Abby Martin is a former reporter for Russia Today, a Russian-owned news network that focuses on the news and politics of the world. In this episode, Abby talks about her time at the network, her time covering the Ukraine crisis, and why she left to pursue a career as a freelance reporter in the media industry. She also talks about how she got her start as a reporter, and what it was like working for a government sponsored news network, and how she managed to get her foot in the door of one of the most powerful countries in the world, Russia. She also gives us a run down of what it's like to be a reporter for a foreign government, and her thoughts on the current state of relations between Russia and the United States, including the recent sanctions against Russia Today and John Kerry's call for a boycott of the network by the U.S. Also, she gives us the inside scoop on why we should be worried about Russia Today being sanctioned by the Obama administration, and if it's really as bad as they say it's getting any closer to becoming a permanent fixture on the airwaves. You won't want to miss this one! If you're a fan of the show, you'll definitely want to check out this episode! Subscribe to the podcast! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices. Rate/subscribe in Apple Podcast's Become a supporter of the podcast by clicking here. Thanks for listening and share this episode with your fellow podcaster! Music: "Like, Share, Share and Retweet this episode on iTunes and share it on your thoughts on your social media platforms! We'll be listening to this episode and spreading the word to your friends about it on all of your friends and posting it everywhere else! and spreading it everywhere you listen to your Insta story! Thank you for listening to it! Love ya'll can't get enough? Peace, bye bye bye, bye! <3 - Tom Bells, bye Bye Bye Bye bye - bye - Cheers, bye - Rory Mclean & Cheers - Rory Dorsey - Caitie & Gabbie - Pravy & Jacklyn - Emily Meegan <____________ - Margo & John xx - Jacklyn xx - - Eudes - Sarah - ~ - Korty - John Kasparek - Rebecca
00:00:25.000Yeah, that's a weird place to be though, huh?
00:00:27.000Like that whole Crimea thing when you were protesting, when you were talking and speaking, I guess in editorial fashion on your show about what was going on with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Crimea situation.
00:00:41.000They were like, well, you should go there yourself and see it.
00:01:13.000So I wanted to get training and also make my own contacts instead of just going with like, Vetted Russians and just like going around Russians there and being like look everything's great They're all happy like we vetted everyone already.
00:01:23.000So here's your experience It has to be a weird gig working for Russia like the Russian sponsored news Network in America living in Washington DC like what a block from the White House yeah It's great.
00:01:39.000You're in the belly of the beast and you're also working for the quote enemy, right?
00:01:58.000I think they would put you on some sort of a list, right?
00:02:00.000I'm assuming that everybody who's friends with you is on some sort of a list.
00:02:03.000Well, I think, I don't like to live in fear of the NSA, but I think that obviously, you know, when you have John Kerry out there all the time fear-mongering about Russia Today and bringing it up, saying that using Russia Today as an example why the U.S. State Department propaganda apparatus needs tens of millions of dollars more funding.
00:02:21.000Which is called the Broadcasting Board of Governors.
00:02:23.000So it's Radio Free Europe and Voice of America.
00:02:25.000And it's what the US does to put their propaganda out to the rest of the world.
00:02:29.000And so John Kerry's using Russia Today as an example of how good Russia is at putting these counter talking points out there and using it to get more money.
00:02:38.000So you know that they're paying attention and you know that they are really bothered by it.
00:02:42.000But if they did anything like sanction the station or try to shut it down, it would look really fucking bad.
00:02:51.000It just shows you that the world is really just these odd shades of grey.
00:02:56.000It's not really black and white, because obviously Putin is a dictator.
00:03:01.000I mean, there can be no doubt, at a certain point, after a certain amount of assassinations and a certain amount of taking oligarchs' money and throwing them into jail and all the crazy shit that guy's done, he's essentially some sort of a new dictator, a new style of dictator.
00:03:18.000And yet, Russia Today reported on some real shit and gave you a lot of freedom to report on real shit, which is weird, you know?
00:03:30.000It gets everybody in this strange predicament, like, can I pay attention to Russia Today?
00:03:44.000But here's what's weird, is that he created this new position.
00:03:47.000So you have Medvedev, and then you have Putin basically re-emerging, right?
00:03:51.000It's like Bush coming back and just being like, yo, yo, yo, I'm going to fucking just create this position and just come back into government.
00:03:57.000So he did kind of create this caveat to come back in and have like a giant sphere of influence still.
00:04:27.000What I don't understand about the whole thing is that We're not looking at communism.
00:04:32.000This is not the Cold War, so I don't understand what the U.S. is getting out of it when you have an oligarchy and an uber-capitalist nation that's basically in line economically with the U.S. I mean, it's run by oligarchs just like the U.S. is.
00:04:46.000We're not talking about communism versus capitalism anymore, so what are we getting out of it to kind of continue to create this dueling narrative?
00:04:55.000Well, I think, first of all, people are nervous about Putin.
00:05:00.000When you look at him, you know, at least the image that's being portrayed through the media, he's this very macho guy.
00:05:08.000You see him with his shirt off, riding horses and shit, and you have one guy, who was the guy recently that said Putin could be worth as much as $200 billion?
00:05:18.000When you look at all the money that he's stolen, all the different people's money that he's taken, all these oligarchs that he throws in jail and takes their companies, they think that he can be worth as much as $200 billion.
00:06:19.000Yeah, what I love about about the propaganda war, though, is that you have all these like establishment journalists who will immediately say that Putin and he very may well have killed that dude, you know, I don't know.
00:06:32.000But to immediately come on the media and say that Putin's politically assassinated all these people in the street right in front of the Kremlin, but then you can never ever question any sort of political assassinations that have taken place in this country.
00:06:44.000So it's like a way to just project all of these issues when it comes to either false flag terrorism or political assassinations or just suspicious deaths outwardly and then just say like, well, that's fucking batshit if you ever apply that to our political system here.
00:06:57.000Well, that would be sort of like if Rand Paul was assassinated.
00:07:03.000If Rand Paul was running against Putin or against Obama, it was like second term, and he was campaigning and running against Obama and then was murdered in the street.
00:07:15.000That would be what it would be more like.
00:07:17.000It's a lot more brutal and open than any of the political assassinations that may or may not have taken place under the United States.
00:07:27.000Can you think of a similar political assassination that you could attribute to the United States, like maybe Vince Foster, which allegedly was an assassination?
00:07:37.000I mean, of course, obviously, other than the Kennedys, MLK, Which, of course, a court case found that the government was complicit in his assassination as well.
00:07:47.000A Memphis, Tennessee court jury found that.
00:07:51.000But yeah, I mean, actually, there was an Embassy Row bombing of a fucking just car bomb exploded and killed some leader and it came back to some complicity within the US government and another government working together.
00:08:03.000So there has been shit like that happened.
00:08:04.000But yeah, I mean, nothing just as overt That guy was a very vocal supporter and he thought that his fame would protect him.
00:08:39.000And also you're looking at a country that, you know, The Soviet Union collapsed not that long ago and they're figuring shit out.
00:08:46.000And so it's kind of like our moral imposition on the Middle East and being like, you guys are so barbaric and why haven't you evolved to where we are?
00:08:54.000And it's like, well, first of all, there's so many different factors playing into that on a completely different political evolution.
00:10:19.000Obviously, the US is openly endorsing and funding the Ukrainian government with lethal aid.
00:10:23.000And then you have Russia arming these rebels there.
00:10:26.000So basically the US and Russia are fighting a war in Ukraine and then you have the Assad factor where Russia is funding Assad and then you have the US openly funding these fucking jihadist Islamic terrorists essentially on the ground in Syria.
00:10:39.000That scares me because the war is already happening.
00:11:51.000So I became kind of the liaison in Oakland for RT and DC and New York and Moscow and I was just like kind of conveying what I was seeing and a lot of my videos went viral from my website media routes that I was covering, you know, the police raids and them tear gassing people.
