can be. But when left idle or when left to the currents of their ratings overlords, how their natural and innate abilities are perverted into something way more damaging. But man, I don't know if you've been watching the coverage, but they have been on, I believe the phrase is mother point. So I have not consumed literally everything that John Stewart has said over the past two decades, but I believe that is the most positive commentary he has ever provided for U.S.-based political media. And I think that there's something to it, but I have a feeling that our panel is going to take issue with a few parts of what was said there. So what do you both think about this?

Well, I just, I mean, if you listen to the entirety of his argument, he makes it seem as though the press is they really shine when it comes to like war coverage. And look, I think the jury is still out. Like, first of all, be specific. Like this is the thing that's starting to become. A pet peeve of mine where media is used as if it's like this monolith and every source is the same. He later made, you know, there were some qualifiers later where he's like, well, not Fox News, right? Okay, well great. I agree with him on that. But what does he mean when he says media? What is he consuming?

Which shows is he watching? Which publications is he reading? So it's really hard to respond to what he's saying unless you know what he's specifically referring to. With that said though, his argument basically was that, hey, you know, this is where the media shines. Like when it comes to this type of coverage, and it's almost as if he has amnesia. Like, did you forget when you were a big time host on the comedy, on Comedy Central, I think it is? And the media dropped the ball on Iraq. The media dropped the ball on Afghanistan.

The media is dropping the ball as we speak when it comes to other invaders. that have not gotten any coverage whatsoever or received very little coverage in print media, but certainly no coverage in cable news or television news. And you know, look, a NATO ally, a NATO country, Turkey assisted Azerbaijan in invading Armenia. And I'm not even talking about Nagorno Karabov. I'm talking about sovereign Armenia. Azerbaijan keeps invading. But no one cares, no one in the media reports on that, the treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government. You don't see much coverage of that. And if you do see coverage, it's incredibly, you know, it's a lot of apology for the Israeli government, which is disheartening to say the least, right?

So I just think he, his argument, maybe it was a spontaneous argument where he didn't give himself time to really think about what he was about to say. But I disagree with him. While the coverage of Ukraine might be okay, depending on which sources we're referring to here, I think that the mainstream press overall has dropped the ball when it comes to anything involving foreign policy or international relations. I agree with that. And one of the main reasons I agree with that is because, well, first of all, when John Stewart is talking about the media, I'm assuming he's talking about the corporate media, which we all know in this country dominates viewers.

and dominates most of the channels and mechanisms by which we can access news stories and Young Turks and Democracy Now and some of the other networks I pay attention to are notable exceptions to that. We also know, and this has been shown empirically and media study scholars have shown this when, of course, many media can be found online, that the stories that media, at least for-profit media or clickbait media or media that needs traffic, media sources that traffic tend to be based on the manufacturing of consent right that's Noam Chomsky's book from over 30 years ago and and what do I mean by that it covers the stories based on the agendas of those in power and that you know

responds or resonates well with the point you just made and about why we don't hear about anything going on in Yemen or the commenter made during the break about you know an ongoing war in Somalia where the United States has military presence including in many many other countries in the world I myself during this last week, you know, of this invasion and this war in Ukraine have been trying to triangulate where I get my media sources from. I've been watching Al Jazeera. I've been watching France 24. I was telling you about that earlier, John. But at the same time, I think what's really absent are many different stories, as we talked about before, that really can help us understand why what's occurring is occurring. How do we try to understand the Russian state's agendas? How do we understand the Russian people and their

suffering amidst this all, how we can understand how African peoples, for example, in Ukraine have been discriminated against through this process. So there's a lot of depth. There's a sort of multilateral sort of set of questions associated with even this Ukraine-Russia story that are taken out, they're filtered out of the American media because right now we've re-simplified things. You know, Ukraine, hero, Russia, bad, but what about the people from both? What about the history? All of these questions are missing. So there's no. And I think, you can make media that is entertaining and informative and fun to watch that actually can show some of that depth.

