TRASHFUTURE - Wrench! A Musical ft. Séamus Malekafzali

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

Seamus joins us to talk about the sudden (apparent) about face of some western leaders on Israel, who suddenly just now realised that a genocide may be occurring on their watch, and why the right time to take this stand was years ago. Also, we discuss a tech leader who wants to productise thinking, the ongoing adventures of Gregor Steube, and a new and innovative way hackers are stealing bitcoin.   Check out Séamus’s work here!   Get more TF episodes each week by subscribing to our Patreon here!   *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s tour dates here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/liveshows *TF LIVE ALERT* We’ll be performing at the Big Fat Festival hosted by Big Belly Comedy on Saturday, 21st June! You can get tickets for that here! You can also get tickets for our show at the Edinburgh Fringe festival here! Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

Hello everyone, welcome to this free episode of TF. It is Riley November in Hussain and we are joined once again by our old friend Seamus Malikovzeli. Seamus, how's it going? It's going alright. I've got Zoran fever or whatever they're doing right now. Yeah, they have, they've diagnosed us with a terminal case of Mamdaniitis. And we actually learned that his family was from your... I don't know the full story.

What I, so here's what I know. The Zoran Mumdani's family grew up in a village nearby or like in a town nearby where my family on my father's side was in Uganda, except they were from very different like class backgrounds. And so when I asked my dad like, hey, did you like know anything about the Mumdani family? He was just like, yeah, they were a little bit stuck up. That's kind of all he knew. Canceled. It's over. So that's a save. I'm actually, I'm endorsing Andrew Cuomo. Yeah, Thrasheater podcast endorsement. Andrew Cuomo. He's already killed your grandparents

once. What more can he do? That's right. I'm just joking. I like him. I like his, I like his mother's films. They're very nice. They meant a lot to me when I was younger. Best. I like him. I like his mother's films. They're very nice. They meant a lot to me when I was younger. Best of luck to him. So that is the T.F. Tipo the Cat. The coveted Tipo the Cat. I just like feeling like I'm part of something. I like that we've made an endorsement for New York City Man before AOC has. Yeah, AOC endorsing Andrew Cuomo, but for the same reasons. ZAC Yeah, because her dad's family is from the

same part of Uganda, yeah. ALICE Yeah. ZAC That's right. ZAC Well, look, we're considered a bellwether for some reason, and as goes us, so goes AOC. So the tentative half endorsement of Sauron, followed by a joke endorsement of Cuomo, can't wait to see that on her Twitter. But, you know, Seamus is our sort of recurrent source. We're talking about all things Middle East. And we are of course going to be getting there. We're going to be talking a little bit about the Trump

plan for Gaza. We're going to be talking about the ongoing love in between the Trump administration and in Gulf states, how these things are connected. But first, I want to talk about some news. The news, of course, I want to start with just the ongoing monitoring of the thoughts of tech leaders that I engage in. Of course. It's OSINT, you know? Yes. I follow all of these people and sometimes they say something that is incredibly revealing about the CEO mindset. So Patrick Collinson, one of the Irish brothers who founded Stripe, and by the way, the guy who was like in 2024 was like jogging in Tel Aviv, being like, I love Tel Aviv, what a safe place to jog. You know, this is who he is. He has said, you know what I want out of AI? I want an AI

product that inhabits my AirPods and continually mutters, and he said mutters, interesting things about the world to me. You know, you can get the same experience with a you know judicious application of the right drugs Yeah, like when I read this I was just like fucking hell like you you want to invent ADHD you know in then I Have a slightly different experience of ADHD from that, but yeah Sure, well, I don't know if mine is very much just like, yeah, I, you know, when your brain just doesn't sort of stop functioning, like, and you know, you just kind of, it's sort of a constant sort of stream of noise. And sometimes it's just like your own anxieties, but sometimes it's just like things that you remember.

Oh, sure. And that you find during, like, a few months ago, I was up very late at the night because like, I had been watching a documentary and like, stuff from my documentary kept kind of going through my brain. I was like yeah fine like it's chill but can you like leave me alone please and so I read this and I'm just like you want this to sort of be a fucking subscription service like what what the fuck what what Collinson has done is he appears to have invented a kind of productized version of a normal stream of consciousness saying wouldn't

it be great if there was a product that I was, as I was walking over the San Mateo bridge would tell me that the San Mateo bridge was built in about a year when it opened in 1929. It was longer than any other bridge on earth at the time. That should be a soft, that should be a subscription. I should pay monthly for that. Yeah. It's, uh, it's, it's strange though, to see these guys be like, it's, it's this AI just just one shot tech leaders into being like, what if we had thinking?

What if we had thinking too? What if I had an imagination, right? Because like, I can outsource all of that. That's not a thing that I ever have to develop personally. I can just outsource it to the thing that kind of mutters in my ears about me being gang stalked. Yeah, I mean, also these guys are sort of obsessed with like, this feels like kind of a few steps, but not that far removed from like, you're listening to audio books at like two times speed or something like

that, right? There comes a point where you were sort of just like, what are you actually getting from this other than like this kind of false sense of completion? Like you can say at the end of the, you can say at the end of the year that like you read like a thousand books, but like the majority of them were done on like five times speed on a jog or whatever, and they're all like business books, right? Left ear, Bible, two times speed in Chinese, right ear, Unibomber manifesto. That's right. Yeah, that's correct. That's that's like the proper ADHD way of using this service. So this feels kind of like the inevitable end point of trying to like optimize

