The Joe Rogan Experience - July 20, 2021


Joe Rogan Experience #1684 - Abby Martin


Episode Stats

Length

2 hours and 44 minutes

Words per Minute

170.26762

Word Count

27,992

Sentence Count

2,135

Misogynist Sentences

26


Summary

In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, I sit down with writer and podcaster Abby Martin to talk about her new book, "The Occupation of Palestine: What's the Real Story?" and why it's so important to know the truth about what's really going on in the Gaza Strip. We talk about the current situation in Gaza, what's going on over there, and why we should care about it. We also talk about why Israel should be held accountable for the crimes they're committing in Gaza and why they should be punished for it. And we talk about how the mainstream media has lost control of the narrative that paints Israel as the good guy and the Palestinians as the bad guy, and how the truth is actually much more complicated than that. Check it out! -Joe Rogan Podcast by Day, by Night, All Day. All Day is a podcast by day, all day, by night, all night. -Abby Martin - The Occupation: What is it really like in Gaza? What are the real facts about the situation in the Golan Heights and what is going on there? What does it really mean Who are the good guys and the bad guys Why is it important to be a human being in the Occupation? Why do we care about what s happening in Gaza ? How do we need to care about the truth and not the lies we tell ourselves about it? - What are we should we really be doing in the truth in the first place and much more, and what do we really need to do to make a better understanding of the truth? And much more? Thank you for listening to this episode, Abby Martin I hope you enjoy it! - Thank you so much for being here! Joe Rogans Podcast by Night Podcast by day - All Day, All Night, By Night, by Day - By Night Thanks for listening, Joe's Journey by Night - By Day, By Day - by Night by Night? I'll see you soon! I love you, bye! - Joe's Train by Day Joe's Podcasts by Night! - The Joad Experience by Day & Night, The Joked Podcast by Night's Podcast by By Day by Night - by Day | By Night by Day by Day? (By Night, all Day, I'll Talk About It? , All Day By Day