I disagree in part, not necessarily with the points that you're making. I think that the points you're making both of you, I mean, are entirely accurate. I think though they're more specifically accurate critiques of the media, perhaps then of the case that he's making. Because I think kind of inherent to what he's saying is he, and bearing in mind that there are definitely aspects of they're leaving out, that they're doing a better job now, which seems to necessitate the understanding that in these other conflicts they haven't, that on these other topics they don't. Sure. Like I think a generous read of what he's saying would be, look

at what they can do with their resources and manpower. Like people know all about things that are happening in Ukraine. What if they sent their reporters to Yemen and embedded them there? What if they were in Ethiopia? What if they were doing all of these things? They can supply tons of information. They have the manpower, they have the understanding, they know how to frame things to make them interesting. What if outside of the context of war, what if they took this media apparatus, this machine that they have and turned to the issue of income inequality and had reporters on the ground talking to people suffering through our economic system? I might be reading a little bit too much into what he's saying to assume that that's the

generalize critique he's making, but I think what he's saying is like in the same way that they can put like a 24 hour day focus on a stranded cruise ship and really focus on it, provide a lot of information, but that's generally a waste of time, like that's an issue, but it's not one of the largest issues. They can clearly do that as they're mostly doing with Ukraine. Bering in mind again, they're missing some angles and even the coverage they're doing, and maybe he gets into this in the full podcast, has a lot of slip ups. Like we've acknowledged I want to show you one more here. Rumors of a thermobaric bomb, which is sort of vacuum bomb, which, to be fair, the US has used before in Afghanistan.

But the idea of being used in Europe is stomach churning. So that's the sort of thing, like it is good to acknowledge that we've used thermobaric weapons, we've used cluster bombs. But when you then immediately say, oh my God, but now in Europe, like no, there, oh my God, there. Oh my God, Afghanistan, oh my God, in Syria, oh my God in Iraq. It's like, there's like an attempt to provide that understanding, but the media is still catching up to the biases they went into this conflict with. Absolutely, because the story of Somalia or Yemen is an American story because of all of the American relationships to everything that's going on from weapon sales to, you know, the coddling with the Saudis and so on. So every story that is global in scope because of American militarism and imperialism, neo-imperialism abroad, is partly an American story.

So it's really about what do you choose to cover and from whose voices you choose to cover it. Yeah. Totally, I agree with you on that. And just to respond to that last video that we played, I mean, it shows you why the double standard exists in terms of coverage, right? It's this weird superiority complex that the United States and the West overall has. And it's this idea that, well, I mean, an attack on one of our own is a really big deal. But any coverage of what the US is doing in Yemen or Somalia, I mean, no biggie, who cares? I mean, the lack of attention on those issues is really, it's beyond depressing.

I think that it's journalistic negligence. But it also goes to one point that he made, John Stewart made that I do agree with. And it's the fact that we have corporate media where at the end of the day, what is the real objective? Profits, you know, there used to be a time in the country where if you are broadcasting on the airwaves, you have to abide by the fairness doctrine. You have to abide by certain regulations that ensure that if you're sharing a story, you provide an opportunity for the other side to make their case or to defend themselves. And there was a lot more fairness in the media when we had those regulations in place. Now, they were weakened by Republican administrations. And by the time we got

to the Reagan administration, it was essentially repealed. And we feel the ramifications of that when you have media that is driven by a profit motive. And I can just say it's like the EP of this show, it's incredibly difficult to ensure that we have a show that is financially sustainable while also covering the stories that we care about, the stories that are important. It is a constant balancing act. It's incredibly difficult to do it. And we've managed to make it work. But as you guys can notice, we're not a massive, you know, corporation where our hosts are making millions of dollars. But I'll take that trade off. I think if you're genuinely concerned with journalism, You shouldn't be expected to enter this job market to make millions of dollars.

You should be doing it because you actually care about informing people about what's really going on, not just in this country, but in the world. Agreed. Final point to you? Yeah, final point. I appreciate that and I appreciate you all very much, which is why I love being here. And I guess I just want to say the reason why I want, I think it's so important that we understand, we Americans understand our own relationship to all of these struggles and these negative stories and issues around the world. It's not so we can feel guilty or negative about ourselves. It's so that we can understand how to make the world more humane.

I agree, I agree. And my hope is, I know we're still very much in the thick of this conflict, but that coming out of it, the media can remember some of the lessons they seem to be getting, like how, hey, we should feel bad for refugees. Maybe we could do that going forward, maybe wars of aggression are bad, maybe we should care about the weapons that are used, maybe we should care more about some. civilian deaths. I hope that they'll remember that when it's no longer white people that are on the receiving end of this. As bad as it is right now, there's going to be a lot of

conflicts of the next hundred years. In any event, there is non-Ukraine news that we have to get to. We're going to take a short break. We come back. Tech bailout, Roger Stone Tapes. Lots to look forward to. We'll see after this. There is, of course, a second hour coming and a bonus episode. It's gonna be awesome, so everyone hold on to your butts. We got a lot more to get to, starting with this. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, who was here tonight. I know where Pat is.