everything to the point where even thinking for a moment is like a detriment to your success or becoming a smarter, whatever you want to go towards. Can you not just, I mean, this is the thing where like my problem with certain AI programs that you take a photo of something and instantly you get all kinds of information about it. Surely you can just Google what this is if you're passing by the bridge, right? Or you can just think to yourself like, oh, that's a nice bridge and then I'll go on with my run or something. I don't know. Maybe I'm just, I'm not in California. I think that's true. And I think like the point about optimization is like a really good and like true point. And I think the other aspect is also just

like these, these guys' obsessions with like instant gratification, because like if you want to sort of find out about a bridge or if you see a painting and you want to find out about the painting, the process of researching that is in and of itself an important part of both the knowledge consumption, but also the way in which you understand the things that you see and the things that you read and stuff. The research component is a part of that. What these guys have basically said is that, oh, research is kind of gay, and you don't want to do that because then people will think you're gay.

Right? So what if you had like an AI that sort of just scraped to the internet to sort of tell you these sort of facts. My other question is just like, what do you do with them afterwards? Like are you just going to like tell people? Well, they've all got their AIs. Right. Yeah.

Like it's this very strange way of just like, are you just going to sort of like share the little facts? And in that way, it's kind of cute because it's like, oh, you just like are you just gonna sort of like share the little facts and in that way It's kind of cute because it's like oh you guys have you guys are just children You're just like five-year-olds who have like sort of discovered an encyclopedia for the first time and you're going to tell each other Facts and that's very cute to watch if you are looking at five-year-olds Not so much if you're looking at men well into their 40s. Yeah I think there should be a five-year-old in charge of the Sort of world the internets main payment processing system and moreover

I think that he should approach the world as just baseball cards waiting to be collected Everything is just a baseball card waiting to be fed to you by the OS from her What if instead of having sex with the OS from her it just said like, you know The Henry Ford created Fordlandia, which some people are saying is the ideal settlement. Would you like to know more? Anyway, a couple other news items, very important, but one that has been sent to me, I want to say upwards of a dozen, maybe 20 times, because it's as though what happened to me was at some point earlier in my life, a wizened old fortune teller said, pointed a crooked finger and said,

you will be informed of the every minor life event of Sarasota Congressman Greg Stubbe. And you will be unable to escape this until your death. And I thought she was being metaphorical or cryptic, but it was quite literal. No one will ever let a Greg Stubbe fact go now without inundating me with it. Seamus, I don't know if for context, you know that we have a pet congressman. let a Greg Stubbe fact go now without inundating me with it. Seamus, I don't know if for context, you know that we have a pet congressman essentially. Greg Stubbe because he is a perfect oath. Yeah. He's a perfect oath. We sort of,

we fell in love with him when he was doing the Senate committee on how tech is too woke in like 2021. Can I garner, if I, if I, if I may, can I garner a guess as to how this name is spelled? Yes. Is it S T U B E? Is it like the oath spelling of it? It's yes. S T E U B E. So he's like, this is the deep German openness.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. Gregor Stoiber, oath of like sort of a village in Lower Bavaria missing that oaf. Yeah. Gregor Stoiber, like, moved over to America in like the 1800s because he was chased out of town for using one of the last ale barrels to make himself an outfit. So Gregor Stoiber, Jr., Jr., Jr. Other things for you to know, Seamus, is we've talked about such things as him falling off of a roof and complaining to a subcommittee on tech hearings that his emails for his campaign

were going into people's junk folders. We we love him. There we go. He's a perfect guy. Yeah, I love him. And we wouldn't surprise you know, he's a big Trump guy. Well, he perfect guy. I love him. And it wouldn't surprise you know, he's a big Trump guy. Well, he's got a new pet project. He's got a new pet project and the pet project is to rename the Washington DC metro system in honor of President Trump or he will aim to cut all of their funding.

100% of it. Yeah. So his, the act is called the Make Autorail Great Again Act. And it's only got it's a very short bill. Basically, it says you should rename the Western Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority to the Washington Metropolitan Authority for Greater Access, which, of course, spells. Yeah, my guy.

I would say that's that's that clean. But OK. Yeah. MAGA. Yeah, well, yeah, we're about to say that's not clean, but okay. Yeah. We should just call it Washington, Mashington, and then just call it the Mashington Authority for Greater Access. This is what we're doing. And that they should rename their rail system the, quote, Trump Train. It's so cool that he's having a nice time in Congress. One of the reasons I go back to Greg, Gregor Stoiba, is that there are a very small number

of people who I think are perfectly happy. He's embodying his own perfect self. Yeah, like even when he's angry, Gregor Stoibe is overjoyed because he's angry in a way where he knows that he is perfectly right, perfectly just, that his enemies are sort of maybe like smitten at any minute and that he is now he's like he's enjoying his life's victory lap of being like, what if we called it? What if we literally called it the Trump train? Mm hmm. Hey, hey, hey. I mean, this is a larger philosophical point, but would it be better for all of us if we were like this to a certain extent? Not as evil, but to adopt the German Bavarian peasant mindset of just like being so angry

that you're kind of just joyful about it, but it's you're in kind of like the middle of a village in the middle of nowhere. So it really doesn't have any sort of effect on the world. I could see. I think the Bavarian peasant mindset is, I mean, that could be a game changer for me, but there's kind of two Bavarian peasant mindsets, right? One is, looks like, you know, looks like the liege lords are doing some more bullshit again. You know, that's fine, I'll keep tilling the fields, I guess.