Transcript

00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.
00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day!
00:00:13.000 Hello Abby Martin, how are you?
00:00:15.000 I'm great, how are you Joe?
00:00:16.000 You're my favorite hardcore lefty.
00:00:18.000 Thank you, thank you very much.
00:00:20.000 Yeah, because all the podcasts that I ever do, whenever I do a podcast with you, I'm like, okay, this one's going to be interesting.
00:00:28.000 There's going to be some shit that's going to disturb me that I don't know about.
00:00:31.000 Hell yeah, man.
00:00:32.000 That's how I like to do it.
00:00:33.000 Well, a lot of this stuff is depressing, and it's not for everyone, but you try to just go balls deep.
00:00:39.000 Because I grew up in the YouTube generation, and I learned so much, and I want to be that source for a lot of people.
00:00:45.000 I want to guide people through the journey of learning about real education and all the sinister shit your government's doing.
00:00:52.000 Sinister shit all governments are doing.
00:00:54.000 I remember one of the first times, not one of the first times, but one of the...
00:00:58.000 One of the biggest times that I got blowback from having you on was your personal experience interviewing people in Israel, interviewing Israelis and interviewing Palestinians and trying to sort through, like,
00:01:13.000 what is really going on over there?
00:01:14.000 What is the real attitude about people over there?
00:01:18.000 It must be an email campaign.
00:01:20.000 It must have been a campaign because it was like the same letter over and over and over again I was receiving in my inbox.
00:01:26.000 It must have been like a website where you could go and then sign it and then send it to me.
00:01:31.000 But don't you think that the tide has shifted in that subject where now people are realizing, like they're going, hey, This is not as simple as the mainstream media wants everybody to look at it.
00:01:46.000 The way the mainstream media was portraying it in this country, it was always that Israel's the good guys, the Palestinians are the bad people.
00:01:55.000 That's how it was.
00:01:57.000 But the mainstream perception now has very much shifted, don't you think?
00:02:04.000 100%.
00:02:04.000 When you see the Iron Dome, and you see these rockets being fired out of Palestine, and they're all getting detonated in the air, and then you realize, oh, this is kind of a crazy situation.
00:02:17.000 One side has this insane technology, and the other side is...
00:02:22.000 Kind of in an open air prison camp, in a way.
00:02:25.000 Like, you can't go anywhere.
00:02:27.000 Right.
00:02:27.000 You're kind of stuck.
00:02:28.000 Right.
00:02:30.000 25% of American Jews now, after the latest onslaught in Gaza, believe Israel's an apartheid state.
00:02:36.000 And that shows you how dramatically the narrative has completely flipped on its head.
00:02:41.000 Because for the last 20 years, Israel's been losing control of dictating the narrative.
00:02:46.000 I mean, that was really what they relied on for so long, that we're acting in self-defense, that we're surrounded by people who hate us and hypothetically will commit genocide against us.
00:02:55.000 To basically defend the fact that they are committing de facto genocide in Gaza, that is the erasure of Gaza residents.
00:03:03.000 It's the erasure of a culture.
00:03:05.000 It's not just the extermination.
00:03:06.000 That's according to the UN. But yeah, the tide has changed, Joe.
00:03:11.000 They can no longer say that they're acting in self-defense over the last 20 years with the bombardments, with the invasions.
00:03:17.000 With the colonization outside of their borders.
00:03:20.000 I mean, we're talking about Lebanon, Syria, and the Golan Heights, and just constantly bombing an open air prison.
00:03:28.000 It is an open air prison.
00:03:29.000 There's two million people trapped there.
00:03:30.000 They cannot leave without permits by the Israeli government or the collaborative government in Egypt.
00:03:36.000 Those people are trapped.
00:03:38.000 And then you look at Israel, they're living high.
00:03:42.000 They're living a great life.
00:03:45.000 I saw some crazy-ass ad from Dior of people basically just having this very ritzy time, living in Tel Aviv, living in Jerusalem, and completely...
00:03:58.000 Just separate from the fact that there is this besieged ghetto of two million people denied basic access to things like water and electricity.
00:04:08.000 I mean, the right to have human mobility, I think, is like the most basic right that you can have as a human being, like to leave and freely travel.
00:04:17.000 And these people can't do that.
00:04:19.000 And the media has completely painted it forever.
00:04:22.000 The media is totally controlled, right?
00:04:23.000 The media acts as an arm of the state.
00:04:26.000 And for the longest time, the media has basically just said Israel is right.
00:04:30.000 They've only depicted the Israeli side of the story.
00:04:34.000 And it doesn't matter anymore because with the advent of social media, Palestinians are able to film their own reality for the first time.
00:04:42.000 So they're filming the home demolitions.
00:04:45.000 They're filming the ethnic cleansing.
00:04:46.000 They're filming themselves getting bombed relentlessly for no reason other than collective punishment and torture of this area.
00:04:53.000 And that is convincing the world and actually bringing more people to their side.
00:04:59.000 The sympathy is now going to Palestinians, where even Democratic voters—a Gallup poll is taken every single year of Democratic Party voters and where they're at on the Israel-Palestine thing.
00:05:09.000 And this year, for the first time in the history of the poll, more Democratic Party voters say that the pressure needs to be put on Israel— And it's just because of this.
00:05:19.000 It's because the narrative's changing, Joe, and they've lost the moral high ground here.
00:05:23.000 They have targeted munitions that the U.S. supplies to them.
00:05:27.000 They choose to target entire families' homes.
00:05:30.000 They choose to kill 14 members of one family sleeping in their bed at night because maybe one person has ties to Hamas.
00:05:37.000 Hamas has indiscriminate rocket fire because they don't have targeted munitions.
00:05:43.000 Wrap your mind around that.
00:05:44.000 One side has all the armaments in the world supplied by the world's empire, and they actually direct these missiles towards sleeping families and civilian infrastructure and AP buildings.
00:05:56.000 Don't they let them know in advance when they're doing something?
00:05:58.000 Don't they drop leaflets and let them know that- So that's what they claim, that we're the most moral army in the world because we warn people in advance.
00:06:06.000 I have contacts on the ground in Gaza that said that is not true, and also this was happening at night.
00:06:12.000 You're sleeping in bed.
00:06:14.000 But they can use that and say, oh no, we sent a 10-minute warning.
00:06:18.000 And even if that were true, Your entire home.
00:06:23.000 Like some guy lost his whole bookstore that his family has passed down from generations.
00:06:28.000 That's all gone.
00:06:30.000 All of these businesses gone.
00:06:33.000 It's not just about people's lives tragically lost.
00:06:36.000 It's about their livelihoods.
00:06:38.000 And their counter is that Hamas is attacking them and they're simply counter-attacking, right?
00:06:44.000 That is what they say all the time.
00:06:47.000 And they have used Hamas governing the Gaza Strip as a reason since Hamas pushed Israeli settlers out back in the day 15 years ago as a reason to enact this medieval siege and tighten the noose every year, allow less and less people to leave,
00:07:03.000 allow less and less water, bomb more and more factories.
00:07:06.000 You know, all of these things that basically make life harder and harder.
00:07:10.000 But the thing is, if you look at actually the history, the Israeli government facilitated Hamas to rise to power.
00:07:17.000 They wanted Hamas to take control of the Gaza Strip.
00:07:19.000 So then they can use Hamas as this eternal enemy to collectively punish everyone there.
00:07:25.000 And it's actually a war crime upon war crime upon war crime because this is indiscriminate bombing.
00:07:31.000 50% of people who live in Gaza are children.
00:07:35.000 Innocent children.
00:07:37.000 That's 70 kids who just died in the last bombing campaign.
00:07:40.000 These people are innocent.
00:07:41.000 They have nothing to do with Hamas.
00:07:43.000 But, Joe, it doesn't even matter what Gazans do, what Palestinians do to resist.
00:07:50.000 Look at The Great March of Return, the documentary that I actually came on last time and talked about.
00:07:55.000 It's now up for free.
00:07:56.000 Gaza Fights for Freedom.
00:07:57.000 Everyone can check it out on YouTube.
00:07:58.000 YouTube's throttling it, but please check it out.
00:08:01.000 This is what happens when Palestinians resist peacefully.
00:08:05.000 Everyone says, where's the Palestinian Gandhi?
00:08:07.000 Why don't they peacefully resist?
00:08:09.000 They are.
00:08:09.000 They have been.
00:08:10.000 They've largely abandoned violent struggle or armed resistance, which is actually internationally protected right for colonized people.
00:08:18.000 But when they resist peacefully, in the tens of thousands, they were mowed down by Israeli snipers, Joe.
00:08:23.000 And it doesn't matter what they do.
00:08:25.000 In the tens of thousands?
00:08:27.000 Tens of, not mowed down dead, but shot.
00:08:31.000 Shot with exploding bullets from these snipers.
00:08:33.000 200 people died.
00:08:36.000 500 people were shot in the head.
00:08:38.000 A lot of them did survive.
00:08:40.000 We interviewed several of these people, medics, journalists, children.
00:08:45.000 I mean, all of these people are protected categories under the Geneva Conventions.
00:08:48.000 They were targeted and shot by Israeli snipers and they were peacefully protesting.
00:08:53.000 And that just shows you it does not matter what they do.
00:08:56.000 They will get met with the same brutality And violence.
00:09:01.000 So do you think it's a part of their culture?
00:09:04.000 Has something been ingrained in them that there's like this us versus them mentality and that they are the other and that they don't think of them as the same?
00:09:15.000 Yeah, I mean, 73% of Israelis wanted the bombing to continue.
00:09:19.000 You know, this was a completely indiscriminate bombing campaign that was leveling civilian infrastructure.
00:09:23.000 We all saw those buildings fall like 9-11.
00:09:26.000 I mean, this was a huge media tower that was leveled for no reason.
00:09:30.000 There was no proof that Hamas was even in the building.
00:09:32.000 This is part of a subtler colonial attitude.
00:09:35.000 You look at, you know, US institutions like our justice system and police force, you know, there's no doubt that there's racism when it comes to the disproportionality of people who are in prison, for example, in terms of African Americans.
00:09:50.000 Imagine if the U.S. were colonizing native land and just subjugating these people today.
00:09:58.000 That is what's happening in Israel.
00:10:00.000 So Israel is built upon ethnic cleansing and it continues to ethnically cleanse and colonize people every single day.
00:10:07.000 This is an ongoing project.
00:10:09.000 What do you think they're trying to do?
00:10:10.000 Do you think they're just trying to take over Palestine and just completely occupy it?
00:10:14.000 Yeah, they're trying to take over the land.
00:10:16.000 That is why all of the Israeli authorities have abandoned the two-state solution a long time ago.
00:10:21.000 Hamas even actually said that they would accept a two-state solution.
00:10:25.000 In their latest charter, they said that they're willing to accept a two-state solution, but no Israeli authority Has actually given that, you know, credence.
00:10:34.000 They've laughed off the notion.
00:10:36.000 Could you lay that out for people, the two-state solution?
00:10:38.000 So what you're essentially saying is that Israel and Palestine at one point in time did not want to accept the existence of each other, right?
00:10:50.000 Well, so Israel was founded on top of Palestine, you know, but the original partition, which is the 1948 borders, that Israel has continued to take more than that.
00:11:02.000 And so the West Bank is here.
00:11:05.000 Gaza is a totally separate area.
00:11:07.000 Gaza was kind of a surplus area for refugees that were basically expelled during the original foundation of Israel.
00:11:13.000 And then you have Jerusalem, which is this international city center where people are supposed to coexist.
00:11:19.000 So ever since 1948, Israel has continued to take more and more and more.
00:11:24.000 And that's why you see that famous, like, you know, the quadrant of the four maps of Palestine and more and more land has been atomized over time.
00:11:32.000 In 67, they...
00:11:34.000 Yep, exactly.
00:11:35.000 In 67, they committed, you know, they went on a huge war of aggression and took...
00:11:40.000 We've occupied the West Bank in Gaza under military occupation and the West Bank today continues to be occupied under an Israeli military dictatorship where you cannot do anything.
00:11:52.000 For the people that are just listening, Jamie pulled up this map of Palestinian loss of land from 1946 to 2014. So it shows before Israel was decided, before it was called Israel, it shows Palestine,
00:12:08.000 and then it shows Jewish land in Palestine.
00:12:10.000 It's like these tiny little pockets.
00:12:12.000 And then it shows the UN plan from 1947, which Israel takes over a big chunk.
00:12:20.000 But then it gets much bigger in 1949 to 1967. And then in 2014, most of Israel is white.
00:12:30.000 And the Palestinian part, which was green in the original map, which all green, is now just a tiny few pockets.
00:12:36.000 And those little pockets of land is basically where the West Bank is.
00:12:39.000 So when people say, we want the two-state solution, and I'm not Palestinian.
00:12:44.000 You know, I advocate BDS, which we can talk about, because BDS is the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.
00:12:50.000 And it's what American allies and, you know, allies of Palestinians can do to try to advocate that human rights are restored.
00:12:58.000 So international law must be applied.
00:13:00.000 Refugees must have the right to return.
00:13:02.000 The occupation must end.
00:13:04.000 And human rights must be distributed equally, which means apartheid must fall.
00:13:09.000 So those little specks of land that are dotted throughout the territory, that is what they say should be the Palestinian state.
00:13:15.000 How could the Palestinian state exist if it's already taken over and atomized by settlements?
00:13:21.000 And when I was on the ground in the West Bank, it's like it's hard to wrap your mind around the reality of it until you're there and you have to go through these military checkpoints.
00:13:31.000 People hear, oh, it's under military occupation.
00:13:33.000 They think of like, oh, there's a base, there's soldiers milling around.
00:13:36.000 This is like fucking the US military in Iraq.
00:13:39.000 This is dehumanizing, subjugating, humiliating occupation on a daily basis that you have to endure.
00:14:00.000 99.9% conviction rate?
00:14:07.000 If you're an Israeli settler, because people say, oh, the PA controls parts of the West Bank.
00:14:12.000 That's true.
00:14:12.000 So they point to the fact that there is some sort of Palestinian authority throughout some of this territory.
00:14:17.000 It's a very small amount.
00:14:18.000 If you're an Israeli settler and you kill a Palestinian, you can't even get arrested.
00:14:23.000 There's no direction that the PA could have to even arrest an Israeli settler.
00:14:30.000 Settler just has all the rights and they're sanctioned by the state to do whatever the fuck they want and they can walk around with guns, point a gun to your head, expel you from your home.
00:14:39.000 And Joe, I don't know if you saw that crazy ass video that basically paints the picture of what I'm talking about right now of a settler from New Jersey or Long Island saying, Hey, if I don't take your home, someone else will.
00:14:52.000 He's literally moving into a Palestinian's home in Jerusalem, which is supposed to be this shared center.
00:14:58.000 How can we find this?
00:14:59.000 Check it out.
00:15:00.000 Just look up.
00:15:01.000 Yeah, dude, it's unbelievable.
00:15:02.000 This fucking guy who's just an American dude, literally squatting in some Palestinian's house.
00:15:08.000 And he's just like, hey, sorry, if I don't do it, someone else will.
00:15:12.000 It's not my problem.
00:15:14.000 And the people are just like, get out of my goddamn home.
00:15:16.000 So how does an American settler get to do that in Israel?
00:15:20.000 This Israeli settler is trying to take over a Palestinian family's home.
00:15:30.000 You know, this is not your house.
00:15:32.000 Yes, but if I go, you don't go back.
00:15:34.000 So what's the problem?
00:15:35.000 What are you yelling at me?
00:15:36.000 I didn't do this.
00:15:37.000 It's easy to yell at me, but I didn't do this.
00:15:40.000 You are stealing my house!
00:15:44.000 Whoa.
00:15:47.000 This neighborhood is home to 3,000 Palestinians, many of whom were descendants.
00:15:51.000 Now Israel, during the ethnic cleansing of 1948, Israel has been ordering the eviction of Palestinian families who've lived in, how do you say that?
00:16:00.000 Sheikh Jarrah.
00:16:01.000 Sheikh Jarrah.
00:16:02.000 Yeah, fast forward because there's a part where he's just like, if I don't take it, someone else will.
00:16:06.000 I don't know if it shows him.
00:16:07.000 He did say that.
00:16:07.000 Oh, right here at the end.
00:16:08.000 You are stealing my house!
00:16:11.000 And if I don't steal it, If I don't steal it, someone else will.
00:16:15.000 So Sheikh Jarrah is a flashpoint right now.
00:16:17.000 So is Silwan.
00:16:18.000 There are two flashpoints in Jerusalem.
00:16:21.000 Basically, they're just expelling hundreds of Palestinians from their homes in order to maintain an artificial majority of Israeli Jews.
00:16:29.000 I mean, it's not just Israeli Jews.
00:16:31.000 It's, as you can see, American Jews who come and squat, and they're actually backed by NGOs.
00:16:36.000 This guy's being paid to do that.
00:16:39.000 He's being paid by U.S. organizations and NGOs to go and squat in a Palestinian home.
00:16:43.000 What is an NGO? Like a non-governmental organization, like just an organization that's backed by rich people who just say, okay, I'm going to pay you.
00:16:52.000 You go squat in this person's home and force them out.
00:16:55.000 So, how are they reinforcing this?
00:16:58.000 How does this guy get into there?
00:17:00.000 What are they saying?
00:17:01.000 How are they trying to get these families to leave their houses?
00:17:04.000 So, this is the problem is that there's a court order that's just totally fallaciously concocted by the Israeli court system because everything is discriminatory against Palestinians and everything is disenfranchised geared toward pushing Palestinians out.
00:17:18.000 So they have these concocted documents that they can use to be like, look, we have this court order, so therefore we need to push you out.
00:17:26.000 The Palestinians are fighting it, but who's going to win at the end, Joe?
00:17:31.000 I mean, this is a demographic law that's in place, which means that 70% of Jerusalem needs to be Israeli Jews.
00:17:37.000 So what happens when you have 31% who are Palestinian Arabs?
00:17:41.000 They need to be expelled to maintain that artificial majority, to maintain that demographic.
00:17:48.000 There's incredible twins, brother and sister Muhammad and Mona al-Kurd, who are filming their reality.
00:17:55.000 They live in Sheikh Jarrah.
00:17:56.000 They're filming real-time settlers in their home, trying to take it over forcibly.
00:18:02.000 So these people just show up and just move into your house?
00:18:05.000 Yeah.
00:18:06.000 Is that accurate?
00:18:07.000 Yes.
00:18:07.000 And how do they not get killed?
00:18:10.000 Well, Palestinians aren't allowed to have weapons, and they are.
00:18:13.000 So when they come with the barrel of a gun to your head, So they come with a gun and they say, this is my house now.
00:18:20.000 Yes.
00:18:21.000 It's really that simple?
00:18:22.000 I mean, it is.
00:18:24.000 And they're being paid to do this.
00:18:25.000 They are being paid to do this.
00:18:26.000 And they have the state sanctioning and backing them.
00:18:29.000 So you have the state show up.
00:18:30.000 I mean, of course Palestinians are resisting.
00:18:32.000 You saw thousands of Palestinians protesting.
00:18:36.000 And you actually saw pogroms, which are violent mobs, I mean,
00:18:58.000 it is that crazy.
00:19:04.000 Just covers it in the most absurd way where they obfuscate like a very plain reality.
00:19:09.000 I mean, this is the violence of colonialism.
00:19:11.000 This is what's going on on a daily basis.
00:19:14.000 And Palestinians, of course, are resisting it.
00:19:16.000 They're, of course, trying to stop this.
00:19:19.000 This is their family home.
00:19:20.000 But they are made homeless, Joe.
00:19:21.000 There's nowhere for these people to go.
00:19:23.000 And in Silwan, They're trying to expel these people for an amusement park, some sort of like biblical amusement park.
00:19:30.000 Yeah.
00:19:30.000 It's not just to build homes for Israeli settlers like in Sheikh Jarrah.
00:19:35.000 So they have these homes in Sheikh Jarrah that these people are living in and then they pay people to just move into these people's homes and force them out.
00:19:48.000 Yes.
00:19:50.000 And what's the official government stance on this?
00:19:54.000 Like, what do they say when confronted about this?
00:19:58.000 Well, they say that this is, I mean, this is what Israel is.
00:20:01.000 Israel is an artificial Jewish majority state.
00:20:05.000 So their end goal is to push all Palestinians out, and they want to make it unlivable.
00:20:10.000 But they claim that they have these, you know, court orders that force these mass evictions, which really don't hold up in any sort of fair system.
00:20:20.000 So they just decide the boundaries have been pushed back and this is now our territory.
00:20:26.000 And so all these people that live in these homes, they have to abandon these homes because if it's our territory, you can't live here because you're Palestinian.
00:20:33.000 Yes.
00:20:34.000 Yes.
00:20:34.000 And in Silwan, they're actually charging people to demolish their own homes.
00:20:39.000 Can you imagine?
00:20:40.000 Here it is.
00:20:40.000 In October, the Israeli Magistrate Court of Jerusalem ruled to evict 12 of the 24 Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah and to give their homes to Israeli Jewish settlers.
00:20:51.000 The court also ruled that each family must pay 70,000 shekels, $20,000, in fees to cover the settlers' legal expenses.
00:21:01.000 Wow, so not only do they have to cover the settlers' legal expenses, but they also have to, in some cases in Silwan, pay to demolish their own homes.
00:21:09.000 Well, it seems like they're saying they have to pay for the legal expenses that these guys had to sort of fight them to take their homes.
00:21:17.000 Yes.
00:21:18.000 So not only did they get to give up their homes, but they have to pay for the legal expenses of the people that are stealing their homes.
00:21:24.000 Imagine, Joe, as someone, you know, Americans, you know, we're all about property rights and stuff like that.
00:21:29.000 And imagine if a mob of armed extremists came and put a barrel gun to your head and said, you need to leave this home.
00:21:36.000 This is mine now.
00:21:37.000 And you're with your family.
00:21:38.000 And there's no, it's not like they have another place for you to live here.
00:21:42.000 They're not giving you another option.
00:21:43.000 No.
00:21:44.000 Which is even insane by itself.
00:21:46.000 Like, say, you can't live there.
00:21:47.000 You have to live here.
00:21:48.000 That's insane already.
00:21:49.000 But they're not even doing that.
00:21:51.000 They're just forcing people out?
00:21:52.000 And this is happening every single day, but I think that because Sheikh Jarrah is a flashpoint in Jerusalem, it's become like a shocking thing for the media to cover.
00:22:00.000 I mean, this is happening all the time in the West Bank, where people are, you know, their homes are getting demolished for just the minor of things that they maybe build an extension to their kitchen or something like that.
00:22:09.000 Then they get demolished, right?
00:22:11.000 And they're made homeless.
00:22:12.000 But in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan, it's in Jerusalem, which is supposed to be this shared center place where Israel touts, you know, all these holy sites are there.
00:22:20.000 And Israel touts it as, we all live in peace and harmony within this area, but it's not true at all.
00:22:26.000 And even within the 1948 borders, you saw mass mobs going, pulling people out of taxis, saying, are you Arab?
00:22:34.000 Beating the shit out of people in the streets.
00:22:37.000 It was an ugly, ugly thing.
00:22:39.000 And all of this preceded Hamas firing the first rocket in the latest onslaught.
00:22:45.000 All of this preceded that.
00:22:46.000 You had Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is the third holiest site in Islam, on fire and thousands of Jewish Israeli settlers chanting death to Arabs and burn their memory, looking at this ancient, incredible mosque in flames.
00:23:02.000 And the new Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, actually is part of this extremist settler movement who wants to basically take over Al-Aqsa and build a Jewish temple.
00:23:12.000 And again, just imagine if thousands of Muslim extremists...
00:23:18.000 We're chanting in front of an ancient synagogue, death to Jews.
00:23:22.000 I mean, you just can't wrap your mind around it.
00:23:25.000 Look at all the fucking Hubba Baloo over Notre Dame on fire.
00:23:30.000 People were throwing tens of millions of dollars and everyone was up in arms about it.
00:23:34.000 But when Al-Aqsa's on fire and when they're attacking it with stun grenades and smoke bombs during Ramadan...