00:12:06.000One of my videos helped Scott Olson win his court case, the guy who got shot with the tear gas canister at his face like in point blank range.
00:12:12.000Anyway, so RT just really liked the videos that I was doing and asked me to come there for an interview and I just said there's no way I want to move to DC. That sounds horrible.
00:12:22.000But I just couldn't pass up the opportunity and they said that they wanted me to have a show and just do exactly what I was doing and just rant and have an international platform to do so.
00:12:33.000The only hesitation that I had, I mean, I talked to someone who initially interviewed me for RT and I asked her, why do you work here?
00:12:39.000Like, why is Russia today covering things that activists care about?
00:13:34.000And I'd rather know the bias, which is Russia Today.
00:13:36.000You may not get the truth about Russia from going to Russia Today and watching Russia Today, but you will get the fucking truth about the U.S. government.
00:13:43.000And you will get the truth about corporations because it's state-funded so you can talk about those things without worrying about advertisers and sponsorship.
00:13:50.000So I always tell people, navigate around the bias.
00:13:53.000No, I'm not gonna tell people that there is no bias.
00:13:59.000It's funded by the Russian government.
00:14:01.000So there's a lot of factors that go into that, but I'd much rather know the bias blatantly in front of my face than not know the tens of thousands of, like, special interests and conflicts of interest going into the entire corporate media apparatus and all these other agencies.
00:14:14.000I mean, and that's even scarier because you have people on those channels that have been fired for criticizing the U.S. government, and it's not even state-funded media.
00:14:24.000The other thing about what you were doing that I thought was really interesting was you weren't easily definable.
00:14:30.000There's liberals and there's conservatives and they're on television and they kind of stick to a narrative because it makes their career more definable, who they are.
00:14:43.000The best examples are the really ridiculous Republican guys, like the Hannity guys.
00:14:49.000They're putting on a show, like the Bill O'Reillys.
00:14:52.000Those guys are putting on a show, whether they realize it or not.
00:14:55.000You will know their opinions long in advance before you ever hear it from their mouth, because you know what they're gonna be.
00:15:03.000There's gonna be no surprises, there's no subtlety, there's no nuance, there's no consideration of all the objective facts that go into all these different things and objective reasoning.
00:15:48.000Yeah, find that shit, because every time Joe Scarborough will tweet something out, all the responses are like, what about your dead intern, Joe?
00:15:54.000Like, no one has let him live it down.
00:16:26.000He's a very influential global leader in terms of, like, policymaking and foreign policy.
00:16:31.000He's kind of like an overseer of a lot of political ideology and thought that has been applied.
00:16:39.000Brzezinski's daughter, it just shows you the ancestral nature of the whole corporate media that you have like, you know, Andrea Mitchell and all these people have really close connections to the political establishment and very high places.
00:16:51.000The Gary Condit thing everybody knew about.
00:17:26.000She was found slumped next to a desk in the floor of the Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough's Fort Walton Beach office where Laurie had served as consultant service.
00:18:42.000They're watching the media and they just think that there's just two camps, two parties that, you know, and it's bullshit, and both are perpetuating really disastrous policies on a domestic and foreign policy front.
00:18:54.000They're indistinguishable when it comes to war, so...
00:19:01.000The medical examiner, Dr. Michael Berkland, said she had a past medical history that was significant, but it remains to be seen whether that played a role in her death.
00:19:09.000Soon after, a member of the immediate family reached out, rejected out of hand that Lori had any significant medical problems.
00:22:07.000Well, I think if you're one of those cats that's willing to send people to war, and you have to be to be a president, almost every single, I guess let's say every single president responsible for someone's death.
00:22:19.000Even, you know, think of like the most, I guess Jimmy Carter would be the most peaceful guy.
00:22:25.000He had to be responsible for someone dying, right?
00:23:37.000Basically what came out after Cheney and Rumsfeld and all these assholes went all over the media and started tying anthrax to Saddam immediately and immediately saying that it was all Islamic terrorism.
00:23:49.000Weeks later it came out that it wasn't Islamic terrorism.
00:23:53.000After, you know, you have Colin Powell holding up the vial of anthrax at the UN, like using all of this to connect to Saddam Hussein, saying that there's like anthrax labs there and you have Judith Miller at the New York Times basically printing like all this bullshit about anthrax and bioterror coming from Iraq.
00:24:12.000It was a high-grade, like, anthrax strain, the AIMS strain, that came from a U.S. bioweapons lab within our own country, within our own government facilities.
00:24:23.000Then they blame this guy called Stephen Hatfield for years.
00:24:28.000They blame this guy who worked within the lab, and it was like case closed.
00:24:32.000They basically ruined this guy's fucking life.
00:24:51.000I don't know, like six million dollars for being falsely accused as the anthrax perpetrator for years and years.
00:24:58.000You know, they're stalking this guy, they're like threatening his family, searching through his garbage, makes him, you know, ruins his life essentially.
00:25:07.000And then next, they blame this other guy named Bruce Ivins.
00:25:12.000Once again, he had, like, there is no actual evidence that this guy did it.
00:25:16.000So Bruce Ivins was just another guy who worked with him.
00:25:19.000He was like a specialist in anthrax and they tried to pin it on him.
00:25:23.000Tried to threaten his hospitalized daughter.
00:26:02.000He was helping the government with the investigation.
00:26:04.000Here you have, fast forward a couple years, The FBI agent in charge of the anthrax case, this just came out a couple weeks ago, the FBI agent is now suing the government.
00:26:13.000He's suing the FBI because he's saying you purposefully hid evidence that proved that Bruce Ivins was not the perpetrator.
00:26:21.000There's exculpatory evidence that shows that he was not.
00:26:23.000I am suing you guys for fucking up the investigation.
00:26:26.000You put all these like low-level interns To run this investigation, and it was totally botched from the get-go.
00:27:21.000Duncan Trussell and I went to the Center for Disease Control in Galveston, the big lab that they have, where they keep all the anthrax and all the Ebola locked behind four-foot-thick concrete walls and bulletproof glass and everybody wears spacesuits.
00:28:16.000I mean, I think during the Cold War, when everything was really crazy, I think they were just ramping it up.
00:28:21.000Everybody was preparing for mutual self-destruction.
00:28:24.000I guess my biggest question about it is, if the government had nothing to do with it, why botch the investigation so hard?
00:28:33.000Why hide evidence to just try to pin it on this guy?
00:28:35.000Why was the Bush administration and press people on Cipro, which is like a really intense antibiotic for anthrax strain, before the attacks even happened?
00:29:34.000The idea that this maniac somehow or another got into office, if you've never seen it, have you seen the guy sing the Bank of America song?
00:29:42.000Guy was like super psyched to work for Bank of America.
00:29:45.000You ever seen the Bank of America song?
00:29:46.000It's equally, maybe more creepy, but Ashcroft, at least the Bank of America guy is just working at a bank.
00:29:53.000And he loves Bank of America in some strange way.
00:29:57.000Remember when John Ashcroft hid the titties of the Lady Justice with purple drape?
00:36:02.000It's like the antithesis of what journalists should be doing, you know, going and like, I don't even know, just going and honoring politicians and schmoozing with them and rubbing elbows with them.
00:36:26.000You're a comic, and he's the president.
00:36:28.000You gotta, you can't goof on him at all?
00:36:30.000Well, it's just like when Eddie Murphy said he wasn't gonna make fun of Bill Cosby.
00:36:35.000Well, I think he just didn't want to do a sketch, which is kind of understandable, if you're Eddie Murphy, especially because he's talking about it while he's got his foot pushing against his own closet, you know,
00:37:45.000Like you got this weird feeling around him like you never really...