What else am I going to do? And then the other thing is the one where you do the kind of jacquery, right, and you're setting fires to castles and sort of like impaling people and stuff and then eventually the backlash gets you and they make you sit on like a red hot iron throne or something like that. So I could go either way, I could do either of those, personally. Like you know, just start hoisting a big flank that I sewed myself that just has a big boot on it and it just says like, kill all landlords. Yeah, I could get into that. Yeah, it's like, he's using the Bavarian peasant mindset for evil, basically.

The thing is, the historical determinant between those two things, right, is you can do as much of this shit as you want, right, of the like, we renamed it to the Trump train or whatever, but if you put like a one Fennec tax on grain, that's the point at which I start making my boot flag. That's right. Well, this is just the latest in what I would say is the multi-year run now of Stoobie being very, very happy. Like, there's one more thing I want to talk about before we get into our main topic though today, which is a case I've been following very closely. This is in New York, actually. So, Seamus, you should look out for these guys.

OK. Yeah. So have any of you been following the new way, the new and sophisticated way to steal Bitcoin? Oh, yes, I have, actually, because this this this actually relates to the Mare podcast. Indeed. So the new, exciting, high-tech way to steal Bitcoin doesn't involve quantum computers decrypting someone's wallet seed wallet. It doesn't involve using some kind of packet sniffer to find their seed phrase if they send it to someone. It's so ingenious, I would never have thought of this. It's to grab the guy and punch him until he tells you the seed phrase. Yeah, ideally what you're going to want to do is do like a kind of a two week kidnapping

and torture situation, which I've had vacations like that, but like it's just kind of, it's the simplest possible thing of just torture the guy until you go Bavarian peasant revolt mode on a guy until he tells you his password. So this happened recently. This was two guys called, again, John Volz, W-O-E-L-T-Z. Once you see it, once you see the hidden hat, you realize it's all Germans. The United States is big Germany

and I'm tired of hearing otherwise. It's the dog, the, it's, um. The United States is big Germany and I'm tired of hearing otherwise. It's, it's, it's the dog, the Deutsche occupied government. But it's like, it's, we, it's the, the octopus, like with its tentacles around the world, but the octopus is wearing later ocean. Yeah. So John Woltz and William Duplessis, South African. Dutch, kind of German. Are both these guys who run a crypto hedge fund between Miami and Manhattan.

One of the great ways to get liquidity for your crypto hedge fund is to kidnap and torture an Italian guy until he gives you his Bitcoin. But the mayor angle on this is fascinating though, like obviously you don't just do this, right? You've got to have some sense of security about doing this and so part of the reason why they're able to do this is because they had some of Eric Adams NYPD security detail helping them do the kidnapping and torturing. Yeah, because the thing is whenever like a tail, helping them do the kidnapping and torturing. Yeah. Because the thing is, whenever a police officer, you remember in London a lot of police officers

use their position to commit a lot of crimes, right? Same as anywhere. Yeah, sure. Yeah. But in New York, same thing. It is so perfectly Eric Adams that it's for a crypto thing this time. This particular one is for a crypto thing. So these guys, basically they've

just been sort of psychologically torturing this Italian investor called Michael Carturane, initially by harassing him from abroad, having stolen one of his Bitcoin. They just targeted this guy. They stole one of his Bitcoin wallets or whatever. And then you have to come to New York to get it back. And so he came to New York and then they off duty NYPD detective who works for Eric Adams, picks him up from the airport, drives him to this like party townhouse that these guys have rented. And then they proceed to like, you know, basically torture him for two weeks while also having parties at the house. This what has happened basically is two guys have made live action,

have acted out in real life Pain and Gain 2. They have created a Michael Bay movie in real life. Perfect. I was wondering what for, yeah, Pain and Gain, it's fucking Pain and Gain, that's amazing. They did Pain and Gain. It all comes back to that. He was dropped off and he was like basically for three weeks he was beaten, drugged and shocked with wires.

Well like these two guys who are again, like when they were, their perp walks are them wearing like Hamptons party outfits. In fact, one was picked up from a club in the Hamptons, but he was doing this. And finally, after being dangled from the top of a staircase, he agreed to provide his password, but then they were like, okay, great. We're going to go get the computer and then they both go. And so he just walks out of the house. That's NYPD excellence apart from anything else. Which is, I think, great.

But also, it's like, this is, I think about like, the crypto people's theory of society a lot, right? And the fact that if you are a crypto person, you're hugely vulnerable to this, right? You're hugely vulnerable to this because you hate anything that looks like an institution, right? And institutions are very good at making it so I cannot be beaten for the thing I have because if your money's in a bank or whatever, and again, not going back to banks are great, but more like the fact of a social institution rather than just this ideology of every single person is just like billiard balls bouncing off each other. There's nothing that reunites us in

common. There's no institutions we participate in evenly. There's just the code and the transactions and pure individuals. Right? That is so vulnerable to everybody being tortured all the time for everything. I think what confuses me about Eric Adams tenure in general is that when I think about like democratic politics, corrupt democratic politics, you know, close to 100 years ago, maybe something like Huey Long. That was someone who used immense in democorruption, private gangs, police, politicians, whoever on payroll. But he utilized that for his own personal power, but also to enact immense

social infrastructure reform, whatever transformed the entire state. Adams, though, I genuinely cannot point to a single legislative achievement of any kind or even any like any. I'm sure it exists. There has to be something. But literally all I have heard about from him is corruption or some sort of obsession with crypto with cryptocurrency or calling something the Istanbul of America or the world or something like that. I don't I don't get what the pitch was initially.