00:23:41.000 No one cared.
00:23:42.000 Now, what was that about?
00:23:44.000 Were they trying to find the people who did something?
00:23:49.000 Like, what was the idea behind the smoke bombs and all that?
00:23:51.000 So they were attacking worshippers during Ramadan, which is a very holy time.
00:23:56.000 And it was all in part of this onslaught in Sheikh Jarrah and these home demolitions, not home demolitions, but the forced expulsions in Jerusalem and all the pogroms.
00:24:06.000 You saw, like, You know, thousands of people marching throughout the streets, chanting death to Arabs, and it was a very, very scary time.
00:24:13.000 So Palestinians rightfully were protesting, and they were protesting around Al-Aqsa, and that's when the Israeli police attacked and started firing, not live ammunition at that time, but they were firing smoke bombs and grenades, and a hundred worshippers or something had to go to the hospital that night.
00:24:29.000 And so they did this into the mosque, but the people in the mosque weren't in the middle of protesting.
00:24:33.000 No, they were just worshipping.
00:24:34.000 Yeah.
00:24:35.000 And that's when Hamas fired the rocket.
00:24:37.000 So, is it accurate to say that it's independent journalism that sort of forced this issue to be recognized the way it is now?
00:24:49.000 100%.
00:24:50.000 100%.
00:24:51.000 Because I remember when you had those interviews, when you went over to Israel and you interviewed these people that had this very nonchalant attitude about just kill them all.
00:25:00.000 And, you know, there was a lot of pushback about that.
00:25:03.000 I remember that.
00:25:04.000 But I remember thinking, well...
00:25:08.000 You'd be hard-pressed to find rational-looking people in America that would have that attitude about any group of people.
00:25:18.000 Like, just go kill them.
00:25:20.000 Kill them all.
00:25:20.000 It would be very difficult.
00:25:22.000 But you found a lot of people that were talking like that.
00:25:25.000 It wasn't just one or two.
00:25:26.000 People look at that and people can check that out on Reporting from Palestine, our playlist on Empire Files.
00:25:32.000 People should check that out because a lot of people will look at that and they'll say, you cherry-picked these interviews.
00:25:36.000 You made these people look bad.
00:25:38.000 Look, not only did we not cherry-pick the interviews, but like you just said, Joe, if you go to the Deep South in the most racist areas of the United States, sure, you'd find people who believe similar types of things, but how quickly would you find enough people all at once saying, kill all the black people?
00:25:55.000 Right.
00:25:56.000 Exterminate them, nuke them.
00:25:57.000 I mean, that's a real genocidal rhetoric.
00:26:00.000 There was even people laughing about it and gleefully telling an American documentarian knowing on camera.
00:26:07.000 I mean, if that's what you're willing to say on camera, what are you willing to say behind closed doors?
00:26:11.000 So is this like just a, do you think this is a culturally accepted perception of the way they view Jewish people versus Palestinian people?
00:26:21.000 And this is something that's been passed down Yeah, I mean, racism is palpable because of the situation that they're in.
00:26:27.000 They're conditioned, born and bred, hating Palestinians, otherizing Palestinians.
00:26:34.000 You have forced, you know, segregation in schools.
00:26:37.000 There's so many elements and layers to the racism, the deep-seated racism that exists in Israeli society.
00:26:44.000 But really, ultimately, you have to In order to accept the fact that you are a colonizer, that you are an oppressor and subjugating people just right across the way in this open air prison, subjugating basically 5 million Palestinians either live in Gaza or the West Bank.
00:27:01.000 And they are being tortured and subjugated and oppressed every single day.
00:27:05.000 And you have to be okay with that to a certain extent to be a proud Zionist.
00:27:11.000 I mean, that's the problem.
00:27:14.000 Did you find anybody over there that was either any Israelis over there that were opposed to this line of thinking, opposed to this perception, opposed to the actions of Israel against the Palestinians?
00:27:28.000 There are definitely leftists in Israel, and I don't mean to say that there are not.
00:27:32.000 Of course there are people trying to push back against the government, of course.
00:27:36.000 I don't know how many anti-Zionists there are, because why would you live in Israel?
00:27:40.000 I know a lot of Israelis who have emigrated to Europe or America, because it's just too much to live there and kind of be surrounded by this kind of mentality.
00:27:51.000 But I mean, yes, simple answer is yes, there are plenty of people there who disagree with the occupation, who maybe want the siege to be lifted on Gaza because it's too much.
00:28:02.000 But I would say at the end of the day, the vast majority agree with the whole premise of the colonial project.
00:28:09.000 And I do know that, you know, it's kind of dangerous to be an out.
00:28:14.000 If I lived there, I would be in danger.
00:28:16.000 Even Bet Salem, which is a human rights organization that has openly declared Israel to be an apartheid state, they operate in Israel and they are in danger.
00:28:24.000 Well, you probably can't even visit there anymore.
00:28:26.000 No.
00:28:27.000 That's why I had to direct Gaza Fights for Freedom outside of the country.
00:28:32.000 I mean, I would have loved to be within Gaza, but I was told I was an Iranian spy.
00:28:37.000 And that I was a propagandist and I was banned for life.
00:28:40.000 And so I can't even go there.
00:28:42.000 And so I had to work through this blockade and get, you know, files every couple weeks and sort through this data.
00:28:49.000 And it was really unfortunate.
00:28:51.000 And it's very scary, especially for the people who worked with us, because they know that they could be penalized and punished for having their name on the documentary.
00:29:01.000 But, Joe, this is reflected in polls.
00:29:04.000 I mean, it's very extreme.
00:29:07.000 The fascism is extreme.
00:29:08.000 Look no further than Naftali Bennett, this dude who's the new prime minister, who said openly, bragged, I've killed a lot of Arabs in my life and there's nothing wrong with that.
00:29:21.000 He has openly declared there should be no Palestinian state.
00:29:24.000 He's actually more right-wing than Netanyahu himself.
00:29:26.000 And you see the US politicians pointing to Netanyahu and being like, look, Netanyahu's an extremist.
00:29:33.000 These settlers are extremists.
00:29:34.000 They don't represent the mainstream current of Israeli society.
00:29:36.000 But that isn't the case.
00:29:39.000 They are outgrowths of a lot of true things about Israel, just like Trump was a true manifestation of a lot of where American society was at.
00:29:47.000 But the liberals They want to sanitize this reality from us.
00:29:52.000 They don't want us to hear from Israeli citizens.
00:29:56.000 Right.
00:29:56.000 That's the thing that's disturbing is when you talk to American intellectuals who are very bright people but either are supporters of Israel or are American Jews and they have sort of a blind allegiance towards Israel in a lot of ways.
00:30:16.000 And that was...
00:30:17.000 In a lot of ways, that was what you had to have in those circles for a long time, right?
00:30:23.000 You supported Israel.
00:30:24.000 Everybody supported Israel.
00:30:25.000 But I think seeing some of the things that you uncovered in your work and seeing some of those interviews and to recognize that it's a very disturbed place.
00:30:36.000 Very, very disturbed.
00:30:37.000 There's no clear...
00:30:41.000 There's no clear moral high ground for these people when you're talking about shooting people that are just working as press or shooting people that are medics.
00:30:53.000 It's one of those things, too, where if you ask someone, like, how do you fix this?
00:30:59.000 How does one resolve the conflict in the Middle East?
00:31:02.000 That might be, like, the biggest problem in all of world politics.
00:31:05.000 Like, ask someone, how do you resolve the crisis in the Middle East?
00:31:09.000 How do you resolve that?
00:31:11.000 Boom!
00:31:11.000 Go!
00:31:12.000 So, I mean, I have an answer.
00:31:14.000 Wasn't that...
00:31:15.000 Well, it's not an AOC, like, gotcha question.
00:31:18.000 Remember that?
00:31:19.000 Yeah, and she backpedaled and said she didn't know enough to...
00:31:22.000 Yeah.
00:31:22.000 Well, guess what?
00:31:23.000 No one knows enough.
00:31:24.000 How the fuck do you fix that?
00:31:25.000 There's not a goddamn solution.
00:31:26.000 Like, what would you do?
00:31:28.000 Like, imagine if you're a...
00:31:29.000 Imagine you are in the middle of a presidential debate, right?
00:31:33.000 Abby, what would you do to resolve the conflict between Israel and Palestine?
00:31:39.000 I would condition, first of all, this is just my political face talking.
00:31:43.000 I think no aid should go to Israel.
00:31:45.000 But pulling the Bernie Sanders card, he said he would condition all aid in accordance to international law, which goes back to the BDS thing, right?
00:31:54.000 We want the occupation to be lifted, which flies in the face of international law.
00:31:58.000 We want the right to return and we want apartheid to fall.
00:32:01.000 And once those things happen, once we have equal rights for everyone, then we can see where we're at.
00:32:07.000 That is the source of the conflict.
00:32:08.000 What does that mean, occupation lifted?
00:32:11.000 So there's a brutal Israeli military dictatorship that's been imposed on the West Bank, and it has been since 67. And this is preventing people from organizing politically.
00:32:25.000 I know people who've been in jail for years and years with no trial because they were an organizer.
00:32:32.000 You know, they were politically active.
00:32:34.000 You can't have weapons.
00:32:35.000 You can be thrown in jail if you have anything on you that can be construed as a weapon.
00:32:39.000 You can't convene in groups.
00:32:40.000 You saw plenty of footage that came out of the last onslaught and the last stuff that was going on of people simply raising a flag, which is illegal under the Israeli military dictatorship.
00:32:51.000 You cannot hold up a symbol of your culture.
00:32:56.000 And you will get arrested.
00:32:57.000 You saw plenty of people getting attacked.
00:32:59.000 You even saw like a six-year-old boy getting arrested by the Israeli military.
00:33:04.000 For having a Palestinian flag?
00:33:06.000 For holding a Palestinian flag.
00:33:07.000 It's wild stuff.
00:33:09.000 So, Joe, I don't know if you knew this, but I just...
00:33:13.000 One, a lawsuit.
00:33:16.000 This is fucking insane.
00:33:18.000 I mean, this goes along with the whole BDS thing, but there are 30 states in the US that have passed legislation that says you cannot make money at a state institution as an independent contractor unless you sign a contract saying that you will never advocate the boycott of Israel and never engage in the boycott of Israel.
00:33:44.000 Really?
00:33:45.000 Yes.
00:33:45.000 30 states in the U.S. This is the ultimate censorship.
00:33:50.000 This is the black hand of the state coming down and enacting laws that says you cannot speak or advocate for this issue.
00:33:58.000 This is a totally passive action.
00:34:01.000 BDS is what brought down Jim Crow apartheid in the South.
00:34:05.000 BDS is what brought down apartheid in South Africa.
00:34:09.000 And BDS will inevitably bring down apartheid in Israel.
00:34:12.000 But I was given such a contract.
00:34:14.000 I was supposed to speak at Georgia Southern University.
00:34:18.000 And I was given a contract that says you can never boycott the state of Israel.
00:34:22.000 You can never advocate the boycott of Israel.
00:34:25.000 And I was just like, this is fucking mind-blowing because this is what I do.
00:34:28.000 I mean, this is in part, you know, bringing attention to these issues, advocating BDS. And the whole conference fell apart.
00:34:37.000 And I ended up suing Georgia.
00:34:40.000 The state of Georgia?
00:34:41.000 Yeah.
00:34:41.000 And you won?
00:34:42.000 Yeah.
00:34:43.000 Wow.
00:34:43.000 Yeah.
00:34:44.000 So you can go back?
00:34:45.000 Talk some shit?
00:34:47.000 Isn't that amazing, though?
00:34:48.000 It is amazing.
00:34:49.000 And this is...
00:34:50.000 It's amazing that that's written into law.
00:34:52.000 It's written into law.
00:34:53.000 Now, is this because it's a state institution?
00:34:56.000 Are there laws like that about other countries or other...
00:35:03.000 No, no.
00:35:03.000 Can you imagine how ridiculous it would be if Putin...
00:35:06.000 And by the way, Israeli government officials have gone and advocated and lobbied these state legislatures to pass these laws.
00:35:13.000 It is like the most direct admission of foreign interference I can think of.
00:35:18.000 Meanwhile, we hear ad nauseum about Russia buying Facebook ads and somehow flipping the election to Trump.
00:35:23.000 No, this is Israel going, advocating these laws to be changed at 30 state legislatures and them doing it.
00:35:33.000 I mean, can you fucking imagine if Putin did that?
00:35:36.000 Actually had the law of the U.S. changed to flagrantly violate our First Amendment.
00:35:42.000 This is a free speech issue.
00:35:43.000 This is a boycott issue that was constitutionally enshrined by the Supreme Court during Montgomery bus boycotts.
00:35:48.000 This is our fucking civil liberties!
00:35:50.000 So the idea is that Israel's our ally and that's why it's okay.
00:35:54.000 Because if someone said something, like here's an example.
00:35:57.000 If there was new laws on the books that said you could not advocate to boycott products from China.
00:36:04.000 Right.
00:36:05.000 And if you did, you can no longer make money.
00:36:07.000 You're banned from the state or whatever.
00:36:09.000 Like if they tried to institute some laws like that.
00:36:12.000 Can you imagine?
00:36:13.000 Imagine.
00:36:13.000 Imagine.
00:36:14.000 Remember the blowback just for John Cena?
00:36:16.000 Yeah.
00:36:17.000 Apologizing people freak the fuck out about some silly movie?
00:36:19.000 Yeah.
00:36:19.000 Imagine.
00:36:20.000 Or Russia.
00:36:21.000 I mean, you actually can't wrap your mind around it because it's totally incomprehensible and flies in the face of logic that actually they would alter our laws to benefit a foreign country.
00:36:31.000 But when you see things like the John Cena thing, or when you see things like the NBA kowtowing to China, and even the World Health Organization, I'm sure you saw that spokesperson who wouldn't even recognize that Taiwan was a country, wouldn't say it.
00:36:47.000 He was in...
00:36:49.000 I was on a Zoom call with this lady who was asking him questions about Taiwan's response to COVID-19.
00:36:56.000 And he refused to even discuss that Taiwan is a country, so he disconnected the phone and then came back.
00:37:04.000 And when he came back, he said, well, I think China's doing a really good job, so let's just move on.
00:37:10.000 He just glossed it.
00:37:11.000 You ever see that?
00:37:12.000 I did, yeah.
00:37:13.000 It's wild, right?
00:37:14.000 But it shows you the crazy influence that one country can have.
00:37:18.000 And we sort of accept it with some countries, but with other countries, we're deeply disturbed by it.
00:37:25.000 Countries that we don't think are our allies, we're deeply disturbed by it, like this China thing.
00:37:31.000 But this idea that these institutions or these countries can have any effect whatsoever on our First Amendment rights That's very disturbing.
00:37:43.000 And it should be something that raises people's hackles.
00:37:47.000 It should put people up in arms because that's a precedent.
00:37:51.000 And if that gets set because we're allies with a country and we allow it to happen because we're allies, you can't talk badly about, you can't advocate for whatever you're advocating for.
00:38:02.000 If you're advocating for boycotts or not visiting or sanctions against them, that's a super slippery slope.
00:38:12.000 All we'd have to do is have these kind of relationships with a lot of different countries.
00:38:18.000 And now you can't talk about anything anymore.
00:38:20.000 That's how it works.
00:38:21.000 You can't have one like that.
00:38:23.000 It's so unbelievable that this has happened under the radar.
00:38:28.000 And you have actually a foreign leader bragging about it.
00:38:32.000 Netanyahu took to Twitter and he was like, we've worked really hard to lobby these states, to pass these.
00:38:36.000 I think they're throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks because they know it's unconstitutional.
00:38:41.000 When they've been challenged before in a couple of states, I think four states, they've faced legal challenges and they've all been ruled unconstitutional because they are!
00:38:49.000 Clearly.
00:38:50.000 They're so flagrantly in violation of our free speech.
00:38:53.000 So does Georgia now change the law that's on the books?
00:38:56.000 So it's unenforceable as of now because of my lawsuit.
00:39:00.000 But they are trying to change the law to render my case moot.
00:39:04.000 So they're now trying to make it so that the law can be on the books still.
00:39:09.000 And now it will just apply to people who are making a higher amount of money.
00:39:12.000 Oh my God.
00:39:13.000 Yeah.
00:39:13.000 So they don't want to get rid of the law because it's a huge coup.
00:39:17.000 For Israel.
00:39:18.000 I mean, you should see the kind of shit that they've done.
00:39:20.000 They tried to sue a Palestinian woman named Sue Hare for $20 million for defamation because she put a Facebook post online.
00:39:27.000 But they purposefully waited till the statute of limitations for libel was up in the U.S. So then they can use Israeli law.
00:39:35.000 And under Israeli law, libel is just anything that criticizes the government.
00:39:40.000 It doesn't have to be untrue.
00:39:41.000 Oh, God.
00:39:43.000 And so they were trying to make that stick.
00:39:44.000 Luckily, that case was thrown out.
00:39:46.000 But it just shows you.
00:39:47.000 Is she an American citizen?
00:39:47.000 She's an American.
00:39:48.000 Is in America?
00:39:49.000 Yeah.
00:39:49.000 Wow.
00:39:50.000 Yeah.
00:39:50.000 And so they were trying her in Israel?
00:39:52.000 They were trying her in American courts.
00:39:55.000 They were trying to do it under Israeli law in American courts.
00:39:59.000 Yeah.
00:40:00.000 Yeah.
00:40:00.000 We have the whole story on Empire Files.
00:40:03.000 It's unbelievable stuff, man.
00:40:04.000 I mean, one more case of just how crazy this is, because it's not just people who are advocates of Palestine.
00:40:08.000 I wasn't even going to talk about Palestine when I gave this lecture, when I was going to give this lecture.
00:40:13.000 This is all...
00:40:14.000 This happened to hurricane relief workers in Texas after Hurricane Harvey.
00:40:21.000 They could not get money.
00:40:23.000 For infrastructure unless they signed this pledge, unless they signed a contract pledging that they would not boycott Israel.
00:40:30.000 Why does that have anything to do with hurricane relief?
00:40:32.000 It's anything.
00:40:33.000 It's any state contractors in any of these states.
00:40:37.000 Right.
00:40:37.000 So any state contractor has to sign this thing saying you can never boycott Israel.
00:40:43.000 And you can never advocate.
00:40:44.000 And that's the only way you can get money from the state.
00:40:46.000 What?
00:40:48.000 That is so bananas.
00:40:51.000 That's so fucking crazy that it extends to hurricane relief.
00:40:56.000 Substitute teachers, construction workers, I mean really anyone.
00:40:59.000 So if you're a substitute teacher and you're making money from the state, you can't criticize Israel?
00:41:04.000 Yeah.
00:41:05.000 Holy shit.
00:41:06.000 Is it you can't criticize them or you can't advocate for boycotts?
00:41:09.000 You can't advocate for boycotts.
00:41:11.000 So you can't criticize them to the point where it would somehow or another financially affect them.
00:41:16.000 Which is a slippery slope because it's like, that's kind of one and the other.
00:41:20.000 I mean, if you are saying Israel's an apartheid state, that is essentially saying, implying that you are boycotting them in some way.
00:41:28.000 So it is like a very gray area.
00:41:31.000 It's wild, dude.
00:41:33.000 It's wild.
00:41:33.000 We don't have a relationship like that with any other country.
00:41:36.000 Why do we have a relationship like that with Israel?
00:41:38.000 Well, Israel serves as an important outpost in the Middle East, just like Uganda does in Africa.
00:41:46.000 Uganda's neighbors with Somalia and Sudan, the two countries that Wesley Clark said they wanted to topple during the Bush administration.
00:41:54.000 So Uganda serves as that point in Africa.
00:41:57.000 Colombia serves as our outpost in Latin America.
00:42:00.000 We're neighboring Venezuela.
00:42:01.000 We pour tens of millions of dollars to, you know, militarize them and do all this shit there in the region.
00:42:08.000 And Israel is our outpost in the Middle East, as well as Saudi.
00:42:11.000 We should probably play that clip, because that clip is very important.
00:42:14.000 It's unbelievable, yeah.
00:42:14.000 See if you can find the Wesley Clark's U.S. plan.
00:42:18.000 What year was that, 2007?
00:42:18.000 Oh my god.
00:42:19.000 Yeah, just look up seven countries in five years.
00:42:22.000 Yeah, it was somewhere in the early 2000s.
00:42:25.000 Wesley Clark, who was a general, Decorated general.
00:42:28.000 Yeah, high ranking general.
00:42:30.000 Who was discussing what he knows of the world's plan.
00:42:35.000 And I mean basically Israel serves as an important strategic partnership with the U.S. military because we can manage operations, we can use them as a battering ram and a military garrison out there.
00:42:47.000 There's a video of it, Jamie, where you can hear Wesley.
00:42:50.000 He's doing some sort of an interview.
00:42:51.000 He may be doing a recap.
00:42:53.000 Yeah, I think he's talking to Amy Goodman or something like that.
00:42:56.000 On Democracy Now?
00:42:57.000 It's a resource-rich region.
00:42:58.000 Yeah, you're right.
00:42:59.000 That's it right there.
00:42:59.000 Yeah, let's check it out.
00:43:00.000 I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz.
00:43:04.000 I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the joint staff who used to work for me.
00:43:09.000 And one of the generals called me in.
00:43:10.000 He said, sir, you got to come in.
00:43:12.000 You got to come in and talk to me a second.
00:43:13.000 I said, well, you're too busy.
00:43:14.000 He said, no, no.
00:43:15.000 He says...
00:43:17.000 We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq.
00:43:20.000 This was on or about the 20th of September.
00:43:23.000 I said, we're going to war with Iraq.
00:43:25.000 Why?
00:43:27.000 He said, I don't know.
00:43:30.000 He said, I guess they don't know what else to do.
00:43:34.000 So I said, well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to Al-Qaeda?
00:43:39.000 He said, no, no.
00:43:40.000 He says, there's nothing new that way.
00:43:42.000 They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.
00:43:45.000 He said, I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments.
00:43:53.000 And he said, I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.
00:44:00.000 So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan.
00:44:05.000 I said, are we still going to war with Iraq?
00:44:07.000 And he said, oh, it's worse than that.
00:44:09.000 He said, he reached over on his desk, he picked up a piece of paper, and he said, I just got this down from upstairs, meeting the Secretary of Defense's office today, and he said, this is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria,
00:44:25.000 Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran.
00:44:31.000 Wild.
00:44:32.000 So, yeah, I mean, this is a resource-rich region.
00:44:35.000 You know, the Middle East is highly resource-rich.
00:44:38.000 We wanted to stake our claim in the region, and Israel's the perfect outpost for that.
00:44:42.000 And, you know, when Israel went on that war of aggression in 67, I think the U.S. was like, hey, we can fucking use you.
00:44:47.000 You've done well.
00:44:49.000 Which actually is interesting because a lot of people think the tail wags the dog or Israel controls the US. No, it's very obviously that the US is using Israel for its military goals and regional domination, which means that it can be untenable,
00:45:06.000 which means that we can make it inconvenient for the US to care about subsidizing Israel.
00:45:12.000 They don't give a shit.
00:45:14.000 You know, if enough pressure is mounted, they will abandon the project.
00:45:19.000 They have similar goals but not congruent goals and interests.
00:45:22.000 They don't care if Israel takes over all of Palestine.
00:45:25.000 That doesn't really matter to the US political establishment.
00:45:29.000 Do you think that part of the way this is all playing out is because the fact that they're backed up by the United States and the United States gives them like these crazy laws like what you faced in Georgia and they have these sort of the attitude over here that like this is our that's our guard dog over there like we'll we'll let this thing loose we'll do whatever we can to support them because we need them we need them to protect our assets over there and so we empower them in A wild way,
00:45:59.000 like in not ever talking about these atrocities and really kind of glossing over the things that you've highlighted.
00:46:06.000 Oh, 100%.
00:46:07.000 I mean, it's totally subsidized by the U.S. And that's why during the Great March of Return, you saw these toothless resolutions passed by the U.N. being like, we condemn Israel.
00:46:15.000 And the U.S. has veto power on the world stage.
00:46:19.000 There's something called the Hague Invasion Act that says if you even try to indict U.S. officials for war crimes, you can fucking be invaded by the U.S. I mean, there is so much power and domination from the U.S. as the supplier.
00:46:33.000 And backer of these states like Saudi Arabia and Israel that no one can do anything about it until we act here.