Pat, there you go. Pat, stand up. Pat came to see me, and he told me they're ready to increase their investment from 20 billion to 100 billion. That would be the biggest investment in manufacturing in American history and all they're waiting for us for you to pass this bill. So let's not wait any longer. Send it to my desk, I'll sign it, and we'll really take off in a big way.

Okay, so that is Joe Biden at the State of the Union encouraging Congress to pass the Chips Act, which will surely be coming soon because they do so much passing of legislation these days. Anyway, the intent of the bill, as you might have gotten from the accolades given to these texts, is to provide a great deal of subsidies, $52 billion to companies that manufacture microchips to get them to build manufacturing facilities here in the US. There are Senate and House versions of this bill that have some differences that have already passed that need to be reconciled at this point. But we are talking about a lot of money that's going to go out the door.

And you might already be starting to worry whatever the government does get around to paying a bunch of money, sending out a bunch of money that there might be a few issues and some have been identified. And I want to give credit to David Strota as well as Extreme Tech for some of their reporting here. But Intel has a mega fab facility, two different manufacturing facilities that they're going to be building, estimated to cost initially $20 billion, but that could swell to over a hundred billion. And so we're talking about huge investments here. And the stakes are high because we're currently experiencing a shortage of microchips that's influencing a lot of different industries.

The issue is that this money is going to go out the door, and then there are not proper controls on what exactly is going to happen with the money. So to sort of quickly bottom line it, Bernie Sanders had introduced an amendment to stop companies from using this money for some of the things they generally do with tax cuts, including stock buybacks. He, in his amendment, companies receiving funding would have had to agree to certain requirements not to buy back their own stocks, not to outsource American manufacturing jobs overseas, not to repeal existing collective bargaining agreements, and to remain neutral in any union organizing effort. And that would have been awesome. So of course, they killed it. Yeah. And there's a new weaker

version that's being promoted by AOC and Cory Bush that they might be able to weasel out of. But there's a lot that we're talking about here. Starting with you, Ramesh, what do you make of all this? I mean, look, during this pandemic, we've seen a doubling of wealth amongst the 10 wealthiest Americans and also the 10 wealthiest, I think approximately 10 wealthiest people in the world, several of whom are American. Now, that might be sort of like, oh, wow, what does that have to do with this? Do you know what percentage of them are connected to technology? About 70, 80 percent or so, depending on where you look. Why is that the case? Because we've all been technologically reliant over the last couple of years.

years and we're likely to be more, you know, moving further into the future, not just because of the possibility of heaven forbid other pandemics or climate related disasters, but just because of the way things have shifted. Things are getting more intimate, more connected. Heaven forbid if we have neuralink chipped up to our brains and we're just kind of on these privatized, gated, metaverse platforms all over the time. But that's where we're heading. And that is a, there's a gross amount of inequality associated with who controls the drawstrings of technology. And we've talked about this, John. I've talked about it with you, Anna. I've talked about with Jenk. I've talked about everybody who will talk with me about it. Technology is not

about technology anymore. Technology is about everything, right? The biggest taxi company in the history of the world is a technology company, Uber, right? That was not profitable yet worth hundreds of billions of dollars until recently for a reason because of the acquisition of intimate data and the power that that offers. So now why does this matter? For any so-called rhetorically progressive policy like let's invest in america let's create jobs in america and so on that sounds great which we saw in the state of the union speech let's look at the reality is the reality an actual investment in america is the reality an actual investment in workers is the reality an actual investment in infrastructures that support collective

bargaining you know climate resilience and all of this no in reality these things all get chopped out right from under us because the devils and the details. Remember Biden said, nothing will fundamentally change and this is a great example of exactly such. I have more I can say about this, you know, but you all know I'm going to go off on this. And thank you, Aishwarya, for putting this story on. But I'll, I'll shut up now and continue when you'll, when you want me to. Anna? Yeah, I mean, what I'll say is, Oftentimes, we will hear all of these, like, grandiose statements in regard to like what the objective is with all these policies and these bailouts. And when you hear about a large sum of money going to any particular industry or to, let's say, Wall Street, you can't help but think about what happened with the bailouts that were provided to Wall Street following the economic collapse.