Yeah, I don't I don't know. I don't know. Well, in this case, this is just people connected to Erica. That is that is true, though. Right. This don't know. I don't know. Well in this case this is just people connected to Eric. That is true though. This is like... So people under his general wing, people who have to be okay with that stuff. Yeah exactly. Exactly. No, that's true. So the prosecutor said investigators found cocaine, a saw, body armor, ammunition, and night vision goggles, as well as a polaroid of the victim with a gun pointed to his head and a crack pipe in his mouth. I mean, this sounds like a pretty good time, unless you're the, you know, guy with a crack pipe in his mouth.

And maybe if you are, depending. They made him smoke crack? Well, apparently. They made him smoke crack, but also they took a picture of them coercing him into smoking crack. They made him smoke crack, but also they took a picture of them coercing him into smoking crack. Just to make sure that everybody knows that he didn't smoke that crack voluntarily. Yeah.

No, no. Your Honor, we took this photo of us with a literal gun to his head making him smoke crack to make him look like a bitch. Yeah, check it out. This fucking idiot has to be at gunpoint before he's willing to smoke crack. Yeah, this lame Italian Bitcoin investor. So look, these guys who are super rich, I mean, I don't know what their plan was other than just, yeah, torture and rob this man while having a sideline and holding parties

in their party house. The lawyer, one of their lawyers, was was like look that he should be released on bond He doesn't have a private jet. He doesn't have a helicopter quote. He's never been arrested before Well, I mean in that case He says he's a 37 year old man with no prior criminal history. He's a college graduate with a degree in philosophy He's been very successful in technology and supportive of his friends and family Which if you don't know what he's being arrested for... Sounds pretty good, yeah.

He's a family man, you know, and he was willing to help someone get over his anxiety about smoking crack. I mean, yeah, well, he was willing to share his crack, which is... That's true. That is true. Which is an important thing to bear in mind. Yeah. Which is an important thing to bear in mind. This guy who has been pretty much cut and dried proven to have tortured someone for three weeks. Come on!

This never happened before! It's not called if Bitcoin is opening up all of this, you know? Are they going to use like the heated crypto moment? This was an argument. They had a personal disagreement. This is a three week long heated moment. This was an argument. They had a personal disagreement. This was a heated crypto three quarters of a month. Anyway, anyway, this is, I found this to be crazy, but also to be like just a perfect, because these attacks are getting more popular, right?

These attacks where it's just like, hey, I'm just going to hit you with a wrench until you tell me your password. They're happening all over Europe as well. They might even be connect. Maybe this one's not connected. Other ones may are considering to be connected. But yeah, Bitcoin is just like has created an entirely new type of kidnapping that just never happened before or hasn't happened since money was just buried somewhere and you needed to torture someone to give you the map. Yeah, I was going to say. Yeah. It's like we have created the conditions of pirate treasure again.

Anyway, look, before we go into our main topic, I want to do like the world's fastest startup. The company is called Ground Swell and it is the all-in-one platform for social impact leaders. Now, at some point, Seamus might figure out why I'm talking about this company. Okay. Unlistening. Yeah. So the all-in-one platform for social impact leaders, we are unlocking the modern philanthropist, which is good because the modern philanthropist has been kidnapped by two guys in a basement

for his seed phrase. We envision a future where every solution is funded and every problem is solved. Okay. Well, that's good. I'm glad though. That's the other Bavarian peasant mindset. It's like, that's all good. Fine. Great.

This is great. You know what? So we have a bold vision of the future where there will be no more problems. So any case, so what this company does is, so the guy who started it was a veteran who like created this sort of, kind of like shady philanthropy organizations that would go into disaster areas and then was like, OK, I'm done with that. I'm going to then start this corporate giving platform. And the CEO, who I'll name at the end of the segment, said, Although the desire among employees to give is abundant, the means to do so are lacking in the corporate world. Distribution delays, funding restrictions and fees create significant challenges for nonprofits.

We've built a system that not only facilitates, but also accelerates and personalizes corporate world. Distribution delays, funding restrictions and fees create significant challenges for nonprofits. We've built a system that not only facilitates, but also accelerates and personalizes corporate philanthropy." The idea is like, oh, boards of directors might give to something because, you know, they get want to go sit at their charity gala table or whatever. They don't want to like support the actual cause. Employees want to support the actual causes. So Groundswell said CEO Jake Wood is all about bringing heart back into corporate giving. Do I know that name? He sounds like the protagonist of like a bunch of platform action games that came out in like the 2010s.

Now, shameless, Jake Wood. Who am I talking about? Oh, oh, is it? It's the same guy. Could it be? I wonder. Yes. Okay. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

It wasn't a startup segment at all. It's the intro into talking about the first of the guys who have emerged to, I would say, initially profiteer from, it seems, and then develop a very sudden case of conscience about what Israel is doing in Gaza. Is Jake Wood is the founder and now former CEO of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Oh the fucking... okay yeah the guy who the guy who quit the day before he realized he was being asked to do Blackwater does humanitarian aid

distribution. Yeah that's right. Okay sure. I remember Jake. Yes. Okay. Sure. There we go. I remember Jake Wood now. There it is. This is how I want to start off our discussion today is with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and how they have emerged as the answer to quote unquote aid and the problems of Israel not letting in aid in Gaza and this, yeah, this private blackwaterish organization that appears to be placing aid in strategic areas

where Israel wants to move Gazans to. Yeah. Well, here's the thing. There have been numerous attempts before for Israel to create. I don't even know what they used to call it, but essentially terror free zones. What's the language that they used to use? At some point, they tried to do that in a neighborhood of Gaza City last year. That didn't work because Hamas kept attacking them and wouldn't stop attacking them and they couldn't defeat them in that neighborhood. At some point they tried to get different Palestinian clans to sign on to some sort

of aid distribution plan. Those clans were fused for obvious reasons, and then Israel retaliated by killing the heads of certain clans. So that didn't work out. So what they're doing now is a combination of entirely destroying cities. Right now, Rafa is being completely demolished in the south, and they have set up these different aid distribution points in different axes that they've occupied. Netsakhim, Mohog, and a couple others that I can't think of at the top of my head. I think those are the two main ones though.