00:46:40.000 Is there propaganda that the Israeli people are exposed to that gives them this perspective?
00:46:46.000 Like is there a concerted effort to try to demonize the people that live in Palestine?
00:46:51.000 Do they try to do this to make it so that they do accept these sort of dehumanizing tactics?
00:46:57.000 Oh, hell yeah.
00:46:58.000 I mean, absolutely.
00:46:59.000 You know, it'd probably be the same propaganda that was given to Americans during Jim Crow.
00:47:04.000 It's like, you know, you don't have the other side of the story.
00:47:07.000 Or to the Germans.
00:47:08.000 Oh, my God, yeah.
00:47:09.000 Of course.
00:47:10.000 And that's really...
00:47:12.000 It's a dark truth, but it is very similar.
00:47:15.000 One of the smears against me is that I compared Israel's tactics to Nazi Germany, and that's actually no longer controversial anymore.
00:47:23.000 I mean, you just have to look at what they're doing today.
00:47:27.000 Even Holocaust survivors have said that these are very similar mentalities.
00:47:33.000 And similar atrocities being carried out.
00:47:35.000 But it was controversial at the time because there wasn't the kind of media coverage in mainstream media, which is where everybody was getting their news.
00:47:43.000 Right.
00:47:44.000 So these controversial, small, independently operated media units like yours that would go over there and report things, they were sort of dismissed and marginalized.
00:47:56.000 Right?
00:47:56.000 Is that fair to say?
00:47:58.000 100%.
00:47:58.000 Part of the manufacturing of consent.
00:48:00.000 Did you get, yes, right?
00:48:02.000 Did you get anybody from any mainstream, whether it's MSNBC or whoever, who wanted to talk to you about your work?
00:48:10.000 Not one person, Joe, and I think we know why.
00:48:14.000 I'm persona non grata because of multiple reasons.
00:48:18.000 The Russia media stuff.
00:48:20.000 I worked for Russia today.
00:48:21.000 So right off the bat, I'm a Russian disinformation agent no matter how long I'm out in the field independently operated and grassroots funded.
00:48:29.000 I'm done.
00:48:30.000 Well, you were working for Russia today, and I think the way I was describing this to a friend, I said, I bet they thought that if you got this woman who talks a lot of shit about American imperialism and you hire her for Russia today, that'd be a pretty good scoop.
00:48:44.000 You got this very articulate American woman who's talking shit about the American empire.
00:48:50.000 Whoops!
00:48:50.000 What is she saying about Crimea?
00:48:52.000 Oh no.
00:48:54.000 And they're like, oh no, this bitch hates all imperialism.
00:48:58.000 Fuck, I thought she was on our side.
00:49:00.000 When you started going against what Putin was doing in Crimea, and then they invited you to go to Crimea and put shoes on the ground, you're like, get the fuck out of here.
00:49:12.000 You knew your time there was...
00:49:14.000 It was up.
00:49:15.000 Yeah, it was up.
00:49:16.000 I mean, what's funny about it is that my boss cared so much about just aesthetics.
00:49:21.000 He was just obsessed about like the set.
00:49:23.000 And he didn't even like, he didn't even really care about like the politics.
00:49:28.000 But...
00:49:29.000 What was interesting is that he got so much heat from what I did from, I don't know, I think the higher-ups, I think half of them really liked what I did because I was trying to assert my editorial freedom and being like, look, this isn't just a Russian propaganda network.
00:49:42.000 You need people out there who are criticizing Russia.
00:49:44.000 So I think half the people were like, yeah, let's do it.
00:49:47.000 And the other half of the people were like, fuck no, you're done.
00:49:51.000 And so what happened was it just became impossible for me to do my job and, you know...
00:49:56.000 I wasn't stepped on in terms of my editorial freedom, but I think my boss never forgave me for making his job harder.
00:50:04.000 Well, up until that point, though, what was interesting, and I remember talking to you about this job, they did not tell you what to do.
00:50:11.000 Never.
00:50:11.000 You had a lot of editorial freedom, a lot of freedom to express yourself.
00:50:16.000 You had freedom for your own opinions to be broadcast on RT, and that's what you had.
00:50:23.000 You had an opinion show.
00:50:26.000 100%.
00:50:26.000 And people have this kind of false perception that they think, and this is like with everything, right?
00:50:32.000 It's politicians, it's journalists.
00:50:34.000 They think that you get a job and then you're bought out and told by the bosses what to do and say.
00:50:40.000 Sure, there's self-censorship, but they buy into your agenda.
00:50:45.000 You don't get paid by RT to start talking shit about America.
00:50:50.000 You know, I knew my place.
00:50:52.000 I knew, obviously, I served the editorial line of the broader network, you know, just like Chris Hedges does, just like Lee Camp does.
00:50:59.000 A lot of these people are radical leftists and they talk a lot of truth and they are not stepped on at all.
00:51:06.000 They are completely untouched by management.
00:51:09.000 Is Lee Camp still at RT? He is.
00:51:10.000 Yeah, he's still doing his show.
00:51:12.000 But, you know, it's just the same thing if you're working for The Atlantic.
00:51:15.000 You know, like, you know your role.
00:51:18.000 You are hired because you know your role and you agree with the editorial line of the network.
00:51:23.000 And so when it comes to, like, Israel-Palestine, like, a lot of these people are hired at these institutions because they believe in American exceptionalism, because they tacitly think that the U.S. should be a global empire, because they are Zionist.
00:51:36.000 So you're not going to step on the toes of management.
00:51:40.000 And again, the whole manufacturing consent model, it's like, that's just the way the media operates.
00:51:46.000 And I think a lot of people have the perception that politicians get paid by lobbying groups and then they do their bidding.
00:51:55.000 Look at someone like Marco Rubio.
00:51:57.000 When the Parkland kids were talking to him, they're like, will you stop accepting donations from the NRA? And he was like...
00:52:02.000 They buy into my agenda.
00:52:04.000 I don't get paid by the NRA to tout gun advocacy.
00:52:09.000 They know that I'm good on the issue and they pay me.
00:52:14.000 So it's the same with the media.
00:52:16.000 And part of the model of control of the media is flack, where you basically discredit and undermine anyone who's going against what the corporate dictated narrative is.
00:52:30.000 And that means Israel-Palestine.
00:52:32.000 She's a Russian agent.
00:52:33.000 She's an anti-Semite.
00:52:36.000 She's a truther because of shit that I said 15 years ago that I stand by today.
00:52:41.000 We don't know the truth about 9-11.
00:52:43.000 But, you know, it's unbelievable the lengths that they will go to make you obsolete from the entire discussion.
00:52:51.000 When you say we don't know the truth about 9-11, what do you mean?
00:52:54.000 I mean, there's so many unanswered questions.
00:52:57.000 The fact that we think that the Bush administration told us the truth, I mean, it's just laughable, you know?
00:53:02.000 I mean, the fact that they waited over a year to even start an investigation.
00:53:05.000 The Warren Commission looks like the fucking Bible compared to the 9-11 Commission.
00:53:10.000 I mean, it was a setup from the start.
00:53:12.000 Even the commission members quit in protest because they said this is...
00:53:15.000 A joke.
00:53:16.000 We're not learning the truth.
00:53:18.000 Henry Kissinger was the first person that was supposed to be administering the commission, a decorated war criminal, where you had family members in horror saying, how the fuck is this guy supposed to administer the investigation?
00:53:31.000 This is unbelievable.
00:53:33.000 They didn't even want an investigation.
00:53:35.000 So I think that starting there, you know, trying to reopen how there was such a massive failure That day.
00:53:45.000 How was there such a massive failure of intelligence to let that happen?
00:53:50.000 The one that drives me the most crazy was the fact that there was a simulation that was taking place at the exact same time.
00:53:56.000 They were simulating, right?
00:53:58.000 What is the exact thing they were doing?
00:54:00.000 They were simulating a specific kind of attack Remember?
00:54:07.000 Yeah, no, I mean, where they had all the NORAD interface, you know, like the jets that were supposed to intercept.
00:54:15.000 So there was confusion as to whether or not this was part of that.
00:54:18.000 Right, yeah.
00:54:19.000 That's why NORAD was flying around the air for two hours not able to intercept the jets.
00:54:22.000 I mean, according to the official story.
00:54:26.000 When you hear about things that are orchestrated, when you hear about FBI people that are involved inside organizations that instigate things and help plan things, then the rest of the people that they're doing it with,
00:54:42.000 you always wonder how much How much of that exists?
00:54:48.000 How much of that exists across the board in all sorts of big events that happen?
00:54:54.000 I was reading this thing.
00:54:56.000 Let me find out if this is true.
00:54:57.000 I was reading this thing.
00:54:58.000 I just saw the title of it.
00:55:01.000 What was the woman's name that there was a kidnap attempt on her?
00:55:05.000 Who?
00:55:06.000 Jamie's on top of it.
00:55:08.000 I was already Googling it before you started saying it, so I don't know.
00:55:14.000 Jamie's on the ball, you fucking psychic.
00:55:16.000 Look at this shit that's going on in Cuba.
00:55:18.000 Good God.
00:55:19.000 I'd love to get to that.
00:55:21.000 I want to get to that.
00:55:21.000 But this Whitmer thing...
00:55:25.000 Yeah, what is this?
00:55:26.000 The title of the article I read was that 12 of the 15 people that conspired to kidnap...
00:55:34.000 Whitmer, right?
00:55:36.000 Is that how you say it?
00:55:36.000 Whitmer?
00:55:37.000 Governor Whitmer.
00:55:39.000 Oh, right, right, right.
00:55:41.000 12 of the 15 people that conspired to kidnap her were FBI informants.
00:55:44.000 Holy shit.
00:55:44.000 12 out of 15. So if that's true...
00:55:47.000 How does this...
00:55:47.000 Yeah, right.
00:55:48.000 If that's true, like the FBI... At what point, even if it's seven...
00:55:54.000 Even if it's one!
00:55:55.000 But if you have 15 and you have 7, even if it's not even half, wouldn't you see the FBI is conspiring a kidnapper?
00:56:02.000 No.
00:56:03.000 Okay, if it's 8, it's more than half, is the FBI conspiring?
00:56:08.000 Nope, still not.
00:56:09.000 What about if it's 12 out of 15?
00:56:11.000 Well, you're not going to get 12 out of 15. Yeah, you are!
00:56:15.000 If that's really the case, if that's really true, if 12...
00:56:18.000 And we've highlighted the story before about the kid who was a 19-year-old Muslim kid from...
00:56:23.000 He was an immigrant, and the FBI tricked him into detonating a fake bomb with a cell phone.
00:56:30.000 They gave him the bomb.
00:56:31.000 They talked him into doing this.
00:56:33.000 They radicalized him, gave him a cell phone, gave him this fake bomb, and then he presses the button to do it, and then they arrest him.
00:56:39.000 Yeah, right.
00:56:40.000 Here it is.
00:56:41.000 The FBI allegedly used at least 12 informants in the Michigan kidnapping case.
00:56:46.000 Defense attorneys said they will argue that the FBI induced or persuaded the defendants to go along with the violent scheme.
00:56:55.000 That is crazy.
00:56:56.000 Could you imagine if you're one of the three dopes that's not in the FBI? And you're like, man, we got a fucking well-organized machine here.
00:57:03.000 These radicals that I'm with, they got their shit together, man.
00:57:06.000 Look at this equipment.
00:57:07.000 This is like U.S. military stuff.
00:57:08.000 How'd you guys get all this shit?
00:57:12.000 How'd you guys get all this shit?
00:57:13.000 We got it from the FBI, man.
00:57:16.000 Like, oh, yeah, you're funny, bro.
00:57:17.000 I mean, how many of these, like, foiled terror plots that then the FBI comes out and releases these press releases to the media?
00:57:23.000 Oh, we foiled this, we foiled that.
00:57:25.000 I mean, I would say, like, 90% of them have some sort of...
00:57:27.000 It's a lot, but what I was going to get to is, does that exist in Palestine?
00:57:33.000 Is it possible that there are nefarious entities that are...
00:57:39.000 Attacking Israel to instigate these attacks on Hamas and the attacks on Palestine.
00:57:45.000 Is that going on there?
00:57:47.000 Because we know that.
00:57:48.000 I mean, that's a really interesting point, dude.
00:57:50.000 That's a really interesting point.
00:57:51.000 But I do feel like, you know, when you push people into a corner like people are in Gaza, it's like that is kind of, you know, resistance is like a natural human inclination.
00:58:02.000 But if you were trying to do that...
00:58:04.000 Right?
00:58:04.000 I mean, listen, I am not making any accusations.
00:58:08.000 But what I'm saying is, if you look at military strategy, if you just look at the strategy that they employ in America with agent provocateurs like they did with the World Trade Organization, when they had that massive protest and then these agent provocateurs came in and started smashing windows and lighting things on fire,
00:58:23.000 and then all of a sudden now you have a violent protest.
00:58:25.000 So then you can send the police in and start arresting people and they set up a no protest zone.
00:58:30.000 Remember that?
00:58:31.000 Where the World Trade Organization, you couldn't even have a pin on your backpack that had a WTO with a red line through it.
00:58:39.000 They were taking pins away from people.
00:58:41.000 You couldn't walk in with a t-shirt that said no World Trade Organization.
00:58:44.000 You couldn't do that.
00:58:45.000 They would say this is a no protest zone.
00:58:48.000 They violated people's First Amendment rights to ensure that the World Trade Organization got to do their little thing in Seattle and have it done completely without protests.
00:58:58.000 So they just start smashing things.
00:59:00.000 That's what they do.
00:59:01.000 That's an agent provocateur.
00:59:03.000 And it's a common strategy.
00:59:05.000 It's existed throughout history.
00:59:06.000 Nero burned Rome.
00:59:08.000 Hitler burned Reichstag.
00:59:09.000 I mean, they did this to make sure that they could implement their strategy and their plans.
00:59:14.000 And you see this on a small scale.
00:59:16.000 Like, I mean, shit, just in the last two years, there's so many videos of people, you know, dressed in all black.
00:59:22.000 I don't know if they're agent provocateurs or not, but sure as hell looks like some cops to me.
00:59:26.000 Like, smashing windows and then lighting things on fire.
00:59:29.000 I don't know what's...
00:59:30.000 We don't know who.
00:59:31.000 Yeah, I don't know who they are.
00:59:32.000 George Soros!
00:59:33.000 It is just very suspect, let's just say that.
00:59:37.000 Yeah, I don't know.
00:59:37.000 When you're trying to instigate something, you know?
00:59:39.000 I think there are certain people in this world that are capable of shit that you and I can't imagine a rational, caring, logical human being doing.
00:59:50.000 And they've been doing it most of their lives.
00:59:52.000 Well, a lot of these people who get into positions of power are sociopaths.
00:59:56.000 Yeah.
00:59:56.000 You know, you kind of have to be.
01:00:02.000 Yeah.
01:00:02.000 Do you remember when Clinton was in the middle of the Monica Lewinsky thing and then he just started to launch some bombs?
01:00:10.000 Remember that?
01:00:11.000 I was like, I'm going to take some of the heat off me here.
01:00:14.000 What's the best way?
01:00:15.000 Exactly.
01:00:15.000 Just launch some bombs.
01:00:17.000 Exactly.
01:00:17.000 Yeah, I mean, doing things like that, doing things like...
01:00:21.000 Any time you're...
01:00:24.000 Imagine...
01:00:25.000 I'm not accusing anybody of this, again.
01:00:28.000 But imagine, if you want to distract someone from one thing you're doing, and the way you do it is invade a country.
01:00:35.000 Invade a country, prop up some rebels, launch some rockets, do something, and while all that's going on, you're over here shoveling money and doing a little of this, doing a little of that.
01:00:45.000 That's gone on throughout history.
01:00:46.000 People have done that.
01:00:48.000 It's a part of strategy.
01:00:50.000 It's a part of propaganda.
01:00:51.000 It's a part of how people implement a thing that they want to do that's unpopular with the people.
01:00:59.000 Of course.
01:00:59.000 I mean, and when the military-industrial complex plays such an interwoven role in our politics, it's hard to separate the two, really.
01:01:08.000 You know, it really is.
01:01:09.000 And these things are administered with such extreme levels of cognitive dissonance, like the Yemen War.
01:01:15.000 I mean...
01:01:16.000 It's unbelievable how that was started and Obama's a war criminal for that alone, you know, and no one actually gives him the credit for starting that and it's still going on and it's absolutely horrifying.
01:01:28.000 Can you explain what happened there?
01:01:29.000 Yeah, without getting into the depressing nature, because I know I tend to go too hard, you know?
01:01:36.000 This isn't for everyone, you know what I mean?
01:01:37.000 What I do at Empire Files, it's not for everyone.
01:01:40.000 It's for people who want to go down the rabbit hole with me.
01:01:43.000 Take the red fucking pill and come down the journey with me.
01:01:47.000 That word's been co-opted, unfortunately.
01:01:49.000 It has, sadly.
01:01:50.000 Too bad.
01:01:50.000 By dorks.
01:01:53.000 They stole it.
01:01:55.000 The Matrix still holds up, man.
01:01:56.000 I just watched that the other day.
01:01:58.000 It's unbelievable.
01:01:59.000 It's an unbelievable movie.
01:02:03.000 It's eerily foreshadows what may be to come.
01:02:06.000 I think there's a very real chance that 100 years from now, 200 years from now, whatever it is, we could be living like that.
01:02:13.000 We could just have a fucking bolt.
01:02:15.000 Right.
01:02:16.000 Clubbed into the back of your head, and that is how you interface with this amazing world where you're a superhero.
01:02:22.000 Well, as long as we can forget what we once were, then sign me up.
01:02:27.000 That's the problem.
01:02:28.000 I want the steak.
01:02:29.000 You'd be like Joey Pants.
01:02:30.000 I want to be an important person.
01:02:33.000 I want to taste the steak again and think it's real.
01:02:37.000 But no, I mean, Yemen...
01:02:39.000 I'll just explain how it started.
01:02:41.000 It was basically the Iran nuclear deal, which 100% all political theater Iran was never trying to develop nukes.
01:02:48.000 It was always peaceful.
01:02:50.000 Really?
01:02:50.000 100%.
01:02:51.000 Really?
01:02:52.000 100%.
01:02:52.000 I've heard people push back against that.
01:02:54.000 I've heard that Iran was looking to develop a nuclear weapons program forever, and they were...
01:03:00.000 Trying to steal U.S. secrets and hire spies to create these different weapon systems.
01:03:06.000 Concocted by D.C. and Tel Aviv because they want to contain Iran.
01:03:10.000 You know, it's not about actually nuclear weapons.
01:03:13.000 What were they doing?
01:03:14.000 It was about nuclear power?
01:03:15.000 Yeah, nuclear power.
01:03:16.000 Everything was under the...
01:03:18.000 Proper levels of 100%.
01:03:19.000 Look at Gareth Porter's reporting, Scott Horton, an incredible anti-war libertarian guy, editor-in-chief of antiwar.com.
01:03:28.000 They have extensively laid out the evidence for this.
01:03:30.000 How could they know, though?
01:03:32.000 Because they were open about it.
01:03:33.000 They were so transparent about the process, which is the Iran nuclear deal was basically saying, our doors are open to you.
01:03:40.000 We are so, you know, we are so willing to be extremely transparent about this to prove that this is all peacefully developing nuclear weapons.
01:03:51.000 Everything's within the legal limits set by you guys, right?
01:03:55.000 Because they don't want the threat, right?
01:03:57.000 Iran wants to just follow the rules, man.
01:04:00.000 Do you really believe that?
01:04:01.000 150 percent, dude.
01:04:03.000 150 percent.
01:04:05.000 My perceptions of Iran, my knowledge of Iran is very limited.
01:04:09.000 But I do know that they murdered, they executed a famous Iranian wrestler for appearing in a peaceful protest.
01:04:17.000 And the UFC tried to...
01:04:20.000 Tried to get behind a campaign to have him released.
01:04:24.000 Oh, that was horrific.
01:04:25.000 Oh, no.
01:04:25.000 I'm not trying to absolve the Iranian regime.
01:04:28.000 No, I know you're not.
01:04:28.000 But I mean, the kind of regime that would do that, I would imagine they would want nuclear weapons.
01:04:33.000 I would imagine that they would want them considering that the only thing that basically makes us not invade and do regime change in North Korea is the nuclear deterrent.
01:04:42.000 I mean, I would imagine that any country would want nukes if they're trying to be undermined and overthrown by the U.S. and its allies, for sure.
01:04:49.000 But the Iran nuclear deal, despite whatever you think about Iran developing nuclear weapons, the Iran nuclear deal was a tremendous step to put whatever containment in order and to basically prove to the world that they are complying with the development of peaceful nuclear energy and nothing more.
01:05:07.000 And so basically Saudi Arabia got irked.
01:05:10.000 They didn't want their influence waning in the region.
01:05:12.000 And so Obama literally said, this is a quote from him, he said he wants to placate Saudi Arabia.
01:05:19.000 And that is why he agreed to get into the Yemen war.
01:05:23.000 A war of outright genocidal bombing.
01:05:28.000 Grain silos, sheep herding.
01:05:31.000 I mean, it's absolutely horrific.
01:05:35.000 What the U.S. has done.
01:05:37.000 And it's not just Saudi.
01:05:39.000 It's the U.S. there every step of the way.
01:05:41.000 It's the weapons.
01:05:42.000 It's the targeting.
01:05:43.000 They were refueling up until a couple of years ago.
01:05:45.000 I mean, it is an all out genocidal war.
01:05:47.000 And one of the people on Obama's security team before we got into the war, he said this war is going to be long, bloody and indeterminate, meaning we have no fucking clue how it's going to end, nor do we care.
01:06:02.000 It is disgusting because people kind of fly under the cover like, oh, it's the Saudis and oh, the US just supporting Saudi.
01:06:08.000 No, the US is responsible for that.
01:06:11.000 And what's disgusting about it is it's all about Iran.
01:06:16.000 It's basically all about, in their mind, containing Iran because the Houthis they see are an extension of Iran because they're Shia.
01:06:25.000 But really, they don't really have anything to do with Iran.
01:06:28.000 But it basically strengthens Iran.
01:06:29.000 This is the most amazing thing about the war on terror is it's strengthened all of our alleged enemies.
01:06:36.000 It's done the opposite of what they've told us they wanted to do.
01:06:41.000 Look at Afghanistan, for Christ's sake.
01:06:44.000 The Taliban controls more territory now than they did when we invaded.
01:06:49.000 And the whole last 20 years was all about, we can't let the Taliban take over.
01:06:54.000 Well, we can't leave now because the Taliban will take over.
01:06:57.000 The Taliban is going to gain strength.
01:06:58.000 And the whole time you're risking life and limb.
01:07:05.000 I was reading a story about Afghan interpreters and people that have helped the troops while they were over there and that a lot of the veterans are very concerned for these people's lives if we pull out of Afghanistan.
01:07:22.000 Absolutely.
01:07:23.000 I mean, this is the reality that the US has constructed, going back to the dirty war, trying to bankrupt the Soviet Union back in the 80s.
01:07:30.000 I mean, it's blowback to the nth degree.
01:07:35.000 Do you think this is a part of a strategy of ensuring constant conflict?
01:07:41.000 And that, you know, this is what Eisenhower warned about, right?
01:07:44.000 With the military-industrial complex speech.
01:07:46.000 He warned that we are involved with a giant machine that's goal is to make war because that's how they make money.
01:07:53.000 So they can stir up conflicts.
01:07:55.000 They're moving chess pieces around.
01:07:57.000 If I move my rook here, they're going to take it.
01:07:59.000 The queen is in position, and this is how you start conflict.
01:08:04.000 You make sure that things are happening so that you can justify military buildup, you can justify all these expenses, you can justify these contracts.
01:08:12.000 Well, like Wesley Clark said, which I think is a really accurate thing, he said, when you're a hammer, you look at every problem like a nail.
01:08:19.000 And when you're a global empire, you don't look at how can we cooperate, how can we peacefully negotiate things.
01:08:26.000 You look at how can we contain people by military force, which is what imperialism is.
01:08:31.000 How can we extract and subjugate, you know, extract wealth, subjugate nations and keep them under our thumb to maintain our domination?
01:08:40.000 And I think that a lot of these people who get into these positions of power, it's really short term.
01:08:45.000 They want to make super profits.
01:08:47.000 They're all tied up in the MIC. They don't have long term strategic goals of like, well, what's going to happen in 10 years if, you know, this and this happen?
01:08:55.000 I mean, you look at somewhere like Yemen or Afghanistan.
01:09:00.000 The Houthis' dire enemy is al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
01:09:05.000 Yet, we are waging a genocidal campaign in Yemen to bomb the Houthis.
01:09:10.000 Meanwhile, al-Qaeda is there.
01:09:12.000 You know, we have this policy, we're also bombing them.
01:09:16.000 But it's just like, it's just a complete mess, which really makes me think that it's a lot of just short-term bad decisions to just continue making that cash.
01:09:25.000 Jesus.