One of the first stories that came out of that was that the very executives that helped lead the way to economic collapse received massive bonuses. And it really makes you question, you know, how is it that a CEO for one of these banks that needed a bailout somehow had millions of dollars to hand over to the very executive that, you know, spearheaded the destruction of our economy? So really, I'm at this point, I'm less interested in hearing what the bold objective is. I'm more interested in hearing what the controls are, what are the enforcement mechanisms to ensure that this taxpayer money is being utilized in the way that it is supposed to be utilized for. And so far from what we've seen, there isn't much of an enforcement mechanism. mechanism and I'm worried about just handing a check to these tech companies so they can do stock buybacks or other pretty disgusting things with our money. Yeah. Yeah, especially when it is obvious when we're talking about giving so much money, we in theory could exercise all sorts

of controls over how it would be used. We're the ones with the tens of billions of dollars. The issue is that it's a tale is oldest time in American politics. Their industry spends a bunch of money on lobbyists, which encouraged the politicians to put in pro industry, like to bias it in favor of the industry, to not do the regulations. They take those talking points, they combine it with campaign donations. But even if they didn't have that, many of the representatives are thinking, my, my, wouldn't it be nice to be a lobbyist for this industry someday? The whole thing is so disgustingly, financially incestuous.

But Ramesh, I did want to hear more. I can see in the corner of my eye where I'm just like, I'm licking my lips and like chomping at the bit in every way I can. So I mean, all of this relates to the privatization of public life, which is really the big story, right, that we've seen in this country and with the passage of neoliberal policies all around the world. Everything public has been privatized in this case by various sorts of digital systems. What is a progressive vision for a digital future, a digital economy that supports people and planet? What does that look like? Why is that not even part of this? And let me just also remind us all, I know I've seen the young Turks cover this for months, you know, while I was sitting on my couch watching you all. What happened to build back better? Like what happened to that? I know we heard of a few policies. What is his mode of implementing an actual vision for workers and the middle and working classes of this country? It's not there. It's not there. Yeah. It's dead. It's dead. Build, I don't even want to hear that phrase during this administration. It's no, no. No, no. I don't mean that to you, I mean from any Democrat who's still pretending like that legislation is gonna go anywhere. And look, Biden is urging Congress to do something. So already, even with

the facade of helping bring manufacturing jobs to the United States, I just want you guys to be super skeptical of him calling for Congress to do anything. It's one thing to argue that Congress should pass legislation that you've been pushing for, but really have you been pushing for it? Are you willing to implement not just carrots, but sticks in ensuring that your policy gets passed? And he's unwilling to do that. So really, I mean, this is a fun conversation, but it's really just a conversation. It's in the abstract. Is anything going to pass? And look, there's a possibility that this legislation could pass as long as it helps the tech donors who fund the the campaigns of these politicians.

But that would mean that any enforcement mechanism would be stripped out of it. Yeah, yeah, it's looking that way. Well, we are rapidly running out of hours. So why don't we jump into our last story? It is a spicy one. In the two years that led up to the great insurrection of January 6th, a team of documentarians, Danish documentarians specifically were following this man around. And I don't know the documentary team, maybe they agree with them, but I

I cannot imagine the amount you would have to pay me to get me to spend two years following this man around. But thankfully, they did because they've recorded a lot of extremely interesting takes from Roger Stone during some incredibly important political events. The Washington Post has looked at just 20 hours of the tapes and get a load at some of the things revealed in just this tiny section of what they've recorded. So way back on July 9th, months in advance of the election, he's recorded saying it's going to be really nasty, he predicted that Democrats would try to steal the election. So he said, if the

electors show up at the electoral college, armed guards will throw them out. I'm the president, FU, he's imagining himself there to be Donald Trump. He probably does that quite frequently. You're not stealing Florida, you're not stealing Ohio. I'm challenging all of it. And the judges were going to are judges I appointed. Well, that's not how it worked out. I can imagine Trump wanting to do it that way, but the legal battle that he fought to overturn the results of the election, far less successful. Now, in the wake of the election, he told an aide to resurrect his Stop the Steel campaign. He predicted to another aide that his brand was about to be, quote, quite a bit hotter. We're going to raise money from Stop the Steel. It'll be like falling off

a log. Just in case you ever forget that at the end of the day, absolutely all of this is about making money. Getting power, sure, but even the power is a means to getting money. It's all grift from top to bottom. It never ends. In any event, A few hours before the attack, a member of the far right oath keepers group who has since pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy, we talked about that in the show earlier this week, was there with Stone. Other rooms in the same hotel were used as a command center by people like Rudy Giuliani. Stone was not a part of the effort, the footage indicates, and he said he feared that top organizers were trying to exclude him from the rally.

On the day of the attack, as he packed his bags, he told the filmmakers the riot was a mistake and would be really bad. So this is what we've seen from a lot of the Trump people. Initially, after the violence and the negative reaction to it, they started to, oh God, how is this going to be perceived? We need to do some damage control. People were actually condemning Trump for the first time. Stone notably, previously, after an aide spoke of driving trucks into crowds of racial justice protesters, bear in mind, they're doing all of this knowing that a documentary film crew has been following them for two years. They talk about murdering protesters.