So far it has been a expected total disaster. On the first day there was obviously many, many, many Palestinians wanting food came down, overran the entire fenced facility, tore down the fences, took the fences back with them. And then aid distribution was canceled that day. Another couple of days, they restarted things. Some aid was distributed, but otherwise it was pretty uneventful, aside from some grenades thrown, and some people also had medical episodes, and also people were shot. Yesterday, though, there was a full-blown massacre in which I want to say 30-some people were shot, at the very least, and in response Israel has claimed that absolutely nothing happened and that Hamas was spreading lies and propaganda

and also placing disinformation that, oh, maybe the Hamas could have maybe done it because they fired on this aid distribution site elsewhere in the strip. It's a joke. It's a complete joke. And as you were saying, the point is to move people eventually south with the idea being that people will go get this aid. They obviously want a steady supply of food, but as the Israeli military continues to move south, eventually people are going to be told they're going to have to go farther south and then not going to be allowed to return north. That's the plan. Yeah. This organization that's at the head of it, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, right? This is the organization that's being used right now to set up these aid distribution points that is, again, guarded by

private security forces. They were set up very, very recently. They are shown to be like, they are very much in the pocket of the Americans. Or even opposition politicians say that it's either Americans or just directly Israel funding where the aid is going to move people around. And then recently this guy, Jake Wood, this corporate philanthropy entrepreneur who was signed up to this thing, he resigned being like, I only just realized now that this is being used as a method of basically forced population transfer by like weaponizing starvation.

Sometimes it turns out you can get like weeks or months into doing that and then realize that that's what you're doing. It's kind of like that one scene in The Master, the end where you're like, well, no, for real, why was I doing all of that? You know? I think the thing is about this is that when the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation thing was announced, which is the perfect corporate name for this, and that there's no attempt to like, oh, yeah, it's humanitarian foundation. Why would you disagree with it?

It's in the name. But if you tried to, I mean, when you explain the whole pitch relies on you not knowing anything about the plan. Right. You have to just be informed. Hey, it's this is an aid group going to Gaza. We know everybody knows at this point that Gaza needs aid. Surely you won't be against this.

Yeah. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good and don't let the good be the enemy of this. Yeah. And you know, it's like, look, every every other aid convoy just gets bombed, whereas these don't seem to be. Oh, whoa, Riley, Riley, you're spreading, look, respectfully, your friend, but respectfully, you're spreading some foul Hamas propaganda right now. This is, aid convoys continue to be stolen by Hamas.

Israel, the UN keeps just dropping aid trucks on the border that they won't bring in because they're lazy bureaucrats. And Israel is just doing the right thing by allowing aid to the strip and taking the aid distribution network away from Hamas terrorists. How are we doing that? Well, of course, we're gonna rope everybody

into a fenced compound. We're gonna use facial recognition technology to see who is a Hamas terrorist within this fenced area. Don't ask us how we determine that, mainly because we said university professors, doctors and everything in civil society in Gaza are Hamas. And just hope that, you know, we don't have any other nefarious objectives that we're really not going to tell you. Unless you're in Israel, in which case we're nefarious objectives that we're really not gonna tell

you. Unless you're in Israel, in which case we're gonna tell you what we're actually doing. Yeah. And also crucially, if you want the aid, you have to then come to the distribution point, the whole fenced area where they can just disappear you. Which is not something that, like, you've ever seen any other humanitarian organization ever really do before, because, like, people have to be able to get to the aid, and you kind of limit it to the people who can make that

journey, which a lot of people can't, which is why they need the aid in the first place, but I'm sure it's fine. A- It's almost like, it's almost like, the point is to make it a horrifying ordeal that you will be locked into because the circumstances outside of the distribution center are so terrible that you will risk being shot to death. I mean, this is something that they've been trying to do for years and for years at this point. God, whenever Hamas attempts Hamas government, the government of the fucking strip, when they attempt to distribute aid, it is not an entirely peaceful affair.

But the vast majority of the time, the vast majority of the time, it goes about without severe incident. Only very recently has it become like more of an issue with how desperate people are to get this thing. One of the reasons why Al-Shifa Hospital was destroyed last April was because it had been the center of a very successful aid distribution scheme. And they needed, and Israel needed to destroy that opportunity for them to continue that a situation in which IDF soldiers and private security contractors

can just shoot Palestinians willy nilly whenever they feel threatened. That is a great situation for Israel to be in. It provides a lot of opportunities to shoot Palestinians. It increases the desperation, increases the suffering, and also creates opportunities for Israel to keep saying the fucking Hamas propaganda that's at the Associated Press and CNN continue to lie about what Israel is doing. I mean, just today, there was Mike Huckabee, the U.S.

ambassador to Israel, said that talking about the aid massacre yesterday caused the attack in Boulder against against the pro-Israel demonstrators and Israeli official accounts talking about how Gazans are voting with their feet against Hamas by going to these distribution sites. And then they have an IDF photographer go up to the people who are smiling and be like, hey, they love it here. All right. How could you possibly disagree with that idea?