01:09:27.000 And then the next administration comes up and tries to clean up the mess, but they look at every problem like a nail also.
01:09:34.000 Also, like, how would you ever put the brakes on all the shit that we're doing right now in more than a hundred different countries?
01:09:42.000 Like, how do you...
01:09:44.000 Yeah, man, I mean...
01:09:45.000 Like, that was the Bernie Sanders approach, right?
01:09:47.000 Yeah, right, right.
01:09:47.000 Also, I mean...
01:09:50.000 Well, many politicians have discussed this, but no one's ever gotten in a position to try to implement something like this, where they're trying to pull us out of any interventionist foreign policy, any foreign wars, like, let's get out of all that stuff.
01:10:01.000 Because it's tacitly accepted as just a reality.
01:10:06.000 Even environmentalists, and we're making a new documentary called Earth's Greatest Enemy.
01:10:11.000 You can check it out at earthsgreatestenemy.com.
01:10:14.000 But it's basically about the environment, and it's about how the U.S. military is one of the largest polluters in the world.
01:10:21.000 And it is the largest polluting industry.
01:10:24.000 And why don't environmental organizations talk about this?
01:10:29.000 The U.S. military is one of the most...
01:10:32.000 What do they do to pollute?
01:10:35.000 Explain...
01:10:35.000 Alright, so our trailer's up.
01:10:38.000 I don't know if you still play videos.
01:10:40.000 Yeah, it's cool.
01:10:40.000 It's only two minutes.
01:10:42.000 Earth's Greatest Enemy...
01:10:43.000 Jamie's on that shit so hard.
01:10:46.000 Earth's Greatest Enemy isn't Godzilla?
01:10:49.000 That looks like Godzilla.
01:10:50.000 I know, right?
01:10:51.000 That shit was crazy.
01:10:52.000 The Gulf of Mexico?
01:10:54.000 How does the ocean catch on fire?
01:10:57.000 Alright, let's play this.
01:11:00.000 There's no longer any debate to be had.
01:11:02.000 What a voice.
01:11:03.000 Our planet is on a collision course with disaster.
01:11:06.000 Urgent warnings.
01:11:07.000 Dangerous record-breaking heat.
01:11:09.000 We're now living in the early stages.
01:11:11.000 Terrifying signs of things to come.
01:11:14.000 Mass displacement, deaths, and extinctions are already here.
01:11:19.000 Whether the planet can remain habitable for human beings has become a haunting question.
01:11:25.000 Climate change protests happening right now.
01:11:27.000 Part of a global call for action.
01:11:30.000 We know there are many culprits, corporations, policymakers, mass consumption.
01:11:36.000 But what if there was one single entity that by itself will bring planetary collapse?
01:11:43.000 One single organization.
01:11:46.000 One single enemy that not only produced enough toxic destruction to destroy the planet on its own, but was also subject to virtually no regulations, no oversight, no accountability, and as of yet, no blame.
01:12:03.000 If there was a monster like that, shouldn't it be dragged out of the dark and into the center of the struggle to save the planet?
01:12:15.000 We're good to go.
01:12:38.000 Here's the awful truth.
01:12:40.000 Even if every person, every automobile, and every factory suddenly emitted zero emissions, the Earth would still be heated, headed towards total disaster for one major reason.
01:12:51.000 The Pentagon.
01:12:54.000 This is heavy.
01:12:56.000 Earth's greatest enemy.
01:12:58.000 So this is going to be all completely grassroots funded.
01:13:03.000 I'm working with Dar Jamal.
01:13:04.000 He was one of the first embedded reporters in Iraq, an incredible investigative journalist who's on the tip of the spear of climate change research.
01:13:13.000 So here's the pitch real quick.
01:13:15.000 That quote is from Barry Sanders, who wrote The Green Zone.
01:13:19.000 Through his extensive research in 2009, he found that even if all of those things were halted, the U.S. military alone as an institution would still cause enough carbon emissions to cause a lot of the climate change that we're seeing.
01:13:35.000 What percentage of the climate change, the carbon emissions are caused by the U.S. military?
01:13:39.000 I don't know the actual percentage on the planet, but it's like a hundred and something countries put together.
01:13:46.000 But it's so much bigger.
01:13:47.000 Like, for example, a B-52 bomber.
01:13:51.000 Produces as much carbon emissions as one car driving for seven years.
01:13:55.000 Like, it's just fucking outrageous.
01:13:57.000 Think about it.
01:13:57.000 We have 800 military bases plus the lily pads we don't know about.
01:14:01.000 What are those places doing to pollute?
01:14:05.000 It goes so far beyond emissions, though.
01:14:08.000 So far beyond emissions.
01:14:09.000 But you can just, like, look at just the equipment, you know, the equipment at these bases, not to mention what war does.
01:14:16.000 One of the things I found out from my friend Evan Hafer from Black Rifle Coffee, when he was overseas, he was telling me about these burn pits.
01:14:27.000 And I didn't know about the burn pits.
01:14:28.000 I didn't know that that's how they got rid of their garbage.
01:14:31.000 They just had this massive...
01:14:32.000 24-7 fire going where they would throw everything into it.
01:14:37.000 Tampons, garbage, cans, like whatever the fuck you had.
01:14:42.000 You know, whatever waste they had they would throw in there and that all these soldiers were forced to breathe in the toxic fumes Because the wind would blow, it would go through the camp, and everybody would be breathing the smoke from this toxic burn pit 24-7.
01:14:59.000 Yeah.
01:14:59.000 365. And they all, like, a lot of them got sick.
01:15:03.000 A lot of them have really fucked up health repercussions because of this.
01:15:08.000 And they're denied claims, just like Gulf War Syndrome.
01:15:11.000 Look, a lot of movies have been done about the environment.
01:15:14.000 A lot of people are focused on climate change.
01:15:16.000 This is a huge issue in politics, mass movements, all of this.
01:15:19.000 The media acknowledges it.
01:15:21.000 But no one has tackled what I see as the elephant in the room.
01:15:24.000 And if you were to pull out 100 people from the streets, how many people would say the U.S. military is one of the largest contributors of not only climate change, but just pollution?
01:15:34.000 Is there a stat?
01:15:35.000 Like, how much does the US military contribute to the carbon emissions versus agriculture?
01:15:42.000 Yeah, it's all in Barry Sanders' book.
01:15:44.000 Here, the global greenhouse gas emissions amount to 593 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent from 2010 to 2018, an annual average similar to the annual GHG emission output of 14 million passenger cars.
01:16:02.000 So what the US military does is essentially the average emissions output of a large city.
01:16:11.000 No, no, no, no.
01:16:12.000 It's way bigger than that.
01:16:13.000 You're not going to find this on...
01:16:15.000 The 55th ranked if it was a country.
01:16:18.000 But here's the thing.
01:16:20.000 We're talking about as an institution, it is the largest polluting organization on the planet.
01:16:25.000 But by saying that, what it said in that quote...
01:16:28.000 So that's Barry Sanders' research, but I'll explain why.
01:16:32.000 Because it's not just about CO2 emissions.
01:16:35.000 Right.
01:16:35.000 But the CO2 emissions, that's what they are saying, though.
01:16:38.000 The average is approximately a 14 million city.
01:16:43.000 14 million passenger cars.
01:16:45.000 Which is probably more than 14 million people in the city, right?
01:16:48.000 Because it's not like everybody has a car.
01:16:50.000 Well, we're going to outline—the climate change research is very—it's hard to elucidate because it's very scientific, and we're going to be with the cutting-edge science with scientists in Alaska.
01:17:01.000 We're going this summer, and we're going to be documenting that.
01:17:03.000 But this goes so far beyond carbon emissions.
01:17:07.000 This is about stuff like you're talking about.
01:17:09.000 I mean— Again, the U.S. military is the largest polluter on the planet as an institution.
01:17:15.000 Not even just the U.S. government.
01:17:17.000 This is crazy, right?
01:17:19.000 It pollutes more than the biggest chemical companies, the top five chemical companies combined.
01:17:25.000 If you were to ask people who should we fight if we're trying to save the environment, people will say oil companies or mining or animal agriculture, all that shit.
01:17:34.000 But really, it's this.
01:17:36.000 This is the elephant in the room, Joe.
01:17:38.000 And people don't want to address this because they want access.
01:17:42.000 A lot of these environmental organizations have...
01:17:45.000 Access and grants from the US government.
01:17:48.000 It's controversial.
01:17:50.000 It's controversial.
01:17:51.000 And I want to give you a couple examples that go far beyond what we just saw.
01:17:56.000 Camp Lejeune, Jacksonville, North Carolina.
01:17:59.000 There was so many chemicals that were poured into the water by the US military 60 years ago that people in the tens of thousands were dying.
01:18:10.000 There's actually a graveyard called Baby Heaven because of how many children under the age of five have died because of these pollutants.
01:18:18.000 The government denied it for decades, and they're still denying paying people for the water contamination.
01:18:26.000 Coldwater Creek, Missouri.
01:18:31.000 Dumping from nuclear waste.
01:18:33.000 I mean, this is radioactive compounds that have the shelf life of billions of years.
01:18:37.000 It's permanent pollution, right?
01:18:39.000 These toxins have polluted tens of thousands of people that played in these creeks.
01:18:45.000 This is what the U.S. military is doing to their own people.
01:18:49.000 Their own soldiers, their own personnel at these military bases.
01:18:53.000 You know what a Superfund site is, right?
01:18:56.000 No.
01:18:57.000 A Superfund site is a site that the EPA has designated a highly toxic Very polluted site in the United States that's on the national priorities list because it's so fucking toxic that it is causing extreme devastation to people's health and the environment.
01:19:15.000 900 out of 1300 Superfund sites in the United States are either military installations or have previously hosted military needs.
01:19:23.000 And there's hundreds more being considered.
01:19:25.000 And places like Camp Lejeune, places like Coldwater Creek, look at the uranium dumping in Navajo land, all of these things that have benefited the US military.
01:19:37.000 And they've just, with callous disregard and criminal negligence, have dumped their pollutants and chemical runoff in these areas, hundreds of areas in the United States.
01:19:47.000 And we're just talking about the US. Think about what the 800 bases are doing around the world.
01:19:53.000 Think about what war does.
01:19:55.000 Landmines still in Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos.
01:19:58.000 Agent Orange still causing birth defects.
01:20:00.000 I mean, all of this really, really heavy stuff.
01:20:02.000 DU in Syria and Iraq.
01:20:05.000 It's not just even about human health.
01:20:07.000 What does it do to the environment?
01:20:09.000 It prevents you from being able to have sustainable agriculture.
01:20:12.000 It creates desertification.
01:20:14.000 It destroys habitats for millennia.
01:20:18.000 And we should explain to you, depleted uranium is what you're talking about.
01:20:22.000 And that was considered by many people to be the cause of the Gulf War Syndrome that a lot of soldiers experienced and birth defects and cancers and all sorts because they were using depleted uranium rounds because apparently when they use them as rounds,
01:20:39.000 it just goes right through tanks.
01:20:40.000 It's like insanely effective ammunition.
01:20:44.000 Yeah.
01:20:44.000 Yeah, exactly.
01:20:45.000 And this is not just stuff that was done during the Cold War and World War II, even though a lot of this shit is still sadly being felt today and again being denied the claims, just like the first responders on 9-11.
01:20:58.000 I mean, how callous do you need to be to use and exploit these people and then to deny them health care?
01:21:03.000 Yeah, that's the scariest thing about all this shit is that there's so many patriotic people that really do think that they want to support their country.
01:21:12.000 And so they do enlist and they risk their life to go over there and do the things that they have to do that they feel they're doing to support freedom, to make...
01:21:22.000 America a better, safer place.
01:21:24.000 And then if they get wounded or if something happens, they don't even get taken care of.
01:21:28.000 Or if they do get taken care of, it's very poorly and they have to fight for it.
01:21:31.000 And things like the depleted uranium poisoning that has caused Gulf War syndrome or things like these burn pits, it's really treasonous.
01:21:39.000 It's horrific.
01:21:40.000 No, it is.
01:21:41.000 And it's not just this relic of how our military used to be before we knew better.
01:21:45.000 The burn pits just happened in Iraq, man.
01:21:47.000 I mean, and I just read the story yesterday of this chemical foam that was used to basically stop fires is now being incinerated in hundreds of sites across the U.S. This is like some goddamn X-Files episode.
01:22:01.000 It's like a sinister covert program to burn this highly, highly toxic foam.
01:22:07.000 It's called a forever chemical because it never actually goes away.
01:22:10.000 It's going to be in the air.
01:22:11.000 Why are they burning it?
01:22:12.000 Because they want to get rid of it.
01:22:14.000 That's the only way to get rid of it?
01:22:16.000 Well, that's what's so funny is that experts have said you can't incinerate something that was supposed to prevent incineration.
01:22:21.000 Like, the chemicals are going to permeate somewhere.
01:22:24.000 And a lot of these Superfund sites, it's all about the water contamination because they seep into the ground.
01:22:30.000 Right.
01:22:31.000 And kids, man.
01:22:32.000 I mean, kids are the most affected.
01:22:35.000 I don't want to go into how horrific the statistics are, but it's bad.
01:22:40.000 And it's not just human health.
01:22:43.000 Like I said, I mean, this is biodiversity.
01:22:45.000 This is...
01:22:49.000 Yeah.
01:23:08.000 Okinawa is basically an entire base, like 70% of the island is a military base, but they're building another fucking one that threatens a rare blue coral reef.
01:23:17.000 I mean, it's lunacy.
01:23:19.000 It's madness and it's lunacy.
01:23:21.000 And I get a lot of people are patriotic and I get that a lot of, you know, we fetishize the military, we worship the military, we're born and bred to think that this is necessary to have a global empire.
01:23:33.000 But I want to make people shift their consciousness and say it doesn't have to be this way.
01:23:38.000 I think what people are worried about, the people that are pro-military in particular, is they're worried about some nefarious government, like whether it's China or Russia or whoever, that builds up a global military that rivals the US,
01:23:58.000 that surpasses it, and they become the dominant world power.
01:24:02.000 The dominant world power, not just economically, which you could argue China has already done, but militarily.
01:24:08.000 I hear that a lot.
01:24:11.000 If the US wasn't on top, someone else would be.
01:24:13.000 And there's no actual basis to that.
01:24:17.000 Because what other country would be mad enough to do what we've done?
01:24:21.000 It's totally counterintuitive.
01:24:23.000 But what China does is very different than we do, right?
01:24:25.000 The way they treat their citizens is very differently.
01:24:28.000 The way they treat dissent is very differently.
01:24:30.000 Look at what's going on in Hong Kong now.
01:24:31.000 They're arresting journalists.
01:24:33.000 They're imprisoning people for writing blogs and making posts.
01:24:37.000 It's a different approach to the way they handle people.
01:24:42.000 Ours is not perfect, but it is better.
01:24:45.000 But you would agree that freedom is not protected by what we're doing around the world.
01:24:49.000 No, but we're terrified that if we don't keep up, like this is, I mean, I'm not making excuses for anybody, but this is like, if you're going to play devil's advocate, you say, okay, We have to do horrible things because the world's a horrible place.
01:25:04.000 This is what devil's advocate would be, right?
01:25:06.000 We have to make sure that we keep our strong military despite all the dangers it presents because if we don't and if we let China take over the world, we're going to be treated the same way Chinese citizens are treated in China.
01:25:19.000 Like if the Communist Party somehow or another gets a foothold in America and conquers it.
01:25:25.000 Like people say that's impossible, that's impossible, that's history.
01:25:28.000 Like, history is filled with empires taking over the other countries.
01:25:33.000 The idea that it could never happen to America.
01:25:35.000 Like, every fucking empire has always thought that it could never happen to them.
01:25:40.000 I'm sure Rome, they were running around, you know, drinking wine, partying for everything.
01:25:44.000 We got this.
01:25:45.000 Same thing with ancient Greece.
01:25:46.000 Same thing with the European or the UK. Like, the way England was running the world back in the day, you would have thought that England was going to be the superpower forever.
01:25:56.000 We have a legitimate concern on our hands globally about some governments.
01:26:02.000 And I think they have a legitimate concern about us.
01:26:05.000 But we want to thank, again, this is rose-colored glasses.
01:26:10.000 We want to thank better us than anybody else.
01:26:13.000 Which is a really sad way to accept this mass-murdering, earth-destroying machine, isn't it?
01:26:19.000 I mean, to basically put this hypothetical scenario that's based on nothing today.
01:26:24.000 Yes, in the past empires were warring, but the US has dominated the entire planet.
01:26:29.000 You can look at someone like China.
01:26:31.000 China has one military base in Djibouti.
01:26:33.000 One.
01:26:35.000 We actually think that China's threatening us for putting ships in their own waters, the South China Sea.
01:26:41.000 I mean, it's ridiculous the kind of news that comes out basically pretending that China is a threat militarily, when literally it would just be like us having a ship in the Gulf of Mexico and China saying they're threatened by that.
01:26:52.000 It's very disturbing.
01:26:54.000 If you're looking at China trying to be a counterweight to, you know, global capitalism, yeah, that's definitely happening.
01:27:01.000 They're offering countermeasures to development in Africa and stuff like that, and you can argue about the benefits of that.
01:27:08.000 But it's definitely not the same as what the U.S. is, you know, putting the barrel of a gun to someone's head and saying, do this, or you're fucked, and we'll sanction you to death, literally to death.
01:27:19.000 You don't think China employs similar tactics?
01:27:22.000 So, look, China, you can argue all day about totalitarianism, thought control, mass censorship, right?
01:27:30.000 Those things are...
01:27:33.000 Undeniable.
01:27:34.000 But what do we do here, Joe?
01:27:36.000 I mean, I hate to be like, you know, bring it back to America, but I do think that you have talked extensively about big tech and the insidious nature of like censorship online.
01:27:47.000 I find that kind of similar in a really eerie way, you know, where corporations have just taken upon themselves to censor Sanitize our reality, curate what they want us to see, working on behalf of government institutions like the Atlantic Council and stuff like that,
01:28:05.000 these fact checkers that censor.
01:28:10.000 What we see on social media and change the algorithm.
01:28:13.000 Google, change the algorithm.
01:28:14.000 We don't see news that I'm talking about when you just Google things anymore.
01:28:19.000 That to me is just as creepy.
01:28:22.000 I would rather be a Chinese citizen and know exactly how the censorship model works than actually herald the First Amendment as somehow working in this country.
01:28:32.000 If I want to know something now, I stopped Googling things.
01:28:35.000 I started using either the Brave search engine or I started using DuckDuckGo.
01:28:40.000 Yeah.
01:28:41.000 Because you get an uncurated, you know, if you Google very specific things, you'll get an uncurated version of it.
01:28:50.000 It's shocking when you compare the difference, like with certain controversial subjects, the difference between using DuckDuckGo and using Google.
01:28:58.000 And you go, well, here's all the articles.
01:29:00.000 And you use Google and like, I can't find shit.
01:29:02.000 I'm trying, I'm going, I'm looking, I'm looking, I'm looking.
01:29:05.000 Look, we're living in a panopticon here.
01:29:07.000 We are in a surveillance state that is undoubtedly so.
01:29:11.000 Edward Snowden revealed that, right?
01:29:14.000 Everything is being data-mined, collected, and surveilled.
01:29:19.000 You, Joe, you are a powerful, influential person.
01:29:22.000 How scary is that?
01:29:24.000 Do you really think that you are not being watched?
01:29:27.000 Well, I mean, I'm on the internet.
01:29:29.000 I'm watching it right now.
01:29:31.000 I mean, your emails.
01:29:32.000 There's nothing in them.
01:29:34.000 Yeah, I'm smart.
01:29:35.000 If you fucking look through my email, you ain't finding shit.
01:29:39.000 There's nothing in there.
01:29:40.000 Isn't that a scary notion?
01:29:41.000 But yeah, it is.
01:29:42.000 But yeah, I can't talk too much crazy shit on emails.
01:29:45.000 I assume all my emails are monitored.
01:29:48.000 Have you seen the new thing about SMS text messages to stop COVID vaccine misinformation?
01:29:55.000 Have you seen this?
01:29:56.000 No, good God.
01:29:57.000 Oh, good God.
01:29:58.000 Get ready for this, because Sagar...
01:30:00.000 Sagar sent me this.
01:30:02.000 We were talking about this recently.
01:30:08.000 They are monitoring SMS texts for dangerous misinformation about COVID vaccines.
01:30:19.000 Look, misinformation's not good, right?
01:30:21.000 With anything.
01:30:22.000 Yeah, but who's determining?
01:30:25.000 Who's deciding?
01:30:25.000 I mean, how long ago was it where Facebook was banning people if you talked about the lab leak hypothesis, which is now widely accepted, but eight months ago, they were banning you.
01:30:40.000 When Trump was in office, if you brought that up, that maybe this shit leaked from a lab, you were labeled a racist, you were a terrible person and a Trump supporter.
01:30:49.000 Mainstream scientists are talking about it openly.
01:30:51.000 It was on the cover of Newsweek.
01:30:52.000 It's been re-examined.
01:30:54.000 Now that this polarizing asshole is out of the White House, we can speak about the truth.
01:31:00.000 How creepy is that, that the intelligence community along with the political establishment and also the mainstream media, notoriously untrustworthy entities are telling us what reality is acceptable or not.
01:31:13.000 Like, for example, Oddly behind this new UFO rollout, which we can talk about.
01:31:19.000 Meanwhile, they are saying QAnon should not exist on the internet.
01:31:24.000 Who gets to decide?
01:31:26.000 What about critical thinking and media literacy?
01:31:29.000 That's what I would rather have, the tools given to us so we can sift through and determine what is disinformation and what is not.
01:31:36.000 Sam Harris has a great, and I know you don't like Sam Harris, but Sam, I do.
01:31:41.000 He called me a fire hose of bullshit, but you know what?
01:31:44.000 I think a fire, is that what it was?
01:31:46.000 A fire hose?
01:31:46.000 Fire hydrant?
01:31:48.000 Yeah.
01:31:48.000 But Sam, let me say something.
01:31:50.000 Okay, tell me about Sam Harris and I'll say one thing about him too.
01:31:52.000 Well, he has a great speech that, if you go to my Twitter, I retweeted it, I think yesterday, about the importance of free speech and how important it is, whether you like it or not, whether you agree with someone or not.
01:32:06.000 It is what we do.
01:32:08.000 It's everything.
01:32:09.000 It's the reason why we know truth.
01:32:11.000 You cannot keep people from discussing things.
01:32:14.000 Let's play this and start it from the beginning.
01:32:16.000 You're going to love it.
01:32:17.000 You're going to hear his voice.
01:32:18.000 You're going to get excited.
01:32:20.000 As individuals and as a species to navigate in the space of all possible experiences together, the only way we have to correct course, the only way we have to notice our errors and correct for them is to talk about everything.
01:32:44.000 We have to exchange ideas.
01:32:46.000 The software we have cognitively and behaviorally is always a matter of persuasion and criticism and error detection and complaint.
01:33:01.000 We have to be free to talk to one another and to not merely Think things in private and remain terrified over expressing these things for the possible reputational damage we may incur.
01:33:17.000 And so insofar as our environment, you know, the environment we create with each other, you know, society becomes stifling of free expression insofar as we're We're hemmed in on all sides by taboos and blasphemy tests and the persistent threat of excommunication and defenestration.
01:33:40.000 We get worse and worse at detecting our own errors and collaborating with one another.
01:33:48.000 Agree with that?
01:33:49.000 Yeah, I mean...
01:33:50.000 So you think Sam Harris is awesome now?
01:33:54.000 I totally agree with the notion that we need to have freedom of expression.
01:33:58.000 I'm a free speech absolutist.
01:34:00.000 I think that it's very, very important.
01:34:06.000 And especially with the anti-BDS laws, it's like, I know how important this kind of speech is.
01:34:12.000 And the thing that I disagree with Sam Harris, first of all, a million Iraqis did die.
01:34:17.000 But I think the other thing that he really gets wrong is that he kind of is an apologist for U.S. empire where he thinks that the U.S. just has good intentions.
01:34:25.000 And so anything that happens as a result of those good intentions, well, it's not our fault and we can wash our hands clean.
01:34:31.000 That's not a direct quote from him?