00:37:50.000There was no real connection with him.
00:37:52.000It was entirely about you being in the presence of Bill Cosby and a bunch of stuff that you had to do in order to make Cosby happy.
00:38:00.000And then, you know, he would leave and everybody would go like, whoa.
00:38:03.000The thing that's so creepy about it is that he could have fucked all these women, I'm sure, but instead he wanted to rape their lifeless bodies.
00:39:30.000I think that those guys that were around a long time ago like that those guys were like today Almost anything you do gets scrutinized and gets criticized by not just the press But like say if you were a Bill Cosby type character like say like like Kevin Hart who's a huge famous comedian If he did a bunch of really creepy shit or said a bunch of really creepy shit,
00:39:54.000people could talk about it on social media.
00:40:48.000And definitely, I think there's a conspiracy of silence in Hollywood when you look at things like Jimmy Savile from the BBC. He was just straight up raping little...
00:41:20.000I'm super fascinated with this because it just goes back to how these things are able to happen for so long and why they're covered up.
00:41:27.000And Gian Gomeschi is a really interesting case because he's this attractive, kind of hipster-looking guy who's had rape culture debates and is a feminist and puts himself off as this guy who really cares about women's issues.
00:42:36.000You're telling me that people at BBC didn't know that Jimmy Savile was like, why were they bringing all these little kids and like, you know what I mean?
00:42:43.000It's like, don't tell me that you didn't know what was going on.
00:43:12.000Yeah, no, he reported it, and I don't know exactly what happened, but that's where the whole Paterno, Joe Paterno thing, ended so awfully, where Joe Paterno was like a god in that state.
00:43:25.000I mean, he was the man at Penn State, and when it all went down, Joe Paterno got sick, like, really quickly afterwards and then died of cancer.
00:43:34.000He was dead within a year and a half, two years.
00:43:39.000I mean, it must have been devastating to him as a person to realize how horribly he had fucked up and let this monster be amongst him for so long and not do anything about it.
00:43:53.000I'm just happy that Bill Cosby's alive to see these women coming out because I really do believe that he raped them.
00:43:58.000And I think it's great that, you know, unlike Jimmy Savile, who's just dead and like no one, you know, he was just glorified until he died.
00:44:06.000And then it comes out after that he's a fucking pedophile.
00:44:08.000Well, the Savile thing is very strange, too, because there's this thing going on right now in the UK where they're investigating all of these royals and all these politicians, all these people that are involved in child pornography and child rape,
00:44:26.000Like, what exactly is going on with that?
00:44:28.000I don't know enough to really lay it down, but there is a lot of weird sex ring child pornography stuff going on with British royalty and also politicians.
00:44:41.000It's really strange, and I haven't really dug into it.
00:46:34.000Yeah, that's what's so crazy about it.
00:46:36.000I would love it if somebody took Bill Cosby and gave him, like, Ibogaine or some, you know, some sort of psychedelic and made him talk about it.
00:46:44.000I've always said that if someone actually wants to do, like, functional terrorism, they should just dose the punch bowl at the White House, like, correspondence dinner with acid.
00:46:54.000I mean, that would be like a really good strategy if you wanted to fuck with the establishment.
00:47:27.000He said that if he becomes president, he will actively go after all the states that have legalized marijuana, and he would put a stop to it.
00:47:35.000And he cites something about- he cites some nonsense about addiction.
00:48:22.000When you've got a giant percentage of America that believes in personal freedom, especially when it comes to something as innocuous as marijuana, when you can die from fucking Tylenol, like you just said.
00:48:34.000You can be a goddamn toxicologist and die from Tylenol.
00:51:13.000But there's no physical properties that are addicted, unless you have some really weird biology.
00:51:17.000Some very rare person, like the type of person that would be allergic to sunflowers.
00:51:22.000There's weird things out there, biologically.
00:51:24.000But the average person, that just shows you this is a criminal organization that's in charge of pretending to be looking out for the people, but really just in charge of keeping things as usual, just keeping policy as usual,
00:52:34.000And when you have a business that's for profit, like a prison business, their business, like, what they're involved in is locking people in jail.
00:52:42.000They would like to lock more people in jail.
00:52:44.000That's how they make more money, you know?
00:53:37.000I know that you're going to disagree with this, but that's the problem with capitalism, is this planned obsolescence in order to make more money.
00:53:44.000I'm gonna disagree because I because you're all about you I've heard that you talk about how you know capitalism encourages competition which it does but at the same time if it encouraged sustainability and competitive advantages in terms of like how to be sustainable which it does not that's the problem I just wish that people gave a shit about making things like harmonious with how the earth functions instead of just like sucking up all this shit and just I can I completely agree with you.
00:54:12.000But saying it does not is looking at it in a very blanket way.
00:54:17.000Capitalism is just the way we do business.
00:54:20.000But you can certainly have ethical capitalism.
00:54:23.000Capitalism doesn't have to be pushed to the nth degree to where All-out profit is the only motivation at the expense of the environment, at the expense of the people, at the expense of laws.
00:54:35.000I think that we have decided it has to be that way because of this competitive nature that people have, where they put the number, the score, above and beyond everything else.
00:55:31.000Ralph Nader never tried to, you know, never forced the government to actually make that a mandate.
00:55:36.000How many tens of thousands more people would have died until the market, quote unquote, corrected itself, where people forced pressure and just didn't buy from the cars that weren't putting seat belts in?
00:55:44.000That's an interesting way to put it, because motorcycles are still legal.
00:55:48.000You know, there's a lot of stuff that's legal that's way more dangerous.
00:55:51.000If you really think about all the activities that people are involved in, where they voluntarily put themselves in harm's way, Seatbelts, I certainly use them.
00:56:17.000Involved in creating cars that are more safe and that are provably more More safe for the passengers that that would have helped in the long run them sell more cars And it would have like encouraged other companies to do the same thing then tons more people would have died You mean if Ralph Nader didn't step up as a consumer advocate?
00:56:38.000No, I'm not arguing against consumer advocacy.
00:56:41.000I think what Ralph Nader's done, not just with seatbelts, but with a lot of things, is super important.
00:56:46.000You have to have someone that's looking out.
00:56:48.000But that's also a different era back then, a much less transparent era where the age of information hadn't really been established like it is today.
00:56:55.000But the problem with today is you have such a saturation of information and you have these multi-billion dollar companies that aren't.
00:57:31.000So even though I hate Comcast, it's like that's that's your only option because they've swallowed up all the other options in the area.
00:57:39.000And I think that that's another huge problem.
00:57:41.000So even though you might want to be a conscious consumer and buy from like ethical companies, it's really fucking hard because everyone you can't be a big corporation and not have bloody hands somewhere.
00:57:52.000No, I think there's certainly a point to that.
00:57:55.000I think the internet is starting to dissolve a lot of these monopolies.
00:58:00.000And I think things like Comcast controlling vast majorities of the cable business, and I think that's slowly going to get eaten up by various internet companies.
00:58:11.000And you start seeing things like, what is it, HBO Go?
00:58:38.000And I think that having just a connection to the Internet is going to be the new cable.
00:58:43.000And then it's going to be about monopolizing Internet connections.
00:58:46.000And how long are people going to tolerate that?
00:58:49.000I mean, that's the real portal right now, I think, is the Internet.
00:58:53.000And I think that's the real portal for information as well.
00:58:58.000I think that all these cable companies that Are producing new shows whether it's CNN or CNBC and like that antiquated format of delivering the news like that shit is not gonna fly You're entering into a new age.
00:59:12.000This is this age if people aren't gonna tolerate this old-schooly Bullshit that you're doing this weird wearing a tie talking like a robot like that stuff is out the window I think The age of information that we're involved in right now,
00:59:27.000all of us, whether we realize it or not, this is like one of the craziest times in human history.