I remember that I remember that Heritage Foundation AI video as well of the like kind of waving smiling Gazans that were weirdly slipped in and out of focus, you know? No, I'm not. Oh my God, that fucking video where they- that I saw from the Free Press where they blurred out all the Palestinians and then a very clear audio clip comes in of some people in an Arab accent saying, thank you, America. But you can't actually see their lips say that, so you can just assume. Although, Hamas is so devious, they even have the power to speak without moving their lips.

Yeah, they're ventriloquists, I suppose. The Al-Qasim Brigade's ventriloquism unit is no joke, I mean, like... Yeah, well, you get the... They ship the dummies in, in parts, and they're all dual use. It's actually part of Iran's strategy in the region. But, like, so, basically, and in this case, right, there's the aid that is getting in is being quite nakedly weaponized in ways that are sort of acknowledged on a daily basis by the Hamas run UN, the Hamas run AP, the Hamas run New York times, you know, all of

these, you know, terrorist organizations are noticing this. And then meanwhile, again, any other attempt to get aid in, I mean, you can see today, you know, the US Senator Lindsey Graham, again, just sort of, I think some of these people so poisoned by experiencing, they're poisoned by a lot of things, to be clear. They're poisoned in their souls by participating in what's going on here. They're poisoned, a poisonous of spirit, right? But at the same time, you know, to, uh, Lindsey Graham looking at like Greta Thunberg's being on a float out of flotilla of aid to Gaza by ship so it can actually get in is like, Hey, I hope you drown. Uh, we're going to kill you.

Yeah. I mean, I mean, like God forbid, but they, I genuinely think they may actually go like it's. Yeah. Yeah. Right. It's the, the idea is that they're the only food that is going to be because again, it's the, it's the assumption because like the Netanyahu assumption is every piece of food that gets into Gaza is going to serve the ends of Hamas. The only food that can get into Gaza must therefore directly serve the ends of Israel. Essentially. We, it's, it's,, essentially. It's seeing the world in that way. So, you know, it cannot be allowed, right, that like a boat carrying food can

come into a place that is experiencing an enforced famine. You know, we're going to kill the girl that every 50-year-old conservative has decided to performatively hate for basically being a human. But also the other thing is, this is part of the larger Trump plan for Gaza, which has been accepted by Israel, even though like there are always rumors of like a Netanyahu Trump falling out. I don't see much evidence of it, which is the forced relocation of Gazans elsewhere and quote unquote Israeli security control of the strip.

So what is the Trump plan at the moment that's being accepted by Israel? There really isn't a specific thing, right? It's mostly just Trump randomly saying at a press conference, hey, we could own the Gaza Strip, right? We could just clear everybody out of there. We can make it a beautiful Riviera area and then the people of the world can live there or whatever. But the thing that Israel actually honed in on was the fact that

Trump endorsed getting all the Palestinians to leave. That is the Trump plan, essentially. I mean, there was a proposal, I think, reported on by Reuters that there'd be like an American-led occupation with Hamas surrendering, similar to the the occupation of Iraq. That was an explicit example. But there was nothing to indicate that this was a really like serious plan with anything other than a bullet point diagram to it. Yeah. The Trump plan is just ethical. So that you can pretend that it's like a peace thing with like a muscle surrender

and there'll be a clean and orderly Transition to you know, like in Iraq. Yeah, exactly None of this like the only thing that seems to indicate anything close to a day after There was an Israeli cabinet minister whose name escapes me who was talking about how the Palestinians might have autonomous zones inside Kaisa. Autonomous zones of an unclear status, but without any sovereignty or any sort of political structure. So functionally, I would assume less than a Bantustan. Yeah, certainly interest, quite a bit of interest. But like, or this is, yeah, Bantustan, a, or like, you know, like how, like, sort of

the American project forced, like, indigenous people onto reservations. I mean, it's over and over again. Like, that's the, that's been the plan. Yeah, it's just downscaling Gaza from being, like, a big version of that to a much, much smaller version of that. Yeah, where people have fewer rights and are sort of more and more. And so, you know, all of the talk about, you know, oh, maybe Egypt, maybe Libya, all of this is just sort of filling time, you know, while Israel is allowed to do the thing it

actually wants, which is what it's doing and what it is currently weaponizing aid to do, basically. Exactly. And I think I just want to elaborate on this briefly in that what is being outlined as a solution for Palestinians who want to collaborate with Israel is something truly foul and that right now there's something being set up in these Israeli occupied zones called the counterterrorism force in which people who are collaborating with the Palestinian authority are being given guns and stealing aid and then selling it at a profit.

And they're Palestinians who have completely given up on the idea of self-determination of a Palestinian Authority returning to Gaza. Purely just, we hate Hamas so much, we are willing to become agents of Israel and just start shooting people. Like that is, that is the solution being, being afforded here. It's not a good one. No. And I mean, I think that when we first started talking to you about this a couple of years ago, right, we would speak about like what the evolving day after was going to look like,

because it was all, it always seemed very clear to us that the only thing that was likely to happen was the commission of ethnic cleansing or just fully a genocide. Right? There was, because then the entire sort of global Northwestern world, whatever you want to call it, all bent over backwards to say, no, this is limited. No, there's a plan. No, they're not deliberately just like indiscriminately targeting civilians.