01:34:32.000 No, no, no.
01:34:33.000 But in theory, he's advocated for the Iraq war and such.
01:34:38.000 And yeah, I mean, I think that that couldn't be further from the truth.
01:34:41.000 I think that there is no like moral high ground.
01:34:45.000 That these actions are being done in our name.
01:34:48.000 And if there's anything that can prove that it's the last 20 years of U.S. foreign policy, I mean, it's a complete joke to actually pretend like any of this is being done for our sake, you know, and to protect our freedom.
01:34:59.000 So you think all of it is being done for profit or control?
01:35:03.000 Yes.
01:35:03.000 It's not about protecting freedom.
01:35:06.000 No, absolutely not.
01:35:07.000 And, you know, and going back to the Earth's Greatest Enemy thing, it's like it's not just about the U.S. military.
01:35:12.000 It's about the structure of imperialism.
01:35:15.000 And it's about the web that works with our junior collaborators.
01:35:20.000 It's also European nations.
01:35:22.000 It's NATO. It's all of these junior partners that also act to secure these interests and keep these countries poor and extracting all their wealth and putting their boot on the neck of so many people and preventing their self-determination.
01:35:38.000 And that's a huge problem, Joe, because I believe in freedom to the point where I feel like everyone around the world can pursue their own freedom and their own freedom of thought.
01:35:48.000 And that's without U.S. interference.
01:35:49.000 And we need to really take a step back and Think of what kind of world do we want to live in?
01:35:54.000 Do we want to live in a world where we are preparing for nuclear war as an inevitability, for preparing for war with China as an inevitability, or do we want to work in a world of cooperation?
01:36:07.000 Negotiation, experimentation.
01:36:09.000 How can we pursue and confront these problems that are systemic and global together?
01:36:16.000 With other countries?
01:36:17.000 Yes.
01:36:18.000 Is that possible to do with Russia and China and these what we would call nefarious empires?
01:36:23.000 Yes.
01:36:24.000 You think it's possible?
01:36:24.000 Yeah.
01:36:25.000 To work?
01:36:25.000 Absolutely.
01:36:26.000 That China is not thinking just about China.
01:36:29.000 That they would go, okay, we'll cooperate.
01:36:30.000 Yeah.
01:36:31.000 I think a lot of things are done in reaction to the US. Like for example, and I think we can get into the UFO stuff, but I think that Space Force, for example, after the US declared that branch of the military and is now violating the Outer Space Treaty and all this stuff to militarize space,
01:36:50.000 Russia was just like, I'm completely against this, but now we have no choice but do our own program.
01:36:56.000 So you see kind of things like that where there's a reaction to this hyper-militarized state from these other global powers.
01:37:04.000 Like, for example, Biden declaring that he's going to invest fucking $100 billion in nuclear weapons.
01:37:08.000 It's like all of that triggers all these other countries.
01:37:11.000 Is that what he declared?
01:37:13.000 He probably didn't even know what he was reading.
01:37:15.000 He was given a placard.
01:37:16.000 For sure.
01:37:17.000 Read this!
01:37:18.000 For sure.
01:37:18.000 Or he's got an earpiece in.
01:37:19.000 They tell him what to say.
01:37:20.000 Yeah.
01:37:21.000 I mean, I do think that we have a lot of power, and if we used it for good, I think the world could be a much better place.
01:37:27.000 And we don't have to live in an empire, and we don't have to live in fear of other countries becoming an empire.
01:37:32.000 I think that we need to look at what kind of world do we want to live in, Joe.
01:37:36.000 And, you know, China, I mean, there was an agreement.
01:37:39.000 There was an agreement between corporate bosses and Chinese bosses to make super profits in the late 80s to ship and export a lot of U.S. capital and production over in Asia.
01:37:49.000 And that has led to a lot of shit that's gone on today.
01:37:54.000 You know, we have to look at the context of how this all happened.
01:37:57.000 It's amazing that that is not being discussed more by our politicians when you talk about the difference between pre-pandemic and post-pandemic America when they recognize that so many things were being manufactured overseas.
01:38:11.000 So many things are difficult to get, including so many computer chips, so much medicine, so many different things are being manufactured outside of the United States.
01:38:19.000 Why is that?
01:38:20.000 Because they...
01:38:23.000 Sacrificed long-term stability for short-term profits.
01:38:27.000 Exactly.
01:38:27.000 And this was something that, you know, I was watching, I'm watching this, it's an amazing documentary series about boxing called The Kings, and it's all about Marvin Hagler, Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, and Tommy Hearns, and about what they were like,
01:38:43.000 like boxing against each other in the 1980s.
01:38:46.000 And it talks about Detroit.
01:38:48.000 And it shows what Detroit used to be like, because Tommy Hearns came from Detroit.
01:38:52.000 And it shows what Detroit used to be like when the U.S. manufacturing of automobiles was all taking place there.
01:38:59.000 And how all these union workers had great wages.
01:39:03.000 You didn't even have to graduate from high school.
01:39:05.000 You could get a union job and have an amazing life and have...
01:39:10.000 You know, be able to take care of your family and educate them and you had money.
01:39:16.000 Like, you could live well because the unions had made it so that these people working in these factories, highly profitable factories, right?
01:39:22.000 They're making these amazing cars.
01:39:24.000 They made money.
01:39:26.000 This is like during the 1950s and the 1960s.
01:39:29.000 And then 20 years later, after the government has changed, or after these organizations, rather, after these corporations have decided to move their manufacturing overseas, source parts overseas, do a lot of the work because they've saved money this way.
01:39:45.000 Detroit is a wasteland.
01:39:47.000 I mean, it's a wasteland.
01:39:48.000 And they highlighted the extreme poverty.
01:39:50.000 They show all these different people that are waiting in line for food.
01:39:52.000 It's wild shit to think.
01:39:54.000 And Roger and me is a great example of that, too.
01:39:56.000 Flint, West Virginia, all of these industry towns.
01:39:59.000 All these industry towns devastated by these decisions for looking at profitability over long-term stability.
01:40:07.000 Yeah.
01:40:08.000 Pay Chinese workers one-tenth of the price.
01:40:11.000 Export all the pollution in industry.
01:40:13.000 Think about all the goddamn electronics we buy.
01:40:17.000 Everybody who's a social justice warrior and who's tweeting from an iPhone about anything.
01:40:23.000 Do you understand what you're doing?
01:40:25.000 Me too.
01:40:25.000 I've got one.
01:40:26.000 Here it is.
01:40:27.000 You know who's making that?
01:40:28.000 It's not some union guy who's got a nice house and a boat, you know, who's doing rel and sending his kids off to college and super happy about his life.
01:40:36.000 No, it's someone who's working in a factory that has nets around it to keep people from jumping off the fucking roof.
01:40:41.000 That's how crazy it is.
01:40:42.000 There's literally nets around the Foxconn buildings to keep people from jumping because so many people hated their lives working there.
01:40:50.000 They were jumping off the roof in such numbers they had put nets up.
01:40:54.000 That's horrific.
01:40:56.000 Yeah, it's horrific.
01:40:57.000 Could you imagine?
01:40:57.000 Could you imagine if the Apple Store had nets around the roof?
01:41:01.000 Someone should do an art installation of like showing, you know what I mean?
01:41:04.000 Just showing how the...
01:41:05.000 It's crazy.
01:41:06.000 No, it's horrific.
01:41:08.000 I had a conversation with Shane Smith about this once where he was talking about in every cell phone is this stuff called coltan and that if you go to where they're making coltan, it's probably an underaged worker in Africa Digging it out of the ground with a stick.
01:41:25.000 And that underage worker in Africa, the child labor, is getting into your cell phone that's allowing you to self-righteously tweet about things.
01:41:36.000 What about the banning plastic straws just kills me?
01:41:39.000 It's like, you think that that's going to be the fucking, I mean, good God, what are we talking about here?
01:41:43.000 One turtle had a straw up his nose.
01:41:45.000 And they're like, let's get this straw.
01:41:47.000 You ever see that video?
01:41:48.000 No.
01:41:49.000 You never saw the video?
01:41:50.000 This is the reason why we banned plastic straws.
01:41:52.000 No bullshit.
01:41:52.000 Oh, God.
01:41:53.000 Look, plastic is horrific.
01:41:55.000 The plastic garbage patch, the Great Pacific garbage patch, is a horrific thing.
01:41:59.000 Right, right, right.
01:41:59.000 And Boyan Slott, who's been on the podcast a couple times, has done amazing work to develop this machine that's scooping up this plastic and converting it into actual goods and recycling it and using it.
01:42:13.000 That's amazing.
01:42:13.000 When he invented this, he was 19. I mean, the guy's a genius and a really wonderful person.
01:42:18.000 He's doing this.
01:42:18.000 But the plastic that's out there is...
01:42:23.000 Go to John Joseph's Instagram.
01:42:29.000 John Joseph is a friend of mine.
01:42:30.000 He's a lead singer of the Cro-Mags, and he's also this hardcore vegan activist guy.
01:42:38.000 He'll post good shit on his Instagram.
01:42:40.000 John Joseph Cromax.
01:42:41.000 He's got this thing about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
01:42:43.000 Oh God, this is so horrifying.
01:42:44.000 Look at that fucking image.
01:42:45.000 Just look at that image.
01:42:46.000 It's terrifying.
01:42:46.000 But here it says, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch covers 1.6 million square kilometers, 617,000 square miles.
01:42:57.000 It weighs more than 43,000 cars, and much of it is single-use plastic, water bottles, and industrial fishing nets.
01:43:05.000 That's horrific.
01:43:06.000 Well, a lot of it's like micro pieces, right?
01:43:08.000 Yes.
01:43:08.000 So you can't net it out.
01:43:09.000 Well, it breaks down.
01:43:10.000 It breaks down.
01:43:11.000 Right.
01:43:12.000 But you can scoop it up.
01:43:13.000 What he's willing to do, what Boyan is able to do with this thing, it's like it skims the water and scoops up all this plastic, and then they're pulling this plastic out.
01:43:27.000 Yeah, this is the turtle.
01:43:29.000 Oh, God.
01:43:29.000 Oh, God.
01:43:29.000 I don't know if I can watch this shit.
01:43:30.000 This sea turtle, you can watch it.
01:43:32.000 I guarantee you can watch it.
01:43:33.000 You're going to watch it.
01:43:34.000 Here we go.
01:43:34.000 Oh, God.
01:43:36.000 Somehow or another he found out that he had this straw stuck all the way up into his fucking brain, it looks like.
01:43:42.000 This poor turtle.
01:43:43.000 Jesus.
01:43:44.000 And this is rough.
01:43:45.000 Normally I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for turtles.
01:43:47.000 Jesus.
01:43:48.000 For whatever.
01:43:48.000 I'm not really much on it.
01:43:49.000 How many views it has.
01:43:50.000 Yeah, 85 million.
01:43:51.000 That's all you needed.
01:43:52.000 Yeah.
01:43:53.000 That's all you needed.
01:43:53.000 But this is how they decided to ban plastic straws.
01:43:57.000 Because we still have plastic caps for water bottles.
01:44:01.000 We stopped using water bottles in here and we shifted to metal cups for conservation.
01:44:06.000 But it kills me that it's all individualistic.
01:44:08.000 It's like you need to just drive a hybrid and you need to drink out of non-plastic...
01:44:15.000 And it's like, dude, look at these corporations.
01:44:16.000 You're telling us that that's going to solve the environmental crisis when we have...
01:44:20.000 A global empire and all these corporations just willy-nilly, like, producing all this shit with no regulation?
01:44:26.000 Like, God.
01:44:27.000 I mean, plastic bags should have been banned fucking decades ago.
01:44:30.000 Like, why are we even...
01:44:31.000 The individualizing the problem is so depressing because it takes away from the structural nature and the systemic nature of pollution and how it's not about the person taking less showers and drinking out of a metal straw.
01:44:47.000 That's just to make you feel better.
01:44:50.000 It's a propaganda campaign.
01:44:52.000 It's just a signal that you're doing your part.
01:44:53.000 Yeah, you're doing your part.
01:44:54.000 Don't worry about the government.
01:44:55.000 Don't worry about these corporations.
01:44:57.000 Don't worry about how all of this fits together under our economic system.
01:45:02.000 It's all just about, nope, you're good.
01:45:04.000 Take one shower a day or one shower a week and drink out of your metal straw and you're good, dude.
01:45:11.000 Don't think about anything else.
01:45:13.000 I've talked about this way too many times, but I'm going to talk about it again.
01:45:16.000 We had Dr. Shanna Swan on to talk about how the plastics that are in our system, because of whether it's plastic that our food is contained in, that we're reheating in microwaves,
01:45:33.000 or leaching from plastic that gets in our water bottles, and these things called phthalates are affecting our reproductive systems.
01:45:41.000 It's a crazy podcast that we had, where she was basically saying...
01:45:45.000 What the fuck's our book called again?
01:45:47.000 Total Collapse?
01:45:48.000 Is that what it's called?
01:45:50.000 Countdown, that's right.
01:45:51.000 I can never remember.
01:45:51.000 Yeah, we don't know how these things affect like biodiversity in the ecosystem.
01:45:54.000 But we know how it's affecting people.
01:45:56.000 There's a direct correlation between, there it is.
01:45:59.000 It's crazy.
01:46:00.000 Countdown.
01:46:01.000 How our modern world is threatening sperm counts, altering male and female reproductive development, imperiling the future of the human race.
01:46:06.000 It's one of the most disturbing podcasts I ever did.
01:46:09.000 Because in the middle, first of all, she's a wonderful lady.
01:46:11.000 She's such a sweetheart.
01:46:12.000 And in talking to her, she's really actually funny too.
01:46:15.000 So like she has like a thing on her Instagram called the jizz quiz.
01:46:20.000 And you would not expect it from this lady who's like, you know, she's probably like in her 60s and she's an academic and she's an epidemiological environmentalist.
01:46:31.000 What is her exact...
01:46:37.000 Environmental epidemiologist.
01:46:39.000 That's what she is.
01:46:40.000 So she's examining the effect that the environment has on biology.
01:46:45.000 And she's found this horrific connection between the invention and the use of petrochemical products and the lowering of sperm counts and the increase in miscarriages.
01:47:01.000 And also, this is where it gets really weird.
01:47:04.000 The shortening of the taint, the human taint.
01:47:07.000 It's one of the best ways, biologically, when you look at animals, one of the best ways to tell males versus females is the size of the taint.
01:47:15.000 It varies by 50 to 100% in males and females.
01:47:19.000 And with males, it's shrinking.
01:47:21.000 And it's getting closer and closer to female size.
01:47:23.000 Penises are shrinking.
01:47:24.000 Testicles are shrinking.
01:47:26.000 Sperm count is shrinking.
01:47:27.000 And males are becoming more feminized because of these things called phthalates.
01:47:32.000 It's spelled with a P-T-H-A-L-E-T-E. These phthalates that are in plastics, they've proven with animals that when you introduce these to animals, it directly affects the male reproductive system and depletes their ability to form sperm.
01:47:53.000 It shrinks their taint, it makes their penis small, and it's happening to people, too.
01:47:57.000 And when you see, like, so many people that are confused about their sexuality, and so much weird shit with sexuality in this country, and then you look at this, and you go, hey, there's a fucking culprit here.
01:48:08.000 Like, there's something that's happening to human beings.
01:48:11.000 Like, a real direct correlation between increased miscarriages, decreased sperm counts, a lot of it is because of environmental toxins.
01:48:24.000 Pesticides, plastics, all these things that whether we like it or not, we're consuming and we're consuming now.
01:48:30.000 And the thing is about these things being consumed by people who are pregnant and then it's going to have an impact on their children.
01:48:38.000 It's going to have an impact on their babies because they've got it in their system.
01:48:41.000 It's going to be in the child system.
01:48:42.000 And this is all like irrefutable science.
01:48:45.000 Do you think that there's also, like, less of a stigma on sexuality, though?
01:48:49.000 Like, helping facilitate a lot of the people who are coming out as, you know...
01:48:54.000 Oh, there's a lot of factors.
01:48:56.000 It's not just that one factor, but I think...
01:48:57.000 But no doubt that this, what you're talking about now, like the leaching plastic is...
01:49:01.000 Good God, who knows what that's doing long time.
01:49:04.000 The stigma about sexuality is one thing, but the decreasing of the human taint, the fact that they can measure that human taints are shrinking and that we know that this is directly connected to phthalates, you can't ignore that.
01:49:18.000 Even if you want to look at this as a social issue and as we're more open now to all sorts of ideas about sexuality, that's all great.
01:49:27.000 You can look at things, but to me, this is a comprehensive To look at what is actually going on with human beings, you have to look at all the factors.
01:49:39.000 You have your positive factors, more openness, more acceptance.
01:49:42.000 Those are the positive factors.
01:49:44.000 The weird one is chemicals.
01:49:47.000 The fact that chemicals might be changing what it means to be a human being.
01:49:52.000 And we can get this into aliens right here.
01:49:55.000 Because I have always had this weird theory about what aliens are.
01:49:59.000 In my feelings, when I look at them, and they have, like, if you look at the classic alien...
01:50:04.000 Classic gray.
01:50:05.000 Classic gray.
01:50:06.000 They have these little tiny bodies with no sex organs and these giant fucking heads.
01:50:11.000 And I'm like, well, if we keep going the way we're going now, well, what is holding us back?
01:50:15.000 If you look at war and...
01:50:19.000 Thievery and assault and all the aggressive, horrible things that people do, right?
01:50:24.000 If you look at just war alone, what is that?
01:50:27.000 It's territory.
01:50:28.000 It's like animals taking over other animals because of their resources, right?
01:50:32.000 That's what human beings are doing.
01:50:33.000 It's a very animalistic thing.
01:50:36.000 How would you stop that?
01:50:38.000 Well, one way to stop that is to completely eliminate sexual reproduction, to have no instincts towards acquiring of resources, no instincts towards acquiring of sexual partners.
01:50:51.000 All sex is eliminated because you can have immensely pleasurable experiences without having any sexual intercourse.
01:50:59.000 You don't even need sex organs.
01:51:01.000 We will reproduce.
01:51:03.000 Through genetic engineering only, we will reproduce through some sort of yet to be invented process that's far superior.
01:51:11.000 It eliminates any kind of birth defects, any kind of mishaps that happen in the genetic code, and It creates uniformity amongst the species.
01:51:24.000 So there is no more prejudice.
01:51:26.000 There is no more racism.
01:51:27.000 Everybody looks exactly the same.
01:51:29.000 They all look exactly the same.
01:51:30.000 It sounds crazy, right?
01:51:31.000 But if you think about it, what would be the alternative?
01:51:35.000 Well, the alternative, you keep allowing this biological chaos.
01:51:39.000 You keep allowing this tooth and claw approach.
01:51:41.000 You keep allowing dominators and victims and everyone's fighting for the position on the top of the hill.
01:51:48.000 If we are to advance to what Carl Sagan would describe as a species that is capable of interplanetary travel and no longer commits war or genocide, what would be the best way to do that?
01:52:00.000 Well, the best way to do that would be to stop being people.
01:52:02.000 Because people are some sort of weird fucking animal.
01:52:05.000 And if you look at our approach in terms of our adoption of technology, well, what are we doing exactly?
01:52:11.000 When you talk to someone that needs their phone on them all the time, what are they doing?
01:52:16.000 Well, they're connected to some electronics.
01:52:18.000 Well, now they got it on their wrist.
01:52:20.000 Well, and soon with Elon Musk's invention with Neuralink, it's going to be in your fucking head.
01:52:24.000 How long before we are some sort of a symbiotic thing where we're no longer a biological entity?
01:52:30.000 We're a biological entity that interfaces constantly and inextricably with technology.
01:52:38.000 Inexorably, rather, with technology.
01:52:39.000 You can't take the two apart from each other.
01:52:42.000 We are technology.
01:52:43.000 The same way a person who lives in Alaska in the winter has to have clothes.
01:52:48.000 There's no options.
01:52:50.000 You are connected forever to your fucking clothes until you get to a warm environment and you can take your clothes off.
01:52:55.000 If it's 30 below zero outside, you're not walking outside naked, right?
01:52:59.000 We've already accepted that a human being is no longer just a biological thing.
01:53:03.000 You need shoes or you're gonna fuck your feet up, right?
01:53:05.000 You need clothes or you're gonna freeze to death.
01:53:08.000 How long before our inventions surpass merely clothes and shoes and housing and comfort and it becomes something that is a part of our biology?
01:53:19.000 And maybe that would be the only way we would be able to leave this planet.
01:53:24.000 Maybe that would be the only way we would be able to avoid war and avoid rape and avoid murder and avoid theft and conquering.
01:53:31.000 Maybe we just eliminate those instincts.
01:53:33.000 And maybe we would look at things in terms of what's the correct logical approach without any of the weird monkey instincts that we all harbor.
01:53:45.000 I mean, as someone who just had a kid, that's such a terrifying concept because I've never felt so animalistic and primal.
01:53:52.000 Everything around me is in a state of reproduction.
01:53:55.000 Every aspect of nature.
01:53:57.000 And then when you become that vehicle of reproduction and have...
01:54:15.000 4%?
01:54:23.000 Up to 4%.
01:54:24.000 And the oxytocin that's released that makes you bond and there's also so many other chemicals and hormones that, you know, it's all about reproduction.
01:54:34.000 And then you realize this is why I exist.
01:54:37.000 This is what humans are.
01:54:39.000 We are reproduction machines.
01:54:41.000 And it just kind of dawns on you because our mind occupies so much of everything else and we have technology, like you're saying.
01:54:48.000 And so it's very disturbing to think that that primal instinct could be completely removed and you could just be in a world where humans are created.
01:55:00.000 Maybe it's blissful.
01:55:03.000 You know, Marshall McLuhan had a great quote.
01:55:05.000 He said, human beings are the sex organs in the machine world.
01:55:09.000 It's amazing.
01:55:10.000 I think about it all the time.
01:55:11.000 Because I think the way I've described it is like we're sort of like some really strange biological caterpillar that gives birth to the electronic butterfly.
01:55:23.000 And we don't even know what we're doing.
01:55:25.000 We're just making a cocoon.
01:55:26.000 We're just making a cocoon.
01:55:27.000 And whether it's artificial intelligence or whether it's some sort of a symbiosis, which is something where the electronics or the technology gets into your body somehow or another because it makes it better.
01:55:38.000 If you think if there was a thing that you could have that would make life way better for everybody, you just had to get it in your body, you just have to accept it as being a part of your body, you'd be rude to not do that, right?
01:55:53.000 Even if it was dangerous to you a little bit.
01:55:54.000 Even if you knew that it wasn't tangibly real?
01:55:57.000 In what way?
01:55:59.000 Like what do you mean?
01:56:00.000 No, I'm not talking about like the matrix.
01:56:02.000 No, I'm talking about electronics or technology.
01:56:05.000 Oh, right, right, right.
01:56:06.000 Like this Neuralink idea.
01:56:08.000 The idea of Neuralink is, the way Elon described it to me, and again, I'm a monkey, so I'm going to do a shit job of paraphrasing this, but the idea behind it is, it's going to radically increase your bandwidth, the way you can interface with information.
01:56:25.000 You're essentially going to have much more access to information, and you're going to be able to access it far faster.
01:56:32.000 And one of the things that Elon said that haunts me to this day, he said, You're going to be able to speak without words.
01:56:39.000 You're going to be able to speak without words.
01:56:41.000 So you're going to be able to communicate with people without using words with this electronic interface.
01:56:46.000 That's what these fucking aliens are.
01:56:48.000 If they have these little tiny slits for mouths and they have these fucking weirdo bodies because they don't need any muscles anymore and they don't need sex organs anymore because no one's having sex.
01:56:57.000 If we accept that How long before it becomes that?
01:57:02.000 Is it fifty years?
01:57:03.000 Is it a hundred years?
01:57:04.000 Is it a thousand years?
01:57:05.000 If we just keep accepting this introduction of technology into the biological human body, how long before it becomes what these fucking things are?
01:57:15.000 These iconic Classic gray aliens that we see.
01:57:20.000 Literally, if you went from what we used to be, right?
01:57:23.000 We used to be these hulking chimpanzee-like creatures, right?