00:59:32.000And people are aware of more things than they've ever been before.
00:59:36.000And I think that the people that are involved, even in these corporations that are involved in these unethical activities and monopolization of resources and just control over foreign governments and all the different shit, all that stuff, it's got a time to it.
01:00:29.000I was in the halls of Congress, and he just started walking toward me in the hallway, and I was like, oh, well, shit, let's ask Rand Paul the question right now, since he's right here.
01:00:37.000So I asked him why he endorsed Mitt Romney, because Mitt Romney is a psychotic warmonger.
01:00:43.000No, I just said, why do you endorse Mitt Romney?
01:00:45.000A lot of people who are followers of yours have questions because, you know, he's the opposite of what you claim to be in terms of foreign policy.
01:00:52.000And Rand Paul just put his head down and kept walking, and that was it.
01:00:55.000A week later, the video goes viral, and I walk into RT. This is when I first moved to DC. Walked into RT, and they were like, why is the Capitol Police threatening to come and arrest you and strip you of your press credentials?
01:01:44.000So I went and met this guy in an interrogation room in the Capitol building with all of the bureau chiefs of all of the major media organizations in this room.
01:01:53.000And I sit down with them and I was like, what in the hell is going on?
01:03:11.000It was like a 30-minute conversation, and after I left the office, I, like, taped it all on my phone because I couldn't believe that it actually happened, and I wanted...
01:04:06.000Is it possible that he didn't, I mean, just given this particular circumstance, is it possible that he didn't have anything to do with that?
01:05:11.000Anyone who's a strict Democrat, like I had a conversation once with a friend and he was talking about Democrats versus Republicans in an election and he kept using the term we, you know, we got to win this and we got to win that.
01:05:44.000It's got to be who has the best ideas.
01:05:47.000The party system has failed us for so long that we are just invested in having the best version of this failed, fucked-up party govern us.
01:05:57.000I mean, it's a terrible version of what could be the governing principles of the greatest nation the world has ever known.
01:06:05.000And I don't think any other country has this kind of absurd show, multi-billion dollar show, where it's like a Hollywood extravaganza, you know, and it gets worse every year.
01:06:13.000And last year they spent over a billion dollars each.
01:06:24.000And the fact that you need millions of dollars to even get on the ballot, almost, and maybe not millions, but I mean, you need a substantial amount of money to get even on the ballot in every state.
01:06:32.000And then to get into debates, it's completely impossible because it's all run by like the oil and gas, like all these corporations fund the presidential debate system somehow.
01:06:40.000Commission for Presidential Debates, a privately funded institution.
01:06:46.000Well, they used to be able to get on it with a small percentage of the popular vote in certain elections, but you can't do that anymore because of our good friend Ross Perot.
01:06:56.000Ross Perot fucked things up back in the old days.
01:06:59.000Because this guy, if you guys aren't aware of Ross Perot or you weren't alive back when this was going on, it was a very unique moment in human history because this guy, who was worth billions of dollars, just said, fuck it.
01:07:14.000I'm going to buy a half an hour of time on ABC during primetime or NBC. I don't I don't remember what network it was.
01:07:21.000And I am going to show everyone what's fucked up about the tax system and show everyone what's fucked up about the Federal Reserve.
01:07:28.000And I'm going to talk about what kind of changes I would make if I was president.
01:07:32.000And everybody was like, look at this guy.
01:07:34.000And he was able to debate with these guys because during the primaries, he had gotten whatever number of the popular vote you needed to get in order to be involved.
01:07:50.000But it's virtually impossible for any third-party candidate, which is why, you know, everybody looked at Ron Paul and saying, well, Ron Paul is this wild independent.
01:08:02.000I mean, you can call him a wild independent in terms of a lot of his ideas are very controversial and unique, but he's not an independent.
01:08:09.000He's a Republican, because if he wasn't independent, he would have never been in those fucking debates.
01:08:14.000There's no, no independents are ever going to get to that point where they are like there's three candidates being considered for the the number one position in the country and one of them is completely untethered to the system.
01:08:27.000And it's all like this political and intellectual bribery on so many levels because first it goes to the Supreme Court.
01:08:33.000I mean we're basically have a monarchy running this country that our Supreme Court justices have more power than like the fucking Queen of England.
01:08:41.000So they're the final arbitrator on so many different things that are really life and death shit here.
01:08:46.000And it's basically turned into like, well, do you want like a crazy neocon to pick the next Supreme Court justice?
01:08:53.000And it's like, that's what we've come down to.
01:08:54.000Like, that's what it's all generated down to is just who's going to pick a Supreme Court justice if someone dies.
01:09:14.000New figures just came out that said that 2 million people have died in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003. Not even to mention the million babies who died from sanctions in the 90s.
01:09:25.000Aside from that, Hillary Clinton, the Gaddafi, Libya, Syria, she wants to bomb Iran.
01:09:51.000So as much as people want to pretend like she's like this liberal do-gooder...
01:09:55.000I'm most concerned about ending imperialism, militarism, and U.S. hegemony, so I'm not going to be voting for Hillary Clinton because she's a fucking woman.
01:10:04.000I don't give a shit if someone's a woman, if they're black, if they're gay.
01:10:08.000If they are perpetuating war crimes and killing innocent people, I know, going back to what you said, it's hard to be a president and not have someone's death on your hands, but fucking A. You don't have to just sign up to kill millions of people on a fake war against a non-existent threat.
01:10:23.000I wonder what motivates someone like Hillary Clinton at this stage of her life.
01:10:33.000The Clinton Foundation, dude, check this out.
01:10:35.000The Clinton Foundation, not only all these giant corporations and banks, The real creepy part is when you see Saudi and Gulf states actually giving her tens of millions of dollars over the years.
01:10:50.000Saudi Arabia basically has bribed so many politicians.
01:10:53.000Harvard, Oxford, like all of these institutions to get Saudi money.
01:10:57.000And then you start to understand the culture of silence around Saudi Arabia and why we have this double standard, this egregious double standard in the war on terror and this unholy partnership with this country.
01:11:26.000So Saudi Arabia doesn't want the Houthi rebels because they threaten Saudi Arabia.
01:11:34.000So Saudi Arabia like backed a coup and supported a puppet regime in Yemen a while back and Yemen is just kind of a thorn in Saudi Arabia's side.
01:11:56.000But when you look at the coalition that's actually bombing Yemen, it's like brutal, oppressive monarchies and like genocidal dictators like Sudan's dictator.
01:12:06.000And then you have like, I think, Egypt, Bahrain.
01:12:10.000And Saudi Arabia and a couple other countries, it's like, wow, great job.
01:16:03.000What I was getting, what started this all off, was I was trying to figure out what would be the motivation of Hillary Clinton at this stage of her life.
01:16:23.000I remember an article came out that said that she had a student discount on the speaking tours that she was giving, and it was like $250,000 was a speaking fee at a university, and that was the student discount.
01:16:55.000And, you know, the whole Saudi Arabia thing really grinds my gears because it's, you know, here you have Saudi Arabia beheading people for sorcery, exporting terrorism around the world.
01:17:07.000And then you have Cuba, which today, you know, here we go, 56 years after the Cold War, Cuba finally got removed from the state sponsors of terrorism list.
01:18:13.000Yeah, and these Chris Christie types who I think he realizes he'll never be president anyway, which is one of the reasons why he's saying those things in order to...
01:18:20.000Keep the coalition or whatever he's established with whatever powers that be that are trying to keep marijuana illegal in New Jersey.
01:18:28.000He's somehow or another in bed with those fucks and that's what he's doing.
01:19:34.000You know, if you went over someone's house and there was stacks of old newspapers and cat shit all over the floor, you'd be like, oh, this person's a fucking nut.
01:19:41.000That's the same thing when you see a morbidly obese person in a suit that wants to run America.