This is actually fine. This is like, like the versions of this that have come before, right? That, that's what seemed to be, seemed to me to be the broad opinion. And the lot of day after plans that got mooted were ludicrous, right? Like, oh, we're going to establish Gaza as a free trade zone. We're going to establish Gaza as Riviera. We're going to have a rail connection to Neom, right? Like all of these, all of these things, they sort of, they,

the purpose of them is just to fill time, right? While they are getting to do what they actually want. And you know, this is, I think this is, we saw a few weeks ago, right? The UK, France and Canada now saying, Hey, wait a minute. It looks like this isn't going to be like the other times that has come before, which we've all found acceptable. It looks like you're actually starting to commit a genocide. And this is now, I think, the perfect example of too little, too late. The kind of Jake Wood maneuver.

Yeah, yeah. I only realized today, you know, in like mid, early May, that it seems like this is what you were doing the whole time. And so, you know, Starmer is now saying, oh, we will, we're going to put our trade negotiation on hold with Israel and we're going to think about what we might do, which so far is nothing. I mean, everybody here from McCall to Starmer to, to Mertz, they've all been like biding their time here, trying to wait this out, keep supplying arms in the expectation, I assume that one day they wouldn't have to face what this actually looked like. And now they're staring down the barrel of the actual final stage of this, which would be the

Kleenex, the ethnic cleansing of millions of people, either deported somewhere in full view of the world, because Israel would absolutely publicize the sin out of it, or full blood extermination, which would also be on every single camera in the world. And they would have to face up to the fact that they would not escape the stain of that. They already stained by it, but now they really feel it because now they're up at the precipice of it. They have to actually sign off on that, not just pretend it didn't exist.

And no, it's it's it's it's it's scummy because they all knew this was going to happen deep down. But now they want to pretend that we couldn't have possibly anticipated this. There was no intention by any sort of a politician to us, expressed to us that this was the plan. Nobody even Macron was saying, you know, if we allow this to occur, then the West credibility will disappear forever. As if that didn't happen months ago, years ago.

Yeah, as if that didn't happen, what, like three wars ago even. Yeah. The idea that it's like, so it also, the other thing is, OK, so wait, Macron, Stammer, or also like tons of British columnists as well. It's like, oh, so this far and no further, then. You're saying that everything up to, everything up until here, you were willing to chalk up to basically being normal, or at least acceptable, right? And then from here, it's like, okay, well, this, now we cannot accept, we cannot let this, as you say, happen under our watch. And mysteriously this coincides with the realization that at some point there will have to be the

ability for some kind of Western journalist to be in Gaza without an IDF escort at some point in the future. And when they do it will suddenly then become acceptable to note that a genocide has occurred after the fact. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I sort of wondered, like, yeah, because it sort of feels, a lot of the stuff feels very obvious in terms of what's about to happen, in terms of like people kind of realizing that like the things that everyone has sort of seen kind of throughout the last like nearly two years is kind of by all, like you know, it is a genocide, but it is also like one of the most horrific things sort

of seen in modern history. And like, but at that point, it sort of feels like, okay, but it is also one of the most horrific things seen in modern history. At that point, it feels like, is the play that, okay, well, it's too late to really change anything? Because I think one of the things I constantly think about is one of the major effects of the Israeli campaign has been to undermine every institution that was supposed to stop it. And also the mythologies around those institutions that were sort of always constantly reinforced, like they were in place to stop something like this happening. And so I wonder whether the sort of long-term effective is not, it will be, it will be to sort of acknowledge that yeah, genocide did happen. But the sort of broader, the broader issue is like, well, a genocide happened and no one could do anything. And in future, no one will be able to do anything.

And what does that mean for like Russia and Ukraine? What does that mean for like Russia and like other sort of neighboring states? The things that this has sort of unleashed is going to be like truly helpful. And like, I think one of the things that not a lot of journalists, well, journalists like definitely, but like certainly people in government, people who are in think tanks and stuff, I don't know if they sort of realized that like what Israel has done has kind of like undermined every type of institutional structure that was supposed to at least limit the type of damage. And now you really are in sort of like a no man's land where anything and everything could

happen and like whoever has like the biggest and most expensive guns, like can sort of just get away with doing whatever they want. I mean, there are certain, I think when I think about diplomats who would have understood how badly their image was destroyed. I mean, I think I do think about the German diplomats in particular, who the German envoy to the Palestinian Authority, he got kicked out of Bursit University last year. People were throwing rocks at him, I want to say, because of how awful Germany had been. Back in Lebanon where I used to live, German institutions became persona non grata. Essentially people did not want to be associated with them in any sort of way.

That sort of stain is, I don't know if the right word is lost its intensity, but it's become something of a, like a dull ache. Like nobody wants to be associated with the idea that there used to be a West with any sort of credibility. I don't think anybody wants to sign back onto that plan. The idea that this could ever be reconstructed or that it can be reconstructed. That's out the window. That's done. There's no, there's no way that's coming back. What would you reconstruct it with?

Yeah, it's like it's at this point like Merit Stammer, like these guys, Ursula von der Leyen as well, they have all spent the last, they've spent several years saying that what Israel is doing is justified. You know, it, what was it? Merit even said Israel's actions in Gaza, what he specifically said was can no longer be justified. You know, what was it? Marenz even said Israel's actions in Gaza, what he specifically said was, can no longer be justified. Right. The eagerly signing up to everything that came before. So, yeah, as you say, what possible world order could these guys ever rebuild at all? Right. That would be like, OK, well, this is all allowed. Or also this. We talk about institutions, right? The,

the whole idea of an international criminal court. Okay, well that's gone now, because they were going to file charges against Netanyahu. That's over. You know, that's the, we just, we're going to, the Kareem Khan has been like, you know, wrapped up in, you know, allegations of sexual impropriety week, two weeks before he was set to bring charges against Netanyahu. So these things are, what are you going to do?