01:57:28.000 And we're covered in hair.
01:57:30.000 And now what are we now?
01:57:31.000 Go to Starbucks and see these fucking nerds on their laptops.
01:57:35.000 I don't know why I called them nerds.
01:57:38.000 Sorry.
01:57:39.000 You know what I'm saying?
01:57:39.000 If you think of someone who's just locked in a cubicle doing programming all day and they don't do any exercise, your muscles wither away, your body atrophies, you have this tiny little shell that you carry your head around with.
01:57:55.000 You just need enough energy and enough physical strength to lift up off your chair and walk over to another chair and sit down and drive.
01:58:03.000 And then you get home, you get up, and you walk over to the food, and you eat that, and then you walk over to the TV, and you sit in front of it, or you walk over to the computer.
01:58:11.000 Yeah, it sucks.
01:58:12.000 But that's, where does that go?
01:58:14.000 Where does that go?
01:58:15.000 That goes to the fucking aliens.
01:58:16.000 You have no muscles now, and you have a giant ass head, because you've allowed Elon to drill a hole in there and stick some new wires in.
01:58:23.000 He's like, oh, we've got to make the brain larger, because the head's got to be bigger to fit the new equipment.
01:58:27.000 And then next thing you know, it's this giant fucking head.
01:58:30.000 I feel like, yeah, I mean...
01:58:32.000 It's our future.
01:58:33.000 That's our future.
01:58:34.000 That's really creepy, man.
01:58:34.000 We're freaking out because it's probably encoded in us that we see where the end of this thing is.
01:58:40.000 We probably subconsciously or somewhere if we're doing an extrapolation, we're just thinking about where this goes.
01:58:47.000 So do you think that that's when these people see these visions and when we see UFOs or people have documented them, do you think that that is what's happening?
01:58:55.000 That it's actually aliens projecting themselves or physically here?
01:59:00.000 It could be many things.
01:59:01.000 They could be time travelers.
01:59:03.000 That could be us in the future going back to check.
01:59:07.000 Maybe we've fucked everything up and we need fresh genetic code.
01:59:10.000 We need to come back and get fresh genes from all these people because we've replicated so much.
01:59:16.000 It's like a puppy mill that makes fucked up dogs with the eyes too close together, right?
01:59:21.000 I had a friend who got a chocolate lab, and I went over her house, and I was looking at the dog, and the dog was like, his eyes are way too close together.
01:59:28.000 I'm like, where did you get this dog?
01:59:31.000 And she's like, yeah, I got it from this really shitty puppy mill.
01:59:34.000 This dog was fucked up.
01:59:35.000 This dog would eat all kinds of things around the house and chew on the walls.
01:59:39.000 It was a fucked up dog.
01:59:40.000 But maybe that's what happens if they don't source genetic material.
01:59:47.000 I mean, or maybe they've gone past that and they just want to do experiments on people.
01:59:52.000 Maybe they're from another planet.
01:59:53.000 Maybe they're drones.
01:59:55.000 Maybe those things that we're looking at, those grays, are really just some sort of an artificial intelligence drone.
02:00:01.000 I mean, why send biological material?
02:00:04.000 Right, because it seems kind of like a human construct that we're projecting what we think that they would do.
02:00:08.000 Travel here in a craft and be here physically.
02:00:11.000 Yeah.
02:00:12.000 My brother and I just did a whole tribute to UFO-ology and lore on Media Roots Radio and attributed a lot of it to your show, Joe, because I was floored by some of the shit that I saw.
02:00:24.000 I mean, the Zimbabwe mass...
02:00:27.000 From the phenomenon?
02:00:28.000 Yes, but also I first heard about it on your show.
02:00:31.000 And then, yeah, watching the movie Phenomenon...
02:00:33.000 And the Tic Tac craft from David Fravor.
02:00:37.000 I mean, all of these things are just so...
02:00:39.000 They really do alter your reality.
02:00:43.000 The Commander Fravor one is amazing.
02:00:44.000 Yeah.
02:00:45.000 And my brother, Robbie Martin.
02:00:47.000 But I mean, he's really into this too.
02:00:49.000 And it was just mind-blowing to go through these cases.
02:00:52.000 And I... As I told you before we started this, I was so cynical, you know, and it's easy to just kind of like look at one debunking video and you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:01:02.000 Or like, you don't believe these people's testimonies and shit.
02:01:05.000 Because I remember seeing so many documentaries on YouTube back 10 years ago of all these military officers, high-ranking people talking about how, or listening to Coast to Coast AM, you know, fucking driving throughout the desert, Art Bell and George Norrie talking about...
02:01:30.000 I'm back.
02:01:36.000 What brought you back?
02:01:39.000 Honestly, these stories.
02:01:40.000 These stories.
02:01:42.000 For people who didn't hear your show, the guy talking about the Zimbabwe mass vision that was shared by 62 schoolchildren, I believe them.
02:01:55.000 I believe these kids.
02:01:56.000 Or the Melbourne incident that they talk about in Phenomenon.
02:01:59.000 I watched several videos of those people.
02:02:02.000 200 fucking people in Melbourne, Australia.
02:02:05.000 Yeah.
02:02:06.000 That's a wild one, too.
02:02:08.000 That landed at a woman's feet.
02:02:10.000 And she felt a heat emanating off of this.
02:02:13.000 I mean, it is just how...
02:02:15.000 And everyone describes the same thing.
02:02:17.000 And, you know, 50 years later, when these people are interviewed, you would think that with the advent of drones and all these things, they'd be like, well, now I can explain it.
02:02:24.000 It was advanced military technology then, because now I see the technology that we have, you know, like, but they don't say that.
02:02:31.000 The Zimbabwe one is interesting, but there is a problem with it.
02:02:34.000 One of the problems is John Mack.
02:02:37.000 John Mack and...
02:02:39.000 I'm not going to make any accusations, but there are people that believe that hypnotic regression...
02:02:48.000 is a very problematic way to get evidence because through hypnotic regression and John Mack, he wrote an amazing book.
02:02:56.000 I think he did two books.
02:02:58.000 He was a Harvard psychologist who I think it was abducted And maybe there was another one, but a friend of mine who wasn't even really into UFOs at all, my friend Maura gave me that book, and she's like,
02:03:13.000 you've got to read this.
02:03:14.000 This is crazy because everyone has the same story.
02:03:16.000 Wait, so that's how the kids, they were through hypnotic- He talked to them.
02:03:19.000 John Mack talked to them.
02:03:20.000 Like the day after it happened?
02:03:22.000 Was he there?
02:03:22.000 I don't know.
02:03:23.000 I don't know exactly the timeline, but the problem was these people that are involved in hypnotic regression- Oftentimes, whether they're aware they're doing it or not, they introduce ideas into people's heads and they give them false memories.
02:03:38.000 It's a common issue and it's one of the main complaints that I've heard critics say about John Mack's work.
02:03:47.000 I'm interested in that.
02:03:49.000 I'm very interested in that.
02:03:50.000 And I'm not saying those people are lying.
02:03:52.000 And I'm not saying that John Mack introduced ideas into their heads.
02:03:56.000 But what I am saying is the real evidence, the real evidence like the video of that thing, whatever the fuck that tic-tac was, taking off at what they estimate to be thousands of miles an hour instantaneously from a standstill.
02:04:14.000 And jetting off to the cat point where they were initially supposed to meet.
02:04:19.000 The coordinates that the jets had where they were supposed to scramble to doing this exercise, this fucking tic-tac went to that spot.
02:04:29.000 Almost like to tell you, hey bitch, I know where you're going.
02:04:32.000 They tracked it on radar going from 80,000 feet above sea level to 50 in less than a second.
02:04:39.000 These are with no visible propulsion system.
02:04:43.000 And flipping 180 degrees, which is, you know, physically possible with the technology that we know exists now.
02:04:50.000 No heat signature.
02:04:51.000 Right, no propulsion.
02:04:52.000 No known visible propulsion system.
02:04:55.000 They don't know what the fuck these things are.
02:04:56.000 So if these are super advanced U.S. military craft, wow, holy shit have they been working.
02:05:03.000 Holy shit, did they create something that defies all known physics that we have today in terms of what's available for propulsion?
02:05:12.000 Because everything else is you've got to push something out the back, whether it's flames, and that makes things go fast forward.
02:05:18.000 Everyone describes it the same way.
02:05:20.000 Even back in the 50s and 60s, it was all described as similar types of things that would disappear or shoot off.
02:05:27.000 That doesn't seem physically possible.
02:05:29.000 But now, what's so weird about it now, why are former CIA directors like Brennan, Woolsey, even Obama has made a joke about, yes, we don't know what these things are, What do you think it is?
02:05:43.000 Why is the intelligence community coming out and actually like putting their stamp of approval on this when for the last 70 years it's been so under the radar they you know they've been putting this under wraps but now they're kind of toying with the idea like we actually don't know what these are.
02:06:00.000 And then they also say, we know that they're not from our military.
02:06:03.000 So they're hinting toward adversaries, right?
02:06:05.000 China, Russia with the hypersonic weapons technology that they're claiming that they can develop weapons five to ten times the speed of sound.
02:06:12.000 And I don't know what that looks like when you apply it, but that's strange to me that you see this rollout in the mainstream media talking about this now with the disclosures that the Pentagon has put out.
02:06:25.000 Now, you are a cynical person, especially when it comes to the US military and the intelligence agencies.
02:06:29.000 What's your perspective?
02:06:31.000 I'm sure you're not just saying, oh, well, they're looking out for us.
02:06:35.000 They want us to know about these amazing things.
02:06:39.000 What's your cynical perspective?
02:06:41.000 Well, when I look at these things, a lot of these people, I believe these people.
02:06:45.000 And especially watching that documentary, Joe, it was a real mindfuck.
02:06:48.000 And a lot of this is bone-chilling because I believe, especially when 62 people see something or 200 people in Melbourne, Australia, or all of these high-level military people who you could tell are scared shitless recounting what they saw, I believe them.
02:07:03.000 I really do because it's hard to act, right?
02:07:07.000 But my mind tends to go toward what is physically possible.
02:07:12.000 Is it mass hallucinations?
02:07:14.000 Is it some sort of DMT weapon that can elicit some sort of mass hallucination where people are susceptible to a delusional mindset and told something like you just said?
02:07:27.000 Is it the hypersonic weapons technology?
02:07:29.000 Is it something that is a drone being projected holographically?
02:07:32.000 Is it something that we can explain by...
02:07:36.000 You know, the realm of quantum physics that we actually don't understand, like the Schrodinger's cat phenomenon.
02:07:42.000 Like, is there something that is within the realm of physics, but we don't understand and can't comprehend it yet?
02:07:47.000 So that's where my mind goes in terms of what is it.
02:07:51.000 If it is something from another planet, is it holographically projected onto us?
02:07:56.000 Is that what's happening?
02:07:58.000 But in terms of the intelligence community and people like Marco Rubio with that PBS special that came out, or the 60 Minutes special, and Marco Rubio at the end of it is just like, we don't know what these are, man.
02:08:09.000 They might not be from our planet.
02:08:10.000 And I'm like, what the fuck?
02:08:11.000 Like one of the most hardcore neoconservatives is going out there and cutely toying with the idea that this could be from another world.
02:08:19.000 And knowing that this has been so under wraps that whatever is happening, and I believe something is happening, has been completely censored and covered up by our government.
02:08:30.000 But now they're coming out and saying it's okay to talk about this.
02:08:35.000 This is no longer some fringe kooky conspiracy theory.
02:08:38.000 This is happening.
02:08:40.000 Of course, the cynic in me goes to what better way to kind of We pull on our deep-seated psychological fears of something that we can't explain, this kind of supernatural element to whatever is going on.
02:08:54.000 Going back to the UFO lore of everything from X-Files, something that I grew up on, you know, the abyss, like this notion that if there's something greater than our government and our technological capabilities, then we need to kind of like just acquiesce toward our institutions to be like,
02:09:10.000 you just do whatever you need to do, whether that be...
02:09:14.000 Militarizing space.
02:09:15.000 These things are a threat just because they exist and we don't know what they are.
02:09:21.000 So my mind goes to There's a reason why this rollout is happening and it's not for the betterment of humanity and it's not because of the curiosity of these officials in terms of learning or wanting to find out what UFOs are.
02:09:35.000 It's about, going back to what I said before, it's about militarization and Space Force was basically part of the neocon blueprint back from PNAC, the Bush administration, and Trump fulfilled that dream.
02:09:48.000 And I do think that this is part of that.
02:09:52.000 And look, I don't know, but I think that we need to ask questions.
02:09:55.000 Why is our reality being sanitized?
02:09:58.000 Why are things like QAnon being purged from the internet?
02:10:01.000 As ludicrous as it may be, but we're also simultaneously being told that UFOs are something that are real, And they're concerning.
02:10:11.000 They're potentially a threat to national security.
02:10:13.000 We don't know what they are.
02:10:15.000 And it's okay to talk about that now.
02:10:18.000 That is a curious thing to me, Joe.
02:10:20.000 It is curious.
02:10:22.000 And I appreciate your perspective because I think it's good to look at this from a bunch of different angles because...
02:10:29.000 It's real tempting to say, well, I'm finally at a point in history.
02:10:36.000 It's amazing.
02:10:37.000 I'm here where the government is admitting that there are alien crafts that are off-world vehicles, not from this earth.
02:10:47.000 You know, that was like one of the quotes.
02:10:49.000 That we're admitting that we are being visited.
02:10:55.000 But are we?
02:10:56.000 Because why would the fucking government finally start telling us without motivation, without some sort of endgame, what's in it for them to tell us about these things?
02:11:08.000 Unless they're so frequent and so bizarre and so many military people are talking about them that they feel like their back is against the wall and they have to say something about it because otherwise they're going to lose credibility.
02:11:20.000 That there's so many of these things.
02:11:22.000 And there's so many of them, like the Go Fast video, the FLIR video.
02:11:26.000 There's so many of these encounters that these very reputable people, like Commander David Fravor, have had with these crafts that behave in a way that is impossible, as far as we know, with any known technology on Earth in 2021. And this is, the David Fravor one is from 2004. What's disturbing about it is no matter what it is,
02:11:45.000 I don't think we're going to find out the truth.
02:11:47.000 And I think it's going to be exploited for certain means that we're not going to know.
02:11:52.000 It's not going to be overt.
02:11:53.000 But there is definitely something going on because it doesn't make sense.
02:11:57.000 And if it's, oh, there's so many people seeing it, shit, this has been going on for 70 years.
02:12:01.000 I mean, that movie, I mean, there's people like every day...
02:12:05.000 One thing that I find really interesting, though, is now everyone has cell phones that film in 4K, Google Earth satellites all over the world that can zoom in on someone walking down the street.
02:12:17.000 So if these things are flying over the ocean, like someone, you know, part of the David Fravor special on 60 Minutes was saying, I saw this shit like this every day.
02:12:26.000 That was a literal quote from him.
02:12:28.000 Why are we only seeing these grainy satellite images of these UFOs?
02:12:33.000 Well, Christopher Mellon, who used to work for the State Department, told me that they have way more shit, way more footage.
02:12:40.000 They're just not releasing it.
02:12:42.000 But why?
02:12:43.000 Why roll out this one where it's this grainy filming of a satellite?
02:12:46.000 I don't think they're rolling it.
02:12:46.000 They're not rolling it out.
02:12:48.000 It's soldiers.
02:12:49.000 It's sailors.
02:12:50.000 It's fighter pilots.
02:12:52.000 It's people are releasing these...
02:12:54.000 Videos and photographs, they're leaking them.
02:12:56.000 But how come they're not getting in trouble for leaking them?
02:13:00.000 This is a whistleblower leaking these...
02:13:02.000 Because I think it's a different kind of a leak.
02:13:05.000 It's not like they're leaking something the United States is doing.
02:13:09.000 You remember that kid that got arrested for taking a photograph inside of a submarine?
02:13:13.000 Mm-hmm.
02:13:13.000 Remember that?
02:13:14.000 Mm-hmm.
02:13:14.000 That's a different kind of leak, right?
02:13:16.000 That's you're leaking out U.S. military secrets.
02:13:19.000 This is not a U.S. military secret.
02:13:21.000 This is a strange, unidentified, what they call a UAP now, because UFO's got a bad rap.
02:13:27.000 It's like Red Pill.
02:13:28.000 I've got to take it over by assholes.
02:13:30.000 You know, so now a lot of these people that have seen these things are frustrated at the lack of transparency.
02:13:38.000 I mean, this is the narrative, right?
02:13:39.000 I don't know if this is true, but my friend Jeremy Corbell, who's been the guy who's released most of these, most of these videos, like those pyramid-shaped crafts that they were watching with night vision that were in the middle of the fucking ocean floating around over this destroyer or this aircraft carrier,
02:13:55.000 they don't know what the fuck those things are.
02:13:57.000 These are videos from people that are there.
02:13:59.000 The one that was a transmedium vehicle that was flying over the ocean and then went into the ocean, they don't know what the fuck that is.
02:14:08.000 They filmed that thing with night vision.
02:14:10.000 They don't know what it is, and this was soldiers that were filming it, enlisted people who were filming it, and you could hear them saying, like, what the fuck is this doing?
02:14:18.000 It's splashing down.
02:14:19.000 It's in the water now.
02:14:20.000 They're like, fuck.
02:14:22.000 It's wild.
02:14:23.000 Yeah, the water to air stuff doesn't make sense either without compromising the function of one or the other.
02:14:29.000 It's very fascinating.
02:14:30.000 But I guess my point is, if they're seeing this shit every day, you'd think that they would try to film it not on satellite.
02:14:38.000 Well, this is the point.
02:14:38.000 They don't have the ability to film it on satellite.
02:14:42.000 Right.
02:14:43.000 They only have access to their cell phones.
02:14:45.000 So it's filming on their cell phone.
02:14:48.000 But they are filming some of these things.
02:14:49.000 Like that one that went into the ocean, that's the best they can do with filming something off of night vision.
02:14:55.000 The ones that were floating around above that UFO or above the aircraft characters shaped like pyramids.
02:15:01.000 About the Go Fast video.
02:15:04.000 I mean, they're using the cameras that are on these fighter jets that are designed to track enemy craft, and that's what they're designed for.
02:15:12.000 They're locking in on this thing with their tracking systems.
02:15:15.000 This thing's moving at the same rates of speed, and they're following it.
02:15:19.000 We're good to go.
02:15:41.000 If that's true, they probably have some really high-resolution shit that will curl your toes.
02:15:47.000 And that's what Christopher Mellon says.
02:15:49.000 But there's no reason for them to release that stuff for two reasons.
02:15:52.000 One, why would they give away the actual capability of these satellites in an undeniable way?
02:16:02.000 If you could see the fucking bolts on this UFO from however many miles in the sky these satellites are, then everybody would be like, Jesus Christ, what else are they watching?
02:16:15.000 What else can they see?
02:16:18.000 Watch you take a shit through your bathroom window.
02:16:20.000 What are they doing?
02:16:21.000 If they can see that, if they can read a license plate from space, that's what's been reported, that it is possible now, through these satellites, that you can get such a high-resolution video that you can clearly see a license plate from space and read it clearly.
02:16:38.000 There's also something called claytronics, which is like a programmable matter, like microcomputers that can create a holographic cloud that's actually a tangible hologram.
02:16:49.000 I mean, there's so many things that seems like it's centuries off.
02:16:53.000 This is what they're saying that they're working on, developing, where you can have a series of microcomputers program themselves into different visual entities, into one giant hologram.
02:17:06.000 That was a Spider-Man movie.
02:17:08.000 Yes!
02:17:08.000 No, I know!
02:17:09.000 You know?
02:17:09.000 The recent Spider-Man movie?
02:17:11.000 No, this is crazy shit, man.
02:17:12.000 I mean, Chris Carter, the creator of X-Files, says that he had a CIA guy feeding him information for the show.
02:17:18.000 I mean, I do think that art imitates reality in a lot of ways.
02:17:22.000 And when it goes back to the 60 Minutes special, which was one of the only mainstream institutions that was taking this seriously...
02:17:29.000 My whole thing is, like, there was no skepticism at all.
02:17:31.000 There was no attempt to debunk these people, which seemed like a change in tone from these institutions.
02:17:38.000 Like, so that, like, blows my mind.
02:17:40.000 It's like, usually you would have people have the debunker, have the guy saying that he saw UFOs.
02:17:44.000 But this one was just, like, glued in, being like, this is happening.
02:17:49.000 Well, the New York Times is the first to break it in 2017. That really shifted the perception.
02:17:53.000 When you see the New York Times has an article talking about these unexplained vehicles and taking them seriously, and then interviews with high-ranking military officials, people from the Pentagon, all that kind of shit, when you see that stuff starting to make it into the mainstream...
02:18:08.000 It just changes everything.
02:18:10.000 The New York Times for sure changed everything.
02:18:12.000 That 2017 article changed the people that would never take UFO seriously.
02:18:18.000 They're seeing that in the New York Times and they're saying like, holy shit, this is in the Times.
02:18:21.000 Yeah, these are the same people who discredited Dennis Kucinich at the 2007 presidential debate because they were like, you saw a UFO? Like, you fucking idiot.
02:18:29.000 And that was one of the questions.
02:18:30.000 And he was like, yeah, yeah, like I saw a UFO. And it's like, dude, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, all of them saw UFOs too.
02:18:38.000 And it was such a discrediting fringe thing.
02:18:41.000 But no, it's not at all.
02:18:46.000 There's so many bizarre things.
02:18:47.000 If they were developing BZ hallucinogenic weaponry back during the Cold War, my mind goes to something about if you take an FDMT, you visit aliens.
02:18:58.000 You know that.
02:19:00.000 Could this be some sort of DMT weapon?
02:19:05.000 Well, if you could figure out a way to get someone to have an unintended psychedelic experience, If there was a way to do that.
02:19:15.000 Like, you know what I go to?
02:19:16.000 You know those attacks in Havana where they couldn't figure out what- Yeah, right, the electromagnetic- Do they know what that is?
02:19:22.000 They're claiming- This is another bizarre thing, is like something that seemed to science fiction a decade ago is now being told that it's real, like microwave weapons.
02:19:32.000 That's what they're saying that they are.
02:19:33.000 So they can aim it at you.
02:19:34.000 Yeah.
02:19:35.000 So like you're in your office, you're working in your office, all of a sudden you lose your equilibrium, you start throwing up, you can't think.
02:19:43.000 Tinnitus.
02:19:43.000 Yeah.
02:19:44.000 Permanent brain damage for some of these people allegedly.
02:19:47.000 They're calling it Havana Syndrome, it sounds like some film noir thing.
02:19:52.000 And then they're pointing to, oh this must be China or Russia because we wouldn't morally Do anything like this, the red flags in my mind go off right there.
02:20:02.000 Like, what the fuck is this?
02:20:04.000 Right, for sure.
02:20:05.000 Do the red flags go off when you see what's going on in Cuba right now, in terms of all the chaos?
02:20:11.000 Yeah.
02:20:11.000 It seems instantaneous.
02:20:15.000 And, you know, all of a sudden the Cuban people are fed up?
02:20:18.000 Who's involved in this?
02:20:19.000 Yeah, so, I mean, whether it be Cuba, Venezuela, multiple other countries, Iraq, there's a policy by the CIA to starve people into submission and then to overthrow their governments.
02:20:30.000 It's never worked in the history of the world.
02:20:32.000 No one does that, right?
02:20:33.000 But it doesn't stop the policy from sanctioning people to death.
02:20:38.000 There's a 62-year criminal embargo that has been in place on Cuba just for the fact that they wanted to go a different route.
02:20:45.000 They wanted to pursue a communist state.
02:20:47.000 And the CIA never forgave them.
02:20:49.000 And so there's been hundreds of assassination attempts against their leaders.