01:20:03.000And I'm not talking about the average person who is...
01:20:06.000Emotional issues or whatever that causes you to overeat and you know, I hope everybody who listens get that under wraps, whoever you are, but when you're when you're stepping up and saying I want to be a leader I want to be a leader of the country the entire Country you can't be fat.
01:20:23.000You just can't you can't be that I mean not saying you have to be like super fit, but you can't be morbidly obese that guy's morbidly obese He's a dumpster, just big waddling, fucking thighs rubbing together, gut overflowing over his belt, pulling it up,
01:20:44.000Because, you know what, we're not talking about shaming someone who has, you know, a congenital disease or some disfigurement because of an accident.
01:22:21.000I think that job requires so much self-control.
01:22:25.000You mean you almost have to be like a monk.
01:22:27.000You almost have to be some enlightened being who's separate from the pressure that the average person is going to receive the PTSD by, you know, going into how many domestic violence situations do you have to go into and watch, you know, men and women who have killed each other in these horrible love triangles or robberies or,
01:22:48.000you know, fill in the blank rapes or, you know, how many times do you have to see these horrible things before your brain is just broken?
01:22:54.000I mean, how many times you have to just think that everyone is out to get you everywhere you go because you've had guys, you know, try to grab your gun or you've had, you know, prisoners try to punch you as you're trying to put the handcuffs on them.
01:23:32.000And I don't think the average person is qualified to wield that kind of power.
01:23:37.000The psychological ramifications of being a person who can end someone's life with your finger anytime you want by squeezing some small muscles in your finger, it's insane.
01:23:48.000When you see that guy, when that guy's running in South Carolina, and that guy's running, and that guy pulls that gun out and he's shooting him as he runs, what the fuck has to go through your mind where you're seeing a middle-aged guy running away from you and you're shooting him in the back?
01:24:08.000And I talked to this guy, Ray Lewis, a former captain of the Philadelphia Police Force, and he said that they purposefully vet sociopathic and people lacking empathy for the job.
01:24:19.000And if you're too intelligent, they actually don't want you to be a cop.
01:25:30.000And in England, there's been like axe wielders, like people running around with axes, and it shows how cops can peacefully disarm them instead of just executing people.
01:25:42.000It's definitely a serious problem, and it's not just a problem with standard police officers, it's a problem with the DEA. I mean, anybody who's seen those DEA raids where they kick in doors and shoot little dogs, like fucking Shih Tzus and shit.
01:26:09.000Yeah, or there's a famous, in the culture high, the documentary, there's that famous...
01:26:15.000Video where they shoot this guy's dog because they had found like some pot in his his trash They had found like a grinder or something in his trash So they they did a SWAT raid on this guy's house in front of his family And you hear bang bang and the dog's yiping the guy's crying you shot my fucking dog like why'd you shoot my dog and And,
01:26:36.000you know, they're handcuffing them, and it's just that power over people, and that power without reason, without reasonable understanding of the situation, a reasonable conversation, just kick down the door, bulletproof vest, gun down the door, gun down the dog.
01:27:36.000Take all the money on them, and this has happened many times, and it's tragic, it's heartbreaking, because someone will maybe lose $30,000.
01:27:43.000People who don't want a bank account, per se, they want to keep cash on them, because why not?
01:27:50.000It doesn't mean you're a fucking drug dealer.
01:27:52.000And so they just take their cash, and then they just won't get it back.
01:27:55.000And if they can afford to hire a lawyer for $10,000 and spend months In litigation to get their money back, then maybe they can.
01:28:03.000But really, like these people, maybe they had a giant pile of cash because they wanted to refurbish their kitchen or in the restaurant they were working in.
01:28:10.000A lot of people have had to close down their businesses after the police have stolen their cash.
01:28:15.000And then they're allowed to use that cash.
01:28:16.000And then they're allowed to use the cash.
01:28:17.000They take that cash and it's theirs now.
01:30:57.000He was just sitting there in the video.
01:30:59.000And they said he attacked or ran towards a cop and then another source said he didn't really do that and the cop was stalking him like a defensive back.
01:31:08.000And when they were walking away towards the car he just simply said to the cop, what's your problem with me?
01:31:12.000And that's when what the video picks up there and he's getting beat up.
01:32:16.000Probably there's some good idea behind it if you're dealing with organized crime and them having massive sums of money they've got through nefarious ways and then you figure out a way to catch those people and take that money from them.
01:32:28.000But as soon as you allow regular people like the police, regular people like that fucking dumb old man that shot that guy the other day because he thought he had a taser out and he had a gun out and he said, oops, I shot him.
01:32:41.000That's the type of people you have as cops?
01:33:22.000I think 47 senators or congressmen signed on to this letter by Tom Cotton, who's basically backed by these neocon war hawks in places like the Foreign Policy Initiative and Bill Kristol, who love war.
01:33:34.000Their whole problem is that the public is too war-weary.
01:33:41.000To be like they're trolls like this guy comes out and writes this letter to Iran basically saying like we don't support these like diplomatic negotiations and encouraging all of these congressmen to sign on to this letter to basically stimmy the process and it's like it's unfucking heard of it's like since when does this asshole Get to come out and kind of like usurp the president.
01:34:08.000And every time you look at like a military intervention in the last decade, it always stems from these letters from these think tanks that like try to shape policy.
01:34:15.000And here's this semester's guy, Tom Cotton.
01:34:37.000There was just a phone call that was recorded by a Deutsche Bank, I think, analyst and Lockheed Martin CEO, where the Deutsche Bank guy was saying, hey, we're really worried that the Iran negotiations is going to depress weapons sales.
01:36:49.000But I like that you said it's the extreme ideologues, because I think that that's the way it is in all of these conflicts.
01:36:54.000It's not a fight between Islam and the West.
01:36:56.000It's a fight between the most extreme ideologues on all sides and the most militaristic, fascistic ideologues, you know, that you'll see that take these to the extreme.
01:37:06.000Unfortunately, in America, these people have suits and they're called politicians, a couple of them.
01:37:11.000Well, this guy, this Tom Cotton guy, the picture in the Red State article where it says Tom Cotton, rock star, is him in full fatigues with a machine gun in his hand.
01:37:57.000But then there's the Obamas who you think are so much better, but then look at he has what seven countries that he's bombing under his belt.
01:38:04.000He's sold more guns in the first five years of his term than Bush did in the entire eight years term.
01:38:11.000Well, it's one of those things where you can't be in that position unless you're playing the game.
01:38:17.000It doesn't seem like you can get there unless you're playing the game.
01:38:21.000And he got in and he showed he's playing the game.
01:38:23.000He's doing what everybody else did, making everybody money.
01:38:28.000I would love to see a rationalization of that.
01:38:31.000You know, if there comes a time one day when Obama's like 80 years old where he gets to sit down and explain like the way Jimmy Carter does speeches today.
01:38:39.000You know, Jimmy Carter does interviews today where he talks about the Iran crisis, the hostage crisis, and it's pretty sobering when you, you know, you realize that he knows that the Republicans were already negotiating for the release of the hostages before he was, you know, I mean, he didn't really have a chance.
01:38:54.000They kept those people in there Up until the moment where Reagan won and Reagan got in office and then they were all magically freed.
01:39:03.000And when you hear him talk today with very measured tones and very measured sentences, you know, I would love to see that kind of a conversation with Obama in the future where he could really tell us, like, what was going on during this whole drone thing, when you were getting the statistics,
01:39:19.000when you were realizing that 80-plus percentage of the people that you were killing were innocents.
01:39:38.000Going back to that report that said that 4 million have died in Iraq, Afghanistan, 80,000 people have died under the U.S.'s warrant here in Pakistan alone.
01:39:47.000And we've never sent ground troops in there.
01:40:41.000It does seem like it's a different thing than has ever existed before.