Select another ICC prosecutor? Why bother? Why would you even bother doing that at this point? Duterte can be arrested by the ICC, no problem, but Netanyahu is first world. You're not allowed to do anything close to that. Yeah, no way. problem, but Nanyahu was first world. Like you're not allowed to do anything close to that. Yeah, no way. It's that they, they were unable to see because they thought it was in their best interest to not see. And now they are unable to move on. They're unable to like

move on from the stain of having not seen. Yeah. It's, it's, it's like, it turns out that that decision actually had consequences. Yeah. Cause you managed to struggle for the domestic ones, you know, because everyone who protested against it at the time was, you know, in Hamas and anti-Semitic. But like, uh, turns out that it also just in itself carries some, some consequences. Like it, not, not to sort of like, glose about this because this isn't anything to glose about, right?

Like it's, it's, it's Like, it's been terrible, but like, this was one of the things that everyone who was against this at the time kind of said would happen. It wasn't the most important thing. But it's not like this wasn't, you know, something that they knew would happen. You know, so now, right? Now, these leaders, you know, some more than others, Macron most, Starmor least, are talking about the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state. But like, again, cool. After the systematic elimination of like half of it. Yeah, after the systematic elimination of everything, every institution that could make

a state a state, you're like, okay, now that it's purely theoretical, we are happy to recognize it. And meanwhile, Israel will just approve another 50 settlements in the West Bank, and you unilaterally approve, sort of like, I don't know, two pieces out of a 50 piece jigsaw. Yeah, exactly. The time to have ever, ever stopped this was immediately, immediately in 2020. I think it's also like the impression that I get, and this is just purely subjective on my part, but the impression that I get thinking about the Israeli decision making here is

that it's all been made in the assumption that at some point the Americans would stop them and the Americans just never did. So, Joe Biden accelerationism, I guess, has led them to this point. Mhmm. I mean, when Israeli politicians, after October 7th, almost immediately after October 7th, October 9th, October 8th, were talking about the need to be cruel, to go scorched earth, when they were talking about humanitarian corridors, quote unquote, humanitarian corridors for all the Gazans to leave to Egypt out of. And they were insisting that this needed to happen when they were talking

about destroying it almost immediately. This was all planned. This was all understood inside Israel itself, which I'm sure Western politicians, Western governments have a presence in. They were in that. We all have the translate Hebrew button on Twitter. It's pretty accurate. Like no media outlet was spared in that country. No newspaper wasn't covering it. This was understood. Anthony Blinken had said he spent so many hours,

we can talk about how strong that argumentation would have been. He spent hours trying to convince the Israelis to like climb down from the positions that they were at because they were ready to kill everybody, essentially paraphrasing like attributed to trauma, attributed to. They didn't know what else to do, whatever you want. But the end result was always in the cards. It was the only result. They're not the idea that this was going to end

with what, a two state solution? And understanding that Hamas was gonna peacefully hand over power to President Abbas, that that was what something that Israel wanted. That a country in which you talk to fucking anybody, almost anybody in that country, and you ask them about Arabs, what do you think they're going to respond to it?

A country that at this point, like almost majority or a majority, no, a majority endorses in polling, endorses expelling everyone from the Gaza Strip, and almost a majority endorses killing everyone inside of it. What do you think was going to happen? They're going to shake hands hands and go kumbaya? Like what the fuck? No, this was what's gonna happen.

And like the as a middle power, as a European leader, as fucking Prime Minister of Canada, if you were ever going to do anything other than loudly support it, the time to, and maybe what you wanted to do was not affect change, but try to finesse your own personal reputation. Who knows? But the time to do anything else, the time to even do that, right, was the moment those news stories about the actual plan started dropping. The moment that like actual, like, government leaders or people like Smotrich or Ben Veer or whatever,

the moment those guys started saying what the plan was, that was the time to say, at a minimum, what like Meritz and Stammer and Macron are saying now, years into it and with barely any buildings left standing in the whole strip. No, it's bad. That's all I'll say. Yeah. Anyway, anyway. Look, as I often say, Seamus, it's always a pleasure to talk to you, but never about the subject matter. Always appreciated.

Yeah. Look, I'm going to say that's about probably about time for us today. But I want to thank you once again for coming on as one of our most oft repeated guests. And to just remind people that people can, they can read your writing if they want to read your writing on this and the wider Middle East. Yes. Then go to subsec at Seamus-Malek-Avselet.com. And I think shortly after this comes out, there may be a piece by me in Parapraxis magazine, which I've been working on for many months. And I will also have something in The Nation coming out very soon. So do check that out.

And thank you for being a listener to this show. There will be a bonus episode in a few short days. That will be four pounds 50 to sign up on the Patreon. That's right. We changed currencies that will not affect you at all if you are currently paying. But Donald Trump has been fucking with the US dollar too much for us to want to continue being denominated in it. I'm sorry.

So, yeah. That's, you know what? I'll take your apology as on behalf of the entire government. So, apology accepted. Please stop fucking with the dollar. And other than that, we will see you in a couple days on the Patreon. Bye everybody.

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