02:20:53.000 The CIA has spent $25 million every single year trying to foment regime change, funding these institutions on the ground.
02:21:03.000 They created a fake Twitter account called Zunzunio one year to try to, like, Yeah.
02:21:25.000 Inside Cuba, in Miami to try to foment all of this hostility against the Castro regime.
02:21:31.000 And the embargo, it doesn't just prevent trade from the U.S. It prevents and basically puts in place this pressure valve where any state in the world knows their place, knows that if they try to trade with Cuba, they will be penalized.
02:21:47.000 So by proxy, they don't want to fuck with that because they will be threatened by the U.S. Like, you cannot do this.
02:21:53.000 So Cuba has been isolated, this tiny island nation that has somehow done these incredible medicinal advancements like eliminating HIV transmission from mother to child.
02:22:04.000 Despite the criminal embargo, this is preventing medicine from getting in.
02:22:08.000 This is preventing food from getting in.
02:22:10.000 This is a devastating thing that's cost them tens of billions of dollars.
02:22:13.000 During COVID, Trump added like 100 plus sanctions on top of the embargo.
02:22:18.000 And every single year, every country in the world in the United Nations General Assembly votes to lift the embargo, except the US and Israel.
02:22:28.000 They vote to uphold it every time.
02:22:30.000 Everyone in the world realizes this is a criminal thing.
02:22:33.000 If we want to see what Cubans can do, and if they're fed up, they need to change their own system from within.
02:22:39.000 But right now, the media is painting this as, oh my god, Cubans are starving.
02:22:44.000 Cubans don't have medicine and food because of communism.
02:22:48.000 Now, lift the goddamn embargo, and then let's figure out what's going on, right?
02:22:53.000 You cannot look at this country in isolation and say, oh, this is due to the communism?
02:22:58.000 No.
02:22:59.000 This is a crippling economic blockade.
02:23:02.000 And when I was there, I went on the ground and did some reports for Breaking the Set.
02:23:05.000 And I talked to many people.
02:23:07.000 There's incredible advancements.
02:23:09.000 There's housing for all.
02:23:10.000 You don't see homeless people there.
02:23:15.000 We're good to go.
02:23:37.000 We are dying and we don't have access to medicine because of the criminal blockade of the United States government.
02:23:43.000 Please tell your government to stop.
02:23:45.000 And then we'll sort out our own problems.
02:23:47.000 If we have critiques, if we want to figure out some other political system, that's on them.
02:23:52.000 But we can't judge them.
02:23:55.000 And you really see how the media is controlled.
02:23:57.000 When Haiti's been protesting for three years straight against a U.S.-backed dictator and no one gave a shit, and then one day spontaneous protests erupt, right?
02:24:08.000 And all of a sudden the media is all over it.
02:24:10.000 We need to intervene.
02:24:12.000 We need to offer some sort of humanitarian chain, just like we did to Venezuela, which is also under crippling sanctions.
02:24:19.000 All of these things are hoisted up by the US media as we need to save Cuba, right?
02:24:26.000 You even have the mayor of Miami on TV on Fox News saying we need to bomb Cuba right now.
02:24:32.000 This is our chance.
02:24:32.000 We need to do what George Bush did in Panama and what Clinton did to Yugoslavia.
02:24:37.000 We need to bomb the shit out of Cuba and remove the president.
02:24:42.000 I mean, this is sick stuff.
02:24:43.000 And when you look at the actual terrorism, That the US has sponsored to try to overthrow this tiny island nation's economic system just because they didn't want to go along with capitalism.
02:24:54.000 It's unbelievable.
02:24:55.000 So yeah, when I see protests erupt spontaneously, and when the media is actually desperately showing the pro-communist protests as anti-communist protests, there's actually dueling protests right now.
02:25:10.000 Bombing Cuba, an option that needs to be discussed, says Miami mayor.
02:25:16.000 Can you imagine advocating that?
02:25:19.000 No, it's sick, man.
02:25:20.000 And I think that a lot of Americans get one side of the story because a lot of Cuban exiles are, of course, against what's going on there.
02:25:28.000 But just go.
02:25:30.000 Just go for yourself.
02:25:31.000 It's hard now.
02:25:32.000 The U.S. had a travel ban on Cuba forever because they don't want you to see with your own eyes.
02:25:37.000 Seeing is believing.
02:25:39.000 But it was lifted for a while, right?
02:25:40.000 It was lifted for a while.
02:25:41.000 Trump put it back.
02:25:42.000 And COVID has completely devastated the economy, even more so.
02:25:46.000 And the sanctions that Trump put on place have completely debilitated beyond, you know, beyond belief.
02:25:53.000 There's no doubt that people are being assassinated now because of these uprisings.
02:25:57.000 There's no doubt that the military is killing people.
02:25:59.000 Oh, no, I don't believe that.
02:25:59.000 I don't believe that at all.
02:26:00.000 You don't believe it's happening?
02:26:01.000 Nah.
02:26:01.000 Really?
02:26:01.000 I don't believe that people are getting assassinated for protesting now.
02:26:03.000 So these people, when you see people getting dragged away by the police and all that stuff, what do you think is happening?
02:26:08.000 I have not seen videos of people getting dragged away from the police.
02:26:11.000 No, I haven't seen that.
02:26:12.000 You haven't seen videos of the police shooting at people?
02:26:15.000 No.
02:26:17.000 I have not.
02:26:18.000 We're getting these reports, right?
02:26:19.000 We're getting these reports of assassinations and that people are being slaughtered.
02:26:24.000 Do you think this is propaganda?
02:26:26.000 I absolutely think that we need to question everything that's coming from our media, especially when I was on the ground in Venezuela when they were saying the same thing about Maduro.
02:26:34.000 And I was there.
02:26:35.000 I was in the opposition protest during the deadliest time.
02:26:38.000 And I looked through the death records.
02:26:40.000 I was walking with opposition protesters.
02:26:42.000 I saw what was happening with my own eyes.
02:26:44.000 And it's not what the media says, man.
02:26:47.000 So let me ask you this.
02:26:48.000 If you are a person and you are on a network, we don't even have to name the name of a network, how does this work?
02:26:54.000 Do you get a message?
02:26:57.000 Do you get talking points?
02:26:59.000 Is there a discussion with some intelligence agency that gets together with the head executives and they sort out what the narrative is going to be and then this gets filtered down to the talking heads that are on the network?
02:27:13.000 Going back to the model of, like, how does consent – how is it operated and how is it manufactured?
02:27:20.000 It's like, yeah, so media ownership, right?
02:27:22.000 Who owns the giant corporate conglomerates?
02:27:25.000 A small few – A small – like five or six corporations control 90 percent of everything that we see here in Reed.
02:27:32.000 Then it goes to media elites.
02:27:36.000 So who dictates the policy?
02:27:38.000 And how do you know how you get access to politicians?
02:27:42.000 I lived in DC for a couple years.
02:27:44.000 I know exactly how this shit works.
02:27:45.000 You don't get access to people unless you play the game.
02:27:48.000 If you ask questions that are unsavory, you will not get invited back to the press conference.
02:27:54.000 Then you go to the whole issue of flack, undermining the messenger who counters whatever.
02:28:00.000 So it's marginalizing and discrediting people who don't go in line, which goes back to the hiring process, which goes back to self-censorship.
02:28:08.000 If you are working at these media outlets, chances are you agree largely with the orthodoxy of the media network.
02:28:15.000 You agree with the fact that the US is an empire, that it, you know, You're a capitalist.
02:28:23.000 You're a Zionist.
02:28:25.000 You think that these countries need to be, you know, that are despotic and whatever.
02:28:30.000 You believe in this.
02:28:32.000 You believe in the mythology, right, that's put out there by our media.
02:28:36.000 Otherwise, you would not get hired.
02:28:38.000 And if you somehow change your mind, you're going to face a wall.
02:28:42.000 You're going to face a wall internally.
02:28:43.000 And you see this time and again.
02:28:45.000 For example, this woman who was just in a Students for Justice for Palestine chapter in her university, some woman named Emily, she joined AP as an intern, and she was fired.
02:28:59.000 From a pro-Zionist lobbying campaign, because they said she was too biased to work at AP. Meanwhile, you have a former IDF prison guard, the Israeli military, he was a prison guard in the Israeli military, managing the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg.
02:29:13.000 I mean, that's the kind of disproportionality that we're talking about.
02:29:17.000 So, yeah, it's also advertising, of course, right?
02:29:22.000 That's who subsidizes media.
02:29:24.000 Defense contractors, pharmaceutical industries, big banks, oil companies.
02:29:30.000 You know who pays your pocketbooks, right?
02:29:32.000 You know who's stuffing the cash.
02:29:36.000 And 80%, this is according to Peter Phillips, the author of Giants Who Really Rules the World, and it's really transnational corporations that have interlocking boards of directorates, and really you can fit them all in a studio no bigger than this giant apparatus, but he says that 80% of corporate news is prepackaged by PR firms that work for governments or corporations.
02:29:59.000 80% of the news that's delivered through this filter is prepackaged for us.
02:30:06.000 That's a pretty scary concept.
02:30:07.000 That is wild.
02:30:08.000 And I've seen it firsthand, Joe, when I was in Venezuela, when I was in Colombia.
02:30:13.000 I've been to Guantanamo Bay.
02:30:16.000 I have talked to journalists in these institutions.
02:30:19.000 They believe.
02:30:20.000 They believe.
02:30:22.000 And a lot of them sit in their hotels.
02:30:24.000 They just sit in their fucking hotels and do their journalism behind...
02:30:29.000 They don't go out and speak to people.
02:30:31.000 Whenever I'm in a country on the ground, I'll go and get a snapshot of what people are thinking.
02:30:35.000 And I'm honest about it.
02:30:37.000 And beyond that, I don't have the veil and facade of objectivity where a lot of these people in the corporate news will say, oh, no, I'm an objective journalist.
02:30:48.000 I'm an unbiased journalist.
02:30:49.000 And that's what's hammered in your head during journalism school.
02:30:52.000 That doesn't exist.
02:30:53.000 Objectivity does not exist.
02:30:54.000 You are always couching your opinions in establishment entities, authority figures and think tanks.
02:31:01.000 And who funds those think tanks?
02:31:03.000 Who's behind?
02:31:04.000 You know, what ideology is driving the figures that you're citing?
02:31:09.000 So what I do with my journalism, I just come out and talk about what my opinion is.
02:31:14.000 And if you want to follow my journalism, that's great.
02:31:16.000 But I don't hide who I am.
02:31:18.000 I don't hide who I am and I don't hide what I think.
02:31:21.000 And I uplift the people that are obscured and erased from corporate media.
02:31:25.000 I highlight what Israelis think.
02:31:27.000 I highlight the Palestinian voices.
02:31:29.000 I'll highlight the Maduro supporters.
02:31:31.000 I'll highlight the Cubans who are Castro and Supporters and supporters of communism.
02:31:36.000 Because we never hear their perspectives, Joe.
02:31:38.000 It's one-sided and it's curated and carefully crafted for an American audience.
02:31:43.000 And we have to take a step back and ask, who's putting this story together?
02:31:48.000 What interests lie behind the story?
02:31:52.000 And apply our own critical thinking, because we're living in a highly polarized, highly politicized society right now, and it's never been worse.
02:32:01.000 We're siloed off into our own echo chambers.
02:32:04.000 We only see what we want to see because the corporations have insidiously curated what our reality should be.
02:32:12.000 And that is not the way that we need to be.
02:32:14.000 That's not how we're ever going to get an understanding.
02:32:16.000 That's not ever how we're going to figure out where our similarities lie.
02:32:21.000 Right?
02:32:21.000 How we can actually change things for the better.
02:32:24.000 I believe that we can.
02:32:27.000 I do.
02:32:28.000 But it has to start with talking to each other.
02:32:31.000 And we can't do that if we're being constantly manipulated and if we're being censored.
02:32:38.000 We're given the illusion that we have free speech, but when it comes to the overall narrative, it's very curated.
02:32:45.000 And I forgot one key element of Chomsky's model, the common enemy.
02:32:51.000 There's always a common enemy, Joe.
02:32:53.000 And who is that?
02:32:55.000 It's Cuba.
02:32:56.000 It's Venezuela.
02:32:58.000 It's Russia.
02:32:59.000 It's China.
02:33:00.000 It's China.
02:33:02.000 That's an imperative.
02:33:04.000 That's a necessity to manufacture consent, for people to be distracted at what is this other person doing, not what are we doing.
02:33:12.000 And as an American citizen, that's all I can do.
02:33:15.000 I can't do anything about China.
02:33:18.000 You know, Chinese people are working to curb their carbon emissions.
02:33:22.000 They're working to change their society as best they can.
02:33:26.000 All I can do as an American citizen is do as much as I can here in this country because I feel like dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
02:33:34.000 And I need to speak out, use my platform, use my voice as much as I'm being, you know, as much as our videos throttled on YouTube, as much as the algorithms have censored my work.
02:33:44.000 I need to do whatever I can to put this information out there.
02:33:48.000 Because I think it's important, you know, and a lot of people are interested in it.
02:33:52.000 I never learned true history or the nature of our government in school.
02:33:56.000 You know, my education was sanitized for me.
02:33:58.000 So it's important for me to be that vector to be that vehicle for other people who want to go down, down, down, down.
02:34:06.000 Well, never has the propaganda been clearer than the adoption by the military of woke ethics.
02:34:14.000 Oh my God.
02:34:15.000 Like these commercials that they're putting out where they show, I had two mommies and now I'm in the army.
02:34:21.000 The CIA? The Latina?
02:34:24.000 Yeah.
02:34:25.000 Dude, talk about a PSYOP. It's wild because they're basically trying to connect themselves to woke ethics because they recognize, they've licked their finger, they found out which way the wind's blowing, like, yeah, go that way.
02:34:41.000 Yeah, propaganda.
02:34:42.000 Let's go with it.
02:34:43.000 I mean, that is nothing.
02:34:45.000 They have nothing to do with diversity.
02:34:48.000 They have nothing to do with that.
02:34:49.000 They have to do with bombing the shit out of people.
02:34:52.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:34:52.000 That's their business.
02:34:53.000 Well, the CIA had such a bad rap, I think, before 9-11, and they've been able to rebrand themselves so many times.
02:34:59.000 And then, of course, through Trump, all these intelligence communities, agents have been able to rebrand themselves as like resistance people and all this shit.
02:35:06.000 But let's go back to what we knew the CIA was doing before 9-11, because they're still doing that shit today.
02:35:11.000 Yeah.
02:35:11.000 They're running death squads in Afghanistan.
02:35:14.000 For 20-plus years, death squads are happening.
02:35:17.000 Right now, they will outlive the U.S. occupation.
02:35:19.000 That shit's happening.
02:35:20.000 So it's no longer the old CIA. What did they used to do?
02:35:24.000 It's what are they doing?
02:35:25.000 And how are they changing their PR strategy to adopt this woke ideology to basically trick young kids into recruitment models and whatever, and to try to wipe their hands clean of their sinister, horrific, bloody legacy that continues today?
02:35:44.000 What can break this cycle?
02:35:46.000 What, if anything?
02:35:47.000 What, if anything, can make our society a more balanced, more accurate in terms of its portrayal of what really is going on in the world and a place where we're not doing the same shit in a more complicated way decade after decade?
02:36:12.000 I think that, well, first of all, demilitarization is key.
02:36:16.000 I think that we don't need 800 military bases around the world.
02:36:20.000 We need to be honest about who we are and what we do, right, and take accountability for what this country is doing in our name.
02:36:28.000 That has to start with the consciousness shifting.
02:36:31.000 That has to start with conversations that are uncomfortable, right?
02:36:35.000 When it comes to Israel-Palestine, it's happened.
02:36:37.000 We're now on the other side of the coin.
02:36:39.000 People know it's an apartheid state.
02:36:41.000 Now the conversation becomes, what do we have to do about it to make apartheid fall?
02:36:45.000 Markedly different than the way it was when you were on my podcast five years ago or so?
02:36:51.000 So controversial, Joe.
02:36:52.000 Now the tide has shifted.
02:36:54.000 You have sitting congresspeople talking about apartheid.
02:36:56.000 You have Human Rights Watch talking about apartheid.
02:36:59.000 We need to address the elephant in the room.
02:37:01.000 I know it's controversial and I know it's hard.
02:37:04.000 And everyone knows someone in the military.
02:37:06.000 My partner, Mike Preissner, who I do the Empire Files with, he is an Iraq War veteran.
02:37:12.000 He has a couple of viral speeches that people may have seen doing winter soldier testimonies.
02:37:17.000 But he joined the military a month before 9-11.
02:37:24.000 And he got shipped to Iraq.
02:37:26.000 And now he is an incredibly committed anti-imperialist veteran who now helps soldiers get out of the military.
02:37:34.000 And when we were on the precipice of war with Iran, he was there coaching people through 24-7.
02:37:39.000 You don't have to go.
02:37:42.000 You don't have to go.
02:37:44.000 And you don't have to be a part of this.
02:37:47.000 So it starts with conversations, Joe.
02:37:49.000 I would recommend people get off Twitter and get in the real world and start talking and engaging in dialogue because nothing will ever change.
02:37:57.000 We're just going to keep reinforcing These structures and we're going to keep reinforcing the most horrible habits and falling back on ideologies that are based on myths and nothing more.
02:38:13.000 And it's really unfortunate because the biggest myth of all is the fact that we need to be an empire and we need to really address that and we need to start figuring out how can we live in a sustainable world?
02:38:24.000 How can we cooperate And face the challenges that are coming.
02:38:28.000 Climate change.
02:38:29.000 The world is going to shrink, right?
02:38:31.000 There is something also optimistic, though.
02:38:34.000 We don't have to worry about college for our kids.
02:38:37.000 I don't think that that's a thing anymore.
02:38:38.000 We don't have to get in debt.
02:38:39.000 I mean, it's all about learning skills and not falling into these debt traps that don't really apply to what the future is going to be.
02:38:51.000 Well, college is such a sinister debt trap because it's subsidized by the government and you can't get out of the loans.
02:38:59.000 Exactly.
02:39:00.000 You keep those loans forever.
02:39:01.000 They're passed on actually to your next of kin if you die.
02:39:05.000 That's the only form of debt that stays in.
02:39:07.000 If you have a student loan, your kid has to pay it?
02:39:10.000 Yeah.
02:39:10.000 What?
02:39:11.000 What?
02:39:11.000 Yep.
02:39:12.000 It's the only form of debt.
02:39:13.000 So my parents have student loans.
02:39:14.000 And if they die, they come knocking on my door.
02:39:18.000 They come knocking on your door.
02:39:19.000 How is that possible?
02:39:21.000 That's what I'm saying, man.
02:39:22.000 That's real?
02:39:23.000 This is actually weird relics.
02:39:24.000 Google that.
02:39:25.000 This is actually weird relics of like...
02:39:27.000 That's so creepy.
02:39:28.000 It's actually kind of cool to think of what our children will do.
02:39:33.000 Because I'm trying to look at this, yeah, there's so many things to be negative about and harp about, but I think that the future could be a really amazing one.
02:39:40.000 Because I have faith that the creativity and ingenuity of people embracing the vastly different reality that we grew up in.
02:39:49.000 And abolishing all these old relics of the nuclear family and the fact that you need to just put in this $100,000 into a college fund and then go to college and get a degree and then slave away in some thing that none of that is going to apply to them.
02:40:05.000 And so it's actually a really beautiful thing that we can develop.
02:40:07.000 And if we cooperate and if we work together and if we figure out a way that we can actually manage our resources in a sustainable way, And in a harmonious way with nature, and I truly believe that we can, I think the world will be a very,
02:40:23.000 very different place, Joe.
02:40:24.000 And I think that because we've done it for so long, we've done these horrible things for so long that we just feel like that's normal.
02:40:32.000 It doesn't have to be that way.
02:40:34.000 The status quo is dangerous.
02:40:37.000 I think we're worried about other countries.
02:40:39.000 I think that's one of the reasons why most people, including myself, support the military is because we think that other countries are up to no good.
02:40:49.000 They have nefarious intentions.
02:40:50.000 It's us versus them.
02:40:52.000 They're trying to be what the United States is, the military leader of the world.
02:40:57.000 And it's better to have us than to have them.
02:41:00.000 This is like the...
02:41:02.000 That's really the prevailing narrative, right?
02:41:05.000 Well, what evidence is there that any other country is trying to do militarily what we are doing?
02:41:10.000 China.
02:41:10.000 What are they doing?
02:41:11.000 Well, they have bases all over the place.
02:41:13.000 There's one base in Djibouti.
02:41:15.000 That's it?
02:41:16.000 That's it.
02:41:16.000 The only base they have outside of China.
02:41:18.000 Yes.
02:41:19.000 Well, they do do things in terms of like using corporations to give loans to places that they know can't...
02:41:27.000 Like the same shit we do.
02:41:28.000 Mm-hmm.
02:41:29.000 Extract resources.
02:41:31.000 So this is all like the military is inexorable from the government, right?
02:41:35.000 The government and corporations, they all work together.
02:41:38.000 There's no such thing as like individual corporations that are independent of the military in China, right?
02:41:45.000 Or of the government in China.
02:41:48.000 I don't know that.
02:41:50.000 Yeah, I don't know.
02:41:50.000 This is the narrative, right?
02:41:52.000 What I've been told is that everybody who's working for whatever corporation you're working for, the mandates get brought down from the Communist Party and that's why they're involved in whether it's road building in parts of Africa or whether they're developing mines.
02:42:10.000 All these things they're doing, they're doing with the interest of the Communist Party.
02:42:14.000 But even if you were to take that narrative at face value and say, okay, so we do that with the IMF and the World Bank.
02:42:22.000 We do the same thing, right?
02:42:24.000 So basically, we have to do that to stave off Chinese influence in those regions and to offer counterweight to U.S. hegemony.
02:42:34.000 But that's like a side.
02:42:35.000 Yeah, it's kind of intertwined with the military, of course, because it's acting as an alternative to subjugate entire nations into debt traps and stuff like that.
02:42:43.000 But still, that's like a side from what I'm talking about, this giant global military empire.
02:42:49.000 It's unmatched.
02:42:50.000 And I don't think that it has to be that way.
02:42:52.000 And I don't think any other country like China or Russia would become that.
02:42:56.000 It's madness.
02:42:57.000 It's lunacy.
02:42:57.000 So you think that it's established this way because of what Eisenhower warned about, that the military industrial complex has become this overwhelming beast of a system.
02:43:10.000 That has just controlled the United States government for so long and controlled the way we interact with foreign governments for so long that we think that it has to be this way, but it doesn't.
02:43:22.000 It does not.
02:43:23.000 And it starts with demilitarizing our mind, our consciousness, Joe.
02:43:28.000 It doesn't have to be this way.
02:43:31.000 It's a good way to end.
02:43:33.000 It doesn't have to be this way.
02:43:34.000 Abby, you're a bad motherfucker.
02:43:38.000 I always appreciate you.
02:43:39.000 You're a very unique person and you've got a lot of courage.
02:43:43.000 Thanks, Jim.
02:43:44.000 It's always great to see you.
02:43:45.000 It's great to see you too.
02:43:46.000 Thank you for having me on.
02:43:47.000 Tell everybody how to get a hold of all your content and everything you're doing.
02:43:52.000 Yeah, so check out GazaFightsForFreedom.com.
02:43:55.000 Check out our documentary about that.
02:43:57.000 Check out Earth'sGreatestEnemy.com.
02:43:59.000 Join the journey there.
02:44:01.000 And check out Empire Files in general and Media Roots Radio, the podcast I do with my brother.
02:44:07.000 And also I have an art website.
02:44:08.000 I'm painting a lot lately.
02:44:10.000 It's helping me get through all this shit, Joe.
02:44:15.000 AbbyMartin.org is my art.
02:44:16.000 So check that out.
02:44:17.000 Yeah, psychedelic art.
02:44:18.000 Thank you so much, Joe.
02:44:19.000 Thank you so much.
02:44:20.000 It's always great to see you.
02:44:21.000 Much love, man.
02:44:21.000 All right.
02:44:21.000 Much love to everybody out there.
02:44:23.000 Keep it together, bitches.
02:44:24.000 Bye.