01:40:47.000I mean, when Smedley Butler wrote that famous piece, War is a Racket, back in 1933, you could read that and apply it today to, and Smedley Butler was a, what was his position, something in the Marine Corps, very highly ranked in the Marine Corps,
01:41:03.000Sergeant General or some shit, I remember.
01:41:07.000Title was in the Marine Corps, but what he said back then it applies today and If you read it and you're reading something about the 1930s This guy thought that he was going over there saving the world and really was making it safe for bankers or safer oil people or safe for this or safe for that and It's exactly the same shit that's going on today and when guys are involved in that and they have the going with this ideal They really are in their mind.
01:41:33.000They want to stand up for their country They believe in it They believe in justice and they want to be a hero and they go over there and they realize oh, I'm just a hitman I'm a hitman for this creepy fucking corporation that wants to keep sucking the oil out of the ground over here and doesn't want to deal with all these people that wanted to stop and That's got to be a very sobering point of view,
01:42:27.000And they factor that in when they talk about veterans committing suicide, I think what they were talking about is currently active veterans that were committing suicide.
01:42:38.000If you add in, that's probably where the 65-minute thing comes from.
01:42:43.000Yeah, I think that probably makes sense because what they were talking about when they were saying that more people have committed suicide, I think they were talking about active military right now.
01:43:24.000I think the story itself, the actual real story, is very fascinating.
01:43:28.000I think Chris Kyle as an individual It's a very, very complex case.
01:43:33.000It's a very complex thing to discuss, but if you even talk about him, you're a coward, and Chris Kyle was a hero, and you just sit there realizing that your freedom that you have is because of a guy like Chris Kyle.
01:44:29.000And another problem, I mean, the people who did see it in American Sniper, Clint Eastwood actually inserted things that weren't in the book at all, like the human shield myth that we talked extensively about before that they used to justify all these mass casualties in Gaza, saying that everyone uses a human shield.
01:44:46.000They showed a human shield myth playing out in the movie that never existed.
01:44:50.000It showed a woman being guarded by her son and holding a grenade or whatever.
01:44:54.000And in the book, when you read Excerpts of Chris Kyle's book.
01:44:58.000He talks about how these people were barbaric.
01:45:00.000It was almost like Christopher Columbus in Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States.
01:45:04.000You can read Christopher Columbus's journal entries when he first came here.
01:45:07.000He was saying that everyone should just be killed, raped, and they were all barbaric animals.
01:45:12.000And that's what Chris Kyle talked about Iraqis as.
01:45:15.000He said that he hated them with a vengeance so strong that it was inhuman.
01:46:48.000You know, one of the things about the Chris Kyle thing, I think if you look at it fairly, you have to take into consideration the fact that this guy was, I mean, he's a Navy SEAL, and he's out there doing this incredibly difficult,
01:47:57.000Dependent upon outside sources to fund them and that these people that are veterans that get blown up and they have all sorts of head traumas, all these injuries, they don't get any help unless someone else donates.
01:48:12.000The amount of money that is involved in the war as far as the amount of money that they give defense contractors, the amount of money that's spent on, you know, various operations is staggering.
01:48:23.000The amount of money that's spent on taking care of the soldiers once they get out is very small.
01:48:27.000So you're left with this guy who is a Navy SEAL who's been involved in I mean what PTSD to the fucking gills I mean how could you not you're shooting people from a distance watching heads explode your friends are dying people are dying all around you're in a death business and you come out and you've got this book to write and You know there's a lot of the stuff that he said in the book that's turned out to not be factual But if I was trying to sell a fucking book Okay,
01:48:53.000and I was in that sort of a desperate situation.
01:48:55.000I would put a bunch of shit in there that's not factual, too.
01:50:01.000I think Chris Kyle is a disgusting scumbag and I hate him, but I understand that this is systemic of just like a very large problem.
01:50:08.000Like there's a problem of empire and when you have a government who's extra judicially assassinating brown people around the world, we should not be surprised that this militarism bleeds in and we have like a culture of empire babies where you have cops going around and killing black people.
01:50:23.000You have, you know, military people thinking that they have a license to fucking do whatever they want.
01:50:27.000And people themselves going and just shooting a bunch of people in a movie theater or, you know, taking down a bunch of people with them.
01:50:35.000I really do think it all bleeds from the same problem with American culture when you have, like, a global empire.
01:50:43.000And a shitload of guns and people who have American exceptionalism and think that they're the best country in the world that can do no wrong and that they're better than everyone else.
01:50:54.000Well, it definitely gives a society a sense of entitlement in some sort of a weird, bizarre way where you ignore all the faults of the people that are on your team and you highlight all the faults of the people on the other team even if they are lesser or equal.
01:51:13.000Whenever you have a team, whenever you have this team mentality, whether it's the Democrats versus the Republicans, us versus them, East Coast, West Coast, you get this stupid idea that we're not all one, that we're not all one superorganism sharing the earth,
01:51:41.000If you have this abundant resource mentality that really, hey, there's plenty for everybody.
01:51:47.000The problem is the vast majority of what we're taking out of the earth is being sucked up by a very limited few people that have control of the overwhelming majority of the resources in the world.
01:52:02.000And they're the ones who are instigating wars.
01:52:05.000They're the ones who are funding and actively campaigning to get these things going and to make sure that, just like we were talking about with private prisons, they want to keep the business of war booming.
01:52:17.000The business of war does not want to taper off.
01:52:19.000The business of war wants to grow like every other business.
01:52:22.000And when you have business and profit involved in going to places and shooting things and taking their stuff...
01:52:32.000And Halliburton, which fucking Dick Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton, he leaves Halliburton, becomes the vice president, and then Halliburton gets these no-bid contracts to repair places that Cheney is involved in instigating these...
01:52:49.000I mean, it can't get any more transparent than that.
01:52:51.000That is the business of war in action.
01:52:55.000The business of this funnel that has figured out how to draw money out of an area and how to filter it into the coffers of all these people that are responsible for all these companies that sell things to the government that are involved in war.
01:53:14.000And that's where a guy like Obama steps in, you know, in 2012. You know, this guy steps in, or 2008, this guy steps in, and you get to see this scenario play out where this new entity steps into this machine that's already been established.
01:53:33.000He has all these ideas in his head about what he's going to do, and then once he actually gets in there, you see what he's really doing.
01:54:32.000And another problem with the way things are going now is, like, I think under the Bush administration it was so blatant and in your face and obtuse, and now Obama, you know, there's all this covert warfare going on.
01:54:41.000The General of AFRICOM, which is like, who knew that we were at war with Africa, right?
01:54:46.000Well, apparently there's military operations going on every single day across Africa.
01:55:09.000And amazingly, it all goes together, too, when you look at the global empire and how it all works, like the extraction of resources and all these countries working together in terms of Saudi Arabia and Israel.
01:55:19.000And when you look at the drone wars, cobalt Is a mineral that's really essential for the military industrial complex to build machinery and weaponry and cobalt comes from the Congo and when you look at the Congo For the last decade or so,
01:55:35.000or more than that, there's been like six million people who have died there.
01:55:38.000There's basically a genocide going on in the Congo, facilitated and protected by the U.S. government.
01:55:43.000In State Department documents in the late 90s or mid-2000s, they've said that they need to keep Congo unstable, basically.
01:55:51.000They need to keep this civil war going so that we can secure the cobalt extraction.
01:57:12.000Maybe because you bomb the shit out of all of these different religious sects that Saddam was actually had a stranglehold on.
01:57:18.000Because at that point in time, the political evolution and climate of the society, they needed a dictator and like some sort of dictatorial rule to keep those factions in line.
01:57:27.000That's how the society was functioning.
01:57:28.000So to just bomb them into oblivion and just be like, we've democratized you.