Stone said once there's no more election, there's no reason why we can't mix it up. These people are going to get what they've been asking for. But the thing is, as I alluded to, the immediate aftermath was one thing. As soon as things cooled off and they realized, oh, the Maga base is not turning on us over this. They wanted the right to go further. They might have said in the moment that it was Antifa, but they wanted it to go further. He was right back to denying the election and trying to overturn it. So that's just from a few hours of the tape, God only knows what's going to

what's going to be revealed. But Anna, I'll start with you. What do you think about Roger Stone's adventures in filmmaking? Well, I think that the Trump administration, Trump specifically pardoning all sorts of criminals and creating this environment of impunity for the worst people in society made him feel overly confident, really. And I'm happy for that. I mean, look, I don't think that the January 6th panel is really gonna do anything to hold Trump accountable. I don't think he's ever gonna see the inside of a jail cell. However, it's very real that someone like Roger Stone could end up in prison if there is evidence that he engaged in any criminality related to January 6th, any type of fraud related to the

election. So we'll see how it plays out. But I love that it appears, that Roger Stone and other goons like him felt like entitled to breaking the law with absolutely no consequences. That is the environment and the climate that Donald Trump created. And he might have been doing us a favor in that regard. Because now there could be some consequences for again, like some of the worst people tied to him. Yeah, Rush.

Yeah, it's just it's astonishing, actually, one of the things that's just sort of been so jarring for me over the last several years since the rise of. Trump, it's just how brazen he and his like goons are about just saying like it's our judges, our judges do our bidding, right? If we if I had been in charge of invading Iraq, I would have stolen all the oil. Yeah. I could kill anyone on wherever he said in you, in the middle of New York City, Fifth Avenue. And I think that that there's something in all of that that kind of I just sort of process all of that. And I think it's very telling of that these powerful figures can say this stuff so openly

and get away with it and also have a significant electoral base. I mean, in Trump's case, right? So when I think about all of that, it's I think there's something more fundamental about our politics, about our country, about the hypocrisy of Democrats, about, you know, So many of the other stories we've talked about American hypocrisy and kind of the smug kind of sanctimonious thing that we do to the rest of the world. And to the point about the January 6th commission that Anna was making, yeah, I agree Anna. Also, what's going to happen with the midterm elections if Kevin McCarthy's the Speaker of the House? Like, what's going to, is that commission just done for?

Is that another big waste of time? I think that chances are very high. Anna. What do you think, Anna? Yeah, I mean, that's the thing that frustrates me about people who still get excited about these headlines. Like, there was a headline recently, we talked about it on the show earlier this week, where it was presented as, ooh, the committee, they found evidence of Trump's criminality. And the headline was written in a way that would make someone think that Trump is going to end up behind bars. Let me just, I'm sorry to put a damper on something that we're all hoping for.

It's just not gonna happen. I think a lot of what's happening with this panel is political. I think it's being done for political reasons. That's not to say that I don't believe that what Trump did was wrong. That's not to say that there isn't criminality involved. But when it comes to actually implementing real consequences, the Democrats always fall short. And they've had a long history of that. And you know, we gave the example of Obama after he had a super majority in Congress and had the ability to prosecute the Bush administration for the war crimes that it committed. And he refused to do it. He wanted to look forward. He didn't want to look backward. So they talk a big talk, much like Trump did with Hillary Clinton and how he's going to lock her up. They talk a big talk for political reasons. But at the end of the day, when it comes to carrying out real consequences for the, you know, evil doers, that never really happens.

That's sort of my fear as well. And unfortunately that is going to have to be where we end. More will come for the Roger Stone tapes, in particular the stuff he had to say about Jared Kushner. Maybe we'll cover that at some point. But for now, Ramesh, thank you so much for joining us. Great to have you back. Thank you, Anna. Where can people see more of what you have to say?

Oh, well, I'm on Twitter at Ramesh Media. I'm not, as you both know, I'm not very active on Twitter. But you can see me on my website, Ramish Srinivasan.org, and I plan on being back with you. on being back with you all. Awesome. Sounds good. Thank you all.

And Anna, who's going to be joining you for the second hour? J.R. Jackson will be here. It's going to be an excellent panel and you don't want to miss it. So stay tuned. We've got some we've got some bangers, some real good stories to share with you all. Stick around. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work.

Listen to ad free. Access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to Apple. podcast at apple.co slash t yt. I'm your host jank huger and I'll see you soon.