01:57:36.000Any logical human being would look at that region and say, well, of course, that's what's going to happen.
01:57:40.000Even Cheney, back in 1994, he was giving this interview about the invasion of Iraq because, of course, Bush Sr., we know he wanted to go into Iraq, too.
01:57:48.000And he was saying we'd never do that because pieces of Iraq would fly off.
01:57:53.000And he was like, it would be a total disaster.
01:57:54.000He basically laid out exactly what happened when we did go in there.
01:58:07.000Okay, you're really good at pointing out all these things that are fucked up in the world.
01:58:12.000But do you have any ideas about how it could be fixed?
01:58:17.000I think that everything that you said about how we're one human family living on one organism, we have the technological capabilities in front of us.
01:58:27.000That's why I love what Peter Joseph and the Zeitgeist movement are doing, because they point out the possibilities and the capabilities that we have.
01:58:33.000The hydroponics, the open source ecology and all of these different movements, you know, decentralized tools online or Bitcoin or This is all happening.
01:58:42.000People are starting the revolution on their own.
01:58:45.000But I think that as long as we are ingesting media that makes us scared and keeps pitting us in camps against each other and keeps reinforcing American exceptionalism and also these identities, these false identities and nationalistic tendencies that makes us not have empathy,
01:59:01.000not extend our empathy from our brothers and sisters in Gaza, our brothers and sisters in Iraq.
01:59:06.000That needs to be stripped down, first and foremost, because if we keep reinforcing the fact that we're different because we're American and we're white and we were born, we just happen to be born within this nation, we're going to have a really long road ahead of us in terms of how we can really change this because if the system is globalized,
01:59:22.000the struggle needs to be globalized and so does the consciousness.
01:59:44.000A lot of people, I know that you had on Sam Harris also who kind of responded to my whole argument about, you know, Islam and how these things have happened and why, you know, why Palestine is the way it is and Sam Harris, his whole thing is why he doesn't criticize Israel.
01:59:59.000I got a lot of hate from people who said that I just, they just didn't agree with me because it's controversial.
02:00:04.000But I totally disagree with Sam Harris in this new atheism movement.
02:00:09.000Reinforcing the American exceptionalism in the Empire and imperialism.
02:00:13.000I mean, it's unbelievable that someone like him and Richard Dawkins can get out there and say, all that matters is your pure moral intentions.
02:00:23.000Islam is so fucked up that even if Islam kills a million people and the US government and Western imperialism kills a billion, Islam is still worse because our intentions were pure.
02:00:50.000And one of his takes on religion is simply that...
02:00:54.000If I could speak for him, the way he looks at Islam, the real underlying issue with any overwhelming philosophy or ideology is what are their core principles?
02:01:09.000And one of the core principles of Islam is If you leave, you're supposed to be killed.
02:01:15.000If you're apostate, you're supposed to be killed.
02:01:16.000If you commit adultery, if you commit homosexuality, if you look at these things, like in the religious doctrine, like in the Quran, how it's addressed, the fundamental rules of this ideology,
02:01:32.000it's very divisive, and it's very strong, and it's very clearly stated.
02:01:39.000Really, how come so many more billions of people are not getting killed?
02:01:43.000There's a billion and I think it's like one sixth or one fifth of the world's population is Muslim.
02:01:48.000So shouldn't we be seeing a lot more just completely like barbarism and terrorism and death and destruction from Muslims if that's really what the entire Muslim religion is about?
02:01:59.000Well, I'm not even saying that he's saying the entire religion is about that or denying even that there are some moderate factions of the religion.
02:02:07.000But I think as a neuroscientist, his point of view is on ideologies and cult thinking and dangerous philosophical trends, like dangerous trends of behavior, like jihadists,
02:02:22.000like ISIS, like things along those lines.
02:02:26.000Not denying the origins of The reason why they're so upset in the first place, the conflict that's brought them to this position, or even the fact that they may have been funded.
02:02:37.000Okay, because I don't ever hear him talk about that.
02:02:37.000I don't ever hear him talk about that.
02:02:38.000You'd have to have a conversation with him specifically about it, like, in a debate, which would be kind of interesting, because you're a very fiery young lady.
02:03:38.000Like, if this is deemed by Allah that you should be stoned to death for adultery, there cannot be a better way to deal with this.
02:03:46.000And I think when you get down to the core philosophy, could you imagine If we were seeing that spread across the country with Christianity.
02:03:55.000I mean, there are certainly some radical forms of Christianity.
02:03:57.000I mean, let's, like, we're labeling things, just all ideologies across the board, whether it's Catholicism or Baptism or Scientology or any pattern that you are expected to follow very rigorously and very, very strictly.
02:04:14.000When you start applying those patterns to the real world and inside those patterns, it includes Death for things like adultery, death for things like homosexuality, very strict, rigid rules like you were describing.
02:05:04.000I mean, all of these religions have evolved over the millennia.
02:05:08.000And I think when you're looking at Islam, we have to give it room to grow and evolve without...
02:05:12.000And it's really hard to look with such harsh judgment and single out Islam in terms of the rest of the religions when...
02:05:20.000There's been so much military intervention in this region of the world and that has reinforced religion because a lot of times people, you know, people in Gaza or Iraq or Syria, I mean, their prayer is the only thing that they have to keep them going when you have fucking nothing.
02:05:41.000And a lot of people for some reason were like telling me that I needed to get schooled.
02:05:47.000You need to get schooled by Sam Harris.
02:05:50.000Well, you know, I don't think either one of you are wrong.
02:05:52.000I think your point of view and his point of view, although they're very different, having a conversation like this in third-party form, or not even having a conversation, but disagreeing on points like that, you really have to sit down with someone.
02:06:06.000There's a lot of people that I've gotten to disagreements with, whether it's online or in reality, or in real life.
02:06:14.000Where I think if you had the time to discuss and sit down and talk about, like, what do you think about this and why do you think about that?
02:06:33.000I think there's a lot of middle ground there and a lot of ways to look at his point of view and a lot of ways certainly to look at your point of view, which I very much respect.
02:06:45.000There's certainly a lot of legitimate arguments to the fact that we have fucked up the Middle East almost Unfixably.
02:06:54.000We have like ruined lives to the point where you're talking about if the new figures of two million people in Iraq and Afghanistan, that's the new figure.
02:07:04.000That's just the people that are dead, man.
02:07:23.000Even with philanthropic missions and building schools and helping people, you're not going to take away the sting of someone's baby getting blown up by a fucking drone.
02:07:36.000I mean, I just don't know how you erase that.
02:07:38.000I think it needs to start with stopping.
02:07:41.000And this is what I asked that Saudi scholar.
02:07:44.000I was like, how can we, and I always come from this angle, like, how can we help the people and their sovereignty without supporting disastrous military intervention?
02:09:12.000So how is a million people getting killed?
02:09:14.000Well, you're killing people, and then you're killing extra people, and then there's people that are mad that you killed those extra people, and they're coming after you, and you're killing them, too.
02:09:22.000And then it just keeps going on and on and on and on.
02:09:24.000It becomes this vicious cycle, especially when you're invading.
02:09:29.000I mean, can you imagine the fucking shitstorm if someone tried to park boats off of our shore and invade the motherland, the soil that Chris Kyle protected?
02:09:46.000People got mad at me, and I didn't say anything about him other than the fact that what he said in his book wasn't truthful.
02:09:54.000Never said a negative word about the guy, didn't see the movie, don't know much about him other than the numbers of people that he killed, and people were so mad at me.
02:11:07.000Well, to me, this is what the beast of capitalism turns into.
02:11:11.000This is like the inevitable outcome of capitalism when you leave it unhinged and people say we need less government.
02:11:17.000To me, that doesn't make sense because that's how we got here in the first place is like letting down all these barriers and having this ancestral relationship between the industry and government sector.
02:12:48.000But I'm not arguing with you with that.
02:12:50.000I'm just saying, like, what do you think can be done?
02:12:54.000I'm not saying that you have to have a solution, but I'm saying if you have an argument that you think capitalism is inherently unfixable, broken, evil, fill in the blank, what could be done?
02:13:09.000Well, I think that we need some sort of actual democratic kind of cooperative governance locally, where people are actually invested in like a cooperative level, which is actually what democracy should be.
02:13:23.000That is actual democracy in its truest form.
02:13:26.000And a lot of what Marx wrote is like that.
02:13:29.000Unfortunately, I hate that we're just put in these two camps where it's like either you're communist or capitalist.
02:13:36.000And I think that a lot of European countries have done it right, where they incorporate a lot of social aspects into their society.
02:13:42.000And people who want to shit all over like socialism, I mean, we have libraries, firemen, like these are all socialist aspects of our country right now.
02:13:53.000So I think that it's been a scary and vilified word for no reason.
02:13:57.000And I think that we need to really grow up and understand how we can incorporate aspects of both to really benefit society until we can figure out maybe what's next.
02:14:06.000Right now, we have a country where people applaud politicians who say that we're not going to give you healthcare, that we want no government, that we want to give more power to the market.
02:14:16.000I just see a lot of problems with that because I just feel like that's why we have a lot of the issues that we have today.
02:14:22.000A lot of European countries have free healthcare in college and I totally support that because Being unemployed for the little time that I have and I looked into Obamacare thinking that it was gonna be like really cheap.
02:15:16.000Socialized medicine at least as a an available thing for everyone I mean if you want like elective procedures, you know if you want a boob job or something like that Yeah, you should be you should be able to buy that if you have a doctor that has you know some Extreme ability to fix knees or something like that and it costs a lot of money to do his stuff and Insurance doesn't cover it,
02:15:41.000Yeah, that makes sense but but The idea that you could go into debt because you get hurt or sick, and you might not ever be able to come out of that, and that our government doesn't look at that as being one of the primary objectives of a government, of a leading group of human beings that are supposed to be in charge of allocating resources.
02:16:03.000Taking care of education and taking care of health.
02:16:11.000Of course firemen, of course all the things that are police, all the things that are already established as being things that we pay for, that the state pays for, those things should be there as well.
02:16:20.000But the idea that healthcare wouldn't be in that group, it seems barbaric.
02:16:42.000Yes, it has a lot of problems and they don't claim to be the best system, but their health care and their altruism in terms of like fighting like epidemics worldwide.
02:16:52.000Cuba was on the front lines of after the Haiti earthquake.
02:16:54.000They sent the largest contingent of doctors to Haiti.
02:16:57.000They sent the largest contingent of doctors to Liberia to fight Ebola.
02:18:43.000By September, I should have another show up and running for a network that I won't say anything yet, because in case it doesn't happen, I don't want to make any declarations, but definitely not going away.
02:18:55.000So Media Roots, it's a citizen journalism project that I started, and that's how RT found me through Occupy Oakland coverage, but it's just a multimedia forum that I have a hub of censored information that I've collected over the years, and now I'm doing podcasts on there.
02:20:26.000They're voting for marijuana legalization.
02:20:28.000They're voting to repeal shit like civil asset forfeiture.
02:20:31.000All of these things will only happen locally.
02:20:33.000And if the DOJ or federal government wants to, you know, usurp people's rights, then at least it will be really obvious where they have to say, like, we don't care what you voted for.
02:20:41.000Then at least it'll be like completely obvious that there's like a coup that happened.
02:20:45.000But right now we can do all these things on a local level.
02:20:48.000And it's also the seismic sustainable shifts.
02:20:51.000Agriculturally, like all of these things, the organics residence, labeling, these things can all be done locally.
02:20:58.000Unfortunately, if the Trans-Pacific Partnership passes, then corporations will have the right to sue actual nations and overturned laws that we pass.
02:21:09.000So there's another trade deal coming, and Obama's trying to fast-track it through Congress, which is like he's going to bypass the congressional vote.
02:21:17.000So we know how fucked up NAFTA and TAFTA and all this shit was.
02:24:32.000I think that the positive takeaway is that there's so many people who are like-minded out there, and we just gotta free our minds, open our consciousness, do art, do music, get creative, put your voice out there, don't live in fear of the NSA. Stop getting disillusioned and disempowered from the federal government's ineptitude and criminality and just live true,
02:26:00.000What you're saying is like total hippie talk and a lot of people are gonna get really mad at you for it, but you're right in a lot of ways I mean this is just life it doesn't last that long and we're caught up in the lives of Millions of people that have been lived before us and the momentum of all these shitty decisions and all these bad choices and and really corrupt ideas that have sort of facilitated The system that's in place right now,
02:26:28.000it's almost like we're born into this system that we don't have any control over.
02:26:32.000You just gotta hone in on your passion and what speaks most to you.
02:26:35.000And you can't, I mean, you can't just live in constant misery of just how depressing the world is and how fucked up everything is because we are winning the information war.
02:26:44.000There is a global consciousness shift going on that is completely obvious and you're either a part of it or you're not.
02:26:50.000You know, I wonder sometimes when I think about America, because America has been around for just such a blip, when you think about human history.
02:26:58.000Human history has been around for a blip in terms of world history, but the United States is the real blip.
02:27:08.000I mean, that's amazing how short of a time that is.
02:27:12.000And in that time an entirely new nation has arisen and I always wonder like is there ever gonna come a point in time where people were like fuck this place and they do it in mass the same way they came to the new world You know, I wonder if like my family all came from immigrants my grandparents on both sides came from other countries Mostly Italy,
02:27:36.000And it's because it sucked over there.
02:27:38.000And they took a chance in moving to another fucking land.
02:27:42.000And I always wonder, is it possible that in our lifetime or several lifetimes from now, whenever it is, that we find a spot and we all get together and go, you know what?
02:27:55.000And maybe if we do, we or they, the people do, it's going to be the same thing that happened when the British tried to take back America, when we had the Revolutionary War.
02:28:08.000It almost seems like that's the only way things are ever gonna change in terms of like the way America was so radically different than the countries that we departed from.
02:28:19.000The countries that people immigrated from and came to America and the founding fathers of our country tried to establish this ideal environment, wrote the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, tried to make laws and rules that made sense, that taking into account all the errors of the past and all of the shit that they didn't want to deal with with Europe and with England create some sort of a new establishment some sort of a new Nation and I wonder if
02:28:49.000it's too late to do that again I don't think it is, and I think that it's unfortunate that you have politicians now on the backs of the ashes of the monarchy that we rose out of.
02:28:59.000Now you have these politicians protecting the last bastion of absolute monarchies in the world, which is these Gulf states.
02:29:04.000I think that once we realize that money is not What really makes us happy.
02:29:11.000And unfortunately, I just think a lot of people still don't understand that.
02:29:16.000It's really drilled into us with the materialistic society that we live in.
02:29:19.000But if people would understand that happiness comes from something much deeper, and that's why people in absolute destitute poverty can be happier than the richest person in the world.
02:29:30.000Well, they say Mexico is one of the happiest countries in the world, but yet one of the poorest countries in the world.
02:29:36.000And if you go to Mexico, it's such a laid-back sort of environment.
02:29:40.000I mean, everybody has this idea of Mexico based on the border states and the border cities and the drug war, which is because of America.
02:29:50.000That's because of our fucking insatiable desire for coke.
02:29:53.000Oh, they already have a shirt, because America, that's why.
02:31:09.000Everyone check it out, abbymartin.org, and check out my brother's documentary called American Anthrax if you want to learn more about the whole anthrax shit.
02:31:16.000And send all your love, not your hate, to Abby Martin on Twitter.